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I arrived late at the first day so day two was my first day at the congress. When asked why I am here my basic answer is: To meet people (again) which I know from IRC and Usenet like 10 years ago.
The Chaos Computer Club is an institution in Germany - for good and for bad. Think EFF with a more hacking approach to things and add distrust to anything especially authorities. (Yes, I know, it is not the same, but kind of).
23c3, this years congress, does have a variety of interesting sessions as well as a lot of sideevent in the hall.
And - hacking. Yes. I will leave my laptop at the safe - some people called me paranoid, but if there is a place where traffic most defenetly is logged and sniffed, it is here. I have done some notes on some of the things I have seen and will try to put them down later, but for now just some impressions.
If there is a word to describe the congress setup the only thing which comes to my mind is: a lot of boys on a school presentation of their science projects. And I do not mean that in a bad way.
Imagine (older and younger) boys playing around with led, with lockpicking, presenting their own written projects or just hang around in a room which reminds me of pictures of gaming parties - just that there are laptops not desktops. There is a shy joy (or sometimes more open) in seeing that other people are interested in this as well. There is a 3D pong, and some legos for the youngsters.
And of course if you brought your own DECT mobile phone from home, oyu can listen to the audio from different rooms if you like. And get your own RFID Sputnik.
Take a look at the pictures and you should be able to see for yourself.
I have to admit I do feel a bit like a suit in a group of geeks - and you know how much of a geek I am myself - but one of the sessions yesterday was about if open source needs professional marketing. I missed the slides, but the discussion was basically what you expected it to be: Geeks feeling threatened by marketing that their baby is taken away and sold. ;o)
One of the things I like is that the event goes deep into the night - and starts late. Although I am late now (doh -if you set your mobile phone to silent it will also be silent in the morning for the wakeup call!) they tend to start at 10, more like 11:30 ;)
Btw, if you want to have a look
Streams are available too. (and if you live around the Congress Center, you could watch it on television as well ;)
I'd suggest you also take a look at some of the postings elsewhere (
google blogsearch,
technorati)
Technorati Tags: 23c3, ccc, berlin
29.12.06 - conference, european view - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Over the next days you will find me in Berlin at the last congress of the Year of the infamous Chaos Computer Club. Besides
a very interesting program. I am looking forward meeting some old friends - like really old friends from Usenet and IRC.
The slogan of the conference is "do I trust you" and the answer is no - at least in the sense that I will not dare using wifi and my computer, the maximum should be to use my mobile phone on very short occassions outside of the building or so. No I am not paranoid, but those are the guys who DO hack and are not only called skriptkiddies. And after all, i am using a windows pc.
I am not even sure if I should use it for taking notes without anything enabled. ;)
Therefore, if you are coming to Berlin to the congress, you should better ping me on my mobile phone (+49 179 4997076) per sms or such. I will be staying in Berlin until 31st morning and am looking forward to have some interesting conversations.
For a change I might even be interested recording on site as I will not have my pc ;) ;) If you are someone interesting to talk to, ping me on site so we can do a recording!
Tag(s): 23c3, berlin
26.12.06 - conference - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Through the whole bruhaha of
Techchrunch UK Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher now have reappeared under
Vecosys (what a web 0.5 name btw).
And the one thing which gets me excited? It seems as if Sam actually has been listening:
After a hectic few days, Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher are back up and running, covering Web 2.0, mobile and new technology firms in Europe.
(emphasize mine)
Yes. Europe. Not just France, not just UK. Europe - and therefore recognizing that there is more to this place than just the UK. (I usually joke that American companies believe that opening up an office in London equals 'covering the European market' - aehm no.)
As I had written before in "
Disappointed by Techcrunch UK - why not Techcrunch Europe?!":
Am I going to read the Techcrunch UK? Probably not. Single nation minded websites (and to be found with UK websites in particular) tend to focus all their energy to local behaviour, habbits, usages. This I cannot relate to. I am European in this regard, not british or french.
This feed will be in my feedreader at once (I have till today not read TCUK regulary because of the focus) and I will send everyone I know who works in this space towards this site.
Not at all because it is a Techchrunch thing, or a American versus Europe thing but because I expect from this site to cover Europe as a whole. They still will have to live up to the set up expectation and it may well be that the most articles will come from the UK - but at least they are open for it.
Tag(s): techcrunch, techcrunchuk, tc, tcuk, vecosys
20.12.06 - european view - 3 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Thanks to Jacob Share for reminding me that there where pictures on my disk waiting to be sent out!
You can find them as usual
under my flickr account or more specifically under
my Paris 2006 set.
18.12.06 - conference - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
I was still in the middle of putting together some texts from the more positive side for Leweb (especially the ones having more suggestions to improving a conference like this as it is worth noting) when i saw
that Loic actually has answered some of the topics discussed over the last days.
I suggest - even if you cannot stand the topic anymore - to go through his listed links which are from both side of the spectrum. (It is also worth noting what he leaves out, but that is a different story.)
I have posted my comment over there as it belongs to that discussion (and also he seems to take comments more seriously if mailed - well then.)
Ewan has done a followup on his blog much more eloquently than I can do it and I agree on all accounts with him on this. Please read that one first too before continuing.
