nerd’s eye view

Feed Your Brain at Gnomedex

August 24, 2008 – 7:59 am | by nerd's eye view

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I am a shy person. I am uncomfortable in large crowds and noisy places. I don’t mind strangers if there are three or four of them, when there are three or four hundred I don’t know what to do. So I find a quiet place to sit and drink my coffee. This is a real shame because as I read the blogging about Gnomedex – which I thoroughly enjoyed – I feel like I missed out. “What great people!” “What great connections!” It’s out there, over and over.

Never mind all that. If I wanted to meet you and didn’t, it’s because I’m a dork. I might be dropping you a line later, please don’t think I’m stalky.

Do you read Wired? We do at our house – from time to time we subscribe and in general, I think it’s pretty freaking great. It’s a weird mash of new technology discoveries, science, storytelling, gadgetry, pop culture, and out there geekiness. Gnomedex was like that, only live. And like Wired, not everything in the conference appealed to me, not everything engaged, but most of it was hugely entertaining and, in some cases, inspiring.

A traveler who uses photography to educate and inspire social change (Amanada Koster:SalaamGarage) spoke on the same stage with a grad student (Jon Malkin: UW) who’s working on the voice activated joystick that allows disabled people to interact with computers. An educator who uses social media to raise money for a cause she’s passionate about (Beth Kanter) spoke on the same stage with the guy who runs one of the most popular, funny, and frivolous humor sites on the web (Ben Huh: I Can Haz Cheezburger). A controversial journalist tried to lead a contentious and noisy room through a conversation about blogging (Sarah Lacy) in the morning and that afternoon, a scientist who navigates the Mars Rover (Scott Maxwell) – that’s right, on Mars, the planet – brought the room to an awestruck silence with a picture of the earth from the surface of Mars.

Wow.

As a traveler and photographer, I was surprised and delighted to see subject matter on the program that spoke directly to my interests. As someone who exists on the edge of the technology playground, it was exciting to see new ideas – I enjoyed the “open source hardware” presentation (Jeremy Toeman: Buglabs) way more than I would have imagined. And on the consumer side, there’s no denying the appeal of the I-Want-One-Now open source media center project (Dave Matthews: Boxee).

There were a couple of dead spots – I was having trouble staying tuned in to a presentation on Vendor Relationship Management (you might be glazing over as you read those words) and the laptop security session that followed sent me in search of more coffee and out on to the balcony to get some daylight and to watch the cruise ships load.

But on the whole, I loved the presentations – they sparked some sleeping synapses in my brain. For me, the take away from Gnomedex wasn’t what the presenters are doing, fascinating though it was. It’s a question, really. How can technology be used to make the world a better place?

“What’s Gnomedex?” That’s come up a lot over the last few days. I can tell you what it was this year – a presentation of big cool ideas by people using technology to do amazing things. I’ve heard that in the past, it was way geekier, considerably less appealing to entry level nerds like me, people who use tech but don’t really care about what’s under the hood. Not so this year. If there’s more of the social and cultural aspect of tech on the program for next year, I’d totally go again. And for those major geeks who like the under the hood stuff, you should too because people like me need people like you to build stuff for us.

Digesting that giant pipe of information over the last two days? Totally exhausting. Being surrounded by humans with their brains firing like mad? Absolutely exhilarating. Gnomedex? Awesome. You should go with me next year.

For the record, I have a little bit of blog angst from time to time, but nothing getting up and walking away from the computer won’t cure almost immediately.

Related Notes:

• You can watch the Gnomedex talks- the recorded videos are on the site.
• Did you vote for travelblogging at SxSW yet? Please do.
• Trick for calming restless nerds? Talk to them about space.
• Major thanks to Elliot Ng from Uptake who sold me his Gnomedex pass for 1/2 price.