This is not generic MS-bashing -- this is a very specific, very targeted "what were you thinking" rant. I am thrilled that Windows Local Live, nee Virtual Earth is out there (along with Yahoo Maps, et al) -- I think that competition in that space does nothing but raise the bar for all players. Google Maps was just out, and this was MS's opportunity to present a well balanced "us versus them, I think you should choose us" presentation. Instead --- and I cannot underscore this point enough -- I got a dude in a butterfly suit.
I speak on the No Fluff, Just Stuff tour, so my patience for marketecture and empty rhetoric has atrophied over the past couple of years. But given that, I still thought that Day One of Where2.0 was much stronger than Day Two. Having the mix of hard tech and soft business blather only made the latter stand out in much starker contrast (to their detriment, I might add). It was great seeing Navteq, Teleatlas, and Schuyler on stage at the same time. That was a "Mastercard priceless" moment -- each presented their positions well, and the audience was able to learn as much studying the contrast as they were from what each person said.
What really blunted the impact of Uncle Jack's ESRI keynote espousing the merits of open GIS standards was the very lack of a counter-point from someone like OGC or Ionic. I don't knee-jerk hate ESRI any more than I knee-jerk hate MS, but not having someone there to balance some clearly false generalizations WRT ESRI's true feelings towards OGC standards was a real disservice to everyone attending.
And quite frankly, it was that lack of balance that made me leave on Day Two by lunchtime. By lunchtime, my shields were up on full strength and nothing else, good bad or indifferent, was going to make it through. So I spent the afternoon having coffee with friends who were in town for JavaOne.
I really enjoyed the conference, and hope to make it back again this year. My expectations for an O'Reilly event are much higher than other events -- I expect them to be informative, challenging, fair, and balanced. (And not "fair and balanced" like that other O'Reilly guy... grin)
Cheers, s Scott Davis [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Jan 26, 2006, at 12:22 PM, Dan Greening wrote:
From Where 2.0 2005, you only have to look at the difference between the Zipcar presentation and the Sprint presentation to understand where the value comes. Basically Sprint said the same- old-stuff and Zipcar was delicious.Big companies will ATTEND, and better yet PAY, and that's fine. But the best presentations are going to come from innovators engaging with developers. And that's WHY the big companies will attend: to watch. Maybe you just be very selective about whether big companies speak.'Course we all know this. Thanks Nat, for your very successful and thoughtful conference last year.Dan R. Greening, Ph.D., CEO BigTribe Corporation, http:// dan.greening.name/contact.htmOn Jan 25, 2006, at 10:37 PM, Nathan Torkington wrote:For a non-technologist conference, there was a lot of technologist companies making big technologist announcements. I had a great time despite having people saying to me before I left, "You're going where?". I think a bunch of the geowankers got free tickets at the last minute, so gnat may have reversed his "I don't want wank" statements. How can anyone not want wank? I hope I get invited again next year, and more geowankers get to speak.I did indeed change my tune. We were chasing a rapidly developing mashup world and trying to figure out how to do a Big Budget Conference with business people and the technologists we know and love. We started off thinking "business people want business wank", but there are dozens of conference offering business wank and everyone's sick of it. Business people turned out to really likemeeting the people who were turning things upside down. I think Where2.0 ended up as a pretty good mix of technology and business, and I want to do it like that again this year. Don't be put off by the marketing copy on the web site. I'm working on a version that better represents the mixture of technology andbusiness, and the reason for putting things on stage. We're trying toshowcase the projects that are shaking up the geolocation/mapping/local scenes. These projects are almost always from one or more of these worlds: * civic action work * hackers / geowankers / alpha geeks (hi!) * open source * startupThey're never from big fat companies with "respect" and "names". ESRIis like Microsoft, like any big company, slave to its businss model.It can't do new things, because new things threaten old things, and itmakes all its money off old things. (I realize you know this, I'm stating it so you know that I know it :-) Putting ESRI on stage to talk about disruptive innovation would be like putting the MPAA up to talk about disruptive music distribution models. There may be other reasons to put ESRI on stage, but it's highly unlikely to be because they're genuinely turning the GIS world on its head. So I want to show the projects that are hurting the old way of doing things, have some people talk about how things are changing (just to spell it out), and then leave it to the audience to figure out where to make the money, or even whether there is money to be made. I was talking with Chris Holmes tonight and in conversation came upon that formulation: we'll show you how the world's changing, you figure out for yourself where the money is. So I am definitely open to geowankers. Ignore what ur-Nat said. Nat in early 2006 is saying "bring me your geowankers, your open source toolkit creators, your huddled Google Maps hackers". If anyone reading this is interested in presenting at Where 2.0, getting your project out to the press (we had NYT, Economist, Wired, and others), getting in front of business people who are making decisions about what to use, or even getting in front of VCs and angel investors if you think that money could help what you're doing. Nat _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
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