As many of my friend microblog from the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, I’m preparing to head to the SIFMA Technology Management Conference 2008. SIFMA is the Security Industry and Financial Markets Association. It was formed by the merger of the Security Industry Association and the Bond Market Association. I’ve gone to the Technology Management Conference for many years as part of my work with Wall Street firms.

However, this year, I’m wearing a slightly different hat. I’m going as a member of the press, a credentialed blogger. I’ll be looking for things similar to those that I looked for when I went as a Wall Street technology executive, what is the interesting hot new technology. Other years, I’ve simply explored the exhibit hall, which is typically more than a full days work in and of itself. This year, I’ll try to attend some of talks as well.

At first glance, the talks don’t sound especially interesting. Perhaps the most interesting will be discussions about computing capacity or open source software. Yet there are bound to be surprises, and by being on the press list, I’m getting little hints here and there. So far, the most interesting press release has come from Tick Data which is announcing the availability of “trade and quote data for equities traded on Japan’s six major stock exchanges back to January 2003”. I was always fascinated by this sort of data and have been trying to gather it for the stock exchanges in Second Life. Tick Data’s press release says that “the firm expects to expand its coverage further into this region in the near future.” This sort of data illustrates just one of the reason why Wall Street technologists are always looking for more compute power.

Will there be other interesting innovations reported out of the Technology Management Conference? We’ll have to wait and see. It probably won’t bring as much excitement as talk about the next version of the iPhone, but it will be interesting to watch and see what comes out.