Conversations from the Gnomedex Stage

After a useful and pleasant meet and greet at the Odyssey Maritime Museum, Day One starts off in the main hall (and the “Cove” room for late registrants who still managed to sneak in).

Dave Dederer ex-of The Presidents of the United States of America is talking about the business model of making a living being an artist and musician, i.e., revenue streams and how the royalties work and how technologists can help find means to monetize and distribute. He co-opted some Velvet Underground songs to provide a couple scenarios or situations and recapped the trials and tribulations of working with the big labels.

Former US Senator John Edwards showed up with a wicked tan and southern drawl. He didn’t have much to say beyond gushing about the audience and how he was “there to listen and learn” (and pose for photo-ops in an audience he knows will put his image all over the Internet).

There was some discussion of how the new communication methods will impact elections and the next president (or next after that) will be the one who is most conversational. The discussion was tugged between politics and technology and got a wee bit heated but I did not the content overly compelling though Marc Canter’s political advice was uhh … attention-getting, and another attendee’s suggestion of a permanent “fly on the wall” citizen journalist on the campaign bus gives a whole new reality show idea.

Moving along:

Amazon’s CTO Werner Vogels gave a great presentation on Net Neutrality - or more accurately, the lack thereof. In short, the choices on Internet access are extremely limited and the erstwhile providers are aiming to grip their greedy mitts around the pipe and control the access to further limit consumer’s choices. Scary situation and a hot political topic in US right now but make no mistake, this gate-keeping with “paid police escort” is an international issue and he offered an example of a certain Canadian Telco who restricted access to a union’s website during a labor dispute .

Steve Rubel who works with for a big-time PR firm led a great discussion on marketing and outreach and asked bloggers how public relations firms should interact with them. Darren Barefoot offered some good comments about how you should really do some research before contacting and offered some examples of PR firms stepping on toes.

Boris Mann put forth that sites need to provide a means for customers to interact and need to offer permalinks for ease of bookmarking, product pics without licensing restrictions, and yes, sites need “personality.”

Tara Hunt , who has a new marketing company with her husband partner - business and otherwise - Chris (and “dot” Ben formerly of BBC), pointed out that companies need to participate in the communities they serve (not talking physical communities per se) rather than just expecting the love.

Marc Canter talked about the process of developing open standards and the importance of two-way openness to foster innovation and help companies maintain a level of independence and avoid getting squashed by the big players.

Oh yeah, lunch was a killer buffet, wi-fi is so-so. Canadians are bringing it.