Defrag Blog

Two quick, interesting links this morning:

The Amazon Web Services Startup Challenge: see, “everything is a platform” meme.

And

Social Graph: Concepts and Issues: written by Alex Iskold, who will be speaking about “structured attention” at Defrag.

More to come…

I’ve posted the most recent version of the Defrag Agenda, and things are looking mighty good (if I do say so myself)!

A couple of notes:

1. On the “Sponsor Challenge”: yes, these are spots where we’re challenging our high-level sponsors to give us their vision for Defrag. I’m envisioning this as an American Idol for vendors — where we (the “audience”) get to play Paula, Simon and Randy.

2. On the Open Space: Jerry Michalski is running this and it promises to be something really interesting. We’re actually intertwining “unconference” principles into the show. Some folks have expressed concerns that this will result in general mayhem, as the attendees get involved and stop sitting passively through presentations — I can only hope! The point of Defrag is to gather a community….hence….

3. I’m still nailing down some final pieces, some of which are *sure* to excite. But in the meantime, let me point to some really interesting things -

A) Clay Shirky’s discussion on Social Intelligence.

B) Michael Barrett’s “message of warning” for vendors in the space (and why Defrag stuff worries him; hint - he’s the CISO of PayPal).

C) The entire afternoon of Day 1 — just check out the last few hours: Dick Hardt on “Defragging Identity” (many of you have seen Dick before, but he’s bringing something *totally* new to the stage for the first time); Esther Dyson leading a discussion “On Attention” (as only Esther can); Doc Searls talking about Vendor Relationship Management and what we can all screw-up as we go about defragging; and Ross Mayfield coming at “collaboration” from a completely different angle.

You may have heard these folks speak separately before, but I guarantee that the discussion that emerges out of these rapid fire talks is going to take us places that we haven’t been before.

D) Things you haven’t heard: How about Karen Schneider, a pre-eminent librarian, talking about taxonomy and folksonomy, or Matthew Hurst and JC Herz making us look at defrag topics through the lenses of data visualization?

I get pumped just writing about it!

Lastly a quick note: I read something this morning about people “monetizing their brands through conferences” - UGH! I assure you that this isn’t a brand that we’re monetizing; it is the initial gathering of a community that will leave Defrag energized to *move* things forward. Beware of people “monetizing their brands” — it leads to puffery.

I hope that we’ll see you there.

Paul Kedrosky’s moderating a panel on “Information Overload and Relevance” at Defrag (or, as Paul calls it “ADD”), and today we’ve made a great addition to that panel.

Joining Paul and Bradley Allen (of Siderean) will be James Altucher of Stockpickr.

Not familiar with James? Here’s a short bio.

Yes, the gathering at Defrag will be a room of people that are waaaaaay smarter than me. You should come join us.

(okay, he’s a *bit* more than just a speaker….)

Here’s how Brad describes himself: “Brad Feld is a Managing Director at Foundry Group and Mobius Venture Capital. Prior to Mobius, Brad founded Feld Technologies, which was sold to AmeriData Technologies in 1993, where he became Chief Technology Officer. Brad currently serves on the boards of a number of private companies, including ClickCaster, ePartners, FeedBurner, Gold Systems, Judy’s Book, Lijit, Me.dium, NewsGator, Rally Software, and StillSecure. In addition, he is on the board of The National Center for Women & Information Technology, The Community Foundation Serving Boulder County, and The Colorado Conservation Trust. Brad has previously been a member of the board of directors of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization and founded the Boston and Colorado chapters. He holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

Eric’s backstory on Brad and Defrag: Brad’s blogging was the original impetus for Defrag. I was reading along with everyone else about some topics, and dropped Brad a note saying that I thought there was a “conference to do here - and I think it should be called Defrag.” Brad responded with “I’d love to play on Defrag” - and we were off and running. A few phone calls later and we were launching a conference. The funny part was that although I’ve met Brad once face to face (he turned down Ping Identity for funding when I was a VP there - we met in “the pitch”), we’ve never interacted that much. Launching Defrag with Brad’s help has been a great experience, and I’m already looking forward to building things out even further in 2008. I think Brad initially hit upon a very important topical thread, and my belief is that the community forming around Defrag is going to help materialize that thread into a whole area rug (sorry, sticking with the textile metaphor).

Here’s what Esther’s bio says: “Esther Dyson is the Internet’s court jester, a person of no institutional importance who somehow manages to speak the truth and to be heard when and where it matters. She does business as EDventure, the reclaimed name of the company she owned for 20-odd years before selling it to CNET Networks in 2004.”

And here’s my backstory: Esther Dyson seems to always be involved in the “seminal moments” in my professional life. I first met her through Steve Larsen during the boom (Steve employing me was my first “technology marketing” job - seminal moment). Next, Esther agreed to be on the advisory board when we launched Digital ID World (seminal moment). Then, when Andre Durand, Bryan Field-Elliot and I were building Ping Identity in the pre-Series A days, Esther put Andre (as CEO) on stage at PC Forum. That appearance led to our meeting with Jeremy Allaire, who was then Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Catalyst, and Ping’s Series A funding (seminal moment). Anyone see a pattern here?

So, when we started Defrag, I sent Esther a quick summary to get her feedback. She’s been helpful at every step, and I’m delighted that she’ll be at Defrag focusing on the topic of “attention”…..could it be another “seminal moment?” With Esther around, the chances are better than even.

Finally, Esther said this about Defrag: “This should be one of those small and memorable events where you actually meet people and hear new ideas… see you there!”

