Mashup or Shutup

I spent the past two days at eTech.

It’s a great conference where you can meet super smart people working on interesting things. And I did a fair amount of that.

My favorite slogan was this one from Yahoo! It’s a rallying cry for their developer network and this photo is from a powerbook (scraped up – nice).  If someone from Yahoo! reads this and sends me one of those stickers I’ll put it on my laptop.

The thing I liked the most about eTech was its relaxed vibe. Web 2.0 is crazy with everyone acting like they have to make the most of it. eTech is much more chill, like a big hangout.

That feel makes it easier to meet people and have more interesting dscussions. 

I have to say that next gen web stuff isn’t as inspiring to me right now as other more "out there" ideas.  It just feels like every next gen web idea has a thousand fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.

I talked a lot about this with the people I hung out with at eTech and while its not the way the majority feel, there certainly is a growing minority who share my feelings.

Of course this doesn’t mean we aren’t going to continue to look at next gen web opportunities. We will and we’ll almost certainly fund some more. But we also have to keep an eye on what’s new and different. Where will the heat be in three years, in five years.

And that was where my head was at most of the past two days. It was fun.