Six Geeks
Last week at the
ETCON,
James Duncan Davidson
posted
this picture which captures so many different themes to me.
First: I met Jeannie Cool! That's how this impromptu gathering took place. I was at the conference and saw jeannielap join #joiIto. From the ip address, I could tell that it was from within the conference hotel. I asked Jeannie where she was, and she told me that she was in the sports bar. Within a few minutes I joined her.
One by one, more people showed up. Ultimately we moved to a bigger table, and some of the overflow went to other tables.
Then there is the reason that Duncan took the picture in the first place. Where else would you find six geeks talking to one another laptops in a sports bar? Captures the ambiance of ETCON perfectly.
And yet, it is so 2004. Five years ago, a respectable geek conference would have a massive "internet" room with rows of shiny machines. Now such rooms are a mere appendage. Five years from now, this picture will seem so dated.
What will the devices of 2010 look like? There seemed to be general agreement at the table that the device of choice will look more like a cell phone than a laptop. Perhaps having Sony and Nokia at the table influenced this conclusion.
In any case, such a change would mean much more than tiny screens and poor input devices. While IRC and blogging build upon a client/server architecture, phones tend to be more point to point. Even after these issues are addressed, subtle differences will make have a large impact on the types of communities which will form; much as the subtle but significant difference in whether jibot is privately addressable makes to the kind of community #joiIto is.
Finally, there was the photographer himself. Three to four years ago, Duncan and I worked closely together despite the difference of aligment of our relative employers at the time. He has changed jobs twice, and physically moved since then. Three to four years ago feels like a lifetime.
And yet we still keep in touch through weblogs and conferences.