#web-summit-vancouver — Public Fediverse posts

Weekly output: AT&T’s mass-market plans, digital transformations, ROI of AI, AI in Android and Chrome development, Firefox as anti-Chrome, AT&T’s Build-A-Plan, DeepMind CEO on AGI, Starship v3 launch

After yet another week of travel–this time to the Bay Area, spending one day in San Jose at TechEx North America and then the next two days at Google I/O–I’m not going anywhere for the next two work weeks. I’m happy about that.

In addition to everything below, I wrote a post for Patreon readers about two recent challenges I experienced with public speaking: doing a solo PowerPoint presentation and then moderating a panel without being able to see how much time was left or even revise my handwritten notes.

5/18/2026: AT&T’s mass-markets chief: Consumers aren’t ‘chomping at the bit for 6G’, Light Reading

I interviewed Jenifer Robertson, executive vice president and general manager of mass markets at AT&T, at the wireless trade group CTIA’s summer in D.C. two weeks ago, and then getting some clarification about that company’s fiber-buildout plans took longer than I would have expected.

5/18/2026: Fireside Chat: My Transformation Stalled–What’s Gone Wrong?, TechEx North America

The first of two panels i did at TechEx in my second year speaking at this conference had me quizzing Manav Khatri, VP of product and strategy at Ford Credit, and Romona Brown, North American president at Prosci, about how companies can go awry when trying to advance digital transformations of legacy platforms.

5/18/2026: Panel: Measuring Success: ROI of AI and Automation in Business Transformation, TechEx North America

My second panel at TechEx, in the potentially dicey postprandial timeslot, had me quizzing Leo Le Hoang Dung, director of manufacturing digital systems and regional digital transformation at Procter & Gamble; Alice Hilson, senior director of digital innovation and enterprise technology at DuPont; and Brenton House, IBM’s principal advisor for automation and emerging technology. I was pleasantly surprised to see the number of people watching exceed the seats available.

5/19/2026: Google Unwraps Plans to Put AI to Work for Android, Web Developers, PCMag

I wrote part of this on the day before Google I/O and the rest early in the morning before the opening keynote.

5/20/2026: Firefox wants to be the anti-Chrome browser for the AI era, Fast Company

I scheduled an interview at Web Summit Vancouver with Ajit Varma, Mozilla’s head of Firefox, without realizing that my Fast Co. editor Harry McCracken had also booked time with him. But Harry didn’t have time to write something from his interview and generously handed his recording to me.

5/21/2026: AT&T Adds a New (But Retro) Wireless Plan Option: Data By the Bucket, PCMag

My advance copy of AT&T’s press release didn’t mention some important details, so I appreciated an AT&T publicist fielding questions I sent late in the day from Pacific Time while he was working in Central Time.

5/22/2026: DeepMind CEO: ‘AGI’ Is Coming Soon, But Here’s the Test It Must Pass First, PCMag

My one datelined I/O post from Mountain View covered a talk that DeepMind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis did with Axios co-founder Mike Allen that shed a little light about how one of the more accomplished people in AI sees where this technology is going.

5/23/2026: SpaceX Starship Hits Some Targets, Misses Others on Latest Test Flight, PCMag

I was ready to write about a launch of SpaceX’s Starship v3 Thursday, but a series of last-minute scrubs pushed that test flight to Friday and gave me enough time to write a little more of the story in advance.

Weekly output: WiFi hotspots, Android 17 + Gemini Intelligence, earning trust in AI, staying IRL in an AI world, AI image generation, photonics + data centers, Bill Gross on AI

SAN JOSE, Calif.–I’m back on the West Coast only three days after returning from Web Summit Vancouver, and my excuse for yet another transcon flight involves two different events: TechEx North America at the convention center here, where I’m moderating two panels Monday, and then Google I/O a little up the peninsula in Mountain View Tuesday and Wednesday. This is my second year at the first event but will be my 12th in-person I/O.

5/11/2026: The Best Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wirecutter

This update to this guide was originally going to review the Franklin A70 hotspot that AT&T introduced last year, but as I was about to file my edits I learned that AT&T was discontinuing that model. So I took out all of the copy assessing the A70 and restored the discussion of older models, which still left plenty of new text covering, among other things, how most high-end smartphone plans now include more data than you get with hotspot-only plans.

