The Brighter Planet Blog

Last weekend, I had the great good fortune of attending Gnomedex 9 on Brighter Planet’s behalf. This was my first in-the-flesh Gnomedex experience, and it was everything I could have hoped for.

Techie conferences are a dime a dozen, but Gnomedex is pretty unique. Founder/impresario Chris Pirillo — an extravagantly social, personal-media-wielding force of nature — wasn’t interested in building an event around narrow-gauge professional development, or around the needs of corporate sponsors. Instead, as one Gnomedex regular very eloquently put it, he wanted to create “a gathering of the geek elite who feel compelled to use technology to make the world a better place.”

It’s this ethos — present among the pioneers of the Internet, and picking up more and more momentum since the advent of the social media/web 2.0 revolution — that turned me from book editor into late-blooming web geek a while back. I’m drawn to people who share it, and I think it was 2005 that I first noticed that an awfully large contingent of such people were converging in Seattle for Gnomedex. And in sifting through the cloud of blog posts, photos, and videos that appeared in the event’s wake, it was clear that attendees left that year’s Gnomedex electrified and reinvigorated in their work. Pirillo himself says it best in the Gnomedex FAQ:

People across the board each and every year have stated that they came away with renewed passion for what they’re doing. They are energized. They look at things from different perspectives than they might have prior to being there. They remember why it is they started on their journey, and have a renewed faith in themselves and their ideas. They come away having made new friends and associates. I’ve been told more times than I can honestly count that Gnomedex is inspiring in many ways. It’s not something that is easy to put into words… but it’s very tangible.

I look at the themes and lists of speakers at each year’s Gnomedex and I’m sure it’s been just like Chris says, every year. And that’s surely an apt description of my experience last weekend. There were programmable robots, and there was Surface — a wildly cool new toy from the folks in Redmond. There were riveting, emotional talks from guys who’ve been using the social web to kick cancer’s keister and knock home the suffering of the homeless. There were glimmering ideas — the legitimate place of skepticism in human knowing (“climate skeptics” fail the test); the coming cyborg age (it’s closer than you think); how a web-based puzzle is drawing on human intuition to solve scientific riddles — that my mind will be returning to again and again. There was a clear thread uniting a very eclectic program: Embrace your humanity — all of it — and come as you are. Come take your place at the table — we’re all in this together, and we need each other. And the walls came tumbling down, progressively; by the event’s end, you just couldn’t miss the sense that we had become a unified body.

Brighter Planet was proud to be a Gnomedex sponsor this year; its values are our values. And — if fate be willing — we’d love to do it again. Thanks to Mona Nomura, Stuart Maxwell, Maya Bisineer, and of course Chris and the rest of the Gnomedex team for all your help and for putting on such an inspiring event!

— Ian @ Brighter Planet

Dig deeper into what went on in Seattle — here’s a little collection of conference wrap-ups I put together.