At Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo conference, the possibility of hiring freezes or layoffs was the top item on the consulting firm's list of things IT managers should prepare for in light of the financial meltdown.

We've written about the amazing iLIMB bionic hand before, but the newest version of it was showed off on the Today Show this morning, and it looks pretty incredible.

For one, the guy who had it was able to simply pop one off and put another on without skipping a beat, with the new hand working almost instantly. He seemed able to control the fingers easily, and he had the added bonus of being able to rotate the hand 360 degrees, which is something those of us with fleshy, non-bionic hands are unable to do. In the future, bionic hands won't be replacements for real hands; they'll be upgrades.

The Web Services Policy Working Group has published two Web Services Policy 1.5 - Working Drafts: an update to the Primer and a First Public Working Draft of Guidelines for Policy Assertion Authors. The new Guidelines document provides ...

Ted Shelton: "Frankly I felt that BlogOn was a waste of time and money."

I think the BlogOn conference was overproduced. In the name of professionalism the organizing firm turned off potential speakers, oversubscribed sponsors, etc.

I would have liked a debatable topic (aside from *blogging = journalism*. Two people slugging it out. Or a devil's advocate taking challenges from the floor.

I would have liked more hard numbers. Facts. Charts. Diagrams. We have the analytic tools to BS-check them; harder on vague opinions and single-points-of-observation.

I found it disturbing how much money was being commanded (from both attendees and sponsors) for a conference at a university. Maybe it was because it was at Berkeley? Maybe we should have taken over a community college or a Cal State or a DeVry. The facilities costs would have been cheaper at least. I heard an organizer apologize and say the next one would be at a hotel, like that would have been better.

Cost wasn't the whole problem. We're at a stage where early adopters are meeting folks who want to leap the chasm. Huge gaps in knowledge, experience, context, culture, vocabulary. It's the gap.

There are huge ideas to be explored, even in the world of applying blogs to media strategy and the enterprise. And most of the big ideas weren't even on the agenda at BlogOn. Probably because it was catering to those who want to commercialize, fund, and otherwise exploit (excuse me, "get in on") the emerging medium.

Let's fork these conferences so advanced topics on business and technology and culture fit the participants. 

[a klog apart]

Reverse takeover

Microsoft is courting open-source developers with Silverlight 2.0, as it strives for cross-platform uptake of the browser-based media plug in.…