The first morning of the Mesh Conference was today, and of course Maj, Amita and I were far too exhausted after our road trip madness yesterday to actually get to the event on time. M&A slept in, but I dragged myself out of bed at 8AM and after a breakfast of coffee and leftovers headed to the MaRS Centre at 9:05. Doh!
The talks so far have been OK -- there's a lot of exuberance in the audience, meaning that lots of people are asking long, off-topic questions, but that's OK. And the organizers are over-using the word "mesh" as a verb -- like, "Welcome everybody, let's mesh!" Which is admirable brand-building but tiresome nonetheless.
The first discussion this AM with Om Malik was OK, but really didn't interest me since it was all about blogging and blogs and journalism and is journalism a blog or is it not blog journalism journal blog blog blah.
HOWEVER, the second keynote of the day, by Michael Geist, was fantastic. Geist talked about the effect of Web 2.0 technologies on society, and he did it with some rapid-fire slides and screenshots that kept good pace with his discussion. He is a good speaker, very well-spoken and fluid, and he got me excited about things like Bill C-60 and other WIPO-related legislation in Canada. He was well-versed in the importance of the technologies, and plugged Creative Commons quite a bit.
Only downside -- he didn't have a slide for Wikitravel in his road show. Oh well; maybe next time. I was also bummed to find out that he won't be in town for the CC Salon Toronto tomorrow night, but he sounds like he's going to be involved with CC Canada a lot more. Which, y'know, fantastic.
I'm watching the baby this afternoon while Maj does some of the early PM sessions, but I'm going back at 4PM for a talk with Bob Young of Lulu.com. I think the Lulu model for small-press publishing is just fantastic, and I want to see more about it.
Between sessions I got to meet with Sunir Shah, creator of Meatball Wiki and one of the best thinkers in community theory I know of. Meatball has been instrumental to shaping my ideas about wiki, about collaboration, and about how to interact with people online. It was really cool to actually talk with him face-to-face, and now I can move him to the "met" column in my Friends list. Woohoo.
mesh06 michael geist sunir shah lulu.com xfn
Afternoon session
I went to the "Will the Web make us Free?" seminar in the afternoon, and it was really good. I was principally interested in the Library of Congress discussion, but also the EFF guy and Lulu.com fellow were really good. I was looking forward to talking to Bob Young of Lulu.com after the discussion, but the press of the crowd was too much and we had to leave. Tant pis!
We went and had dinner at our friend Lee's house. Lee moved from Montreal to Toronto last fall, just after (or before?) Amita was born. We were going to see her last night, and we ended up not doing it. But tonight was great! Lee made risotto and roast veggies, and Amita loved the risotto. They got along like gangbusters.