iX Conference 2007

Longtime readers know I organise an annual conference in Singapore modeled on the O'Reilly events like Web 2.0 Conference.

This has been an amazing iX Conference (http://www.ixconference.com). I've been doing this (organising the event) for 4 years, and this one is the best by far. I know that Douglas Merrill, Mike Downey and Cory Ondrejka are giants, but to frame them up in a television interview format, and see how they come to life as TV stars is just stunning for me.

It takes a good interviewer to draw people out, and Mark Laudi did a brilliant job. He dodged the dead ends, and ran around to address new subject matter, just when you suspected a slow pause. Awesome, and the product of year's of experience reporting from the Singapore stock exchange and of course a passionate interest in digital media. It was a thinking man's seminar, with video and audio stimulus at peak levels.

Memorable moments.... Douglas is really consumate in describing the financial underpinnings of Google's business, and the concerns of a CIO in respect to Web 2.0. Mike describes why free is good - consumer applications on the Internet just don't take off without free clients. And he positions Apollo (now AIR) without sounding too corporate. His demos are more convincing, but he is a great as an interview subject too. And Cory - how do you explain such 'tour-de-force' of intellectual passion, business acumen and military strategist. Just awesome!

Day one of the conference addressed various audiences, including government, academic and the industry honchos. Tomorrow, day 2, is when we bring it all together in the Congress Plenary, targeted squarely at enterprise buyers. Google, Microsoft and Adobe, will all be sharing their new platforms for Rich Interactive Applications.

Maybe this is a bit off-topic for 'learning communications', but I think what Google, Second Life and Adobe are doing are just fundamental to the communications tools we all come to depend upon. This event has provided wonderful insights.