Supernova is a gathering of Internet-focused people from all sectors, from EFF to FCC, from HOTorNOT to SecondLife, from VCs to the ATT. I was hoping I could do something witty with that list, but, uh, really, it’s people from all sectors.

As is often the case panels and presentations are hit-or-miss based upon what you already know or not. And as is always the case it the conversations between the sessions (as well as the banter on the IRC backchannel) that really make this so worthwhile.

Here are some notes worth sharing.

Jonathon Schwartz, the blogging CTO of Sun Microsystems, prefers not to call this period Web 2.0. In his mind using mainframes and dumb terminals isn’t much different than using web servers and data-persistent websites. It’s more elegant, but is really just Internet Version X.0 and will soon enough be supplanted by a more efficient system. What he sees as the big big big challenge for Internet content providers is controlling permissions and access as internet-devices become ubiquitous and web-access a given.

There was lots of talk about trust on the Internet, which seems like a very old topic to me. The fact that everyone is still wanting a cross-net 100% reliable trust system only tells me that no one is close to solving this problem that everyone considers to be very tricky. Short of a benign trust and permissions administrator, I’m really not sure if a computerized system will be an option until chips record our entire life and keep track of our scores.

Another common topic is The Long Tail. I’m surprised how often this term is used by smart people as if it’s a new or interesting phenomena. History has shown that what is popular one day is not the next and yet almost always there is a group that continues to enjoy an outmoded trend. The 50’s are over but Rockabilly lives on. Speaking Latin has a very long tail. So the fact that a book on Amazon still sells 5 years after dropping off any important charts really doesn’t change any of my understanding of society.

I’ve gotten to meet some great people and catch up with others I never see.
Jeff Clavier writes a really sharp blog I read regularly and got to speak with. Same goes for Ross Mayfield and Suw Charman. I had lunch with Jim and James, two very low-key guys who’s incredibly popular hotornot.com site makes even VC green with envy. Hotornot has been one of Dogster’s long-stand business role-models and now that we have subscriptions going we are finally on our way to see if that’s true. Later I met Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson of < a href=http://snarkmarket.com/blog/>Snarkmarket. Makers of the engaging must-watch-once EPIC 2014.