Hacker Friendly

I’m just back from Mind Camp 3.0, a 24-hour conference and celebration for smart people. While this event definitely appeals to the tech crowd, some of my best experiences so far have had nothing to do with computers or the Intarweb. Some highlights:

• I met Ron Hale-Evans, memory guru and author of Mind Performance Hacks. Mnemonics, Moleskines, and Hipster PDAs abounded. For more, check out Ron’s great Mentat Wiki.
• Bluedot tags your bookmarks (like about a billion other services out there, only for your friends instead of the world at large.) They apparently put the dot in Web 2.0, or something. And it’s in Beta. Surprised? I’m only surprised they didn’t spell it bl.ued.ot…
• Natural Language Processing is easier with organic computers, according to Phrasetrain. But how do you entice them to do good work for you, short of paying them?
• There was a ton of interest in Second Life. Players, developers, and biz dev folk were all well represented. There is apparently a Meetup group here in Seattle… I got to show off my koi farm and talk about Second Life’s ongoing role in building the metaverse: the old Netscape vs. AOL debate.
• People look really funny playing with their Wii.
• I’ve got to see Vermillion Pleasure Night. Mirror Mask was dull but pretty.
• The Lucid Dreaming session was interesting and epic (it ran just shy of four hours, although it still didn’t come close to the 10+ hour Werewolf session going on in the next room…) We talked about dream recall, lucid dreaming tricks and techniques, EMDR (a treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder using rapid eye movement), Ambien nightmares, and dream journals. We also did some interesting creative visualization exercises.

All in all, it was another great Mind Camp. Looking forward to 4.0…