At lunch I had an interesting chat with a librarian from UCSD. His theory why libraries (and librarians) are getting out of touch with the public in the age of Google was that in the 80s libraries made big investments in the (then) newest technology so it was hard for them to switch. Now teh first thing they ask of any data management system is: can we get the data out.
Afternoon Talks
Bo Cowgill talked about what they’ve learned from their prediction market experiment, which is the largest in the world. Main result was that the best predictor for how people traded online was spatial proximity. I was expecting more analysis and interesting details. I bailed out of that towards the end and caught the end of Violet Blue’s (no, that’s not a pseudonym) talk about sexual identity online. Blue is a sex educator and maintains an explicit blog. She talked about her experiences and some of the problems with using her real identity online. I was surprised to learn that her biggest trolls (who even sent her death threats) were women, who were evidently too dumb to notice that they can be tracked back with email headers.
Gina Trapani’s Personal Productivity Session
This one saved the day for me, it was great. Trapani has created the uber-popular blog Life Hacker and talks faster than an excited football announcer. One of the main ideas, that resonated hugely with the audience was: It’s good to be efficient but do not lose sight of why you want to efficient, sometimes shopping at a supermarket with your sister for an hour is better than splitting up and finishing the shopping in 10 mins. The seven habits she advocates to increase productivity were:
- Have a system: e.g. always put car keys at the same place
- Get things out of your head: Classic GTD. Do stuff immediately, e.g. answer email immediately after you read it
- Piling, not filing: Don;t create complicated folder structures, e.g. for mail, use tags, like GMail doe
- Park on a downward slope: Leave a note for yourself when switching tasks so it’s easier to pick it up later
- Build strong filters: Only look at important stuff.
- Clear the clutter: You should clear your field of vision, e.g., desk space, inbox.
- Have doable todos: Don’t sabotage yourself with huge or vague tasks, e.g. “clean the garage”
She also recommended the followinf software: textexpander (only on Mac but a Firefox plugin for Windows is available at Life Hacker) , quicksilver (Mac only), and KeePass.
Partying The Night Away
ETech provided drinks and food in the evening while we looked at the sponsoring companies who have booths. A guy from Yahoo showed me their new stuff at the Yahoo developer network. Great site with tons of documentation. He told me that that was the documentation, i.e., they don’t keep internal and external versions. Sweet. However, Sun owned the floor with their new Sun Spot thingies. It’s not clear where Sun wants to go with these things but they are cool. They use ZigBee to communicate, programmable with Java, and can be combined like Lego bricks.
Google was there, too, but they only showed the Android simulation on two screens. Lame. They can do better than that :-)
After the ETech reception there was another party thrown by Disney at 8:30pm, oh the joy! They even had a raffle but they announced the winners at 10:30 and only had 5 prizes. I never win anything from these but the night was not a total waste: I talked with a manager from Intel and a IT staff person from Purdue University (go Boilers!). Our main topic was, as you might have guessed, home schooling and the crumbling American school system. Interesting discussion, but that is the stuff for another blog.
Tags: google, Life Hacker, productivity, sun, sun spot, yahoo
