ETECH 2008 call for proposals

The call-for-proposals for the 2008 O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference has just gone up. ETECH is held each year in San Diego (the next one is March 3-6), and it is consistently the most invigorating, surprising and exciting event I attend every year. I've been on the conference jury since this was the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer convention, back in 2000, and I'm very proud of the work we've done each year (I'm also excited to have Boing Boing's David Pescovitz on the jury with me!). This year we have a new chair, Brady Forrest, who has put together a dynamite CFP.

Boing Boing's readers do some of the most interesting stuff I've ever heard of, and ETECH often features presentations by people who read about the call-for-papers here. I hope you'll consider submitting something.

This year we'll be asking ourselves: where are some of the previously emerging technologies? It's been two years since a man got a neural implant to surf the web, but no one else has one yet. Virtual worlds have been multiplying since the '90s, but many of us have never had a productive meeting in one. And where are our jetpacks, anyway? How close are these and many other "futuristic" technologies to being viable here and now, and if they're still far away are there techniques and lessons we can learn from any progress they've made in recent years?

At the 2008 version of ETech, the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, we'll take a wide-eyed look at the tech that's just arriving and cast a cynical one at some that have been emerging for too long. From robotics, health care, and space travel to gaming, finance, and art, we'll explore promising technologies that are just that–still promises–and renew our sense of wonder at the way technology is influencing and altering our everyday lives.

Do you have something that points the way to the future? O'Reilly Media invites technologists and strategists, CTOs and CIOs, technology evangelists and scouts, programmers and hackers, researchers and academics, artists and activists, business developers, and entrepreneurs to lead conference sessions and tutorials at ETech. Submit your proposal now.

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