ETech Favorites
My two favorite presentations at ETech, not counting the AMEE one that I specifically went to see in the first place, are Electricity 2.0: Applying the Lessons of the Web to Our Energy Networks and Save the Programmer, Save the Planet.
The first was by Tom Raftery, a charming Irishman who lives in Spain and gave a really entertaining, informative and compelling talk. I know he is charming because he is apparently a good friend of Gavin’s, so I met Tom while I was hanging about like a groupie waiting for my chance to talk with Gavin. Tom’s talk was so good, I even enthusiastically pointed my poor mother at the slides (we have a Continuous Family Chat on skype that is lots of fun) but she complained there is no sound, which is true, it is just the presentation, not a video …. but it was great when Tom gave the slides anyway. The best bits of info for me personally out of Tom’s presentation were the companies doing residential energy use and production measurement and monitoring. There are three that are more or less local. I’m interested because I’d like to analyze my own residence energy use but I also might try to get a job at one of them.
The second was by Mike Mathieu, whom I did not get a chance to meet except via email when I begged for a pointer to his slides. I did not mention that I needed them because while his subject, civic software, was very interesting and he had a ton of cool examples and advice, I only paid half-attention because I was still exploring some of the links and info from Tom’s presentation which was immediately before, in a different room. I believe Mike’s bottom line was that civic software is not rocket science, an echo of the example that O’Reilly gave in his keynote of the Yes We Scan! guy who put something up on the web in an amount of time that was an order of magnitude less than what the government had said it would take.
So, programmers, get out there and save the planet because the amount of good stuff that can be done now, pretty easily, but has not yet been done is immense. I’m hoping to pull some good examples out of his presentation to add to my portfolio of stories to inspire teens to learn to program.
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