Category: Weblogging

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Clay Shirky was kind enough to stop by, and drop a comment in the post “We are Out There”. Among other things, he references a conference O’Reilly is putting on: the Emerging Technologies conference, being held in April in Santa Clara.

The conference will have a social software track, for those interested in attending. I, unfortunately, do not have the funds to attend. And before anyone points a finger, yes I would like to attend, and yes I am envious. Very. I am eating sour grapes by the handful if one is curious. However, paying bills and rent takes precedence over technical conferences (a point I was trying to make in my “We are out there” posting).

Catch 22: To get jobs for money to attend conferences you have to have a network of contacts in the biz; but to get the network you have to attend conferences. Excuse me while I go dump my head in a bucket of ice water to complete the job of the cough.

(Now, if this had been held in Chicago or St. Louis instead of the inevitable West or East coast location…)

Update And now Dave is talking about a Weblogger Conference. Sigh.

You know what conferences are? Lodestones for the elite.

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I decided to pull this into a separate post.

Once I had time to think on Dave’s idea, I found myself really liking it. As I wrote in my comments, just think of all the people involved in weblogging, all those different interests. In my blogroll are accessibility and/or markup folks, photographers, artists, philosophers, hard and soft core techies, writers, politicos, teachers, communication folks, and even marketing. Just the people in my blogroll alone (and who should be on my blogroll once I do another update) have enough energy to change the world if we got together in one room.

Just think of putting all that power into a single venue with a single focus — the mergence of humanities and technology. Oooh, it hurts to get this excited when I don’t feel good.

Dammit, I wish I had thought of this one. Dave, way to go. That was an excellent idea. I’m in.

Suggestions:

One thing I would suggest a change to is allowing the people to pick who they have dinner with. Make it totally random. Let’s force people outside of cliques. Let’s see if we can’t get liberals to sit with Glenn Reynolds, and so on. The way to run this conference would be to break the rules, and let’s start by not letting people stay within their comfort zones. We don’t in weblogging, let’s not do so in a weblogging conference.

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Update I’m going to be pulling out of the conference planning and re-direct you all to the person who originated it. I emailed Dave and suggested he set up a weblog to focus ideas. Lots of good ideas too, so Dave has something to work from.

If I go to a conference next year, it will most likely be something such as the O’Reilly Emerging Tech conference or something of that line. Right now the economy is very tight in the country and I, as do many, have to focus more on what helps my employment situation. Chances are I’ll only be able to go to one conference next year, and I need one that will help me keep my skills up, discover what’s new in the tech world, and where I can sell myself as a viable tech entity, in that order. And, no, this isn’t trying to sell O’Reilly. I think I proved last week that I don’t push O’Reilly just because the company’s my publisher.

I would love to meet other webloggers, and will, but more along the lines of sitting down and sharing a cup of coffee or a beer at the local pub.

I think the weblogger conference is a good idea, and will help if I can. But, after a bit of reflection (and an internal reality check), I don’t see it happening for me next year. I hope, though, that it happens for those who want it.

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One interesting side note related to the Weblogger conference. In my comments attached to the first conference posting, an anonymous poster wrote:

A meet-up would never work because it just wouldn’t have the elitist pseudo-professional look to it that these people want to portray.

Since the comments were coming fast and furious, this one was buried a bit, until AKMA commented on it in my second conference posting. He wrote:

Anonymous suggested that there’s an elitist streak to these meetings; s/he is right, in both the obvious negative sense and in a positive sense, where “leading” personae get the chance to sit around and talk to one another, allowing their imaginations to strike sparks and develop notions that wouldn’t have arisen or grown as readily in solitude as they do in company. I don’t have a problem with that, though I’m mostly just a wannabe in tech circles. If I get cool innovations and insights from the elite, what’s my stake in saying, “but no one’s paying attention to me?” If Shelley and Mark Pilgrim and Dave and Sam want to put their collective brilliance together for an evening’s technical tete-a-tete, I oughtn’t to complain that they’re being elitists.

In circles in which I’m marginally closer to being part of an elite, I try to help people join the scintillating conversations—but I also get weary when someone with whom I hadn’t expected to be talking damps the exciting exchange of ideas with discursive Blank Space.

It’s a tough balance, but in that balance “elitism” isn’t only a bad thing.

My first reaction to any form of elitism is that it’s a bad thing. However, AKMA has a good point; people with advanced knowledge on topics need time to talk, to exchange ideas, to feed off of each other in a productive sense. To discourage this would be as counter-productive as not encouraging discussion from the people who don’t have this advanced knowledge.

Both AKMA and Dave Winer referenced a post by Aaron Swartz about how to have a good conference. Aaron has some interesting points, particularly about the inappropriate use of speech. However, he also writes:

3. Get smart people and encourage them to talk. Now this one is a bit difficult. Most conferences seem to use a large mass of “normal” people (the “audience”) to subsidize the “special” people (the “speakers”). Since I tend to be in the latter group and don’t have much money, I sort of like this. But the annoying side-effects are that “special” people don’t get to discuss things with each other and “normal” people waste everybody’s time by asking stupid questions. I’m not sure how to solve this. Maybe only let “special” people ask questions? I suspect this would seriously hurt the feel of the event.

So what happens when you do this? The closest thing I’ve heard of is the Hackers Conference. Reading the description made me drool. Everyone’s a presenter, interrupting is encouraged, everyone gets a booth to demo, there’s lots of talking-to-each-other time, the conference runs 24 hours, they invite only the best. They also do a lot of other clever things to make it work, especially in the physical location.

Sadly, I’ve never attended. Mostly because I’ve never been invited (you have to be invited to come, and you have to be cool to be invited) but also because it’s incredibly expensive (I suspect this is because of the physical location thing, but also because there are no “normal” people to subsidize the rest of us). Maybe someday, all conferences will be as cool as this. Or at least the ones I’m interested in. I sure hope so.

No matter how I look at this, no matter how much I want to not get into position of yet again picking on someone whom everyone adores, I cannot agree with this sentiment. No, I cannot agree with this in any form.

I understand what AKMA is saying, that people with extreme knowledge need time to communicate directly with each other in order to generate new ideas. I think this view agrees with Aaron to some extent.

Perhaps my odd euphoric energy from earlier today is running down, but the whole conversation about ‘normals’ and ‘specials’, and ‘normals’ and ‘stupid questions’, and ‘normals’ funding the conference so the ‘specials’ can talk is sobering. And disquieting.