Glue begins to take shape

It seems like everyone is naming their product "Glue" these days (for the record, our first post here was on March 18th, 2008), but that's cool because Glue the conference is already starting to take shape. Our sponsors now include: Amazon Web Services, Gnip, MindTouch, NewsGator, Ping Identity, Microsoft, Cloud Ave, and Saugatuck Technology Research. A few notes, then:

• As I've been chatting with folks about Glue, the "vision" of what Glue will be has started to come into focus a bit more. It all begins with the assumption that the web is the platform, and then asks, "now what?" Put another way, Glue is exploring what it means when applications are just assumed to live on the web. The result is that three topics have immediately crystallized: cloud computing (infrastructure glue), data integration (data glue - where "data" means everything from mashups to identity), and web oriented architecture (or, what happens beyond SOA?). The format for topics like this is clearly a technical one, and folks I've spoken with are indicating a real hunger for a conference that's going to "go deep." Format-wise, that'll mean technical workshops, open spaces and hack-a-thons situated around more traditional "content."

• So, what kind of "specific" topic ideas have I started to receive? Jud Valeski of Gnip has offered up some great ideas that are indicative of the level/kind of stuff I think we'll end up having at Glue (quoting Jud):  1) "How do we evolve past LAMP" - the old, client-server-desktop, app building model died a long time ago, yet the "new way" hasn't been as good replacement in a lot of ways. why? how do we solve this?  2) "Keep it simple stupid" [WOA] = the best glues are often as simple as tree sap, highly complex chemically engineered glues are often overboard.  3) "Is the real cloud, actually glue?" - deploying code to virtualized instances is cool and all, but the cloud/glue is really abstracting the layers (e.g. data/db/big-table) and making those accessible in an "instance" independent way.

• That's just one topic area, but you get the point. Really "meaty" stuff.We're still way early in the process, but we're now officially working on this, so I'd love to hear from you. If you're interested in becoming a sponsor, please email me (enorlinATmac.com). Or, if you're feeling nutty and wanna register early (pre-agenda), go do so. The code "early1" will get you $50 bucks off of the already insanely-low price of $395.00.