Supernova 2007: because technology is everyone's business

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Personal Infosphere

Supernova2006 workshops open with a look at the “Personal Infosphere,” and asks: With all the feeds of information that come to us, how do you get your life back? Five companies demonstrated Web services that enable you to aggregate information and collaborate with others who share your interest in that information.

imeem: Dalton Caldwell, co-founder and CEO of imeem, showed how an IM client can be used to gain “presence” online and find out what are other people doing. It becomes a social networking medium when you use meems (groups) to aggregate people around different interests.

eSnips: Yael Elish, CEO and co-founder of esnips described a social service focused on finding people with like interests and sharing content that you’ve collected. People who use esnips want to go beyond sharing and socializing, they can sell things. Collections can be public or private.

Plaxo: Ben Golub, president and CEO, says Plaxo is the industry’s first smart address book. It connects people through multiple accounts and synchs data, so no matter where you access your address book, you can have a consistent data set. When you change an address, your book is automatically updated.

Netvibes: Tariq Krim says the idea of netvibes is to create one place where you can access everything you like. From the start page, you can aggregate your blogs, searches, bookmarks, personal channels, etc. You build your personal portal, using modules you create, or ones built by other users.

Plum: Hans Peter Brondmo, founder and CEO of Plum. Plum gives you a way to collect information, no matter where it is, and bring it together in one place, which you can share with family, friends, colleagues. Plum creates communities of knowledge. When you search for info on the web, Plum indexes it and creates a searchable archive of articles on that topic.

Audience Discussion
Opening the floor to discussion opened the door to every conceivable issue that could be raised in an hour. These are some of the perplexing questions raised by not fully answered by the audience:

If you want to connect with people locally, regionally or globally, how does that affect data structure and tagging? People want to put form and structure around content, but that restricts how it can be searched, shared, archived, indexed, etc.

Does the company that hosts the web service claim the data as an asset? Most terms of service agreements state that the user owns their information, barring copyright issues. The knowledge you applied by making a collection makes that content yours.

What happens when too many people use a social networking tool? The people in your social network become your filter. When you search a social network for information, When the masses start using social networks, the quality of that filter will degrade. Then you need collaborative filtering.

How do you structure services so you can continue to add value? Does the service adapt to adjust from a narrow search among a small social circle, to a broad search among the masses? With all these different ways of getting information, are we simplifying our personal infosphere, or contributing to its complexity?

Does tagging data impose unwanted structure? When you initiate a search, you have a moment of unstructured discovery. There needs to be a seamless connection between the digital realms where data may be stored in both structured and unstructured ways. You can spontaneously discover things because instead of searching for info, it’s being pushed to you through your filter (the social network).

If your data collection represents who you are, just like your collection of books , do you want just anyone rifling through it? Would you pay a premium for a service that lets you have a private collection behind the firewall, and a public collection that takes advantage of collaborative filtering?

Massisively Multi-layered Learning from Virtual Worlds

The session about how interactions in virtual environments can be utilized in the real world was very inspiring and could have kept going for hours. I will try and highlight some of the general trends of the many issues discussed. 

The MMOGs of today like Wow is very expensive to create and maintain because of the time spend by game designers to generate content for the users. The general consensus among the panel was that hardcore gaming MMOGs like Wow will blend more with user generated worlds like 2nd Life and generating a hybrid format of MMOGs in the future. The hybrid MMOGs will benefit both game producers and users by lowering the cost of development but also by adding more sustainability for the users by allowing them to create their own content and hence creating an army of game designers.

The hybrid MMOGs raises some interesting question about the game designer versus users designing content and who have the power to develop the game and controls the game mechanics. 

Another interesting issue was raised by Jerry Paffendorf that MMOGs are becoming a point of access to the internet where build browsers in 2nd Life allows users to have one access point to web content and implementing that with a Google Earth type MMOG would creating a true metaverse experience.

The last issue I will highlight is the blending of MMOGs quests with real world problem solving like quests where a player have to scan images for certain patterns to complete the quest. The real pattern the player is scanning is a real world x-ray images and is helping a doctor diagnose for cancer. It might be one of the more difficult quests to complete but a very interesting collaboration with a truly real world socio-economic benefit.

And so it begins...

I’m writing this from one of the first Supernova 2006 workshop sessions, which just kicked off in San Francisco.  I’m always excited when the conference—which exists entirely in my head and on my laptop for several months—suddenly becomes real.  And this year I’m more psyched than ever about the people, companies, and ideas that will come together over the next three days.  Welcome to everyone who’s here on-site, and everyone else participating virtually through the blogosphere!

We’ll have several guest bloggers posting session notes and commentary on this site during Supernova, including Cathy Chatfield-Taylor, Peder Burgaard, and Eveyln Rodriguez.  I’ll drop in and post when I can.  Send us your comments and trackbacks, or directly with your thoughts. 

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Sold Out

Supernova 2006 is SOLD OUT.

For those who wish to participate virtually, we’ll be streaming live audio of all the general sessions, starting Thursday morning, on the Supernova Media Center.

Virtual Supernova

Although there’s really no substitute for experiencing Supernova in-person, we’re providing a number of resources for virtual participation in the conference. 

We’ll be streaming live audio of all the general sessions, as well as posting podcasts, videoblog entries, and blog coverage on our Media Center page, starting Thursday morning.  You can also access the Supernova blog, wiki, IRC chat, and other tools at the Supernova Community Connection. 

And if you have an account with Second Life, the 3D virtual world, you can hang out in the virtual Supernova Lounge and see live video of the Connected Innovators presentations Thursday night—go to http://tinyurl.com/m42t8 while Second Life is running to be teleported directly there. 

Monday, June 19, 2006

Heading Out...

I’m about to get on the plane to California for Supernova this week.  Everything is looking amazingly good for the conference. 

We’re right on the brink of selling out.  I’m working hard to make all the sessions sizzle.  And, a couple of surprises have come together at the last minute that I’m really excited about.  Can’t say more—you’ll have to see in person!

Friday, June 16, 2006

Why I haven't been blogging

Supernova planning has been all-consuming the past month.  But that’s a good thing! Registration numbers are up, we have a tremendous group of speakers, and we’re doing all sorts of cool new things that we haven’t tried before.  All of which should make it an awesome event this year.

By the way, if you’re thinking of coming, register soon.  We’re getting close to selling out.