I spent most of today at the San Jose Convention Center, attending the
ACM1: Beyond
Cyberspace Exhibition. I’ve been to many trade shows at the
Convention Center — but this wasn’t just another trade show.
Oh, sure, Microsoft had a huge booth, showing all sorts of whizzy
software that’s not ready for primetime (and no, I’m not making a snide
reference to any version of Windows or Office, past, present, or future
— not this time, anyway). And IBM was there too, showing various
research projects like
Blue Eyes and
Veggie
Vision.
But those booths weren’t the most interesting things at the
Exposition, not by a long shot.
I was much more impressed by the more unusual presentations. Things
like Artabunga, which gives kids
a place to draw on the Web (and share what they’ve done). Or
FocalPoint 3D Audio, something I’d
dearly love to have available on my next conference cal. And
e-chalk, which captures a
blackboard session in realtime, along with the discussion going along
with it, and makes it sharable.
The University of California at Berkeley showed four research projects;
the two that interested me most were
Telegraph, which shows
how you can combine data from different Web sources to develop
information, knowledge, and, if you’re not careful, falsehoods; I also
liked
Conversation Maps,
which might provide a way to deal with the mess of e-mail which makes up
my working day.
The best part of the conference, though, was seeing so many high school
and middle school students taking in the exhibits — not just wandering
through, either, but actively participating. And I enjoyed being
Fibonacci’d by the students at
Longfellow Middle
School — though by the time I came through, they were getting very
tired.
I hope ACM does this again in another few years, when Jeffrey would be
ready to enjoy and appreciate it.