Archive for the ‘events’ Category
Smibs visits Silicon Valley: The real-time web is coming on fast
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009Last Friday I flew down to San Francisco to attend the TechCrunch CrunchUp conference. This year the conference topic was ‘The Real Time Stream’. The conference was aimed to capture the opportunities and latest developments arising from the the rapidly growing amount of real-time data that is generated on micro-blogging services like twitter, friendfeed and soon facebook.
The conference was an excellent event for me. It gave me real insight about where the web is going next and on the seriousness and progress rate of the current developments. In the opening panel (video below) Ron Conway describes the real-time web as having multiple multi-billion dollar opportunities. He goes so far as to compare the current development with the early days at Google, when they still hadn’t figured out a business model and could only imagine what an impact Google would have on how we use the web today. Watch the video below for the full opening panel on ‘The Realtime Opportunity’ …
The day was packed with interesting panels and presentations and after getting an idea of how far people and companies are along in developing new platforms, tools and services, I have to say I am once again astonished. The world might be in a recession but Silicon Valley is bursting from the mass of innovation it’s producing, and its buzzing with people who will eventually turn that innovation into striving businesses.
I keep repeating myself but every time I am in the Valley I notice its biggest advantage in the tech sector: A huge amount of people who want to try new stuff – not just entrepreneurs but also consumers and businesses of all sizes. This results in new ideas getting traction early on. By the time the rest of the world notices a new idea like twitter already has a couple of million users, and the rest of the world watches as they reach critical mass.
TechCrunch put on a nice after party and I met a lot of people from last year and some people I have only met online so far. All in all it was a great trip that opened my eyes with regards to the next big wave of innovation. I look forward to taking the opportunities that come with it 
.
Oh, at the conference someone noticed that I didn’t wear socks in my business shoes so I had to explain my reasons on camera. Watch the third video under the ‘Channel’ button in the embedded video box below!
Resisting monoculture, supporting polyculture
Thursday, June 18th, 2009On Sunday, June 14th I attended an event commissioned by the Arts Council on behalf of the city of Edmonton where local musicians were invited to compose songs about sustainability. That’s Edmonton for You! was held at Louise McKinney Park just south of the Shaw Conference Centre. Sustainability… kind of an interesting topic for local musicians to explore, but in today’s uncertain economic climate, definitely worth exploring.
It was nice to see the city acknowledging and supporting the arts by sponsoring the event. The reaction was great, the outdoor venue inspired thoughts of community building and sustainable growth. Music producer and master of ceremonies, Trevor Anderson insisted that we should “resist monoculture and encourage polycultureâ€. He encouraged the more than 1,000 people in attendance to become active members of society and broaden their attitude towards arts by experiencing multiple events of different styles and involving themselves in community arts and culture. 
By embracing the idea of “polyculture” you will inevitably meet new people, discover cool events, be inspired by new ideas and gain access to exciting opportunities. By being an active participant in society, you not only benefit others but undoubtedly will find your life enriched as well.
