Imagine a conference that runs for 3 weeks! Can’t spend that much time away from home/work? No problem. This one’s on your desktop. The Online Social Networks 2005 (OSN2005) conference opened its virtual doors on Wednesday. The first week started with a keynote panel discussion from Howard Rheingold, Lisa Kimball, and Joi Ito, which was followed by an ongoing discussion by conference participants (I hate to say attendees as I would for a physical conference, because we’re not exactly attending anything) who are a truly international group. The first dozen responses to the keynote came from the U.S., Brazil, and Denmark. Although the conference organizer told me that over 300 people have signed up, the most I’ve seen online at one time has been somewhat over 50.

The themes I’ve picked up so far have to do with how large the online world has grown. There was a sense of nostalgia from both keynoters and participants, a longing for the “early days” (meaning the 1980s) when only a few people were online in a collaborative, social networking sense and everybody knew each other. Now there are more people and more diversity. It’s not the clubby, small band of like-minded technophiles it was.

I’ve heard the same from the pioneers of online search and information retrieval and they predate the 1980s. Note to self: Time to get over it.