Supernova 2007: because technology is everyone's business

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Stalking the Supernova speakers (part 1 of 3)

Before beginning regular blogging in the lead-up to the conference, I figured I’d get up to speed on what the confirmed speakers for Supernova 2006 are thinking, talking, and writing about in the weeks prior to the conference. I ran the list through a few searches to procure the following clues as to what they’ve been up to in the month of May (publicly, anyway).

• Michael Zyda is quoted in a story about how struggling Ohio towns might benefit from a flattening world in which jobs can be located anywhere, thanks to technology.

• David Weinberger spoke on web taxonomy and the progress of his upcoming book, Everything Is Miscellaneous at last week’s Syndicate conference. He was also quoted in an explainer on how organizations are using collaborative tools, as well as an article on monetizing user-generated content. Of course, he’s been characteristically prolific on his own blog.

• Esme Vos informs coverage of Philadelphia’s evolving plans to set up a muni WiFi network and continues to organize the MuniWireless Silicon Valley Conference (scheduled just prior to Supernova 2006).

• Werner Vogels expounded upon service-oriented architectures, iterative development, and Ph.D. sabbaticals at Amazon in an interview with ACM Queue magazine.
  
  

• Mena Trott participated in a roundtable on the topic of “extending social networks into social search,” transcripts of which are woefully unavailable.

• Jonathan Taplin appeared at the OnHollywood Conference and spoke on the issue of net neutrality, prompting ZDNet bloggers to take a crack at the suggestion that the net neutrality debate will decide who controls TV distribution.

• David Sifry summarizes the state of the blogosphere in a widely linked-to report, talks about the real value in RSS and the big picture of syndication at the Syndicate conference held earlier this month.

• Dan Shine published a special edition of the AMD 50x15 Newsletter for WCIT 2006, where AMD CEO Hector Ruiz spoke.

• Tina Sharkey opened AOL’s CEO (Chief Everything Officer) event honoring the heads of families.

• Jonathan Schwartz sparred with Gartner analysts who asked him to show them the money at the Gartner Symposium he keynoted last week; likened Java to lightbulbs, shipping containers, and rail lines; took McNealy’s spot on “most overpaid CEOs” lists (McNealy’s joke, not mine); and gave Forbes his plan for the next 100 days as new CEO of Sun.

Because the list of confirmed speakers is so long (and because the speakers themselves are so active), my report is out of date by the time I’ve finished Googling just half the people in it. I’m breaking this post up into three, lest I curse myself with the Sisyphean task of writing a never-ending blog post.