The new buzz word is currently the hot stuff in technology circles. Everybody hears about it, talks about it, but not everybody knows exactly what it is. That’s what I’m talking about when I say its like Che: all the kids wear those T-shirts sold by the gap. Do they have any idea who che is? NO! In a similar fashion, everybody wants to jump in the web 2.0 bandwagon.

O’reilly does a good job explaining what “Web 2.0″ is. Mesh was a conference held Monday & Tuesday, 15 & 16 of May in Toronto. What was it about? Web 2.0, the ripples it promises to cause in society, media, business and more. Why have a conference held when we could all read a damn article on the net and be all happy? Well, the point was meeting the people that are causing the ripples and actually start one too, hence the ‘connect, share, inspire’ tagline.

As per the schedule we had quite a few keynotes, workshops and panels. Most of those were really interesting but in reality, these were all excuses and conversation starters for what would happen in between/after them; in line for lunch, at the little cocktail-party on Monday and particularly at the bar.

There have been many blog posts written about the conference, so I won’t explained what happened there, but I’ll give my take on the meta-information I grasped from there:

1. Elliot Noss, CEO of Tucows, plays World of Warcraft and is actually very funny.
2. Everything you learn, you learn more when there’s alcohol involved.
3. Waiting for food gives you the opportunity to go get drinks, which in turn allows you to learn more.
4. Holy crap, most geeks actually look normal.
5. Shameless plugs work: taking the mic at the proper moment and promoting yourself gets you the desired attention.
6. If you don’t go to the bar afterwards, you might as well have not come… sorta.
7. Where the nice chicks are (Amber was there!), the geeks flock like fat kids to pizza.

The moral of the story is this:

Web 2.0 is nothing new, it is just enabling what we’ve been doing for ages: meeting people and creating connections. It’s all about sharing and having an opinion. Web 2.0 is the virtual re-enactment of Mesh… sort-of:

• Some person says something stupid at the keynote (how does the name pinko sound to you?) and you get the fanboys/nVidiots/trolls/flamers all cussing it up on the way to the food table.

• When nerds see chicks, (by chicks i meant Amber, see above) they go crazy: the panel Amber was hosting seemed to be very rowdy!

All in all, the next time you hear there’s a conference like this, just go. Do whatever, sell your used underwear to a pack of weird japanese, steal off your grandma or pledge to do a speech even if you’re a kiddo, just go and don’t forget to get drunk, you might land your next job.

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 @ 2:55 am Uncategorized
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