Shel Israel btw has found the best description about what many of us are upset about I have seen until now:
But if I went to a rock concert to discover the lead off group was a string octet playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons. I would be confused and disappointed. As so many of Le Web 3 attendee seem to have felt.
Which can work too - if it is done properly. Looking back on this I think most arguments have been posted and written up which is why I would like to move on.
And take the time to point to something else: Could you please be so kind and stop floating with the tide? And no, I do not mean Loic with that because *he* does not change his story just because some flack came back at him.
Could you please be so kind and stop floating with the tide?
It is not new, but it amazes me to see the amount of people being two faced.
As for example people telling you "you voiced exactly how I fell and I will never talk to him again" (being far over the top on this) and then suddenly when writing their own posts or giving comments they state that everything was great, wonderful and no problems to be seen?
If you want to behave that way fine but do you think I and others are so stupid to not notice that? If you do have an opinion, make a conscious decision about it. Stop sending mixed signals.
Btw: Having an opinion does
absolutely not mean having it set in stone. It is suppose to evolve and be developed the more information you get. "At first I had a bit different opinion but now that I have more information this is what I think" is perfectly fine.
And then there are the quiet ones, which did not change their mind but stay quiet . It does not help to keep quiet because then you will never get what you want. If you do not put your money where your mouth is your silence will be taken as acknowledgement of whatever is happening.
Take a look at what you are doing at the moment: You are reading a text from a person you most likely do not know, on a computer screen. This *is* a new world, it needs new forms of communication and I seriously do believe that many voices should be heard in how to develop this.
If you keep quiet, you will not be heard. If you say something, you can voice what your impression is, what you think about and how you feel on a topic. It does not need to be a blog or a public comment. Voicing it can be done in many different ways - more silent, more loudly, short or long. But do it if you want to be taken seriously.
Yes you will be held accountable for it. You will receive "feedback" for this. No, that is not easy.
[And an information for the men: Being a woman who voices her opinion and believes does mean getting additional feedback "below the line" and with extra attacks in trying to put you as the naive, not experienced, unskilled little girl who should go out and play with her dolls.
You ask why so few women are at such events, show up and make their voice heard - this is definitely one of the reasons. You need to have double the skin thickness of a man to
start with just for opening your mouth and having an opinion.
This article btw shows a different side of the same thing (and I wanted to blog this link before I forget it): "
What She Wore: The Prevalence of Gender Bias in Reporting"]
Technorati Tags: leweb, leweb3, loic lemeur, conferences, values
17.12.06 - cruel to be kind, european view - 2 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Ben try to get into 4 digits numbers - some more links will surely help ;)
16.12.06 - fun - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Jonas Luster has posted the entry I was waiting for as we did discuss this topic on Tuesday already. It is one of the reasons which did increase my uneasiness with Tuesday's Leweb:
Secret Service dossier investigations on “aging carpenter” performances are child’s play, utterly lackluster performances, compared to the works of the world’s most efficient and powerful governmental security agency - the Mossad.
Let’s not kid ourselves, a man the stature of Peres doesn’t just “show up” at an event, movements, police contingent, placement of plainclothes and uniformed security detail, snipers (yes, snipers), medial emergency teams, rapid extraction task forces, all that needs time. And it’ll be there. Along with, of course, the - again - world’s most efficient spook agency’s, dossier team.
So much for "but it was just a bold move to increase your horizon, stupid! get out of just the blogosphere, there is a real life out there".
I am not knowledgeable enough to say "yes that is true" but I am at least sure that our names have been taken of a list and run against name checks and some of us have been look into deeper.
Do you expect that if you go to an event like Leweb that this will happen? Probably not. And having known that we should be sure that on Monday already "secret service" was floating around - now think about your conversations on Monday. Anything you might want to repeat in from of somebody like that? Not only him but candidates for presidential elections in france as well ...
As Jonas also said:
As an aside, I believe Loic did a crack job assembling and hosting some of the greats of the Industry. It’s too bad that this accomplishment is overshadowed by “Loicgate” as someone called it.
The overshadowing is one too much of a dark shadow.
Technorati Tags: leweb, leweb3
13.12.06 - conference - 2 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
If you have been to any major tech conference in the last years I assume you will recognise the following situation:
"We are proud that our sponsor XYZ will provide us with this gigantic connection to the Internet to make you all happy! Go forth and blog about it and be happy." says the conference host and everybody starts the game.
Throughout the conference you then spend your time trying to connect, get happy for some minutes, try to get back on. Where again is the powerplug? Lost connection again. Shoot! I just want to do IRC which is like the lowest usage you can think of!
You start exchanging views with your friends where to find the most reliable router which crashes the least. One or the other has to leave the conference in order to "find a signal" because they have to submit an article, really do some work or other. The happy ones have gotten the costly but more reliable option of a mobile connection as this never works out.
At the end of such a conference everybody is pissed because the wifi was flaky, no Ethernet cable in sight and you know you will have to do the reading at home / at the hotel (mostly a costly option) and do all the blogging / tagging / flickering you wanted to do later.
