Main themes: exploration of 'free data' and information - mission for the 'liberation of World data' (well this is a very American focus, but you can see where they are going with this!)
Sunday tutorial day. I'm reliably informed that WiFi was particularly good on this day as there were less geeks about! since then Wifi ironically has been an issue, oh to be able to poke on Facebook whilst in attendance at sesssions!...
The more informal Ignite event was great! Speakers given the opportunity to put themselves forward to talk about whatever they like, and up to the audience how long they last, and how the session is received... risky for those talking, but great interactive element of the audience! Even the more 'boring' of sessions have been kind of 'cool' - mostly this is because of live commentary and interactive element - although it does seem ironic that audiences are not provided with mics to relay questions to the key speakers, still live data information and displays do make up for this! in short some really fascinating and exciting stuff!
Most sessions I have attended have all be very good - usual conference organisation issues etc. such as questions from a 1000+ strong audiance with no microphones, so really hard to spark decent debates. Although you do get the feeling that at times you are being given the marketing speel and not really looking indepth at web 2.0 issues, contexts and developments. Although much of what is being marketed is really interesting and well worth a play around with! Thankfully the expo exhibit hall has this covered, with freedom to play, launch sites and all those free t-shirts!
One of the things that has worked really well are the Birds of a Feather sessions, these run concurrently with the conference sessions and are a means for people to talk about what they are up to etc. more of a 'resarchers' and critical contextualisation of Web 2.0 stuff. For example one session on SN's was informed by a discussion about migrant women.
From the more commercial side of things some launch pads have been really 'cool' swivel.com stands out - a platform that allows users to upload data and then this is available to everyone. You can also map this information using graphics, share with other people and re-map it onto other publically availalbe data sets. They like to think of themselves as 'the Youtube for Data'.
Key to remember though that this IS data that is under scrutiny - just look at how Google ads, Facebook etc market particular ads to the individual - in this way the digital consumer needs to remain savvy and aware of where data is coming from and what the click of the button and various downloads says about them... One particular stat stood out for me, referring to Blogs Dave L. Sifry of Technorati mentioned that many people do not realise that they are 'reading' blogs with over 120, 000 new weblogs being created each day inking behaviour and tagging are becoming the 'online' norm...
Visualtion of information was key to Web 2.0 practices. This was also linked to security and maintenance of privacy of information for users. Luke Sontag of Videoop mentioned control on identity and hacker proof security: Videoop is a security launch pad that uses a username as identification and then has visualisation process for 'password' to log users on. Identification this way is protected from known key strokes (as these are different each time the user logs on) - a way of 'Taming Web 2.0?'... we'll have to wait and see!
The convergence of digital technologies represents an important 'future' for Web 2.0 applications. Mike McCue announced 1 800 555 TELL or Tell Me that is a voice recognition application availble on any phone where you phone up and ask for information. Kind of like 118118 in the UK without the operator at the other end. Additionally this information can be texted to the user and usingWAP mapped via Google Maps - handy if you want to know where the nearest Starbucks is, of your just 'lost' in the city! Mike's example was to ask where nearest ice cream parlor was ('I want icecream'), stating his city Tell Me came back with numerous choices, from which he selected his preference and the information was 'told' to him and sent via text, then mapped with Google maps - great interactive and immediate consumption of information!
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