In his post on “going to conferences” David Hornik discloses how today’s VCs find out what’s up.

They simply go to conferences and listen. What a concept.

I’ve been doing that for years - as it’s a self fulfilling prophecy “anybody who schleps to some dumb conference MUST be motivated as hell”. Which is a good sign if they’re an entrperenuer.

But where do the end-users fit into this mix?

That’s why I like Gnomedex so much. It’s for humans. David Hornik and PK should have come up to Seattle with us.

Not only would they have witnessed a rare public Dave Winer appearance, but they would have met real end-users. I can’t see why O’Reilly never acknowledges Winer, who really created RSS or anything that humans do - and I sure wanna make sure that people understand the politics of exclusionary treatment.

By O’Reilly never inviting Dave Winer to Foo Camp, to speak at conferences and continuing their elitist exclusionary attitudes - they turn techy geeky nerds into poltiical animals. That’s really a bad thing. The Ajax summit was such a thing. An embarassment. A sham. A fucking rude ass move.

Don’t we have enough of that bullshit in real life? Why do we need it in our industry? Shouldn’t Web 2.0 be better than that? I spend a lot of time trying to be nice to everyone.

I don’t wanna play politics. I don’t wanna have to take up sides. But sometimes rudeness just goes too far and the O’Reilly camp is practicing that in spades. Tim’s post on Macromedia supporting open source just went too far.

Isn’t a drag down, knock out yelling match in the hallway between Dave Winer and Rael Dornfest gonna be more entertaining than listening to yet another VC or CEO ramble on about their established monopolies and position in the marketplace?

I’d rather go to a conference made up of humans than business wonks.

But then again - I don’t get invited to those anyway.

And I know I’m totally blowing it with O’Reilly. But consider this the anti-sucking up to O’Reilly post. I’m just so tired of it - and it never works anyway.

At best we get the last panel slot of the last day - against some Microsoft announcement - so what the hell. I get to get this off my chest and feel like I did the right hting - and all I do is ruin my rep with one of the most important conference giver companies around.

But I gotta stay true to myself, so…..

One conference I AM invited to is Tony Perkin’s AlwaysOn Innovation summit. Now I can hear you all snickering “Tony sure is one of those VC wonks - isn’t Marc being a bit disingenuous?”

Well I’m not here to tell you Tony has changed, but he’s trying. He’s also making sure that different voices and opinions are heard (a distinctfully UN-Republican thing for Tony to do) AND he’s letting in everyone on the AO 100 list - so many can come - who might not have come.

Doc and I are doing a panel on the ‘OpenWeb’ so I hope folks come or at least tune-in via webcast or IRC. But the AO conference WILL be propogated by VCs and rich people - and I prefer hanging out with normal people the best.

That’s why I love Gnomedex. I sure hope there’s another one - soon - like at the end of September. Just not on Sept. 21st - OK?

And thanks to PK for the pointer.

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