5/12/2026: In Android 17, ‘Gemini Intelligence’ Can Automate Tasks Across Apps, PCMag

Google dumped an enormous amount of news one week before I/O, to the point that I needed almost 1,200 words to cover it without even getting into Googlebook laptops, since PCMag’s Michael Kan wrote up that part of Google’s news. I trust that Google left something else to announce onstage at I/O Tuesday.

5/12/2026: Data done right: Earning consumer trust in an AI-first world. Web Summit

This was the second year in a row I had a Web Summit Vancouver panel featuring Pamela Snively, chief data and trust officer with Telus Communications. Knowing my fellow speaker’s conversational style made this panel easy; the topic was also a good one to explore.

5/12/2026: The Analog Renaissance, Why Human Connection and IRL Is the Most Radical Innovation, Frontier Collective

I showed up 5 minutes late to this offsite panel hosted by a local tech group because my floatplane joyride ended almost 30 minutes later than scheduled, a timing failure that in retrospect seems like something I was asking for. I then had a fun discussion with my fellow speakers–Raven White, TED’s director of audience development and community; Heather Odendaal, WNORTH CEO and founder; and Johnny Rodgers, a founding principal engineer at Slack–but I feel bad about inflicting “where is Rob?” uncertainty on the organizers and forcing emcee Theodora Jean to field my position for the first few minutes.

5/13/2026: What it actually takes to train frontier models, Web Summit

This was a late addition to my schedule, leaving no time for a prep call beforehand with Black Forest Labs co-founder Tim Dockhorn. That, in turn, meant I only discovered on stage that he can answer questions exceedingly briefly–which required me to improv a bunch of new questions. This sort of thing has happened on panels before; this time, I didn’t feel like I was flailing around onstage quite so much.

5/14/2026: Can Photonics Make the AI Data Center Boom More Palatable?, PCMag

Since my research for this started at NTT Research’s Upgrade conference in mid April, I was happy I finally got this written–including quotes from my interview of the photonics firm Taara’s CEO at Web Summit Vancouver that helped this post be about more than just the expenses-comped NTT event. I was not so happy to discover that I left two errors into the copy, one about the distances that Taara’s silicon-photonics chipset can send data through the air and another about this firm’s spot in the extended Google corporate universe.

5/15/2026: Bill Gross thinks AI companies are running out of ways to avoid paying creators, Fast Company

This is the first time in a long time–maybe ever, actually–where I wrote a story from an interview as an edited transcript instead of writing a more-structured piece with selected quotes plugged in where I saw fit. I enjoyed the challenge of finding the most enlightening exchanges about the longtime Silicon Valley founder and investor’s new venture ProRata and the state of AI in general out of 6,000-plus words of AI-generated transcript from my phone’s Google Recorder app (which I then checked by playing back the original recording).

Ran into friends, made new ones at the Surrey Founders meetup, got recognized by a pal I haven’t seen in person for 10 years! Talked with the only co-op, hung with language nerds (spoke some 日本語), and observed last year’s “responsible AI” messaging is now “sovereign AI” 😜 #WebSummitVancouver 🇨🇦

BC Premier David Eby talks about the province’s Look West campaign and growing tech center
Gary Marcus delivers hot takes on Anthropic leak, symbolic logic, the Sillycon Valley Trials
CEO of Bell asks for an industrial policy 👀
Stephen Walt‼️ sez Trump lost the Iran War

#WebSummitVancouver 🇨🇦

Good morning from #WebSummitVancouver

Who else is at Web Summit?

#WebSummitVancouver #WebSummitVancouver2026 #WebSummit2026 #WebSummit #Vancouver #VancouverBC #VancouverBCCanada #BCCanada #Canada

Weekly output: Google I/O teaser, satellite-to-phone services, passkeys, connected-home considerations, Matter

I’m spending a few days in cooler confines–Monday morning, I head to Vancouver for the second year of Web Summit’s conference there. And just like last year, I won’t have enough time to do much wandering around British Columbia’s largest city and taking in its stunningly beautiful mountains-and-sea scenery, because I have three panels to moderate over Tuesday and Wednesday (with the conference hosts paying for my hotel and reimbursing my airfare).

5/5/2026: Google Teases I/O Pregame Event. How to Watch ‘The Android Show’ on May 12, PCMag

This was one of the shortest posts I’ve written for PCMag, owing to the paucity of information in the brief teaser video Google published.

