On Friday and Saturday I attended my first Gnomedex. I met Chris Pirillo for the first time last week and like him a lot. I really hope his event becomes even more successful than it already has over eight years running. The big question is “What is Gnomedex?” and despite my enjoyment of the event and my feelings for Chris, by not answering this question well enough Gnomedex hasn’t yet enjoyed the reach it could or should. Chris calls it “Human Circuitry” but that’s just way too vague and intangible.
Quite simply and in my own terms, Gnomedex is an event that shows how technology can be applied to scale humanity. So often we see technology as a means to get work done or to entertain us, and in both cases the motivation is often profit. Gnomedex is a stage for passionate folks to share with the world how their using technology to make people’s lives better, even when profit isn’t the motive.
Gnomedex reminds me of two other conferences which I hold in high regard. The first is TED, which is a conference about technology, education and design (T.E.D.) and which carries the tagline “ideas worth spreading” which fits it perfectly. The second is Mark Anderson’s FiRe – Future in Review conference – which draws some of the most distinguished speakers.
In a very good way, the best presentations at Gnomedex remind me of that famous Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) quote from the movie Say Anything: “I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don’t want to do that.”
Most of the speakers were infectiously passionate about something that matters to them. And they found a way to use technology to scale the impact on humanity they could have in their area of passion. One of the things I loved is how often I thought a talk wouldn’t be relevant to me personally and how personally moved I was by the talk. Here are a few of the talks you missed if you didn’t attend Gnomedex:
Kris Krug gave a talk on how to take great pictures. This is one of the talks I thought wouldn’t move me but really did. He covered a lot of ground and his two loves really came through: 1) he wants to take great pictures that you will love and remember; 2) he wants you to be as good as he is. Two simple tips he gave was very humane. When taking pictures of someone for the first time, start without the camera. Just get to know the subject and put them at ease. Second, after you take a picture or two, have them take a peek at the image. In Kris’ words “People don’t dislike being photographed. They dislike bad photos. Show them how good they look and they’ll open up.”
I’m one of about 5 people on the planet not fully enamored by icanhascheezeburger but I thoroughly enjoyed Ben Huh’s talk on how the LolCats site came to be, how it grew and how it spread to a franchise now comprised of seven sites. They are on track to reach 100 million page views per month within a month or two.
Many of you already know, respect and admire Beth Kanter. She didn’t disappoint in person. Full of energy and passion she gave a wonderful talk on using social media for good causes. She walked the walk and talked the talk live, simultaneously giving her presentation while running an online fundraiser and an in-the-audience pass-the-fez fundraiser to raise scholarship help for deserving Cambodian students. The point of her talk, and a theme echoed by a few other presenters, is that technology and the Internet are amplifiers which can boost the signal of your message to a much larger audience than your voice can alone. Embrace it.
I was incredibly moved by Amanda Koster’s story and her causes. She’s a professional photographer who donates much of her own time and professional skills to spreading the word of important causes through photo essays. She’s now scaling her previously individual efforts through Salaam Garage, which provides an opportunity for indviduals like me and you to go with her and get involved. It’s Amanda’s realization that technology has democratized the media – we’re all now part of the media and together we get to decide what issues to promote.
It seems every conference has to have its celebrity guest speaker and Sarah Lacy filled the bill in this regard. Sarah led a town hall discussion about the transformation of blogging and social media from representing the views of the everyman to becoming the “big media” that it despised so much. This session got a lot of people talking and twittering, but I think it was over-manufactured myself. We blog because we have things we want to say. Some become fixated on traffic and subscribership and there’s no doubt some blogs have become media companies. But we all blog because it fulfills an agenda. The agenda ranges from making money to generating leads to attracting employees to relieving writer’s cramp writing in a journal. While I think Sarah and I would disagree about whether there really is a problem here, I think Sarah did a great job engaging the audience and stimulating a healthy discussion.
Eve Maler, a.k.a. xmlgrrl, told us that technology can empower us to shop promiscuously. OK. Maybe she didn’t quite say it that way. She led a talk about online vendor relationship management, discussing the many tradeoffs we consumers face – the convenience of having online stores remember a lot about us (a committed online relationship) vs our desire that sometimes they remember absolutely nothing about us (a shopping experience more like a one night stand). I think of VRM more as ‘cross the web identity management than vendor relationship management, but regardless it’s an interesting topic championed by Doc Searls in his work at the Harvard Berkman Center and Eve’s talk was terrific.
University of Washington electrical engineering grad student Jon Malkin wowed the room with a demonstration of a voice joystick he and his colleagues at UW are creating. It was impressive. It allows someone to move a mouse pointer around with their voice, using vowel tones (aaaahh, eeehhh, ooooh, ihhh) to “push” the mouse in one direction or another.
Another UW grad student, Ethan Katz-Bassett, gave an interesting talk about black holes on the Internet. As we learned last year when much of Egypt dropped off the Internet due to a cable cut near the Straights of Gibraltar, sometimes destinations can be unreachable for extended periods. The Hubble Project tries to find and explain these black holes through some interesting maps and data.
The most commercial talk was Dave Mathews of Boxee and I wouldn’t mention it other than the technology really is cool and Dave did an awesome job. Boxee is what Windows Media Center and Apple TV should be if they were done right. It’s a software application that runs on the Mac or Linux to fully control your media – TV, music, movies, etc. The user interface is gorgeous. The most interesting part of Boxee is that it’s social. In a world with “500 channels and nothing’s on” the best guide for what to watch and listen to is the implicit and explicit recommendations of people we know.
The talk that drew the most engaged, passionate response seemed to be Scott Maxwell’s presentation dubbed “Mars 3.0″ in which he wondered how might the Internet change space exploration. Scott’s talked moved me not so much because of what the future held, but by how much he made space exploration so tangible and meaningful to us today. Scott works for JPL and his job is to drive the Mars Exploration Rover via remote control. The array of questions from the audience was dizzying and the way in which Scott answered each in terms we all understand was awesome. He shared some of the most spectacular photographs I’ve ever seen. Scott has a great knack for making things relevant. He first showed a spectacular photo of Victoria Crater at Meridiani Planum on Mars, then brought down the house showing a lolcat curled up in it (photo above).
Besides the great talks, Gnomedex is great for mingling, meeting and greeting. It’s such a laid back, low key venue that everyone feels comfortable talking with each other.
So if you are interested in applying technology to scale humanity and promote causes about which you’re passionate, don’t miss Gnomedex next year. It’s really a terrific conference.
