Some ROFL Haiku

HTML5
Beautify My Web Site
Tables G2G


AFAIK
Adobe Hates Apple Now
Just an FYI

FWIW, I
think Google Rules the World Now
BICBW

IMAFK
Do not try to find me now
JK, BBL

IMHO, Good
Haiku should be AFZ
But WDIK?

I think I'm done here
Haiku is a lot of fun
But no more for now

Thank You, San Francisco!

Presumably, this will be my last post from the Moscone Center and Web 2.0 Conference. I may be able to slip one in at the airport if the WiFi is free. But nothing in SF has been free so far, so I'm not expecting it. Denver, maybe? We'll see. On that note, I want to leave here with a few thoughts. I'll skim the session I went to and add some photos.

I attended a session called Using Gameplay to Make a Big, Boring, Complex Industry Approachable and Fun by Cordell Ratzlaff. Ratzlaff is the creative director for a company called Kapitall that utilizes the concept of gaming to help people understand the world of online trading. His demonstration was nicely done and the game itself looks very intriguing. It's built using HTML5 and javascript so it works across all platforms. Is it ADA compliant? The jury is out on that, but it proves that complex gaming engines crunching huge amounts of real-time data can be created without Flash. I also think there is an application for this in what we do. (Think Farmville only more real).

My next session is Social Games 2.0: Myth, Fact and a Grand Future. It should be interesting.

Thoughts on San Francisco:

San Francisco is an amazing city. It's beautiful, unique, free spirited and from what I can see, accepting. It's an overall cool place and a great place to hold a Web 2.0 conference. That said, I'm ready to come home. I'm tired of being charged too much for meals. I'm tired of being charged for everything (rides, information, internet, 6-packs of beer for $12... SRSLY!). I miss my wife, my kids, my Manhattan. One thing that San Francisco has done for me has been to make me realize that I'm satisfied living in Manhattan. Big city life is cool and exciting, but deep down, I'm a small town kid who spent a good part of his life out on the farm. It's my heritage and it's in my blood. I'll be glad to be home again.

If the iPad was the technology du jour inside the conference, the Smart Car was it's relative outside the conference. There were a ton of these out here in SF.

The last photo is a view from the 2nd level of the Moscone Center. It's just downtown SF, but it's exciting to a small town boy like me.

Thank you San Francisco for a fun stay. To everyone in Manhattan, I'll see you soon!

Neal

On Being Scared

Just finished the keynotes for this morning. While they were all interesting and intriguing, the final keynote presented by Steve Blank was incredibly good.

Blank is a professor of entrepreneurship at Stanford and Berkley and he told 4 stories of entrepreneurial success vs. failure. The four stories revolved around decisions that impacted the tech sector in the early days of Silicon Valley. The talk was quite inspired and informational and I think the value that I found in it has more to do with an epiphany, of sorts, that both Gamage and I had immediately following.

The "powers that be" at Stanford are not scared. This has allowed for the recruitment of faculty and students who are willing to embrace that idea and push the gamut. One prime example is Fred Turman who is truly the father of Silicon Valley. As a professor of engineering who specialized in radio, Turman did various things for the NSA/CIA during WWII. The one thing that was most impressive, though, was that he came back to Stanford and told his faculty and students to take all of the intellectual property they wanted and start companies in Palo Alto. They did and thus was born Silicon Valley.

How many other universities would be willing to do something like that? How many would allow the absolute control of intellectual assets to leave their hallowed halls and be built into businesses?

Stanford continues to allow some of the greatest minds to express their creativity into failure, failure, failure, success, 100s of times over. Ge Wang is a prime example of this. Smule (Ge and other faculty/students at Stanford began this company) is a company that is making millions of dollars through the sale of the iPhone/iPad music apps they have built. It is institutions like Stanford, that allow their faculty and students to harness the full potential of their creativity without fear of reprisal that are leading the new revolutions in techno-media.