5/7/2026: FCC Chair: Starlink Isn’t Enough. We Need at Least 3 Satellite-to-Phone Services, PCMag

I spent Wednesday afternoon at the wireless trade group CTIA’s annual summit in Washington. Most of the talks on the program didn’t yield anything too newsworthy, but Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s appearance met that bar even though he didn’t talk about his clumsy attempts to leverage the FCC’s broadcast licensing authority to punish TV shows and TV hosts for being mean to Republicans.

5/7/2026: Passkey-Adoption Report Finds Many Orgs Don’t Know How to Quit Passwords, PCMag

I had an advance copy of this FIDO Alliance survey but didn’t have time to write it up in advance; fortunately, Thursday did have enough idle time for me to get this post written and filed.

5/8/2026: Smart Homes In Practice: Bridging Design, Integration, And Market Promises With Real Human-Centered Living Outcomes, Smarter Infrastructure Summit

I had a brief trip to Chicago–well, its suburb Rosemont–for this small conference. I was a late addition to this panel, in which moderator Lisa An Wong quizzed me and architect Stephen Yas and connect-home integrator Corey Ardell about ways to get homes and the appliances in them thoughtfully wired.

5/9/2026: Matter Smart Home Standard Still Looks Immaterial At Retail, Smarter Infrastructure Summit

The title of this talk I did mirrors the story I did for PCMag almost three years ago; that post caught the attention of the conference organizers, and the chance to revisit the topic and get in some practice with doing a solo presentation led me to accept their travel-expenses-covered invitation.

I am working furiously on lots of ATmosphereConf tasks ... but I also am looking ahead at the rest of the year and timing for other events. Just kicked off a forum thread about planning for @[email protected] in May. discourse.atprotocol.community/t/web-summit... #WebSummitVancouver

Weekly output: Tech Talks podcast, SpaceX Starship, AI data privacy, Bluesky CEO Jay Graber, agentic AI, scaling AI, Trump scrubs NASA nomination

This week will be my fourth in a row with nights away from home–but since the first of those was something I did for fun, nobody should feel too sorry for me. Plus, last week’s trip for Web Summit Vancouver treated me to some beautiful mountain, water and city scenery. This week’s less-scenic trip is to Santa Clara, where I’m moderating three panels about… wait for it… AI at the TechEx North American conference.

I wrote an extra post for Patreon readers: a breakdown of my inputs and outputs from Google I/O as compared to two prior trips to cover Google’s developer conference.

5/26/2025: Education, Education, Education! The Biggest Lessons from Rio., Tech Talks

I joined this episode of the podcast that my conference pal David Savage does for his employer Nash Squared almost a month ago at Web Summit Rio, when I sat down in front of a microphone with David, Ingra Labs founder Nicole Ingra, and Koala CEO Benjamin Buthmann.

5/28/2025: On Ninth Test Flight, SpaceX’s Starship Rocket Survives Launch But Not Space, PCMag

Instead of taking some time to explore Vancouver after my late-morning arrival, I caught up on e-mail while waiting for my room to be ready, got in an interview for an upcoming story and then watched the livestream of SpaceX’s ninth launch of its gigantic Starship rocket–which proved to be almost as snakebit as the previous two test flights.

5/28/2025: Whose data is it anyway?, Web Summit Vancouver

My first of three panels at the summit had me quizzing Pamela Snively, chief data and trust officer at Telus Communications, and Amin Venjara, chief data officer of ADP.

5/29/2025: Bluesky Still Figuring Out How to Make Money Without Spamming You With Ads, PCMag

I left my schedule open Tuesday evening to see Bluesky CEO Jay Graber’s talk onstage, then finished writing it up early Wednesday morning after jet lag once again had me wake up before 6 a.m.

5/29/2025: The agentic era, Web Summit Vancouver

My panel with Josh Software co-founder Gautam Rege and Outreach CEO Abhijit Mitra, featured something I hadn’t seen before at Web Summit events: The countdown clock moved backwards. I found out afterwards that since the previous speaker had ended early, the stage producers opted to give us his stoppage time after seeing that we were having fun in our conversation.

5/29/2025: Building the new internet: Lessons in simplicity, security, and scale, Web Summit Vancouver

My third panel started 20 minutes after my second and on the same stage, leaving just enough time backstage for a quick sync-up with Tailscale CEO Avery Pennarun. He brought a somewhat cranky view of AI-industry hype that I appreciated very much.

5/31/2025: Trump Hits ‘Undo’ on Private Astronaut’s Nomination for NASA Administrator, PCMag

Maybe because I spent a large part of Friday offline in the sky, I couldn’t resist a chance to cover President Trump withdrawing his nomination of payments billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator–because writing that post also let me loop in readers about the brutal budget outline for the space agency posted Friday.

