Below is live coverage of the Keynote Conversation: Vint Cerf, Google from SMX West 2009 conference.
This coverage is provided by both Barry Schwartz, the editor of the Search Engine Roundtable and Keri Morgret of Morgret Designs.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed. In addition, you can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog.
| Keynote Conversation: Vint Cerf, Google | (02/11/2009) Powered by: CoveritLive |
8:44 | Barry Schwartz: We got about 15 minutes until it starts |
8:46 | Barry Schwartz: About 20 minutes ago, Vint Cerf was in the Speaker room, I snapped a picture |
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8:48 | Barry Schwartz: Vint Cerf entered the room, he is talking with Chris Sherman now, who will be sitting with Vint on the stage |
8:50 | Barry Schwartz: Here is a picture of the stage... |
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8:55 | Barry Schwartz: Keri has joined, she will be helping with this coverage, so you will be able to get dual live blogging int his window. |
8:55 | Barry Schwartz: 5 minutes until we start |
8:57 | Barry Schwartz: Danny just joined the stage |
8:58 | Barry Schwartz: He mocks us |
8:59 | Barry Schwartz: Danny then teases the people trying to get into the room |
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9:00 | Barry Schwartz: Disa (formerly Detlev) Johnson is having a talk tonight.... |
9:00 | Barry Schwartz: Danny now gets off the stage to allow the keynote to start |
9:01 | Barry Schwartz: They launched a video on the screen |
9:02 | Barry Schwartz: The video is basically a futuristic movie from the past about the Internet, trying to find the video on youtube |
9:03 | Keri Morgret: Chris Sherman is up now. |
9:03 | Barry Schwartz: Chris introduces Vint Cerf, the father of the internet |
9:04 | Barry Schwartz: They talk about Arpnet and how it brought along the Internet |
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9:06 | Barry Schwartz: He did not envision that the Internet would happen from what he did |
9:06 | Barry Schwartz: But it was interesting watching it be connected |
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9:07 | Keri Morgret: A year or two after arpnet started, networked email started. He's talking about how people find interesting new ways to use the technology. |
9:08 | Barry Schwartz: They saw the potential but not the specifics |
9:08 | Barry Schwartz: Chris asked, "what surprised you the most"? |
9:09 | Barry Schwartz: Vint said, people's willingness to share this information on the Internet |
9:09 | Keri Morgret: He also saide that he doesn't think it's as much knowledge as power as it is the sharing of knowledge is power. |
9:09 | [Comment From Discovery] Is this not where CerfNet came from? |
9:09 | Barry Schwartz: @Discovery, not sure... |
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9:10 | Barry Schwartz: It is a wonderful social evolution of how the internet works |
9:11 | Barry Schwartz: Chris asked, do you find that your title, chief internet evalgalist... do you find yourself needing to influence and create excitment for internet at Google? |
9:11 | Barry Schwartz: Vint said, he didnt pick his title |
9:11 | [Comment From Discovery] Answered my own: May 20, 1992 Met Vint Cerf at my Job SDSC |
9:11 | Keri Morgret: Only about 21% of people are online right now, so people do need to be persuaded. |
9:11 | Barry Schwartz: We need to make investments to get the rest of the people online |
9:12 | Keri Morgret: Part of his time is spent visiting the engineering offices of Google around the world. |
9:12 | Keri Morgret: He spends some of that time on policy issues dealing with the internet. |
9:13 | Keri Morgret: How do we establish norms for digital commerce, for example? What does a digital signature mean? Where is it accepted? What policy do we have around this? |
9:14 | Barry Schwartz: Cloud community is built like there is no other cloud on the internet |
9:14 | Barry Schwartz: How do you send info from one cloud to another |
9:15 | Barry Schwartz: So there is a present issue with "inter cloud" communication |
9:16 | Barry Schwartz: So this is an issue and he goes to universities to lay out this issue and hope they find a solution |
9:16 | Keri Morgret: The students are too young to know that you can't solve x, so that's why he loves going to campuses. |
9:16 | Barry Schwartz: Standing room only here... here are pictures: |
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9:16 | Barry Schwartz: Chris asks about the future of search |
9:16 | Barry Schwartz: Vint said, we do well with text search, even multi-lingual |
9:17 | Barry Schwartz: But we need help with video, images, etc |
9:17 | Keri Morgret: We don't know what it is we are searching about. We can find strings and match them, but we don't necessarily understand the semantics of what we are looking for. |
9:17 | Barry Schwartz: An intern told him, we navigate people to documents, but we should navigate them to answers. but we don't know what question is motivating a persons search |
9:18 | Barry Schwartz: If you can explain to a search engine what you are trying to accomplish and the search engine could understand those semantics, then it is golden |
9:18 | Barry Schwartz: Lots of room for improvements there. |
9:18 | Barry Schwartz: Chris brings up YouTube and its dominance |
9:19 | Barry Schwartz: Vint is impressed by YouTube and the effort being put into it by the community |
9:19 | Barry Schwartz: YouTube has touched a nerve |
9:20 | Keri Morgret: It's stunning how that has changed the tenor of debate. Very powerful in this latest election in the U.S. |
9:20 | [Comment From Bob Gladstein] "we navigate people to documents, but we should navigate them to answers". They've gotten a lot better at that in the past few years. Yesterday I searched for [current time gmt] and above the collection of pages where I could have gotten the answer was... the answer. |
9:21 | Barry Schwartz: @Bob, yes, some times it is easy to know searcher's intent |
