Press Release
March 28, 2006
The "Attention Economy" Explored at the 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference
Sebastopol, CA--Geekdom's collective intelligence gathered earlier this
month in San Diego, California at the fifth edition of ETech, the O'Reilly
Emerging Technology Conference. Just over 1200 technologists, CTOs,
scientists, researchers, programmers, hackers, business developers, and
other interested parties came together to debate and discuss meaningful
new technologies loosely coupled around the theme of the "attention
economy"--a new order of tools and services to help us sort through the
flood of digital data inundating our lives.
As in past years, ETech explored not just cool "blue-sky" ideas and
projects, but tools and technologies destined to have a lasting impact on
the computing landscape in the very near future. Just a few of the
conference highlights included:
NYU's Jeff Han gave an eye-popping demo of a multi-touch computer
interface
Ray Ozzie of Microsoft introduced a universal web clipboard that uses
RSS beneath the hood to act as the bridge between web sites
Linda Stone, formerly of Apple and Microsoft, gave an incisive discourse
on how we now only pay "continuous partial attention"
Jon Udell of InfoWorld unsheathed his attention focusing strategies that
included multi-modal communication, visualization, and naming conventions
Revered sci-fi author Bruce Sterling presented an elegant and blistering
vision of the coming "Internet of Things"
Kathy Sierra built on her concept of guiding technologists towards
creating passionate users
Eric Bonabeau of Icosystem unveiled the "hunch engine," which uses
interactive evolutionary algorithms to help users navigate large spaces
Amy Jo Kim, a game designer, focused on the mechanics of game design and
how these concepts can be extended to other non-game systems and
applications
Boxxet founder You Mon Tsang discussed how to amplify participation in
the social web through the use of bionic systems
Cal Henderson gave an all-day tutorial advising people launching and
scaling new web services
George Dyson presented thoughtful examination of the current state of
the digital universe
Clay Shirky detailed the building of a pattern language for moderation
and beyond
The Make Fest, a hands-on, science fair style demonstration of DIY
projects by and for geeks, was hosted for the second consecutive year by
Make magazine
Over 100 participants brought their Etech experience to a close by
queuing up to test-drive hydrogen fuel cars provided by the California
Fuel Cell Partnership
ETech once again brought together a wide range of communities, affording
unexpected connections. The ever-stimulating "hallway track" (which this
year took the form of geeks camped out in small knots on the swanky Hyatt
carpeting just outside the ballroom) was abuzz with inspiration and
introductions, abetted by after-hours games, birds of a feather sessions,
and late-night parties hosted by Yahoo!, Adobe, Adaptive Path, and
Krugle.
Several notable announcements and launches were made at this year's event,
including:
Laszlo announced the planned extension of its advanced Ajax application
development platform, OpenLaszlo, to support the delivery of applications
in browsers with or without a Flash plug-in
Microsoft unveiled its web clipboard and Windows Live Search, an
enhanced version of its search engine featuring a new image search
service, a redesigned user interface, and new tools to refine query
results. Microsoft also introduced a new test version of its MSN Toolbar
called Windows Live Toolbar
New APIs were announced by Yahoo! that interface with Yahoo! Photos,
Calendar, MyWeb, and Shopping, and browser-based authentication that
allows third-party developers to authenticate users via Yahoo’s
authentication service
MapQuest launched the beta version of MapQuest OpenAPI, a free program
which makes many of the core MapQuest capabilities, including mapping,
geocoding, and routing, available to developers in a single, integrated
toolkit. MapQuest also announced an OpenAPI Developers Challenge, asking
developers to build the most creative mashup that leverages the mapping
and routing functionality of MapQuest OpenAPI
Foldera presented its free, open, and web-based Organizer and
Messaging/Collaboration Service
Salesforce.com announced the AppExchange Developer Network, a new web
site that provides the community, tools, and resources to let developers
build new applications for the AppExchange
ThinkFree Office announce that it will allow users to add photos from
Flickr to Write, Show and Calc Documents; as well as additional
enhancements
ROOT Markets premiered ROOT/Vaults, an "attention banking service," to
store, manage, and share personal data
Winners of the eBay Developers Challenge were divulged: The grand prize
went to Eric Smith for UnWired Buyer; first place winner, AuctionContact
by Alexander Stankovic; honorable mentions include Gumshoo by Craig
Villamor, AuctionWatch GD by Ty Kroll, and Auction Monitor by Christopher
Wong
Also announced at the conference were the dates for next year's event.
ETech will be back at the Manchester Grand Hyatt, San Diego, March 26-29,
2007. The conference will take place in a slightly larger, more
centralized space within the hotel next year; however attendance will
again be limited. The call for participation is scheduled to open in
August; registration will open in December.
ETech's exhibit hall was also its largest ever. Sponsors displaying their
wares at this year's event were: IBM, Windows Live, eBay Developers
Program, iNetWord, Sxip, Yahoo!, Adobe, Aggregate Knowledge, AOL.com,
Attensa, California Fuel Cell Partnership, Foldera.com, Google, Intuit,
Laszlo, Mapquest, ROOT, RSSBus, Salesforce.com, sms.ac, TechSmith,
Thinkfree Office, Tibco, and Zimbra.
As program chair Rael Dornfest summarized, "Just how it is we're going to
be able to cope with information overload, build applications and services
to hone our attention, and systems to route more signal and divert more
noise is still up in the air. We gave the subject a good start and I look
forward to hearing how it has manifested itself in what you're working on
in the coming year."
The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference features a range of
technologies that are growing just below the horizon of commercial
viability, placing a spotlight on the projects, people, and business
models likely to become very important to the future of internet
computing. From peer-to-peer networks, person-to-person mobile messaging,
web services, and weblogs to big screen digital media, small screen mobile
gaming, hardware hacking, and content remixing, ETech pries open the
transformative new technologies destined show up in the products and
services we'll take for granted in the not-too-distant future.
Additional Information:
Other Upcoming O'Reilly Conferences:
- MySQL Users Conference, April 24-27 in Santa Clara, California
- Where 2.0, June 13-14 in San Jose, California
- O'Reilly Open Source Convention, July 24-28 in Portland, Oregon
- O'Reilly European Open Source Convention, September 18-21 in Brussels, Belgium
- Web 2.0, November 5-7 in San Francisco, California
- O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference, January/February 2007 in the San
Francisco Bay Area
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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