Esther just had me take a look at her photos on Flickr — taken here at LaCosta as well as last week at Etech. So I said I’d post them — here they are. Note the street bums demoing at Etech…gotta love that.
Category: Conferences/Events (Page 79 of 80)
I’m sitting here now in the registration area, just outside the Grand Ballroom, where the first session fires up at in an hour or so. The sun came out full-on on my drive south from San Clemente late this morning, so the weather turned out to be quite nice here at LaCosta (but still cool). People started trickling in about noon, but now they’re filing in more heavily. Many folks, of course, just flew in today, from all over, so they’re just now getting checked into the hotel. Here are some shots I grabbed with my cell phone while I strolled around to check out this sprawling resort a bit. (Excuse the quality of the pix, but I forgot my big camera – duh.) In the first shot, of the registration desk, that’s Daphe Kis, Publisher of Release 1.0 on the right. I also chatted with Esther Dyson, who was greeting many people personally and seems as calm as can be. (Comes with experience, I guess, from doing this conference so many years.) Talking to other attendees here, I already get the idea that PC Forum has a very loyal following, year after year.
(Just click on the photos to make them larger.)
Well, I arrived in Southern California last night in preparation for the big event to kick off tomorrow in Carlsbad (North San Diego County). And I was just in time for a huge cold front and mega amounts of rain! They even had snow down to 1500 feet in the mountains. Not exactly what the San Diego tourism board had in mind! And here PC Forum just relocated from Scottsdale this year, too. Oh, well, no matter. I’d always rather be here, and by Monday things are due to improve. (Plus it’s raining bigtime in Scottsdale, too, from the same storm.)
Here’s a little rundown on the things I’m looking forward to with this trip:
1) Blogging for my readers about what the buzz is at this very highly regarded conference.
2) Learning about new technologies and business models.
3) Finding out who’s funding what.
4) Taking in a packed conference agenda, with some particularly good sessions being these, in my opinion:
• Esther Dyson’s interview of Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and now CEO of Omidyar Network, which is funding both for-profits and non-profits, but believes profitable enterprises and efficient markets are often the best way to achieve social good.
• “Behavioral Targeting 2.0”: how four marketing and ad technology vendors, Compete, Grassroots, mSpoke, and Tacoda, are moving beyond spyware to get users actively involved in controlling their own data.
• “New Business Models: Power to the Edges”: featuring the CEOs of Brightcove, Salesforce.com, Augmentum, and Microsoft’s SVP of technical strategy.
• “Search: What Are You Gonna Do for an Encore?”: a look at what comes after search reaches its natural limits, including the two trends of personalization and verticalization, and featuring the CEO of Zillow, Google’s SVP of sales and bus dev, the CEO of Efficient Frontier, and Yahoo’s SVP of search.
• And the closing panel, “New Forms of Life”: how online community is actually changing life — wherein it’s heading toward no longer being “virtual,” but part of life, just like work and play. The panel includes the CEOs of LinkedIn and Facebook, along with a producer from Seriosity, a still-in-stealth company that’s out to apply gaming culture to work.
5) And, of course, meeting lots of interesting people — including interviewing some of the speakers and attendees. So far, I have Jeremy Allaire of Brightcove, Bill Day of WhenU, Michael Tanne of Wink, and Greg Pierson of iovation on my list. And I’m also hoping to chat with J.J. Allaire of Onfolio (just acquired by Microsoft)…Adam Bosworth of Google Health…Michael Arrington of edgeio…Steve Marder of Eurekster…Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn…somebody from the Omidyar Network…David Gilmour of Tacit Software’s pre-launch (and very cool sounding) Illumio startup…Bruce Francis of Salesforce.com…and others yet to be determined.
Stay tuned. I’ll be blogging live from PC Forum, and during breaks, etc, as I can. And please do email me if you have any suggestions relating to my coverage of PC Forum, questions you’d like me to ask, or whatever…
I was hoping to make O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference this week in San Diego — at least to be able to drop in on the last day — but my schedule is now uncertain. Meantime, the best place I’ve found to get up to speed on what’s happening out there — well, a summary, in close to real time — is O’Reilly’s own continuously updated page: ETech Conference News. It’s written by O’Reilly’s self-described “PR gal” Suzanne Axtell. Nice job, Suzanne!
And there’s always the Atom feed, too.