Early bird registration ends in 16 days (August 22nd), so don’t delay - register today!

Things have been a bit crazy around here as of late, but fear not — development of Defrag continues!

My “big news” today is that JP Rangaswami will be joining us. If you don’t know JP, he’s one of those *really* smart guys that is the CIO of British Telecom’s Global Services….

JP’s worked and presented with a bunch of folks already on our schedule, so now we’re just down to figuring out where best to use his talents. I’m overjoyed with how all of this is shaping up — really amazing people in a small, high-touch setting.

Did I mention that Defrag is gonna rock?

Here’s how Wikipedia describes Ward: “Howard G. “Ward” Cunningham (born May 26, 2024) is the American computer programmer who invented the wiki. A pioneer in both design patterns and Extreme Programming, he started programming the software WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the website of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham (commonly known by its domain name, c2.com), on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. He currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon.”

Eric’s backstory: When I was originally trying to dig into what “defrag” meant, the foundational thing I knew was that wikis played a role. The other thing I knew was to ask for help. So, when I asked the newly formed advisory board who I should be recruiting, and Clay came back with “Ward Cunningham” — I listened. I admit to having *no* idea that Ward had invented the wiki when Clay first brought him up. In fact, my only experience with wikis had been through Ross Mayfield over at Socialtext. Nonetheless, I was happy to dispel my ignorance and get Ward on board (and rhyme as well).

By now, you’ve probably read about the 365 Main debacle. I’ve been saying that California is a bad place to put major data centers for a while now, but that’s beside the point. My favorite blog about this so far is John Paczkowski’s “I Felt a Great Disturbance in Web 2.0, as if Millions of Start-Ups Cried Out in Terror and Were Suddenly Silenced” -(yes, I’m a child of Star Wars).

Why do I bring all of this up and what does it have to do with Defrag?

Irony. 365 Main does a press release boasting about 100% uptime for 2 years on the exact day that their data center goes down.

There’s an old Woody Allen line that goes something like (I’m butchering this): “Do you wanna know how to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.”

And here’s how it ties into Defrag: Our own David Weinberger used to do some writing for Mr. Allen.

A little Defrag trivia for ya…

John describes himself (or, at least, his corporate PR/marketing people describe him) this way:

John is the CTO of JackBe Corporation. As CTO he is entrusted with understanding market forces and business drivers to drive JackBe’s technical vision and strategy. John Crupi has 20 years experience in OO and enterprise distributed computing.

Previously, John spent eight years with Sun Microsystems, serving as a Distinguished Engineer and CTO for Sun’s Enterprise Web Services Practice. Mr. Crupi is co-author of the highly popular Core J2EE Patterns book, has written many articles for various magazines and is a well-known speaker around the globe. He is a frequent blogger and was selected to join the International Advisory board for Ajax Developers Journal. John was also named as a member of the Software Development Magazine’s Dream Team.

Eric’s backstory: I actually found out about John by stumbling upon his blog — a must read (if you’re into mashups and such). And then, through a turn of events, ended up working to get John onto a panel that we’ve titled, “Defragging the Enterprise: DIY tools, Mashups and Widgets.” I don’t think it’ll be just your usual ole panel — as I’ve got Adam Gross from Salesforce.com as the other “participant” and Jeff Nolan (formerly of Teqlo) as the moderator. I’m assuming that strong opinions will ensue…

Sidenote: Sorry for the light posting and general lack of availability this week — Defrag is moving the intergalactic HQ, so things have been a bit out of sort. Here’s the first sunset from our new corporate stronghold.

Steve Larsen was the first guy to pay me to work on a conference. At the time, Steve was running marketing for Net Perceptions - and he signed me up (via Chris Locke) to work on personalization.com and their accompanying conferences. I came into that position incredibly green (really only on the strength of Locke saying - “hire eric”), and Steve was nice enough to pick up the role of mentor and teach me a bunch about tech marketing and conferences.

In the process of all of that, Steve and Chris introduced me to all of their friends — people like Esther Dyson, Ann Winblad, Martha Rogers, and countless others. And if you want to get a sense of just how deep Steve’s network of connections goes — go read his post about the meeting that took place in June of 1996 (afterwards dubbed, “Jerry’s Kids”).

Quoting a short bit from that:
The sessions begin the next day with a most welcome edge of childishness. There are scatterings of toys to play with, miniature slinkys, puzzles, silly putty. No agenda –we make up the rules.

Jerry leads the group in making a determination on what we want to talk about, where do we wish to focus our energy and then he moderates. It’s a wild group and while I first get the feeling that Jerry’s task is somewhat akin to herding cats but after a time he appears more like Coach Pat Riley coaching the Los Angeles Lakers in their prime. Some people go off and prepare, then come back and present to the group, others present with little to no preparation.

So, why, you ask, am I bringing all of this up?

Well, the other day, Steve dropped me a note to tell me that Defrag looked “like something special” and he wanted to do anything he could to help (I accepted). That was nice. But even better was realizing that I have Jerry (see above) signed up to lead some open space stuff, Esther coming to lead us on a wild ride, and now Steve will be there……I wasn’t at the June ‘96 meeting, but it almost seems like we’re “putting the band back together.”

Is it possible that the magic from that meeting carries over? There’s only one way to find out….and this week is actually your best way to find out. Use the code “Norlin12″ to receive $100 off of the early bird pricing — a *this week* only deal that expires on Friday, so don’t delay.

(sidenote: Steve is now CEO and co-founder of the code-search engine Krugle.)