Whew.
The web-and-other-things conference [Reboot](http://www.reboot.dk/) is over for this year. I attended, this my second year, with some notion of what to expect.
Meeting people again was a hit.
I got to meet Flash guy and music composer [Niko Nyman](http://nnyman.com/) of Helsinki, and many other HKI folks. [Jyri Engeström](http://zengestrom.com) was wearing thin-golden-rimmed glasses which made him look like a youthful John Backus (of [BNF](http://cui.unige.ch/db-research/Enseignement/analyseinfo/AboutBNF.html) fame). Couldn’t find the image with the likeness online, though.
Since the format of the conference is more of a space-rocket ride at 20 meters from the ground over highly interesting landscape, the participants are careful with their time, and allow detailed conversations & elaborations to spill over, into the blogosphere, for later.
Lesson: **Business cards are convenient.**
The morning of Day 1, I was packing my stuff (doing the mistake of lugging a laptop), and my wife asked me if I had any business cards left. Oops. I took 5 of them to the conference — it was too late to bike to the the office, across town, to grab them, so I attended the conference anyway. The same thing happened the next day, when I thought the activity was to commence at 10. It turned out an interesting presentation was on at 9.15, and I had to skip biking across town again. Luisa’s fix for this was simple and elegant: Print two sheets of label stickers with contact details. Adhesive business cards.
Lesson #2: **Laptops can be a hindrance.**
So, I had a more agile day 2, with only a little Moleskine notebook and a cheap pen. Switching contexts on a free, empty, white, small piece of paper is… what you do. It’s not even an activity to make a new category, a new partition, a new selection – on paper, it all flows.
Presentation picking for the curious: When presented with many choices, **among the unknown presenters, pick the one with the most interesting surname**. This leads you away from hearing only Thought Leaders and A-listers, which can be a good thing. Your best friend has already videocast the presentation in the Big Room anyway, so you’re gonna hear that later, on your way to work. The skunkworks, improvised, extra stuff: that’s often missed in the post-event documentation flurry. (Note to self: write a post on Guy’s 20×20 format!)
Meeting [Pelle Brændgaard](http://www.stakeventures.com) again was a rare pleasure. Views, ideas, literature hints, war stories, commentary: we were quite the chatters. Pelle’s lived the crypto-dream Back In The Day (those of you who read [Cryptonomicon](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptonomicon) will know), and the free spirit is still vibrant with him. He’s one of the rare men who can smoke cigars, and still look natural and simple. His work-mate Tim was also there, great chap.
(Note to self: Since this is not a list of great people, I should stop listing them.)
“At Reboot, the hacker quotient is low, and the hackers that are here are mostly open-minded folks”, said UK hacker Tom Armitage (who’ll be in the 20×20 post as well). He’s right. It’s about going outside your own domain, to learn about… the other things.
Thanks, Mygdal, and thanks Nyholm, and thanks crew. This year was also great.