Webstock 2012: Sex, death, tech and the way to make $100m

Mike Brown started out with a strangely disturbing eulogy to himself, the co-organisers and Webstock, and the affection of doing an excellent job and the way important that was. I almost expected him to interrupt into My Way.

'Love' is usually an enormous theme at Webstock; i suppose there's some variety of hippy connection (ie, Woodstock). Nonetheless it always makes me smile, as nearly 1000 web developers/IT professionals/entrepreneurs/etc in a room and talks of 'love' from the primary stages strikes me as incongruous.

Actually, except for your entire intellectual goodness at Webstock yearly, incongruity is usually present. Last year it was from watching the 1930's German erotica-styled Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) point out sex, technology and each of the while swearing, struck me as challenging geek comprehension. Although that wasn't half so strange as Palmer seeking to cause them to dance during a musical performance to finish the development.

A year before that, I (and most others, i believe) was astounded when Kevin Rose (founding father of Digg) announced he was going to inform everyone the way to raise US$100 million in venture capital.

Basically, this meant working through one street a chance capitalists in California.

But one hundred thousand would were a lot more apt, in a recession, in Wellington.

However, this incongruity is a part of Webstock's charm - part of that heady mixture of presenters and their information designed to challenge these bright people, perhaps (and hopefully) thus inspiring them directly to greater things.

There always seems an unspoken theme at Webstock. a number of years ago it was mobile devices; before that, accessibility.

This year it sort of feels to be history - a time of reflection. Speakers include type expert Jessica Hische, and iPad app designer Jennifer Brook after living in a treehouse for years and hand-creating books - and leather shoes.

Kathy Sierra was the primary speaker - she has presented at Webstock before. Sierra carried on Mike Brown's tone of reflection. She even showed an image of herself as a professional skateboarder inside the 1970s, and glossed through a history of her game coding to where she is now.

Sierra said that social media has changed everything. True - changed everything for westerners rich enough to have computers, and strong technology of their pockets, anyway. Social networks have sure had an impact on attention spans. a chum of mine sat through a Webstock seminar yesterday and afterwards was shocked to find the presenter were tweeting through the whole thing. Yes, the presenter! Some tweets were relevant, to the presentation, but others were inane, and this from an authority on "usable security and research methods for social media usability".

Basically hall, Sierra got people representing different skill sets to face up - for sure, soon the overall town hall was standing. This was a confidence building exercise, i assume. On this way, Webstock functions as one of those team building exercise.

She made some excellent points, like "Are not making a killer app - make a killer user". She showed the star of Dexter because the killer user - i realized him at an Auckland gig only a few months ago.

I liked her point that businesses make glossy manuals to entice buyers, then fob them off with boring manuals after they buy. As a former game developer, Sierra talks in regards to the 'gameification' of apps, technology and how we interact with them.

She was okay received, the gang lapped it up.

I used to do a count of the way many Apple devices there have been within the room. First it was 20 per cent, then it was 50, then 80... now I only see two or three PCs and glowing Apple logos everywhere. Apple won this fight, people. Every one of these experts are actually are using Macs.

Here speaker was Jeremy Keith, an Irish-born web developer who works for the internet consultancy firm Clearleft. Keith wrote the books DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, and most recently, HTML5 For Web Designers.

Keith talked abut the evolution of human ideas about time, communication networks and the discovery of computing. I liked his talk - I got the impression (probably wrong) that some of the attendees had never heard of Babbage, Whitworth, Lovelace or Turing.

Now, Keith said, persons are 'working for 'algorithms': if people build server farms to dance more and faster market transactions, that's in effect what they're doing. For computers are handling our markets, making changes and adjustments at lightning speeds.

This sounded just a little dark (SkyNet, anyone?) so Keith bought it back to the human transactions within the social networks. That is very important, for "The web will forget our hopes and dreams."

Dana Boyd is from The Establishment (well, that is what Microsoft and the MacArthur foundation represent to me). That said, she looked young and cool. Boyd is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and a research associate at Harvard University's Berkman Center for internet and Society. She is currently co-directing the Youth and Media Policy Working Group, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Boyd "examines everyday practices involving social media, with specific attention to youth engagement", and recently co-authored Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.

Even that title rings a bell in my memory of the Microsoft TV ad wherein the teens capture dad dancing like a robot and woa, before you understand it, the video is on the web. Woah, crazy or what ...

Anyway, Boyd's talk was interesting. I liked her point that terrorists use fear to spread their ideology, while Western governments spread fear as a way to justify harsher laws and more surveillance, and more control of, as an example, file sharing and the net. The media was mentioned, too: fear used as a marketing tool to extend emotional pull.

This was contrasted with the idea of Radical Transparency - the more honest information there's out in public, the easier everything can be.

Oh yeah, and she or he ran her presentation from a Mac. Anyway, Boyd's bringing of fear into the talk has not been heard enough, and it was appreciated.

Egypt's part inside the Arab Spring was also mentioned: Egypt is an unlimited country. Just a tiny proportion was online and portion of the much-publicised spread of data through social networks.

Her final point was that power is now inside networks, whereas formerly it was hierarchical. "The technologies that we're building are shaping public life."

You could build tools but you can not control how people use them.

And that was the primary portion of Day One at Webstock.

By Mark Webster