Many institutions are always afraid to allow intellectual property to leave their control. The fear grows exponentially when the economy begins to fail and Federal/State funds find their way to the chopping block. Many institutions are forced to compromise the creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of their faculty/staff/students because of regulations that have been put in place by a government that just doesn't get it. It's not always at the Federal or State level, though. Even at the institutional level we find political factions that, purposefully or not, stifle the creative and entrepreneurial spirit. Whether it's by requiring a democratized design on a print or web piece, or whether it's by utilizing power and status to bully people into one individual's way of thinking, the entrepreneurial spirit is crushed.

Are there niche areas within our institutions that foster and grow creativity and entrepreneurial spirit? Yes. Unfortunately, it's not an institution-wide phenomenon and many times, it's almost done in secret.

KSRE and Research and Extension in general have come under fire lately for not being valid or viable as 21st century leaders in the different fields they engage in. I strongly disagree. I have many friends within KSRE as well as RE at other universities who are amazingly creative, but because of the economy and ultimately the fear of the possibility of losing their job, have decided that it's more prudent to work within a known quantity. Because of fear, their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit is hidden behind maintaining the status quo of having to constantly validate what they do so that the State or whomever will see that they are a valuable asset to the organization.

If we are to survive and grow, we need to rethink the status quo. Perhaps it's time to look at ways to bend the rules and rebel against those who would seek to stifle. Perhaps it's time for a revolution. Perhaps it's time to stop being afraid.

Oh, the Irony.

I just found this to be humorous. Read my previous posts if you don't get it.

Web 2.0 Expo, Final Day and Notes from yesterday

Yesterday began with several good keynotes, one of which wasn't the Adobe Keynote as you can tell by my previous post.

I began my session track with a design strategies talk called Hit it Hard! (With the Pretty Stick), or something like that. Jenny Lam spoke about why aesthetics are important and the idea of designers and developers working simultaneously on projects... together. I was pleased to have that thought reaffirmed since it's something that I've been preaching since I began my career as a digital media designer.

She went on to talk about a Standford study which showed that 46.1% of people base their trust of a Web site on its design and aesthetic beauty. It is important to recognize that aesthetics communicate purpose and character as well as looking good. This isn't really about warm and fuzzy, it's about gaining viewers. Humans are, for the most part, very visual and we love looking at things that are beautiful.

One last thought that I'll take a moment to share is about prefab design and design by committee. Ms. Lam spoke about allowing designers to do what they know how to do, which is to design. As designers, we understand what makes things beautiful and many of us understand the idea of form in harmony with functionality. It is this expertise and creativity that should be culled from the designer and that designers should be allowed the freedom to do what they were trained to do. The idea of designing by committee will ultimately end up as an aesthetic failure. I'll be blunt about this. I've always believed it was my job to be creative and marry form with function. It bothers me that many of us (designers) are forced to design by committee under the perception that it has to be politics as usual because someone might not be happy with the result. This is one of the few fields where the experts, in some way or another, get told how to do their jobs. I'll leave it at that.

The other thought was prefab design. Let's just put it this way. People know when you have a prefab design. They can see the lack of craft and care and the design will not ring true. In the end, it will hurt your brand.

My next session was a Virtual world type session called Money for Nothing: User-generated Virtual Goods with Cary Rosenzweig, CEO of IMVU. Some of it turned out to be simple promo for IMVU. He did talk about the IMVU economy and the idea of consumers as creators. This really parallels what Linden Labs has done with Second Life, but on a smaller and more controlled scale. I haven't tried IMVU, yet, because it is PC only.

Cary brought up some points that I found intriguing. 70% of IMVU users are female. 60% are over the age of 18, but still within their 20s and 60% of users are from the US. From what I know about Second Life, the age demographic is older, which says to me that as a university, we may want to invest in looking at IMVU as another platform on which to promote ourselves to students.

