Ewan's Musings

ETech 2005 - Snap Summary

And it's all over for another year. Emerging Technology is a strange type of conference. I've found it more tiring than the Symbian Expo's and 3GSM's of this world, even though they've all involved a fair amount of walking around the floor, or travelling time. I think it's the sheer amount of information that needs to be absorbed in the 3 days of seminars that run almost wall to wall that's just causing my brain to say 'enough - let's put some Proclaimers on the MiniDisc to give me something to numb the synapses.

It's also a strange conference because it's really impossible to give myself a concrete goal that I can measure success against. After 3GSM there was the obvious number of articles posted to All About Symbian, and the ongoing Podcasts (of which Monday will see an interview with Sun CTO David Rivas being posted). What's the aim for ETech? Oooh, talk to a couple of people.

Kenton reminded me over Skype that a large part of this gig is being seen at an event like this, which makes sense. If you want to be taken seriously (and I'm pretty sure I do) then it's almost de rigeur to turn up (and also to use big words like that). I'm starting to see some of the ideas i saw bubble to the top of my brain (and if not the idea, the tag on the idea) so I'llprobably leave that post for another few days. What surprised me was the relative lack of podcasting buzz. Apart from Odeo sneaking in a beta launch at the last minute into the program (Mick and Cam really should have been here to be seen) it was either never mentioned, pushed aside as "why would I want to listen to a blog," or certain Finnish companies telling their staff that they were not to partake in any podcasting because "they wouldn't know what they had said..."