Web 2.0

[da]

I'm going to Chicago for a perl conference that starts Monday. This is the most geekish group I am involved with. In addition to many other things about YAPC that I enjoy, I like the opportunity to learn what all the alpha-geeks are up to these days. The conference flavour is not particuarly higher-ed, corporate, or trade-show. It's more like a smallish con, or a swap-meet trading in programming ideas. I always learn something interesting, and often something I can take and use at work immediately. But a lot of it is just plain fun. (For example YAPC was my first exposure to massive numbers of laptops with wifi, in '01 or so.)

This year's mailing-list and wiki have been gearing up for a few weeks, and people are starting to make their plans for hacking sessions, being tourists in Chicago and so on. (I've made plans for a less herd-oriented tourist experience; emaki , another friend Arguile, and I will be touring in a small group on Saturday and Sunday).

The conference planners are taking advantage of the stuff that seems to be called "Web 2.0" these days, including social-networking services, AJAX (which is less server-intensive web tools built with javascript and xml), and "mashups" between web tools. This makes sense; the organizers this year include a number of bloggers, a podcaster, and a part-time magazine-publisher.

Yesterday, they announced the "official tag of YAPC". I initially scoffed, thinking it overkill. Then I thought about what it would be used for; del.icio.us bookmarks, flickr photos, perhaps technorati blog-searches, and google searches. So yes, it makes sense to standardize on a tag, and since most people will be bringing laptops, cameras, blogging, and maybe bookmarking whatever they discover at YAPC, it makes finding stuff in these web services much easier for those of us who come along a bit later.

This morning someone converted the official schedule to ical format, including abstracts. Someone else posted it to Google Calendar, which is pretty handy for me, though I'll probably use ical for the duration of the conference since there isn't a guarantee of network quality.

So what's the point? I suppose it all comes down to laziness. ;) And, hopefully, building on the work of others (and giving it out for others to do the same in an open-sourcy way).

Comments

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Wait, wait! They need more hubris!

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

...And impatience, to balance out the laziness and hubris.

...and I need a perl project to get into, since I've not used it at work in a dog's age.

geekpride

[(Anonymous)]

I'll admit that there is a certain focused geekness to YAPC, I'll grant. I don't think that either Arguile nor myself are hard-core geek. I'll admit proclivities, though.

-emaki

Re: geekpride

[(Anonymous)]

sigh. s/nor/or/ and s/, I'll grant// for $last;

Re: geekpride

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Heh. Either way makes sense to me. I certainly don't mean 'geek' in a pejorative way. :)

I don't think we need a geek pride parade, though. (too many chances for dropping the laptops).

Unless there are segways.

OK, stop me now.

Re: geekpride

[(Anonymous)]

There has been much discussion on the mailing list about geek motorcycling. I wonder if you could attach laptops to Harleys, somehow? Have a motorcycle/geek gang. The Perl Panthers or something. Seems like typing on a motorcycle might easily result in going to the big pocket protector in the sky, though.

I suppose that we are all geeks in most conventional sense. Just interesting how diverse that world is, in many senses. There's a woman coming, for example. Heh.

Incidentally, there is a woman coming who sequenced her DNA and released it under GPL. I wonder how many awkward men will approach her about making derivative works?

Re: geekpride

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

With a helmet-mounted HUD and a helmet mic that connects to voice-recognition on your computer, you might be able to, say, track your route, use wifi, and so on. Oh. And a wireless access point, so you can keep in contact with the other bikers. And you could *trade pirated software while you ride* and how cool would that be. (don't answer that, I don't wanna know).

I suppose that we are all geeks in most conventional sense. Just interesting how diverse that world is, in many senses. There's a woman coming, for example. Heh.

Heh. just kidding but barely. Sigh.

Who sequenced her DNA? That's sort of cool, if... damned expensive, I bet.

[pnijjar.livejournal.com]

Stop! Stop now!

No. Don't stop. Keep going.

I am surprised the official tag of YAPC 2006 isn't "the official tag of YAPC 2006".

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Heh. You forget the virtue of laziness. Too many letters.

[pnijjar.livejournal.com]

No, I forgot that this was a bunch of Perl geeks. Nothing they use is supposed to be readable.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Touché.