It looks as if there are a few more controlling factors in IMVU. Avatars always have some type of covering, as far as I can tell. Virtual sex and sex type animations are not allowed, which I think makes it a much better/safer environment. And the purchase of virtual goods is more centralized within a catalog, rather than individual storefronts around the virtual IMVU grid. I'm interested in this model and think it might be worth exploring.

The final session I attended was the High Performance Web Sites talk with Steve Souders of Google. His presentation focused on some relatively technical issues, which I won't go into here, but his main point was that the speed at which a page/site loads is still very important to the user. In fact, it is the most important factor as to whether or not a users stays on your site. He also mentioned that Google is using the speed of a web page's load time as a factor in their search rankings (although it's one of 200 things they look at and it's not a really high priority).

He also presented his predictions for the top 10 things that need to happen on a large scale for speed and performance to get better on the Web. Here they are in simplicity:

10) Sites will be fast by default (server side speed enhancements)
9) People will have more visibility into the browser and what makes it faster
8) Consolidation (of tools, metrics, services)
7) TCP and HTTP will need to be looked at and optimized
6) Standards (I'm so happy to see this... I love standards for all things web)
5) Industry Organizations (professional groups, training/cert., standards bodies)
4) Data (Internet performance archive, network parameters, DNS times, Cache)
3) Green (Web Performance Optimization [new niche business, btw] is green. Consider this: By optimizing their site/servers, Shopzilla was able to cut their servers down to half of what they had. Netflix was able to cut their bandwidth consumption by 50%. Both of these things lower your power consumption and carbon footprint. By default, optimizing your site/servers is a green initiative.)
2) Mobile (metrics, long poles, root causes of speed loss, solutions and best practices)
1) Speed will be the differentiator between devices, vendor selection, reviews and user loyalty. In short, speed will affect the attractiveness of a site.

Well, that's all for now. Hope you've enjoyed this. If I have time and internet, I'll post more at the end of our conference sessions.

Adobe or Disillusionment v1.0

I'm completely disappointed with Adobe. Kevin Lynch, CTO at Adobe was a keynote speaker at the Web 2.0 conference this morning and sadly, his interview seemed to devolve into a bash session of Apple. He stated that Adobe is embracing the idea that innovation in HTML is back again with the advent of HTML5. The programmers at Adobe are moving Flash (which is at the crux of the Apple bashing) forward. The idea for Adobe is that the story is bigger than HTML vs. Flash and that the two can work in concert. At this point, the interview addressed the issue of Apple and Steve Jobs' statement regarding why Flash is not allowed on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

To be fair, I still think that Adobe is heads above any other company in creating excellent products for designers for both web and print. However, when Kevin Lynch is on stage bashing Apple because of Jobs' refusal to allow Flash on his products (for some very valid reasons) it starts to sound like whining. However, I think for Adobe, there is much more at stake. Apple computer users have stuck with Adobe despite the fact that Adobe hasn't been very Apple friendly over the last several years. Apple computer users have let it pass that 64-bit functionality was introduced to Windows users first, despite the fact that machines running OSX have been 64-bit ready for some time.

Lynch took the grousing a bit further, even by accusing Apple of walling off the web and becoming a closed system. Seriously? That's kind of like the pot calling the kettle black. Flash is the closed system. Proprietary to the max and do they have any competitors that even hold a candle to their product? No. And please don't say Silverlight, that's like saying that GIMP is as good as Photoshop. Yes, Silverlight is good, but it's not Flash. Lynch also went on to say that Apple is impeding competition. Again, who is competing with Adobe when it comes to Flash?

In reality, I think Adobe Execs like Lynch are pissed about their bottom line when it comes to Mac users. Those of you who remember 3.5 inch floppy disks might also recall that Apple stopped supporting their use by eliminating 3.5 inch drives on its computer products long before the PC side of things did. If Adobe chooses to fight this fight in this manner, they will find Flash dying a slow death. Creatives aren't the only users of Apple products anymore and when you get right down to it, developers (both creative and coders) can adapt to work within Apple's requirements. It could be argued that this could push Flash completely off the map.

