So after taking the weekend to think about what made Make Web Not War great here are my impressions on the whole thing. For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Make Web Not War is a

The notebook given to me by Microsoft at Web Not War 2010 with the platform picks. Click to go the port25 blog.

a developer’s conference that is Sponsored by Microsoft where developers are encouraged to interact and become part of a community of people who are “makers of the web.” It was also a chance to “show and tell” about a particular app and how it’s useful to others in some way.

Since SafeKidZone represents a unique way to use the web and phone to address a real human concern, we were invited to come by Microsoft’s Angie Lim. I think the consensus among all the smiling (and smitten) conference attendees is that she did a fantastic job taking lead on putting this all together with her team of event planners. No argument here.

The Setting

This year’s event was held in Montreal at Espace Réunion. The location seemed to be on the outskirts of Montreal proper, in the Outremont district. From the outside it looked like a warehouse of some kind in an industrial district.

My taxi driver even commented on it as he was perplexed as to why a fairly well dressed person like me was heading out that way. He thought I was doing some shady dealings, but I assured him I was just as perplexed as he was. However, inside the venue it was beautiful. The registration folks gave me my name tag, a necklace holding 5 guitar picks, each printed with the logo of a coding platform -  my necklace had Microsoft.Net, 2 Pythons and 2 Java. The game was to run around the conference, meet new people, and trade picks until one had collected all 5 different ones.

Also given to me was a 2GB flash drive with all the brochures (way to go paperless Microsoft!) and finally a folder with a notebook asking the very obvious question on everyone’s mind: “Why the @&*# is Microsoft doing this?” Why indeed, considering that one would think that Microsoft would be in competition with some of these other platforms it was interesting to speculate as to why they’ve embraced the open source community like this. I suppose that’s why they conference is called “Make Web Not War” because we are seeing Microsoft being much more open here and coexisting peacefully with other contenders on the web development scene. In a word: Interoperability.

Although you would think differently upon entering the venue which was decked out with army helmets, camo tarps, gas-masks, ammo boxes and the most devastating weapon of all; Beatles Rock Band. The venue was beautiful on the inside and the theme was a nice touch which served as a backdrop to a very well put together and professional event. I set up my presentation on the dual projector screens in the main presentation room and went about networking and taking in the ambiance.

Lydia and Angie working out the details. Photo: Motionblur

Then, to my surprise, Lydia, one of Microsoft’s team of organizers and the one chiefly responsible for getting all the decorations approached me with a set of 4 white guitar picks. She informed me that these were rare and I was tasked with selectively handing them out to attendees who I found had something amazing to say or who had an open mind. Good thing open minded people are the ones who tend to pick up SafeKidZone!

Community

Although Web Not War was multifaceted in it’s scope, including both a “main track” and a “developers track” as far as presentation options were concerned, I think the real overarching value of the conference was its intimacy which cultivated fertile ground to forge new friendships and contacts. Although there were a few hundred people there I met many great folks who were genuinely interested in what the other had to say about themselves and their web app. Although there were a few people who had sought me out because they heard on the grapevine (that is the twitter wall created by Jet Cooper) that I was one of the secret white pick agents, they too became SafeKidZone fans once I enticed them to watch my live demo of the app in the main room.

There were also some people who had come to watch the live demo who had previously seen the short non-live slideshow two nights before at MonDev’s Ignite presentations.

Show and Tell

There were some really amazing apps and services, in particular Vanilla forums, Tiki and Microsoft Website Spark, and DevLab. Another much-anticipated thing was announced to us by none other than Microsoft Vice President, Gladstone Grant. Windows 7 Mobile! This is a platform that we at SafeKidZone will hopefully get a chance to tinker with before it’s release during the upcoming holiday season. My new friend Barnaby Jeans is one of Microsoft’s Chief Evangelists and we will talk about that soon. So all you Windows Mobile users stay tuned!

App demos were a lean 5 minutes which, to be frank, didn’t seem long enough for any of the presenters to be able to show the true power of their respective apps. Although I was able to get the message across fairly effectively during my time at the mic, I would have like to be able to do a full app demo of all the different ways SafeKidZone can be applied to a myriad of situations. Although, to be fair, that may have needed considerably longer. Fortunately, there was a fairly good sized group of people who tracked me down after the presentation to get the full scoop and I was only too happy to oblige them.

Final Thoughts

I still think that the most valuable thing at Web Not War was seeing some old friends and making a host of new ones (My blogroll on the right side of this page will have a growing list of these good folks) These are all great people who not only want to help others but are part of a community with a common ground in improving things in some way. In our case (social media and web geeks) we have our Tumblr meetings, Social media pow wows, web shout outs, tweets and, of course, Karaoke on Thursday nights after a hard week at work, but the spirit of community and camaraderie is every bit the same as the kind that is shared be people like you who live in communities where neighbor helps neighbor, goes to your kid’s hockey or baseball game with the rest of the parents to support your little athletes or just shoots the breeze with your fellow parent or big sibling over a cool drink in the summer or a hot one in the winter while the kids play and learn their way to adulthood.

The point is that we as people are interconnected and we all share a common goal of growth with friendship as the social lubricant by which to move things along. We support one another and help each other grow in one way or the other. At Web Not War we help grow our contacts, development skills and our brands. At SafeKidZone we and our members help our kids grow up in safety and health and ultimately we grow as people and parents.

That’s why I love working for this company.

Follow us on twitter and facebook. And Sign up!

Extra treat: Here’s Joey Devilla AKA: @accordionguy playing us a little ditty.