One of the biggest conversations at Gnomedex 6 has been attention data and how companies are bad and evil for keeping this data and not letting users have it. Same for our user generated content. The sites that let us contribute our data and trust to build their site and wont let us get that data back out when we’re ready to go are evil.

Agreed.

But, there’s something more evil, and it’s not the companies or their practices. It’s us. We’re letting them do it. I hear a lot of people standing up and pounding their fists. That’s good, they’re incensed and letting people know. BUT, they’re not leaving these sites. They keep giving them more data!!!

If Charmin scratched you ass every time you wiped it, would you continue to use it?

For goodness sakes everyone, TALK WITH YOUR FEET!! Continue to stand up and complain, continue to fight the good fight, but above all else, DON’T continue to use a site that you bitch and moan about.

If you’re mad that e.g. a site you’ve reviewed products on won’t let you get that data out of their site easily so you can take it to another site STOP REVIEWING PRODUCTS THERE!!!

Stand up for your rights and take your business, your trust, your data, and your attention to someone who knows how to respect you in the morning.

There’s a discussion in the Lockergnome/Gnomedex IRC channel about words spelled funnily with u’s in them (colour, honour, etc…) It reminded me of a theory I’ve always had that I call the “Persistence of Consonants”

Basically, all the ‘r’s from Bostonians going to drink at the ‘ba’ or go driving in their ‘ca’ flow south to Pittsburgh where they’re used to ‘warsh’ clothes.

No matter how much people make fun of you for the way you talk or spell words, it’s all for a reason. Those extra letters come from someone else that is getting just as much grief about their dialect.

I just spoke with Geoff Nelson from AMD in the lobby of the Bell Harbor Conference Center waiting for Gnomedex 6 to start up. He said that AMD is making a concerted effort to reach out to bloggers as news makers. They sound like they want to make themselves available to answer questions on stories on the same privilege level as “regular” press.

I hope this stands up and happens - there are too many companies ignoring the sheer reach and breadth of the blogosphere. There are quite a few companies that could stand to follow suit…

If you read the schedule, you noticed that there are no return buses from the party at EMP Saturday night. I have a great parking solution if you’re driving in to the show. Under Sport Restaurant at Fisher Plaza is a parking garage. There ARE two cons: 1) it is about a mile away, but if you like a brisk walk, it’s all down hill; 2) it doesn’t open until 9AM, so you might be pressing your schedule if you’re a really slow walker. The pros though far outweigh these cons: 1) it is only $5 for the whole day on the weekend; 2) it is about 3 blocks away from EMP so you’re right by the car when the party ends.

I don’t have an address for the garage, but Sport’s address is on 4th street, and Fisher Plaza is the huge white building with the mass of satellite dishes on the roof right across from the monorail and Space Needle. The garage entrance is on the south side.

AND, if you live in the Seattle area, check out Sport sometime for your favorite sporting event. I don’t work there, but I’m on the Puget Sound PSU Alumni Board of Directors, and we watch all our games there. The staff rocks, the food is great, and you can’t beat a 130″ Plasma HDTV with any size stick.

I have a couple of posts RE: Gnomedex in the back of my brain, but I wanted to throw out some contact information now if anyone wants to meet up.

Best way to reach me the whole weekend (or anytime for that matter) is to call my SkypeIn number @ (206) 855-5578.  If I’m on wifi and logged into Skype, I’ll get your call there; if not, it will forward to my cell phone.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know that my name is Myk (pronounced “Mike”), I live in the Seattle area (Maple Valley to be exact), and that I’m a web application developer.  I have serious interests/leanings towards content and information sharing and retrieval.
I’m representing the company I work for (Pure Networks) and our product (Network Magic) and want to focus in on network usage, content sharing, and community/social networking environments.  I’ll be a bit more explicit in a followup post tonight after I get home from the registration party; right now I need to hammer out some bug fixes!