I’m waiting at the SeaTac airport for my flight back to Los Angeles so I figured I’d take the time to reflect on the experience of Gnomedex.
Since getting back into the corporate space, I’ve gone to a few tech conferences in order to get myself more ingrained in the culture outside of the entertainment industry. If there is a place I “belong” so to speak, it’d be among the geekerati and the technophiles. In the last year I went to Web 2.0, E-Tech and now Gnomedex.
These conferences are little microcosm environments with roughly the same people talking the same things. They are driven by a desire to connect and a desire to find the passion people have individually for all things technical reciprocated and amplified in an open forum.
Web 2.0 and ETech were corporate conferences, with agendas rooted not in the money being made (or not made) by participants, but rather promotion of an idea that served through direct means the owners of the conference. That is all well and good, and I did meet good people at both ETech and Web 2.0. However at those conferences there was a hierarchy of experience and influence that was disconcerting. A have-have-not barrier, a backstage pass necessary and booming announcers, track schedules, shitty Internet/food and in general a lack of attention to the fact that the Internet is supposed to unify, not divide.
If you’re to run a tech conference, there should not be hierarchies of access and influence imposed. Spatializing the social nature of the Internet implies also spatializing its open-ness. Otherwise you’re subjugating the social strata of Internet communication underneath traditional castes of the ins and outs. It’s not fun, and its quite stupid and pompous.
Gnomdex was refreshing because it was a flat conference. In fact, lets just call it a discussion. It was the right size, was open, frank and honest in its intention and never avoided confrontation for the sake of control. I got more out of it than the other two conferences combined. Chris and Ponzi did an amazing job. Its good prep for your wedding!
Some notes and suggestions for future conferences and just about tech in general.
1. We need to stop being obsessed with our own preciousness. This goes to talks like Chris Messina/Tara Hunt’s, all the hubub about Microformats, Attention, etc. The same applies as well to the (literal) echo of the podcasters, the Scoble obsessiveness, the Firefox militia, etc. Cut the precious “aren’t we cute and counter culture!” Its starting to get annoying.
2. Age matters. Dave Winer, Marc Canter, et al lived through an era I did not, and dealt with political, social, technological and epistemological situations that I never had to. They can be curmudgeonly, but they still actually bought Patti Smith’s Horses on RELEASE. I did not.
3. Theory matters. All those talking about social software, the “read/write web,” blogs, comments, trackbacks, microformats, tagging and the ilk need to go read: Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, Howard Rheingold, Sherry Turkle, Marshall McLuhan, Roland Barthes, Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Lefeuvre. Read about these subjects: Actor Network Theory, complexity, connectionism, post-structuralism, spectatorship, the Gaze, the history of cinema, the history of television, the history of punk music… The things we’re trying to do with technology have been tried before through other means, and written about in substantial ways. Theory matters. Believe it.
4. Art matters as well. Take a look at the digital art/music landscape for works. Lisa Jevbratt, Marko Peljhan, Marcos Novak, Victoria Vessna, George Legrady, Natalie Jermijenko, Adrienne Jenik, Sheldon Brown, Shawn Brixey. Hisotrically: Rothko, Warhol, Mondrian, etc. I think the fundamental truths of dealing with the complexity of the information and noise of the world comes through its reduction into visceral experience. Art in other words. I would LOVE to see Gnomedex 07 have Marko Peljhan speak. It’d be awesome. And not just because he’s a good friend. I think these conferences need more “outsiders”
5. Less obsessed with the “wow,” and more questioning of the “why?”
6. Less podcasting!
I think that’s it. I’ll see you all in the fall I suppose, or give me a shout if you head to LA and are hankering for free CD’s.
Some shout-outs necessary: finally got to meet, Eric Rice, Chris and talked to Will Pate, Boris Mann, Kris Krug, Robert Scales, and everyone else I conversed with and especially those that told me my talk was OK. I never plan these things, I just talk whether the audience is 350 or 2.
EDIT: Apologies to the old-guard. I forget that sarcasm isn’t readable in text form, even though I wrote an entire paper on that fact.
Technorati Tags: gnomedex
Comments 14
Dug your talk yesterday. I like your thinking. Agree with you about Gnomedex versus other conferences. Regarding your talk; you are indeed breaking down the proscenium/dominance-from-the-stage and just where a lot of entertainment needs to be going. My hope is that the crusty old farts of my generation will spend more time in a mySpace/Second Life headset and less in a one-to-many Clear Channel one. Thanks.
Posted 02 Jul 2006 at 11:02 am ¶Ethan - Really enjoyed the talk, and finally meeting you face to face. I think more outsiders (that is, people who don’t have a Technorati rank) would be a decidedly good thing at next year’s Gnomedex. We need to hear from people who are coming at the questions from angles we don’t perceive; having the same cast of characters just creates a sense of deja vu (”Didn’t they blog this a few months back? I think I remember a comment they left on my blog that said that” and so on) that doesn’t lend itself to progress.
Will take you up on the free CD offer when I’m in town next month.
Posted 02 Jul 2006 at 12:06 pm ¶Have you tried a BarCamp? Doesn’t get much flatter… Sure you have the occasional “internet famous” presentations, but the better sessions are always the guy who’s been banging out the code at night and decides to show it off at a low key local event like BarCamp.
