Impressed with, and impressions from, the Reboot conference

The first day of the Reboot 8 conference offered everything from the macabre ("Marx predicted the knowledge economy and it heralds the end of capitalism") to the mundane (rules to help you deal with email overflow). Most of the topics in between were both interesting and inspiring.

The Big Questions were asked by conference organiser Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, unpublished author Michael Thomsen and big bank CIO / blogger JP Rangaswami. While we use digital technologies to improve processes and work smarter, they are bringing about changes at the core of our culture. By understanding our past and not focusing on kludges brought about by previous constraints we can harness technology to deliver a renaissance of the things that really matter. In the process, power may shift geographically and structurally depending on who is prepared for the change. Globalisation and disintermediation were not brought about by the internet, they have been happening for decades; but coupled with the effects of Moore's law, Metcalfe's law and the global bandwidth glut we are witnessing change that forces us to revisit the fundamental models for society. Only by building on a solid foundation can we hope to define sustainable models. Out with the previous century's concepts of marketing, censorship, privacy and requirements placed on individuals because certain things used to be of a monopolistic naature; in with freedom of choice, transparency and clear cause-and-effect relationships (build a good reputation by doing good things).

In another session, Matt Webb suggested that good software design should take into account how humans use their senses and focus on providing us with useful super-sensory perception. I have previously written here about geotagging and creating a people-generated map of our planet: Steve Coast presented the structured approach that OpenStreetMap has taken to it. If you own a GPS, start contributing your traces to the 21m existing data points.

In terms of demos, PirateBay impressed by not demoing their website: Their infrastructure had been empounded the day before by Swedish police. Another example of old-world thinking leading to bizarre outcomes in the new economy. And on the subject of bizarre, Austrian event artists Ubermorgen.com entertained us after dinner with how they helped burst the internet bubble for eToys, how they were accused of disrupting a US presidential election and how they are (slowly) taking control of Google with Google's blessing and finances.

A sign of a good quality conference is that the breaks are as interesting (or more) than the planned sessions. Konrad Marx (no relation to Karl) explained how spreadshirt.net is rethinking the approach to branded clothing. Using wikis internally while engaging their customers externally are just a few of their modern ways of running a business born this century.

Around midnight, I had an introduction to thingamy, a potential ERP/CRM/SCM killer app, by Sig Rinde. I borrowed a version of the software that I can install on my Mac when I get it. I plan to spend some of my spare time building a model of a professional services firm.

Tags: reboot reboot8 thingamy spreadshirt ubermorgen.com copenhagen Karl Marx capitalism