It was much easier to attend this morning’s keynotes, since I managed to get a mostly full night of sleep last night.

Ben Fry started off the keynotes with a talk about the Processing Development Environment, which looks very cool. It’s similar in concept to Logo—which leaves a wonderful aftertaste of nostalgia for me—an entire development environment to do visualization, including a domain specific language to allow the programmer to focus on writing what they mean to do, not how to do it. Coincidentally, I’ll be attending a session on domain specific languages later today. He even wrote code on the fly in the environment, in front of the audience which is a very brave thing to do. But, it was an awesome demonstration of how easy yet powerful the environment is. This keynote was quite good, but he had the advantage of presenting something that can produce very fun and cool visualizations. But, isn’t that the whole point of a keynote: to educate, but still entertain? I can’t wait to play with this software.

Next up is Professor Robin Hanson of George Mason University to talk about “Overcoming Bias.” He joked about not having any slides, and being glad he didn’t after the preceding demonstration (how could he possibly top it?). People, obviously, have preconceived notions of just about everything. We think we understand that people are biased, but Robin is here to tell us that it’s much, much worse than we realize. I usually believe that I am aware of my biases, but this keynote made me think that I need to be more vigilant in watching out for my biases and to continuously evaluate them.

The keynote about bias was well timed, because next Nat introduced Bill Hilf of Microsoft by pointing out that it is a company that appears a bit “schizoid” from the outside, but that large companies often have very divergent views on the inside. Bill is here to give us an update on the status of Open Source at Microsoft. Bill joined Microsoft three and a half years ago, to be our man on the inside so to speak. There’s a concept within Microsoft, created by Bill Gates, called Software Darwinism. It’s exactly what it sounds like: survival of the fittest software in a highly competitive environment. Really? I’d hate to see the competition Microsoft Exchange had. Funny anecdote: a new senior programmer at Microsoft once asked if it was okay to visit a Linux web site. The moral of the story appears to be that Microsoft isn’t really evil; that Microsoft really does contribute to Open Source. I’ll believe it when Ballmer and RMS share a stage (am I biased?). Um. Wow. I don’t even know how to respond this oxymoron. Before Bill could run off the stage, Nat jumped up to put him on the spot about patents and Novell. Way to go Nat!

Nat segued into the next speaker, Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Pirate Party of Sweden, to talk about Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties. While this is a very well done keynote, I find it difficult to summarize it better than the title has already done. The message Rick wants to drive home is that the real conflict isn’t the one on the surface, the one about copyright infringement and the loss of revenue. It’s really about loss of privacy. He briefly summarized the platform of the Pirate Party and showed that they have influenced other parties—in Norway. It’s a hard, uphill battle in the United States, unfortunately. Still, this guy is awesome. He’s actively demonstrating the power an upstart political party with decent ideals can have. It also demonstrates the advantage a small party can have in a parliamentary system, versus the system we have in the States.

The last keynote of the morning, Steve Yegge of Google (but not on behalf of Google), was introduced by Nat as a knowledgeable and funny person. A perfect way to cap off a great morning of keynotes. He’s here to tell us “How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps.” Open Source developers are notorious for ignoring marketing, much to their own detriment. Unfortunately, he got started off with some technical difficulties. The O’Reilly tech couldn’t get his Mac to sync up properly with the projector system. Stupid Macs . Steve immediately questioned how people choose software. Someone in the audience answered, “logic!” We all got a good laugh out of that. Brands are like pointers. They’re a placeholder for a product in our minds. So how are these brands created? I’m not entirely sure he ever explained it beyond, “they just do.” The single biggest branding problem in Open Source is the name “Open Source.” There’s no brand, no association, and no trademark. I must say, I’m impressed. Even without his slides, Steve managed to give us a smooth, entertaining, and educational presentation. That’s the mark of a great speaker, when he doesn’t even need his slides to get his point across.

No Q&A after these keynotes, since we ran long. So we’re done here.

Nothing interested me during this morning’s second session slot, so I took the opportunity to check out the vendor booths on the expo floor. I’m sorry to say that I’m pretty disappointed with it this year. Last year (being my first conference) I was excited to go home with so many free t-shirts and even the meager swag that was being given away in return for nothing more than enough personal information to annoy me for the rest of my life.

This year (being my second conference), I lack any real desire to collect t-shirts—not that many vendors have them anyway. Even if I wanted the t-shirts, I don’t want to go to the effort required to swipe my badge (thus handing over my contact information) and listening to a sales representative.

I have no interest in sales pitches. I want to see cool demos. What can this software do for me? No marketing glossies, please.

The fundamental problem with vendors at an Open Source conference is the demographics. The software is generally free. So businesses have adapted to that by selling services instead. I don’t want these services. Whenever I’ve brought these services back to work, no one wants them.

Oddly, the vendor presence I find most fascinating is the New York Times. I couldn’t figure out why they were here, so I asked. They aren’t selling anything (though they are recruiting Open Source talent—good for them!). Instead, they’re showing off how they use Open Source to develop their on-line services. They even have a blog. They’re even running a BOF session on the use of Amazon Web Services, which I will likely attend.

There are a couple of other booths that are worth visiting. Intel looks cool—and is a good friend to Open Source—and OSL is demonstrating the XO-1. I’ll make a few more rounds of the floor to see if my attitude towards the vendors improves.