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OpenTech 2005 Thoughts After The Event

Posted on July 27, 2005
Filed Under OpenTech 2005 |

So, OpenTech 2005, what did I think? Well, apart from my adventures with the iPod Shuffles (and my explanation is getting a nice tag-load of link love), I had a pretty good time. Not exactly stunning, but then I’ve found that most Tech Conferences in the last year or so to be more useful to me for the networking and staying in touch with people who may or may not be useful to me in the future. A case in point is Alfie and Suw, both of whom are now helping out Orgasmatones and All About Palm respectivly.

Other contacts, well, things happen and if you surround yourself with people you can talk to, with a multitude of skills, then at some point, you might have a need for their skills. And vice versa those poeple might need my skill set and can call on me. That’s where the value of something like OpenTech is for me. Yes actually hearing from the people who are involved in a project is great. For a moment, the idea of an iPod that has every single ZX Spectrum tape copied over so you can load any game into any Speccy that you come across, almost had me reaching for an iPod - before I booted up the Emulator on the Palm Tungsten T5 and the 350mb dump of the snapshot images.

The talks that I really enjoyed were the ones where I didn’t know what they were going to talk about. Case in point, Danny O’Brien’s keynote on relationships, fame and being ‘fabulous’ in the digital world. Danny is a great speaker for a geek audience (Dave and Danny should get another season of their TV show, they work brilliantly together) and everything he said made sense in a sort of strokey-beard philisohpical way, with hard evidence. Easiest thing you can do is go listen to the talk; files are hosted over at the OpenTech 2005 website.

So realyl I spent the day networking, popping my head round one or two of the sessions that did look interesting (Tom Reynolds How To Blog And Not Loose Your Job, and James Larsson Blowing Things Up stick in my mind), but laying the groundwork for next week’s brand new podcast show - more on that tomorrow. The most important work, as usual, was done in the bar and at the Curry Palace afterwards.

It was definitly worth attending, and I’m already looking forward to next year. hopefully there’ll bemore mingling time, and perhaps an advertised semi-official meeting planned for the Friday night for more socialising.