The Conference on World Affairs and its future

I only went to one session session in CU’s Conference on World Affairs this year — the one on the first day about Twitter — and decided the trip, the parking, etc., were not repaid by that much insightful talk. Actually, the information itself was quite good, but the panelists somehow seemed sing-songy and not that interested themselves.

I think CWA may face increasingly hard times given the abundance of compelling “content” available from the Internet and a moderately well-crafted palate of DVR’d cable shows. I’d give the CWA about five years max. They continue to prolong what I consider strategic errors, like giving the public just an often-cryptic panel name, serving up speakers whose bios are often not that alluring and bear no visible relationship to the inscrutable topic, etc.

As for my prediction of CWA’s demise, be warned that many of my predictions (“Apple stock can’t keep going up”) are wrong.

A great tech pundit gets chatty

While I’m kvetching, I’ll add a truth-be-told comment about famous tech commentator and columnist Andy Ihnatko, who was on the above-mentioned panel and also appeared Thursday night at the Colorado Macintosh Users Group (COMUG) meeting. He’s now on at least two major podcasts that I know about (Mac Break Weekly and Ihnatko Almanac, the second of which is often not about tech at all). I think that, as a public figure, he’s in danger of becoming overexposed. People come to Ihnatko for one thing — talk about Mac and technology. His forays into other random topics thrust him into a larger arena where let’s just say the competition is more intense. I prefer the old Andy, a purveyor of useful information about tech and, in particular, about our shared adulation over all things Apple.

Bloom off Farmers Market rose?

The kvetches keep on coming. This weekend, we even skipped the second week of the Farmers Market where, in the past, we have not only been every-single-week attendees but at 8 a.m. flat. Right now is not a big time of year for produce. The initial market last week seemed dominated by cutesy stands selling stuff that was only barely food. And, above all, a lot of the prices are getting just plain crazy. The Farmers Market, like the venerable CWA, could possibly use a bit of a reset, though certainly not the full Etch-A-Sketch.