Mind Bombs for Y2K
Saturday, August 26, 2000 by Dave Winer.
Michegas 
Yesterday I got two emails that got me going, and neither of them had anything to do with open source or DeCSS. One came from BK Delong, an XML developer who was at the Scripting News dinner in Amsterdam in May. He wondered if we'd do the same thing in San Francisco this week when lots of publishing developers are in town for Seybold. "Good idea!" I said, so I sent an email to Liz Grady, who manages the sessions for the Seybold show, asking if we could do an evening session. She said yes, almost immediately.
The other email came from a reporter at Wired News who wanted to know if there would be a gathering of a Weblog people in SF next week. He asked the question in an irritating way, using the brand name of one of our competitors to describe a category we pioneered. Oy! I used to write for Wired. Look at what they're resorting to. It wouldn't surprise me if my irritation appeared in Wired. Shit happens, I guess.
Hey I got an email today from Tim O'Reilly where he used the word michegas, one that I use frequently on Scripting News. How did an Irishman come to use such a term? He must have read it on Scripting News. No matter, it's open source. What if you could patent a word like michegas? But I ramble.
San Francisco in Y2K
In Amsterdam, Scripting News readers could fit in a small dining room. Not so in San Francisco, which is my home city, and in a way, the home city of the Web. We're proud of our city even if dot-com yuppies are invading, driving prices up, and forcing the artists out.
Even suburban San Francisco -- Marin, The East Bay, Silicon Valley, are unreally expensive. Ordinary houses in Palo Alto rent for $12,000 per month. That's a mind bomb for sure.
Mind Bombs for Y2K
So, on Tuesday evening we'll have another in a series of face-to-faces. For a brief moment the Web will be alive, truly interactive, multimedia. The title of the session is Mind Bombs for Y2K.
In Amsterdam we talked about XML. In San Francisco, we'll talk about more. The hot topics are music and radio on the Internet, The World Wide Web, The World Outline, mind bombs, open source, barking farting chihuahuas, amateur journalism, weblogs, standards for XML-based syndication, SOAP, XML-RPC, the First Amendment and software, Napster, how do artists get paid, patents, basically everything we talk about on Scripting News. And whatever else is interesting.
Interrupt me, please
We've done these many times before. I roam through the audience, there's no panel or video. Donahue-style, I speak for a bit, a few things that interest me, and people interrupt. Liz is also going to be roaming with a mike, this will be the first time we try it this way.
No standing in line waiting for a mike to open, so we hear people's spontaneous insights on a random basis. If the past is a guide, there will be 200-300 people; the room will be sprinkled with celebrities and authorities. Reporters are welcome. Brief product pitches are tolerated. Rambling former-CEOs explaining How Things Really Are, are not welcome. (No names, sorry.)
That's the process. What you see is what you get. Let's have a great time on Tuesday.
Where and When
So, if you'll be in San Francisco on Tuesday evening, please come to my little salon.
It's at 7PM, in Room 102 at Moscone, 747 Howard Street, San Francisco, CA.
Attendance is open and free. You do not need a badge to get in.
The title of the session is DaveNet Live -- Mind Bombs for Y2K.
Bring a friend, bring your mind, and bring some mind bombs. ;->
Dave Winer
PS: Michegas, pronounced mish-i-goss, is a Yiddish word that, roughly, means "All This Crap". You say it with your hands waving outward, perhaps magnanimously, as if illustrating the broad scope and ever-presence of the crap. Michegas is messy, as are many Jewish concepts.
PPS: On Tuesday at noon I'm doing the lunch keynote, also discussion style, on Napster, the biggest Mind Bomb of Y2K. The last one I did was pretty heavy. There's little doubt I'll want to talk about it Tuesday evening.
PPPS: What's a Mind Bomb? An idea that's so strange or powerful that it explodes in your mind. And that's a good thing!
PPPPS: More than 80 percent of the 195 people who participated in the survey so far said that my base64 code release was open source. Lawyers argue that it wasn't. However I specifically asked non-programmers to stay on the sidelines and let programmers work on this among ourselves. So far, programmers haven't tried to define integrity and ethics in the legal profession. So stay out of our profession please. (A hopeless plea, I know.)