The intellectual property police were out in force for this first session due to the screening of the not-released-until-February movie, Amazing Grace, the William Wilberforce Story. First they prevented people from bringing cell phones into the theater (<snark>because, you know, we might pirate the movie using our 320×240 camera phones</snark>). Then they even prevented the use of laptops - so I’m composing this all well after the fact rather than liveblogging it. Hopefully I will be able to read the notes I scratched down - it’s not like I actually write much anymore.
In any case, I can somewhat understand the phone prohibition, but the laptop restriction was ridiculous. Like I couldn’t just convert my written notes for publication, which, incidentally, is exactly what I’m doing. Furthermore, you would think that any publicity would be good publicity. Hopefully this paranoia was simply due to the movie screening - if it was not, then it seems like a mistaken policy. For many people my generation or younger, taking notes on a laptop is much more efficient than scribbling them down, and if they’re trying to build a movement, it would seem that they would encourage folks to blog during the show.
But whatever, it’s their show. I suppose I can overlook these annoyances if the conference is good. And so far, it is off to a good start. More in the next entry.