Evening organisation is not done by online tools but by mobile phone through crappy SMS.
Additionally the conference chair expects some warm welcoming applause for the provider. (Btw: Why do you clap in such situation? They will not change if you applaud them).
So we have the pathetic situation that conference attendees hope for some connection every time and still get disappointed.
Tell me if that sounds familar.
Now, I am not a hyper technical person and I do know that there are some limitations involved as well as the technology itself but sorry. This is nearly 2007 and getting a working system up and running to satisfy the need of for example a thousand or just 500 people in the room is not rocket science if you apply some basic measures like thinking about it from the perspective of the root of all evil as well as know how to prevent some of the issues.
So Joe Reader (you are most likely male), this will your assignment if you take it! Let's see if we can break the task down and tackle some of the problems. You just need to read any reportage about the conferences in the last months and you will find some common issues and problems appearing every fraking time!
- At any technology / geek crowed oriented conference chances are that 100 % of the participants have a laptop with wifi possibilities nowadays and guess what - they actually expect to use it. Especially in the morning when they want to check their emails and see who else is there.
- If for some reason the net is not working, they will try it over and over and over again in hope to once get a signal. Many may never have heard of the concept of strongest sending signal and the necessity of several routers. They will just go on and use what looks good. And this in some cases can mean that they like the other name better.
- If then finally something is running part of the time, some people do have their computers up as "access points" and do run p2p software. You or the host go up and ask them to switch that off and to turn off the p2p.
Everybody nods and nobody thinks it is them - which is why they crash the network and have open access points. The ones knowing what they do will be able to use this sensitively. For the rest you do talk in the wrong language to them.
- The conference host wants them to buzz and gloat about it online during the conference so you need to have the connection up and running the whole time. No connection, no postings, no buzz.
- It is not good buzz when the only people posting are the ones who had to leave the conference due to problems with your connection and they had to get back to the hotel or worse.
- You also need to provide some ways that the presenters have access to a connection. Experience tells you that it is a stupid idea for the presenter to use the same connection (especially wifi) as the room - if will again embarrass you.
As you will learn from looking at videos from presentations you will notice that despite better knowledge most presenters are also clueless in learning from experience and do not prepare a self sustainable presentation which can run without net connection.
If you have another room for presentation or just other sponsors and they need a connection, you will make sure that they as well have a separate connection to be able to showcase whatever they want.
So we have a lot of experience / same old problems - and still there are no solutions to it. Why oh why is this? When we look closer at the problem we do have the following
- technical incompetence on side of the attendees
- technical limitations
- technical incompetence on side of the organizers / connectivity providers
- organizers / connectivity providers not being able to think smart
technical incompetence on side of the attendees
Let's face it: Many people just click on connect and expect a wonder to happen. They will not know if their computer is cluttering up your system with broadcast messages, they will not understand or care if they are "access points" and they just want to run skype, not knowing what they do there. Before you try to get a hold of them, start on your side first, because that is much easier to deal with.
Even with a knowledgeable audience - last year in Paris iirc we crashed not only the leblog network but the chamber of commerce's one and the university which was in the same building.
technical limitations
So you wanna set up connectivity on a conference with X participants. Just looking at the pure number you will be able to smell trouble. X participants means X+x users on your network - laptops and mobile phones.
I would be happy to link to somebody giving a small oversight of what the main problems are which are happening here, as I am not an network technician. But interestingly most of those problems are homemade which is why I will come back to technical limitations at the end.
technical incompetence on side of the organizers / connectivity providers
You should never assume that your attendees will be able to know what they are doing. You need to cope with worst case scenarios (and it is not the first time this is happening, so you do not have an excuse).
If you will not be able to bring up a reliable working system with wifi then leave it. And provide ethernet cables or get a sponsor for one of those nice small mobile options where you can track and expand a cable - makes a GREAT schwag gift. (I got mine from Lufthansa when they where promoting their wireless service in the planes ...)
But lets stay with the idea of wireless for a second. You know you will have your so called "inexperienced" people who not even try to have their laptop set up to be an access point - they do not know. Find a way to find those laptops and notify the owner. (Am I the only one thinking trace the access point not in my list of allowed access points by mac address and net send here?!)
Get an intern and give him or her the task of finding those people. Set out a bounty or whatever.
People using peer to peer software
Trace the usual suspects of application, hunt the ip / mac down, message the owner as in "your laptop will blow up in 10 seconds if you do not stop this. We have your mac address". AND: Take your time to LIST the p2p software you want to ban during the conference. Because most people do not realize what actually runs on p2p, like for example skype.
organizers / connectivity providers not being able to think smart
They will crash your routers and connection. You know it. Why not deal with it?
- Name the access points in a way normal user understand what to do. Like at the last Leweb: Organize seat rows and put up signs like 'please connect to this name of access point. It is your best, trust us.' And they did not use geeky names but colours. Even if you did not understand french you will be able to identify rouge, noir, prune etc.
- Provide places outside with wired access so people who have to send something will have a way of doing so. People will use this fast connection to shortly send up those flickr fotos and then go back happy that they did not need to use the wifi.
