No matter how hard I try to describe Berlin, only one word comes to mind - it is very very “German”. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what I love about the place. Just like Weisswurst and pretzels, the city is numbingly bland on first impressions, until you discover the sachet of honey mustard. The wide streets layered with crunchy leaves reminded me of Boston. The ample public transport and complete lack of rush-hour traffic reminded me of Dublin… in a parallel universe… at 3am on a Wednesday… post apocalypse.
I spent five hours on Sunday walking around, seeing the sights. I got a good feel for the city… on a superficial level at least. Smart Cars proudly parked beside luxurious Bentleys. Stumpy dachshunds and puffy pomeranians waddling alongside hefty rottweilers and dobermans (should that be dobermen?) Berliners seem to have a particular fondness towards the more ungainly German breeds of dogs.
The conference itself was worthwhile. Purely by coincidence, I bumped into two lads from Enterprise Ireland, Brian and Jonathan, and before long there was a sturdy Irish contingent in place. Kevin from Electric Mill, Ben Mosse from Associated Press, Alan O’Rourke from Spoiltchild, and his Polish colleague Bartek “the noob” Czerwinski (or so the t-shirt says). Congrats to Alan and Bartek on the launch of Toddle - haven’t had a chance to test it out yet, but it looks good.
For a short time on Tuesday, Cork had the upper hand, as Tom Raftery and Mark from EMC joined the fray. Tom gave an informative and entertaining keynote talk about “reducing your carbon footprint”, inspired by his experiences in setting up the CIX datacentre in Cork. Widgets and social networks the world over breathed a sigh of relief, as Tom’s talk marked a hiatus in the concerted attempt to beat them to death.
Highlights of the event:
- Photosynth demo - truly incredible. I can’t wait to see this program in 18 months time when it has been developed a bit more. Kudos to Microsoft.
- Simon Willison, the co-creator of Django. I saw this guy at Future of Web Apps, introducing speakers and taking questions (I believe it’s called “the chair”, jut to confuse foreigners). I didn’t realise who he was at the time, but was impressed by his ability to understand some utterly garbled questions from the crowd, even when the speaker and the rest of the audience were baffled. His workshop on Monday was phenomenal. What seemed like a run-of-the-mill “so six months ago” topic (What AJAX can do for you / comparisons between the different JavaScript frameworks / Unobtrusive JavaScript, etc.) was a brilliantly articulated information overload and crash course in everything I wanted to know about this stuff. Not since the Godfather Part II has my attention been held so completely for a 3 hour session.
- Cal Henderson from Yahoo/Flickr about building scalable websites, while everyone else crammed in next door to see the illustrated guide to things things that suck and things that kick ass. At FOWA, I went to a bunch of talks about scaling web apps, so I didn’t expect much from this session, but it was outstanding. Just like Simon, Cal somehow managed to keep going for three hours without so much as a stammer. Disappointed that I missed the start, but I’ll buy his book, and the more detailed book he recommended too, if I can remember the name of it…
- David Recordon’s OpenID pitch. Why did I go to a talk about OpenID? I have no idea. My interest in the subject has always hovered somewhere between moderate, and approaching zero. What is it about this presentation that appealed to me? Not quite sure there either. I took some notes for the Web 2.0 Ireland blog and gave my reaction there. I also took about 90 seconds while David was talking to turn http://www.jamesgalvin.com/ into my own identity (provided by Verisign). Wish I had gone to David’s other talk - slideshare really does no justice.
I suppose this shows that I’m more interested in the hacker guys who build the technology than the pointy haired bosses who rave about how widgets and wikis can make your turnips grow. As much as I want to be inspired by the marketing and business speakers, I am usually disappointed, leaving with the feeling that I learned nothing new. The guy either spoke basic common sense (“the internet is the future!”) or rehashed old ideas (“I call this: the Ophiuroidea and the Arachnid!”). The exception to this rule was Tim O’Reilly. Even though what he says is hit and miss (lets not mention that code of conduct thing), Tim’s talk at this event was about the only one that made me realise “I never thought of it like that before…”
Disappointments?
I’m such a positive person that I won’t dwell on the downers. I’m not going to diss the venue, because it sounds like they’ve heard it all already (just remember folks: some multi-coloured beanbags and a cappuccino maker can go a long way!)
Honestly, my biggest disappointment was having to miss the Thursday; Stefan Weiss on privacy, Cory Doctorow on copyright wars, and Mark Birbeck’s talk on “Progressive Browsing” (I’m blown away by Sidewinder). Most of all, I was disappointed to leave behind the array of delicious Middle Eastern restaurant/take-aways. I can tell you, I’ll definitely be trying to vote Turkey into the EU if it means being able to get one of these on Patrick Street.
