O (b LOG N)

Wii Scavenger Hunt, Wii!

I just posted the hints to the Wii scavenger hunt. Enjoy.

Coffee please

Where’s the coffee? It looked about for almost two hours before I went and bought a $4 cup of coffee. WTF.

Where are the chairs?

What is going on at this ETech? We’re in the Hyatt, but it’s downstairs this time. There is no shared space for people to mingle easily. There is a ton of traffic in the area from other conferences. And there are no chairs. Perhaps worse of all is the staff that is just blatantly snotty. Maybe they’re contractors and not O’Reilly staff. I’m not sure. The vibe is different from last year. Case in point: myself and another fellow walked up to a pair of chairs and asked a conference organizer if he minded if we sat in the chairs. His response was a terse: "actually I do mind".

There are dozens of us waiting for the keynote, which starts at 7:30PM (in 24 minutes) and they’ve barred us from the empty room the keynote is taking place. I feel like I’m back in high school and the O’Reilly staff (or contractors thereof) are the yard-nards with illogical rules about which side of the yard or parking lot you can be in. Maybe by tomorrow when the event is in full swing things will be a tad more friendly.

Kathy Sierra cancels at ETech07

Creating Passionate Users

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop at the ETech conference. But I’m not. I’m at home, with the doors locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers. People you’ve probably heard of. People like respected Cluetrain Manifesto co-author Chris Locke (aka Rageboy).

I am shocked and disgusted. Kathy Sierra has been receiving death threats for weeks and as a result has backed out of speaking at Etech! This is sick shit! This kind of behavior is disgusting. I sincerely hope these people are revealed and their mums give them a good thrashing. I cannot imagine this is anyone other than a twisted adolescent. Nonetheless I understand her concern. I caught Kathy’s session last year. It was one of my highlights at ETech06. She is brilliant. Best wishes K I hope this is quickly resolved.

Love me some ETech

It’s that time again. Time for one of my all time favorite conferences: Etech. If you’re here, look me up. If you’re not, you can always sit in on the IRC channel at Freenode.net #etech, which often is more fun than meatspace.

MindTouch (OpenGarden.org) has organized a scavenger hunt I’m calling: MindTouch Scavenger Hunt, Wii!!. Yes, I know I’m not so good at naming things. Did you ever hear the story of how I was so fed up with arguing with SteveB about the name of DekiWiki that I asked the janitor in my office in MN what his name was and wanted to name DekiWiki after him. His name was Brown. In my defense, we had been arguing about the name for over a month.

The first two people to complete the MindTouch Scavenger Hunt, Wii!! will win, guess what: Nintendo Wiis. I’ll be posting the hints Tuesday, 3/27 probably around 5pm.

Right now I’m sitting in the bar at they Hyatt trying to play catch up on community related work at OpenGarden.org. Also, somehow this year I ended up with a totally lame pass. I came down for lunch today and the good folks standing guard informed me I was not allowed because my badge is lame. _sob_ I don’t belong again! _/sob_. Our previous admin who booked my ticket was…well…less than focused.

There is a APP BOF I’m looking forward to and a BlogBridge BOF tonight, but I think they conflict. I’ll probably have to go to the APP BOF. Anyway, expect some posts and photos.

Wrong again

Ross Mayfield’s Weblog

I have to learn to do trackbacks instead of leaving comments because so often people won’t accept my comments. _sniffle_People don’t like what I have to say_/sniffle_. Anyway, this is funny. I really shouldn’t poke fun, but it’s so easy.

Today we have more deployment options than any established or upstart vendor.

* Managed Service Appliance (SaaS behind the firewall)
* Dedicated Hosted Appliance (here is a good introduction to Appliances)
* Custom On-site
* Hosted Professional
* Hosted Personal (free)
* Open Source

Of course, MindTouch has all these (for longer in some cases) +1 more: software appliance (VM). It’s called MindTouch Deki. I especially enjoy the recent trumpeting of the managed service appliance. A concept MindTouch pioneered. We call it the DekiBox. Also, as I’ve spoken about previously, the claim that Socialtext is open source is dubious at best considering they’re not OSI-approved and it took them four years of claiming to be open source to release their source code. Strange, I know. Anyway, clearly Socialtext is not the most comprehensive provider. Of course, you don’t hear me saying: “Sorry, Charlie“. That would be totally lame.