The wildly popular squishy cow doing booth duty at ISPCon.

On Tuesday May 16, I flew to Baltimore MD to attend ISPCon.  ISPCon is a conference for Internet Service Providers and is held twice yearly in Baltimore in Spring and Santa Clara in the Fall.

The AccordionGuy, Joey Devilla, pointed out to me that I was attending a wide range of conferences in this week from the ultra un-conference BarCamp to Mesh, a cross between un-conference and conference to ISPCon, a full out traditional conference.

There were a lot of differences to be noted.  For example, everywhere you looked at BarCamp or Mesh you saw someone hunched over a Mac typing away.  It seems de-rigeur to type up your thoughts on your Mac during an un-conference.  I felt really eccentric making my notes on paper.  At BarCamp and Mesh, I only saw one or two Windows-based laptops (complete with Technorati stickers) the whole time.  At ISPCon, I only saw one Mac the whole time (it was being used by Zimbra's product manager, to do demos of their Ajax based email client).



And so ISPCon turned out to be a good reality check after a few days of how blogs and Ajax will revolutionize the world.  ISPCon had many attendees who run ISPs, including dial up.  I heard a stat (which I haven't verified) that 50% of US internet users are using dial up.  Dial up!  As one attendee pointed out to me, a great number of his customers are still only interested in dialling in, checking their email and sending a few emails. 

An interesting topic that was frequently being discussed at ISPCon was wireless broadband, particularly in rural regions where DSL / Cable is not available.  Earthlink participated in the keynote address to discuss their municipal Wi-Fi projects.  However, I found it more interesting to talk to ISP operators who had a rural market and were investing in wireless to sell more broadband.

The fact that broadband is only now being rolled out to many people in the US at the same time that more and more media is going on line is creating an interesting dynamic.  Many times, I realized that my perspective (and those of BarCamp / Mesh Camp participants) is driven by having access to ubiquitous broadband.  Many people in that crowd say wait until we have ubiquitous wireless with constant broadband access.  But I think that when the current portion of dial up users starts to pay for broadband, it will be to access content on line.  If email inspired people to pay for dial up, then what will encourage them to pay for broadband?

A co-worker of mine at Tucows, Adam, & I had a discussion about Google.  Adam writes the secret snowboarding blog, so secret that I shall link to it here.

Adam knows alot about SEO and recommended that if I was interested in it, he really recommended John Batelle's book 'The Search'  and I just finished it.

Batelle's book is excellent and I highly recommend it as well.  It was interesting to read the history of web page search, especially the chapters on DEC and AltaVista.  Batelle is careful to stress that his book is not about 'Google' though it would be hard to tell that since the publisher decided to use Google brand colours on the book jacket (and I assume added the de-facto business book marketing '[...] changed the rules of business'.  The book is not too business-y and not too technical so anyone interested in Google would enjoy it.

Batelle believes that the concept of 'search' and the fact that more and more content is becoming digital is the key factor that is changing our society.  And Google is central to that. 

What struck me as I read the book was that I realized that in all the blogs and articles I had read about Google over the past year, Google is really taking on many faces.  To some Google is becoming a 'software' company ready to displace Microsoft.  To others Google is a centre of innovation and 'super smart' (Phd.) people who will change our world for the better.  While to others Google provides the most successful Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising model which has made domain names hot property again. 

That PPC model is what allows Google to be so many things to so many people.  PPC has brought in incredible amounts of cash.  And cash is time.  This week Eric Schmidt made a couple of statements publicly about Google.  He said that more competition will result in higher prices and that Google appears to be benefitting from a 'limitless growth model'.  Both of these statements can be argued to be true.  In theory, Google does have 'limitless growth model' but how will that work out in practice?  Well, you need alot of people searching, you need more and more people searching.  You need people searching more often. 

But when I think about this and all that I read about Google, I feel like its become almost a symbol or hope for the way we want the web to go.  Fortunately, in software a great vision can be shaped into reality.  This is both the advantage and downfall of many a CEO in software.  Is Google going to become the Google of our dreams?

Hot on the heels of BarCamp, I attended Day 1 of Mesh.  (It was no co-incidence that the two were held so close together.  Mesh panelist/speakers Tara Hunt and Chris Messina helped to organize BarCampTdot).

Mesh was organized by a group of bloggers who felt that the type of discussion taking place in Silicon Valley should happen in Toronto.  So rather than look to others, they organized a conference themselves.  The group includes Mark Evans, Stuart McDonald, Matthew Ingram, Mike McDerment and Rob Hyndman.

I think that it is incredible that this group could organize a conference in 9 weeks.  They had a great group of speakers and panelists.  In some cases, I think that they asked their favourite bloggers and perhaps not the people most authoritative people to speak on 'Web 2.0'.  Who would I rather hear from?  Someone from Yahoo, Microsoft or Google.  Someone from a hardware vendor (RIM?).

