DISQUS

Ben Metcalfe · 2 years ago

Lolcatz to me for not spell-checking my prose. I'm dyslexic, so I should know better.

I corrected the mistakes - thanks for pointing them out :)

Mathew · 2 years ago

No sweat, Ben. I hope you do the same for me someday -- that's what bloggers are for :-)

Tom Morris · 2 years ago

Well, I'd say that it's finally honesty in advertising. Half the Web 2.0 stuff is marketing/advertising/advertorial or whatever under the guise of technology. Before we had all the Web 2.0 stuff, a typical business plan would be "we're going to build the best [database/word processor/'foo' server etc.] in the world and we're going to sell it to people". If the TechCrunch crowd were doing that, MC Hammer would be totally irrelevant. But they're not.

When we're talking about YouTube - the technological component of which consists in FLV files and a server farm the size of a small town - it seems far more appropriate to have media people than tech people. I mean, what the crap do we know about advertising and music promotion or indie video? We write code and geek out with computers. A group of fourteen year-olds could club together and build their own YouTube clone in less than a month these days (and evidence suggests quite a number of them have - and then subsequently went on to found companies).

In an age of tech startups being basically media companies in disguise, MC Hammer is a far more appropriate choice for the conference board than a techie.

Karoli · 2 years ago

Mathew, I'm not sure what happened to the comment I posted earlier, but the gist of it was this: If the focus of this conference is Web 2.0, then users should be part of the mix, don't you think? And Hammer is a blogger, gadget geek and uses multimedia mashups. Like me, his origins are not in the tech industry, but more as an end user. I can't think of a better perspective to add to the panel, personally.

Mathew · 2 years ago

Sorry, Karoli -- not sure what happened to it either. Might have been eaten by the spam filter.

As for your point about users, that's a fair point -- except that Mike and Jason are calling it an "experts panel." There's kind of a disconnect there I think.

kareem · 2 years ago

a few months, i was talking to a couple of friends whose opinions i really respect, who know hammer. they say he knows what's going on in the space better than most...

Mathew · 2 years ago

Well, maybe I've been too hard on the guy then. It wouldn't be the first time :-)

sookie · 2 years ago

A couple years ago when I was starting my first blog I stumbled upon Hammer's. It kind of surprised me since it wasn't some self-promo thing, as you might expect, but just a regular guy's page about him and his kids with pictures of them hanging out at McDonald's.

Leigh · 2 years ago

I think Fred Wilson put it best:

"The intermingling of Hammer and the blogosphere will be HOW future generations comsume their news. Period. End of story.

I learn stuff on Hammer's blog every day that is more profound than many of the twitter postings that I read."

;-)

Peter C · 2 years ago

And the latest news.. Bill Cosby at this year's FooCamp!