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Foo Report | Aug 30, 2006 06:25

Well, that's it. Been there, got the t-shirt - a number of t-shirts, in fact - and am now down to processing it all. Foo Camp was very cool, and quite unlike any conference I've been to before. I learned a lot and laughed quite a bit too.

Because it's invite-only, Foo Camp can be - and is - accused of being a clique. But it couldn't really operate any other way. There were some concerns that the unprecedentedly large crowd this time (250) might spoil things, but it seemed manageable. The thing to do is count yourself deeply lucky for scoring an invite and get on with it.

I was hugely impressed by the openness of everyone I met from the moment I arrived on the Friday afternoon. The first person I met was Leila Hasan, who does GIS visualisation stuff for Nasa and others. She was exotic, for a geek. Once I'd got registered, picked up my Foo Camp shirt and had my photo taken, I did a quick post to the PA mailing list - naturally, the whole area had bangin' wi-fi - spied danah boyd and gave her a hug. She in turn introduced me to Graeme Merrall, a Kiwi who works on web stuff for News Limited in Australia and a lovely chap who took some nice photos of the event.

It helped that I'd meet a certain crew by virtue of the Werewolf evening earlier in the week, but I think I could have just turned up and started saying hello to people and it wouldn't have been that different. I thought it was notable that people were happy not only to talk but to listen. After a couple of hours of randomly meeting people I decided I should actually meet someone on purpose, so I bowled up and offered my hand to Stephen Levy, who looks 20 years older than the picture on his home page. I really enjoyed his book about the Macintosh, Insanely Great, and I hung around like a groupie while he showed someone else the proof of his next book, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness.

The tech journalists I've admired over the years - Levy, Kevin Kelly, Dan Gillmor - were half a generation older than me. On the other hand, Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg.com, is eight years younger than me, and already onto his second venture. He led a session on the future of news on the Saturday where he pointed out that doomy predictions that reader-driven news aggregators like Digg would simply promote "sensationalist" stories hadn't really come to pass. I pointed out that the peril wasn't so much sensation as novelty: "cool" stories inevitably prosper, but if our news consisted only of cool stories it wouldn't be doing its job. Adelson noted that Digg washes up serious stories in the morning and, to a lesser extent, the early evening, while the "surfing dog" stories rise up around 3pm, when then kids come home.

No one at the session - including Kelly, Gillmor and Tom Coates - believed in the idea that bloggers would somehow usurp professional journalists.

I hooked up again with Graeme at the next session, on public data, with Gillmor, Levy and Adrian Holovaty, a journalist-hacker from Chicago. His specialty is taking public data and making them useful to the public. For example, his Chicagocrime.org site lets citizens see what crimes were committed where in their city, their district and even on their street. I do think this is journalism, and very useful journalism. I wish I had those skills.

On the other hand, there are ethical issues. He got a parking ticket, entered the ticket number into the website where citizens can pay their fines, and discovered that if he entered one number up or down, he could see other people's ticket details. So he wrote a script to scrape all parking offences from the site. If he'd done that to a whois database he'd be a bad guy. I think America needs a privacy law.

Dan Gillmor made some good points about information trails in that session, arguing that a future US President will have written a blog as a teenager, and "that will be full of stuff that would be disqualifying now but won't be then … Unless we start cutting each other a hell of a lot more slack than we do today, we're going to be in a hell of a position."

Levy raised an interesting question: "If one of the big four search engines said 'we're not going to keep any search data' as competitive advantage, would you shift to them?"

The session also threw up yet another cool IBM project, this one from the Cambridge Research Centre. Many Eyes is a free web service that will visualise any public data on request. It will let you generate graphs based on the stats of your choice and then, if you want, permalink to them. It launches in October. The Australian government is apparently very interested. I think ours should be too.

I also went to a session on software radio run by Matt Ettus. It's something I didn't know anything about, but I came away with some understanding of what's going on there. It meshes with the hacker ethic that overlays everything here. The people doing it don't want to wait for the system to deliver them the technologies the system wants to deliver, they want to force the issue and build the devices they want. Ettus promotes the idea of "cognitive radio" - software-based wireless devices that will find channels that aren't being used locally, and use them.