The group of attendees at Mesh was a real cross section.  I saw many of the same people that I saw at BarCamp or previous DemoCamps.  Many active participants in Toronto's development community attended as did a number of venture capitalists.  Also, there were many communications and marketing specialists attending from traditional industries.

I think Mesh could have benefited from a Web 2.0 101 stream and an advanced Web 2.0 stream.  The huge attendance and questions asked at Tris Hussey's well done 'Blogging 101' presentation illustrated how new these concepts are to most people.

I enjoy the topics that are discussed at Mesh but I don't think that there is enough acknowledgement that these concepts are very advanced and not yet mainstream.  I know that traditional media is going to go through huge changes because of Web 2.0 but I still have friends who say 'What's blogging?'.

On Saturday I attended day one of BarCamp TDot.

It was a great day.  Joey DeVilla has a great post on what Barcamp is, if you've never heard of it before.  To summarize BarCamp is an event for developers, product managers, marketers, students, designers .... anyone really to get together and talk about what interests them.  Generally, the topics are about technology but it can be a particular topic (Ruby on Rails) or theory (Agile Development).



I really enjoy the format of allowing people to self-organize and make their own presentation.  The rule of Barcamp is 'no participants' which can sound a little FightClub-ish but is really intended to say 'everyone can participate' or in other words, 'we all have the same authority to speak and contribute as a presenter'. 

BarCamp Tdot was organized by Jay Goldman and David Crow.  They did a great job.  It was held in a warehouse in Liberty Village.  There were drinks, and food.  I will post my notes from each session I attended.

My general impressions of BarCamp is that there is a great need for both DemoCamp and BarCamp events in Toronto.  Many people seem to be so happy to be able to attend this type of event to share, learn and meet other people.



What I noted was that there is not a broad enough spectrum of people attending BarCamp Toronto.  I *thought* there was no one from IBM but I was later correct by Jen Nolan that there were 5 attendees.  But I didn't meet anyone from ATI, RIM, Motorola, Bell Mobility or a major financial institution.  Perhaps BarCamp is supposed to be 'grassroots' and Tucows is the most corporate they want to take it but there are talented engineers doing interesting things at all those companies.  A few of us had a discussion about this and I was reminded that there could be another association for tech companies in Richmond Hill / North York.  So BarCamp/DemoCamp Tdot may really be BarCamp Downtown Tdot.  Personally, I would like to see a greater cross mix of hardware and software developers.

FootCred & Shayda
FootCred seemed good except I couldn't hear it properly.  Bad sound was problem that plagued more than one doc I saw.  I'm not sure why this doc wasn't mixed better since it was a completely studio product.  Documentary makers please do not under estimate the importance of audio quality.

Shayda
Excellent doc!  This was a compelling story of an Arab-Israeli (an Arab Muslim who holds an Israeli passport) young woman Shayda who competes in Karate championships with the Israeli team.  Shayda faces personal decisions as she tries to continue Karate after she marries.  A very personal examination of many issues - the treatment of Arab-Israelis, and the role of women in an Arab-Israeli family.  Highly recommended!

Maquiapolis: City of Factories
Excellent doc!  This doc covered the women who work in the Maquiapolis - the factories on the Mexican side of the US - Mexican border.  Under NAFTA raw materials can be imported into Mexico and finished goods exported out.  The jobs are well paid for Mexico but the local conditions in Tijauna are terrible.  The doc used footage recorded by the women themselves which was excellent.  This doc had an excellent soundtrack.  Two docs from Mexico in 2 days and both had great soundtracks.  Highly recommended.

Once in a Lifetime
Its always good to see at least one sports documentary at Hot Docs.  Once in a Lifetime describes the rise of the New York Cosmos and its star player Pele from Brazil.  I really enjoyed the watching the footage of Pele playing, he was an incredible soccer player.
This doc was fun to watch and had a great soundtrack.  Its an interesting story to see how Warner basically bought a winning team, a practice that was frowned upon at the time but regularly done now.  Enjoyable doc.  Watch for it in wide release.

Total Denial
This doc explores the human rights violations committed by the Burmese military while an oil pipeline was being built through Burma.  The oil companies chose to use the military for security in a country ruled by dictatorship.  The doc follows how the Burmese human rights activists successfully sued a US company for compensation.  Excellent doc, well made and tells the story excellently.  Highly recommended.

In The Pit
This doc examines the building of a bridge in Mexico City.  Imagine building the Gardiner expressway over a city 10 times the size of Toronto.  This was a great doc.  Particularly excellent sound track and the last five minutes of a continuous shot over the near completed bridge was amazing.  Highly recommended.