Category: Conference

Le Web 3 has been disappointing – though I’m not sure, whether this is due to an underwhelming programme or simply that general debate on 2.0 has not progressed much lately; I had a similar feeling after this year’s ETech…but that maybe because my expectations increase with each year 🙂

The underlying tone of Le Web seemed to assume that delegates knew little of 2.0 and had been just waiting to be told…the general message was that ‘Web 2.0 was a great idea’, ‘open source is cool’ and ‘user-generated content was important‘ – we sorta knew this already…

There was also a disappointing deference to speakers’ positions – a panel session including representatives of Microsoft, Orange, Nokia and Yahoo should have hauled some of the representatives over the coals. Instead, we heard lazy reiterations of each company’s position. Yes, Nokia is connecting people, Orange is converging and Microsoft is Live…

Earlier this year, The Next Web, put together a compelling, tight, one-day programme that didn’t parrot the memes of Web 2.0 but gave Kevin Kelly space to speculate on the distant future history of the web and Steven Pemberton the chance to share his vision of the future structure of the web. They also managed to maintain a European focus by getting European VCs to talk about where they were betting their money.

Despite today’s snoozely content, there were some highlights…

• Feeling smug that I’m employed by both of the two key sponsors, Orange and TechCrunch.
• Hans Rosling‘s session on The Real World & Why It Matters was an engaging and insightful tour of various human development trends. This is the data that’d driving 2.0 yet is often overlooked in the fetishisation of technological developments.
• Catchin’ up with Jeanette Moskivitz at lunch. She’s now CEO of AutoQuake, a company that helps customers eBay their old cars. We last met at dinner with Marc Canter in Summer 2005.
• Meeting the lovely Amanda Lorenzani, editor of Excite’s WebTwitcher blog.
• Adding another O’Reillian to my collection – Nikolaj Nyholm. I’m constantly amazed by Tim O’Reilly’s ability to find super-smart people who are really approachable and laid back. Marc, Rael, Nat, Jon, Lorrie, Mike – they’re some of the nicest and smartest people I know 🙂
• Picking up a free La Fonera wifi router from FON.
• Loïc’s surprise announcement that Shimon Peres had called that very morning to request a speaking slot on Tuesday…now I really regret not packing my Kaffiyeh.
• Hearing about Sam’s ideas for Startup! and discussing our plans for a TCUK event in Leeds.
• Seeing Lee Bryant passionately shoot down the naive characterisation of Enterprise 2.0 as ‘distributed capitalism’. Also discovering that Lee’s a fellow Northerner from Harrogate, used to work for the heroic Haris Silajdžić and is an advisor to the board of the Muslim Heritage project! I now like Lee a lot 🙂
• Bumping into FTRD’s Benoit Lelong on the Métro at Corentin Celton. I assisted Benoit on FT’s Usage Trends Observatory in 2005.

Sadly, the sessions, keynoters and panel sessions were kinda forgettable; doubly ironic as turnout was over a thousand delegates and the list of speakers was, on paper, pretty stellar. The conference was however a great networking event; I wonder if workshops, how-tos and smaller more intimate sessions could have worked better for the delegates, giving more space to meet each other in more managable sessions.

However, without a guiding theme or framework, like ETech’s Remix, Magic and Attention or The Next Web’s infectious futurism, Le Web currently lacks a voice that’s unique.

UPDATE – Sadly, Sam’s quite reasonable and balanced impressions of Le Web, have led to an unfortunately public exchange with Loïc and resulted in unpleasant consequences.

