A few posts back, Alistair wrote about Human 2.0, focusing on sensory immersion, augmented reality. and bridging the gap between the human and the screen. These techniques are only half of the Human 2.0 equation - they modify the environment - the inputs - not the human body itself.
I’ve been interested in these fields for more than a decade, to the point that I have my own EEG at home so I can read my brain waves and learn to modify them at will. Some people have closets full of golf clubs they never use. Mine is full of soliton lasers, cerebro-electric stimulators, light/sound goggles, micro pulse generators, and FIR-LED neuron growth stimulators. I can’t wait to get my own Emotiv headset.
Smart drugs? Tried them all (and I won’t say if I take them now). I’m a board member of a non-profit called the Smart Life Forum that meets once a month in Palo Alto. (Third Thursday of the month - check it out; I’ll be there…) SmartLife’s advisors include leading anti-aging physicians and Steve Fowkes, author of “Smart Drugs II,” and head of the Cognitive Enhancement Research Institute. Hormone testing? Been there. SPECT scan? Done that. Ayahuasca? Check. You get the point. Ray Kurzweildefinitely gets the point.
Jennifer Bell and the folks at Visible Government took the covers off their much-needed I Believe In Open project. If you’re a Canadian, you should go sign up. Simply put: any elected official who isn’t willing to be transparent and accountable to their electorate has something to hide, and we now have the technology to track their record.
Which makes me wonder what Bitcurrent’s record is. Once upon a time, many of the folks behind Bitcurrent were part of Networkshop, a consulting firm that became Coradiant, a web performance company that helped create the end user experience management space.
Back then, Networkshop talked a lot of trash. We blew the whistle on SSL performance issues, and wrote a huge (250+ page) study on load balancing. We also prognosticated a lot.
Unfortunately, Martin Dubois, Chief Counsel of HR SaaS giant Taleo, wasn’t able to make it for his presentation yesterday on Compliance, Regulation and On-Demand Applications. Both SaaS co-chair Jeff Kaplan and I are sad that Martin’s great content didn’t see the light of day, so we’re arranging to have him record the material as a webinar we’ll distribute to attendees.
By some sick twist of fate, Interop and VMworld are happening at the same time this week. That creates a real problem for those of us in the space where the application meets the network. Do we go to New York for Interop, which is conveniently next to the Web2Expo, or do we go to VMworld? Many companies, including Zeus Technology, split their executive teams, sending some to New York for stupidly expensive hotels and great food, and others to Las Vegas for slightly less expensive hotels and slightly inferior food, but better gambling. I ran into some of 3Tera’s execs at Accel’s reception at the Tao Opium Room, and they had the same problem.
Alistair made the call to go to Interop. I made the call to go to VMworld on my own nickel, since I have lots of friends in the virtualization business due to my time at Citrix, where I did strategic planning for their virtualization business pre-XenSource. Special thanks to Fortisphere for covering my show pass! I miss expense reports, or at least getting them paid.
But the real reason VMworld seemed a good idea is that, in addition to consulting, I’m working on a stealth mode cloud computing idea, and I guessed that VMworld would be the place for clouds. It sort of is, but not compared to Alistair’s cloud program at Interop. Sure, there is VMware’s Vclould announcement, and there are quite a few companies with the world “cloud” on their booth, and some real cloud companies like RightScale and SkyTap, but on Wednesday, there are more than 80 VMworld breakout sessions, and exactly one of them is about clouds specifically.
Why is this happening? It’s because VMware is focusing on virtualization in all its flavors, but the cloud computing guys see virtualization as only one of the enabling technologies that can make clouds work. So I guess it’s natural for the clouds to be attracted to Interop and Web2Expo more than VMworld.
It’s time to head to New York for the start of the fall conference season. This year, Interop and Web2Expo are side-by-side at the Javitz Center, and we’re holding the Interop Unconference event on Thursday night. Then there’s High Performance on Wall Street happening on Monday the 22nd.
At Interop this year, we’re helping to run the Software-as-a-Service track (in conjunction with Jeff Kaplan of Thinkstrategies) and the Cloud Computing track (helped by Peter Laird, who I first met when I saw his excellent Taxonomy of the Cloud, which he’s been hard at work revising for Interop.) I’m also doing a free session on cloud foundations at the show. The lineup of speakers and panelists is remarkable, and will hopefully lead to some great conversations. We also have folks from Google, Amazon, Joyent, 10Gen and Bungee on a Web2Expo panel.
Here’s a recap of the sessions and participants: [Read more]
Bitnorth is over, and it was a lot of fun. Smart people, relaxation, great content, and an awesome location.
We’re already getting lots of folks wanting to know about the next one, or wanting to return with their Most Interesting Friend. Stay tuned. Some links to the content:
We will have videos of the sessions published shortly
Images are available on Flickr (just look for Bitnorth08)
We’ll be uploading some of the sessions as podcasts shortly
The (apparently) slower pace of summer is giving way to a very hectic September, with Bitnorth, Unconference, Interop, and Web2Expo all happening in a two week period.
Haven’t figured out all the questions yet, but it’s bound to be a good discussion with that many seasoned Web2 operators in one place. Bitcurrent has a $100 discount code for the conference: webny08mc23.
At Structure08 last week, Bitcurrent and GigaOm introduced Briefings. These 20- to 30-page reports look at a particular industry or technology in detail, combining what we learn while reporting on the space with research and internal discussion.
The first briefing focuses on cloud computing, which was the topic of much of Structure08. It’s available from the Briefings website at an affordable $250 through Paypal. If you’re trying to come up to speed on cloud computing quickly — whether as an investor, an entrepreneur, or an IT professional — we hope this format of background, landscape, and industry direction will fit the bill.
We’ve got many of these planned — my next one will be on Application Delivery Networks, and we’re also doing one on mobility and telepresence.
Cloudcamp San Francisco, the first in a series of events centered on cloud computing, took place on June 24. If the roughly 300 attendees at this informal industry meet-up are any indication, cloud computing is a popular and rapidly growing subject.
“Based on attendance at recent Amazon cloud conferences I was expecting maybe 100 people”, said CloudCamp instigator and Enomalism co-founder Reuven Cohen, “this is an amazing turnout after only 3 weeks of planning.”
Bitcurrent is part blog, part analyst firm, and part resource site for web operations. We're a loose federation of pundits and entrepreneurs with experience in networking and technology.