- Provide places with wired ethernet. As there are technical limitations which cannot be overcome at the moment - we understand. We just want our fix. We even will bring our own cables if you tell us to and promise us connectivity. We need cables anyhow for our laptop power.
- If part of the problem is getting people to connect due to the amount of tries to get an IP address - then distribute preset IP addresses! I'd rather go through the hassle of using such than not having a connection. Put it in the Schwag bag or something.
- If your wifi uses security settings or needs special attention: Those information belong on the screen, in big letters, and need to be accessible everywhere. It is a bad sign when attendees memorize 10 digit access code.
- Bandwidth always seems to small and nobody really has a grasp of how much data is transferred. It may be technical but get somebody to EXPLAIN what is happening as well as provide statistics at half time to show the participants that there actually is something happening. Have a screen on the side / in the hall to show current traffic.
- Dress up your team to make them recognizable. I would suggest dart target pictures btw. Make Network angels - that will be a great lesson for people you want to train to deal with angry customers. There is only a limited amount of laptops floating around and network problems so not much of a problem.
- Make a net check point or something. Let people bring their laptop to get it checked for malicious stuff happening from there.
- If you are also a mobile provider: You know you will have problems. You know you will have a depending customer base which is angry to annoyed. So why not make a special deal at the conference setup and show them through the days of the conference how your mobile service is working?
Take a deposit for the card, get a free connection for those days and offer it to special people or all of them. You not only will get a mass test, a good feedback if you do it clever. You might even get a new contract or more out of it.
technical limitations II
even if every option is exhausted (and my listing above is by far not complete in any way) there will be technical limitations. What do you do with such? Just cave? No. You go out and invent something new which can deal with these new requirements.
And in case you think: 2Why care about such an event, this is only happening some times a year" then try to think some years in the future and realize that the times where so many connections are coming to your service will come soon and you will have to deal with it anyhow.
What else did I miss?
Suggestions happily welcome.
Technorati Tags: wifi, conferences, connectivity
13.12.06 - business blogging - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
The question is valid of course, as besides my post about the really crappy part of the event there should be something good coming out of this event, shouldn't it?
Well, I usually find something worthy even in things ugly. And if it is just that it this can be hold as a bad example.
So in no specific order and yes I do like organisational details:
- I liked the venue.
I blame Google maps for my little detour the one day as it did not show a small street I had to take, but other than that it was reachable by metro in a decent amount of time.
The venue itself may be seen a bit non stylish / industrial - I thought it actually provided exactly what we needed.
A room for the audience, enough space for all the technology, a close room to network which did not look like just the entrance, the space for the exhibitors was well integrated with the flow of the audience, the lunch space was big enough to hold everybody and still quite enough. I did not attend the startup presentations but it seemed that was okay too.
The coat room was clever enough to expect that at the second day most people would come with bags. They where prepared for that with the numbers.
- Catering at lunch
One of the biggest outcries of last year. While the service personal was not the quickest and I would have made a different selection of food (simpler, perhaps even lunchbox type to get people faster served), it was an interesting combination as food selection. I say interesting because I am not keen on experiments like with the french cusine - but that is just me personally.
Hot and cold food as well as cheese was served, a good selection of drinks and there is no question that the deserts where gourgous.
- Catering during coffee breaks / other time
as some people know I do drink coffee half half with milk which meant I did not have any coffee over those days. The breaks where okay but there was water missing for the rest of the time to take away - people got thirsty in this venue.
- Sound quality / video
Sometimes people did forget to use the mic or do not have learned how to move their body with the mic but other than that the transmission of sound was great and afaik there was a stream as well running on the net.
I have not checked (typing this during a train ride) but Videos are supposed to be up in good quality. Although the stage was visible from even the last row, two screens where presented most often with the person(s) on stage on one and the presentation on the other. The one in the middle hold the presentation (in wrong ratio) but also advertisement. I was not bothered by it.
- No backchannel on the screen
Despite the fact that there was not a constant backchannel anyhow due to networking problems there was not even the attempt to have it on screen which I find absolutly 100% correct.
People who want to read / join the backchannel will do so. Everybody else stays out it. By putting it up on the screen you force people who do not want to see it to watch it. From my experience this goes hand in hand with having problems with focussing on several things at a time.
This is not bad or anything it is just a different way of receiving information. Somebody who is triggered like this and gets something like a high speed IRC channel running in big in front of him - that is screwing it up for that person. If you want the backchannel, go join it.
- The language was english
Despite the incidents around the politicans, the language was and is english to allow everyone to join the conversation no matter from which country they where coming.
- List of attendees on the web page
A hopefully complete list of all attendees helps me find later who I was talking to or what webpage that person might have. It is faster to go discover now as well.
- The program was not planned well
Well it is not exactly that what you like but seeing how the structure was and the timing it was clear that not very much could be expected of the speakers in this short amount of time - and that is not fault of the speakers, many of those are highly interesting. It made more time for networking - not only for myself but for everybody else who was bored.
Things which where not good but are hopefully taken up as "learned from experience!"
- One hopefully finally has learned that if you do provide seperate connections /access for audience and speakers / presenters.
- Printed programs are overrated as they are prone to changes anyway. Make a big screen in the lobby or in the hall itself to show what is up next.
