Next year in Honolulu!

I had to choose between spending Friday night at the gala Microsoft VIP reception at the Hong Kong Jockey Club at Happy Valley racecourse or going to Shabbat services at UJC. It was an easy choice, and I really appreciated getting out of conference mode and into Shabbat when the service began. As they used to say in commercials, “Thanks, I needed that!”

I brought two of my colleagues from the conference along with me to services (one IBMer, one guy who used to be at Microsoft and is now at a smaller company); there were also several people from California who were on a China tour, and it turns out one of them is from Los Gatos and studies with the Rabbi at Shir Hadash (though she belongs to a different congregation). It really is a small world.

There’s no Torah study this weekend; the Rabbi here just got back from Toronto and is a bit jet-lagged. And he won’t be here if I return to Hong Kong in the future, because he’s going back to Toronto permanently in a few months to take up a position with Kolel, the Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning. Their website looks very interesting and promising, but I think I’ll defer exploring it until I don’t have Hong Kong as a competing attraction.

Friday’s lunchtime keynote at WWW10 was an excellent lecture by Dr. Susan Blackmore of the University of the West of England, an expert on memetics. The lecture was titled “The Meme’s-Eye Web“, and in it she made the point that memes have shaped human evolution, both genetically (by encouraging the developement of brains which were more effective hosts for memes) and, of course, culturally, and that the Web is a wonderful playground for memes. I found her talk very interesting and thought-provoking.

But then during services, we studied a chapter of the Pirke Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, part of the Talmud), as is traditional during the counting of the Omer. This week, we studied Chapter 3, and Pirke Avot 3.18 struck me as a very interesting counterpoint to Dr. Blackmore’s lecture. In it, Rabbi Akiva says:
“How greatly God must have loved us to create us in His image; yet even greater love did He show us in making us conscious that we are created in His image.” I haven’t decided whether Dr. Blackmore and Rabbi Akvia are completely at odds with one another or if they’re both saying the same thing in different ways — but it was a curious coincidence to hear both views within eight hours.

Shabbat Shalom!

WWW10

This is going to be a short entry, I’m afraid, because I’m spending all my time actually attending sessions and talking to people at WWW10 — too busy to have fun!

Yesterday, TimBL gave a keynote on the full potential of the Web, especially how the Semantic Web will lead us there. The slides are on the Web (of course) but I can’t find them.

And then I spent the rest of the day attending sessions as a member of the Awards panel for the conference.

Today, I’ll be at one session in my role on the Awards panel, and then will be spending the rest of the day in the Web and Society track, seeing the fruits of my term as co-chair.

Pictures are unlikely until the weekend, but stay tuned anyway.

Two sessions down

The Web and Society Track has now had two sessions, and both went well, I think. The first was a panel on privacy, which, I’m afraid, came to no new conclusions; the second, which I chaired, was a panel on “The Web and Everyday Life”, which had three presentations dancing around that theme. Again, no new conclusions, but some interesting discussion.

Lunch today was a wonderful piece of salmon, and now in a few minutes, it’ll time for the official conference dinner, which will be an “extravaganza” — which I suspect means another ten-course banquet. Dining out in the US is going to seem so pedestrian after this trip.

Ten more courses

I was right — the conference dinner was, indeed, another ten-course banquet, this time held in the Grand Hall of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, where Hong Kong was officially handed over from Britain to China in 1997 (we happened to be in England that day and watched some of the coverage on the BBC; at the time, I never dreamed that I’d be in Hong Kong, much less in that particular room!).

The room was so grand that I couldn’t take pictures which did it justice; the best I could do was get a few snaps of the acrobats who entertained us between the fourth and fifth courses.

907 dinner:

I outwitted the caterers, though; instead of sitting at a table with vegetarian food, I sat at a “regular” table and skipped the courses with shellfish, so I only had to deal with a six-course meal. In comparision, I guess it was like getting a meal from the diet menu!

Hotel reviews and the opening of WWW10

I’ve tried life on both sides of Victoria Harbour now, and I think I should have stayed on Kowloon side. Last night, I moved to the Renaissance Harbourview, adjacent to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, where WWW10 is being held. The Marco Polo HongKong, where I’d been for the past few nights, is a little bit on the old-fashioned side (they have metal keys, not keycards — can you imagine?), while the Renaissance Harbourview is tres modern and clean. But the Marco Polo HongKong works much better as a place to stay — or at least it does for me.

