Gnomedex was very different

I’ve been reflecting on Gnomedex for most of this week. It was a very different conference than I have ever been to before. The entire place was full of content producers. Text bloggers, audio bloggers, video bloggers, cartoonists, rockers, photographers, journalists, publicists, marketers, and venture capitalists all mixed into the same room. Everyone I met at Gnomedex created new things and publicly made available their own view of the world. We had so much to share even two T1 lines could not hold our stream of thoughts.

“I read your blog” was a line of introduction. “I like you, I read your blog” was also a method of calming tempers as we argued in the hallways about attention metadata, advertisements in feeds, and the future of web browsers and mail clients. “I must subscribe to your blog” was the perfect closing comment to continue the conversation at another time from another state or another country.

New tools are enabling new content and new ways of sharing. I asked a group of video bloggers if they would be able to do what they do without the Internet Archive footing the bandwidth bill. They responded that they don’t know what they would do without that resource. Audio bloggers recorded interviews using $250 MP3 players with a microphone input. Photobloggers snapped pictures using $800 digital SLR cameras. All of these technologies and price points have only really taken off in the next year.

What technological toys, software, and storage will we have next year to enable new creations? Everyone seems abuzz with innovations and the want to share their view of the world with others. It’s a powerful thing.

Tags: