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One of the best presentations I saw at Reboot was Leisa Reichelt’s “Ambient Intimacy“. She was talking about something I’ve been wondering about for a while – that as a result of blogs, Flickr and the rest of the social software tools it’s possible to know someone else far better than they know you. In one way, that’s the same as the relationship between a member of the public and a celebrity, but the point of ambient intimacy is that it’s now also possible to be the relationship between “normal” people.

It’s not just about basic stats, either – ASL and so on. If you add together all the social tools that it’s possible to use, you can end up knowing so much more – my Flickr stream showing where I’ve been, for example. And delicious is a very effective way of finding out what I’m interested in now, and what’s interested me in the past.
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Reboot was amazing. I didn’t really know what to expect, and reading some of the reactions to previous years’ made me wonder if it didn’t sometimes verge towards the religious – but it lived up to the hype. If I’d spent the two days ignoring the sessions completely and just sat around in the sun talking to people, it would have been worth going, so the people and the sessions made for something unique. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere with such a high ambient IQ (not to mention such a high density of Macs), so if the places for Reboot 10 were on sale I’d have booked one already.