BearHug Camp : Live « THE DREAM IN ACTION

September 12, 2008
Posted by Ryan Graves

BearHug Camp : Live

*click on the pic to watch live

This afternoon I watch the BearHug Camp hosted by Steve Gillmor. The event was focused on the progress of the micro-blogging space. One of the main topics of conversation was around live search of the Twitter data. Currently there is nothing that is “real time” and for political purposes among others this service is much desired.

Evan, Biz, and Alex from Twitter came just before lunch and they really took a lot of heat. Many of the comments online stated that it seemed that Steve set this group up to “gang” up on the Twitter crew. My perception is that this is probably true. The guys were put on the spot big time about how they will listen to the developer community going forward. Alex’s response was that his email is an open door for suggestions, comments, concerns (alex@twitter.com).

In attendance from my point of view (online) was Loic Lemeur (Seesmic), Leo Laporte (TwiT Army) who livestreamed the event, Dave Winer (Scripting.com), Ari Steinberg (Facebook), Kevin Marks (Google Open Social), Angus Logan (Microsoft), identi.ca guys, among a group of developers in their respective fields. There was a lot of talk around XMPP becoming just as common as HTTP so that the web can be much more LIVE!

My take-aways: This event was interesting but the stubbornness of Steve Gillmor and the politically motivated conversations took away from the event. The best part of the event that I enjoyed the most was the time that Evan, Biz, and Alex were there. The conversation although tough for them was the most focused that it had been all day. I see a huge push for the web to become more and more “live”. The web used to be static, now it’s updated, next it will be live!

0 Comments

Posted Under People & Leadership Technology

Ryan Graves

Brian- Thank so much for the the comment and the thought behind it. I think
that you are right, Gillmor's stubbornness definitely gets things done! I am
a huge fan of Seesmic...follow me and we'll chat on their! Cheers.

share flag

spam
offensive
disagree
off topic

ryangraves

brianjesse

Great post, Ryan! I was there and it was fairly electric having all of those big players in the room -- it's interesting to see your perspective from watching live on the Web via Leo Laporte's http://twit.tv

I have a couple of thoughts -- first of all, the Twitter guys are just hugely admired by me for coming to this event. I don't think they really "took a lot of heat" but those gathered had a very energetic need to discover the "why" of recent changes to the service, and the "when" or "how" of the return of some important features which were disabled to stave off the fail whale.

Those features are regarded as important to the success of the medium and Steve Gillmor's stubbornness made this meeting of minds happen. when he abrasively defended the discussion, he did go back to the person he interrupted to give them another shot.

Dave Winer and Steve Gillmor in the same room are funny, they are both looking at recent microblogging developments through the lens of history, seeing a new communications medium emerging, and are scrambling to keep it from getting eaten by it's mother or some other, better analogy.

Finally, Seesmic and CEO Loic Lemeur are an incredibly open and innovative company. I did not realize! The new version of Twhirl with support for any Laconi.ca installation was the most exciting announcement of the day. I was planning to start video-blogging with Vimeo but I am now officially a Seesmic fan.

Jack Moffitt wrote an amazingly comprehensive writeup of all of the technology matters that emerged from this event http://metajack.im/2008/09/13/bearhugcamp-for-t...

-- Brian

THE DREAM IN ACTION

By Ryan Graves

BearHug Camp : Live

*click on the pic to watch live