Supernova 2007: because technology is everyone's business

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Supernova 2007 session video

We’ve begun posting video of Supernova 2007 sessions, as well as off-stage interviews, at the Conversation Hub. 

The most controversial sessions—John Kneuer’s broadband policy presentation and the debate between David Weinberger and Andrew Keen—are online now, along with Clay Shirky’s opening provocation.  We will post additional video in the days to come. 

All Conversation Hub content is available under a Creative Commons attribution license.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Thanks for another great Supernova!

Supernova 2007 is in the books.  It was a fantastic week, starting with the Open Space Workshop on Tuesday, continuing into the Challenge Day on Wednesday, and concluding with two dynamic days of General Sessions.  (At times, very dynamic!) I’m still recovering, but my mind is buzzing with ideas.

We’ll be posting additional material, including session video, on the Conversation Hub website in the days to come.  It’s my hope that we can continue the discussions started around Supernova 2007 through the rest of the year.  The conference itself may be the crucial physical meeting point for the Supernova community, but it’s only one node in the unfolding conversation.

Thanks again to all the staff, volunteers, speakers, sponsors, bloggers, and attendees who made Supernova 2007 successful!

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Supernova week is here!

It’s over.  And so it begins.

I’ve spent the past several months with my team and friends putting Supernova together, through a maelstrom of email messages, phone calls, meetings, text messages, wiki notes, Skype chats, blog posts, social network pings, and the occasional in-world chat in Second Life and World of Warcraft.  This week, that part of the work is done.  The planning is over.  And the real fun begins. 

I’m thrilled that so many amazing people will be joining us at Supernova 2007.  The magic of interpersonal interactions is what, to me, makes real-world events still worth it, despite all these wonderful tools for virtual communication. 

This year’s Supernova is packed to the gills with four full days of activities. We start on Tuesday with the Open Space Workshop, a self-organized “unconference” that is open to anyone who wants to attend.  Our friends at Jaiku are hosting a that evening at the Adaptive Path offices.  On Wednesday, we open the formal Supernova festivities with the Challenge Day at Wharton West, including an all-conference reception that evening, followed by two days of General Sessions at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. 

For those of you joining us in person for some or all of the festivities in San Francisco, I look forward to seeing you.  And for everyone following virtually through the Conversation Hub and other mechanisms, thanks for participating in the extended Supernova community.  This week, let’s have some provocative, productive fun together.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Your Chance to Speak at Supernova

I always say that the attendees at Supernova have at least as much to contribute as the speakers. (And in fact, many of them regularly speak at other events.) That’s why the speakers don’t get special badges or a “speaker lounge” to hide from the hoi polloi; everyone is a valuable part of the community.

To further leverage the incredible talent at the event, we’ve set aside the final block of sessions on June 20 as “Challenge Roundtables.”

Anyone attending the Wharton West Challenge Day—whether a speaker or not—is invited to propose a short talk on a topic you’re passionate about. It can cover virtually anything that would be of interest to this community, whether technology-focused or not.  Last year, the talks ranged from Network Neutrality to Global Warming, and all were fascinating.  The only thing I don’t want are company or product pitches.

We have limited space, so we can’t guarantee everyone a slot. Please email me at as soon as possible if you’re interested. Include a brief summary (a couple sentences at most) on what you’d like to talk about, and why you’re excited about it.

Friday, May 18, 2007

The 2007 Connected Innovators

• adap.tv
• AdaptiveBlue
• Aggregate Knowledge
• CastTV
• Critical Metrics
• Jangl
• Pando Networks
• SodaHead
• Spock
• Wize
• ZapMeals
• ZenZui
• Zing

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

New York Mixer Photos

Howard Greenstein and David Parmet took some great photos our pre-Supernova mixer in NYC last night.  It was a blast.  Silicon Valley may get all the attention, but there is no shortage of energy and ideas among the East Coast tech community.  Thanks to everyone who came! 

Next week, San Francisco.  We had to close the registration list for the SF mixer after only a couple days, but please put your name on the waiting list, as we’re trying to free up more space. 

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Tonight NYC, Next Week SF!

