First, a major thumbs down to OMG for not providing free wifi in the conference rooms — this is an expected level of service at any computer-related conference these days. The Doubletree (where the conference is being held) has paid wifi throughout the hotel so I was able to get online, at a price. One of the conference speakers later made the comment in response to all the requests for wifi that we should just turn off our laptops since we were supposed to be paying attention to the conference rather than reading our email. Thanks, Mom, but I was actually taking notes and live blogging about the conference, not reading my email.
On a more serious note, every presenter who I heard speak today was an expert in their particular area, but knew almost nothing about competing standards. I heard the phrase “I’m not an expert in xxx” too many times today, and I think that anyone involved in standards like this who is speaking at such a workshop should be at least familiar with the other standards that they are inevitably going to be asked about. I’m still sorting through how all these standards and formats fit together, which are competitive versus complementary, and it doesn’t help when the speakers don’t have a vision of at least their part of the landscape.
My favourite presentation was John Evdemon’s: not only was he informative, he also has a lot of passion for his topic. We had a brief chat afterwards about how we can bring together process and Web 2.0 that I hope to continue later.