CTC 2005 Day 0 and Day 1

The inaugural Collaborative Technologies Conference in New York is going great (see www.ctcevents.com). In terms of my attendance, I'm half-way through, having spent Sunday and Monday there, with Tuesday and Wednesday to go. How can something that you look forward to for so long suddenly be half-way gone?

The highlights of the conference for me to date are:

• Delivering the 7 Pillars Workshop as a pre-conference tutorial. It was neat to meet the attendees ... Susan, Ben, John, Bettina, Dan, Lars, and others ... the questions were good, the group interacted well, and I left feeling as though I'd contributed something of value to them for the weeks and months ahead. Lars even caught the New Zealander's view of my presentation ...



• Meeting so many of the players in the collaboration market, and getting a chance to shake their hand and say hi. Today I met Brian Hoogendam (Advanced Reality), Jared Spataro and Alex Pozin (Open Text), Peter O'Kelly and Irwin Lazar (The Burton Group), Francis deSouza (IMlogic), Pushpendra Mohta (Vayusphere), Ed Simnett (Microsoft), Chris Rechtsteiner (Parlano), Ross Mayfield (Socialtext), Paul Fulton (Orative), Mark Rankovic (Kubi Software), and many many others. This is heaven-on-earth for collaboration GEECs.


• Being able to attend the conference sessions and hear what others are thinking about. I definitely disagree with some of the things I hear, but that's good for productive friction.


• Giggling at the troubles that my roommate is experiencing with his new Tablet PC. He's rebooted at least 3-4 times in the last two hours, while I'm sitting here working just fine on my PowerBook. Long live Apple! Actually, he's just said "I'm going to buy a Mac" (more to come later).

My disappointments to date:

• The Westin New York charges US$16/day for in-room Internet access. It delivers a very poor quality experience, for a not insignificant amount of money. With 863 rooms in the hotel, if only 10% of stayers paid the charge, that's over $1300 per day in Internet access fees. For what it earns over the course of the month, then, the quality of the in-room Internet access should be fantastically awesome. I'm thoroughly unimpressed.


• Unfortunately, the sound system at the conference has been less than ideal. Microphones haven't worked, and loud feedback has been generated at multiple points. It's a good way for making people listen carefully and to get their attention ... but ... SCREECH!


• 25-slide "product pitches" from vendors. Grrr. They should know better, eg, that attendees don't appreciate this stuff. Eric said that I was agitated, and he was concerned that I was about to leave my seat to put things right.


• Having insufficient time to have all the conversations that I'd like to have. It's been awesome to meet up with all these people I've talked to for years ... it would be neat to have a day just to sit with each one and talk.

Sincerely congrats to Jennifer Pahlka, the conference chair, for pulling together a great conference. I'd love to attend next year.

Comments

[Martin Edic]

Michael,
Regarding your issues with hotel internet access. I had a business concept brainstorm after reading your complaint. Simply set up a wi-max network in an office across from a major hotel and put up a billboard advertising cheap access via a log in...