Gnomedex 2007
Well, here I am again, back at Gnomedex for a second year. I am really looking forward to learning a great deal over the next couple of days.
One difference from last year, though, is I am not going to write a post for every session. That got to be a little too much work last year. But I am going to be writing some thoughts as we go along. Those are going to be available via my pownce account. But I will write some closing thoughts back afterwards.
Technology Training to Go
Recently, here in Florida, we had a conference entitled “Technology Training to Go.” It was kind of the latest iteration of the old Florida Public Library Technology Workshop which later became the Florida Electronic Library Conference. Anyway, the highlight of the conferences was a keynote by Stephen Abram. I just found out that the slides are available. It isn’t the same as being there, but it is better than nothing.
Phil Torrone
Phil did a great presentation on open source software, the history of gizmos and gadgets, how they have been modified, how kits and popular again and lots of other ideas.
Jeremy Zawodny
Jeremy planned a session of what people are looking for in social software. It got more heated than I would have expected, but I think it has the potential to be productive, if everyone really listens to what was said.
Blake Ross
Blake talked about how Firefox was created to be a product that the development team’s parents could use. And how they marketed it through things like Spread Firefox. At some point, though, the discussion went off the rails thanks to Dave Winer and Steve Gillmor. Dave wanted to get an upcoming feature list which was not what Blake was up there to talk about. And Dave’s point about how Mozilla would become Microsoft if they had enough marketshare was just silly. It really was a shame, but if I do get a chance to meet Blake later, I will be eager to thank him for standing up to Dave.
Note: This explanation from Brian Carnell is relevant to what happened.
