First-order effects

• Microsoft gains direct, informal exposure to emerging developer and web culture — Barnett hears about new uses of online news feeds (RSS-era syndication) straight from practitioners rather than through analysts or press.
• Amazon uses the event to give attendees a look at its newest project, testing ideas with a technically savvy audience before any formal announcement.

Second-order effects

• Big Seattle employers like Microsoft and Amazon get a low-cost sensing mechanism for trends forming outside their walls — the kind of ground-level signal that later fed into more structured showcases like Amazon's invite-only MARS conference.
• Other companies face soft pressure to participate in or sponsor community events, since employees attending on their own time become de facto ambassadors and scouts.

Third-order effects

• If the pattern holds, the boundary between corporate R&D and volunteer-run tech communities keeps dissolving — a dynamic visible decades later in how Microsoft now runs its own massive developer events like Build, where community feedback loops are institutionalized.
• Unconferences help normalize the idea that product direction should be shaped in open conversation with users and independent developers, laying cultural groundwork for the platform-and-developer-ecosystem era.