Defrag 2008, A Social Networking Conference

November 10, 2008, 4:38 PM —

Defrag 2008 was held in Denver last week.  Defrag is a social networking conference that brings together innovators, businesses and investors for a couple of days of robust dialoging on the business value of social networking tools, what is available in the market and what is coming down the pipe.  The last day of the Defrag conference did a smooth transition into the Denver-Boulder Technology MeetUp, which made for an immersive, intensive, educational experience on the state of social networking.

 

Defrag is a substantial conference with some well known, brand name sponsors like Oracle, BT, Connectbeam, InQuira and many others. Click here for more Defrag 2008 sponsors and participation information http://defragcon.com/2008/.

 

My greatest take away from the conference were the caveats each speaker included in their discussion points.  For example: Anything you do is better done with friends, but not all of them. Or this one: Not everyone produces or shares content; but everyone adds value via their social web.  The point of these comments is that your web presence is wider than you realize, and what you elect to reveal at your personal social sites should reflect a level of modesty and definitely etiquette. As one panelist put it, don't be so transparent, opacity can be good.

 

The point of controlling the level of personal transparency you elect to share was driven home in the discussion titled Personal Informatics and Techniques of Self. This speaker showed some emerging mash up tools that readily bring together all of the instances of your web presence, even those you are unaware of.  When your friends enter your name associated with specific pictures on their Facebook or MySpace site that will show up. So will the letters to the editor you wrote five years ago, and the columns you contribute today, as well as how you finished in your last marathon event.  It is all there, waiting to be gathered and presented to the inquirer via the emerging mash up tools.

 

The bottom line: we don’t know, and cannot know yet, the privacy issues that will surface. With that in mind, discretion is the better part of valour.

 

I'll be posting additional information from the Defrag 2008 conference this week. The conference provided a lot of rich content worth sharing, like emerging standards and how companies should approach becoming a Web 2.0 organization.