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mesh 2008 first day: rocked

Mathew — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:52:25 +0000

Have to get some sleep soon, since I feel like I’ve been up for about 18 hours straight, but I had to mention how great the first day of mesh 2008 felt. Obviously I’m biased, being one of the organizers, but I really think the keynotes were pretty fantastic — even if we did have to get Michael Geist to sub in for the missing Matt Mason. Ethan Kaplan is one of the most interesting and thoughtful people when it comes to the future of music, and I could have easily continued talking with him about it long after the keynote was over. And David Gratton of Project Opus continued some of the discussion about those issues on his panel in the afternoon with musician David Usher, Kieran Roy from the indie label Arts & Crafts and Graham Henderson from the Canadian Recording Industry Association, who was actually a pretty good sport about being made out as the bad guy all the time.

The music panel really seemed to get people fired up — we had a huge amount of great questions and interaction from the audience, which to me is one of the hallmarks of a great mesh panel. And we had some great feedback on a bunch of the other panels as well, including the Private vs. Public one with my friend Mark Kingwell from U of T, Internet researcher Nancy Baym from the University of Kansas and Ken Anderson from the Ontario Privacy Commission. Add on top of that some great workshops from the always excellent Amber Macarthur and Mark Kuznicki and it was a pretty awesome day — followed by drinks in the MaRS atrium and a great party at The Rockwood. And now, to sleep.

If you want to read up on some of what people have been saying about mesh, check out the aggregator page that David Janes has set up at Onaswarm, or see the live-blog that David Fleet did with CoverItLive (David Gratton live-blogged the Ethan Kaplan keynote as well, and Nav also had some thoughts about Ethan’s keynote), Or you can do a Tweetscan for mesh08 or check out the mesh08 Tweme. If you come across anything else interesting about mesh please send us a link, or twitter it and use the keyword #mesh08.

mesh keynote update: Matt Mason

Mathew — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:01:27 +0000

For anyone who was looking forward to the mesh keynote by Pirate’s Dilemma author Matt Mason (and that includes all of us on the mesh organizing team) we got some bad news over the weekend. Unfortunately, Matt has run into some visa problems in the United States, and he won’t be able to make it to mesh. While we are disappointed that we couldn’t work things out in time — as is Matt — we do have a top-notch replacement for him as the society keynote: Dr. Michael Geist, the University of Ottawa law professor and copyright expert.

Dr. Geist was originally scheduled to do a presentation Wednesday afternoon about how Facebook and other social media tools are being used for grassroots lobbying and advocacy purposes, building on his experience in setting up a Facebook group opposed to Ottawa’s anticipated copyright legislation. In Matt Mason’s absence, we have asked Dr. Geist to adapt his presentation as the keynote for the society stream, which will take place at 10:40 a.m. on Wednesday. Taking the place of his original presentation Wednesday afternoon will be a panel discussion on “Managing the Mozilla Way” with Mic Berman, John Resig and Mike Shaver, moderated by Michael McDerment.

For more information, please see the mesh schedule at www.meshconference.com/schedule2008.

mesh video from Mark Mckay

Mathew — Wed, 07 May 2008 02:00:34 +0000

Video whiz and all-around wild and crazy guy Mark Mckay, who won our mesh 2007 video contest and wound up doing a bunch of video for us last year, came out to a recent mesh meetup at the Irish Embassy and has put together a great little highlight reel for us (and if you haven’t got your ticket for mesh or meshU, you’d better get cracking — they’re going fast!).

Thanks a lot to Mark and to Rob Manne and the other folks at Edelman.

Book those mesh 2008 dates, and get ready for meshU

Mathew — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:51:55 +0000

Has it been eight months already since mesh 2007? According to the calendar, it has – and yet, it seems like just yesterday we were meshing with Mike Arrington, Jim Buckmaster, Richard Edelman, Tom Williams, Austin Hill and an atrium full of eager participants at the MaRS centre (there are pics here if you want to check them out).

We’ve been getting bombarded with emails about this year’s conference, with many of those coming from people wanting to block the dates out in their calendars. So without further ado, here they are: mesh 2008 is scheduled for May 21 and 22. Info on ticket prices, keynotes, panelists etc. will be coming soon. So book those dates!

In addition to mesh, we’re also planning a little something extra – something we think (and hope) will meet a growing need in Toronto: the need for practical, down-to-earth information about tools, knowledge and expertise for startups, web designers and developers of all kinds.

What we have in mind is a one-day event – which we’re tentatively calling meshU – that will be filled with small, focused workshops by those who have earned their stripes in the startup game; people who can talk knowledgeably about everything from interface design to using Amazon’s S3 distributed server network.

This one-day event – which is scheduled for May 20th, the day before mesh – will be taking shape over the next few months, and we’re hoping you can help program it by telling us what kind of content you want and/or need.

Got an idea for a panel? Let us know. Have an expert you think would lead a great hands-on workshop? We’re all ears. Post a comment here or send an email to stuart@meshconference.com and let us know what you have in mind. More info coming soon on workshop leaders, ticket prices, etc.

Mesh on!