Press releases

"Remix" the Future at the 2005 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

Press release: August 30, 2004

Call for Participation Is Open; Proposals Due September 27, 2004

Sebastopol, CA--Futurists, those high-tech fortune tellers (and fortunes are indeed at stake), often take the form of sought-after public speakers, expounding on a vision of the future gleaned from a variety of sources. While this synthesis and analysis can be instructive, ETech, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, also takes the empirical tack: by bringing together the hackers and lead users that futurists observe and consult, the conference puts ideas up for debate, allowing all participants to draw their own conclusions about--and perhaps take a hand in--the shape of the future.

ETech is able to spotlight important emerging trends in computing because, as conference program chair and O'Reilly CTO Rael Dornfest noted, "We are influenced in our building of the conference by the proposals we receive-- that and a program committee of alpha geeks." Preparations are underway for ETech 2005, taking place March 14-17, 2005 in San Diego, California. To that end, Dornfest encourages technologists and strategists, CTOs and CIOs, researchers, programmers, standards workers, business developers, and entrepreneurs to submit proposals for conference sessions and tutorials.

The theme for ETech 2005 is "Remix," illustrating how technological components expand, contract, and recombine, encompassing new nexus points of iterative hacking and large ideas that have a way of transforming technology. Some of the faint signals, deeper trends, and current topics for the conference include:

  • The phone as a platform, moving beyond mere voice to smart mobile sensor
  • Geolocation, providing a sense of "there" and facilitating the formation of groups with feet in both the virtual and physical worlds
  • Peer-to-peer, as it relates to the networked mobile devices in our pockets
  • Web services, now that the B2B EDI replacement has given way to recombinant data services and syndicated e-commerce
  • Hardware, examining what happens when geeks with screwdrivers "let the magic out" of their computers, game consoles, and other assorted gadgets
  • Social software, such as weblogs, wikis, social networking, and wireless data networks
  • Emerging topics, the not-yet-ready-for-primetime ideas and inventions
  • Business models--what projects and people are likely to become crucial to the future of internet computing?

    • What alpha geeks do today can radically alter the future of technology for everyone else tomorrow, and transmitting the knowledge of these innovators to a wider audience is one way of getting important--and fun--products and services into our hands sooner rather than later. The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference frames the ideas, projects, and technologies that the alpha geeks are thinking about, hacking on, and inventing right now into a coherent picture from which to extrapolate and upon which to start building.

    Additional Resources:

    For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the convention, contact Andrew Calvo at (707) 827-7176, or andrewc@oreilly.com.

    About O’Reilly

    O’Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O’Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying “faint signals” from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.

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