Come on out to Austin in August and check it out.
http://www.barcamptexas.org
Posted 03 Jul 2006 at 5:12 am ¶Hey Ethan, I enjoyed your talk at Gnomedex. Unfortunately I missed out on meeting you, but some other time.
Good advice re reading up on theory and art. As the author of the Read/WriteWeb blog, I guess I need to go back to school huh? p.s. it’s McLuhan not McCluhan
But seriously, I love that old school media theory.
cheers, Richard
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 12:20 am ¶Ethan.
Great talk and great to meet you.
I agree wholeheartedly about the more soulful, artistic and creative balance that I think these things need to have. This year had more than last year, and as a ‘citizen createc’ I find that all the more enjoyable.
I disagree about less podcasting though. Those that can get their interviews and content up and online asap are doing those that couldn’t make it a favour. They’re hungry to hear what’s going on. Rather like live music events, festivals etc. Those who couldn’t get a ticket sit at home refreshing pages of related tags to see what’s going on, as soon as it happens. Rather like the vanity tag searching I noticed you doing, while sat behind you ;P
In fact I saw ALOT of that at Gnomedex. People sat there constantly refreshing the gnomedex flickr tag page to see photos possibly taken minutes before. The navel-gazing has increased so much, compared to last year.
No wonder I couldn’t get online to check my mail
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 4:30 am ¶Here’s to Gnomedex7.0!
You seem like a reasonable person, but I can’t imagine you’d like being called a bastard in public. Why do you do that Ethan? Geez I thought we had a cordial thing going, now I feel a pretty big imbalance.
The whole point of blogging, imho, is to bring humanity into communication, but you just said something on your blog, something personal and hurtful, that I jsut can’t imagine you saying to my face or Marc’s.
Please do a reality check, look up The Golden Rule, and imagine what it would feel like to be called such an ugly name.
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 9:59 am ¶Dave, it was sarcasm. I really admire you, and in no way consider you a bastard of any way shape or form. Appologies.
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 10:02 am ¶And btw, you got the Horses part right. I was a Patti Smith fan when she was new. I also bought Sgt Pepper’s and the White Album when they came out. Exile on Main Street and Morrison Hotel. Feats Don’t Fail Me Now.
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 10:02 am ¶Sorry, i didn’t find it funny, obviously. I get flamed so much Ethan, it’s just plain ugly to me.
And by the way you’re getting quoted on the bastards thing. That’s how I found out about it.
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 10:04 am ¶Edited it…
It was a term of endearment
But I hear you about the flames.
If you scroll down to a few entries back I found some cool Patti Smith footage on YouTube.
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 10:07 am ¶ethan. was great to see you and your points are mostly righton. say hi to michael stipe for me and let’s think about kickin’ off that live music event photography web service. mmm mm.
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 2:17 pm ¶I enjoyed your summary of Gnomedex Ethan, despite the fact that I wasn’t able to get there this year. BTW, I think you mean ‘Baudrillard’, instead of “Bauldrillard”, but I couldn’t agree more with your point about theory. In this day and age when everyone is seemingly occupied with building the next great AJAX toolkit (or whatever), it’s important to take a step back and think about ‘why’ rather then ‘how’. Well said…
Posted 04 Jul 2006 at 3:55 pm ¶Hey Ethan - Good to meet you @ Gnomedex. I think you were a big hit on Day 2 as evidenced by all the folks who mentioned your session @ EMP.
I just traded emails with the guy coordinating la barcamps and dinners and you may want to check it out: http://barcamp.org/BarCampLA-Geek3
pete
p.s.
What was the “snake eating it’s own tail” art reference again? I need to remember that one.
Posted 06 Jul 2006 at 1:06 pm ¶Its the ouroboros, the snake eating itself…
I find it an apt way to describe the blogosphere, and totally shown visually on TechMeme every day. Its not a bad thing, just the nature of closed ecosystems, and its endemic to other areas like academia, science, etc.
Posted 06 Jul 2006 at 1:09 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 5
Thoughts on Gnomedex 6.0
This year Chris and Ponzi asked me to shoot some pictures during Gnomedex 6.0, so I spent a lot of Gnomedex running around with a camera in my hand. This post is the usual roundup of impressions of the conference. I’m going to write a second post a
[...] While playing with Elastic Path “thinking putty,” they discuss ways to optimize the user experience, pros and cons of various technologies, the EBA Grid and Combo Box products and recap a few Gnomedex conference highlights - plus have some laughs about ski culture (gapers), community building, fantasy sports and the fleece-filled recreational equipment district of Vancouver. [...]
[...] 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. [...]
[...] While playing with Elastic Path “thinking putty,” they discuss ways to optimize the user experience, pros and cons of various technologies, the EBA Grid and Combo Box products and recap a few Gnomedex conference highlights - plus have some laughs about ski culture (gapers), community building, fantasy sports and the fleece-filled recreational equipment district of Vancouver. [...]
[...] “Gnomdex [sic] was refreshing because it was a flat conference. In fact, let’s just call it a discussion. It was the right size, was open, frank and honest in its intention and never avoided confrontation for the sake of control. I got more out of it than the other two conferences combined. [O’Reilly’s Etech and Web 2.0 conferences]†~ Ethan Kaplan [...]
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