Ettus also looks after the Gnu Radio project, which has done some work on an open-source HDTV implementation - one without the obnoxious rights management being built into official HDTV standards. But his main thing is Universal Software Radio Peripheral, or USRP (pronounced "usurp"). Also there was Brit Toby Morgan, whose technology lets GSM phones to be tracked (anonymously) in a way that lets him analyse pedestrian flows for retailers.

I didn't meet any of really big names, but that was okay: this guy had a lot more to say to Ray Ozzie than I would have. And Rich Kilmer of RubyForge had opportunities to discuss with Jeff Bezos (principally, taking advantage of Amazon's recent announcement of a service allowing third parties to hire chunks of time on its huge processor farm) that I didn't.

With as many as 14 sessions on consecutively - the schedule was created in a rush to the whiteboards after Friday night's orientation meeting - it was impossible to get to every interesting one, and I feel like I missed some I should have gone to (Tom Coates' 'Dirty Semantics' session on building big websites that make sense was apparently great), but it seems that everyone thinks that.

It was interesting hearing, in conversation, about the BBC from people who've been inside and are pretty soured by the experience. The basic problem is that nothing ever ships, particularly if it comes out of the research division. To have people do such fine work on creating an online catalogue of nearly a million BBC programmes going back 75 years, and then indefinitely take it down for "review" is idiocy. The bloody thing worked. Apparently France Telecom is worse: more PhDs than Google, research all over the place, and it never ships anything.

Foo Camp is conceived as a party (the idea originally emerged from a whimsical wish for a "Foo Bar" at a conference), and people really show a great degree of social stamina. I think I left at 1.30am on the Friday night and 2am the next and there were still plenty of party people both nights. I spent a little time wandering end to end of the campus on Saturday night; one end being the "makers room" as presented by the nice people from O'Reilly's Make magazine. The people there seemed to be having more fun than anyone else; making stuff. A couple of guys had a laser-etcher and were etching Powerbooks and iPods for free. When they got tired, they just taught the next guy how to run the machine.

It occurred to me that for all that it tilts toward the future, there is at the heart of this microculture a yearning for classic values. Make's founder, Dale Dougherty, told me that what he had in mind was Popular Mechanics in its fifties heyday. At other times during the weekend, there was a clown, a carny game and Mr Jalopy's gumball machine full of useful bits and pieces. Make is about to sprout a sister publication, Craft, which offers patterns for knitting your own robot and instructions on printing fabric with an inkjet printer.

On the Saturday night, electric guitars and a banjo appeared and a group of campers played venerable blues and bluegrass for hours (while outside Leila Hasan played trip-hop through her iPod speakers). Even Werewolf, for which games rolled on until 5am both nights, has the feel of an old parlour game; albeit one which lends itself to a degree of drunkenness.

And of course the Foo "product launch", the Chumby, is consciously un-modern. It's soft and lumpy and encased in suede (although hacking that is encouraged: one of the highlights in the makers' room on Saturday night was the hacking of a Chumby into a Tellytubby: "We're now about to eviscerate Tinky-Winky …"); modern but quite the opposite of every other new electronic device you see. The Chumby Industries people refer to it as "the anti-Pod", and the CEO, Steve Tomlin, was delighted when the first report posted on it puzzled at its ugliness. He explains more of the thinking in his "first personal blog post".

Christine Herrono has a good write-up on the Chumby in her blog. I got one too - it'll be the Public Address Chumby - although it didn't recognise the WiFi network I created in my hotel room last night, so it'll have to wait until I get back to get properly born.

I have interviews in the bag with the Chumby guys, Dale Dougherty and Tim O'Reilly himself, although I haven't had time to do anything with them. Something else that'll have to wait.

Right now I'm in a hotel room in San Francisco, near Union Square in the zone where whitebread tourists, crazy people and crack dealers all rub shoulders. The town hasn't changed, then. I have some shopping and stuff to do before flying out tomorrow, and I bought myself a ticket to see Cat Power play tonight. Nice.

