Fall conference plan

Tuesday, September 25, 2007 by Dave Winer.

I have three conferences on the schedule this fall, which is an unusually large number of conferences for me these days. It's a pretty wide-ranging and eclectic group, and so far I'm not actually speaking at any of them, which suits me fine these days, I'm enjoying not speaking and just listening, to the extent that I can keep myself from saying anything.  

1. I'm going to Jeff Jarvis's Networked Journalism conference on October 10 in New York City, to bring together bloggers and professional news people. I've been to a number of these meetups, and I appreciate Jeff's prime directive for us, no trash talk, we're there to find ways to work together. My main observation is that while we've accomplished so much in virtual space, we have neglected the material space. Putting bloggers in the same physical space with each other and professionals on a routine basis is a sure way to make new ideas and projects materialize. Where to do that? The newsroom, of course. 

2. I asked for a press pass to the Web 2.0 Summit, and was graciously provided one. I've never been to one of these. I'll try to keep the expectations to a minimum, and an open mind, and as I said before, I'll try to say nothing at all, just listen and blog. I came pretty close to that at Gnomedex, only speaking once, and look at all the trouble that caused.  

3. I'm going to Le Web 3 in Paris, my second European trip this year and I'm totally looking forward to it. I've gotten to know Loic Le Meur, the promoter of the conference, now that he lives in San Francisco, and it's fair to say that we've hit it off. It's so much fun to brainstorm with the guy. Yesterday he was here at the house in Berkeley and we sat in the den, with the FlickrRivr app running on the big screen, and it had its hypnotic effect on him. It really is something, you can't describe it in words, people have to experience it for themselves. As a result it's going to be part of the show in Paris, running constantly behind the speakers. Now that's what I'm talking about! A few days ago, in my wrap-up of TC40, I wrote: "Maybe someday these conferences could host real-time development, where media hackers put together new communication systems and deploy them before the conference is over." There will be over 2000 people at Le Web 3, some of them will be programmers, so maybe this is where we will get a chance to try out real time media hacking.