Wilson’s Gnomedex Report Day 3: Don’t Anger the Scoble

Thursday, August 28th, 2008
by Lamarr Wilson

On Day 3, we (the Rosenfelds and I) arrived early to get a closer seat and to have more room.  Breakfast was great as usual, and I ran into Robert Scoble in the main area and got a picture of him and Chris talking.  It was weird, both of these internet celebrities, and they are just normal people and people treated them as such.  It was nice to see him in person and say a few words to him.

The highlight of the morning was definitely Sarah Lacy’s town meeting type discussion entitled “What Happens When You Get What You Want: The Growing Blogosphere Angst.”  She definitely ruffled some feathers in the audience when talking about blogging and its contrast/comparison to “real media,” as well as where all this is going.  It seems some people didn’t like that others made it seem like some just blog to get money and high posting in Google instead of creating unique content; I guess there were some there that do that.  Even Scoble got ruffled by one of the audience members and approached him nearly face to face (a little tense in person).
I try not to just re-blog someone else’s article; I try hard to create something original and a unique perspective, and I think in the end, that’s what will get you readers.  Money will come if you do the right things (if you’re blogging for money; I’m not at this point).  It was a great format and a very lively discussion.  Watch the presentation.

Dave Mathews (no not from the band, he hates that question), was another speaker and he introduced a media extender service called Boxee.  I must say, it was really slick.  I’ve seen him present it on DLTV and to see it the presentation in person was cool.  Although I have an Xbox 360 that is my media extender, this is something that is open source that I will look into.  Watch the presentation.

The abolutely freakin BEST presentation of the whole conference was done by Scott Maxwell, the “Mars Rover Driver.”  This dude, for a living, sits at NASA and drives the freakin’ Mars Rover!  How cool is that? He has the best job on this planet for sure.  His presentation was lively, animated, and he explained how the Mars Rover worked and what he does to drive it.  An interesting point is that there can be a 10-20 minute delay for each command, so it’s not like driving with a joystick, as many of us thought.  It’s a tough job, and this genius of a guy does it well.  You MUST watch his presentation.  This was the only presentation to get a standing ovation, and it was a sight to see.

It was sad for the conference to eventually wrap-up, but I did get to go on stage and personally thank Chris and Ponzi for inviting me to the conference, and I also made Kat blush when I mentioned her, which I enjoyed seeing.  She also took a picture with me and Robert (jwire4) which will be memorable for a long time.

My final post on Gnomedex will be a things learned summary that I think will complement these last 3 posts on the conference, so I’ll save my thoughts for that post.  In short, it was very enjoyable, and I now have my first tech conference out of the way!  I look forward to many more!

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