"Until Google put this technology out there, no one was really thinking of Web pages as applications"
— Francis Shanahan, Sapient Corp. (SAPE) Software Architect

Go here www.jackbe.com/Company/testimonials.php
and click "about our industry".

I’m right up their next to Seth Steinberg, co-founder of Meebo and the guy from Gartner. Comical.

I’m a pretty decent public speaker. I have been told I break things down well, my materials are polished and sometimes, on rare occasions, I have even displayed what some have called "showmanship".

But let’s be honest, I am generally not that far ahead of my audience in terms of subject matter knowledge. For me, the best presentations are done by those whose command of a topic far exceeds the audience’s and generally, that’s not me.

I have so far been asked to speak at two conferences:
a) Interop New York 2005 on the topic of RIA
and
b) The Semantic Conference 2007 on the topic of the Semantic Web.

Ok, to be fair I could probably put some slides together, fill 45 mins on either of these topics, then muddle through some questions at the end. I’d be happy to do it but it’s not really doing conference attendees justice.

It’s all a racket. These conferences charge upwards of $1,500 dollars (early-bird) to attend. Conference organizers also rake in big bucks through advertising and stands. It’s really insane given the research that goes into picking the speakers. Generally there’ll be some decent keynotes and no doubt and you might even learn something but I wouldn’t count on it.

Some say the real value with conferences is in the networking opportunity. For me though, you can build a more meaningful relationship through interactions in the blog-o-sphere. Then, when you’re actually you’re ready to do business, meet the person. By then you’ll already know if they’re flaky or not.

Perhaps it’s self-deprecating catholic guilt but I would typically not want to attend a conference that would hire me as a speaker.

Unconferences ++;  [LINK]

Zuggest implements the common-sense idea of submission throttling. Rather than submit a query for every single key-stroke the user hits, it waits until you’re done typing and then searches.

It’s always surprising and interesting to me to find that one man’s common sense is another man’s design pattern but there you go.

Read the sample chapter [Link] and search for "zuggest".

My own book: Amazon.com Mashups will also mention Zuggest along with TagLines and Zollage and so on so you can make your choice as to which one you buy.

And finaly a note to AUTHORS: If you are planning on including a reference to one of my applications, that’s great and thanks! But please drop me a note to let me know!!!! Common courtesy and all that.

Zollage was mentioned in the article’s companion piece which is a slide-show entitled “Sampling the Web’s Best Mash-Ups”.

Among the list are

• Housing Maps
• Chicago Crime
• Mappr
• Double Trust
• Amazon Lite
• !!! Zollage !!!
• a9
• Actor Tracker
• Book Burro

Quite a nice thing for my little site to be listed along with these other excellent examples.

Robert did pose one question which I’m still mulling which was “with all the web services available today (Flickr, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo, Google etc.) is there a business model somewhere in there? You know I honestly believe the answer is yes. Living in America it’s definitely shown me just how easy it is to start a mediocre business, Route 22 is full of them.

Offshoring is creating a bottomless IT industry here in the US. College grads can’t get work, experienced developers are getting laid off. Seems everyone’s an architect all of a sudden. It’s the only way to survive.

I see the next couple of years as one where the Specialist who can envision a design, articulate it, manage a team on and offshore and still code being the single most sought after role in IT. If you get a couple of folks together like that, you have a killer company that would never be out of work. Right now the industry is flooded with Architects who can’t code and Coders who can’t design.

Loosely coupled systems means disperate technologies. Business will implement web services but WSDL, REST and XML-RPC is only 1 piece of the puzzle. Tying it all together needs real vision and true expertise which only comes if you stay hands on.

Ok so I’m still in search of a killer computer case. Here’s about the silliest idea for a custom computer case I’ve ever seen: http://www.g-news.ch/articles/nhp200nc/ and here’s a nice looking Apple Kiosk which doesn’t look all that comfortable at all but then again I don’t think you’re supposed to sit at it.

If anyone would like a poster, I’d be happy to produce the electronic format for you to take to Kinko’s.

Sort of embarrassing in one sense but think at some point everyone needs to toot their own horn. I don’t think it’s too much of a transgression.