- You can never have enough helping hands. In this connected world people actually can help you out with special tasks - just make sure the rest is directed towards it. Attendees could have organized much more on their own if most would have know better about the wiki like side events. This can be outsourced.
More on both if I remember them.
Technorati Tags: leweb, leweb3
13.12.06 - conference - 1 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
Dear
Orange, if you try to set up a wifi on a high profile conference like Leweb I would suggest you talk to your technical department first if you are able to do such a thing.
Obviously you are not, you have proven that over the last two days.
You did serve us lime, not orange. Perhaps you should consider a name change.
(Why can I post now? Because only a fourth of the people are left. It seems they could cope with 250 people.)
Technorati Tags: orange, not working internet connection
12.12.06 - conference - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
fyi: In order to understand my posting, please make sure to take a look at this posting on Loic's page. He has changed it since it go online, but this is a story which has more than just one side. You should at least follow some of the references.
Last year at Leblogs we had the problem of being promised a high profile event, like *the* major event in this regard, and got took by surprise how the audience was not really even. A lot of more geeky people (as being early adopters and ahead of the curve) met the more normal people.
This year I was expecting differently: No approach as a high end conference to the early adopters with real impulses, real new interesting discussion but I was aware that with 1000 people coming I would not be among my peers only but would be in the 'consulting' role.
I was fine with that as it would also give me a chance to meet a lot of new and known people. It was clear that though a lot of the speakers had more to say it would be difficult to get into deeper discussion.
Surely as it turns out it is still a single track program - a fault in itself. Looking at the program it was also clear very soon that there had not been spend enough time on really putting together a program which would work with this audience, the size of the audience and the structure of the audience.
Let me repeat that in different words:
If you have an audience like this and a standing like this in Europe for this conference you invest some time in making the the program. This obviously has not happened. Which is why i have an amount of political content i never wanted to see nor wanted to attend and everything else got pushed aside because of that - without me having really a choice through this.
So far it was to be seen from the preparation that it would be a not very organized event but still. Some of the topics would have been nice.
Would have been. Because this event has been
hijacked to be a pit stop of the french presidential election campaign.
I do not go to a EUROPEAN conference to listen to a guy in french talking about french politics. I do not care as they do not care. I would have had less problem with having this scheduled on the program, it being in french and having the rest in order.
I did not go to a conference to have to show my id to get in. I did not intent to go to a tech conference and find myself having barred out of the big room because some security wants to search it.
I do not tolerate that a lot of my friends who are supposed to be speaking for 20 min got told the day of the speaking that oh they have to make it in like 10 minutes to make space for some "last minute changes" while as the same time it was possible to organize translation headsets and translaters for those french politicians.
I will not tolerate that for another politician questions are cut off of people coming to this conference for a totally different thing.
I will not get taken hostage being part of an audience where the headline actually can be "politician ... in front of 1000 of europe's top technology attendees."
While I did get a free pass for the conference I still have expenses of several hundred dollars in travel expenses plus my time. This event was set up to be a great conference. But nearly everybody I was talking to was disgusted, disappointed and especially personally disappointed with Loic in this. French too btw.
I am wondering as
Dieter Rappold of Knallgrau did how the sponsors of Leweb 3 feel having sponsered a plattform for politicians.
Many of the attendees of this conference work in high positions of new AND old media in Europe. They are connected even without a working Wifi.
The result of this conference is very simple for me:
What was done to us today goes against anything this new world stands for. I am surprise about how stupid a person like Loic Lemeur can be to still try to pull it off. ESPECIALLY him.
This has been a mediocre conference through the organisation and how the program have been set up. It has been a mediocre conference through the way the side event / blog entries / connection of the attendees has taken place (or better it has not.)
Read the reports on this.
It is not the people attending nor the speakers. I feel sorry especially for the speakers to be connected with this.
For what? The only answer I have for this is:
Loic Lemeur has sold out his european peer group for some cheap headlines in french politics - if at all. He has destroyed trust and confidence in a way I have never seen this before.
He has not shoot himself in the foot, this is more like having shot himself in the head.
Is it interesting to have politics coming to such an event? Could it be done in a good way so people like me
really got exited about it? Yes, absolutly. If you want to know how to absolutly not do it, look at this "conference".
Some reading suggestions:
Technorati Tags: leweb, leweb3, loic lemeur, sixapart, orange, google, nokia, fon, netvibes
12.12.06 - european view - 27 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
In one out of three cases I actually managed to find the place in decent time ... at least in the states as well as in the UK they a) speak a language I speak and b) there is milk for my coffee everywhere! :)
(It took me an hour to walk to the thing yesterday as well as a detour tomorow of at lest 10 ... I need a decent gps / map system)
Leweb has started, and while it is supposed to be 1000 people it does not feel as ugly big as other conferences that size.
some short notes:
Can someone suggest some decent catering to organizers like Loic?
And are those French really just not understanding or not willing to get money from me in exchange for services?
Hans Rosling just has finished a great presentation about modernisation / globalization which needs a rerun from the podcast later but as usual this conference is about meeting new and known people to enhance the communication in Europe and beyond.