ETech is the de rigeur geek-place-to-be this week, it seems. And thus you could read blogs on it all day and all of the night. Tons of bloggers there. I was telling someone earlier today, let’s hope the big one doesn’t hit San Diego this week, or we’ll lose most of the a-list and half the b…. 🙂
As a follow-on to my earlier post today, I asked Esther Dyson some questions about her upcoming event in Carlsbad, CA, March 12-14. She was kind enough to take out some time to give me her perspectives. Here’s the interview:
What should attendees expect at this year’s PC Forum?
Esther Dyson: The people they sit next to at lunch and dinner will be interesting — either prospects or competitors or potential partners or both, with challenging ideas and opinions. [Ed: and that doesn’t even include breakfast, my personal favorite!] Aside from that, the content will be thought-provoking. The subtheme — “Users in Charge” — sounds like a mindlessly cheery, rarely-delivered-on slogan. But it’s preceded by the provocative reality of “Erosion of Power.” New business models, when they’re delivered on, often destroy old ones. Users in charge is no mere slogan; it’s a threat to the people who were in charge. 
Businesses have a choice whether to lead the changes or resist them. But just deciding to respond isn’t that easy. You have to figure out how: how to put users in charge, how to listen, how to mediate among users who disagree, how to collect revenue (and for what)….and most important, how to change a culture. So, in many ways, things are easier for startups — except they lack resources and have to prove their new business models. So, the discussions will be fun. I have spent the last two months interviewing all the speakers — but I know I’ll still be surprised with what they say, especially once they start talking to one another and engaging with the other participants.
How might it compare with previous years’ events?
Esther Dyson: In character, it will be the same, but we have new material — everything from recent developments around Google to a gaggle of startups ranging from Spot Runner to invisibleCRM.
How is PC Forum different from other conferences?
Esther Dyson: The content tends to be more provocative because we don’t have any outside sponsors. By and large, we don’t let speakers “present.” We ask them questions. And they really talk among themselves, rather than presenting serially. There’s a dramatic tension that gets people paying attention. Beyond that, we really cater to all the attendees, not just to the speakers. It extends to the details: The badges are large and readable and don’t flip over, so it’s easy to find people you want to meet. [Ed: And they have a great attendee networking site, with features better than any I’ve seen.] We keep the lights up in the auditorium so you can see the other attendees as well as the speakers. We encourage people to bring their families, and that makes the atmosphere more relaxed and friendlier than at most conferences I attend. Also, we hold it in a slightly out of the way place, so people (even speakers) come and stay, instead of dropping in.
Please tell us about the types of attendees you attract, and the quality of networking attendees can expect.
Esther Dyson: They include entrepreneurs, investors, industry veterans, big company execs, analysts, press. We’re proud of what we do and we charge for it, so we get high-level attendees. On the other hand, we work hard to bring in new people and especially startups, so many of these high-level people are ones you haven’t heard of — yet. And things start happening at PC Forum: for example, Eric Schmidt met Larry Page at PC Forum, IBM met Lotus, and AOL met ICQ/Mirabilis.
How do you select the categories for companies you debut, and the companies themselves?
Esther Dyson: We select the companies first, by and large, and then we design the categories to fit them. We’re looking for companies that will be successful, of course, but we’re also looking for new ideas. We want attendees to walk out saying, “Now that’s a neat idea!” Over the years, our debutantes have included Flickr, Brightcove, IronPort, Technorati, Emode (Tickle), Groxis, Junglee, Mirabilis (ICQ), Eurekster, and JotSpot, to name several.
What are your conference themes this year, and which of these are getting the most buzz so far?
Esther Dyson: Well, in addition to what I said in answer to the first two questions, “Users in Charge” is getting lots of buzz. But it’s my contention that many people who think they resonate with it don’t quite get all the implications.
What are the three outcomes you most hope will result from this year’s PC Forum?
Esther Dyson: I’ll give you four, actually: that 400 people will walk away with new ideas and new friends and business partners…that the 70-odd family members who came will feel appreciated and closer to the world of the attendees who brought them…that the ideas that were floating around PC Forum will get crisper….and that the companies embodying those ideas will learn from one another and will compete more effectively, giving their management better tools and goals, and end up serving their customers better.
My thanks to Esther for these great insights into PC Forum, especially for those of us who’ve never attended. I look forward to seeing any and all of you who can make it. And I of course plan to do many more blog posts on this one…
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