Tom Conrad

It seems that the big news out of Gnomedex last week was the “drama” that played out around Jason Calacanis’ presentation. The basic context is this: Jason took the stage to talk about spam content creeping into search results. This is clearly a topic that Jason is passionate about — so much so that he’s created a company that he hopes will tackle the problem through a new kind of editorially-influenced search engine. As he spoke, it became clear that his talk was going to segue right into a discussion of how his company could solve this problem.

Generally the presentations at Gnomedex aren’t about particular products or companies. There are exceptions to be sure (for example, this year the CEO of JibJab gave one of the more interesting talks, which was almost entirely about his company). I don’t have a strongly held point of view on this subject; for my part I just want the presentations to be interesting. If that means talking about your company so be it.

So, as Jason gets going, he’s talking about spam (”unwanted commercial pitches”) showing up everywhere, especially in search, and it occurs to someone in the back of the room that if he’s going to segue right into Mahalo, then the talk is sort of “conference spam.” That struck some as funny and ironic. There was some mumbling and giggling from the back of the room. Jason noticed, paused, hesitated, something — and Dave Winer said “You’re doing it now! You’re spamming us!”

This is what I thought at the time: that’s kinda funny. Maybe a tiny bit obnoxious to yell it out, but Jason’s pitch was a tad ironic. I think I chuckled a bit. Then I went right back to listening — with some interest frankly — to what Jason had to say. We use subject matter experts at Pandora to classify music, so there are some parallels with Mahalo and I wanted to hear more.

I would never have thought about it again.

And then the blogosphere picked it up. The first accounts I read sounded like “HUGE BLOWUP AT GNOMEDEX!!!” Strange, I thought — my experience of the event was quite different: it was a non-event for me.

Could it be that we wanted to invent a little drama to attach to what was really a pretty sedate little conference? That maybe, just maybe, the entire thing wasn’t about what Dave said at all? Given that very real possiblility, it doesn’t seem right for Dave to be at the epicenter of an invented conroversy, with lots of old stories of ancient feuds and perceived injustices being dredged up. When I saw Dave at BarCampBlock on Saturday, I told him as much. He mentioned it on ScriptingNews today so I thought I’d say a bit more about my perspective on what happened.

Wow. What an event.

Tremendous turnout — not sure they have a perfect count of attendees but easily 600 people. The huge grid quickly filled up with fascinating content from all corners of the tech, community, and art communities. Some giant sessions, some small sessions, but a spirit of sharing that I think embodies the current vibe in silicon valley. This was a gathering of people that are passionate about the work they do who share an eagerness to learn from their peers. Incredibly exciting.

I had the pleasure of leading a small group discussion about Music Rights issues (who gets paid what for various forms of digital music). For me this conversation perfectly embodied the spirit of BarCamp — just a handful of people sitting down to share what they know about a complex topic in the hopes that everyone would walk away better informed, and more prepared to build great things.

Later in the day I lead a much bigger discussion examining the evolution of Pandora in the two years since the first BarCamp. Great fun and lots of interesting questions. Incredible how different things are for Pandora than they were two years ago. I’m really lucky to be involved in something that so many people enjoy.

No discussion of BarCamp would really be complete without a mention of the people that create these events — people like Chris Messina, Tantek Çelik. Ross Mayfield, and Tara Hunt. You all are an inspiration to me. Thanks for all you’ve done for this community.

Two years ago, when Pandora was still in its (oh-so-short) private beta, I decided to head down to a two-day event in Palo Alto called BarCamp. The rules were simple: you show up, you present. It would turn out to be the very first public demo of Pandora. And it was done absolutely on a whim.

Shortly after I arrived, I wrote my name on the whiteboard offering a talk about our new music service (cleverly titled “Introducing Pandora”). I remember listening to Chris Messina’s talk about Flock just before it was my turn to present. Michael Arrington was there and asked for a quick demo because he couldn’t stick around for my presentation. While I’d met Mike before, TechCrunch felt like one of his little side projects to me. I was happy to give him the demo early, but I’ve got to tell you it wasn’t anything like what folks go through today to get on his agenda. What I remember most is he gave me a bunch of crap about not inviting him to the beta (we’d met at Gnomedex and it had competely slipped my mind). Pretty funny in retrospect.

The presentation went well enough (and the demo worked); some folks wrote nice things. It was a fun and very memorable day. I met a lot of people that day that have become good friends.

Tomorrow is BarCampBlock — the two year anniversary of that original BarCamp. It simultaneously feels like a very long time ago, and like it was just yesterday. Certainly my whole world has changed, as has Pandora. I’m excited to head down and throw my hat into the ring again… should be quite an event. They’re expecting 900 people. I’ll be there again this year and Pandora is providing the music for the after party at SocialText.

Starting at 12:00AM Eastern time on June 26, 2007, Pandora will be participating in the Internet Radio “Day of Silence.”

Joining Pandora are Yahoo, Live365, MTV, SomaFM, Bagel Radio, Rhapsody, and dozens of small webcasters. The idea behind this event is to give everyone a glimpse of what it will be like if the oppressive royalty rates recently set by the Copyright Royalty Board are left unchanged. You can read more about the issue at SaveNetRadio.org. There are bills pending in both the Senate and in the House and I’d encourage you to lend your voice to the cause if you love Internet Radio. Please call your representative to let them know that this is an issue that matters to you.

While I believe in the statement we’re making with the Day of Silence, this is a painful night for me. Taking Pandora off the air is something that we don’t do lightly — in fact when we moved datacenters a year ago we worked long and hard to ensure that we didn’t have any down time at all during that transition. To take our music off the air intentionally is completely unprecedented in our 2 year history. It’s not something that I’ll enjoy. Here’s hoping though that the Day of Silence helps to move our lawmakers into action, so I don’t someday in the not-too-distant future have to pull the plug on Pandora entirely.

We’ve been working with the team at Sonos for about 6 months to get the Pandora Everywhere experience on their family of devices. During that time I’ve of course had the chance to listen to a Sonos here in the office a fair bit as we iterated together on builds. What I wasn’t able to do was to experience it in my own home. That all changed 48 hours ago when I setup my own multi-room Sonos system.

Best. Thing. Ever.

I’m a huge fan of Slim Devices and have been a very, very happy Slim customer for many years (going all the way back to their very first device the SliMP3). They’re a great company with a great team building really neat devices. But at the end of the day they really play at different places in the market than Sonos. The Squeezebox is more affordable device than the Sonos and the Transporter is at the very high end really targeted at the kind of people that pay ten grand for a CD player.

So, getting back to Sonos… this is a really delightful product. Incredibly easy to setup. I managed to configure a multi-room solution with Rhapsody, Pandora, and our own library of music in about 15 minutes and that included a round of firmware upgrades to take advantage of their latest feature (Pandora!).

The implementation of multi-room is the killer app for Sonos. It’s just flawless. I’m convinced that my home music use is going to skyrocket thanks to this. It’s also by far the best way to use Rhapsody (finally the $13/month makes sense to me). The Pandora implementation is also fantastic. I can’t wait to get back home and play with it some more.

The big news in music web-dom today is the CBS acquisition of Last.fm. I’ve frequently talked about my affection for last, and I really am happy to see them “exit” at a valuation that should be good for the entire team. Last is truly remarkable at getting great features out into their communities hands. It’s a great site with tons of really interesting content and conversations. I wish them continued success as they move into their latest chapter.