The new media and blogging conference I’m attending in Seattle, Gnomedex, is in full swing and it’s been a real experience. Besides the brilliant, smart, funny people in the room, there’s also been some interesting presentations. The format of this year’s conference is radically different from previous years’, and I like it. Basically a ‘discussion leader’ presents a no-nonsense pitch or initiates a discussion with the rest of the +-350 people in the audience. This usually involves a whole bunch of polarized perspectives being debated, and some yelling when things look like they’re not going your way.

The highlight of the day was the heated debate between Dave Winer and Blake Ross which kinda ended with Dave telling Blake that he wasn’t answering his questions properly and needed to grow a thick skin in order to play in the big league.

There were also some great demonstrations by new start-ups yesterday which included:
Blue Dot – http://bluedot.us/friends/dots
Farecast – http://farecast.com/
Visual search – http://pixsy.com/
Melodeo – http://www.melodeo.com/
People Aggregator – http://peopleaggregator.net
Blubrry – http://blubrry.com/

Senator John Edwards also gave a very polished keynote and answered some pretty hairy questions which were directed at him afterwards. Overall, the point he was trying to make was that he was thoroughly devoted to technology and said that he was here to learn from bloggers and technologists and find out how he can use technology best in order to communicate his political views to his constituency. He’s already one of the most progressive politicians involved. Following in the footsteps of Howard Dean, the Senator runs a blog and weekly podcast on One America for All of Us. His visit to Gnomedex made the front page of The Seattle Post Intelligencer which felt kinda cool to have been there as some have predicted that he will be the next Democratic Presidential candidate for 2008.

Microsoft are sponsoring a huge closing party tonight at the Experience Music Project and the Pacific Science Center. Although I’m sure there’s ulterior motives involved, I don’t care. I’ve been wanting to go to both those places whilst I’m Seattle anyway.

If you would like to see the pictures that some of the participants have taken at the conference, check them out here on Flickr. I especially like this shot of Firefox frontman, Blake Ross