Category: Conferences

MindCamp 3.0

Image by chadum

I’ve got a crazy week this week, but I wanted to say a few things about MindCamp 3.0 this weekend.

First off, Andru, Stuart and the rest of the gang – Thanks for putting on such a fine unconference. This was my first unconference and to quickly organize chaos so well was really impressive. The high level of interactivity of the conference and the quality and caliber of the folks that I met made the conference stand out from any I’ve been to in the past.

A few specific mentions

Coffee hacks by Jack Bell (pictured) was spectacular. I can’t wait to roast my own beans. Now, to figure out what the heck that single serve coffee device was… anyone, anyone?

The guys from Menuism are looking for ways to build their community and lots of good suggestions came their way.

My session on using gaming mechanics to make sites fun brought a bigger crowd than I expected. Got lots of great feedback on what folks considered fun. Thanks everyone for making my first time talking about this to a group enjoyable.

I met some fun, young Microsofties, whose business cards I didn’t get. If you’re reading this, gimme a shout some time. Sorry to slag Vista so much…

Elizabeth Grigg has a nice summary of various sessions.
Karen Anderson has a great post about general impressions of MindCamp.

More later

Conferences Features Google

John Battelle and Economy of Intention

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date November 1, 2006
No Comments on John Battelle and Economy of Intention

I had a great time at last week’s Blog Business Summit. I met a lot of people whose work I respect a great deal and people that I found that I had a lot in common with. John Battelle is someone that I hold in very high regard because he inspired me very early on.

I got an opportunity to hear Battelle speak Friday and he’s as well spoken in person as he is on his blog. The content of his speech inspired me yet again. I’ve read his book, The Search but I don’t think I truly realized how powerful an idea “The Database of Intention” truly was. Adsense and Adwords best illustrate the power of the intention economy and it is those products that have put Google where they are today.

Why FM Publishing?

Given all of that, I still have a lingering question. If Battelle truly believes intent will triumph over content, why did he start a “content” based publishing business, rather than one based on intent? I asked John that very question.

Essentially John replied that in the near term there are tons of advertising opportunities for content. To me that future seems limited. This limitation and distinction is currently being well demonstrated when comparing Yahoo’s quarterly earnings versus Google’s.

I relearned a valuable lesson that day; sometimes your idols let you down. Battelle isn’t a visionary, but he has spent his career being able to recognize them and to report on them, and in a limited way, to capitalize on them. I hope he will be able to learn the lessons he is teaching to capitalize on his Database of Intentions in the future.

Photo by Niall Kennedy.

Conferences Site News

Business Blogging Summit

This week, Seattle hosts the Business Blogging Summit from Wednesday, October 25th to Friday, October 27th. I’ll be on hand to pick up valuable tips from the folks that are there as well as meeting up with some people that I met back in July at Gnomedex.

I’m looking forward to meeting up with folks who are interested in social media, so if you are coming to the show, drop me a line so we can meet up.

Gnomedex

Gnomedex Speakers and their blogs

Post author By Randy Stewart
Post date June 28, 2006
1 Comment on Gnomedex Speakers and their blogs

I’m heading to Gnomedex this weekend as it is hosted in Seattle, my current backyard. Gnomedex is a blogger conference held annually Chris Pirillo, blogger and tech geek extraordinaire.

So, I’m a little new to the whole Gnomedex thing… I’m no insider, mega blogger, or Chris Pirillo, but I did want the 411 on who would be speaking. The Gnomedex Wiki seemed to be down, so I created a quick and dirty schedule with links to all the speakers for this weekend.

Click through for the schedule.

CES Macworld

Back to Seattle

Whew…. finally made it to the plane. I took BART this morning to the airport and naturally it was late getting me there. I’m finally getting a chance to kick back for the first time in a few days. CES and Macworld were hectic and my social calendar was pretty full while back in San Francisco for the first time since the move to Seattle.

I’m hoping to get the remaining posts up from CES and MacWorld by the weekend, so stay tuned true believers. Also, I’ll have a bit more in-depth look at the new features of iLife ’06 as it should be sitting on my doorstep when I get back

Apple Macworld

MacBook Pro hands on

I ran the new MacBook Pro (is it me, or is this a really bad name) through the paces today. My first reaction was that the machine was pretty snappy. I loaded up iPhoto which had about 6k pictures on it, rendered a couple of HD transitions in iMovie and then loaded up a demo in GarageBand and everything seemed to fly compared to my 1.5 Ghz G4 laptop. It wasn’t until I loaded up Photoshop that things began to slow down. Rosetta is pretty amazing, but Photoshop felt about the same speed on MacBook Pro as it did on mine. All things considered, once apps are rewritten for Intel Macs, they will run very quickly, but performance for non-optimzed apps was reasonable, if a little slow.

The big question that remains is battery life. Steve glossed over it with no real numbers attached to performance and the Apple rep that was there said that they are still tweaking it in the lab, but battery life will be “competitive.”

I put my order in this morning, so I’ll let you know when I get it. It’s about time Apple got back into making kick ass laptops.

Apple Macworld