Eric Norlin – who runs the Defrag Conference – has a good post up today titled The metaphors we’ve outgrown. He riffs off of the Google Chrome announcement. At the end of it, he answers "what makes Defrag different."
People ask me all of the time what makes Defrag different? I kind of giggle and tell them that I’m proud that we’re not a conference loaded with case studies. Don’t get me wrong, that has a very useful place (in a nearly mature market). We’re just nowhere near that place. Defrag is about gathering to explore, imagine and build these new metaphors. The web should be getting smarter, more implicit, more enabling.
Let the rest of the world get mired down in economic uncertainty, productivity enhancement and cost reduction. There’s plenty of time for you to do that (trust me). Come to defrag and help us grow out of these metaphors. And then watch as the supposedly “pie in the sky” things you find at Defrag are suddenly “real world” things that you’re using and implementing everyday. Kinda cool, huh?
For all those interested, I’m still using Chrome – mostly enjoying it a lot but starting to notice the things it is missing, especially all those fun implicit web plugins I’ve been using.