Today was just a half-day as things didn't officially start rolling until 2pm. That said, I attended four hours of fantastic panels including Josh Williams', CEO and co-founder of Gowalla “Chasing Virtual Good (not Goods) in the Real World” and Mark Cuban, HD Net/Dallas Mavericks and Avner Ronen of Boxee’s “Pay TV vs Internet - The Battle for Your TV”.
I enjoyed listening to Williams’ take on geo-location technology and game mechanics. Through discussing his experiences developing PackRat and Gowalla, and sharing some of his observations on user behaviour, Williams provided great insight into what compels people to participate in game type activities online. Williams went on to point out that game play mechanics are not just limited to location based services. These dynamics are becoming more and more prevalent in behaviour all over the web, and in the real world too.
“Pay TV vs Internet - The Battle for Your TV” was an epic, David and Goliath contest between corporate utilitarian, Cuban, arguing for pay TV and our man of the people, Ronen, presenting the case for Internet video. I’d like to say that Ronen won, or at least that the fight went undecided (especially considering the level of support for Ronen from the audience). To be honest, Cuban won the day, hands down. The discussion was intense and temperatures ran high - not just between Cuban and Ronen but, even more so, between Cuban and the audience. To get a full idea of how the battle unfolded I’d encourage you to check out the back channel on Twitter.
I was also pleased to be able to take in part of Christian Crumlish's “Ukulele for Geeks” session at which I learned how to jam on the Ukulele.
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