Dave's live weblogging session at Harvard

Went to Dave Winer’s live weblogging session at Harvard last night. About 30 or so people showed up for what turned out to be some pretty interesting discussion. I wasn’t exactly sure what “live weblogging” would be. Do all of us just sit in a room and write on our weblogs? Actually, it was much more sensical than that. Dave would “post” a topic, and a (live) discussion “thread” would emerge. If a topic seemed to be dragging along, or taking up too much time, an entirely new one would be offered.

Some of the highlights included:

• Dan Bricklin (one of the creators of the lengendary VisiCalc program) talking about something his company is developing called SMBmeta. Basically an RSS feed for small businesses that includes relevant information like directions, contact info and descriptions of what they do. Interesting application ideas were thrown around — if a mobile device could tap into these feeds based on location, for instance. What’s nice is that it puts the updating of this information in the hands of the business, and not a third-party directory or search engine.
• Dave talking about the two forks that have evolved for RSS, and how the importance is not on the format — but on the tools and applications that support it. It was good to hear this.
• How Harvard is much like Mircrosoft, in that it likes to get its name out there wherever it can. Surprisingly, this means good things for weblogs at Harvard — essentially giving every student the opportunity to self-publish under the Harvard name.
• A guy named Peter who runs reinvented.net said that no one has ever linked to him. Dave immediately asked for his URL. “Donna, you got that? OK, You’ve just been linked to.” Peter went on to say that he doesn’t care who reads his weblog (he’s been writing it since 1998). The purpose of his blog is soley for his 2 year old son — so that he will be able to read it when he’s older to see what his Dad was thinking during the time he was growing up. What a motive for blogging. A great reason.
• The guy who wrote RSD was there talking about how adoption for his format for linking services and weblogging software was adopted by systems like Blogger, MoveableType, Radio, etc. took just two days.

Donna Wentworth (Copyfight) has blogged the entire discussion on her site. Which is just strange, yet useful at the same time.