I spent last weekend at the XOXO festival in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been close friends with Andy Baio, one of the organizers for about a decade and he’s talked about doing a conference for the past couple years so it was pretty amazing to see those conversations about ideas turn into reality over four glorious …
Category Archives: conferences
My Webstock Talk: Lessons from a 40 year old (now with transcript)
Here's my talk from Webstock last month (a conference I loved): I will say humbly that it's a good talk on important subjects I've been thinking about for the past several years, but I should explain my sheepish, low-energy delivery. My slot was mid-afternoon, and all morning was spent watching one amazing talk after another, …
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Webstock: best conference ever
Conferences come and go, they ebb and flow. Sometimes they fade away while other times they grow until quality suffers. Webstock this year was phenomenal, matching reviews I've heard in years past. Where typical conferences have most speakers giving a 6 out of 10 talk with the occasional 9, I'd say this year's event was …
SXSW 2011
Clay Shirky, with sponsors It’s hard to believe I started going to SXSW eleven years ago, but for my ninth trip to Austin, I decided to do it up like an adult with a family and kids and only stay a few days instead of doing a 6-7 day drunken bender like years past. I …
My SXSW 2011 talk on lessons from 11 years of community
Lessons from 11 years of community (my SXSW 2011 talk) from Matt Haughey on Vimeo. This past Saturday, I gave a talk at SXSW Interactive on some lessons in moderation and growing a community that was sparsely attended (I was half a mile away in one of the outlying hotels, no biggie — it …
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This is why I hate Las Vegas
I saw this talk live a couple years ago, and it perfectly communicates everything I hate about Las Vegas and why I think it's one of the worst places on earth, designed to bankrupt people, enable addicts, and generally just be a horrible place for humans to be. This talk is from someone that …
Khan Academy
My favorite project and talk from GEL 2010 was this one by Sal Khan. His amazing Khan Academy is what happens when you sit down and simply share comprehensive knowledge on every subject imaginable and make it freely accessible to as many people as possible. http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11731351&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 Sal Khan at Gel 2010 from Gel Conference on …
GEL 2010 Conference trip to Dead Horse Bay
The highlight of the GEL Conference was an amazing trip to Dead Horse Bay, which is on the outskirts of Brooklyn towards JFK airport. You can read about the place on wikipedia and here's a google map of the place. Anthropologists Robin Nagle (her 2009 GEL talk was amazing) and Howard Warren took a group …
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SXSWi 2010 recap
Now that I’ve slept it off and a couple days have passed, I feel like I can start processing the past week in Austin Texas for the South By Southwest Interactive Conference. Some quick bits follow. Huge Crowds I’d heard this would be the biggest SXSWi ever and I certainly remember not having as much …
MaxFunCon
Teddy Bears Have Their Picnic, originally uploaded by mathowie. It's pretty hard to summarize or even relate how MaxFunCon went last weekend, so maybe I'll start with some history. Nearly a year ago, Jesse Thorn emailed me to say he was seriously considering throwing a comedy/internet type conference/festival outside of Los Angeles, and would I …
A Whole Lotta Nothing 