Alright. After a couple days, I have had time to digest what I experienced at Gnomedex 9.For those of you who don't know, last week I attended a conference here in Seattle called Gnomedex (pronounced like nom-a-decks). It is a tech conference where the latest tech innovations, trends and issues are discussed. There are multiple session over the three days. This year they ranged in topics from 3D printing, life extension, SPAM, crowd sourced protein-folding, social challenges on social media, etc. Overall, a fascinating lineup of speakers that, to be honest, were all over the place.
But for me, that was only half of the actual value of the conference. On the first day, I walked into the auditorium at Bell Harbor Conference Center, sat down and turned on my computer. As the little POS (guess what that means! :) ) loaded I looked around me at the other attendees. There were a bunch of programmers in the back that had taped a "PC's only" sign to their row. And the only reason I knew that they were programmers is because they had shirts with phrases like " Kiss my 0101000111000" and such. The marketing people sat in the middle of the auditorium, dressed in business-casual outfits, greeting one another like long lost friends. And then there were the geeks (yes, Sven, the socially accepted nerds). They were everywhere and since I consider myself one of them it would be biased of me to give you a description... The stunningly beautiful people that were so graceful it appeared as if they were floating in air.... oh wait, that is an excerpt from one of the Twilight books. Darn.
Anyway, what really struck me was how at home I felt amongst this peer group. For me, the atmosphere was intoxicating and it made me realize how passionate I was about the digitial information age, the technology it was producing and the social behavior it was affecting. The dichotomy between the constraints it has placed on us (140 characters of communication) and the freedom it allows (open source platforms) makes my blood boil every time I start to think about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I had a chance to chat briefly with a handful of people and I was astonished to find that every single person in that room was not only incredibly intelligent but also had the same interest and passion about the space that was running throw me at that very moment. It was incredible.
There are a few people that I would like to give shout-outs to:
Kathy Gill - Someone who never fails to astonish me, the UW should thank their lucky stars to have someone so intelligent and dedicated to the MCDM program as she is because I assure you she could be doing many other things beside teach (although I am so glad she does teach)
Chris Pirillo - The mastermind behind the conference has more energy and enthusiasm in one little pinky than I do in my whole entire being
Amber Case - She had me at... Prosthetic Culture...... enough said.
Phil Plait - Critical thinking is a must in an age where Twitter disseminates false information at such rapid speeds so it is important to have people like Phil around saying, "Hey, slow down. Think about that for a sec."
Anyway, that was my experience in a nutshell. I cannot wait to go to the 10 year anniversary Gnomedex and hopefully, I will be able to write a little bit more about what was actually discussed at the event. :)
