Revision 23045494 of "Gnomedex" on enwiki

'''Gnomedex''' is an annual technical conference, coordinated by [[Lockergnome]] founder [[Chris Pirillo]], that began in late 2001, and has so far been held five times. It is not affiliated with the [[desktop environment]] [[GNOME]]. The conference is typically held over the summer on a weekend, and focuses on leading-edge social and technical trends, most recently including [[RSS]] aggregation and [[podcasting]].

It has been traditionally held in the quiet town of [[Des Moines, Iowa|Des Moines]], [[Iowa]], Pirillo's home town, but due to its size, moved to [[Lake Tahoe]] in 2004 and then [[Seattle]] in 2005, where Pirillo now makes his home.

The conference consists of parties, a keynote by Chris Pirillo, and presentations by various leaders in tech-centered fields. Notable speakers have included [[Rob Malda]] of [[Slashdot]] fame, [[Adam Curry]], [[Tim O'Reilly]], [[John C. Dvorak]], [[Dave Winer]], and the [[Microsoft]] [[Internet Explorer]] development team, who at Gnomedex 2005 announced widespread [[RSS]] support in the upcoming [[Windows Vista]] (a.k.a. "[[Longhorn]]") operating system, due in 2006.

Started as a "a tech conference for everyone else", what Gnomedex is exactly about is not really known. It is fun, informative and generally enjoyable. While the conference is run professionally at high-end venues, sponsorship from large companies including [[Microsoft]], [[Yahoo!]], and [[Google]] keeps registration fees unusually low. Another uncommon feature is a single "stream" of speeches in one room holding a few hundred people, rather than parallel series of talks and discussions as at other conventions.

Topics are vast, but activities are usually centered around a theme: at 2004's Gnomedex 4.0, the theme was "Taking the 'con' out of Convention", while Gnomedex 5.0's taglines in June 2005 included "The Technology People Aggregator" and "Grassroots of RSS, Blogging, Podcasting, BitTorrent, Media!" A bit odd, the mixture makes up an unusual conference experience.

==External links==
*[http://www.gnomedex.com/ Gnomedex Website]

[[Category:Conventions]]