As a surprise Shimon Peres has asked to come here and speak at Leweb, we will see how that will work out tomorow.
More to come through the tags and postings, as the internet is still not running at perfect connection. :)
If someone wants to join in, I would suggest #leweb3 on freenode for the infamous backchannel - at least it seems as if this year they have learned and leave it away from the screen! :)
I think this article is just getting video taped - juhu! (Who let those video people in?)
Technorati Tags: leweb, leweb3
11.12.06 - conference - 4 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
As usual I like to do a pre conference podcast with interviews of some of the speakers, and this time it is for
Leweb which starts next monday. Over the next days you will find the interviews coming up
on the usual place for those interviews.
Already up are the following interviews (newest first):
The rest will follow soon and I will update this posting as well. :)
Tag(s): leweb, leweb3, pre conference podcast
04.12.06 - business blogging - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
yeah yeah a bit late, but I added now
my photos from podcastcon. :o)
The following are a bit special.
A great t-shirt:
Geeks playing parking a train ...
(
they did another mashup of Accident Hash and the TPN Rock. )
Guess what is wrong with this picture:
Podcasting Bingo
It was - as last year - a wonderful event and many thanks to the organizers! :o)
Tag(s): podcastconuk
04.12.06 - conference, podcastconuk, podcasting - 2 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
NYT reports in "
Have Camera Phone? Yahoo and Reuters Want You to Work for Their News Service" how Yahoo and Reuters want your material for their news sites. Although the wording is a bit off: If you work for somebody you do get paid.
Starting tomorrow, the photos and videos submitted will be placed throughout Reuters.com and Yahoo News, the most popular news Web site in the United States, according to comScore MediaMetrix. Reuters said that it would also start to distribute some of the submissions next year to the thousands of print, online and broadcast media outlets that subscribe to its news service. Reuters said it hoped to develop a service devoted entirely to user-submitted photographs and video.
Of course there will be some editoral selection so that not everything will make its way online:
Starting tomorrow, users will be able to upload photos and videos to a section of Yahoo called You Witness News (news.yahoo.com/page/youwitnessnews). All of the submissions will appear on Flickr or a similar site for video. Editors at both Reuters and Yahoo will review the submissions and select some to place on pages with relevant news articles, just as professional photographs and video clips are woven into their news sites today.
If you until now read Google News, why not in future use Yahoo if you get the same information but with pictures and video? As usual the question pops up: If I work for you, will I get paid? The answer looks good at first glance:
Users will not be paid for images displayed on the Yahoo and Reuters sites. But people whose photos or videos are selected for distribution to Reuters clients will receive a payment. Mr. Ahearn said the company had not yet figured out how to structure those payments. The basic payment may be relatively small, but he said Reuters was likely to pay more to people offering exclusive rights to images of major events. For now, no money is changing hands between Yahoo and Reuters, but if Reuters is able to create a separate news service with the user-created material, it will split the revenue with Yahoo.
It seems as if the answer is yes - but if you look closely it only "enhances" the services of Yahoo and Reuters. If revenue is generated, it will be split with Yahoo. And although it may be reprinted somewhere, the future for news is online and not on paper.
Basically you are giving Reuters a huge amount of material to select from (without them having to pay anything for it) and if you are lucky, your work is taken. Then your work gets used (probably without usable credits) and if it gets reprinted AND it will be reported, first Reuters and Yahoo will receive money.
It may be interesting for an aspiring photographer to try and work this angle and get some recognition this way, but for the shere masses this is a a win win situation: The readers get photos / video for free and Yahoo and Reuters earn more money through it. Why? Because stories with multimedia are more interesting than just text.
A bad picture may be better than no picture at all and if there is no video material at all, any kind of video will do.
Readers will know that I am no friend of the old copyright system, I call it outdated and it needs work done. It was invented in the last millenium and could not have forseen the internet. Still, we have to talk about ways to share revenue in a fair way between all parties.
[Additional text in German:
Yahoo / Reuters wollen 'Leserbilder' übernehmen]
Tag(s): yahoo, reuters, work for free
04.12.06 - cruel to be kind - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
So taxes might come to incomes of virtual worlds: "
IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable".
I do understand that the core audience reading this article is from the States. But please,
pretty please, can 'journalist' at least make a minimal effort to look at the bigger picture? How to achieve this on a global scale?
Do those writers actually have knowledge about that this internet thingy is something spread internationally? You know, connecting the world? This is Cnet we are talking about and not Little town in the prairy news.
Of course if you report on such an discussion you should report mostly about what was said etc. But would it kill you to add even a paragraph about the problem?
If those kind of discussions are started and focussed on US law alone, then we can start all over again once they discover that there is more to those virtual worlds done than just in the US!
How do tax payers in the US feel that their representatives spend time with doing things more than once instead of doing it right from the start? "Ups! Surprisingly our plan did not work, now we have to deal with those funny people from outside our world view. There seems to be money too ..."
This is fricking 2006. It should have come also to the attention of some tax people that there is more than just their own country.
Especially when you want to collect their money too. Start thinking globally with local in mind and then make it local usable.
