I hope I captured the mood of the camp in the last post. Lots of interesting people, lots of talk and a game or two on the Wii. Did I mention my tennis prowess?

Here is my rundown, quick as I can before it is all forgotten...

David Cunliffe has agreed to make peering (or local internet data exchanging – to coin a pithy phrase) the issue of 2007. There was some robust discussion about what the solution to the current infrastructure mess should be later in the weekend. Basically it seemed to be poor old John Houlker vs. the rest of the world. Kind of disappointing for the rest of the world after the immense progress that had been made with the Minister but hopefully we will reach common ground.

Judith Tizard managed to stick around for the whole weekend. An immense effort considering the earnestness with which many folks wanted to talk to her about the DRM like provisions of the upcoming Copyright act. In fairness, it should be pointed out that Judith Tizard is able to return serve with vigour and conversation in her vicinity was always lively. It is true that she was a werewolf for a while, tinged with red. We really owe a debt of gratitude to the two ministers for attending this conference in person unencumbered with the usual entourage one expects from people who are in government (of any hue). I fully agree with Judith Tizard that New Zealand is probably one of the best countries in which to access your policy makers and politicians. If you don't try it though, you will never know.

Interesting presentation from Greame Merrall of New Digital (Rupert Murdoch's bunch over the ditch). The News sites have gone in for blogging in a big way and the traffic they are receiving is very impressive. Richard Hulse from Radio NZ also chipped into the conversation. Podcasts have been growing at a rate of about 10% per week but since Christmas Radio NZ podcast demand has been growing at 50% per week. Some trend there, surely.

I got to met David Slack and David Haywood, two of the finest contributors to www.publicaddress.net (other than Russell Brown hisself, of course). David Slack was a very early internet adopter setting up a speech writing site (it's true I tell you) where you whack in some details, pick a speech type and out pops a speech. What started as a joke and publicity stunt in 1993 now feeds his family. All here at www.speeches.com .... but the really interesting stuff is still to come. David Slack is keen to help people tell their own stories, in an authentic voice. How to do this is just one part of the dilemma and on its way to being solved. The hard question facing him is whether to put his whole system (years of TLC and IP) out under an open source licence and whether to use the Creative Commons licence for his literary works. If it helps, David, I have read your Civil War book which I may not have done if it was not free (beer) at the conference.

David Haywood has made an equally brave decision. David H. is a renewable energy scientist / engineer. Seems he likes writing better and is giving up the old career to launch the new. Fortunately he still was able to give a presentation on renewable energy and some of the issues behind changing the energy infrastructure to cope with micro-generation technology. Seems there is as little incentive for the electricity industry in NZ to change as there is for the internet infrastructure to change. “Death to Badly Structured Infrastructure.”

I gave my talk contrasting Internet infrastructure with the software infrastructure we are building in NZ for tertiary education. This talk had an attendance of about 6, fair enough I suppose given Ben Googer and others were competing for ear time.

For me, one of the best talks was the last one I attended. Rob McKinnon is a kiwi living in London. He and others have been using the internet to increase participation in democracy. He is now applying the ideas and code to New Zealand. Check out www.theyworkforyou.co.nz, better still get involved with coding and canvassing your politicians. This site is a great example of how when public data sets become open (e.g. Hansard) the variety ideas that come about for using them are almost infinite and certainly incredibly hard to anticipate. “Free the data sets”, as Matt Biddulph would say..

Other folks to mention, just because I can, Tim Norton, Simon Wood, Peter Gutmann (of I gave him a lift fame), John Clegg, Peter Harrison, Rochelle Hume, John Humphrey, Robert O'Brian (whose company uses Erlang!), Justine Sanderson, Adam Shand and Jeff and Pia Waugh. Look them up on Google, I am sure you will find something interesting.

Huge thanks to Nathan Torkington and family, Russell Brown and Rod Drury. If I think of anything else to say I will post at a later date.