BLOGSPOT:It's a fairly safe bet that Kara Swisher's blog has been getting a lot more traffic from Ireland in the last couple of weeks. Swisher co-organises the influential
D: All Things Digital technology conference with the Wall Street Journal's technology columnist, Walt Mossberg.
Last month, Swisher revealed on her blog that the pair were in Dublin to look at possible venues for the first international version of D, which has been taking place in California since 2003.
D is a technology conference unlike any other. There are no keynote speakers, PowerPoint presentations or plugs from sponsors. Instead, it features candid interviews conducted by Swisher and Mossberg with leading techies such as Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Palm founder Jeff Hawkins and, famously, a joint interview with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs last year. As a result, bringing it to Dublin would be a real vote of confidence in our technology sector.
The BoomTown name comes from a column that Swisher wrote from San Francisco for the Wall Street Journal during the original dotcom frenzy, when she broke many stories about the internet's big issues and players. Her blog is a digital extension of that column, where she covers the current generation of internet companies and the issues raised by their technologies.
In common with the conference she organises, Swisher's blog covers media issues as much as pure technology - although with a firm focus on how the ubiquity of the internet is affecting the media business.
Incidentally, Swisher was against Rupert Murdoch's takeover of the Journal, and blogged accordingly.
Generally, Swisher marries the best of the maverick blogging spirit with the analysis you would expect from someone who has worked for so long for one of the world's leading business newspapers.
Like other bloggers, she links to articles that have appeared elsewhere, but not without first providing some context and commentary.
A great feature of Swisher's blogs is the videos she posts of her visits and interviews. The technical quality may not be the greatest, but it gives you an insight into Swisher's caustic wit, not least on her recent visit to Google Dublin, when she compares the exercise balls strewn around the office to "Google weeds".
Hopefully her blog will also be the forum on which she announces that D: All Things Digital will be coming to Dublin in autumn 2008.
