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Thanks for another great Supernova!
Supernova week is here!
Your Chance to Speak at Supernova
The 2007 Connected Innovators
New York Mixer Photos
Tonight NYC, Next Week SF!
Pre-Supernova San Francisco Mixer on May 23
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
For sponsorship information, please email us at .