NBMA's Big Event, May 20, 1999
An Evening of Predictions
Presented by
Dan Shafer of
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Networking with the Peanut GalleryOne of the best parts of the Big Event, is the chance to meet new friends and see familiar faces. After a year and a half at a dream job as Technical Writer, a job that came about as a result of meeting my future employer during the Networking portion of a Big Event from days-gone-by, I am inspired to add this important part of the event to the reviews.On the way in to the meeting I happened upon a first-timer to our Big Events, Dave Elliott, who introduced himself as a Systems Engineer from Resource Phoenix, a company that supplies SAP on Virtual Private Networks. Welcome Dave! Once inside the door, I was surrounded by the familiar sights and smells of lovely cheeses and assorted snack goodies. Soon found myself shaking paws greeting some old friends including Max Gerard, long-time NBMA member and Web Developer who just finished a stellar job setting up the site for radio station KPFA. Now getting his portfolio ready for the SFSU Multimedia Studies Program, a jewel of a discovery that led to many great reviews for NBMA and the Virtual Reality Education Foundation. Thanks for the hot lead on some fabulous shows at the New Minds Forum. Good luck Max! Linda Jay Brandt, Writer Extraordinaire and long-time NBMA board member and Editor, and wonderful person that she is, had some good news to share about a book she just finished proof-reading that sounded most interesting for any of you Dead-Heads out there. The book is called In the Spirit - Conversations with the spirit of Jerry Garcia and should be available by the time you read this from, where else? .. Amazon.com of course. Congratulations Linda!
AnnouncementsAnn Smulka, President of NBMA, welcomed old members and a few new visitors to this evening's presentation, announcing the Web99 Developer's Conference coming June 27- July 1 to the Moscone Center and offered a 200 dollar discount to NBMA members! Send mail to Ann at smulka@dnai.com for a Conference pass discount. Michael Wanger took the floor to announce the Best of the North Bay, June 17 at the Autodesk Atrium, which promises to be a spectacular display of the best sites and CD-ROMs for 98-99. For more info see the NBMA Online for details about the Big Event, and other events not to be missed! Michael also announced a couple of job offers of interest to the group, one for a Graphic Designer with a background in advertising, the other for a Designer to create Educational Games. Those interested may email vidkid@well.com. Sir Maylock Stansbury, leader of the Art, Sound and Video SIG, made a call for volunteers to showcase Multimedia at the Marin County Fair in July, representing NBMA. Those interested may send mail to maylock@pacbell.net or Sharon Callahan at scetc@earlthlink.net, always a lot of fun and help is always appreciated. Mike Campos announced an important Entrepreneur's SIG coming Thursday, June 10 featuring Dr. Peller Marion, best-selling author and entrepreneur herself, presenting How to Maximize your career in Multimedia: Job Security in an Insecure Industry. Peller is responsible in no small part, for inspiring me to land on little cat feet at my present position doing what I do best, for someone who appreciates it with great rewards. Now if she can do that for me, what can she do for you? Come to her presentation and find out, or catch the review in a future Cat's Alley.
