Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Category: Innovation (Page 39 of 78)

ETech 08: Strangest Session Title Goes to…”How to Kick Ass”

Kathy Sierra was one of the speakers in the morning session of this second day of ETech. She’s a perennial at this event, though missed last year. One of the few women in this largely man’s world of developers (esp on stage), but she’s very popular. Kathysierraetech
Her thing is "creating passionate users," and who can’t like that?  Her talk today was titled to arouse curiosity, I suppose. What it was about, as I Twittered during her talk, is that it’s healthy to get involved in something that isn’t the main thing you excel at. She cited a guy taking pix of her in the aisle with a big camera on a tripod, and how he was a leading open-source guy, but has become a kick-ass photographer. Kickingassthreshold
She said it’s not about natural talent, but just the ability to put in time….and not about making money at something [oh, like maybe blogging, perhaps? 🙂 ].

Fast forward to the punchline: we finally got to what she was trying to tell all the hard-working, no-outside-life developers, hackers, and assorted geeks in the audience. It was to "get unplugged," get away from all the distractions ("partial attentions") we all have in our lives, and "focus on the things you care about." 

Ah, surfing…it won’t be long now. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

GSP West 08: Hot and Cold

It’s a hot conference, and what do I get?  A damn cold!  And I just had a doozer back in January, too.  Is this the worst, hellish year for colds and flu that you can remember, or what?  It sure is for a lot of people I know….

Anyway, I’m sucking it up (oh, god, that’s bad), tryin’ to keep up…. I did my live-Twittering thing yesterday, after getting well practiced at DEMO. Gspopeningscene
See my 40 or 50 something tweets (I lost count) here.  Then chatted over wine with Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch), Dan Carroll (Somr.org, former Twin Citian, now Mountain View), Chris Messina (DISO guy), Maria Sipka (Linquia, a fellow Aussie and surfer), Chris Gammill (a buddy from LA), and others — all while uploading my pix on Flickr. Gspplatformwars

Afterwards, attended part of AppNite (couple of cool ones!), then managed to hear most of Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at 8:00 — it was good, very inspired. Tim is amazing. Took a lot of notes, but was all out of Twitter juice by that time. So, dragged myself back to my hotel (a very cool little boutique place called the Sophia). Now it’s Tuesday morning, and I’m seriously looking for a Walgreens so I can load up on cold medicine…  🙁

Headed to “Graphing Social Patterns” and ETech ’08

Tomorrow morning early, I’m jumping on the 5 here in San Clemente and driving south an hour to downtown San Diego for O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference. I’m looking forward to a great two-day program. Gspwestlogo
Here’s the main page for the Facebook Group, which 200 people for far have joined saying they’re attending, and 81 more are "maybes." The event is being held in conjunction with O’Reilly’s ETech conference, which draws an even larger crowd. It also starts tomorrow (Monday, March 3), but it goes through Thursday. This will be about the third or fourth ETech I’ve atended, including the 2007 edition, for which I wrote this Conferenza review.  It’s a geekfest of the highest order, and I’ll be attending through end of day Wednesday. So, two days GSP and one day ETech, and the evening events are common for both conferences. If you’re attending either one, I look forward to meeting.

Feeding Frenzy’s Started on FriendFeed

Or so declares Fred Wilson. And I see Josh Kopelman’s on it, too. (Wonder which guy funded it, or both?) Friendfeedlogo_4
A buddy of mine gave me the heads-up in a comment a couple hours ago, to my previous post (see below), saying this could be the next big thing at SXSW. 

What is it about this time of year?  The Web 2.0 crowd just needs something new to get ’em talking?  Okay, I’m tryin’ it — gotta see what this is about.  Only took me a minute or two to set up my FriendFeed account. Looks kinda like a Twitter that ate its Wheaties…  🙂

Except, this year, aren’t they jumping the gun a bit?  ETech and GSP come first, next week, ahead of SXSW.  Anyone know how far in advance of SXSW it was last year when Twitter went live?  Should be fun to see how long this one will take to break… 🙂

UPDATE (1:30 pm CST): Well, we now have the skinny on who’s behind this one — my friend Brian Solis just posted.

 

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