Posts with keyword: defrag08

7 entries

Why Can My Car Move When I'm Not in It?

Tue Nov 4 11:43:00 2008

Jonathan Yarmis from AMR Research just told the story of someone who visited his house to pick up some kids and forgot to put the car in park. She went in the house as her car took off down the driveway. It ran over a power transformer and then crossed the street and came to rest 150 yards into the trees on the other side of the road. The woman became aware that her car was on the move when Mercedes called her to tell her that it's airbags had just deployed (the power went off first, but that
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Stowe Boyd on Lifestreaming on the Edge

Mon Nov 3 17:06:00 2008

The notion that we're drowning in information is false. The world is full of information and we've been dealing with it from the pre-agricultural era. We're reaching back to systems and techniques that we've never lost. There's no such thing as information overload. Attention isn't a resource that needs to be parceled out. This is like the earlier failed metaphor of "knowledge management." You can't manage knowledge like bricks. The movement of message control away from large organizations (the center) to the edge has destabilized the status quo. Non-market collaborative efforts (like open source) have had a similar effect.
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Connected Platforms for Connected Applications

Mon Nov 3 14:25:00 2008

Ian Davis, the CTO of Talis is speaking about connected platforms. He starts with a lesson in economics. In the pre-industrial era, most goods were produced by individuals or small groups working together. consequently, most trading was local. Trading to a large market required a very large company capable of vertically integrating all its functions. The East India company is an example: ships, docks, towns, armies, and even currencies were all done by that one company. Transactional costs for a given market size were usually much larger than the associated value in the pre-industrial era. Transaction costs fell with
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Flow Applications

Mon Nov 3 11:31:00 2008

Chris Shipley is moderating a panel with Dick Hardt (Sxipper) and Sam Huleatt (Workstreamer) on applications that support flow. Chris turns the time over to Dick who demos Sxipper (the new version) that provides information about things your browsing. This reminds me of something I saw at ETech years ago called Dashboard (Nat Friedman). Ultimately this is an idea about getting context about information. Can flow applications make the problem worse by increasing the amount of information we have to process? Possibly. UI helps. Flow applications need to be intelligent about what information is presented. Presence and location information
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It's Always a Good Time to Start a Web Business

Mon Nov 3 10:59:00 2008

Howard Lindzon is up next speaking on by it's always a good time to start a web business. Howard runs a hedge fund. The headlines we're seeing today aren't good. Leaders need to look beyond the headlines. The goal: zig when other's zag (with hat tip to Warren Buffet's "the time to be fearful..." The best time to start a "premium" business or one base don ad revenue was the last four years. Now we need to focus on being "too small to fail." Get your idea and product ready and the first customer under your belt as soon
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Paul Kedrowsky: Around the Horn (Defrag08)

Mon Nov 3 10:16:00 2008

Paul Kedrowsky starts the panel by referring to a James Surowiecki article in The New Yorker called Everyone's Watching. If I understand the reference, the key point is that the current financial meltdown wasn't caused by too little information, but too much--and with no one paying attention. There's some discussion about whether we need to take a step back and pay more attention. On Twitter, @kevinmarks says "this makes me think of Neal Stephenson's ideas from Anathem of deliberately introducing isolation and delay to gather deep insight." Paul doesn't believe that paying more attention is an option. Is the
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One Week to Defrag!

Mon Oct 27 07:27:00 2008

This year, I haven't had much money to travel because when you're starting a business you do only that which needs to be done. Consequently, I haven't been going to many conferences. The big exception to that is Defrag. I enjoyed it a lot last year and decided I wanted to go back. And besides, I found a ticket to Denver for $91.16 on Delta--how could I refuse?
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