The 2004 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference:
"To Shape the Future, You Have to Be There."
Sheffield, UK and Worldwide, October 25, 2003 /Wi-Fi Technology News/- Sebastopol, CA--From February 9-12, 2004, hackers, alpha geeks, bloggers, researchers, developers, CTOs, entrepreneurs, and educators will descend on the Westin Horton Plaza in San Diego, CA to share their common interests and uncommon passion for ideas and the promise of the future at the third annual O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (ETech).
"Alpha geeks and early adopters show us the technologies that hold the potential for widespread adoption," says O'Reilly & Associates Founder and President Tim O'Reilly. "In fact, people you've never heard of are changing the world. To shape the future, you have to be there. This conference presents the future in process, as it's forming."
The ETech Conference committee was faced with an unprecedented number of exceptional proposals to consider this year. "Computing innovations are coming down the pike at an extraordinary rate, from not-necessarily traditional sources, heading in unforeseen directions, and being used in unexpected ways," notes conference chair Rael Dornfest.
Some of the themes that will be explored at this year's ETech are:
- Social software, representing and supporting groups of people, from Hiptop Nation to weblogs
- Mobility--what's happening with data, devices, and communication now that they're freed from the desktop and broadcast models of the past decade?
- The untethered world of ad hoc networking made possible by wireless technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular, and Rendezvous - Post-browser interfaces to data and services utilizing rich internet applications
- Navigational devices, geospacial annotation tools, visualization software, and proximity sensors
- Hardware--how it's being poked, prodded, and repurposed by hackers
IRobot Co-Founder Helen Greiner, at work on the next Mars rover, and Marc Smith of Microsoft, who will demonstrate tools that catalyze collective action, will give keynote presentations. Other intriguing people speaking at this year's conference include:
- Xbox hacker Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, on reverse engineering techniques to legitimately gain design intelligence about existing products
- Russell Beattie, mobile applications developer for phones and PDAs
- Eric Bonabeau, who uses evolutionary computation to detect weaknesses in complex systems
- The Walt Disney Internet Group, leveraging RSS for collaboration and massive content delivery
- The BBC's Priya Prakash analyzes the impact of wireless service in emerging markets
- Author and researcher J.C. Herz examines the technologies percolating through the Pentagon
- Economics professor Edward Castronova looks at the future of cyberspace economies
- Fiona Romeo creates social software for children at the BBC
- GeoURL's Joshua Schachter annotates the landscape with geospacial markup and distributed geographic annotation
The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference is an exceptional meeting place for people keenly interested in how technology shapes the world in which we live. Every conference participant-- attendees, speakers, exhibitors--can be a profound catalyst for change, influencing new applications, networks, and culture. Gather with lead users, forward thinkers, and technology activists at ETech to vet the projects and ideas that will radically alter the future of computing, communication, lifestyle, business, and education.
Comments about the 2003 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference:
"The annual conference has become one of the key events geeks attend to tune in to the vibrations of trends on the industry's edges, where legions of software developers...are knitting new bits of Net together." --Scott Rosenberg, Salon, April 2003
"But for hundreds of do-it-yourself technology developers drawn to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference here during the past week, prospects have never seemed brighter...this is no fringe-fest, judging from who attends. Software architects from BEA Systems, IBM and Microsoft, as well as computer pioneers such as Alan Kay, who helped coin the term 'personal computer,' and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor came to prove they still have what it takes to be a geek..."
--Eric Auchard, Reuters, April 2003
"The O'Reilly conferences are the gold standard for drawing together a critical mass of thought leaders."
--Steve Gillmor, CRN, April 2003
"Call it a Davos for geeks...the conference is an umbrella symposium for all the brand-new, up-and-coming technologies that may or may not make a dent on the future. It is one of the primary gatherings of all the geeks and nerds busy inventing tomorrow, and those seeking to make a buck off their ideas."
--Leander Kahney, Wired, April 2003
Additional Resources:
For details about the 2004 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, visit:
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech/
To register for a press pass, go to:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/28/press.html
Media coverage from the 2003 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference can be found at:
http://www.oreillynet.com/et2003/
For information on being a media sponsor, contact Catherine Dale at (707) 827-7184 or cat@oreilly.com.
For information on exhibition and sponsorship opportunities at the conference, contact Andrew Calvo at (707) 827-7176, or andrewc@oreilly.com.
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly & Associates is the premier information source for leading-edge computer technologies. The company's books, conferences, and web sites bring to light the knowledge of technology innovators. O'Reilly books, known for the animals on their covers, occupy a treasured place on the shelves of the developers building the next generation of software.
O'Reilly conferences and summits bring alpha geeks and forward-thinking business leaders together to shape the revolutionary ideas that spark new industries. From the Internet to XML, open source, .NET, Java, and web services, O'Reilly puts technologies on the map. For more information:
http://www.oreilly.com
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