Ignite Boston 4 - Tonight!

by Mike Hendrickson | @mikehatora | comments: 7

The fourth Ignite Boston is this Thursday, September 11, from 6 to 10pm at The Hooley House in the Faneuil Hall area of Boston. Don't miss out on hearing a special keynote by Tim O'Reilly. There is no cover charge or any sort of fee. The event is free as in 'Free Beer'. In fact, Microsoft is sponsoring the night and there will be a free beer for those of you who check in when you get there.

RSVP If you plan to attend, email IgniteBoston at oreilly dot com for the chance to win $300 worth of O'Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win. There will be other giveaway items like tee-shirts and O'Reilly books that will be distributed during the event.

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Ignite Boston 3 - Next week

by Mike Hendrickson | @mikehatora | comments: 0

The third Ignite Boston will be next week - Thursday, May 29, from 6 to 10pm at Tommy Doyle's in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. There is no cover charge or any sort of fee. The event is free as in 'Free Beer'. In fact, Microsoft is sponsoring the night and there will be a free beer for those of you who check in when you get there.

RSVP If you plan to attend, email IgniteBoston at oreilly dot com for the chance to win $300 worth of O'Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win. There will likely be other items like tee-shirts and other promo items for those who alert us ahead that they plan to attend.

From 6-6:45 pm, mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. After the mingling and social stuff, we'll have a couple of special keynotes by Jonathan Zdziarski and John Viega to kick off our Ignite talks. Then, onto the lightening talks.

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Velocity preview at Web2.0 Expo

by Jesse Robbins | @jesserobbins | comments: 2

At the Web2.0 Expo this month we have a small preview of some of the topics and speakers at the Velocity Web Performance & Operations conference.  (Radar readers get a 20% discount by using "vel08js" as a discount code... and yes it works with the $300 early registration discount!).

Failure Happens
Friday @ 11:00 am, Room 2009

Artur Bergman and I will kick off the day with an entertaining/informative/eye-opening review of the year’s biggest failures, disasters, and painful lessons learned.

We'll review incidents by underlying root cause with a focus on what could have been done to prevent it. We promise not to be too harsh on anybody, although we will give special attention to particularly ironic failures or those that are "entertainingly coupled" to absurd marketing claims.

(Hint: Send your boss to this talk if they don't understand why you and your whole team need to go to Velocity.)

Even Faster Web Sites
Friday @ 1:30 pm, Room 2012

Steve Souders is the co-chair of Velocity and author of the bestselling book High Performance Web Sites. At the Expo last year Steve gave an incredibly popular talk on the 14 best practices he developed while working as the Chief Performance Yahoo!.

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Getting the iPhone Open Source Tool Chain Up and Running

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 6

Tomorrow at 10 am pacific time, oreilly.com is hosting a free webcast with Jonathan A. Zdziarski, one of the original hackers of the iPhone and author of iPhone Open Application Development. From the announcement:

Jonathan will demonstrate how you can use the iPhone open source tool chain to design third-party software that will run on on both today's iPhones, and on iPhones that will soon be running Apple's next version of firmware based on the official SDK. Jonathan will demonstrate on a Mac running Leopard.

Introducing Jonathan will be Brian Jepson, executive editor for Make Magazine's Make:Books series, co-author of Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks and a number of other geeky books, and iPhone hacker at large.

This is your opportunity to hear expert advice on building applications for the iPhone and ask questions of the experts themselves.

Attendance is limited, so register now. We'll send you a reminder before the webcast.

Date: Thursday, April 3 at 10am PDT (17:00 GMT)
Cost: Free
Duration: 30-45 minutes
Meeting link: oreilly.com/go/webcast-iphone
Teleconference dial-in:
(select the number that is closest to your location)
East Coast US: +1 617 231-0350 and pin 8136507
West Coast US: +1 213-455-0500 and pin 8136507

Some people might wonder why we published a book on the open source toolchain when an official SDK has already been announced. (I wondered that myself :-) We started the book before Apple had learned from the first hackers that people wanted more out of the phone and announced the open API. But why didn't we just hold off on publishing it, modify it for the official API, and release it when the time comes (supposedly sometime in June) when the official API is open for business? The answer is threefold.

