Emerging Technology Conference

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The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (not to be confused with the MIT Emerging Technologies Conference) is O'Reilly Media's premier conference about the new technologies that are on the O'Reilly Radar. O'Reilly defines its core business not as books, conferences, or online publishing, though it does all three, but as "changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators." While other O'Reilly conferences, such as the Open Source Convention, the MySQL Conference, or the Web 2.0 Conference, focus on specific technologies, ETech, as the Emerging Technology Conference is commonly called, highlights different issues and emerging trends each year, with a focus on innovations by non-commercial developers and enthusiasts.

Originally started in 2001 as the Peer to Peer Conference, ETech evolved to its current name and positioning by May 2002. It is currently held in San Diego every March. In 2006, the conference is being held March 6-9, and is focused on the Attention Economy. The conference is increasingly becoming a venue for announcements by new startups, and is more widely attended by venture capitalists than in the past, when it was more purely a get together for what Tim O'Reilly refers to as "the alpha geeks."