My first experiment with “live blogging” my notes from presentations has been interesting, as you can read through my “gnomedex” category or below. It’s oddly liberating - straight up, unedited, unvarnished impressions during a presentation, rather than self-edited and semi-polished interpretation after the fact. However, a bit of retrospection is also valuable the day after, so…
On Winer
In a world of corporate-speak, I have to admit Winer is a refreshing voice. He can piss you (actually, almost everyone) off at one time or another, because he doesn’t hold back. What he thinks, he says, often loudly and abrasively. I may take issue with his unbounded ego on occasion, but I’d rather he let thoughts like that fly rather than stifle them for the sake of decorum.
On his keynote and demo of OPML Editor - I was hoping to see how OPML Editor would be so revolutionary in terms of team workflow and knowledge management (speaking of corporatese). Perhaps due to the sporadic wireless he couldn’t get to it, or perhaps the product is early enough in development that it doesn’t demo well. But that was a disappointment - I can see glimpses of a potential, but I really don’t get a good feel for how this could be so powerful.
On Dean, GM of IE
Lots of blogger and media reaction to the RSS/Longhorn announcements. Steve Rubel has an interesting take on it as well. In my stream of thought reactions I believe I gave too strong of an impression of tension with the audience - call it transference, my apprehension about how Microsoft (and LH/IE7) would be received by this audience, which is (by my informal analysis) about 50% Mac users and probably 80%+ Firefox/Safari.
The actual response was along the lines of cautious interest, and some genuine enthusiasm. There were a few very negative reactions, which is to be expected in any setting, but by and large I think most folks were appreciative that a) Microsoft is making such a strong commitment to RSS in LH, and b) that Microsoft approached THIS audience to make the announcement, stand up and take any heat and openly engage in Q&A. To that end, I think Dean and team did a great job, and as an employee I was very excited to see it happen.
I also believe, as Rubel does, that years from now we’ll look back on today as the day when RSS started to truly go mainstream (right up there with when ESPN.com adopted them…nice), because with Longhorn and other developments, we’re going to see a future when no consumer will need to care or know they are using RSS, just that they are subscribing to some content they like.
Side note - I love the “Browse. Search. Subscribe” tripod concept Dean’s team is pushing. Very clear communication of the importance and user experience.
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