1. We believe strongly that hackers mark off the natural paths that official developer programs later pave over and make safe for the less adventurous. Smart companies know this, and pay attention to their hackers. (Google Maps is a great case in point. It became the mapping platform of choice because, rather than shutting down the early mashup hackers, it quickly figured how to pour fuel on the fire that they'd started.) We think that despite the official disapproval, Apple knows that the hacker interest in the iPhone is a great boost to their program and their goals. (Witness the fact that the Apple store in Cambridge MA allowed Jonathan to present on open iPhone development in a meeting at the store.)

2. The open API has a great deal of overlap with the official API. So getting up and running with the open toolchain will help developers get a head start. But it's also more powerful than the official toolchain, and will let developers continue to push Apple in interesting new directions. Jonathan wrote:

   With the introduction of the Apple SDK, developers gauged its functionality based on a comparison to the unofficial, open source SDK released last August. In the process of building this custom, open source compiler for the iPhone, the development community exposed the many low-level APIs (application programming interfaces) available on the device. Using tools such as class-dump, nm, and just plain old trial-and-error gave developers access to the full breadth of functionality available deep within the iPhone's frameworks. It was used to write applications that could look and act just like Apple's preloaded software, so when Apple announced that their SDK was "the same set of tools," many expected that it would look and feel like the open tool chain. Very few had anticipated the many restrictions they've come to find in the official SDK. While roughly 75% of the two SDKs do overlap, the remaining 25% has shown to be very restrictive, removing the developer's ability to do "the real fun stuff" with their application.

3. The demand was there. The number of slots in the official API program is far smaller than the apparent demand. We published the book, and it sold out immediately, indicating that we were right. We do plan to update the book with information about the official API as soon as the Apple NDA is lifted, but for now, we are eager to fuel the fire, since we believe that the iPhone is one of the most important new platforms in the market today, and one that developers should be exploring as deeply (and as soon) as possible.

See also Jonathan's article on the O'Reilly Network about open API development for the iPhone for more information about the difference between the two APIs, and why developers need to know about both. We're also planning to have a strong open mobile development track at OScon.

'Computing in the Cloud' workshop hosted by Princeton University - January 14-15

by Jesse Robbins | @jesserobbins | comments: 1

Marc Hedlund and I will be speaking at the 'Computing in the Cloud' workshop hosted by the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton on January 14-15. The sessions look very interesting and registration is free.

Panel 1: Possession and ownership of data - In cloud computing, a provider's data center holds information that would more traditionally have been stored on the end user's computer. How does this impact user privacy? To what extent do users own this data, and what obligations do the service providers have? What obligations should they have? Does moving the data to the provider's data center improve security or endanger it?

• Joel Reidenberg, (home page), Professor of Law, Fordham University
• Timothy B. Lee, blogger at Technology Liberation Front and adjunct scholar, Cato Institute
• Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director, Electronic Privacy Information Center

Panel 2: Security and risk in the cloud - How does the move to centralized services affect the security and reliability of users interactions with technology? What new threats are likely to emerge? How might provider behavior, user behavior, or government policy need to change in response to those threats? How does the open source ethos work in a cloud computing environment?

• Marc Hedlund, founder and chief product officer, Wesabe.com
• Mihai Christodorescu (home page), researcher at IBM TJ Watson Research Center
• Benjamin Mako Hill researcher at MIT Media Lab and Free Software Foundation

Panel 3: Civics in the cloud - How and where can cloud computing best improve public knowledge and engagement in political issues? What has been achieved so far? What is possible in the long run? What moves by private actors, and what policy changes, might do the most to harness the power of cloud computing for civic engagement?

• Josh Tauberer (home page), founder of Govtrack.us
• Andrew Page, associate director, MAPLight.org
• John Wonderlich, Program Director, Sunlight Foundation

Panel 4: What’s next? What new services might develop, and how will today’s services evolve? How well will cloud computing be likely to serve users, companies, investors, government, and the public over the longer run? Which social and policy problems will get worse due to cloud computing, and which will get better?

• Andrea LaPaugh (home page) Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University
• Reihan Salam The Atlantic Monthtly
• Jesse Robbins O'Reilly Radar

Updated on 1/21/08. Here is the the video of my panel:

Customer Service is the New Marketing

by Marc Hedlund | comments: 4

I've written earlier about liking the people and the project at Get Satisfaction, the wisdom-of-the-crowds company for customer service. They do great work and have a fantastic product going. (Note: since my original post, O'Reilly Alphatech Ventures has invested in Satisfaction, and OATV is also an investor in my company, Wesabe. But I'm on the record loving Satisfaction long before that happened!)

