June 2006 Archives

The phone and cable companies will fundamentally alter the Internet in America unless Congress acts to stop them. They have the market power, and regulatory permission to restrict American consumers’ access to broadband Internet content, including music and movies, and have announced their plans to do so.

There is a lot of freedom at Gnomedex for the discussion leaders to address the topics that are on their minds. I will use my session at 1:30 tomorrow to address the current state of affairs with respect to the Net Neutrality debate. Yesterday’s vote by the Senate Commerce Committee shows that there are still many strong arguments in favor and against regulation that would ensure fair treatment of all internet content.

I would like to focus the discussion tomorrow on the impact a lack of regulation will have on ”The Individuals”, those who use the Internet to access services, and on “The Innovators”, those who want to build and launch services that need to compete with the establishment.

Other discussion topics: Susan, Ethan

tags: Net Neutrality, Gnomedex, Gnomedex 6.0

The coffee breaks are the best parts of the conference

I stole this remark from Harrison Owen. His observation was that the traditional way people come together to discuss issues was not very effective, but that they all thought the coffee breaks were the place where all the action happened.

I do believe there is room for a traditional conference model. I will definitely go listen to an expert or someone with unique experiences. This dissemination model works well if there is a highly educational quality to the content or if there is good entertainment value to it.  George Dyson for example is someone who is fascinating to listen to over and over again. But there are other non-celebrity speakers that are equally interesting because of the story they have to tell. I normally like an extensive Q&A session, because it show what other participants are thinking about. I like it especially if it is an experiences presentation or something really extreme, but I have also walked away from a presentation needing to think first before making up my mind. Giving the ability for your audience to follow-up is important.

I have not seen many successful panels. The main cause is that the selection of panelist is often very incestuous. Nothing more boring than a panel of experts. The real interesting panels I have seen or that I have participate in were those where people were willing to take shot at the other panelists.  Some passion and emotion will go a long way in making things interesting. If your competitor is on this panel, be polite but go for his throat; show the world why your product is the best. I was on panel last year with Jon Crowcroft where we on forehand divided up the roles; we would both take a complete extreme point of view and defend it, even if these were not our positions in real life. Nothing more effective to get a discussion going than two mad dogs on a podium going at each other.

The “work-in-progress” approach allows for a high bandwidth communication. In short time a diverse set of off-the-wall technologies parade bye that often triggers a deeper follow-up later on.

Beyond this the conferences that focus on participation are best served by the Open Space approach. I don’t think the “unconference” hybrid model is as effective as Open Space. Unconferences still rely on big names and predefined topics to restrict the conversation. In Open Space all the participants come together on the first day to define the topics to be discussed and anyone can propose a topic within the theme of the conference. Participants then go to take part in the discussions they are most passionate about.  There is some additional structure around the process to make sure everyone learns about the details of every topic that was discussed. The outcome depends a lot on the theme or the goals of the conference, but in general I have found that the participants feel extremely empowered by this approach.

The goal of Open Space is to make the whole conference one long coffee break …

Whenever I end up in Vegas I am continuously amazed by the magnitude of the way things are implemented here and at the same time the superficiality of it all. Normally I take a stroll north or south of the strip to ground me and get back some sense of reality. This time I didn’t have time for that, so I got stuck in my favorite place in the hotel: the race & sports book.

Not that I am gambling on any team, but I like the atmosphere. Next to the professionals hanging out there are all the folks who are passionate about some sport or another. Last night it was the hockey fans. Currently during the day the room is filled with South Americans and Europeans celebrating soccer. The image above is during the England –Sweden game played concurrently with the T&T against Paraguay game. It took some time to get used to watching two games at the same time.

I really regret that I couldn’t be there tonight for the Mavericks-Heat game. I am pretty sure it would have been a lot more heated than the San Diego hotel bar I watched the game just now.

I have to congratulate Mark Cuban, even though the Mavericks lost the final tonight. He has personally shown a tremendous customer focus during the year, and strived for transparency. No matter whether you hate or love him, he has given you something to love or hate, which is a major accomplishment. His passion for winning makes that people want to kill him or be his best friend. I am sure that if you are a Mavericks fan you feel that Mark has given you everything you have ever dreamed of (except maybe the title). Customer focused as he is, that is all what matters to him. Congratulations!

I am on the road this week (I am speaking at Oracle GMM, Garner Enterpise Architecture & Supernova). The first stop is in Las Vegas. This is on the sports board in Vegas:

Personally I think the Argentinians look a lot more on fire than the Brasileiros. Of course I am not rooting for either team. But it is good to see I may get a 5:1 return on the bet I made today...

it is good to now and then be reminded of what the real important things in live are. From the "gents"of a London pub:

Building systems that can guarantee performance and availability while scaling up to handle exponential growth in datasets and user requests is still very much a Dark Art. It is an art we master quite well by now at Amazon but it took a lot of growing pains to get to this level of sophistication.

At least someone at Technorati has a sense of humor about their pains…

tags: Technorati, Distributed Systems, Scalability,