9:21 | Keri Morgret: Instead of being locked into something as it's being transmitted, like the original model of TV, we can now store them and play them back later via things like TiVO and downloading. Time shifting has changed things. |
9:22 | Keri Morgret: People don't treat advertising as annoying information if they're actually interested in the information. |
9:22 | Barry Schwartz: Why not give the consumer control over their ads with video and that is what YouTube ads want to do. |
9:24 | Keri Morgret: He's interested in seeing how we're going to be able to enable the consumer to have more control over the advertising they're seeing. |
| 9:24 | Do you like the idea of controlling the ads you see? Yes ( 38% ) ( 13% ) ( 50% ) |
9:25 | Keri Morgret: In this user-controled world, you may not have to go to the same amount of trouble to get their attention, since they're already interested. |
9:27 | Barry Schwartz: Chris asks, you said on google blog, about mobile ads and your phone... |
9:27 | Keri Morgret: It will be easier to refine the type of advertising and know more about the customer when things are more interactive. |
9:27 | [Comment From Olivier Amar] Privacy is overrated. Give me control and I'll tell you everything you want to know :-) |
9:27 | Barry Schwartz: Vint said mobile phones know where we are and it can help them answer Qs |
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9:28 | Keri Morgret: People asking questions from cell phones are very often geographically related, such as where is the nearest ATM. |
9:29 | Keri Morgret: Vint didn't appreciate this as much until he went with his family to Arizona to go on a houseboat on the lake. No grocery stores at the lake, so they need to plan in advanced. Someone wanted to make paella, but they needed to find saffron to make this. |
9:29 | Keri Morgret: He types in page arizona, saffron, grocery store. He gets three results. He calls the first result, they have it, uses the map to find the place, got what he wanted. |
9:30 | Keri Morgret: We can add functionality to mobile devices by downloading software, and more software is being written all of the time. |
9:31 | Keri Morgret: Chris brings up that we're really talking about privacy, and a search engine even turns into a confessional of sorts. He asks about Google and privacy. |
9:32 | Barry Schwartz: Vint said passwords for authentication is way "Too weak", he wants something stronger. |
9:32 | Barry Schwartz: He brings up medical records... Um, Google Health... |
9:33 | Barry Schwartz: IF you have a medical issue, the last thing on your mind is privacy, first thing is to give them your medical records so they can fix your issue. |
9:33 | Barry Schwartz: Controlling access to this information is important. |
9:33 | Keri Morgret: You want a finite control over access to that type of information. You want them to have it then, but not forever. |
9:34 | Barry Schwartz: Mobile phones can become our "remotes" that control all our information |
9:34 | Keri Morgret: sidenote from keri: I'm guilty of picking up my phone and trying to use it as a remote. |
9:35 | Barry Schwartz: We live in a world where "privacy" is hard to come by these days. |
9:36 | Keri Morgret: There's a tension between maintaining privacy for individuals and protecting society from people who might want to damage it. |
9:37 | Keri Morgret: Vint: Sometimes you need regulations to maintain openness and fairness. if there isn't sufficient competition to [missed this] you may need regulations. |
9:38 | Keri Morgret: Regulation is only as good as its ability to be enforced (gives example of senator who wanted to delcare pi as 3 instead of 3.1415..... |
9:39 | Keri Morgret: If we can't prevent something from happening technically, can we instead say if we catch you doing this there will be consequences? |
9:39 | Keri Morgret: For example, drinking and driving -- if we catch you, we'll take away your license, etc. |
9:40 | Keri Morgret: It could be that we deal with some of these problems not by regulations, but by common legal posture. |
9:40 | Keri Morgret: Chris asks Vint about interplanetary extension of the internet. Vint says people thought he was joking, but he wasn't. |
9:41 | Keri Morgret: Standard internet protocols didn't work -- 40 minute delays weren't good. |
9:41 | Barry Schwartz: Last October, NASA gave Google the opp to upload data to something... |
9:42 | Barry Schwartz: The space craft completed its mission of blowing up something |
9:43 | Keri Morgret: They've tested protocols, and hope in August to upload it again. Will ideally have three nodes in the interplanetary system. |
9:43 | Barry Schwartz: Good thing Keri is into this academic stuff  |
9:43 | Keri Morgret: Let's hear it for the interplanetary internet! |
9:44 | Keri Morgret: Chris asks where Vint sees Google evolving in the next 10 years. |
9:44 | Keri Morgret: Vint: continue to organize the world's information and make it useful. Hmm..should it be expanded to the universe's information now? |
9:45 | Barry Schwartz: Google has complete trust in their employees, their only rule with 20% time is don't do something illegal with it |
9:46 | Barry Schwartz: The "Bits we pour into the internet may become rotten" in the future |
9:46 | Keri Morgret: We need software to interpret data. Software doesn't last forever. Bits in internet may become rotten at some point when we can no longer look at bits. |
9:46 | Keri Morgret: Old jpg formats for example, you can't get access to them now with today's software. |
9:47 | Barry Schwartz: How do we preserve our ability to interpret this data in the future. |
9:47 | Keri Morgret: We need to preserve the application software, maybe even an emulation of the hardware. |
9:47 | Keri Morgret: You just need to remember what your passwords were 100 years ago if you do this! |
9:48 | Barry Schwartz: Our ancestors figured out a way to preserve their ideas and words hundreds of years later, we need to do the same. |
9:48 | Keri Morgret: Will we be a big pile of rotten bits to our ancestors? |
9:48 | Barry Schwartz: That is it, we are out of time |
9:49 | Barry Schwartz: Next session on SearchWiki in 45 minutes |
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