Satisfaction is holding a summit in San Francisco this coming February called Customer Service is the New Marketing, bringing together people and companies that share their ideas about interacting with customers. I'm very happy that they've invited me to lead a panel there on the topic of "Scaling Customer Service," with panel members Heather Champ, Community Manager at Flickr, Frederick Mendler, Vice President, Fanatical Support at Rackspace, and Pratap Penumalli, Consumer Operations Manager at Google.

It sounds like it will be a fantastic event all around. If you're interested in coming, you can get a 15% using my referral code, FOMH. Also, their early registration ends December 31st and prices go up $200 after that, so head over soon if you're interested. And if you do go, please come by and introduce yourself.

Ignite SF and Portland

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 3

On October 16th we are going to have Ignite SF at the DNA Lounge. There have been twelve speakers selected to give us five minute talks on the geek topic of their choosing. Chicken John the SF mayorial candidate is going to discuss Art and Innovation, Susan Wu is going to explain how being a VC is like an RPG, AnnaLee Newitz is going to explore what sci-fi spaceships say about our culture, and Bryan Sullivan is going to do a look at functional programming.

RSVP at Upcoming. Submit now if you are gunning for one of the final slots. Ping me if you want to sponsor. We are looking for videographers, ping me if you would be interested in filming the talks. The full set of talks are after the jump.

If you can't make it to SF then you should come to Portland's first Ignite. It happens on Thursday, October 25, 2007, at Wieden & Kennedy. They are the first non-O'Reilly group to use our new Ignite community tools. They are still looking for speakers if you want to submit. RSVP at Upcoming.

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Ignite Boston 2

by Mike Hendrickson | @mikehatora | comments: 6

Summer is flying by and as we usher in fall, we wanted to give all New Englanders a heads-up that we are having a second Ignite Boston. The second Ignite Boston will take place on Thursday, September 6, from 6 to 10pm at Hurricane O'Reillys. Yes that is right, Hurricane O'Reillys. No, it's not Tim's office after FOO Camp. We've picked a venue that is more acoustically-oriented and should allow everyone to hear what is going on. And we are planning to mix-up the format a little bit. There will be some short "launches," followed by lightening talks, and a couple of other ideas that we will inform you of in the coming weeks. Let's show our tech colleagues around the country that Boston/Cambridge have a vibrant tech community that gets involved in talking about cool new technologies and ideas. Not to mention that it is a social event to get to know other developers in the area.

If you plan to attend, email IgniteBoston at oreilly dot com for the chance to win $300 worth of O'Reilly books of your choosing. You must be present to win.

If you are interested in connecting with some of the folks who attended the first Ignite Boston, we have a social network set up for this purpose. You can reach our Crowdvine network here.

Another reason we wanted to announce this event this early, is so those of you who would like speak for five minutes on something cool, new, or exciting you can get into the queue sooner rather than later. Please submit your idea/s here:

Presentation Guidelines

• Be no longer than 5 minutes.
• Be on an innovative topic (no sales pitches, please!).
• Be viewable on a PC [a MacBook Pro with Powerpoint, Keynote/has remote control, and PDF] with standard AV equipment.

To submit a proposal.

For anyone that's never been to Ignite, you may find it useful to see a talk or two. Here's a link to a good examplefrom an Ignite.

Technorati Tags: Boston, Cambridge, Event, Ignite, O'Reilly Media, Speakers

Ignite Boston!

by Mike Hendrickson | @mikehatora | comments: 0

The first Ignite Boston will be on Thursday, May 31, from 6 to 10 pm at Tommy Doyle's located at 96 Winthrop Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA.

From 6-7, mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. Or, join a MAKE challenge team and participate in building bridges (how much weight can your bridge--made from less than 1K popsicle sticks--support?). After that, keynote speaker Scott Berkun will kick off our Ignite night with a talk about myths of innovation. There's more! Guest speakers will give lightning-fast, five-minute presentations, catching you up on the cool, new, innovative stuff going on in technology today. During intermissions, get a cold beer and chat with speakers, sponsors, and O’Reilly’s editors and staff.