At the Marco Polo HongKong, one of my challenges was remembering where I’d stashed all my stuff — the room had a walk-in closet with the minibar, as well as a regular closet, and at least two dressers. At the Renaissance, I didn’t have enough drawers to store all my socks and underwear, and my suitcase is sitting in the middle of the room because there’s nowhere to hide it.

At the Marco Polo, there were electrical outlets everywhere and a hair dryer built-in to the bathroom; at the Renaissance, I can only find one outlet, and it’s not very handy, and of course the hair dryer isn’t built-in either.

At the Marco Polo, they had a switch by the door marked “please save energy” so that you could turn off all the lights when you left, but the air conditioning kept going to fight off the heat and humidity. At the Renaissance, there’s a slot well inside the room where you put your keycard, and that activates the lights and A/C — of course, you have to be able to find the slot in the dark to begin with! And the A/C is not very strong, so it takes a long time to cool down the room. But I’ve already beaten the system; it doesn’t check to see if it has a hotel key; anything the size of a credit card will work, and I have a large supply of such cards with me — the card that I bought to add value to my phone account was perfect, since it had no other use once I’d called Orange to update my account, and it has no information which could be used against me (like a credit card number or frequent flyer number).

My room at the Renaissance does have an enormous picture window, much larger than the one at the Marco Polo — but the view from Kowloon was better. And I liked the neighbourhood around the Marco Polo better than Wanchai — the area immediately adjacent to the Renaissance is sterile, but a few blocks away, you’re in the remains of the old Wanchai (see The World of Suzie Wong for more details).

The good news at the Renaissance, though, is that I get Marriot points for staying here, while nights at the Marco Polo were wasted.

WWW10

893 opening

I’m typing this during the opening session of the WWW10 conference. A tradition in this conference series is to have an opening ceremony which partakes of the local culture, then a local politico officially opens the conference. I don’t remember what local color or politico they found for WWW6 in Santa Clara, but the conferences in Melbourne, Toronto, and Amsterdam had interesting ceremonies, and this conference continued.

We began by having the chair of the conference corporation (Nigel French) and the local politico (Carrie Yau, Secretary for Information Technology and Broadcasting for the Hong Kong SAR) “dot the eyes” of the lions, who then proceeded to get the conference off to a roaring start.

895 jumping lion:

Ms. Yau then gave a brief welcoming talk, and now Tim Berners-Lee is giving his view of the Web and its full potential. I’d already heard versions of Tim’s talk three times in the past week, so I have to admit I haven’t been paying rapt attention to it this time around, but it’s clear that practice adds polish.

Community

Happy birthday, Dave.

Susan, you have my condolences and sympathy on the death of your grandfather. Thanks for sharing the good times like his 100th birthday celebration with us.

Jeff, sorry to hear you’ve been dot-bombed.

Falling Behind

Now that the conference has started, I don’t have connectivity during meetings, and so I have less time to read blogs (not to mention trying to keep up with e-mail from my daily job), so forgive me if I fall behind in keeping up with you for a few days. I’ll keep posting during odd moments — but I’m not betting on many good pictures until the weekend.

Amen, brother!

Joel says:

There is nothing that makes me close a web browser faster than going to a home page that plays stupid background music.

This seems almost too trivial too complain about. If your company home page plays stupid background music, stop it.

I couldn’t agree more. I still remember encountering the AT&T ad on the USA Today home page that made a stupid knocking sound and saying “let me in!” every time you went to the page (including returning from an article); that was the day USA Today fell off my list of online news sources to check periodically (and you’ll note I didn’t provide a link here, either!).

Soul food

Today is the second day of the W3C Advisory Committee meeting. Lunch today was a surprise: it wasn’t a ten-course banquet. Instead, we were treated to a buffet, which was mostly Western foods (there were a few Chinese-influenced dishes, too, such as rice, tuna-fish pasta, the desserts, and, of course, spaghetti). They even had lox (but no bagels); that’s soul food to me!

Last night, I took lots of pictures at our dinner and a show at Ocean Park. Take a look, but be patient; it’s a big page.

Things to buy in Hong Kong

Everyone knows that Hong Kong is an amazing place to shop. Of course you can buy electronics, clothes, and luggage here, but did you know that you can buy ISO 9002-certified water here?

Jeffrey, you’ll be happy to know that I was able to buy something else here, too.

And in case you read the phone saga in Saturday’s posting, I’ve updated it to add the name and address of the shop where I bought the phone and had good customer service.