MIX 2010 – Day 0: Eat your veggies

MIX 2010 Day 0. Day 0. You read that right. I’m not trying to be nerdy. Tomorrow is technically Day 1, so what else should I call it? Suck it up.

Workshops. Every year the same thing. This workshop was awesome but the other one sucked. In an attempt to avoid negativity, I’ll just stick with the one I liked. “Media Processing Workflow” with Alex Zambelli: A surprisingly enjoyable and informative mix of high and low level technologies that combine to deliver optimum online video streaming experiences.

Although I’m not certain that Alex’s presentation was organized well by design, the net effect was an interesting overview of the processes and architectures required to deliver professional media productions. And this was important for me—someone who hasn’t dipped his toes into the streaming technologies in more than seven years.

I’m not going to go into all the details of Alex’s talk. Instead I’m going to add my own spin. And that’s precisely what I committed myself to doing. If you want someone to write a verbatim post on the talk, then go elsewhere. In fact, I’d prefer you went directly to Alex’s blog. http://www.alexzambelli.com

The thing I’d like to touch on that became clear to me as I sat in this presentation today was this: if someone has taken the time to understand the underlying protocols, these technologies seem more than intuitive—they seem obvious. Those who simply learn how to use tools without understanding the affects and effects are doomed to learning each new technology as if it’s yet another mountain.

I touched on it in another blog post a couple years ago, but I had a co-worker several years ago who had a disagreement with me on a choice of technologies. He was convinced that sticking closely to the patterns defined by Microsoft for ASP.NET and web forms was best for a number of reasons including that many developers already have skills in ASP.NET web forms.

I held that I didn’t feel that proficiency in ASP.NET web forms was requisite to being a web developer. I stated that I’d rather have a developer working for me who was familiar with HTTP. Then based on that knowledge he could adopt any number of server-side technologies to achieve his goals.

Alex Zambelli’s talk on HTTP Adaptive Streaming and IIS Smooth Streaming illustrates my point beautifully. His explanation of how the Adaptive Streaming pattern takes advantage of HTTP made the entire business of streaming media immediately accessible to me. I even found myself repeatedly asking my other self, “why didn’t this happen earlier? It makes perfect sense.”

In addition to immediately grasping the concept, I was soon dreaming up the possibilities that the GOP approach to delivering content fragments opened. Content indexing and annotation is now much easier than it has been in the past. Somebody, get a government grant for the arts to put together an art/wiki site where people upload videos and the site continuously streams 4-8 second fragments of each video and the video/audio switch between the fragments will be seamless.

What are we waiting for? There are so many obvious uses. Oh. Wait. They’re only obvious to those who understand the inherent beauty of the simplicity of the pattern. If you call yourself a web developer and you haven’t read the HTTP recommendations… do yourself a favor. RFC 2616

We have Galvanized Bolts: Life in the fast lane

Off the ground. I’m in mid-flight to MIX 2010 and I’m thinking about a marquee sign next to a small hardware shop building on the side of the highway about 20 minutes from my home.

“WE HAVE GALVANIZED BOLTS”

This is actually an exciting change. For the last three years the same marquee has read:

“WE HAVE METRIC”

How is this news? There’s not much going on in the hardware and fasteners business these days, I guess.

How awesome is it to be working in an industry where change is a constant. With web applications the worst kind of stagnation we have to complain about is the gulfs of time between Internet Explorer major version releases. (MS… haven’t you already learned that incremental minor releases trump the codebase-jarring major releases?)

I may complain about many things in the software industry, but a sign like this grounds me. The world of cutting edge web technologies is never boring. Innovation is everywhere. We create our own tomorrow.

Brothers. Sisters. You may hear me bitch about a lot of things. But please understand that there are very few things I’d rather be doing for a living. Until someone starts paying me for playing with my kids or taking my wife out to a show I will be right here with a big smile on my face… happier than a kid making mud pies.

MIX 2010 Event bloggers and tweeters: Put down the laptop!

Ok. My bad. I spend too much time thinking about things to post and, as you can see, no time actually posting. But recently I started thinking about those out there who seem to spend more time posting and less time thinking.

To clarify, when I go to industry events I look around at the attendees because…. Well, because I’m neurotic. Whatever. The point is that in the last couple years I have looked around the crowd during keynotes and other sessions and I have seen very few people who seem to be paying the presenter any attention, whatsoever. Instead, there are tight groups of people huddled around power strips and heads-down in their laptops.

My first reaction when I started seeing this is that these people must be very busy working or dealing with issues back at their mother ships. Given the cost of attending these conferences, this seemed to be a major waste of time and money. Then over time, I came to understand that many of these people were not only listening to the presenter; these people were parroting the presenter to their blog readers/Twitter followers/Facebook friends and fans, etc…

As I started following these conference hounds on Twitter I was beside myself at how devoid of value the practice truly was. What I got from these conference coyotes was a heap of quotes from the speaker that, when compiled, resulted in a steaming heap of humorous quips and commonly held beliefs and understandings that have already permeated the ethos of the industry. So why parrot this crap?

The true value lies in the sentences between the quotables. You can find it in the prepositions of novelty and invention. To assume that the full value of a presentation can be boiled down into four of five tweets is an insult to the speaker and the event coordinators who arranged to have them there in the first place.

I have spoken to audiences and–you can call me old-fashioned–I like to have their attention. The eye-to-eye contact speaks volumes to the presenter about how much the audience is comprehending. Distracted and nodding audiences tell me to pick it up while understanding nods and meaningful questions tell me that the audience is engaged.

I know, I know. The laws of the information economy say that the value of information is directly proportional to the proximity of source. So if I can hear from an industry leader directly and report what they are saying as soon as they say it, then I am offering more value to my sphere. Yes, there is value in that. But if I am reporting the same thing that hundreds of others are simultaneously reporting, then the scales tip to supply and the demand for my reports is diminished. If I were to play that game, I would simply be in a race for proximity and timeliness.

I am a busy person and I don’t like wasting my time. A simple race for followers based on my proximity to people who add value would be a waste of my time. And, honestly, most of you who partake in this practice are wasting everyone’s time.

So what am I doing? In the calm before the MIX2010 storm, I am posting about the valuelessness of posting about conferences? No. I’m not. I’m declaring that there is value in posting about conferences and there is an information market that demands it. But the majority of that value needs to be generated by the poster. Parroting information is not valuable.

In order to illustrate my point I am dedicating the next week to posting about the MIX2010 conference experiences and what I demand of myself is that I add value to information as it passes through. I don’t attend conferences to receive truth; I attend conferences to receive ideas and insight. I will not dishonor my many years of industry experience by simply acting as a conduit.

The MIX crew is usually pretty good about posting the presentation videos quickly. If you want to hear exactly what a speaker says, then watch the videos. Don’t waste your time listening to the social mimeographs. If you want more insight into the meaning of what the speakers are saying then come back here. I will challenge the information and seek to boost the value of the conversation.

If you’re going to be at MIX2010 let’s hook up and talk shop! Twitter: @stygz | Send Email