Yes, I basically say a lot of random stuff about a random topic, justify it with more random stuff, answer my questions with more theoretical random responses, and make it fun and entertaining. :)

Thanks to David Weekly of PBWiki / Super Happy Dev House for the link!

OH! And if you want to see the fine academic research paper that this presentation is based on, click here.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Oh, the days of computer camp! I attended a computer camp from 2002-2006 and watched it transform from small intimate startup into a big nasty corporation. There was a huge influx of campers and counselors, and the management staff became uptight and nasty authoritarians. Here's the story from the eyes of 13 year old Jessica Mah:

I remember going to a summer camp fair, where dozens of summer camps showcased their pictures and activities in their booths. I walked around, and most of the camps were sports related. Being the young, geeky, unattractive 13 year old Jessica Mah that I was, I immediately picked up the brochures for the only computer camp there. My engineer dad was pushing me to go, and of course, I did! That summer, I was sent off to computer camp and experienced the best two weeks of my life. What's better than eating pizza while tinkering with C++ and playing counter-strike at 3AM? Nothing can top that!

So why were these two weeks at computer camp so significant to my growth as a geek and eventually an entrepreneur? As always, it's about the people. In my first hour at computer camp, I had already befriended four other 12/13 year old tech geeks -- at which point, I had an amazing revelation. I realized that I wasn't alone in this world! Yes, as lame as that sounds, I realized that I wasn't as nerdy weird as I had always thought I was. I FINALLY found a place where I was the "coolest" of the pack. Within 24 hours, I was tooling around with Apache server and dual booting with Fedora Linux on my 800mhz Compaq laptop thanks to camp friends.

Summer after summer, I continued going to computer camp, and I continued to love it... that is, until things got strict. There was bureaucracy. The counselors and directors took advantage of their power. Counter-strike was banned. 1/3 of our time was re-allocated to being required outdoor recreation time. Hundreds of more kids came, counselors were abusing their power, internet was banned from the dorms, and boys couldn't hang out in girls' rooms. All of a sudden, senior campers found themselves lost in a major corporation that decided to fire the founders and hire Harvard M.B.A. types. All of the new rules in place were to appease the "investors" (parents) at the expense of "customers" (campers). And to this day, my fellow camper friends and I chat on AIM about how the summer camp lost its touch and became just like every other major organization.

I think it's time that a new startuppy computer camp takes foot-hold in Silicon Valley -- except it should be WAY more than just a geeky computer camp: it should teach the fundamentals of running a startup and being entrepreneurial. How to attract users, how to co-create products with customer input, revenue models, etc... Such a summer camp would be for smart and motivated geeks 13-18 years old. There's an application process to get admitted into the summer camp, but that would insure that the campers are only of top caliber. Bureaucracy and rules exist to manage incompetent employees -- same applies to children. For recreational activity, we'll offer DDR and counter-strike themed laser tag. Together, we can re-create the geeky teenage summer camp that will always maintain its small start-up culture. In other words, we would be creating the "Rackspace of Computer Camps" or a TechStars targeted to teens. Sounds like a plan!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

I remember hearing about a huge and popular blog that did nothing other than post funny pictures of cats. Well, my next project will do something simple and stupid of a similar nature, but with music and videos and other 100% original content recorded in-house at the Berklee School of Music. You just wait and see! We'll be launching in the next few weeks...

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college Bard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Not to mention, this conference is like no other I've ever been to. Firstly, it's in Amsterdam: beautiful city, amazing people, and even better after parties.

Next, the private events: As a speaker, I've made friendly with all of my fellow co-speakers (including but not limited to Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, Chris Saag from DataPortability, and Khris Loux from JS-KIT). When you're with the same people every day, you build closer relationships with them. This almost feels like summer camp!

After party at the Odeon, Amsterdam

Anyway, it's 6AM Amsterdam time and I've been up wayy too late doing nothing but watching Revision3 and pondering my future as a wanna-be-entrepreneur. The speaking engagement went quite well, but I felt like I was there more to entertain than I was to teach. (which was the intent) Expect a blog post from me about lessons learned from public speaking :)

Signing off for the evening.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

As you probably know, I'll be headed to the Next Web Conference in Amsterdam in two weeks to speak about the future of web. And no, I do not know what on earth I'll be talking about. If you have any ideas, please email me!

