February CTO Breakfast

Wow ... what a crowd! This morning was quite packed, and there was a good variety of people from many roles in Utah companies.

Phil started off talking with Hilarie Orman from Purple Streak. It turns out that Phil was familiar with some of the previous work of Hilarie, and some of the people that she worked with. This led into an interesting conversation about security, encryption, and quantum computing. She was involved in the Demo Conference ... on a security panel. She mentioned that Koogle(?) was one of the more interesting demos.

Bruce Grant started to talk about his perspectives of Demo, and some of the mobile applications and thoughts on where mobile devices are going. He talked about the difficulty in developing software for these devices due to all of the various operating systems, etc. He also commented that there will be some sort of consolidation ... which I agree with. This is a standard EVO-DEVO pattern.

I commented that I believe that the Negroponte $100 laptop is going to be one of the catalysts that is going to cause the consolidation. I'm not so sure that this device is going to be in high demand for the developed world, however it is going to drive innovation and solutions that wil be delivered at a slightly higher price point.

I missed a good bit of conversation going to get some food, but when I returned we were well into a conversation about AJAX, and the new Web 2.0 trends. One of the people brought up a new Marc Andreessen project called Ning. Very cool ... some very innovative ideas as a platform for the creation and sharing of social application. This is a variation on JotSpot ... and I'm going to do some experimenting.

Fun morning ...

[tags: utahctobreakfast security encryption ning]