"语义网 (semantic web) vs 语境网 (contextual web), 微支付 (microformats), 开源 (open source), and 标签 (tag)"
BloggerCon
Only one person has asked, but to reiterate, I am not attending BloggerCon. If I were to attend, I'd wake up late, skip the opening ceremonies and the Podcasting / Academia / Newbies sessions (boring / boring / interesting, but not applicable) and attend Robert Scoble's session on information overload, hang out for lunch, skip out the Election 2004 / Moble Blogging / Core Values sessions (boring / interesting, but not applicable / boring) and come back for Julie Leung's session on the emotional life of bloggers (though "Making Money" sounds cool, and Lawrence Lessig is a hero, so it's too bad there are three great sessions at once), then, if I had met a pretty young thing while skipping the after-lunch sessions, skip out the closing ceremonies. But, more than likely, attend the closing ceremonies.
Sleep schedule permitting, I will attend these sessions remotely via webcast and IRC.
I'm not really big on conferences. I went to a Python conference during the summer here and Vancouver and ended up skipping most of it, leaving one session to cover the 2004 Pride Parade which was terribly exciting, it being my first, then came back only to fall asleep during a session on Plone. (Though can you blame me?) I'm excited about the Canadian blogging conference here in Vancouver, though, mostly because I don't have to travel. I'm all for travelling, but not to attend what is basically a discussion group about something I do much—though not most—of my waking hours with a large group of people I've probably read about but would have to re-learn all over again what they're like. Not travelling and doing that is good enough for me.
Yeah, the ironing was delicious. The content of BloggerCon was fairly lame-looking, but the people there were (well, are) rather interesting! (Full disclosure: a very interesting online friend of mine was an attendee.) I caught the webcast of the last session of Day 2—Dave Winer got visibly and audibly agitated when it was suggested that users don't matter that much. But yeah, it just seemed silly to me: people talking in realspace about something that happens almost exclusively in cyberspace. I can stay home and not pay $500 to do that! I don't even need to dress (much less dress up) to do that!
Before she went, the aforementioned friend of mine wondered who I would want to meet if I were attending, and my list was pretty long. [List forthcoming, although the point is now moot, isn't it?] Yeah, relatively few young, non-white, female participants. All categories, individually were underrepresented. It turns out, though, that my friend is young, non-white and female, so she at least bumped up the cumulative average.
Oh well, better luck next year, right?
This is an observation, which, although unquestionably fair and balanced, has likely been made elsewhere, but here goes. Last I checked, scholarships were awarded on academic merit, not randomly to those who put their name in a hat. Therefore, the BloggerCon "scholarships" are not scholarships at all, but rather is, to engage in subject-verb disagreement, a random prize draw.
Pity that BloggerCon has turned into such a fiasco. It would have been interesting to see Josh Marshall speak.
