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

Tag: Esther Dyson

‘Defrag’ Conference: Brainstorming the Next Big Thing

Next Sunday, I’m off to Denver for a really cool conference called Defrag. (Here’s the blog, which will tell you what’s really goin’ on.) I’m looking forward to it, because it’s different — a smaller, more intimate kind of event. The kind of event "where you send your brains for a workout," say the producers. Defregconf
There’ll be a couple hundred really smart people participating, many whose names you would know. Folks like Esther Dyson, Jerry Michalski, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Paul Kedrosky, Brad Feld, Jeff Clavier, Chris Shipley, Steve Larsen, and a couple of new players I’ve met in the semantic web movement, Nova Spivack and Alex Iskold. Denverhyatt
And that’s just a few I can remember — there are many more smart Internet minds who’ll be there.  We need this kind of event after Esther Dyson retired her great "PC Forum" conference after the 2006 edition. (I’m so glad I got to cover that one. It was soo timely, and everybody-who-was-anybody was there.)

Defrag is being held at the very cool, new Denver Hyatt. Here’s an invitation to all my friends here in the Minnesota technology community:  please join me at Defrag!  (At least two already are, and we’re flying out together.)  Denver’s not that far — and, hey, you guys need to get out of town once in a while! 🙂  I even have a special discount code that will get you $500 off.  But you have to act fast, since that expires soon: the code is "DefragMN"…and you can use it when you register right here.  I guarantee you, you won’t be sorry you attended this conference!  Check the agenda.

One of the three producers of Defrag is a guy I know named Eric Norlin, and I’m looking forward to meeting the other two. I met Eric back in ’99 through my work with Net Perceptions, and he’s become an even more plugged-in guy since then. He’s been in the digital identity business and has run other conferences, such as Digital ID World.  He lives in Florida now, but was in Colorado for many years, so has lots of contacts there. (He also was based in the Twin Cities for a couple of years, quite some time ago.)  Early on, Eric even worked with the NSA, so he’s just an interesting cat to say the least. It’ll be fun to see him again. Here’s how Eric and friends describe their newest creation:

Defrag is the first conference focused solely on the internet-based tools that transform loads of information into layers of knowledge, and accelerate the “aha” moment. Defrag is about the space that lives in between knowledge management, social networking, collaboration and business intelligence …. it’s a gathering place for the growing community of implementers, users, builders and thinkers that are working on the next wave of software innovation.

The sponsors of Defrag are BEA, Yahoo, Me.dium, Newsgator, ThinkFree, Adaptive Blue, AOL, Dapper, HiveLive, Lijit, Near-Time, Siderean, Microsoft, ZDnet, ProQuo, and Collective Intellect.  For more on the sponsors, see this post on the Defrag blog: All the Cool Kids Are Doing It.

And here’s more insight into what this inaugural Defrag is all about, from another of Eric’s blog posts,  Inter-Twining at Defrag:

One of the earliest phrases that I hit upon to help describe Defrag was ‘networked knowledge’ … That idea — that knowledge is not simply a passive, managed asset, but an active agent in a system that is working for me — is the core of what we’re exploring.

I’m pumped!  Watch for my live blogging next week — Monday and Tuesday, November 5 and 6. Take a look at the agenda and tell me what you like. I especially like "Social Networking in the Enterprise." Cheers.

Esther Dyson Calls It Quits (but only sorta)

Just got an email from Esther that she’s discontinuing the annual PC Forum conference. Wow, what a bummer… Such a great, long-standing industry event. She leaves a huge legacy. But she goes out in style, after an excellent conference this past March, which I was lucky enough to catch. Estherdyson200 Here’s the terse email she sent to those of us on her Release 1.0 list: “Word has slowly gotten out that the PC Forum last March was the last ever. So let me interview myself.” And a link then takes us here (requires registration), where she explains her decision. It’s all quite upbeat and positive, but it still comes as a shocker. Few individuals command as much respect in this industry as Esther. She’s one of a kind, that is for sure! And many, many people will miss her annual event. She built up a huge fan base and following over the years, and attracted the very finest speakers. Pcforumlogo300_1 Here’s a rundown of those speakers through 2005. For more about the swan-song event in March 2006, read my coverage here. Esther launched her conference near the dawn of the PC revolution, about the time I was going off on my own as an independent consultant, and I’ve followed her all this time, as has the entire technology industry. But, as she reminds us in her self-interview above, she’s not done yet! I know we’ll be hearing much more from her…. Good luck, Esther!

Meg Whitman Called: She Wants to Know What’s All This About Someone Killing Her Company

One word: Edgeio…or should I say EdgeIO…or edgeIO…or is it edgeio? [Seems to be upper and lowercase challenged.] But it’s all the rage in the blog-o-spherical world lately because somebody said it’s an “Ebay Killer.” No wonder Michael Arrington (the TechCrunch guy) didn’t return my email — he’s been, uh, a little busy lately? And no wonder he didn’t sit in on the presentations at DEMO, but just hung out in the press room. Now we know why! He’s hyping his new play, teamed up with old buddy Keith Teare from RealNames. You’ll remember that as a Web 1.0 company that was going to change everything, but … didn’t … quite … make … it.

Lots of talk out there about this one, and why or why not it will be the next big thing. Whatever, it’s really early-on at this point…. Though they plan to pitch the company formally at one of the next big, buzzy conferences: Esther Dyson’s PC Forum next month at LaCosta (Carlsbad, CA).

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