Blogs

Microsoft's Alex Barnett at Seattle Mind Camp. Click image for photo gallery from the event.

Hanging out in an empty office building this weekend, I heard about the latest ways to use online news feeds, took an inside look at Amazon.com's newest project -- and even got a crash course in advanced coffee brewing.

The inaugural Seattle Mind Camp was an interesting and eclectic event, with lots of knowledgeable people and good discussions.

One down side: Internet access was out for much of Saturday at the conference. It became available toward evening, but the connection was slow. The situation was clearly frustrating to a lot of Mind Campers, many of them die-hard geeks wanting to blog and post photos and digital audio to document all the cool stuff they were doing and talking about.

More than 150 people were expected, and it looked like nearly everyone showed up, gathering on the second floor of a big building near Boeing Field. Lots of people from Microsoft were there. To get a sense for what Mind Camp was like, check out the accompanying photo gallery for some pictures I took Saturday afternoon and evening. And for more background, see this preview last week by my colleague, John Cook, who also attended the event.

Among other things, I listened in on Chris Pirillo's discussion of RSS, OPML and his gada.be site; took part in a discussion about the past and future of video game consoles; and listened to people from Microsoft's MSN team talk about some advanced tricks for using MSN Search and other services. One of the people presenting was Sanaz Ahari, who has had a busy few weeks. She's the program manager for start.com, the MSN team that's also responsible for the related live.com -- the site at the center of the new Windows Live initiative announced by Bill Gates last week.

Topics of casual discussion in the main room and over dinner ranged from the Second Life virtual world to systems for managing traffic -- not the kind on a computer network, but the kind on a road. Toward the beginning of the day, I met Phillip Torrone, of Make magazine and Engadget fame, who talked about some of his current projects and, at my prompting, shared some of his thoughts on what newspapers should be doing to adjust to the new realities of the digital age. (More precisely, he shared his thoughts on what they should have done several years ago to adjust to the new realities of the digital age.)

Jack Bell's home brew.

Later in the day, Jack Bell's "coffee hacks" session was a lot of fun, showing a series of little-known but proper ways to roast and brew coffee. A traditional "vacuum coffee maker" was his grand finale. This may disappoint the gadget enthusiasts out there, but that name doesn't mean it was made with a vacuum cleaner. However, Bell did explain how to roast coffee beans with a popcorn maker, and he was nice enough to pour us all cups of the vacuum-brewed coffee at the end of the session. Extremely good. (Click here for more details on two pages of the photo gallery.)

But one of the most interesting parts was a session in which Amazon's Jeff Barr demonstrated and talked about the Mechanical Turk project, in which companies will augment computer systems by paying people to complete small tasks that require human judgment or skill. (See Saturday morning's story by the P-I's Kristen Millares Bolt for more details.)

I hadn't known quite what to make of the project beforehand, but Barr's description and demonstration made it clear that it's a fascinating concept, at least. I recorded the presentation, and I'm planning to upload the full audio for access in the official Mind Camp feed, along with sessions recorded by others. Meanwhile, here are some of the audio highlights of what Barr had to say during the Mechanical Turk session, all of them in MP3 format:

• Discussing the original Mechanical Turk and explaining the fundamental computer-science challenge that led Amazon to start its project: 1:46
• Talking about the potential for this to be "hard-wired" into business proccesses and work flows in all sorts of industries: 1:45
• Explaining how it works for the virtual workers, in addition to one offbeat way the company has thought about connecting the Mechanical Turk service to its main online retail site: 1:50
• Describing the effects of the project's unexpected Slashdotting: 1:25

Barr wrapped up the session by asking the people attending to suggest some ways they could envision companies using the system. Some of the suggestions were really thought-provoking -- such as using the virtual work force to filter spam or transcribe audio. Others were more irreverent, such as using the service to pay a bunch of people to flood a legislator with e-mails in support of a particular cause. See this page of the photo gallery for the full list of suggestions as typed down by Barr during the session.

As you can see from the list, one person even suggested using it to outsource the scanning of baggage at airports, via an online connection. Someone also pointed out that it might work to conduct a virtual version of "Hot or Not," paying people small amounts to weigh in with their opinions.

Those last suggestions may be slightly off-the-wall, but it was eye-opening to hear all the ideas that people brought up. The whole thing intrigued me enough to ask what effect, if any, Amazon expects such an approach to have on the world economy in the long run. Barr, the company's Web services evangelist, pointed out that he wasn't even the right person to talk about Amazon's finances, let alone those of the globe.

That's it for now from this Mind Camper. After all that, I'm definitely ready for another cup of that hacked coffee.