I’m attending MinneWebCon again this year. It’s probably the biggest gathering of nerds at the University of Minnesota. I say, “nerds” with the highest affection of course. I brought my laptop this year, so updates here will be possible if I can find the time. In any case, check back here for updates later in the week.
Posts Tagged ‘MinneWebCon’
APML
On Monday, as I may have mentioned, I attended MinneWebCon 2008. Looking back, I think Laurie McGinley‘s presentation on microformats was my favorite session of the day. I had no idea I would find it as interesting as I did.
I think the concept that intrigues me the most is APML, or Attention Profile Markup Language.
How many of you use an RSS reader? Raise your hands. How many times a week to you go and “Mark All As Read”? RSS was a godsend for those of us who are interested in finding information on the web. The ability to scan hundreds, or even thousands of titles of my favorite websites to decide to read was exciting, for a while. Soon people like me built up so many feeds that the practice of scanning became overwhelming. After your feed posts get a few days old, there are just way too many even to scan through. So almost daily we all go through and mark them all as read. Really we’re just getting them out of the way because we want to scan the 200-300 newest headlines. You know what I’m talking about. Enter APML.
In an APML-enabled world, I can decide what topics I’m most interested in and the blog posts that most closely match my predefined interests will rise to the top. I can focus my attention on the posts that are most interesting to me. Sound great? We’re not quite there yet. There are a few websites out there trying to utilize the concept, but as far as usability goes, they’ve got a long way to go. I want to use APML because I have limited time. If I have to work very hard to use the service, I quickly move on. That sounds petty, but my lack of time/attention is what got me to APML in the first place.
But the technology is not far from being implemented. It serves as a reminder that relatively low-tech solutions can still emerge as important tools on the web.
MinneWebCon 2008
I spent a great day at MinneWebCon yesterday talking with and meeting other folks in the industry at The Big U where I work and elsewhere.
It was really a good event for those of us in Minneapolis who are interested in current and emerging web technology. The interesting this to me is how much Twitter added to the experience for those of us participating.
If you weren’t monitoring things on Twitter, you really missed out on an ongoing conversation. The most obvious observation is that there was a general air of excitement about the event and a lot of people were merely expressing that sentiment in real time. That had one benefit: I was able to get a sense of what was happening in sessions that I was not attending. At least once it influenced my decision to bail out of one session in favor of another.
The second, perhaps more valuable thing about Twitter at the event was a stream of continuous feedback. We were not 30 seconds into the conference before someone was commenting on the @klayon‘s introduction. Tracking “#minnewebcon” from my cell phone was like having an ear to the wall. The best part about that? The organizers of the event responded directly to me about a couple of comments I made. They were paying attention and that’s important.
There will be more formal methods for providing feedback in the next few days, but if you want to troubleshoot the problems in real-time and address them, Twitter is your friend.