Treat Us Like 13 Year Olds
QuinnNorton's notes on TimOreilly's keynote at the 2004 EmergingTechnology conference. I wish I was there ...
tim o'reilly keynote, 2/10/04 having seen a few of tim o'reilly's keynotes i get the feeling that he throws conferences to get thousands of people working on the technologies he really wants. if tim really wanted a jet car, he'd throw a conference, invite some jet car enthusiasts and talk about how great it would be to have a jet car and then sit back and wait for someone to build him a jet car. it's like the peter lynch investing philosophy in reverse: instead of investing in the things you use everyday, get other people to invest in the things you wish you had everyday. in that spirit he gave us some new homework. he wants to see social software integrated into the "killer apps" of the net. he makes an excellent point about social software itself not necessarily being all that, but the features of social software are combined with existing major apps, amazing and fun things happen. he wants the full suite of social software features to be plugged into all the apps he uses. especially under osx- tim has a mac. he gave a great example of garage band not having an easy way of sharing user created files. once he mentions it, it's a no-brainer, but until then i hadn't really thought about it. he does seem to suggest that social software features should be so integral they should be as fundamental a part of the ide as the radio button, and he's probably right. he likes orkut more than me, but tim has always been moderate and forgiving and positive, which are excellent qualities in one of the "elders" of the community. if tim ever got his proverbial jet car and stopped asking us to make stuff for him it would be a great loss to the high tech community. he has a wonderful eye for possibilities. oh, and the "google adwords market" was frickin cool. he touched on hardware hacking, but without quite as much coherence. he likes hardware, but more seems to wait to be surprised than to be outlining what he wants his cell phone/battlebot/personal servant to do. o'reilly puts on a good conference. i have a theory of why- they keep things immature. i've done sessions teaching adults. adults are cool, calm, and assume you know what you are doing or that you're a bullshit artist. a good adult audience never takes its attention off you. but then, i've also done sessions with kids. my favorite are the 13 year olds. the early cynics, they've figured out that most of school is a waste of time. but then if you can just grab them, just get them excited about something, they forget you. they suddenly release all this energy at a subject, and often see their own insights as amazing. it's rare that they are right, but then again they only have to be right once to make a life out of an idea. you know what makes your conferences good, tim? we all act like 13 year olds. show me, make me care, and when you do, i'll care so much, and i'll believe that i can revolutionize the field. we are hanging on the edge of our own abilities. we don't know what we're doing, and we're not talking bullshit, but we may be wrong. but then we only have to be right once.