#ADP #agenticAI #Bluesky #BritishColumbia #Canada #DavidSavage #JaredIsaacman #JayGraber #JoshSoftware #nasa #NASAAdministrator #NashSquared #Outreach #SpaceXStarship #Tailscale #Telus #Trump #TrumpTariffs #Vancouver #WebSummit #WebSummitVancouver

American apologies on Canadian soil

VANCOUVER

Between Americans and Canadians, the latter are supposed to be the people always apologizing even when unnecessary, but the last four months and change have not gone the way they’re supposed to between these North American nations. And coming from Washington in particular to one of my favorite countries for Web Summit Vancouver left me convinced that it was Americans’ turn to say “sorry” over and over.

In addition to his numerous other offenses, President Trump has treated Canada more shabbily than any president in my life, almost certainly in American history since President Madison made an invasion of Canada part of the U.S. strategy in the War of 1812.

Trump has slapped tariffs on imports from Canada based on the slanderous lie that Canada tolerates massive smuggling of fentanyl into the U.S. (Canada does not and suffers from that scourge too, as a walk Thursday night along some sketchy blocks of Hastings Street reminded me.) Trump won’t shut up about his deranged obsession with turning Canada into the 51st state; understanding that Canada consists of 10 provinces and three territories seems far beyond the president’s grasp, much less finding Nunavut on a map. He could not stop belittling the country and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even as Canadians began boycotting American goods and swung to the previously-doomed Liberal Party’s side, leading to a stunning win for the Liberals and Trudeau’s successor Mark Carney in April’s elections.

But nobody at this conference got on my case about any of this, even though they would have been more than entitled to do so. In particular, I could not have whined if I got yelled at by the Canadian attendees of Web Summit’s Collision conference in Toronto last year or in 2023 who had listened to me confidently predict that American voters would remember Trump’s crimes instead of returning him to the White House.

Even when I suggested in one of the three panels I moderated that a collaboration between Nvidia and the Canadian telco Telus to upgrade a data center in Quebec into a “Sovereign AI Factory” sounded like a new “elbows up” response to Trump’s thuggishness, Telus chief data and trust officer Pamela Snively assured me that this had been in the works for a while.

(Obligatory disclosure: Web Summit paid for my hotel and is reimbursing my airfare.)

I did not wind up apologizing onstage, but Fast Company tech editor Harry McCracken did just that early in an interview Wednesday of Bell Canada CEO Mirko Bibic. My fellow American and my editor at that publication noted what he called “this unprecedented time” and said he apologized for Trump’s annexationist delusions, saying “Canada is the best neighbor in the history of neighbors.” He’s right, and our country’s government is wrong. And I’m sorry too, Canada.

#51stState #Canada #elbowsUp #JustinTrudeau #MarkCarney #TrumpTariffs #TrumpVsCanada #Vancouver #WebSummitVancouver

Yesterday I was at #WebSummitVancouver helping a friend (in exchange for a pass). We were vibe debugging the demo early that morning. Then the rest of the day yapping to passers-by about https://baseweight.ai and https://videoscan.ai

Sometimes I helped guide the conversation from tech-explaining to asking-for-something, but mostly I part of the moral support posse

I was worried his demo was too simple. But we did more coding *that morning* than some exhibitors had done, period

The @feathers.dev crew gearing up to head out for their booth day at #WebSummitVancouver feathers.dev

I guess we’re back at the stage where Canadian cities / provinces compete with each other for the mythical substance known as startups (This is a bad idea / not how to do it) #WebSummitVancouver

Shout out to #WebSummitVancouver brains hammering into their socials minutes before midnight PST esp if y’all running an EST clock.

I didn’t make it into the Center stage at #WebSummitVancouver so here’s a photo of @jay.bsky.team at an overflow space

Looking forward to welcoming people for #WebSummitVancouver this week Z-Space is all spruced up, believe it or not this my desk in a cleaned up state, and yes we’re working late Our coffee networking events are now all waitlisted news.z-space.ca/web-summit-v...

Anyone on the #Fediverse coming to Web Summit Vancouver 2025?

I especially have my eyes set on a few social media-themed events happening there.