Join us Thursday, May 31, for a fun, energetic evening of talking, learning, making, collaborating (and drinking!).

Plan on coming? You can RSVP by sending an email to IgniteBoston [at] oreilly [dot] com. With your RSVP, your name will be entered into a drawing to receive $300 worth of O'Reilly books! (But you must be present to win!) We won't use your name for anything other than this raffle. RSVPs aren't required but appreciated.

Want to speak at the first Ignite Boston event? Submit a proposal soon. Also visit our Ignite Boston blog, or get more information on other Ignite events around the country.

See you there!

Technorati Tags: Cambridge, Ignite

Secrets of Mental Math

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 5

I don't know what time attendees are showing up for ETech, but if you're coming, and are tempted to skip the opening keynotes for dinner on Monday night, I have a word of advice: whatever you do, don't miss Arthur Benjamin's Secrets of Mental Math. I've seen this talk before, and it is truly amazing and inspiring. And it's so totally in tune with the theme of this year's ETech, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur is one of the world's fastest human calculators, and he demonstrates it with an astonishing "magic" act. But it's not magic he uses. It's a technique that anyone can learn (and that he explains and has written about in his book). As a demonstration of human capabilities, and a lesson in the power of knowledge, his talk has few parallels. You'll be astonished. You'll be envious. You'll be on your feet clapping!

Additional Speakers at Radar Executive Briefing at Etech

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 2

In my writeup the other day of the O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing at ETech, I neglected to mention one planned session.

As I've written before, one of the big things on our radar is the idea that the data center is the new programming platform. (Remember Debra Chrapaty of Microsoft's injunction: "In the future, being a developer on someone's platform will mean being hosted on their infrastructure.")

Recently, Paul Kedrosky asked the question, "How do you invest around data center construction?" We invited Paul, the outspoken venture capitalist behind the Infectious Greed blog, and Rich Miller, the technology analyst behind the Data Center Knowledge blog, to join us to discuss this provocative topic.

In addition, Alec Proudfoot of Google and Allison Randal of the Radar team, co-chairs of our Energy Innovation Conference, will talk with us about what they're seeing on the energy front as they're evaluating technologies, startups, and the hacker frontier for the conference.

There's more than a casual connection between these two topics. While there's a lot more happening on the energy front than its intersection with computing, it has been conversations with Google, Microsoft, and other large data center players that first made us aware of just what a critical factor energy consumption was becoming in their strategic thinking. It's become the new focus of many Silicon Valley VCs (Who would have thought that the investment focus of noted computer scientists turned VC like Bill Joy and Bob Metcalfe would be energy?)

And of course energy innovation is now becoming, at long last, once again a critical factor in the strategic thinking of our country.

O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing at Etech

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 6

As I did last year at OSCON, I've prepared a special one-day O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing at Etech on March 26 in San Diego. This is a chance to get an up-close look at some of the people and topics on the O'Reilly Radar. Unlike most of our conferences (except the Web 2.0 Summit), this is an executive conference format: light on presentations, with a focus on interviews with movers and shakers. And it's a small enough group (limited to 200 attendees) that there's a good opportunity for audience interaction.

Two major topics we're exploring at this year's Executive Briefing are:

Web 2.0 and Wall Street. It occurred to me recently that Web 2.0 (particularly the emerging Google economy) and financial markets have a lot in common. Both are highly networked information markets with a lot of money sloshing around in them. What can the Google economy learn from Wall Street, and what is Wall Street learning from Web 2.0? We'll talk about this subject with Peter Bloom, now a managing partner at General Atlantic Partners and the former CIO/CTO of Salomon Brothers, and Bill Janeway, former vice chairman of Warburg Pincus. I thought this might be a provocative topic, but the deeper I dig into it, the more excited I become -- and the fact that I can't get anyone from Google to come talk about the subject from their side makes me even more convinced that I'm onto something!

The on-demand manufacturing revolution. There used to be a gulf between the hardware hackers we celebrate in the pages of Make and the kind of stuff we buy in stores. That barrier is breaking down, as new on-demand manufacturing networks put not just the workshop but the factory at the hacker's disposal.

