Here I am at the end of Day 2. I’ve been helping out with the conference since Monday, so I’m quite weary around the edges at this point – I haven’t woken up this early this regularly since last June! – but it’s the sort of satisfied tiredness that comes from having done and seen a lot of really interesting, engaging stuff, so I’m quite enjoying it. I haven’t gone to any of my backups thus far, though I think that’s mostly because I have a hard time judging things as being boring. Unrelated to my work, sure, but I’m typically tough to bore. Here’s a brief rundown of the sessions I attended on day 1:
- Matt Wong, Daniel Sutko – I came in late, so I only caught half of Matt’s presentation on the importance of SSIDs (names) in wireless network, and his thoughts on free/open wireless access points. We had a good chat about grad school – already the second of many I will undoubtedly have throughout this week. I also related a lot to Daniel’s presentation on location-based mobile games and various ways of interacting with public spaces through technology. Being American, I directed him towards Toronto’s funderkinds, newmindspace, as well as Spacing magazine.
- John Killoran, Karine Barzilai-Nahon – this session blew my mind, and as a bubbly girl in a skirt speaking rapidly, I sometimes feel like I’m overstating my enthusiasm, but I’m telling myself it’s not a detraction and probably just relative to my surroundings (because, well, I’ve heard Sacha squee at a conference, I’ll never really feel over-the-top again, or feel too bad about it either). John’s research was something I knew a fair bit about (the use of websites in establishing credibility for small business owners in interactions with clients), though I also felt in some ways that it was the sort of research that confirms what most people I talk to in business know to be true. Granted, the people I talk to work in or are interested in Web 2.0, and that’s not a truly representative sample, so kudos to him while he continues his analysis.
Karine’s paper blew me away, mostly because it’s precisely the space I would love to be in. Her paper was on comparing information handling challenges between e-government and e-commerce, and I found it terribly fascinating, as someone looking to work more with governments and having spent time in the corporate background. Her experience was close to home but different enough (Karine and her associate are at the University of Washington) to be interesting to me. She would be the next notable person asking me whether I’m doing grad school. *whistles innocently*
(There was a third gentleman who presented his paper at the beginning of this session. I must be honest – I was twittering and blogging during his talk, because I really just didn’t engage with the presentation. His presentation style just did not resonate. He had great questions beyond his presentation, in both this session and other sessions we were in together; but there was something impassable about those 15 minutes. I didn’t give him a fair shake, admittedly. Bygones. I’m glad I stayed, I was seriously considering my backup.)
- Keynote: John Lester aka Pathfinder Linden. I really enjoyed the talk, as it was really the first opportunity for me to be bitten by the Second Life bug, seeing as I’ve never logged in but having heard lots about it and having been interested in it a long time ago (back in 2004). I’ve since heard some fairly critical comments about the speech, and Second Life’s positioning in general, that have me rubbing my mind’s chin. It was a great overview, if nothing else, of the interesting uses that are being made of it, and the incredible resourcefulness and creativity with which people are grappling with it as a platform.
My Big Idea, which I’m sure somebody in SL is already doing, is to have an entire Second Life server (or, to set the goal of having all the Second Life servers) run on clean, renewable energy. It would certainly consolidate a particular kind of demand (powering servers) that could go a long way in helping to get the investment in the infrastructure in place, and I do so love the thought of the virtual world having positive impacts on the Real World.
- The last session of the day was a bit of a haze for me. It had a title, “Policy and design,” which described approximately two of the four presentations. I zoned on one, and felt a little bad for the presenters, who had to try and carve out the key points of their work amongst such different session-fellows, but I think the audience was sympathetic and tried to ask engaging and interesting questions anyway. There was good interesting stuff in there, on IPv6, the Massachusetts experience with open standards, nationhood and representation, though I’m not sure how much my spongebrain retained.
- Birds of a Feather: Religion and New Media – it was nice to meet some of the people interested in the area and to hear about their studies as well as their take on the state of the research landscape. I didn’t have much to contribute except for my own dabblings in it, which are really more as on a personal experience and reflection perspective than research. I was glad to be able to leave with interesting reading and a new RSS feed to add though, and everyone was quite receptive to having me there which was great. I think it also brought my “grad school” conversation count up to at least 7.
For today, I attended two sessions in the morning: one that took a critical perspective on Web 2.0 that, I felt, relied a bit heavily on the specifics of the case so as to make generalizations difficult (but which I found valuable anyway), and another on civic governance that both engaged and irritated me slightly (mostly because the questions were super-interesting but still not quite the “right” ones for me). The afternoon was spent working the table, though I caught a lot of Henry Jenkins’ keynote. I’ll write about those tomorrow. For now, I’m going to gear myself up for three more hours of happy mingling at the Banquet. I think that may require of me a nap more than anything else!
One more day at the conference to go. Phewf!
