Francesco’s Blog

Last thursday evening I attended a meeting organized by Milan Java User Group (JUG).
Title: “RSS and the future of media”
Reporter: Ben Hammersley

Ben is a weird guy. Completely bold, he presented himself with a scottish kilt (and this made me understand his obscure phrase on his website “I’ ve not worn trousers for six months now”), an Apple Powerbook and an iPod.

He has spoken about rss feed, podcasting and the Long Tail.
I had already read something about these subjects, so I hoped he was going to explain them in a thorough way.
Unfortunately the time was too short, so he could only give a very quick panoramic view of everything, leaving many questions unanswered.

I have however discovered what “water cooler programming” means (we’re talking about the tv programs that everybody talks about in the morning, normally during the break around the water cooling dispenser).
Moreover Ben’s words have made me think about the fact that using rss feeds, the content becomes king again. It is no longer lost within a website, but assurges to its own status without frills around to distract the reader.
I hadn’t thought about this, but actually too often a site is evaluated more for how it looks than for what it says. A rss feed allows the reader to concentrate on the content, on the news, not on what’s around it.

So, in the end, I have been a little disappointed because not all subjects have been deeply explained, but I managed to learn some new things all the same and that’s the most important thing.