It's been a very, very good experience, getting out of my usual zone and seeing new things and new people. I've made a couple of contacts that should result in certain people turning up in New Zealand for our events. Maybe I'll get invited back next year, maybe I won't. I'm just glad I got to go to Foo Camp once.

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Quick update | Aug 26, 2006 06:46

I am now a member of something called Environment California, having been persuaded to sign up on a Sebastopol sidewalk by a pretty young Japanese-American. I explained that committing to a regular monthly payment would not be appropriate, given that I live in New Zealand, but made a once-only donation of $15, explaining that my Kiwi dollars didn't buy a whole lot of her American dollars.

We had, she said, to find a way of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in California. Well, I said, you could start with these, pointing to the line of SUVs waiting at the lights a few metres away. Yes, she said.

Honestly, the SUV thing here does my head in. I stood waiting to cross the road yesterday while a stream of single-occupant vehicles the size of small houses trundled past. Behind me there was an entire car sales yard of similarly-sized vehicles. Want independence from Middle East oil? Drive cars, not personal trucks. That'll help.

Gnat points out that IBM's RSS-for-the-whole-Internet thing is actually available for public use (registration required). As the IBM guys advised, be careful what you ask for. There's a lot out there.

This story from the Herald, about copyright interests reaching new heights of privacy abuse seems to be missing a few key facts. What is this software they're using to track personal searches? Does it really work like the story says? And who the hell do these people think they are?

I see National's Bob Clarkson is proving that elevation to Parliament hasn't elevated his mind any: declaring that Muslim women oughtn't wear burqas or even scarves because " how do we know there's not a crook with a gun hiding under a burqa? Who's under that gown?" He generously grants that he's got nothing against "homosexuals and lesbians as long as they're doing it in their own house, but if you try to ram it down my throat, look out." I think there are words for throaty sexual practices, but they're not for polite company. And a man who behaves the way Clarkson does around women has a bit of a nerve saying that, don't you think? National's gay MP (well, the out one) Chris Finlayson says he agrees with everything Clarkson says. I think if Finlayson cringed any further he'd implode.

Gleefully pedantic PA reader Alistair Windsor, of the Maths department of the University of Texas took issue with yesterday's post: " Your description of passing through Immigration in the US is obviously a thinly veiled tissue of lies. The threat level orange notices are not photocopied A4 they are photocopied Letter sized paper. This is a ludicrous 8.5"x11" size paper that is a standard in the US and nowhere else in the world."

Mathematicians, eh? Gotta love 'em.

More on coffee: Tony Peguero points out that I am not the only one to be put in mind of pure, unadulterated evil by the experience of a pod coffee machine. Very funny link indeed. And Melissa offered a Starbucks survival tip: "After a year or two living in Boston I realized that if you ask for a small latte with two shots of espresso and no 'foam' (the word froth doesn't seem to work in America) you get something that resembles a flat white, and doesn't taste like thin milk that they passed coffee fumes though. Hope this helps."

Things to like about Sebastopol: an awesome wholefoods store that stocks (alongside a lot of yummy food) cherry fruit extract, a demonstrably effective gout remedy that you can't get in New Zealand. Not cheap, but I'm not quibbling. Things to be amused by: a veterinary centre that offers homeopathy, acupuncture and herbal treatment. Things to be exasperated by: can no one in this town sell me a pair of cheap sunglasses?

Just waiting for a pick-up to go the O'Reilly campus for pre-Foo fun and looking at the final guest list. OMG. Larry Page, Bill Joy, Jeff Bezos, Mitch Kapor, former CTOs of Nasa and the US Defense Department, more serious-assed hackers (software, hardware, genetics) than you can shake a stick at … oh, and me. Some guy from New Zealand. Represent.

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It's all good, mostly | Aug 25, 2006 07:13

It wasn't quite the first contact I would have desired. The man on the immigration desk didn't seem to like me. In response to the usual opening question, I told him I was in the United States for a conference. He looked at my two-year-old "I" visa, which said I was a journalist, and decided that both statements could not be true.