Dale Dougherty, publisher of Make:, will co-host this session with me. We'll be talking with:

• Brian Warshawsky, VP of Operations for Potenco, the company that is building the innovative power supply for the One Laptop Per Child project. It was a conversation with Colin Bulthaup, the CEO of Potenco, that got me started thinking about the manufacturing revolution. Colin casually showed me a table full of prototypes of the pull-string based charger for the OLPC, all of them looking like they'd come fresh from a blister-pack at Best Buy.

  How'd they do that? No hand-made prototypes these. They look like something you'd buy in a store. And there were a half-dozen different versions strewn across the table.

  "We're now able to iterate on a hardware design on a weekly basis," Colin told me. "This is leading to rapid exploration of ideas in hardware analogous to what we've gotten used to in software. Up to a year ago, what you'd get were mockups. Now you can get fully functional mechanical prototypes."

  In addition to talking with us about cutting edge prototyping, Brian will show us the current incarnation of the One Laptop Per Child.

• Bunnie Huang, hardware designer for the Chumby, will give us a first hand view of Chumby's adventures finding Chinese manufacturers. Chumby is the wifi-enabled clock radio of the future that you can "hack with a seam ripper," according to Steve Tomlin, its CEO. Chumby is interesting not only because of its manufacturing experiences, but also because of it's open source hardware/web 2.0 services business model. (Note: O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures is an investor in Chumby.)

• Jacob DeHart and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of skinnycorp, the web design firm behind threadless.com, the user-generated t-shirt design firm. Threadless lets its users submit and vote on designs digg-style (though we should perhaps say that digg lets its users vote on news threadless style, since threadless started doing this in 2001!) Shirts that get enough votes get manufactured. As a result of its reversal of the normal order of business, threadless has sold out of every product it has ever created.

• John Hagel, author (with John Seely Brown) of The Only Sustainable Edge, will be joining us to talk about what he and JSB call "global process networks." These are networks of as many of 10,000 incredibly specialized suppliers, many of them in China, India, and other emerging countries, who represent the distributed factory of the future. He points out that "there is a lot going on in terms of collaborative networks in manufacturing but equally, if not more importantly, these same network orchestration techniques are being applied to product innovation and design."

In addition, we'll be taking a closer look at some intriguing new companies and asking what they tell us about the shape of the future:

• Robert Cook, the co-founder and chief architect of Metaweb's freebase will show us freebase, and talk to us about the marriage of Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web that it represents. My recent blog posting on freebase got a lot of buzz, and I know a lot of people would love to take a closer look.

• Ed Kozel of Skyrider Networks will talk to us about the emerging advertising economy on P2P networks. P2P has fallen off of a lot of people's radar, but it's still a booming economy, and Ed (the former CTO of Cisco) and his team at Skyrider are finding new ways to monetize it.

• Seth Goldstein will debut his latest brainchild, atten.tv. atten.tv is still not public (so there's just a single page there at the link), but imagine your web surfing habits as the Truman Show. Where are the boundaries between privacy and exhibitionism in the attention economy of the future?

• OK, Jeff Jonas doesn't have a new company to show us. He's still Chief Scientist at IBM's Entity Analytics Division after selling them his company, Systems Research & Development, in 2005. Jeff got his start in "identity resolution" detecting fraud for Las Vegas casinos, and he's the one of the deepest thinkers about extracting meaning from large databases that I know.
  

Last but not least, Roger Magoulas, O'Reilly's director of market research, will show us the numbers behind the trends. He'll show some of our latest quantitative research on the Second Life economy, differences between technology adoption among startups and the mainstream market as shown by online job postings, and much more. In addition, LeeAnn Prescott and Bill Tancer of Hitwise will provide insights they've gleaned from the web traffic logs of more than 25 million worldwide users.

I'll be publishing the actual schedule for the day shortly. I'm juggling a few things, and trying to squeeze in a few more fascinating people and topics. But it goes from 8:30 to 5, just like the conference tutorials, on March 26. There are still a few places left, so if you're interested, you can register here.

MAKE on the Colbert Report tonight!

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 2

Shawn Connally, the managing editor of Make writes:

"Mark Frauenfelder, editor in chief of MAKE magazine, is the guest on tonight's episode of The Colbert Report! Rumor has it that Mr. Colbert wants to know why MAKE hates corporate America so much that we'd teach people how to make their own things instead of buying them from the corporations that make our country great. Tune in to find out!