A reminder—the pre-Supernova New York mixer is tonight at Gallery Bar.  And our San Francisco mixer is next Wednesday, May 23, at Sugar Cafe.

Both should be a good time, and some excellent networking.  See you there!

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Pre-Supernova San Francisco Mixer on May 23

For those in the Bay Area, we will be hosting a mixer on Wednesday, May 23, in San Francisco.  Like the May 15 mixer in New York, this will be an informal opportunity to network with interesting entrepreneurs, executives, press, developers, bloggers, and other industry leaders.  Details and RSVP information at:

http://www.socialtext.net/sfmixer

Please be sure to RSVP, as we will have to close the list once we hit the cutoff of the venue.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

What is the New Network?

The theme for Supernova 2007 is “Defining the New Network.” What does that mean?

The basic concept is simple.  Networks are central to everything significant in technology today.  There are physical networks (the Internet, the telephone system, wireless links), virtual communications networks (Skype, Fon), social networks (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn), advertiser networks (Google AdSense), information networks (Digg, Craigslist, Wikipedia), and video content networks (YouTube, Joost), to name just a few.  Not to mention networks of organizations, of systems, and of people (like the Supernova community itself).

About 15 years ago, two monumental shifts began.  The personal computer went from being an isolated device for individuals to a node in a global network of networks.  And the telephone went from being a dumb network endpoint to a powerful computer in its own right.  These changes created pressure to restructure both the infrastructure linking all those devices, as well as the software stacks and end-user services on top of them.  We take it for granted now, but it’s utterly remarkable that I can pull a mobile phone out of my pocket and speak to three billion people, or type a search query to scan the full text of billions of documents on computers around the world, or run an entire business on remote web-based tools. 

So, what now?

The networks we depend on today could only take root with enough available and affordable computing power, bandwidth, and storage.  Yet those networks are also the precursors for further developments.  The PC and the phone were the starting points for today’s ubiquitous Internet, which is tearing apart industries like telecom, media, enterprise software, games, and retailing like (to borrow the title of a paper I once wrote) a digital tornado.  If the starting point is a broadband Internet, with massive aggregation and services platforms like Google, AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!, and a host mechanisms for linking data in powerful ways, what appears now that couldn’t take hold before?

The New Network is broader than [fill-in-the-blank] 2.0, because it’s less about comparisons with the past, and more about describing the future.  Developments like virtual worlds, social networks, federated digital identity systems, search engine marketing, microblogging, zombie botnets, conversational marketing, and data centers in shipping containers don’t have clear antecedents, nor are they just about user control and open standards.

To understand the New Network, we must step back and reconsider every aspect of the technology-driven world, from the physical attributes of the Internet to the ways of turning content into revenue.  And, we need to challenge ourselves not to be complacent.  Huge legal, economic, moral, technical, social, and strategic questions cloud the future of every corner of the technology, media, and telecom worlds.  Optimism is warranted, but so is a sense of urgency to tackle the hard problems.

That is the starting point for Supernova 2007.  In future posts, I’ll dive into the sessions and agenda in more detail.

For now, I welcome your comments and feedback.  Is this a useful way to think about the challenges companies will face in the next several years?  What other unappreciated developments do you see as part of the New Network?  And what topics should we be sure to cover at the conference?

Pre-Supernova Mixers in New York and San Francisco

We will be hosting pre-Supernova mixers in New York City and San Francisco later this month.  These are opportunities to network with a fantastic group of entrepreneurs, executives, investors, and others interested in the areas we address at Supernova.  And… an excuse to have a good time!

The New York mixer will be Tuesday, May 15, from 6-9pm.  It will be held at Gallery Bar, 120 Orchard St. in Manhattan.  If you want to come, please RSVP at:

http://www.socialtext.net/nymixer

The San Francisco mixer will be Wednesday, May 23.  Stay tuned for more details.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Conference Agenda

I’ve posted the draft agenda for the general sessions at Supernova 2007. 

It always takes a long time to fit everything together, and I’ll be tweaking the sessions until right before the conference.  Unlike many events, Supernova doesn’t start with a pre-defined template.  I put together the most interesting sessions based on the speakers we’ve been able to confirm, and look for the best possible speaker to fit the sessions we’ve defined.  It’s a continually shifting puzzle, but the result is a more dynamic agenda. 

