Reboot Fragments

Reboot 4.0

Reboot is a chance for Danish web amateurs and professionals to take a day off from work to hang out and listen to American web experts opine. This is my third year returning; these are my notes on 23 May 2001:

Reboot 4.0 in a former slaughterhouse
a less funky venue - gone the giant Navy equipment tracked along the ceiling with giant hanging truck sized hooks
looks like double or triple the 900 people I saw at previous Reboots
less eating and drinking and smoking during the talks - more civilized.

My presentation
tough to go first, but exhilarating, rewarding - you're off early and if you do well you can contribute a good opening stanza
I felt good about my speech - the pattern of writing out an essay, abstracting an outline. I ditched PowerPoint at the last minute - it felt good to be unchained from the computer and competing with my own visuals.
The view from stage:

1.1 meg extra blowup mega-mix

dave winer
more laconic speaking.
immediately after my talk I'm invited to interviews outside, keeps me out of the path of Winer's words
(anders from danish radio; lars, from danish daily paper; geppe freelance young dude; anne louise - borsen business daily)
Dave Gray
storytelling walkthrough for character Joe who wants to communicate, trying to develop an information package. cartoons powerpoint.
moral of the powerpoint - stories sell ideas, stories have moral content
he cites some of my themes - learning from gaming, games as future of visual storytelling
Mark Hurst - Creative Good
great graph - increasing web site complexity, decreasing % of technologically literate web users
amusing site critiques
separate speech about bit ownership and manipulation - trying to pack too much abstract engaging content at the end of a tangible series of web usability critiques.
Lunch - I realize this is the only internet conference I've been to where there are four bars, one in each corner, serving beer to an eager, well-dressed audience starting at 11am.
Evan Williams
my eyelids and knees are dropping out - i retire to a backroom to sleep sitting up in a chair
through the wall I'm leaing against I hear evan gives a tour of the world of weblogs, shares his pyra evolution.
emerging later, I see he paces relentlessly, holding a beer and a notepad
He's got a nice straightfoward delivery, I like to think it's his Nebraska roots.
his Q&A is a five way panel
are weblogs hype or the next big thing? panelists agree, it's as old as the web and consistent. Some argument over the shape of weblogs - reverse-chronoligical
Thomas, who seems to coordinate this entire thing, he's turning 24 in a few weeks
smart young chap - we talk about how rushkoff's rampant productivity makes us feel lazy
outside I meet hilda
attractive, quick, honest. said nice things about my words
I was turned on by her confidence, and almost sorta glad when she dropped
"my boyfriend" early in the conversation -
blood flowed from my loins upward
Douglas Rushkoff
I'm downwind from Winer smoking - argh

beautiful city, beautiful girls, beautiful boys
denmark you got a good thing going here - don't let what five americans tell you fuck it up
coffee beans fueled the renaissance
now is parallel to the renaissance
perspective painting - holograph
coffee - LSD
round world - fractal
calculus and limits - chaos theory
printing press - web
so now is as big as the capital R renaissance
reality itself is open source - popular line
media is where we negociate the reality standards
television "programming"
doug is anti-story as closed source
interactive media broke open the "how" of story
then the "what"
first change was the remote control
deconstructed TV - consumers avoiding tension
pong was the power to manipulate pixels
joystick demistified TV
keyboard and mouse equal DIY
pyramid of finance raising building - angels on top, first round VC, etc.
ignoring lesson of the bible - building pyramids is for slaves
some of you are still waiting for shares to vest
but the rich people have already left
technology development has been retarted since money hype?
no government net intervention? business comes
like absence of bacteria inspires growth of fungus
internet has just fought off another infection
social currency of media and the internet
timothy leary's advice to new acidheads - "find the others"
reboot reality on your own terms
any technology that's not helping you meet other people and maybe get laid, what the fuck is it worth?
evolution is the operating system of an open source reality

all the speakers leave for the last panel, it's in danish. as I sit here updating my site with my wireless web connected laptop, the audience is much more animated, laughing and calling out, in their home tongue, and beer glasses appear abounding.
This ends in a seven minute speech by the lunch cook, who performs sound effects of pigs fucking. a little bit different than the high minded dialog on open source and web logging today, well loved by this audience.
muscles in my leg are tightening and numbing up - I'm getting folding chair ass. I'm sweating and parched from ambient smoke. Gotta finish the web site.
Sarah from BizReport in Denmark asks Rushkoff and I to say what kind of IT business we're in, and what kind of soda and car we would identify that with. Martin sits nearby to show us Waveform.dk, a sound exchange.

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