Doc is blogging the conference here. Dave Winer is blogging it here. Cory Doctorow is blogging it here. Dan Gillmor is blogging it here. David Weinberger from here.
I have been following the Supernova Bloggers, and I have a few comments.
I don't know if decentralization is the best term for the changes that I am seeing in the IT world, although there is a trend towards decentraliztion in the user community. Software applications are becoming much smaller, componentized, open and free; content is decentralized and connection to content occurs, not through huge organized systems, but through networks of people and powerful search engines like Google. Blogging is an excellent example of very distributed content management. Anyone can create and post content to a personal content management system. Others can subscribe, if they wish, to your flow of microcontent and quote or link to your thoughts. Links accrete around important or contrversial conversations or insights into topics.
Compounding this trend is a dramatic decrease in hardware and software costs. Walmart is selling a linux based PC for $199 with 10 gigs hard disc space.
The implication of this is that computing is becoming extraordinarily powerful, extremely adaptive, and extraordinarily cheap. Companies should take advantage of these trends to encourage much more dialogue, collaboration and free flow of ideas. Each person, should be encouraged to publish, subscribe and comment on the thoughts of their colleagues. Rapid experience sharing, I am convinced can create the speed that is required in the new economy and this different and decentralized computing model can accomplish this at a much lower cost.
Now, what does that mean to us..
Companies have large infrastructures that are ripe for cost reduction, when combined with open standard tools and the internet, cost can be reduced dramatically. Monolithic centralized IT departments should be disassembled.
Content management processes can be distributed so that authors can spend more time on content creation and management rather than technology
Collaboration can be done with P2P tools rather than large client server collaboration tools.
Open source software and extensions to current applications should be embraced, supported and enabled further.