I know that I promised to cut back on my conference going, but I figured that I'd get to visit the Netherlands for my first time, hang out with friends I met at Harvard, and learn how to speak in front of 750 people. It's over my spring break, so no class cutting required!

Anyhow, if you feel like dragging yourself out to Amsterdam to learn about the future of web and network with cool people like Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble, Leah Culver, and ME, then totally sign up!

See you there!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. She's totally overrated and you all know it.

I try not to splurge, but sometimes I have no choice! Take for example SxSW: You guys convinced me to go to the South by Southwest Conference, so I'm going. Few issues:

1) The only flight out that worked for me cost $620. It was only $100 for an upgrade to first class, so I bought it. Some call it splurging but I call it well deserved.

2) Every half decent hotel in Austin is completely booked. What can I say, the only so-so hotel I found was this place called the Four Seasons. Hopefully I'll find myself a successful, sexy, (wealthy) business man while I'm there? I'll dream on.

3) I had to upload a picture of my face to South by Southwest's website in order to claim my badge. I don't have many photos of me on the internet, but I figured I'll show you guys what I have:

Fugley or what? Whatever, it's better than my driver's license photo. Funny enough, this is the first real photo I've shown to you publicly via my blog.

I'll promise to take lots and lots of pictures for you guys! I'll be lonely, so please shower me with visits.

PS - I'm underage so I can't check into the hotel. Their stupid company policy is that I have to be at least 19 years old. Any of you want to help me? I'm offering a reward!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star. (and traveling to random cities and checking into hotels while being underage)

Ok... fine.. I'll admit it: Very frequently, I write a blog post about something that I dislike or expect to dislike. Several days later, I would then write about the same topic and have a much more positive opinion. Harvard Model United Nations just so happens to be one of these things.

After all, I've been to over 30 conferences now. I've only paid for two of them. Therefore, who could blame me for having such high expectations on what is a good conference versus a bad conference? Of all the events I've been to this year, I'll probably place Harvard Model United Nations in my top 5 list for all conferences I've been to. Impressive!

The first question is, what makes an event better than the others? The speakers, the topics, the food, the atmosphere? Wrong! The quality of the attendees takes precedence over everything. If there are good speakers, you could probably read their interviews on the interwebs. If there are amazing topics at the conference, I'm sure that any average joe could probably find it in the local book store. But people are different - in order to make lasting connections/friendships or whatever you'd like to call them, you must physically be present at the event.

Next, what is considered to be a high-caliber conference attendee? You could look at this from many different perspectives. Firstly, no sales people, and absolutely none of those silly network marketers! If you're paying hundreds/thousands of dollars to go to a conference, (I'm not one of them!) then you probably expect the sales people to be completely rid of. A good conference attendee may not necessarily be a wealthy celebrity. In fact, these people may be so popular that they'll want nothing to do with you. That's why it helps to have invite-only events. In the example of Harvard Model United Nations, only undergrads from colleges came. There was no application from attendees, but the expectations of a "Harvard" conference weeded out the lazy kids who didn't really care about debating and negotiating on world issues. As you may have read, I recently got accepted into TED - often described as a "group of remarkable people that gather to exchange ideas of incalculable value". The incredible value from this conference comes from the fact that most TEDsters are of such a high-caliber. This is the precise reason why invite-only groups are of such high value. Events such as TED don't only want smart people - they want attendees who are open to helping others with their interests and aspirations. And at the Harvard Model United Nations, there was no option to sit passively in the back. Sure, many people did it, but plenty more motivated students sat in the front and played an active role in the committee sessions.

Picture of me and my fellow "early-college" classmates at Harvard Model U.N. I'm the Asian down below if you couldn't guess that much.

Conferences need to manage the work-play relationship. For example, having too many workshops and/or keynote speakers can be boring! When I first wrote about the Harvard Model United Nation Conference, I mentioned how I saw plenty of people falling asleep at the opening ceremony. The basic idea is simple: bring in a charismatic keynote speaker or don't bring one at all! My opinions are controversial, but I hold my belief that a boring keynote speaker will do nothing but help set a *boring* attitude to the rest of the conference. This means that the conference had a rocky start, but quickly picked up pace when the attendees were thrown into action. After the committee sessions ended, the conference organizers threw cocktail parties, delegate dances, and more! Of course, the attendees threw their own private parties that nobody can know about. Whoops.