IntroductionAnn introduced our featured presenter for this evening, famous author and respected industry insider, from CNET Central, Dan Shafer, welcome Dan! Meet Dan Shafer of CNETDan introduced himself from earlier days as creator of "For What it's Worth" newsletter, followed by twenty years as a writer, on to such industry giants as Intel, Cisco and Apple, author of over fifty books and webmaster of gui.com (the Peanut Gallery sat quietly, duly impressed). Three years ago, he began to reminisce fondly, he remembered listening to the melodic strains of the Rippingtons at the Marin Fair on July 4. He saw the multimedia show with his friend from Inverness which, he commented with a sly smile, is a long way from the Bay Area, and not just geographically (big laugh from the Peanut Gallery). Now there are those of you out there, he pointed accusingly, who will say Oh yeah, I've seen it, but he has learned over the years, he doesn't have to invent everything. This Presentation, he explained to us, can take two hours or two days, it depends on the questions. No hidden agenda, he promised, otherwise he'd be getting rich selling secrets about CNET (another good laugh from the Gallery beginning to liven). Starting with his prognostications he promised, he would take a vote for our favorite topics, and then most likely forget! He also promised to forecast for about a year, and if all his predictions come true, we can all bow down and worship at his feet (big laugh). ECommerce - Convergence of TechnologiesThe future of ECommerce, he proclaimed, lies in the Convergence of Technologies. He gave an example of Hypertouch in San Jose, you can touch the icon on a magazine page and follow it to the vendor, imagine pushing the door of a shiny, new red truck and it will take you to a virtual showroom. The technology, he explained, comes from Xerox Parc. On Affinity and Affliate Programs he put links on his own site to Amazon.com and they pay him 15 percent for people who link to that site when they buy something. Even at 5 percent he recounted an amazing story of a friend who just made a check for seven thousand dollars as a fee! ETOYS.COM pays 25 percent, you can make money, he commented. Someone in the Peanut Gallery asked him to explain the magic icon from the magazine. It works by the use of an Infrared sensor in the magazine holder. He remarked sadly that he was under non-disclosure and could only say there were three major magazines planning to ship the free holder. Remember the early days of National Geographic he asked, when they used to ship you a free, cool holder for the year's issues? He motioned slipping the magazine into a protective slip such as I had seen at the library. Another voice from the Peanut Gallery asked for more information on how to join an Affliliate Program?
He predicted that Compaq or Dell or Gateway would offer click-through fees, only to be interrupted by a member of the Peanut Gallery proclaiming that Dell already started this, to which Dan replied, You see, my predictions have come true already! (to a big laugh from the Peanut Gallery).
Someone asked if services, such as web design, could be auctioned online? Dan was optimistic about the possibility of companies posting a banner ad looking for a flash graphic in 24 hours and take bids for 200 an hour, as an example. He also mentioned Verticalnet, like Priceline.com but on a larger scale, and added a prediction to dislodge the existing brick and mortar way of doing business. Agents, Spiders and Info Gatherers
Dan pointed us to An SA he explained, is an agent substituting for a human actor. He held the Peanut Gallery's full attention as he recounted a marvelous story about SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, creating a cool screen saver, while your computer sleeps, it runs a program in the background so that if your pc finds the key to discovering life from outer space, they will name it after you! He explained how this allows them to distribute a huge, computing problem out to millions of users, each doing a piece of the puzzle and sending the info back through an agent. A member of the Peanut Gallery asked Dan to clarify the difference between spiders and agents? Dan qualified for us.
Standards received a little attention, as Dan mentioned that Internet Explorer 5 promises to be 95 percent compliant with the latest HTML standards set by the W3.org, (which, he also commented was like being 95 percent pregnant) while Netscape promises their version of the future browser from Communicator to Gecko, to be 100 percent compliant with the new standard. The Web Standards Project, he further explained, allowed for plug-in's such as Flash, Beatnik or QuickTime to be included in the browser rather than require downloads. Standards do not break down at the text level, only he warned, when you reach anything cool (to great peals of hearty laughs from the Peanut Gallery). Q and A with the Peanut GalleryMichael Wanger (producer of Emmy award-winning nature videos and NBMA Best of North Bay) asked if full-motion video would replace static graphics? Dan replied that he believed it would be more of a convergence, than a replacement. He mentioned speed.snap.com as a high bandwidth site. He also explained Eyeballs, count for every page that gets viewed. If you break up an article into 10 pages, and put a different banner ad on each page and deliberately program each page to load the banner first before it begins loading the rest of the article, you get paid for each "Eyeball" but announced for all to hear, that You didn't hear that from me! (to great more laughs). Someone from the Peanut Gallery asked for a prediction about Satellites? Dan replied laughing, that his wife wouldn't go for it, and admitted he had his own issue about the reliability. Another voice called out something about Ricochet, to which Dan replied that on a T1 line, you bet! He also mentioned that he used to work at Solon on wireless communication. The best question from the Peanut Gallery, asked about programming for 3.0 Browsers? .According to Dan, research shows that only 10 percent of users are still using that old a version. Dan's advice (music to our pointy ears):
Thank you Dan, for an evening we should long remember! |
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