"It says here you're a journalist," he said, eyeballing me. "Why didn't you tell me you'd be doing that?"

"Well, yes, I'll probably write some stories, but I've been invited the conference as a delegate" I said.

"But you'll be there as a journalist."

"No, as a delegate. But, yes, I'll be writing some stories about my trip."

"You say you 'will' be writing stories now," he said, pouncing on a target only he could see. "See, you've changed your story already. Do you know it's an offence to lie to a federal officer?"

I really didn't know what to say next. Eventually, after one of the most confusing and pointlessly hostile verbal exchanges I have ever endured, he stamped my passport. What the fuck was that all about?

Fortunately, immigration man was the only American I've met who wasn't upbeat, polite and friendly. Even the security staff manning the endless security hurdles in stuffy, sweaty halls were pretty cool. The heavy manners of a fearful security environment are inescapable at the airports. Photocopied A4 sheets are sellotaped to doors with the news that the "threat level" has moved to "orange". A honest appraisal of the recent scares would suggest that the "threat level" has not really changed at all, and that a good deal of the shaking-down is arbitrary and for show, but, hey, it's not my country. It's still hell of a relief to not have to be anywhere near an airport for a few days yet.

I've been busy. First stop on Tuesday was with SixApart, home of Moveable Type and LiveJournal, and, more recently Vox, an impressive personal-blogging platform aimed at noobs, and experienced bloggers who want a closed-circuit channel to communicate privately with friends and family. The user-friendliness of the back end of Vox was pretty amazing, as was its integration with Flickr, YouTube and Amazon. I have a Vox invite, so I'll have a bit of of a play and report back sometime.

I interviewed SixApart's co-founder Mena Trott, a bubbly bohemian who wouldn't look out of place in a K Road café. The company has a mostly open-plan floor of a nice old brick building, where about 100 people work (there are 40 more in other locations, mostly overseas). She and her co-founder Ben have closet-sized offices of their own.

In what seems to be the manner of all tech firms, Six Apart lays on free drinks by the truckload; delicious fruit nectars and flavoured mineral waters. Their kitchen is also home to something called the Keurig Premium Coffee System, which affects the appearance of an espresso machine, but is in fact the creation of Satan himself.

You insert a pre-packaged pod of coffee and press the button. What comes sluicing out to fill your paper cup looks like hot coca-cola. It is very possibly the worst cup of "coffee" I have ever had in my life. The search for acceptable coffee becomes an underlying theme. Like the PA readers who wrote desperate emails for our coffee posts a while ago, I've been obliged to resort to Starbucks. Starbucks espresso is not bad so much as truly, desperately average; about the cup you'd expect to be served in, say, Taumarunui (I hope I'm not doing Taumarunui undue insult there). Its latte is definitively insipid.

Our next stop was the Google campus, a place of busy calm; light and air. It seems designed to expose process - you walk past a window and there's a meeting going on inside. Food (three meals free a day for employees) is everywhere, and there are rooms for massages when they get a bit tense. People whizz around on electric scooters and all the buildings have large whiteboards for people to scrawl random creative geek shit on. You can feel the brainpower bubbling beneath the surface. The PR girly who walked me around had a Masters in Psychology.

From there, Gnat and I and his Irish programmer mate Brian went to Sushi Blowfish to Die For, a high-concept sushi-fusion restaurant soon to open its first non-US branch in Auckland (the founders have recently been in NZ overseeing the new place, which is being established by a returning expat couple who were long-term customers of the San Francisco restaurant).

I had thought, well, another sushi bar in Auckland: so what? But I can see the niche now. One dish didn't quite work for us but most were divine. My personal favourite was the Ritsu rolls: high-grade tuna wrapped in nori, dipped in a light tempura batter and briefly deep-fried. Yes, I know, it sounds wrong, but it was incredibly delicious.

Presentation is a hallmark: the sashimi combination comes atop a ceramic pot of dry ice and arrives at the table oozing exotic white vapour (we took a movie of that, but I haven't been able to get the files off my phone yet - I'll post it next time). The cocktails were excellent too - especially the one made with sake, lychees and lime juice. Could I come along to the Auckland opening please? I'd like to do that again.

