Defrag Blog

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.