Saturday, August 18, 2001, 1:00 pm

The Emerging Peer-to-Peer Model 
Book Review and Audience Discussion
Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies
[book editor, Andy Oram; publisher, O'Reilly; March 2001] 
Reviewer and Discussion Leader: Toby Perkins, Software Engineer 

A review of the new book Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies, recently published by O'Reilly, will kick off a discussion with the audience about the technical, social, and business ideas behind "the peer-to-peer revolution." The cover of this book trumpets, "Peer-to-peer is the next great thing for the Internet," but the very first article in the book says, "The Internet as originally conceived . . . was a peer-to-peer system." To what extent is this book, written by the inventors and advocates of new peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella, Napster, and Freenet, the manifesto of a true revolution, and to what extent is it just plain hype? 

O'Reilly, a respected technical publisher, is promoting the Second Annual Peer-to-Peer Conference in Washington, DC, this September. This discussion will prepare you to review the conference proceedings, and other statements about the emerging peer-to-peer model, from a more fully informed perspective. 

Reviewer/Discussion Leader: Toby Perkins is a software engineer who uses free software tools to build database-backed Web applications. He holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from Swarthmore College and an MBA with distinction from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Toby Perkins may be reached at tobywan@ari.net.

Meeting notice from Toby's earlier e-commerce book discussion with our SIG in June 1999, which followed up on the subjects of the book StrikingItRich.com by Jaclyn Easton:

        http://www.cpcug.org/user/entrepreneur/699meet.html

Presentation Description | Speaker Information | Meeting Agenda | Location  | Registration | Door Prize

Free Parking: There's construction underway at NIH, so try to arrive a little early. (There are traffic police on the NIH campus--even on Saturday. So please observe the signs. Speeding or rolling through stop signs, or letting out passengers in unauthorized locations near the Metrorail station, for example, can result in tickets.)  You may park in the indoor parking garage of Building 10. Enter from Memorial Drive and park on the P3 level. Watch for and observe the parking signs as well. Some spaces are limited to cars driven by "handicapped" drivers and others are only for "small compact" cars. Tell any parking attendant you are attending a CPCUG event (there will be no charge). You may also park in the many outdoor parking lots.

Metro--Medical Center Station on the Red Line (about 3 blocks across the NIH campus) 

Free