Hydra

Lot’s of Hydra use going on at the O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference. Tom Coates writes about using it and links to some .txt files of it. However, as far as investigating the use of Hydra, the .gif is much more interesting since it retains the colors indicating who is writing what. My first thought when I saw it was that an IRC transcript would be so much tidier. Then, it clicked, and I realized I had been missing the point. In fact, I think there was a visible lightbulb above my head.

Reading the other Hydra notes that he links to, I stopped thinking about the app that created it and the fact that there were multiple authors. Instead, I was just reading excellent notes from the various talks. I then thought about all the great notes various individuals had posted during the last few conferences I attended. Some were almost perfect word for word transcripts that were just missing a bit here and there. Some were the authors’ reactions to the presentations with supplementary information. All were wonderful to have access to. (I was especially grateful for the pervasive wi-fi at SxSW that seemed to encourage posting quickly and often.) However, imagine if all of that effort were combined. Instead of scattered notes with strengths in some areas but lacking in others…well, you get the idea.