DivaBlog

Another story from "BlogOn2004" today.

Some folks from Microsoft were presenting on the fine work they've done with Channel 9 (rant...the videos don't work on my Mac or presumably on Linux, but they looked great on the demo)...

Anyway, the presenter was doing his pitch in a polished way and at one point he said he wanted to show us a "really cool" feature and he looked up into the audience and said "Show of hands...How many of you use Internet Explorer?". Probably 99 times out of 100 when he asks that question all the hands go up, right? Well first there was a pause and then a giggle and then a whoop of laughter as the audience looked around and realized that NO ONE had raised a hand. The presenter was thrown off his mark, but he recovered and said, "Wow! Okay how many of you wish we'd fix IE so you could use it?"

Still no hands....

Informal survey afterwards said the Windows users in the crowd were all using the latest Firefox. Wouldn't it be amazing if Mozilla ended up winning in the end?

This is my second day of attending "BlogOn2004" on the UC Berkeley campus. Its another in a series of conferences announcing the dawn of "Social Media". This morning's panel has Dan Gillmor, Ross Mayfield, James Currier, Reid Hoffman, Michael Sikillian and Jim Spohrer. They're talking about new media futures, which is pretty interesting I guess

Funny enough that many of the futures they are talking about have been floating through the conferences I attend for about the last 2 years. This conference exists to push the vision further into industry consciousness, I guess. Some of the organizers used to work on the Demo tradeshows, whose reason for existence as far as I could tell is to get rich "influencers" together via exclusivity and luxury...they bill themselves as the "world's most elite product showcase". The folks they've invited seem to mostly be members of the choir, however. I guess you have to start somewhere (they plan future events they tell me).

So far nothing very new to those already following blogging is being discussed here. Predictions that Social Networking phenomena will become increasingly important (from people who run companies banking on that outcome). Predictions there will arise a Social Media marketplace. Assertions that Social Media is "virtuous" (more so than traditional media" and (Dan Gillmor's) prediction that early proprietary "standards" will quickly lose to open standards. Concern over the effect of over-regulation on the potential of this new movement.

Looking at other people's blogs on the conference, I see I'm not the only one wondering when we'll go past the known here