The Colbert Report airs nightly at 11:30 p.m./10:30 Central, then again 3 or 4 times the following day. So Mark should appear on: Tuesday 11:30 p.m.; Wednesday 1:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m.

This should be a blast! Nice to see Make and the amazing phenomenon it has become the voice for getting some attention with new audiences. I can't wait to see how Stephen puts Mark on the spot!

Show and Tell Night at Instructables

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 3

Instructables, the collaborative how-to site that spun out of Squid Labs with funding from O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures is holding an Instructables Show and Tell on Friday 3/9 at Instructables HQ in Alameda and at Miters in Cambridge, MA on Saturday 3/10. Christy Canida writes:

Bring your friends & family, drinks or a snack for the table, and something you've made (or are thinking about or working on) to share with the group. You'll meet a diverse group of smart, excited art and technology geeks who want to talk to you about your projects and ideas. Please RSVP to canida(*at*) instructables.com so we'll have a decent guess how many people to expect.

Examples: your new LED, LEGO, or K'nex project, a cool screen-printed T-shirt, neat origami, a cool bike mod, home-made kimchee, alternate uses for your ipod, a fire-breathing Godzilla, a neat example of vintage technology, or just a cool idea you'd like to explore with other like-minded people. Anything you'd put up as an Instructable is definitely fair game- bring it by and show it off.

Note: NO PowerPoint. You've got 2-4 minutes to talk about your project; words and models are best way to do a quick demo.

I've been to a couple of these in their previous incarnation at Squid Labs, and they are a great way to mix socializing with learning about cool new projects and ideas. Like our own Ignite events, they force presenters into a constrained format (though not quite as constrained) that makes sure you get the point quickly. And in the informal surroundings, you can easily followup with people whose work you find interesting. Unlike ignite, and more like foo or bar, there is no program set up beforehand, but just signups on the spot.

Hint: This is worthwhile just for a visit to the new Squid Labs/Instructables/Makani/Potenco headquarters, the control tower of the old Alameda Naval Air Station. There's a 270 degree view of the bay and San Francisco, and a whole lot of cool people (MIT west, practically) building a squid's nest of fascinating projects and new startups.

21 Speakers for Ignite Seattle!

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 1

Ignite Seattle is a Seattle-based geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The next one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Tuesday, February 13th (tomorrow). The Make Contest (Egg Slam - see Bre's Egg Drop Video for some tips) will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.
We have twenty-one awesome talks and speakers this time. The talks range in subject matter from tech to community to art to business and then back to tech with a little law and science thrown in. Each series of talks will begin at the bottom of the hour. Since the talks (should) last only 35 minutes (five x seven = thirty-five) there will be plenty of time for networking and socializing. Each talk is 20 slides long and each slide is on for only 15 seconds. If a topic bores you, step away! Chances are it will be done by the time you get back. We'll be expanding the Ignite Series soon. I'll be doing them at both the Web 2.0 Expo and Where 2.0 this year.

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oreillygmt.eu blog launches

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 6

O'Reilly's European offices have just launched a new blog devoted to tracking news from interesting people in the territories they support. It's called oreillygmt, but despite the localizing name, they say "We plan to bring you the low-down on tech culture from Iceland, Russia, South Africa and every place in between."

Craig Smith, one of the folks behind the blog, wrote in email: "Josette [Josette Garcia, one of the other organizers] has cajoled Jono Bacon and Greg McCarroll into posting for us, and Juantomas Garcia has agreed to interview Miguel de Icaza, (though we're not quite sure how much Miguel knows about this as yet!) One of the great things about the site is it allows us to build on the many links Josette has forged with the technical community over the years."

I'm really glad to see Craig and Josette getting into blogging. For too long, we've acted like just a book publisher in our international offices, rather than a company devoted to changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators. We've built a huge network of connections with cool people in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but because we haven't had much in the way of conferences or online publishing in those markets, we haven't always made the most of those connections.

This is also a good site to watch for news about upcoming local events in Europe especially, as well as technology user group news.