Overall, it was an amazing experience. Great people, great work-play balance, and all of the other good things that go along with having a grade A event. (minus the super boring keynote speaker) Don't be misled: Sure, this was a kiddie conference and I'm still one of them, but it seems essential that any good event must bring in quality people who are engaged in both learning and helping fellow attendees. Harvard Model United Nations, TED, and any "un-conference" are particular good at achieving this.

Plenty more to come! I can't wait to report on Northern Voice 2008.

PS - I wore formal attire throughout the conference. First time ever. Now THATs impressive!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Gosh... ok, I'm so out of breath! Basically, the conference people wouldn't issue me a press pass until 10AM. Oh wait, the keynote ends at 10 something AM. Oh noes! Of course, I wasn't planning *not* go to the keynote. That's the only thing worth seeing! So me and a huge mob of Apple geeks marched across the street to Moscone West and did everything from cut the line to just walk right in. Most of you know that I'm no newbie to Moscone West. Remember how I got front row seats at the Web 2.0 expo keynote even after they overflowed? Well, I managed to find a way into Macworld's keynote, sitting next to the people who've been waiting on line since sunrise. I'm on the press list, but let's just say that the security people "forgot to check the press badge that I'm yet to pick up." I didn't get front row this time, but I'm not complaining. :D The following coverage began at 9:20AM:

I'm sure you've read the predictions: Movie rentals, iPhone/iPod Touch upgrades, etc... Newbies:

- Apple TV Take 2: No computer needed and the capability to rent movies for $3 or $4. It has a kickass interface as usual with all Apple products. Steve was trying to demonstrate the Apple TV's capability to take photos from Flickr, but the silly photos wouldn't pop up! So he ended it by saying something among the lines of, "oh well, Flickr doesn't want to display the photos... So isn't that amazing?" What a great speaker! The price of an Apple TV was downgraded from $299 to $229. Again, Yay!

"There's something in the air," says pretty much every huge banner here at MacWorld. What the hell does that mean? We've been hearing about it for weeks now, and Apple has finally launched the MacBook Air. "In a sentence, it's the world's thinnest notebook." And that means what, Steve? A 3 pound, 0.76 inch, envelope sized laptop. No new product introduction is without an impressive introduction: Steve brought out the laptop in an envelope! Downsides? A tiny 80 GB HD for one. A lack of CD drive for two. You expect a small battery, but no: 5 hours in that tiny piece of beauty! The laptop starts at $1799 and ships in two weeks.

Phew, wasn't that exciting? On another note, I was silly enough to bring my Dell laptop to MacWorld. Big mistake. I almost died. Pictures are forthcoming.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Who knew that our world's youth would become so internet obsessed to a point where there'd be rehabilitation camps for these nerds?

Simply put, we're becoming so reliant on our computers for everything. Our communication, our finances, our news, our homework, our research, our fun, etc... it just never stops. If you find that your children or significant other(s) are becoming too much geeky for their own good, send them to rehabilitation camp, where they'll be taught to appreciate the REAL world!

Just imagine yourself at such an awesome place:

According to the Post, one clinic in the Beijing suburb of Daxing keeps some of its 12 to 17-year-old patients locked in rooms with barred windows for most of the day, treating them with a combination of counseling, medication, and military-style discipline. At the Daxing clinic, these troubled teens whose "souls are gone to the online world" are housed together on the third floor of the building, where they are subjected to hypnosis and even mild shock therapy in an attempt to rid them of their love of surfing.

Hmm... sounds like summer camp to me! I sense a minor problem with all of this. The people running these camps may not understand the root of the problem. Many 12-17 year old boys become computer obsessed nerds because they find more success and popularity in the virtual world, whether it be via Myspace or World of Warcraft. Matter of fact, one of these geeks just so happens to be a cousin of mine. There's no stopping him from shooting to his computer immediately after school. His social life at school is pathetic, but he's definitely thriving in Warcraft.

The geek rehabilitation camps are trying to treat the symptoms. It's all about punishment without relating actions to a core reason, which definitely isn't sustainable over the entire course of a nerd's life. Chinese people seem to have the problem of punishing and instilling fear in people rather than actually teaching them something. For example, If I went to China and openly admitted my bisexuality, I'd basically be signing myself up for intense shock therapy. (
However, if any of you come across a geek rehabilitation camp that doesn't use isolation and shock therapy for treatment, please let me know! I'll pass it onto my geeky Cousin.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.