AO Innovation Summit webcast: Noise, anarchy or influence?

Just finished watching about a 2 hour webcast from the AlwaysOn 2005 Innovation Summit at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. It was quite an interesting adventure and thought I’d take a moment and provide some thoughts.

Like the AlwaysOn web site, the streaming video window was attractive and I eagerly anticipated participating. I was dismayed over the latency I was experiencing (and I have a FAST broadband connection) and it was materially more noticeable than other streaming media events I’ve watched. Much more noticeable — especially for an “Akamaized” webcast.

Kudos go to Tony Perkins for having the big swingin’ gonads to have the live chat projected on a screen in front of the audience. Tony referred to the chatters on occasion as many of us were *very* agitated by the line of questioning to panelists Sandy Berger, Jerry Brown and Michael Medved. Though Perkins was clearly attempting to have a domestic, geopolitical and macroeconomic flavor to his line of questioning, it SCREAMED “off topic” to the chatters…and to me. The point of how the discussion tied to tech innovation was lost in the noise and tangents taken during the discussion.

When logging in to the webcast, I put in my real name but only a few others followed suit. I think AO should, in the future, have pre-registered webcast attendees so people at least are required to enter a real email address and hopefully their real name. Otherwise, the problems with human motivation to do stupid crap and say things they wouldn’t in person leap to the fore. I was embarassed by many of the others in the chat.

Still, I’m hungry for the content from this event as tech innovation accelerates again and wish that I could have attended this event. Being there, hobnobbing with other attendees and physically being present (in the audience and “the moment) would’ve ensured that the maximum impact is gained….which is what I love about trade shows and conferences.