Tag(s): closed minds, international tax, second life, virtual worlds
04.12.06 - european view, second life - 2 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
I stumbled across an ode for the nice guys: "
There IS someone who understands!".
Ode to the Nice Guys
(This rant was written for the Wharton Undergraduate Journal and revised for this facebook group.)
This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure hours of whining about what jerks guys are, while disproving the very point.
This is dedicated to those guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. [...]
It is something you read with a smile on your face, stating how true that is yada yada. It would have been just a nice link, but it kept bugging me for some reason.
And now I know why: Usually the nice guys stays the nice guy until somebody finds out about this unpolished diamond. Now meet the greatest polishing machine of the world: The net!
Not popping up on the radar
Yes, fellow women know: nice guys are a much better choice to spend our time with but they rarely pop up on our radar.
It does not help that those guys often are the quieter guys, more willing to listen, perhaps even a bit insecure to put himself in the spotlight. He who does not brag about what he did or what he likes and how cool he is. How sensitive, interesting, wonderful, intelligent etc he is. He who probably reflects too much on himself and is too self aware to push this.
We would have to discover that on our own. Which, basically, women do not often do because we are busy doing other things.
When the second move is the first move
I read a book once way back and it talked about how especially the nice guys use the wrong strategy when approaching women. They make their move and when they are rejected or feel like rejected they stop having interest at all. Whereas the women often is irritated and rebuffs a move out of initial shock, but then starts getting interested and looks into him more. Gets perhaps more interested and starts noticing things she had not before. But if she then makes a move back, she is rebuffed, because the man already is on "bah, she did not like me! Now I don't like her anymore" mode.
I found this very often to be true. I would assume that the 'non nice guys' just ignore this and hit as many times as they want perhaps having learnt that they will get what they want in the end. You might see where the problem lies for the nice guys if he is not aware of this. So far nothing new. Well, kind of.
Popping up on the radar differently
Through the net I have met so many people I would never have met otherwise. And not the usual way "shell first, content later" but the opposite: "inside out first" and later the 'shell'. In real life you do not run around and broadcast what occupies your mind. You do not run around and spend a lot of time with just anyone.
With the new media, you do. It is so easy to consume or interact with a wider base of people that someday someone pops up and you can click so much faster than through traditional methods.
The thing which hit me when reading the text was how many 'nice men' I got to know from the net. And they "score" so much more "points" in this "game" than out in the wild. Not just on the getting laid score, but much more important on the "I would like to get to know this person better because (s)he is really interesting / has something to say / is respectable / has knowledge" scale. They pop up on the radar in a new and different way. Shiny new nice guy, 2.0 if you dare to say.
The net increases chances for communication of all kinds
Which is one of the many reasons why I find the Net so wonderful in its possibilities to actually let us evolve as a society. It is my strong believe that the Net and the things we do with it is a major keystone to what society will evolve to, not only on a small and local level, but to what Science Fiction has long told us can be the future.
For now, I can connect with people or use the tools to connect them with my contacts and benefit from it on so many different ways. I am not restricted to my direct surrounding but can look out for people I like to interact with on a global scale (as long as internet connection is given and I do understand the language of course).
So, will using the possibilities of the new media help the nice guys to get more women? ;o) Probably more than other tricks. But jokes aside: most important it will connect people and take away the stigma of 'just being nice' and make others aware of the qualities a person has.
It is the nice guys and girls who add to the experience and bring in new and clever thoughts, not the 'hot studs and babes'. It broadens *my* horizon to see how many different talents and interests are out there. *I* can experience how wonderful it is to get to know them, talk to them and more.
Thanks to all of you. Now go out and tell the rest of your nice friends to use new technology as well. ;)
[thx to
Falk for the inspiration and the link.]
Technorati Tags: nice guys, communication, friendship, net
03.12.06 - Things I would like to see - 2 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
"Don't Fuck With Simple. Especially when "simple" is synonymous with "useful"."
Jeremy Zawodny
03.12.06 - the small things - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
On
Marketing Shift there is an article about Podcasting saying it's 15 minutes are up.
The multitude of independent podcasters will scratch and claw for the occasional hour when people want to hear about a niche of their interest, but podcasting will have about the same long term business impact as e-books.
Reading the article and the comments I have to agree and disagree at the same time.
First the usual complain: Given the fact that many people do not know what Podcast are it is always great to ask them if they have downloaded one.
Saying that the technology has been around for a decade misses the critical point that let podcasting explode when it started - the combination of techniques who had been around for a long time. (If you want to stay in this one should add that recording capability has been around for several decades ...)
But lets put that aside and think for a moment that the author actually believe the current report which he is citing (which neglects so many aspects I will not even start with it, critical ones, not minor ones): A good article would have take a look into the development and compared it with other media.
E-Books, the ones he chose as comparison, have never been so wildly adopted into the multimedia mix of companies and where not as heavily produced by individuals and supported by over a billion players world wide (mp3 players and mobile phones). Looking at the development of Tivo and Co, the worldwide spread, the numbers around it is hard to come to a conclusion like that - except when one really does not like the new media and wants it down for different reasons.
The commenters suggest the study was more done for the dying radio industry - well, looking at the studies about new media in the last year I would say you can find faults in so many of them that I would not even go there.