#WebSummitVancouver #WebSummitVancouver2025 #WebSummit2025 #WebSummit #Vancouver #VancouverBC #BC #BritishColumbia #Canada

Weekly output: broadband satisfaction, Google I/O announcements (x2), Mark Vena podcast, Android XR, Google Beam

I got back from one part of the West Coast Thursday night and I’m heading to another part Tuesday morning. But while my travel plans have included Google I/O since 2010, Web Summit moving its Collision conference to Vancouver and rebranding it as Web Summit Vancouver has put that city in my schedule for the first time since an epic ski trip to Whistler in 2004.

5/20/2025: In the ISP Race, Fiber Is Still Tough to Beat, But Don’t Discount These Upstarts, PCMag

My first post of the week, written Monday off an embargoed copy of the American Customer Satisfaction Index‘s latest survey results and filed from my flight to SFO that evening, unpacked more bad news for cable broadband.

5/21/2025: Google’s ‘AI Mode’ Is Coming for Us All, PCMag

I wrote part of this, based on Google’s embargoed announcements, on Monday’s flight, part from my Airbnb after jet lag had me awake before 6 a.m., and part from my seat at Shoreline Amphitheatre before the start of Google’s keynote.

5/21/2025: Google’s New Flow Moviemaking Tool Can Turn You Into AI Scorsese for $250/Month, PCMag

I finished writing this after the keynote had begun, so the copy I filed had quotes from Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s keynote remarks.

5/21/2025: Ep 110 SmartTechCheck Podcast — Apple’s upcoming WWDC 25, Google I/O and “Apple in China”, Mark Vena

I made a rare outdoors appearance on my industry-analyst friend’s podcast, logging on from a picnic table in between I/O exhibits in Shoreline’s parking lot.

5/22/2025: Google Glass Reborn? I Tried Android XR Smart Glasses, and One Thing Stood Out, PCMag

Waiting out a lengthy queue to try Google’s new connected eyewear proved to be an excellent use of my time Tuesday afternoon.

5/23/2025: Google’s Futuristic Beam Tech Almost Made Me Forget I Was on a Video Call, PCMag

I missed some press-specific previews of this holodeck-esque video-conferencing system Tuesday but was able to squeeze in a demo Wednesday afternoon.

#ACSI #android #AndroidXR #broadband #GoogleAI #GoogleBeam #GoogleIO #IO #MarkVena #MountainView #WebSummitVancouver #YVR

The @feathers.dev folks are kicking off #WebSummitVancouver with a hack day at @z-space.ca Come hang and work on personal projects and meet others!

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vt3kmm3nroqj5jpzt7n75dsi/post/3lprme4zovk2v

UPDATE: I wrote to Web Summit and was given an ICS calendar file link and even a really nice printable version of my personal schedule. It’s just not linked from anywhere!

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: There is one link … in the “Checklist” email that was just sent out this afternoon. Please boost!

#websummit #websummitvancouver

https://mstdn.ca/@nep/114550559250932131

Aren't open standards and interoperability the foundation of the Internet and the Web?

(He groused at no one, his frustration boiling over that the Vancouver Web Summit has no RSS feed for its content or ICS feed for its schedule.) #websummitvancouver #websummit

https://vancouver.websummit.com/

For those coming out for #WebSummitVancouver, can’t wait to have you drop by the space. Open every morning for coffee networking & an ATProto event at lunch on Wednesday. There will likely be some late night hangs too. news.z-space.ca/web-summit-v...

Web Summit Vancouver @ Z-Space

Our May events round up post is up dwebyvr.org/dweb-vancouv... Planning meeting tomorrow, @z-space.ca Electronics Bazaar next Friday, and a bunch of events end of May around #WebSummitVancouver

DWeb Vancouver May 2025 events

Hosting the first ATProto #Vancouver meetup tonight at @z-space.ca, 6pm - 8pm. Happy birthday to @alex.mcroberts.me, who will make it to the next one, which we'll do around #WebSummitVancouver (Jay will be speaking on Tuesday night, looks like)

ATProto Vancouver · Luma

Are you coming to #WebSummitVancouver?

The DWeb Vancouver crew @dwebyvr.org are organizing a DWeb Science Fair and are making a call for projects https://dwebyvr.org/dweb-science-fair-call-for-projects/

We want to showcase your DWeb principles aligned project / protocol / company @dweb

Fill out the form if you’re planning to be in Vancouver and want to present!

Thanks @dmathewwws.com for coming up with the DWeb Science Fair idea and running with it. If you’re a DWeb project we want to showcase you during #WebSummitVancouver

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:22pyi6okltsfjyn47rm4z3xe/post/3llukix33rc2t