Six Apart gave me the opportunity to attend f8, the Facebook developer’s conference, yesterday, and it was a blast– not just the tech breakout sessions, which were mixed, but the opportunity to meet so many people from so many interesting companies. A large chunk of the world interested in social networks was there, including many who already partner with Six Apart– so it was great to meet those people in person for the first time (for me, anyway).
One of the highlights of Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote was David introducing a brand-new Movable Type plugin: MT Facebook Connect. I took a non-great photo of him on stage with my iPhone (which, as it turns out doesn’t do well in low light):
However, Anil’s post has a much better photo, as does David’s own coverage. This, of course, isn’t the first Facebook product Six Apart has launched– we released Blog It back in April– but it’s another great addition to show the power of Movable Type.
Dick Hardt asked later if Facebook Connect will be fatal to OpenID– David’s response was that no one will let Facebook own authentication, just as no one allowed Microsoft Passport to succeed. Hopefully he’s right– otherwise all Facebook has done is, with much fanfare, rehashed a decade-old mistake.
One of the other incredible things about f8 was how much of a production it was– major tech crews, hundreds of TVs and sofas and projectors (occasionally displaying a live feed of people’s thoughts on the web from F8Feed), and even a huge catering staff (of which I took a picture, during one of their meetings; this was only about half of them, as the rest were on the floor).
I also ran into an older gentleman at the after party, who was sitting by himself on a sofa; I asked him why he wasn’t joining the other people milling around, and he said that he was just taking a break. When I asked which company he was representing, he just smiled, and said “none– my kid works for Facebook.” This was, of course, brilliantly funny– which I appreciated, since I’d seen his nametag, stating “Ed Zuckerberg.” He was a really nice guy– an opinion which the Mercury News apparently shares.
I also met people from a thousand other companies, large and small, from Plaxo (and their illustrious team of interns! Yay for interns at tech conferences, because we like them too! Plaxo also gave me a great t-shirt, stating “Plaxo and Facebook are now in an open relationship,” but declined to specify just how open; the rest of the tech world awaits the sordid details :-) ) to MyDogSpace.
Anyway, a great time seemed to be had by all– but now it’s time to take the ideas gained from f8, and put them to use. Bye for now!
P.S. A friend of mine just got her first professional website up; go check it out, and congratulate her on moving to the Internet age!