I’m excited about some of the things we have on tap this year, ranging from three of the smartest figures in the tech industry giving their perspectives on the future, to the Bush Administration’s top tech policy official.  I’ll be posting more details about individual sessions on this blog (and on our soon-to-launch Conversation Hub), but for now, go check out the line-up!

Monday, April 23, 2007

Choices and Voices in Communications

In my interview last week with Fon founder Martin Varsavsky, we discussed how Fon’s ambitious community WiFi service would get along with incumbent telephone and cable companies.  Martin argued that Fon was actually a good thing for these operators, because it extended the connectivity radius of their customers. Sounds like Martin and co. are making headway.  GigaOm is reporting today that Fon has struck a deal with Time Warner Cable to encourage cable modem customers to share their connections through Fon. 

This is a good sign for Fon, but also for the transformation of communications generally.  The future of connectivity is not about parallel platforms doing the same thing (although more competition in last-mile broadband would be a good thing).  It’s about multiple platforms doing different things, which link together to provide comprehensive user experiences.  The reality is that no one telecom company will ever have a truly ubiquitous global footprint.  And even if it did, it couldn’t possibly serve all the different needs of its users.  We’re used to thinking of communications as all-or-nothing.  In fact, we all use networks to communicate in different ways at different times.  I don’t need a highly reliable honking big pipe to check my email on a train, but I do to watch a live football game in high definition video.  And sometimes what matters to me is not what I’m connecting to, but who among my friends or colleagues are communicating with me. 

Thus, today I have a cable modem account (for home broadband), a wireline phone account (for home telephone), a VOIP line (for home/office telephone), a Skype connection (for telephone and instant messaging), a mobile phone account (for mobile calling), and a wireless data account (for mobile email and web surfing).  Sure, I could combine some of them, and other people might desire the convenience of fewer providers more than I do.  In general, though, communications will become more fragmented and complex, even as it becomes more social and (unfortunately) more consolidated as an industry.  It will look, in short, something like the consumer Internet industry today.  The key dimensions are the increasing complexity of choices (to match the diversity of user desires), and the increasingly social nature of the experience. 

Thursday, April 19, 2007

The Copyright Threat

Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred von Lohmann told the startups attending the Web 2.0 Expo this week that they should run their business plans by lawyers to anticipate litigation by intellectual property holders.  On one level, this is good advice.  Entrepreneurs and technologists too often ignore legal and policy issues that could trip up their businesses.  And there are certainly business ideas out there that clearly violate legal requirements.  Better to consider the risks ahead of time. 

On the other hand, it’s somewhat sad that, even as the technical and operational costs of starting an Internet business are plummeting, the legal costs seem to be rising.  This includes not just the direct expenses to pay the lawyers, but also the crushing uncertainty when investors and customers can’t be sure a company will survive the legal threats.  And that uncertainty is real.  Digital copyright law is unsettled in many key areas; the answers are often not obvious ahead of time.  Google, with its vast warchest and other resources, may be able to take risks around intellectual property, but most startups don’t have that luxury.  (YouTube is the exception that proves the rule.) So the question becomes, how to balance copyright holders’ legitimate concerns about protecting their rights, against innovators’ desire to deliver new services to their customers. 

At Supernova 2007, noted lawblogger Denise Howell will lead a Challenge Session workshop on these issues.  Fred von Lohmann will be joining us, as well as Morgan Lewis partner Ron Dreben and YouTube General Counsel Zahavah Levine.  It should be a rather lively discussion!

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Martin Varsavsky podcast

Knowledge@Wharton is running my podcast interview with Supernova 2007 speaker Martin Varsavsky.  We talk about changes in the telecom industry, which Martin has seen first hand as the founder of seven companies over the past 20 years.  He really gets going about halfway through the interview, when we start discussing the differences between the technology scene in America and Europe.  Worth a listen. 

Friday, March 30, 2007

TechNation audio interview

Moira Gunn of the syndicated NPR radio show TechNation interviewed me about tech industry developments and Supernova 2007.