Defrag Blog

Having taken a look at day 1 of Defrag, I wanted to glance at morning 2.

Where day one’s morning keynotes were focused on culture and innovation, day two begins to lead us down roads of knowing, data and getting smarter.

We kick things off with David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto (among other titles). David was our lead-off keynote at the first ever Defrag, and he absolutely blew people away (anyone remember the poem from Rilke?). I’ve been saying that David’s going to talk about the “philosophy of knowing” — but honestly, I’m not sure what twisty passages David will lead us down. Whatever they are, I guarantee you’ll be thinking sideways at the end of this one.

After David, we move to one of my favorite brains - Paul Kedrosky. Paul’s been involved with Defrag (and putting up with me) since year 1. For the past few years, I’ve had Paul moderate some things, and every single time, I had people saying “we want more Paul!” Well, it only took me 3 years to learn that lesson (thankfully), so I bring you - MORE PAUL.

Paul asked me what he should talk about and I think I spouted something about the correlation between California highway accidents, furniture left roadside, and the success of data management in the enterprise. Or something. I have no ideas. He told me he was going to address, “Monkeys, Typewriters and Data” - and we’re running with that.

Post-Paul, we enter into a flow of talks that address user-generated submissions (Scott Porad from Cheezburger Network) — which should be incredible, as they get 20,000 submissions a DAY, and Scaling technology company culture (Dan Portillo). And then we hit Jeff Jonas.

If you don’t know Jeff - prepare yourself. Jeff sold his company (SRD) to IBM a while back, and he’s now a Chief Scientist at IBM. SRD was a company that Jeff built that helped Vegas casinos identify everything about people through *context*. And Jeff’s a master of “context.” Your head’s gonna be swimming as Jeff describes why “organizations are getting dumber, and IT’s to blame.”

And then, before lunch we get JP Rangaswami (always a favorite) talking about information as seen through the eyes of a foodie.

So there you have it: philosophy, monkeys and data, context and vegas, food.

Just another typical morning at Defrag

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