Call for Speakers for Ignite II (2/13 in Seattle)

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 0

Shelly Farnham at Ignite; Photo by PD Gibson

It is time for you to submit your Ask Later proposal to the next Ignite Seattle! What do you want to tell Seattle in 5 minutes? You get 20 slides for 15 seconds a slide and you can't control it. If you're unsure of how it works watch a couple of videos from last time.
To submit a talk email us at:

Please include the topic and any affiliations in your email. Submissions will be open until Wednesday, February 7th. We have room for 21 speakers. I expect there will be more than that proposed. Slides will be due by Sunday the 11th.

How will selections be made? They will be based on content (will it appeal to geeks?) and what else is in the program. There will be no repeat speakers from the first Ignite. One tip: we found that the best, most popular talks were not straight product demos, but instead focused on personal experiences that could easily be applied to other people's own project and lives.

Looking for inspiration? Check out the previous speaker list and watch the videos from last time.

Ignite Seattle is a geek event that combines on-site geekery, sharing, and innovation (and drinking). The next one will be held upstairs at the CHAC on Tuesday, February 13th. The Make Contest will begin at 6:30; the Ask Later talks will begin at 8:30. Videos and photos from the previous Ignite are available. Admission is free.

Reminder: Ignite Seattle is on 12/7

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 0

Just a quick reminder, that tomorrow night is the first Ignite Seattle from O'Reilly Radar and Make. We have over 25 speakers planned, a popsicle-stick bridge-building contest and Werewolf. We have speakers lined up from Amazon, Ontela, UW, Microsoft, MySQL, some independents, and a slew of startups. Topics range from "Dorkbot" to "Info Tech in the Third World" to "Innovation" to "Corporate Culture Hacking" to "Home VOIP Hacks". All talks are 5 minutes long with just 20 slides each on auto-play for 15 seconds.
Check the site for details and if you are in Seattle please stop by. It is a free event.

Second Life at Seminars on Long Term Thinking

by Tim O'Reilly | @timoreilly | comments: 7

Stewart Brand writes:

The online substitute reality called "Second Life" now has over a million residents, growing by some 30% a month. It has a vast token economy which intersects with the real-world economy (the rate varies around 300 Linden Dollars to 1 US dollar). Real universities teach courses within "Second Life" and real corporations sell goods there, joining no end of businesses that exist solely within that alternate world. It is a teeming place, celebrating unfettered creativity.
 

Thursday evening, the founder and CEO of "Second Life," Philip Rosedale, will explore some of the early lessons about long-term thinking (and everything else) to be gleaned from the emergent behaviors of massive multi-player world building...

"'Second Life:' What Do We Learn If We Digitize EVERYTHING?" Philip Rosedale, Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco, 7pm, Thursday, November 30. The lecture starts promptly at 7:30pm. Admission is free (a $10 donation is welcome, not required).

Note: this Thursday, Nov. 30 (not Friday).

Ignite Seattle!, a Radar/Make Night

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 0

Radar and Make: are going to be hosting a free geek night in Seattle, on Thursday, December 7th. Ignite Seattle will be held at the LowerLevel in Capitol Hill.

The fun will start at 6:30 with a Make: Magazine sponsored bridge building competition led by Bre Pettis. Using popsicle sticks and hot glue, each team will have 30 minutes to make a bridge. Then we'll weigh them down until each one is destroyed. The team who has the bridge that holds the most weight will win prizes. All ages welcome! Feel free to bring your own LED's, wire and batteries to make your bridge light up!

The main event will start at 8PM with a series of short talks from local volunteers in the Stage Room. The talks are all going to be five minutes long, with 20 slides that change every 15 seconds. So far Scott Berkun, Shelly Farnham, Beth Goza, Danyel Fisher, Stuart Maxwell, Justin Martenstein, Rob Flickenger among others will be speaking. Brady Forrest will be MC'ing. Sign-up in advance to get an early spot (go to Ignite Seattle and leave a comment).

In addition to having full bar, the LowerLevel has WiFi. It also has a second room (the room with the bar) so that you can take a break from the planned activity to do your own thing. Currently Buster McLeod (AKA Erik Benson) plans to lead Werewolves in there.

The goal is to have a fun night of geekery and networking. Come prepared.

To recap:
The date: Thursday, December 7th- Make Seattle starts at 6:30; Main event starts at 8
A bar to call our own for the night - LowerLevel
No cover
One stage, two rooms
Wifi throughout
Werewolves!
See the Ignite Seattle Blog to learn more details or to sign-up
RSVP at Upcoming