reboot 9.0 is coming

At the end of May 2007 the next iteration of the conference for practical visionaries opens it doors. Pre-registration including an earl-bird discount is available, and the program is being suggested and formed by potential participant on the absolutely terrible website.

I am kind of undecided wether I’ll be attending. Last year didn’t really do it for me, but the year before was just great. It’s also a great of hooking up with people I merely know by their blog URLs.

Hm, I’ll probably end up going if I can persuade my boss to fork over the registration fee.

Reboot reflections

So Reboot 8.0 is over, and I am kinda left with this weird sensation that I somehow didn’t get it.

The speakers were generally very clever and I am sure their presentations were well thought out and interesting. Unfortunately I mostly found myself in a hall listening to some topic that was way too abstract for my hands-on techie mind.

There was slightly too much of “we’re on the brink of something very interesting that’s coming right around the corner” as compared to “this is where we’re at now, and these are good ways to move forward”. Ah well, it’s me, not you, there’s something wrong with, Reboot. I did get around to releasing a small update for Guildspace, though.

Meeting people was great, though, and even though I suck bigtime at networking, mingling, and smalltalking I did get to shake hands with some new people.

Nevertheless, I have a strange feeling I’ll be there next year. Which gives me around a year to come up with a strategy for detecting the interesting talks. And for learning to meet people.

Live from Reboot 8.0

Reporting live from Reboot 8.0. 5 minutes ago the official opening should have started. Hall A is slowly being filled. The concentration of Mac laptops is as high as ever. Thomas madsen Mygdal is taking pictures with cell phone. The bags we get with admission this year are actually pretty cool, instead of the paper bag of last year. We also got 2 t-shirts instead of one, totally worth it ;)

reboot7 afterthoughts

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

• Systems that supports social needs of users
• Letting people shape information
• Openness, interoperability
• “Good enough” is actually good enough

Oh, that and the fact, that I suck at networking – I hear it’s kinda big at these things.

David Heinemeier Hansson

Notes from David Heinemeier Hanssons speech; Ruby on Rails: Tech, Necessity, and Passion

Jason Fried

Notes from Jason Frieds speech; How to make big things happen with small teams

Jimbo Wales

Notes from Jimbo Wales’ speech; The Intelligence of Wikipedia

Ben Cerveny

Notes from Ben Cervenys speech; At Play in the Garden

reboot7: Dina Mehta

Notes from Dina Methas speech; Social tools for research & collaboration

reboot7: Michael Heilemann

Notes from Michael Heilemanns speech: Open Source Design

reboot7: Scoble

Notes from Robert Scobles keynote speech at reboot7.

reboot7, here I come

If I should describe the whole reboot7 regsitration process with one word, it would be “late”.

Still, the registration fee is finally paid, and baring any last day trouble I will be attending the conference. It’s been a few years since I went there last time, the business has changed for the better, and I hear reboot has too.

See ya there – I’ll be the blonde guy looking like a conference noob :)