Supernova.
I hate it when two conferences collide. Worse when there are three. But that's what's happening next week with The O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCon) in Portland, Pulver's Supernova in Washington, D.C. and the Burton Group's Catalyst conference in San Francisco.
OSCon runs July 7-11, Supernova runs July 9-10 and Catalyst runs July 9-11. Slipping back and forth between the three isn't as easy as it was to do the same between OSCon and in San Diego two years ago. (Here are notes from Craig, Dave and myself, back then.)
OSCon is a professional necessity for me (since I work the Open Source beat). But I want to put in a plug for the other two — and Supernova especially. Decentralization is the theme, and Kevin is driving the conversation very nicely with only one show under his belt so far.
Of the three conferences, I believe Supernova has the most need for support, and the most important topical focus as well.
I say that because I believe decentralization is THE theme for our times. It's what the Net and the Web were about in the first place. It's what Cluetrain was about. It's what the successes of Net-roots movements like MeetUp, MoveOn, DigitalConsumer.org, AOTC, Warblogging, Peaceblogging and the Howard Dean campaign are all about. It's what blogging was about, too.
I say was because I'm concerned right now that blogging risks centralization. A year from now, don't be surprised if everyone with an AOL, an MSN or a .Mac account automatically has a blog, and if those blogs use noncompatible means to interoperate with each other. Just like we've seen with instant messaging since the beginning.
And don't think that other companies with an interest in blogs, such as Google and IBM, won't find their own ways to defeat interoperation for both competitive and idealistic reasons, no matter how well-intended they may be. They want to make better blogging tools, sell better blogging back-end systems, better ways to put advertising on blogs and better ways to do other stuff. But better isn't always best. Often (though not always) means better everything: including protocols, formats, and standards that are bettered all the way to isolation and well-rationalized noninteroperability. Instead of an open market with lots of interop, you've got a bunch of isolated silos. It's not a long trip, and it's often travelled unconsiously.
Or consciously.
Apple has conciously, and astutely, played this game for years. Its iChat AV system, for example, is really wonderful. It does a jaw-dropping job. I've been blown away by the quality of its audio, its video, it's ability to employ devices like ordinary webcams and camcorders. But it only interoperates with itself. Maybe one day it'll interoperate with other chat/IM systems. But it's in Apple's interest to not interoperate right now. Just like it was in Apple's interest to launch an MP3 player that didn't interoperate with anything other than the company's own host systems. To its credit, Apple eventually made iPod work with Windows (in a way that left it open to working with Linux as well). But it still used noninteroperability as a strategy. Credit where due: iChat will drive Apple CPU sales, big time, in large part because it's non-interoperable. Even while Apple has done a terrific job of driving open interop standards like USB and FireWire. If you see the strategy, the irony goes away.
Back to blogging. As I understand them, standards like RSS and XML-RPC, as originally conceived, and as still largely implemented, have the virtue of POGE: the Principle of Good Enough. Big-vendor-driven standards like SOAP have a way of going off into non-interoperable directions, based on the compeitive ideals of their participants.
I know Dave Winer has received some heavy shit for being a "control freak" and worse. But to me it seems he's just trying to protect POGE standards like RSS and XML-RPC from those who seek to improve or replace them.
Every category is a coal mine. We need our canaries. We may not like the sounds Dave makes when he chokes on gasses the rest of us can't smell, but we owe it to ourselves to listen.
Seems to me Wes was listening when he wrote this:
When one side is committed to worse-is-better and the other to pedantic perfectionism, a fork is the best thing that can happen.
The follow-up questions for me are, 1) Will perfectionism out-muscle worse-is-better because it's better-funded? And, 2) Where will it go if it succeeds? Don't assume that perfectionism will make a naturally better world, or build a better Web. Perfectionisms are highly arguable, and arguments of the perfectionist sort result in all kinds of forkages that disperse market power, especially for the independent developers who create and develop categories that are open to anybody and everybody.
For context, let's go back and visit the NEA principles that the Net imperfectly embodies:
- Nobody owns it.
- Everybody can use it.
- Anybody can improve it.
Job One for the world's category canaries is making sure that the pursuit of #3 doesn't defeat #2.
Nothing could be more important to decentralization than that.
[The Doc Searls Weblog]
It looks like I'm gonna miss SuperNova as well - and I'm bummed. I would really have loved it slugging it out with those 'inside the beltway' types. That's Kevin's old world. My best wishes go out to Kevin and the East Coast crowd. I plan on participating virtually - as best I can.
UPDATE: Doc updated his post - so I copied that additional bit in here.
