Every time I come home from a conference, I'm tempted to write about how WiFi has changed technical conferences. The change is both positive and negative, but on the whole I think it's negative.

Luckily, I don't need to articulate why. Chris has done it for me. Go read what he wrote.

Posted by jzawodn at June 07, 2005 07:19 AM

Reader Comments
# Arun C Murthy said:

In your experience: is it only WiFi's fault or does it exacerbate ubiquitousness of the portable computer?

Btw... I'm betting in lots of these places WiFi is not a secure one... :D

on June 7, 2005 09:12 AM
# Paul said:

I am wondering if you have any material on the NDB engine that may be going into 2nd edition of HPMySQL? There seems to be a dearth of documentation on NDB.

on June 7, 2005 01:02 PM
# Dave McClure said:

sorry, i violently disagree with this perspective, much as i respect Chris, his opinions, and his capabilities as an interesting speaker / presenter.

1) A speaker's desire for attention & focus should be earned through interesting material & presentation, not mandated by the audience's lack of a wireless connection.

2) If the presenter does a good job, they might even juice my natural free-association abilities by inspiring an interesting concept -- whereby i may then want to lookup a URL, email or IM someone about the idea, or blog about it (real-time).

3) If the presenter doesn't have something interesting to say, then i can exercise my right to check out something else online -- w/o having to getup and walkout of a room full of people (and yes i have no problem doing that & have in the past, but in the middle of a crowded row it's tougher to pull off... and it's not very considerate of others who may find it interesting).

in short, i don't believe i should be mandated to live according to the presenter's and/or conference organizer's dictated philosophy about whether i should have access to a wireless connection.

like the rest of the world, speakers / presenters should face up to the fact that they have competition for my attention, and not force me to make that choice before i know what i'm getting into.

now give me back the needle, dammit -- i can quit anytime i want to...

- dmc

on June 7, 2005 05:13 PM
# Chris DiBona said:

This does bring up a funny question, who decides what....the speaker who is speaking for free or the conference goer who is paying for a conference.

on June 7, 2005 11:00 PM
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone. My current, past, or previous employers are not responsible for what I write here, the comments left by others, or the photos I may share. If you have questions, please contact me. Also, I am not a journalist or reporter. Don't "pitch" me.

 

Privacy: I do not share or publish the email addresses or IP addresses of anyone posting a comment here without consent. However, I do reserve the right to remove comments that are spammy, off-topic, or otherwise unsuitable based on my comment policy. In a few cases, I may leave spammy comments but remove any URLs they contain.