Westin St. Francis, February 2001 — Consilient on the sponsor bill of the first P2P conference
This is Jonathan Hare's account, with its provenance shown. The person or organization named has not yet claimed or corrected it.
The first O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer Conference — February 14–16, 2001, Westin St. Francis, San Francisco — with a program the archived announcement documents directly: Ray Ozzie of Groove, Bill Joy of Sun, Eric Schmidt of Novell, Dave Stutz of Microsoft, Ian Clarke of Freenet, Gene Kan of Gnutella, ninety-plus speakers in three tracks (S-119; the nettime.org archive was fetched and verified 25 August 2026). Jonathan Hare's account, at recorded grade: Consilient — then deploying its P2P architecture for BP, Intel and AIG — paid $50,000 as Platinum sponsor of the first-time event, buying a place on the keynote stage alongside Schmidt, Joy and Ozzie. The archived letter names the headliners and says 'many more'; the conference's own records or the Consilient accounting archive would upgrade the sponsorship to documented grade, and the request is open below.
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The architect of the era's defining collaboration software, known across two companies
Open →speakerThe Microsoft architect who championed Consilient — then told Microsoft the network had already won
Open →speaker, per Hare's accountActiveState's founder — a close friend of the P2P era, connected to half its cast
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