My snips from today’s closing sessions at Euro OSCON…

• Robert Lefkowitz’s Architecting Babel raised some interesting questions on the quality of open source, notably the human language in which source code is available – code isnt usually localised for the developer, though the user is catered for. Lefkowitz argues that the open source community is perfrectly placed to localise code as well as applications. Lefkowitz closes by exploring options for Sub or Dub (subtitling or dubbing code) and a roadmap that encourages localissation of identifiers, comments, keywords and dynamic libraries.
• I missed Florian Mueller’s New Innovation Models, Policy-making & Lobbying as it took me 30 minutes to checkout of my hotel and then another 20 to walk over to the venue…
• Chris Heathcote’s My Life Has Value! Making Sense of Public and Private Data on the Internet emphasises that applications are now no more than vessels for data, hence data ownership, trust and privacy are critical to open source. Chris explores the same inversion of privacy, strategies of personal privacy and issues around deriving intentions from actions. Chris goes on to explore what he describes as self-revelatory software, aggregation of IM presences, publication of location and ‘selfish software’ that enhances a user’s life, but adds to public value (like del.icio.us). What Chris describes socially acceptable software being enabled with machine readable capability becomes unacceptable (the addition of FOAF to ecademy)…Chris suggest users need the capability to lie in social software and that privacy will ultimately become a luxury.
• Simon Wardley’s Making the Web Of Things, speculates about the future of 3D printing, spimes and blogjects postulating that open source in hardware will be as important as open source in software. Simon raises the concept of a Spime script as a common instruction set for both hardware and software production, moving software engineering to a new paradigm. Interestingly, Simon drew a parallel between Drew Endy’s work on BioBricks and the notion of ‘printers-printing-printers’ in the race to viral manufacturing technologies. I’d love to get some thinkers from genetics, biology, tech and manufacturing together for a symposium on this emerging field 🙂
• Colin Brumelle’s Music 2.0: The Coming Revolution revisited the history of music recording and recent P2P developments before exploring discovery services. Colin posits that music is getting cheaper to produce and distribute, coupled with recommendation services and long tail economics, the record company is set for reinvention. Labels and companies that can build band brands, concert and merchandising as well as offering the source ProTools files can out maneuvre traditional ‘disc-shipping’ companies as well as nullifying the effect of file sharing and piracy. Colin also noted that copyright is likely to evolve into universal artist funds.
• At lunch, I talked with Martin Graney about his GeekMeets concept; an aggregtor of tech industry events, conference, camps etc. The concept is kinda like Nico’s proposed London Design Events service. Martin’s ‘scratching his own itch’ (to use the terminology of Open Source) and simply volunteering his time. However, I suggested he had the basis for an important filter for the technology industry. As well as a basic calendar, could GeekMeets enable demand-generation, allow people to plot a course of sessions across conferences and orient themselves around place and people as well as times? I wonder if GeekMeets could become the TechCrunch of technology events.
• I missed Mark Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu: Improving Collaboration in the Free Software World, a session I really wanted to see, but had to get to my flight home 🙁