So a sloppy article - why do I even write about it? Because when a blog named (!) marketing shift writes such a piece in this way, you have to ask yourself how many other things they do not get?
The Business Week Article which is referred to "
What Podcasting Revolution?" is better build and ask more relevant questions although some of the premises are wrong as well.
When 75% of the traffic for podcasting goes through itunes (something I cannot confirm) why does it cut of the rest not to have an ipod? I do have an ipod and still do not use itunes for podcast downloading. ;)
In both articles I am strongly missing a few points. Podcasting in itself - for many people indeed a revolution in it self - is not 'just that' anymore. But that has not been the case since the release of itunes. If at all then Itunes did kill the podcasting star.
Podcasting belongs into the same row of inventions like the VCR and Tivo, because it changed how a lot of people consume media. I for example have increased from nearly zero radio consumption to "a lot" because of pocasting. I have changed from nearly no TV at all to a lot of stuff I get through the internet. Although Audio is much more, my media consumption has changed - and it is no likely to go back. Just like with Text and Blogs / News through the internet. There is few going back to old ways like newspapers.
Like me, many people have changed their behaviour forever and this will gain more traction over time.
People who still consume 'normal' media will start changing the moment it is compelling enough. How many people do Tivo and alike in the US? Is it so much different than VCR? Basically that has been around for decades as well! But suddenly when people get Tivo, they change. Away from traditional media. And has DVD changed the way we look at "video"?
Absolutly. It changed drastically. *This* is the context in which I expect those number to be interpreted.
Podcasting in itself as a revolution for its own had its time and I am more than happy that I was able to be part of it. It was a small burst, but now it IS mainstream. Not in the sense of everybody is using it but that it is mainstream that it is used the way it is.
But how can I say it is mainstream if only few people use it? Because that is a development which has to be seen as well. The era of mainstream mass media is nearing its end.
The future is my interests, content for me, highly selected and delivered just to me. When I want, where I want, what I want, how I want. With cross connections over the globe, cultures and languages.
THAT is not going away or going back to the old ways. That is the revolution. And that is the context in which everything has to be jugded ... If you do not see how the world has been changing in the last years and deny how much more this will change over the coming years, you should start reading job applications for a different job.
Just look a year back, or 5. It is incredible what will be coming and Podcasting has been part of this. And will be in the future.
Technorati Tags: podcasting, statistics, the revolution will not be televised
03.12.06 - Things I would like to see - 2 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
[This is the english version of my german entry "
Das virtuelle Leben als Spielart des ersten - oder als komplette Alternative?]
I saw on
Techcrunch an article about a new social software site called
Rupture will have a plugin for Wow and that they want World of Warcraft Users as their beta testers. Which is a clever move: Instead of getting us beta junkies they use testers with an actual need to use the service.
But it got me wondering about something: How many people really use the net as a tool to enhance how they live / work / have fun in their first live and for how many people is this really different?
My contact page only lists some of the services I am using and it is already a mess, but if you would have a deeper look at it, you would see that they are all tied in together, you usually find my nick on forums to be nixande etc. You can research what I say and do pretty good job. (Still you will be missing out on the parts of my personality and life I intentionally do not share with anyone online but with close friends.)
So for a person like me a new social software site which has the intention to allow me to integrate rather than force me to reenter data is compelling. I want technology to help me and make my life easier. There are several inventions I am really waiting for to finally make the step from Science Fiction to reality.
I might choose from time to time to 'make' such a second identity for different purposes, but generally I am 'myself'. But that is me. What about you?
Do you prefer to keep those lives seperate and do not wish them to mix? To which length do you go to keep them separated or the oposite, get them 'together'? Would a service which let's you integrate your data more easily be more attractive or do you find this to be creepy because it feels like with google when "all your data are belong to us"?
Do you want your Second Life to be just that - a second one, with no or few interactions to your first one? Do you want your chat identity to stay hidden, or do you want the benefit of not needing to care about which irc networt you are just entering because your friends will recognize you right away?
Technorati Tags: social software tools, sl, second life, wow, world of warcraft
02.12.06 - second life - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
If you plan a barcamp .. how do you start?
Of course: The simple wiki page, a google group and then you go for the most important things first: How to design the logo for the tshirt and stickers. ;o) ;o) No need to set the date before you have a logo!
If you want to take a look how the new Barcamp Frankfut logos are tested out,
take a look at this flickr set and leave a comment which you like best. (This is not the final version yet, but a draft.)
And what is your favorite part you organize first? ;))
Technorati Tags: barcamp, barcampde
01.12.06 - conference - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
While going through the process of adding some information for the new
google group for the Barcamp Frankfurt I noticed that you could if you like use the google group not only to have discussions but also host pages and host files.
Very interesting for groups who want to share information like with the barcamp folks! Although it is again one of those cases where you have to relearn where to find stuff ...
On a side note: Planned Barcamp FFM will be about the 4th Barcamp in Germany in few months, plus at least one additional podcamp planned in january in Berlin. Slowly, slowly it is coming along. ;)
01.12.06 - conference - 0 comments / TB ( ) - permanent link
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