It may not be HTML5 that is the Flash killer everyone thinks it is. It may just be a combination of HTML5, Apple and developers choosing to tell Adobe that their monopoly on this part of the Web is no longer a viable business model.

Keynotes from Day 1

Last night's keynotes were the highlight of yesterday. All but one were really good. Ben Huh (I can haz cheezburger?) talked about becoming one with the internet culture and the effects that this culture has on the media. The main point was that the media controls things and feeds what it believes is important to the people. Individuals within the internet culture, on the other hand, use the power of the internet to feed the masses with what they feel is important.

The second keynote was by Lili Cheng, from Microsoft. She introduced some new tools that harness the power of search and social networks. Interesting stuff, but not really. Okay, I'm biased. It was actually pretty cool.

The third keynote focused on rethinking the way startups go about ther business. Most startups fail. It's just a simple fact of life. However, if startups could embrace the idea of the "pivot" (new buzzword du jour) and change the speed with which they bring products (that people actually want) to market, there would be less failure. Both Gamage and I agreed with almost everything this guy had to say and we both think that the methodology he introduced can be applied to projects within our department.

The final two keynotes were really good and have really ignited some ideas that I need to flesh out before I talk about them and present them. June Cohen, one of the organizers of the amazingly popular TED conferences, talked about what they are doing with TED and their open marketing model. She also talked about some of the initiatives that are taking place that are spin offs of the TED conference. One of these is TEDx, which allows organizers outside of TED to put together a conference and utilize the TED branding. TED TV was the last thing on her agenda. It's new, it was introduced to the public here at Web 2.0 and it looks like it could be a lot of fun.


The final speaker blew everyone away. Ge Wang is a professor at Stanford University and he's doing some pretty amazing things with the iPhone and iPad and music. Basically, his group has created apps that turn the iPhone or iPad into unique musical and social instruments. The bottom line is that this is the type of thing that we need to be doing within Research and Extension if we're going to stay viable in the long run.

A Brief Interlude

I realize that this blog is supposed to be about Web 2.0 and technology and how it relates to what I do and I promise that I’ll get to that, but bear with me while I take a brief interlude.

I woke up this morning at 3:40 a.m. Pacific. I thought maybe at first it was due to the hotel bed or perhaps because my body is still on central time and I’m used to waking up at 5:30 when I’m in Kansas. However, lying there, I realized that my insomnia wasn’t entirely due to discomfort or central standard time. It was due, in part, to the fact that I’m not used to seeing so many homeless people.

Each day that Andrea and I or Gamage and I walked along the streets downtown or by Fisherman’s Wharf, the homeless have confronted us. I’ve watched people who were very obviously mentally ill walk into traffic or yell incoherently at other people or at people who can only be seen by their eyes. I’ve watched as they sit with a pan or cup between their legs, mumbling to themselves until you walk by and they ask, “Spare some change, sir?”


I’ve walked by alleys where the smell of piss and unbathed humanity is so overwhelming that I now hold my breath when I walk by them on my way to the conference. On two different occasions I’ve watched men suffering from DT’s stumble across busy streets. Both times I was positive that I would see them get hit. I’ve seen one man who had been beaten up, his cheek swollen, possibly broken. I watched this morning as one man walked aimlessly up and down the block for 20 minutes because he had no real destination.

When I first got here, I wondered how people could be so callous and simply walk by their fellow human beings without even a glance. Now I have some sort of idea, though. They do it because if they don’t, they’ll be up at 3:40 each morning wondering why in the hell we can build such amazing technology, why we can afford iPads, laptops, million-dollar homes and quarter-million dollar cars, why we can do such amazing things with our minds and our hands, but still can’t solve this problem.

