TorCamp Redux, or What I Learned at TorCamp ...

TorCamp was today ... spent most of the day there with some very smart people talking about very interesting things. Here's what made it into my notebook:

Reg Braithwaite's definition of an application: "something that does stuff with stuff, and that stuff can be people"
Apparently Rogers and other big-name providers are blocking podcasts. Individuals report that after a few podcast downloads, they can't connect. Alec Saunders (TorCamper) blogs about it here.
David Janes: the value of a tag is in the effort that someone put into tagging something. Remove the tag, remove the value.
Also, David Janes on microformats - simple conventions for embedding semantics in HTML to enable decentralized development
Patrick Dinnen of wirelesstoronto.ca -- they have about a dozen free hotspots here in Toronto. Great program! Needs to build critical mass. Sign up for an account today, and then go patronize the establishement of the provider. St. Lawrence Market is a major wifi zone!
43Folders has a must-hear podcast (thank you Ken Schafer)
Richard Sharp of podchannels inc. shares an interesting idea - what if you could subscribe to a *person*, i.e. if everytime I posted something, wrote a guest column somewhere, appeared in a podcast, etc., what if *that* were the feed (as opposed to just the feed of my blog). Follow-up thought from me: the relationship here between identity (who is the real Kate Trgovac - see sxip for cool ideas around identity), meta-filtering of content (I want everyone to be able to read my posts about marketing, but only trusted friends to read my cat blog posts) and trust
Ken Schafer on making money -- build it into your process, make "making money" an organic component of your venture (not an afterthought)
Heard often (including said by me) "I'm building this so that my mom can use it" ... upon reflection - is that really the *best* model? Our moms are in a finite twilighty Internet space. In 15 years when the teenagers of today are moms, they won't be like our moms are now. Will we then to have to retool?
When should an online product/service attempt to "build community" or provide a "social network"? Only when it makes sense to. Some of this social networking stuff is a fad or predicated purely on cool technology. Some of it is useful. What is most useful? To me, it's when I can build trust, when I can use social networking to expand my circle of trust.
Need to check out Cory Doctorow's new book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Finally, a meta-wireless discussion. A fear expressed (apparently) about free wifi in cafe's, etc is that it will attract "zombies" who sit there all day and stare into their screens. Aside from the "no it doesn't" response, there is a larger conversation to be had about the difference between physical place vs virtual place. Mike Fergusson (who is on the left coast and unfortunately couldn't be at TorCamp) has written about this and how this distinction is lost on teens of today. Project PlaceSite takes this a step further and aims to create digital community services by, for and about people who are together in the same physical place.