Top > DaveNet archive > 2000 > Touch of grey > <h4><a name="10">The scene</a></h4><p>
1. There were so many interesting people in the room. Michael Schrage from the MIT Media Lab. Mike Weiner who I knew from the Thesaurus Wars of the mid-late 80s. Turns out he's a patent expert. Others I have mentioned, the ever-grinning Jakob Nielsen, Tim O'Reilly who thought the Web Apps should be on the main stage, and Esther Herself who said most people wouldn't understand. I love Esther, but..

2. Was this the beginning of an industry? Perhaps. There were other Web Apps at Esther's, including the new Kleiner-Perkins startup Firedrop, and Desktop.Com, which is more gutsy than even Ken Rhie's ThinkFree.

3. If we get another larger meeting together, perhaps its own conference, I want to be part of it. I would be very happy to play the same role I played in Phoenix. This was one of the best sessions I ever moderated. I had as much fun as I had at the Can Apple Survive? panel at Seybold in 1997 (which I think helped save the publishing market for Apple) and the private session we had at Microsoft in 1998 where we designed XML-RPC.

4. I like moderating groups of people. When I'm the only one on stage I don't know who to talk to. I've tried little tricks to pretend I'm conversing with a particular audience member, but I get in my head and it doesn't come through very well. But give me a group of people and I can make them shine, and give the audience their moneys-worth. I do this better than anything else I do, including writing essays and software.

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8/20/2008; 5:06:18 AM Eastern.
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