Monday, May 22, 2006

NY Times: "Personal electronic information on up to 26.5 million military veterans, including their Social Security numbers and birth dates, was stolen from the residence of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee who had taken the data home without authorization." 

New header graphic, a canal in Amsterdam. 

My drawings are more popular than my pictures on Flickr, and Big Life Lesson #1 is the most popular of them all. It's a good thing to remember when you get mad at someone, that you probably don't have a clue what they're thinking, even if you think you do. The converse is also true, an outside observer has a better perspective on how you look than you do. But there is no objective truth to this, because the spec of crud that one person might see might go completely unnoticed by another observer. An interesting discussion followed the intro.  

BTW, I'm going to try to sneak some of the HyperCamp ideas into BloggerCon IV. 

MSN's search engine is allowing sites to opt out of the DMOZ descriptions by using a META tag in the HTML source. I've included the tag in the source for Scripting News. 

BloggerCon IV 

Welcome to BloggerCon IV planning week on Scripting News. I don't have any more trips planned between now and June 23 when BloggerCon IV begins. I'm going to hunker down and make this a kickass and very unusual BloggerCon!

So here, in no special order, are the foundation ideas that make this BloggerCon different from the three previous.

It's a podcast. Previous BloggerCons were about defining podcasting, now I'd say it's pretty well defined, so we're going to break new ground in the art of podcasting. The goal of this BC is to produce a webcast and a podcast, along with a IRC channel. It's less about the venue and more on the net, and even more, a record that can be listened to in any order, at any time in the future. The podcast is the focus (not the room, the IRC or the webcast). The room will be live with mikes, and everyone will be encouraged to say meaningful and unusual things. Not the ordinary.

We're including other conferences. Since conferences have become unstuck in time and geography, with year-round parties spread around the globe, and constant presences on the web, we decided to invite three conferences to be part of BloggerCon this time, and they went for it! The three: BlogHer, Vloggercon, Gnomedex.

The DLs choose the experts. Each discussion leader is charged to create the panel they would if this were not an unconference, however, these people will not sit at the front of the room, and the normal BloggerCon discourse rules apply. The DL isn't limited to calling on their ten people, by no means, this is how we get an interdisciplinary mix. The room therefore will be filled with the panels. Everyone will rightly be able to claim to be a speaker. I will not have editorial say over who they invite. (This is likely to be the most controversial part. Not everyone who wants to go will be able to. We have very limited space, and different goals this time. To not be able to go to a conference is something I have to deal with too, from time to time.)

What won't change. It's free of charge. Lunches and dinners are at local restaurants, and there are lots of them in the neighborhood. We will organize Food For Thought dinners on Friday night. There will be lots of room for schmoozing outside the studio at all times, and this will be open to everyone and anyone. Free wifi. Totally non-commercial, leave your business models at home.

Thanks to Dan Farber and CNET for providing the facility!