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]

Java Entrepreneur

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto

Sun Microsystems has announced plans to cut between 5,000 and 6,000 jobs — that's between 15 and 18 percent of its workforce.

"It blamed the cuts on the global economic downturn, but I think that like many other companies, Sun is using the downturn as an excuse for what were pre-existing problems, foretold by its stock price, which seems to be in an unending swoon," suggests GigaOM's Om Malik.

"How much has Sun spent to develop Solaris or Java?" asks InfoWorld's Neil McAllister. "How much must it continue to invest in maintaining other products, which, despite being open source, have no appreciable development community? To say these products are not loss leaders suggests something akin to Hollywood accounting."

The answer? "Spin off Java," McAllister added in a later post. "Just get rid of it — farm it out to an industry consortium and let the companies that depend upon it manage it..."

More here from CNET News ... more here from the Guardian ... more here from ZDNet ... more here from TG Daily ... and the press release is here.

Sun Microsystems Comes Up With RFID Based Java Net Community Website - 14 May 2006

Welcome 2007 with Open-Source Java - 25 October 2006

EarthLink Fires Half of its Workforce - 28 August 2007

Sprint is Bleeding - 18 January 2008

Uses Ajax and some other web2.0-ish features.