Defrag Blog

You can always tell when you round the corner and you’re four weeks out from a conference. Two things happen: People you’ve never communicated with before begin asking for discounts (not a bad thing at all), and you begin to get the question about what you’re “really looking forward to” in the conference’s content.

The first question is easy to answer — use the code, “defrag3″ to get $300 off — but hurry, it is expiring at the end of this week.

The second is really a bit more difficult. I can rattle off a ton of sessions that are going to entertain, inform and offer fodder for thought, but if there is one session that I think is going to force me to stop typing, look up from my computer and *really* listen, it will be Alex Iskold’s session on “structured attention.” Why do I think that? For the same reasons that Brad Feld and Fred Wilson keep bringing up: Alex is just damn smart and REALLY good at condensing his thoughts down into understandable chunks.

Evidence: Alex’s latest on Read/WriteWeb. Alex writes about the “structured web” in general, but manages to capture ALL of the important technical underpinnings of what we’re working on at Defrag. And, he brings up probably the three central pieces to Defrag’s conversation: semantics, attention (implicit behavioral stuff), and personalization.

You should, of course, join in this discussion.

My bet is that the first Defrag will see 7-10 people/companies emerge as the folks that will be “definitional” in the Defrag space. Alex has already made that list.

PS: there’s talk of a tuesday night dinner with Alex and David Mandell from me.dium….heck, I’m hearing talk of all kinds of cool meetings in and around Defrag. We’ll be rolling out several social networking tools to help accomodate that — but please be in touch with me if you have questions about getting included, etc.

PPS: Don’t delay on that registration, discounts are expiring Friday.