I’ve just spent the week in San Diego at O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference – aka ETech 2007. The theme was the old Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
I came out to San Diego for two reasons. The first was intentional: my job has an underlying requirement that I be aware of what’s going on in the tech world, and I can’t think of a conference more targeted at that line of thinking than ETech. The second was unintentional: in the time since I booked my conference registration, I have burned out very hard on a serious personal project, and I grew to look forward to this time as a chance to reboot myself in terms of technological interests.
In both respects, I believe it was a success.