Defrag Blog

I’ve been really digging into the defrag agenda, so much so that what’s currently on the website isn’t totally “current” (that’ll change shortly). As such, I thought I’d walk through and highlight some things, topics and cool stuff that I’m seeing on day 1:

Strategic Intuition and Defrag:Â William Duggan kicks things off with a talk about how his book, Strategic Intuition, relates to all things Defraggy. I’ve told the story many times, but essentially Bill’s book set off light bulbs all over the place for me, and I think his unique mix of modern science and theories on strategy provide some incredible pointers with regards to where semantic, collaborative, implicit technologies should be heading.

Around the Horn with Paul Kedrosky:Â If you’ve ever seen ESPN’s “Around the Horn” - this panel is modeled after that. Pau’s going to be discussing various topics (from both him and the audience) with each panelist — and SCORING their responses. The end result will be the awarding of the first annual “Kedrosky” - and an all around good time. [sidenote: Lou Paglia has explicitly asked that Paul not dive deeply into exotic strategies around financial derivatives. ]

The Quantification of Everything:Â Esther Dyson’s going to bring us deeply into the future - as we begin to think about what it means when our ability to quantify everything out-paces our ability to process, analyze or even store all of that data.

Getting into the “flow” apps:Â This one’s not on the website yet, but here we’ll be exploring this new set of applications that are broadly about “flow.” Twitter is the classic example. We’ll be bringing a few new examples, and an audience discussion moderated by Chris Shipley. It is my personal belief that “flow apps” are about to change the fundamental ways in which we imagine and interact with our productivity tools (email, messaging, collaboration, etc), and I think this session is a great jumping off point for further discussion.

After that, we’ll head into some breakouts. I won’t highlight all of them here, but a couple of fun notes…

Knowledge Networking and Ambient Intimacy:Â Leisa Reichelt (who unfortunately can’t be with us) coined the term “ambient intimacy” to convey the weird thing that happens as you get to know topics or people better simply by “hanging around” them (via tools like FriendFeed). Perry Mizota is going to take that initial thought and then dive into how that relates to “networked knowledge” — or the power that comes from insight derived by connections.

Is collaboration changing how we consume and interact with analysis?:Â This is a question that Sam Lawrence first raised when he began publicly grading analyst firms in the interest of transparency. Now Sam’s flipping the usual meme and putting the analysts on the spot. Fireworks, anyone?

Appfrica: the growth of information overload in Africa:Â When Jon Gosier, who lives in Africa, approached me and said he thought he had something to add to the Defrag discussion, I immediately said “yes.” Not only am I fascinated by the tales Jon can tell, but I’m absolutely determined to have Defrag move past the “usual conference circuit speakers.”

Social Computing and the Enterprise:Â We close the day out by grounding things a bit. Mark Koenig of Saugatuck Technology Research will present his early findings of a major research study they’re doing around the “gaps” between what vendors are promising and enterprises are wanting, seeing, desiring. If the afternoon of day 1 is meant to let you imagine the possibilities, then this session is really meant to bring you back to how we actually can get “down to business.”

I’ve left out a bunch of good stuff — Stowe Boyd on lifestreaming; deriving intelligence from distributed communities, a panel discussion on identity as a filter, and sessions on democratizing data and connected platforms via semantic technologies. I’ll try to highlight more as we go.

Needless to say, Defrag’s day 1 is set up to ignite discussion, stretch our thinking, move all of us out of the “echo chamber” (that we all stay stuck in too often), and finally, bring it all back to earth. The day is capped off with a great evening reception, and birds of a feather dinners that are being organized by Get Satisfaction.

The day will be packed, fun, relaxed, approachable and intimate. You won’t find yourself lost in a sea of bodies — but engaged with exciting people and great conversations.

I hope you’ll join us.