About once a year, I confer with Blake Burris to discuss the latest technology trends. Not as well attended as an O’Reilly conference, although I did notice two people at the Barnes & Noble store eavesdropping as Blake regaled me with stories from the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.
It wasn’t emerging technology that mesmerized my mind; it was technology emerging buzzworthy that captured my imagination.
Picture this: During a presentation, an audience member fires up a collaboration app, starts taking notes, and shares the document. Now, other users can edit the document, adding their thoughts about the latest advances in technology and how it affects them. Someone doesn’t understand a point, they type “???”; another person jumps in to answer the string of question marks. Immediately after the presentation, the brave speaker turns the tables through the magic of the anyone-can-type-anywhere-anytime app, and takes the audience’s pulse.
That’s SubEthaEdit. It’s a free OS X app, developed by three German computer science students in their spare time, that lets you participate in collaborative note taking. SubEthaEdit uses Rendezvous to discover users--on a local network--who want to join the fun. Fun is how some spectators-turned-actors have described this experience.
Experience is the marketing. So say James Gilmore and Joseph Pine, authors of The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. They suggest you plan experiences that move your customers: “The way to reach your customers is to create an experience within them.”
Will the SubEthaEdit adventures move Macs?
Let’s not jump to conclusion island. Remember, this confab is attended largely by early adaptors. If Apple is to increase their box office draw, they need to exit stage left, past the alpha geeks in the round, and draw the rest of the theatergoers to the show.
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