Blipverts, from the second day of Euro OSCON…

• Tom Steinberg took the audience on a rapid-fire journey through the work of MySociety,org – honestly.gov – their achievements include Pledgebank, TheyWorkForYou and others. Steinberg closed by proffering advice on how to launch successful and effective eDemocracy projects. Tom also later ran a session titled Democracy: A Hacker’s Guide, with more practical steps on running eDemocracy services, Notably, Steinberg advises operators to make public data findable by search engines, provide email alerts, aggregate performance/ratings data to incentivise politicians, create new forms of pressure such as the discursive nature of HearFromYourMP.com and finally to be prepared for effect’s. Oddly, Tom related that the Auk’s non-partisan democracy community is larger than other countries such as the UK. MySociety has tackled abuse simply by trusting its users until they do something to undermine that trust.
• Dale Doherty’s segment on Make and the re-emergence of DIY tech sought to connect the traditions of homebrew computing, DIY and amateur electronics to current trends in open source; notably the urge to ‘scratch one’s own itch’ and distribute ‘recipes’ as a means for social validation. Dale also previewed the upcoming Craft magazine, to accompany Make.
• Douglas Arellanes spotted on my blog yesterday that I missed his session so caught me sneaking out of another session. However, I had a great time learning about his work on Campfire and I can hopefully introduce him to Lee at Fonly, Jim’s work on OLPC’s 2B1, Surj’s Tuxphone, Aaron’s Aidphone work and maybe even Craig’s Spiricomp initiative. Doug’s a lovely guy – I hope we can work together on something…maybe some content from Believr.
• The Secret Sauce of Robust Developer Communities was a joint presentation between Collabnet and O’Reilly, listing collaboration, recognition, dynamic content, conversations and passionate participants as the key ingredients as well as leading suites for eBay and BEA Systems!
• At lunch I met Rob Savoye, creator of GNash (an open-source, embedded Flash player) and the guy that ported the US air traffic control system to Linux after 9/11! Gnash could be very useful to the OLPC guys…they were comisserating the lack of an open source plugin for Flash. Rob’s also an expert in alternative energy systems, habving taken his home off the grid altogether 🙂
• Jim Purbuck was back to talk more about Second Life and The Creation Engine: Collaboration, Community and a Creative Commons in Second Life. Second Life is unique in that the number of contributors is a high proportion of the total population…the mode of Always On creation coupled with modes of collaborative construction are seen to be driving this. Second Life is coming to a turning point as real world companies and organisations (e.g. American Apparel and Creative Commons) begin to establish themselves…with every object in Second Life being copy-able, the potential for a virtual open-source world is very high.
• MySQL CEO, Mårten Mickos, spoke about Cultures Consequences On Open Source Communities & Business. Mårten asserts that European higher education, civic traditions and passion for freedom (particularly Nordic openness) makes Europe great for open source. In contrast the US is cost-conscious, less risk-averse and looks to advantage by technological innovation as well as largest finances and talent pool. Indeed, MySQL’s move from Europe to Silicon Valley brought improvements to team spirit and market opportunities. However, Mårten is mindful of difference in European and US attitudes, but also observing Asian attitudes as they develop in India and China.
• Tor Nørretranders was speaking again today in his session Dare, Care, and Share…thematically the segment explored the motivations for why individuals undertake difficult endeavours; exploring Veblen’s Conspicuous Consumption, Spence’s Costly Signals and Zahavi’s Handicap principle. Notably the disability principle leads to an exploration of culture as the vehicle for natural selection and survival; if you can find time to create and explore culture over and above daily survival, this is a means of signalling that you are strong enough to exist beyond the mundane. Nørretranders explores his perspective further in his book, The Generous Man. Nørretranders promotes the notion that every second of your life is a choice to Dare, Care & Share – or not. Closing on the web gift economy, Nørretranders suggests it is a natural development  as gifts build relationships and societies. Gift economies and sharing are the best mechanisms for regulating an open source society…indeed most human activity is ‘gifting’. Openness is the ultimate handicap 😉
• I had a great chat about LEGO, the Chumbys and visualising startup employee migrations with O’Reilly’s director of research and analysis, Roger Magoulas. A lovely guy – he reminds me of Jeff Goldblum 🙂
• Simon Willison’s  Yahoo Interface Library talk outlined where Yahoo! has sought to abstract browser differences and create a core of reusable components, divided into UI controls (sliders, autocomplete etc.) and behavioural utilities (events, drag’n’drop…). The library appears to be very powerful, notably the DOM library in reducing the complexity of many Javascript operations.
• Sam Hiser‘s presentation on The Future of OpenDocument recognised Europe’s more advanced deployment of open formats. The longevity and persistence of data for states outweighs that for corporations, hence the public sector has been one of the leading adopters of open source file formats. Though formats like RTF can be syntactically read, context is lacking and hence without semantic understanding, they cannot be considered open in the longer term.
• At the evening’s Make fair, I met Mark and his $75 laptop, fashioned from an old Apple eMate!