They do it because they aren’t interested in seeing a problem that diminishes the beauty of this amazing city. If they have any humanity in them at all, they do it for the same reason that I now do it: Because if we look directly at these people, we’ll be forced to acknowledge them and if we acknowledge them, we’ll feel a sense of moral obligation to do something. Anything. “Spare some change, sir?”

I want to step back for a moment, though. I want anyone who is reading this to think about this one thing with me. They, like us, only want a bit of dignity and if they tell you otherwise, it may be illness talking or perhaps that this has been their normal for so long that they've forgotten.

Picture it in your mind. The homeless are: friends, neighbors, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers… at one time they were children. Their dreams and aspirations did not include growing up to be an alcoholic or mentally ill or someone who has lost their job. Their dreams did not include wearing layers of filthy clothing, reeking of urine, alcohol or both. Their dreams did not include asking the question, “Spare some change, sir?”

Again, I realize this is supposed to be about technology and Web 2.0 stuff. Believe it or not, it really is. Someone once said (and I don’t know who because I don’t have an internet connection at the moment) that if they had a long enough lever and a fulcrum placed in the right position, they could move the earth. I know they meant it literally. I have an idea, though and I think I can move the earth metaphorically. With the right lever and fulcrum, I think that I can move the earth. I’m going to pray about it and I’m going to talk with my wife about it. Then I’ll let the world know about it. The Web (2.0, even) is my lever and the internet is my fulcrum.

Conference Day 1 - Final from Presentations

This is your code, obey the code.

To a degree, the presentations that I've chosen were geared toward my interests in the Web and where things are going as well as the aspects of designing for the Web and Social Media. My third session was about designing your products/business based on UX (user-experience). This was an interesting session and touched on some points that are fairly obvious when it comes to starting a business or creating a new product. Fundamentally, the issue is about making sure what you want to create is something that your target audience will want.

The fourth session was about storytelling and the impact of social media/"trans-media" on it. This session was a roundtable between Tania Yuki, Alex Barkaloff and Kevin Townsend. For me, this session ended up not being quite as valuable as I had hoped. Two things that the presenters kept coming back to and that I've believed in all along is that if you have a good story, the audience will come and that ratings systems for any type of media should be universal. There are other things that were interesting about the session, but the attitude of Alex Barkaloff and Kevin Townsend were kind of condescending and trite. I suppose that's what we should expect from big time producers. This session did make me think about one issue that I've taken note of. Digital media outlets (and I mean everything from YouTube to Craigslist) almost always start out as a solution to the personal need of the consumer/user. YouTube is a prime example. However, as big media has taken hold and recognized the power of these outlets, it becomes harder and harder to tell what is user generated and what is generated by a corporate giant. This is also evident on sites like eBay, where you can barely find things offered "garage sale" style by real users. So much stuff on eBay comes from business owners who have established ties to some type of warehousing agent or even directly with a manufacturer in China. I have a lot of thoughts on the impact of this, but I'll save those for later.

I also stopped by the expo. It's about half the size that it was two years ago. Makes it a bit tougher to gather t-shirts and other novelties, but it's still fun. Does anyone find it ironic that Microsoft is having a scavenger hunt where you use your iPhone to take photos of the hunt item in order to win a Zune?

Currently we're sitting at the keynotes and they've been interesting, but I'm hopeful that we'll see some knockout thing that no one saw coming.

Conference Day 1 - 1:02 pm: iPads, iPads, everywhere...

This is my eyePad. I think it will sell well. It comes with a pen, you provide the creativity.

Call me old school, but I'm not big on showing off my tech. I guess I prefer to quietly enjoy the knowledge that "my tech is bigger than yours" so to speak. That is to say, I don't need to advertise. Here at the conference, it seems like the big deal is the iPad and how much you can use it in order to get maximum exposure to those who don't have one. Am I jealous? Sort of. iPads are cool. I want one. Would I show it off? No. I would sit at home on my couch, much like Phil on Modern Family, and gently touch my iPad and tell it how much I love it. That being said, whipping your iPad out for everyone on God's green earth to see and touching, nay, stroking it, in public is pretentious to say the least.

