Gnomedex Rolls on with Day 2.5

Whoosh, whoosh the days fly by at Gnomedex. Day One’s spiels had highs and lows and Day One dinner at the fascinating and charming Museum of Flight was great times.

Actors in character being (almost aggressively) educational as they tell anecdotes from the days of WW2 and WW1 - some attendees didn’t know what to think as they mingled with the crowd and interjected their historical tales of secret women bomber brigades and crafty Japanese soldiers. The planes and the sets were remarkable with Quonset huts and farm houses set up like impromptu headquarters by allied fliers. I liked the 2 RAFmen playing cards in a cabin with flight gear arranged neatly behind. Really though, one couldn’t see all the museum due to the massive talking and learning going on in the casual environment.

Anyhow, after the Museum of Flight was the Broadband Mechanics party at the Marriot. Marc Canter is an industry gadfly and innovator and always (if you can get over his amusingly bombastic manner) has something to bring to the table. This time, he is brewing up a plan to have a central repository of info for folks to manage the myriad social networking apps logins and content aggregators in one place. Marc brings a revolutionary (dare I say counter culture or punk) attitude to his projects and I plan to try out his new scheme and provide a better explanation about what it does.

Day Two spiels started with Dave Winer (the godfather or RSS) which I missed (see photo-ace and Intel geek Josh Bancroft’s recap), followed by Pud Kaplan (also missed) but I arrived in time to see Tara Hunt and Chris Messina talking marketing from the stage - and to catch the cover of the Seattle PI with Edwards speaking at Gnomedex on the cover (PI journalist Todd Bishop is the only working “old” media representative allowed in the inner sanctum).

Anyhow, the two of them (the married in real life heavily involved Chris and Tara), along with Ben Metcalfe, have started Citizen Agency, which I take to be a new marketing consultative biz. In short, their message was, “do not fear the 800 pound gorilla, instead embrace your smallness or niche whatever the size and rock it. Build community, build affinity, encourage collaboration, together a solar-system of smaller companies can remain vibrant and innovative and can still be profitable. In other words (to paraphrase Darren Barefoot and/or Werner Vogels) why not be 80 10-pound spider money or 10 80-pound orangutans or 20 40-pound chimps - and so on.

This theme of questioning “what constitutes success” was repeated throughout the conference. Seems this time around (referring to the monetary ramp-up/feeding frenzy in the industry) the carrot is no longer VC funding but rather carving out a niche biz which makes money, makes the Internet a better place (to paraphrase Michael Arrington’s requirements of success) and also manages to make you enough cheddar to stay home and hang out with family while pushing the biz along at a sustainable rate.

Here are a few more thoughts to hold onto from Day Two:

Hailey from some company led a discussion about managing creative types. While her “hip den mother” approach was a little over the top for me, I realize she was just trying to bring some energy to her daunting task of engaging the crowd into some useful feedback. The useful feedback turned out to be: To manage creative types successfully (designers, marketers, programmers etc), create smallish groups, give a distinct task with exact timeline (repeated often) and let them rock with it and spend your time clearing barriers which will hinder their accomplishing the task.

Ethan “Almost Famous” Kaplan works for Warner Brothers and is dripping with intelligence and name-drops. He earned an MFA, brought REM online and has taught at UCSC, not bad for 26 years old. He spoke of democratizing the music listening experience and breaking down the barriers between artists and fans. He showed some ways he and the WB webmonkeys are building community and spoke of the struggles to get management buy-in for new ideas.

I talked to him later asking career advice for the Numbskulz (my youthful punk rock protogees) and, I held off on my rock and roll namedropping and went right for vintage REM concert dates. Yup, he hangs out with the band but I saw them like 6 times in 4 timezones before he did ;-). I should have mentioned being at the Clash’s last ever concert too but didn’t wanna sound *too* cool but then he might have mentioned me in his blog post where he namedropped all my buddies but not me ;-(.

Blake Ross, even younger, busted out a browser called Firefox (heard of it?) and in his presentation, took unnecessary heat from the old guard of Winer and Gillmor. The two industry vets railed on him and in doing so, made themselves look like petty ole curmudgeons to some of the audience, and distracted from his speech which wasn’t titled, “Forum for expressing minor issues with this fine independent browser” but rather something about, “How to spread your software using grassroots guile and word of mouth.”

This discussion from the stage turned into, “this one time, on your blog, you said …” and thus became a bit of an uncomfortable waste of time. Me thinks respect and kindness are key and Dave and Steve should find ways to help and educate young Mister Ross as he tries to spread innovation and make a living vs. MS IE7 (BTW, Firefox is a very nice browser). However, I think the browser will re-invent itself in ways that many myspace kids “get” more than the rangy industry pundits do right now (scary isn’t it).

In general, I think the qualities which the early-adopter/tech-enthusiast folk value most are NOT the same qualities favored by “regular” users. This “echo chamber” effect of conference attendees talking around in circles with one another rather than find out what users *really* want is real.

In my estimation (based on 10+ years of busting out web stuff), users in “unbleeding edge” world want tools (web or otherwise) which are:

1. Easy to use: say no to installing new plugins, odd navigation, unnecessary flash, and laundry lists of content to sort;
2. Inherent Utility: tools (sites) must DO something useful (i.e. help pay bills, sell something, give information) not just re-index/aggregate other content and require jumping through flaming registration forms to perform a task;
3. Enjoyable: If it ain’t easy and useful, you’ve already failed but if you can make it do something and do it easily, you just need to make it fun, which usually means building a social/community culture around the content.

This reminds me of my “new apps and tools to check out” list from this con-fab:

1. Flock - I got the personal low-down from young Master Will Pate, Community Development dude for Flock. Basically, a browser with built in tools and apps designed to integrate and enhance your social networking experience (publish direct to blog, drag and drop photos, share everything)
2. Blip.tv - I’ve tried Youtube and found the interface clunky, performance spotty and the vibe cheesy (it’s probably just me). Everyone I asked about t a video sharing tool suggested Blip. I tried it out already and love the FTP features and instant cross post-ability.
3. Qumana - A Vancouver business which seems to have some overlap with Flock but is centered on the blog-editing abilities. As a busy writer with a dislike for using the behemoth MS Word for minor writing projects, I am eager to see if it enhances the experience allowing me to concentrate on words rather than formatting.
4. Broadband Mechanics’s People Aggregator - a site service mentioned above which attempts to “open” social networking - a great idea which is catching flack for ugly interface design
5. Social Media Club - an association for fostering conversations within “creative” fields to cross-pollinate and be interdisciplinary

Phil Torrone (PT) from MakeZine was/is a rockstar. Both his content (open sourcing your hardware) and his delivery (rapid fire and humorous) and his perspective (he loves making things and showing that this is not new) were top-notch. His presentation was entirely engaging and broke up the droning preciousness which can creep into the day.

The irrepressible scamp, Chris Pirillo presented a biz plan to some VC types on stage with the audience as witness. The ideas (tag aggregating website designed for mobile device users and people seeking a variety of results) is a launched as proof of concept but he really didn’t have a business plan besides “this is cool, I need a lot of money.” Things like “what will be done with money” and “how revenue will be generated” were not *really* touched upon in his presentation but he has other revenue streams figured out so well that he probably doesn’t need the bread. His “idea” became fodder for discussions about “why do you need funding, why doesn’t the community just build it?” Indeed.