Gnat and I moved along to the inner-city apartment of SixApart programmer Artur Bergman. Artur is Swedish, and the crowd of clever people assembled there included several Brits (all, it seemed former BBC employees, including Tom Coates, who wrote the stinging Who's Afraid of Ashley Highfield? post that everyone's linking to lately). They worked for Yahoo, Google and Flickr.

The purpose of the gathering was to play a few rounds of Werewolf, a sort of blend of roleplay and strategy. No computers: just one card per person that tells them their role - the rest is gameplay, which consists largely of observation and argument. I can see why people making social software would like this game. I had thought I wouldn't like it, but it was pretty good fun.

We were up too damn early the next day for the drive to the IBM Almaden Research Centre, which was a lot better than I expected. It was in fact, really, really cool. The place itself is a 1970s California modernist complex set atop a beautiful hilltop near ugly San Jose. Its long, broad halls are paved with stone and walled with wood and its front desk is manned by a friendly black woman called Nicole M. James, whose mother occupied the same seat for 20 years.

Our first presentation was from the WebFountain project, which focuses on handling very large bodies of data. They have the entire public Internet archived on one system (half a petabyte, if you were wondering), which made up the corpus for a demonstration of semantic searching. That is, searching for concepts and relationships. I had to resist the screaming urge to ego-search myself, but we did do Theresa Gattung.

Other points of interest: the overall average colour of the web is a blue-tinged grey. In South East Asia it tends more to a red or orange tinge, in Korea is it starkly monochrome and the Germans have an inexplicable fondness for pink and purple. Also, Almaden can take any term or relationship you like and turn it into an RSS feed for the entire Internet.

I also liked Fringe, a project that turns the traditional IBM internal contacts directory into a kind of corporate MySpace - friending and all. They're working on identity-production style integration of media as a next step. It was presented by a laid-back dude in a Green Day t-shirt. It's clearly not your Dad's IBM any more.

We stopped in at Apple Computer on the way back. We were pretty tired after five hours of presentations, and after a brief chat with some Kiwis I'd been forbidden to interview under Apple's crushing press policy, I shopped for some merch at the Apple Store and we piled back into the car to head for Sebastopol.

We, I should explain, means me, Gnat (re-pat Kiwi and O'Reilly employee Nathan Torkington, who is the angel behind this trip) and his offsiders Rael (a South African Jew) and Surj (a British Indian). They all share a relentless, tasteless sense of humour that makes them a pleasure to be around. By the time we reached our hotel last night I swear that my whole head hurt from laughing.

Along the way, we stopped off in Berkeley, with which I was immediately more comfortable than the blasted hills of the valley, with its strip malls and millionaire enclaves. ("Mountain View, Cupertino - all the famous names are shitholes," Gnat explained. "Except for Palo Alto, which is Stanford.")

We ate at a brilliant little restaurant called Breads of India and did a little tour of the town, where it was "rush week" at the university and the gently sloping paths around were flocked with pretty young things looking to pledge to their future soroities. We passed the famous computer science department (home of BSD and all) and exited via what Rael called "gourmet ghetto").

And here we are now in Sebastopol: granola town. It's nice - full of craft shops and cafes, with a great record shop and an interesting-looking used bookshop nearby. Best of all, and finally, there is really good coffee not 20 metres from my hotel room door at a hippyish café which also served me a lovely light cherry-and-almond muffin that was in a different cosmos to the stodge on every corner at Starbucks. The barista remarked to me that the espresso was coming out beautifully today. Oh yes. Coffee that doesn't taste the same every day, everywhere.

I have a little work to do before I can wander around in the sunshine, so I'd better see to that. The hotel wi-fi is too iffy to bother uploading pictures (or even to faff about with more links), but I'll do y'all a gallery next time. It's kind of nice to have a day to process rather than absorb all the stuff that's coming off all the fiercely smart people I'm meeting. Foo Camp will be smart people up the wazoo for three days and I'd like to have something to say for myself there. So please, look after New Zealand while I'm away and I'll catch you later.

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