Enough about everyone's iPad, though (I do want one, so LJ and Kris, if you're reading this.... I need one so that I can test all things web :). Two things I'm noticing at this conference. The split between men and women (by my rough estimation, which is absolutely unscientific and solely opinion-based, is maybe 60-40 (60% men and 40% women). This is a far cry from the "old" days of technology when men would outnumber the women at a 1:0 ratio. I think this is cool and I hope this trend continues.

Okay, so, I'm going to geek out for a minute. I attended Eric Meyer's presentation "HTML 5 vs. Flash, Webocalypse Now?" and was impressed with his thoughts, which I'll share when I present to everyone back home. One thing I will say. Flash is not dead, nor will it be in the near future. In fact, I think HTML and Flash will coexist uncomfortably for many years to come. I also think that developing toward HTML 5 and W3C standards should be the basis and Flash should be incorporated, but not solely relied upon to deliver our Web content. I will say that the following link is an interesting read, though: Steve Jobs on Flash. Flash may not be going to die anytime soon, but maybe Adobe needs to stop whining. Here's another good article to read, as well.




This is Eric Meyer making a point. You can tell he's making a point because... he's pointing.

So, Eric actually came up to me and asked if he could get a photo op with me. I was kind of embarrassed, but I obliged him. Then he sat by me in another session that I attended. I kind of felt like he was stalking me, but what he really wanted was my CSS expertise on a couple of issues he was having. (Does that sound believable enough?)

Well, that's enough for the moment. Going to enjoy some more conference stuff. Lunch was good, the expo hall is about half-filled to what it was 2 years ago (which is sad), but I'm looking forward to more learning and I love it that everyone I've spoken with really seems to appreciate that I'm from a university.

And yes, Gerry, I'll post some photos later on.

Conference Day 1 - 8:43 am

Well, we're here. The prevailing overview from Gamage and myself is sparcity. This conference appears to be leaner than the last time we came. We assumed we would get some type of writing pad and pen in the conference goody bag that you receive when you first register. Sadly, that was not the case. We received 2 flyers and a 90-day trial version of the newest Microsoft .NET software. We also thought we'd receive a continental breakfast. Wrong on that count as well.

Okay, we're not actually here for the free amenities. We're here for learning and application of new and exciting things in the world of Web. But a few freebies would have been nice to start the day.

The first sessions begin in 10 minutes, so hopefully those will be chock full of goodness and information. I'm off to start my day in room 2010 of Moscone West. In this session I'll learn about the exciting world of the architecture of iPhone apps.

Kicking it off...

Well, Monday isn't the "official" kick-off for those of us who have "Conference Only" badges, however, we were allowed to attend "Ignite" which is kind of a sponsored event for Web 2.0. To be honest, I think we were hoping for free drinks and hors d'ovres, but what we were treated to was 45 minutes of sitting and waiting and when they finally kicked it off, it was about 11 people sharing some ideas that were... interesting... or not.

I was interested in the idea of onemilliongiraffes.com. I'd suggest participating. Another worthwhile endeavor was put forth by a young lady from NASA and offers the use of Microsoft's planetarium software (free download) and instructions on how to make a small planetarium for schools. The idea still costs roughly $1200 with materials, computer, projector, etc, but it's a neat idea.

I think one thing that is hitting home for both Gamage and myself is the idea of how much having an internet connection or not having one impacts our lives. We're in a hotel that requires payment for internet that doesn't really work. So, we're in a Thai restaurant enjoying Thai Fried Rice (Pork) and using their free Wi Fi. I had thought earlier that I could work a bit on a project, but then when I didn't have a css solution at the tip of my fingers, I couldn't "Google" what I wanted and therefore, was stuck.

