One of the things that really surprised me was the amount of Mac laptops. I’m not sure I recall a single presenter using a non-Mac laptop, but there were also quite a few among the audience. And boy, is a Mac a great system for these kind of things. Bonjour, Rendevouz, WiFi, SubEthaEdit, Bluetooth, all merges into one big pile of mmmm. Just check out the contact list snapped by Michael Heilemann.
Lots of good talks on lots of diverse subjects (perhaps a bit too diverse), tons of interesting people.
Finding a common thread for the speeches and ideas put forth there is kinda hard, but if I hard to sum it up, I think my conclusion would be, that “the ways ahead” are
Oh, that and the fact, that I suck at networking - I hear it’s kinda big at these things.
At the Information Architecture summit in Montreal last March, I noticed the same effect—lots of PowerBooks in use.
Building of Basecamp was the same way… Wow look at all the shiny aluminum boxes!