Today’s highlights…

• Tim O’Reilly speculated about the future of open source software in Open Source 2.0. Tim described how in an era of hosted software, open source needed to evolve into open data. As the power of hosted software has shifted from source code to data, open data becomes essential to perpetuate the open source philosophy.
• Tor Nørretranders’s Attention Please! Who Are We? attempted to conflate sex and reproduction with open source – I didn’t fully understand, so I’m not going to attempt to explain!
• Brian Suda provided an overview of microformats in his presentation Web of Data. Quickly running through elemental and compound formats, Brian concluded the session by demonstrating how microformats can be used to pipe multiple data sources together; I wonder if we can contract a hPrayer format for Believr 😉
• I intended to go to Douglas Arellanes’ session on The Campware Initiative, but was drawn into a conversation on mobility, digital identity and enterprise social software with Boris Mann from Drupal and Bryght.
• Schuyler Erle is co-author of my friend Rich’s Google Maps Hacks book, so I figured I should say hi at his talk on Cool Tools for Geographic Applications. Schuyler’s demonstration of Gutenkarte was very interesting as Tarique and I had speculating on a geotagging verses of the Qu’ran for Believr.
• Steve Coast’s Open Data AWOL broke down the sources and users of open data platforms (such as Wikipedia) and posited that the industry is reaching the limits of what’s possible with source code alone.
• Adrian Holovary’s Journalism via Computer Programming outlined where journalism is being influenced by open source; the Faces of the Fallen. the US Congress Votes and TheyWorkForYou are all sinks and sources of open data that tell a story via an application, but also expose underlying data for syndication and remixing by others.
• Jim Purbuck discussed the relationship between Open Source and Second Life; unlike other MMOGs, Second Life is built by its users and their digital creations within the game environment are the property of the creator, not the operator. Such openness is driving the Second Life economy. Worryingly, SL players built a virtual town that was acquired by FEMA for disaster training <rolls eyes> but the service infrastructure and technology base is largely open source, including a number of contributions to open source projects.
• Lorenzo Benussi attempted to reconstruct the history of open source in An Economic Interpretation of the Evolution of the Free/Open Source Software; Lorenzo’s work is largely focused on the use of FLOSS and open source in the innovation process. Disappointingly, the discussion focused on the technological history rather than political and economic shifts in the same period. More distractingly I saw a girl wearing a T-shirt with <BODY> on the front and </BODY> on the back 🙂
• Alexios Zavras’ session Open Source for Fostering Local Development described various public services and government agencies that have switched to open source; largely driven by transparency, developer communities, standards, sustainability, reuse, interoperability and security over the long-term.
• I had a quick chat with Arnulf B. Christi , one of the directors at OSGeo.org, about the opening of geodata…notably the UK’s tight-fisted Ordnance Survey and the Freeview Consortium.
• I had lunch with Femi Akintoye of Progenics, a Nigerian software house; Femi and I exchanged stories about technology and innovation in emerging markets and the developing world.

…And finally, I took some photos of the Grand Place 🙂

I arrived in the midst of EuroFOO, hence as a FOO alumni, was tempted to compere the US and European editions. So I snuck upstairs to the floor of the Hotel Le Plaza where EuroFOO was taking place. My first day of EuroOSCON was actually a pair of tutorials:

• Marcel Molina’s Ruby On Rails was immensely useful, albeit I was unable to follow tutorial exercises without an installation of Ruby. With my recent adventures learning MySQL and PHP, the contrast with the simplicity of Ruby was sharp. Both Ruby and Rails seem to be richer development mechanisms for th work I’m planning to do.
• Damian Conway’s The 7 Principles of better API Design was useful in places, with guidelines for architecting APIs (e.g. design the code that calls APIs before creating the APIs themselves) though focused heavily on Perl development…I don’t know Perl 🙁 Strangely the curtains and slide colour were reminiscent of Apple’s recent Showtime event.

During the lunch break, I met Daniel Erasmus, Founding Partner of The DTN and Scenario Thinking. Daniel helps clients execute scenario planning and develop early warning systems and forecast processes; essentially helping to predict the future. Daniel described some fascinating work he’d been doing with some mobile operators and recounted Peter Schwartz’ the Greening of Russia; the story of how Shell modelled the decline of Soviet Communism and predicted the rise of Gorbachev even before he jointed the Politburo!