In 10 years, the internet/www/whatever, will be so integrated into our society that we won't be able to use 99% of the products without some type of connectivity. Sometimes I think it wouldn't be so bad going back to a time when we didn't rely so heavily on this type of technology. Don't get me wrong, I love it, but I also think about simpler times. Times when we didn't get frustrated by not having a cell phone signal, times when we didn't carry our laptop/mobile device/etc around and expect to be able to find a way to connect to all of our facebook friends, e-mail, blogs, etc.

So, as I'm sitting here thinking about the idea of simpler times, eating around the pork strips in my Thai Fried Rice (saving them so I can eat them one after the other, yummmm!), it brought back a question that was asked at the "Ignite" seminar. WDYDWYD? (Why do you do what you do?). For some the answer might be very simple, for others, not so much. For me, I'm not sure I want to share my answer publicly because I'm afraid that I may not like the honesty of it.

New Experiences

San Francisco always has new experiences and you can never do everything that you want to do in the amount of time that you have. Yesterday, we began our morning with an overall tour of San Francisco. Most of the tour was spent on a huge tour bus (kudos to the bus drivers who can navigate these amazingly tight and busy streets) looking out the windows and listening to the driver describe what we were seeing. We did have different stops that allowed us to take photos or video. Some of those included the Golden Gate Bridge, Twin Peaks (where you can purchase a hot dog for the amazing price of $4.75... and they don't taste any differently than the ones you fix at home, folks!) and the Financial District. To be honest, it was not quite what we had expected, but it was still fun.

The highlight of the day was visiting Alcatraz. This tour is worth the money and I highly recommend it to anyone who is coming out to SF for any amount of time. The tour is hugely popular so you need to book it in advance.

Looking forward to the conference, but not looking forward to having Andrea head home.

Goin' Back to Cali

Well, we made it to San Francisco. We've used BART to get downtown from SFO, we've strolled through China Town, walked out of a restaurant serving hamburgers that start at $20, ate at a way cool diner called Lori's Diner and we've picked up a flyer for a comedy club. We're also staying in the world's smallest hotel room at Hotel Fusion with the world's worst view. However, for this weekend, I'm with my wife and that's what's really important. So, we're going to kick back, head to the comedy club in a bit, tour SF tomorrow and have ourselves a nice weekend before Web 2.0 starts. Two things have been going through my mind. One is how many people there are that were on my plane from Denver who are going to Web 2.0 and Two, considering that San Francisco is supposed to be really "green" they don't seem to have any real smoking ordinance. Maybe I'm missing it, but I have to say, about 1 out of every 3 people on the street is smoking. I was surprised to say the least.

Anyway, going to enjoy the weekend then get to work!

Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco

Once again, we're heading out to San Francisco to attend the Web 2.0 conference. Our experience the last time we went was phenomenal and personally, I'm excited to see what this conference has to offer in terms of how things have changed and advanced over the last two years.

Technology is truly a spectacle not only in what it can do, but in it's exponential growth. Two years ago, the emergence of browsers as a platform for delivering software was really just getting a toe hold. Now, in 2010, computing "in the cloud" and using your browser as the place where you conduct over 50% of your business is easily becoming the norm. The emergence of mobile technology is also a prominent component. I think at this conference, we'll see how things have shifted from the desktop to the digital mobile device and perhaps catch a glimpse of where things are going.

One last item of note. I was looking through the list of businesses taking part in the expo and noticed that aside from the big names like IBM and AOL, the businesses that had booths at the expo two years ago weren't there. It makes me wonder whether they continue to do business and have outgrown the need to participate in this expo or whether they are out of business. If I have time, I'll see if I can do a quick run down of what start ups were attending the conference 2 years ago and whether or not they still exist or have merged or have simply gone the way of the great white whale.

My next post should be from San Francisco... :)