If you don’t know yet then I’m about to tell you. Jimmy Wales is the founder of Wikipedia and it seems a host of offshoot companies stemming from Wikia (I think).
Heather Ford kindly invited me to the very first of the Innovations Series held yesterday at the Grace Hotel.
Firstly, the Grace is a wondrous venue and a gem in the heart of Jo’burg that everyone should try and have tea at sometime!
I think that this post is going to take a different point of view to the others. This event was the first that I was invited to in my capacity as the SA Rocks editor. That alone was a great feeling. The next thing was that I was in the presence of some serious geek-champs. Matthew Buckland spoke at the event along with Louis-Mark. And to top it all off, Jimmy Wales, the innovator behind Wikipedia was the Keynote speaker, if I can call him that.
Without many of us knowing, yesterdays event was actually the launch of the ICommons Innovation Series. This series will be a regular occurence that brings together like-minded innovators and features some of the greatest minds around today.
The first featuring Jimmy Wales was not dissapointing. Matthew Buckland hosted a rapid-fire talk that focused on where he thinks things are going. A heavy focus on internet access via mobile devices and an open and free culture that is safe as houses because EVERYONE’S information will be equally and readily available.
Louis-Mark spoke about the three phases of the web, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 and how they correlate to us learning lessons at each point. Very interesting when he juxtaposed this opinion with the recent past of the net and the 128-bit encrypted-something-or-another that was banned in the US or something. See I’m really not a geek deep down!
Jimmy’s talk was more relaxed, explanatory and then a revelation of the plans for Wikia in one way or another. We were privelaged to see the very first screenshots in the world for the new search engine that might possibly, maybe according to some, rival Google, maybe.
The search engine will more than likely take on a Facebook approach to search. Matt wrote a more detailed post and this is what he had to say:
But the screenshot that Wales briefly showed the audience looked very much like a Facebook profile page, than a search page. In fact it looked pretty much identical to a Facebook profile page.
Could this mean Wales is developing a social networking, Facebook competitor too? Could it be some kind of search/social networking hybrid?
Described as “Google’s worst nightmare”, Wales said the main “failing” of search engines out there like Google was that they were secretive about the way they ranked search results. In stark contrast to the Open Source movement, these search engines kept information about their algorithms and code close to their chest.
Matt is right, the search/social network integration could be interesting and open up an entire new world of what could be hybrid sites that link, educate, socialise and bring together everything on one platform.
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All in all I think that it was a great event that kick-started an even great long term concept. We are sure to see more great minds, innovators and hopefully billionaires (local ones ofcourse) emerging from and speaking at the event.
Congratulations to the ICommons team and everyone else involved. A great event.
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