Swank Bookie Jibes

Running in the Special Olympics

If you are going to get in an argument with someone on the internet, choose a good avatar that makes you look like a cool easy going guy:

No matter what, do NOT choose one that makes you look like the bad guy from James Bond:

Seriously, I don't know/care about 8020 Publishing or whatever but don't you think this argument was kind of lost when when one guy showed up to the battle with an eyepatch and a tuxedo?  He looks like he's about to plan an elaborate death sequence for Powazek that he'll only narrowly escape by using using a 'web communities' version of Hulk Hogan's 'Hulkamania' move.

Danah's Talk

Danah's talk was really awesome. Finn you are right. Its prolly posted somewhere, so I'm not going to try to sum it up or anything. However, it did make me think of a couple things. One is that its funny how all these people here are what we normally think of as early adopters: they see some new tekmology come out, they can understand the purported benefits pretty quickly, and they are confident that they'll be able to handle whatever the new paradigm of using the thing is. They have technical skills they bring to the table that they think will translate. With all this social technology, this is not the case. It's more social than technological. I know a lot of technology people, myself included, that don't quickly grasp the benefit of some new social technology, and further, don't have any confidence in their ability to function in it. Technology people are generally still trying to figure out how to act in the existing social contexts.

Danah was also talking about how people use various social media technologies for widely divergent purposes depending in a large part on their stage in life: young kids seek validation from their immediate peers, people in their 20s make myspace pages where they try to get famous and get on a reality show or something. People get older and use blogs for work stuff and use a professional, programmery style to be like, "here are my thoughts on an important topic in my field." Tim Bray-style blogging-as-turbo-resume. This squares pretty well with what everyone sees, right? Even the way the blogs are written. If I was a linguist, and I was...in grad school or something, I'd think about looking at syntax in this way. It's interesting that you have all these people writing all this text, all this "connected discourse", and they seem to be embedding social cues to the purpose of their text not just in topic and vocabulary, but syntax. And you wouldn't have to do all those interviews! That's weird. Eh, maybe its not.

More Rando Etech Stuff

Yesterday's promising tunage turned out to be coincidental. Basically the tunes are like XM Satellite radio's "Classic Rock That No One Hates" feed. Still its better than anonymous museum exhibit "future" music most of these things play.

I've never seen Tim O'Reilly speak before this thing. He seems like a guy who it would be cool to be friends with. Like if you went to his house there'd be all kinds of cool stuff around that he'd have a good story about. "Oh that rock? That rock is actually from the moon. Most people don't know this but BlueOrigin has already been there and back and Jeff left one of these rocks here a few weeks ago. Be careful playing that organ. It shoots flames out of the pipes. Some SRL people gave it to me for my birthday."

I have never seen higher-quality slide decks in my life, including from consultants, whose life is making flashy decks. The average slide deck quality is off the charts. This may be partially related to the Keynote:Powerpoint ratio, which is unusually high as well.

Lunch Day 2

I accidently set down at lunch at a table full of people speaking Finnish. What follows is a transcript of part of the lunch table convo:

kraballa rabala blabala VIDEO STREAM blabala blabala blabara NETWORK rababla

As best I can tell, Finnish has only one vowel, and all the words contain either 'ala' or 'ara'. Then the Finnish dudes left and some dudes who were really pissed about everything sat down. Sitting near pissed people is the worst. It's like they have a highly contagious mental disease. All of the sudden your like, "WHY DOESNT THIS HOTEL HAVE WIFI UPSTAIRS FOR FREE? WHAT A EFFING RIPOFF!" Then you walk away and are like, "(a) its ten bucks. (b) the etech free wifi works everywhere. Who cares? Seriously, just go home, or at least quarantine yourself and don't talk to anyone.

Manufacturing Serendipity

One of the best "Why Blog?" spiels I've seen is the whole manufactured serendipity thing. The other day, Finn said to me something like, "I don't really get the point of Etech." I didn't get the point of any of these techcons until recently. I had a strong bias against them because it sounded like another great way for technology people to avoid actually building stuff. However, I now think the chief value of them is also manufactured serendipity. Maybe if you are like an executive or other square you show up and are like, "TWITTER?!?!? OMG LETS BUY IT!! O'REILLY YOU ARE A GENIUS AND I'D LIKE TO BUY THIS 'RADAR" OF YOURS" but for me, the best thing about these events is the conversations you have during the coffee breaks. The implication of this is that the conference sessions almost don't matter, so long as you get the right people into the coffee breaks.

An Open Letter

Dear Everyone Involved with Bringing This Plastic Knife Into My Life, Including You, Dick at the Coffee Stand in the Hotel:

I have a feeling that people prefer metal knives to plastic because they cut food better.  Contrary to what's clearly a popular hypothesis, it's not because they are silver and shiny.  The unfortunate ramification of this is that making a plastic knife silver and shiny does not make it cut food better.  You guys are engaged in what scientists call "Cargo Cult Utensology".  Lets just try not to put a pitcher full of white paint on the Fixins Bar when we run out of cream, ok?

ETech Day 2

Who chooses the music that plays on the PA before/after the talks at stuff like ETech? So far ETech has had the best jams of any of these types of things I've been to. Before the Rael Dornfestfest last night they played some Stones songs, then when I walked in here this morning they were playing The Weight by The Band, and now they are playing Springsteen's Rosalita which is hilar 'cause I've had that song stuck in my head the whole time I've been here ("...there's a little cafe, down San Diego way..." Actually downtown San Diego has more Spring Break-style "Mexican" joints than places where they play guitars all night and all day.) Man this song rules.

San Diego Speeds Abstract Expressionism Time To Market

California

I've been in California since last Wednesday, first for Under The Radar (where we won  Judges' fav in our Category, thanks) and now for Etech.

Since I'm in California, I had to drive a car.  Twice so far.  In California, when you stop at a stoplight, after it turns green, as far as I can tell, no one beeps at you.  I've been reading maps, checking email on my phone, sitting at the front of the line with the light green for who knows how long, and not a single beep.  I wonder if sometimes people have heart attacks or pass out up there and the line just sits like that for hours.  Maybe that's why California has such bad traffic problems.

Another odd traffic thing about California is that they don't really get down with crosswalks, at least in Mountain View.  You just bust out into the middle of the road and hope the cars stop, which they do, so every pedestrian has the power to completely halt traffic anywhere on any road, as far as I can tell.  I think this may explain why technologies like Twitter get created in California.

Mountain View is one of the strangest US towns I've been to.  We really don't have towns like that back on the East Coast.  I bet it was totally awesome in the 1930s or so.  There's a big airfield, it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, they've got a NASA lab and one of the world's largest airship hangars.  It's the kind of place where you could imagine The Rocketeer actually happened.  Someone should make a movie set in old Mountain View about a ragtag band of airplane racers including David Strathairn as the irascible mechanic, Cate Blancett as the saucy female pilot, and Jeff Bridges as the test pilot everyone keeps saying is getting too old for the airplane racing game.  Man that would be a good movie, especially the part when the engine explodes right before the big race after the Nazis sabotage it and they have to work all night to patch something together out of bubblegum and baling wire.

FP!

I've decided whats missing from the world is another blog.  NOT ANYMORE!