reboot 9.0 Day One

For reasons I’m not entirely clear on (yes, there is irony in this), although it is 10:35 p.m. here in Copenhagen, the sun is only just now setting completely. I’m sure that this has something to do with latitude.

I was wondering, just now, why I’m so exhausted at this point. Sober second thought: I’ve been conferencing for 12 hours straight, bracketed by longish (for me) bicycle rides. Of course I’m exhausted. As such this is one of those years that I don’t stay at [[reboot]] late into the night to participate in live video chats with the inventor of the computer mouse, etc.

I started the day with back to back to back commercial victories: by 9:00 a.m. I had secured a Danish SIM card for my mobile phone (from the friendly and helpful man at the Telia outlet in Central Station), used the station’s Sidewalk Express Internet station to update my [[Jaiku]] and [[Plazes]] profiles to reflect my newfound mobile number, and rented a 3-speed bicycle for two days.

I immediately headed west and, as last year, I managed to overshoot the reboot site by about 2km — I get confused by all those smokestacks and the one I head to never turns out to be the right one. But I got there, got registered, and was in my seat for the 10:00 a.m. start.

While aforementioned exhaustion prohibits a thorough review of the day’s proceedings, here is a quick run through the highlights:

• The 40 minute short course in Humanism was, like last year’s 40 minute short source in Sociology, brilliant. Adam, the performer/professor has what I characterized on the back-channel as “one of the fastest minds I’ve ever experienced.”
• I enjoyed Stephanie Booth’s talk on Waiting for The Babel Fish, which was a rumination on language, localization and the web. Apparently, for example, the rest of the French-speaking world just says “email” instead of Quebec’s invented courriel.
• I not only ran into many friends from reboots-past, but also many people I know only from their social network avatar icons — “hey, you’re the guy with the beard on Jaiku.”
• Jyri’s this here is where Jaiku got started-grounded talk about microblogging was brilliant: he’s one of those guys that, despite all outward appearances of meekness, owns the stage when he’s on it.
• I updated my [[Plazes]] verb and location with “Eating too many cupcakes @ Reboot 9.0”. Five minutes later, after I’d moved on to additional trivialities and forgotten all about this, I got an SMS back from Plazes that read “You’re eating too many cupcakes at Reboot 9.0”. It was like receiving the voice of God by mobile phone.

• Irish guy Tom, from CIX presented an excellent technical overview of how he’s setting up a “carbon neutral data centre” in Cork. Heartening.
• The Cofoco food for supper was simply amazing; bring them back next year!
• The micro-presentations — 15 slides for 20 seconds each — were as entertaining to watch this year as to present last year. Guy did a great job piecing together a smooth technical setup, and it all went off with only a hitch or two.
• Tobias from Easyflow sequestered some red wine.

• Henriette and Jonas and I dreamed up a new “define your relationship with this person” social network layer that replaces the usual “friend / family / acquintance” model with things like “If I was drunk and it was 3:00 a.m. would it be okay to call this person?” and “If you were being interogated and got the opportunity to be set free if you ratted out this person, would you take this option.” Stay tuned.

• I got the “your domain name will expire in 2 weeks” message for OpenBread.org in my email today, an idea, still in the “planning stages” (i.e. yet to result in an actual loaf) since reboot 7.0 in 2005.

• The Danish peach-flavoured iced tea is addictive; there’s just something about it. Also discovered that “regular” coffee in Denmark has enough potency that I don’t need to go all high-brow and order fresh-pressed.

• I participated in the Jaiku back-channel by SMS, and left the laptop at home. Then I discovered that my Telia SIM comes out-of-the-box enabled for GPRS data, so I suddenly had real live email too, which was, alas, dangerous for its distractions.
• Matt Jones’ made Dopplr look very interesting in ways I’d never considered. Although suggesting that it will actually be an environmental boon by reducing the need for travel seems naive.
• I managed to ruin both Rob Paterson’s knees and my own knees by engaging in a wacky hopping exercise sponsored by Johnnie Moore. Rob may never forgive me.
• It is a universal truth that any session that has “Enterprise” in the title or subject matter will be confusing and buzzword-filled.

The big and important event in my life today, however, is that by virtue of a technical glitch, I’ve been reassigned to Sweden: witness my reboot badge’s country affiliation:

Fortunately my Swedish acquaintances in the rebootosphere have welcomed me in, promised to teach me the national anthem, etc. I’m going to have to prepare an acceptable set of reasons for [[Catherine]] and [[Oliver]] as to why we’re relocating to Stockholm (casting a misprint as a Revelation will probably not cut it).

Must sleep now in preparation for doing it all over again tomorrow.