Live from Silicorn Valley

I just got back from Blogindiana 2008, Indiana's first blogging and social media conference, held at IUPUI in Indianapolis. Although loyal readers know I spent a number of years in IT, I have been out for a while and since it basically moves in dog years I had some catching up to do. A lot of other dudes have blogged about this, posted photos and the like (I found one picture of my back here), but I will add a few humble words (and I would post my own pictures, but I dropped my camera on the concrete at the company picnic, the storm over which has yet to subside at home).
It was quite a good conference with many compelling speakers, a neat facility and a good lunch, with the extra benefit of bumping into some old some old pals. My wife found it funny that I came home Saturday night and spent another hour surfing the web looking at the blogs of the people I had just met, but that's how we bloggers roll.
I learned a lot about Web 2.0, web analytics, social media platforms, and a lot more that puts me at the edge of a migraine to think about, but even more importantly is figuring out how to apply some of these ideas to the next-generation distribution model for movies, TV, and the like that I have been percolating on all summer. One thing I decided to knuckle down and try for a month or so is Twitter (see sidebar), which seemed to be the tech du jour at the conference. It was funny to see people sitting around chatting amiably while a vast wave of snark was unspooling on a Twitter wall being projected onto the wall in the main conference room. For the first time in my life I had a sense what it would be like to have the mind-reading superpower and know what people were really thinking.
The other thing that struck me funny was how lo-fi the goodie bag was; all pens and pencils and notepads, not a mouse pad or thumb drive among them. It gives me hope for our humble "legacy technologies," and the lonely boy who proudly trooped off the Ball State University in 1984 with his new electric typewriter. The older and somewhat wiser version held his tongue during discussions of citizen journalism, as he knows that it has existed for many years: as public access television, his day job. But it is interesting to see the new two-way model that Web 2.0 stands for, and to follow where it may be going.
Until later, catch me at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.