intertwingly

Doug Daulton: I'd heard nothing negative about anyone, but past experience tells me anytime you get a group this size together, you are bound to shake out a sphincter or three. None here, I am happy to report.

Doug and Doc Searls capture a bit of the essence of the bustling anthill which was ApacheCon 2003.  While ApacheCon is a place where you can meet an author of the HTTP spec, it is also a place entirely devoid of rock stars.  Instead it is a place where work gets done.

It is a place where the epic battles that occur on mailing lists are put aside in favor of mass consumption of beer.  And visiting Klingons.  In fact, the biggest feedback (at least in IRC) was that the conference needed more beer.

Best of show in my book goes to Chris Pirillo who's keynote covered the magic of syndication.  This being said, Chris's example served to prove one of the key points in Doc's subsequent keynote.  It took Chris paging to the third page of a feedster query to find a dissenting point of view.  This was then picked up by a journalist as conflict, and subsequently reverberated through the blogosphere.  Which just goes to prove another of Doc's points: namely that bloggers are journalists.

All in all, ApacheCon is not the place where epic battles happen.  Instead it is a place of pure Stigmergy.  This is the way I like it.

Though, I must confess, I do kinda wish that the suggestion I heard from an unnamed participant that we should dump Andy Oliver in the swimming pool had been acted upon...