Clay Shirky points out that there is no recipe for success but defines three broad rules... "a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool and an acceptable bargain with the users."

"The promise is the basic "why" for anyone to join or contribute to a group. The tool helps with the "how" - how will the difficulties of co-ordination be overcome, or at least held to manageable levels? And the bargain sets the rules of the road: if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect, and what will be expected of you?"

The order of promise, tool and bargain is also the order in which they matter to the success of any group. Creating a promise that enough people believe in is, not surprisingly, the fundamental requirement!

Why blog this? If you haven't already read Clay's book, or listened to any of his talks, turn off your internets, and ask me for a copy of Here Comes Everybody. I'm a bit of a Shirky fan, but it is entirely merited as many of his thoughts are entirely on the money with regards to internet culture - across economics, collaboration, society, community and just generally most things which fall under the new models of interaction we struggle with recently. This video, although short, is an interesting piece on the divide between 'quality' and the polished nature of certain content online. If things are 'too' right, they're generally not interacted with, or touched - but why. Is this an uncanny valley phenomenon in brand interaction?

Why blog this? If you haven't already read Clay's book, or listened to any of his talks, turn off your internets, and ask me for a copy of Here Comes Everybody. I'm a bit of a Shirky fan, but it is entirely merited as many of his thoughts are entirely on the money with regards to internet culture - across economics, collaboration, society, community and just generally most things which fall under the new models of interaction we struggle with recently. This video, although short, is an interesting piece on the divide between 'quality' and the polished nature of certain content online. If things are 'too' right, they're generally not interacted with, or touched - but why. Is this an uncanny valley phenomenon in brand interaction?

A number of obvious things do come to mind and some of which we are already trying in my council.  These ideas are based not only on existing SNS but bespoke ones for specific purposes as well

• participation and engagement with young people and wider groups of interest
• extended communications to staff without formal connection to corporate network
• Internal knowledge base and reduction in use of internal email
• providing services as widgets so we don't have to expect people to come to council sites

I'm sure there are lots more, but the reality for me is that these sites will provide greater opportunities to communicate and provide services directly to and for people.

Gerry McGovern highlighted at the "perfect council website" conference earlier this year, that people generally use the internet quickly and in between their favourite programmes so if we make our sites difficult to navigate and services hard to use why would they bother?

However people are prepared to spend time of SNS to co-ordinate social events or exchange information with their friends, so why can't we offer the services they need within their window of opportunity.

After all even as a council worker i don't find myself navigating around my own website let alone other local authority websites because i am a busy person, like we all are and time is something i am not prepared to sacrifice to, for example report a pothole.

This issue for me is one of the drivers behind trying to reposition our thinking on web and how we approach the web. I believe that a web strategy needs to focus on the channel and not the corporate website alone. This is why i am now in the process of preparing a re-write of the councils web strategy that i wrote about 18 months ago.

It will incorporate a wide range of opportunities online and will represent a sort of "online activity" and "digital access" strategy.

Regarding the strengths of SNS, well i believe that they now represent a fundamental shift in the way people use the web, it truly is a social web and and that means websites that offer and increase this kind of activity will become more and more popular.   Where does that leave traditional council websites, i'm not entirely sure yet, but they will and can not look like anything they are now...

For me the greatest strengths of SNS are the people in them, the technology is only a facilitator, they wouldn't work unless people wanted to communicate in that way. So we really need to focus on people and and where people are if we are to engage with them.

Some people will still prefer to meet in the context of a group down the local village hall and would like a council representative to discuss issues with, others will be part of online communities of interest and we must respond to them as well.

SNS and social media in general do exactly what Clay Shirky talks about in his book, they provide opportunities for people to organise themselves without formal structures and organisations to support them. I found this video on you tube of Clay Shirky talking about the book

I also found this interesting presentation on the future of social networks

[slideshare id=416808&doc=20080515fosn-1211255161971019-9&w=425]

The first from my own talk when my CD and powerpoint became corrupted and I had to speak without slides which will be the subject of another post.. the second in the final moments of Charlie Leadbeater's talk when Clay Shirky asked him some questions and you had two great minds on stage thinking together - thinking live, thinking as performance.

Charlie in one section of his talk , captured here , talked about mainstream media organisations as Boulders, and individual content creators as Pebbles. His argument which built very elegantly suggested more than strongly that the Pebbles will have the future and that Boulders could never understand the agility, creativity and sheer potential generated by the pro-am, the user-generated and the unleashed creative potential of the network.

And what's more, he argued, the Boulder (mainstream media) could never manage creatively enough to harness this explosion of creativity (I am paraphrasing here so please do correct me if I am wrong) . The landscape of the beach was changing and this was a direction that was now unleashed. But in the Q&A with Clay Shirky Charlie talked about his earlier meetings with Business keen to harness the creativity of the Pebbles and who asked him how best to harness the energy and to mange their output?

This posed a bit of a conundrum, for me at least. On the one hand the future of creativity and agility was in the hand of the pebbles who are free to network and grow their interconnectedness, on the other the needs of business to harness such creativity in order to get output. So I made an observation from the conference floor which I hoped might move things on from this either /or dialogue. I identified myself as both a Boulder and a Pebble. I work in a Boulder, but I am also a Pebble I write my blog, I contribute to other blogs and in other ways with my more individual creativity and output. And what's more I work in my Boulder to encourage more Pebbles to interact with us and our Boulder to become more permeable - and in this respect and now I am now pushing at an Open door.

So isn't the landscape more beautiful if you have Boulders and Pebbles on the beach together ? Isn't the question rather about what is the creative or dynamic type of leadership needed in the networked world to harness the strengths and creativity of both and encourage the exchange - rather than assert the two camps , with the one on the path to triumphing the other.

Clay picked up the theme and contextualised it in terms of governance and management: people need a framework in which to be creative or innovate - the blank page does not always help them. He also talked about his analysis of the Linux Kernel report and how even Boulders can fund people to produce work that is valuable to the wider eco-system and enable the Pebbles to become stronger (my paraphrasing but for a proper summary of that work see here . And so, whether Boulders or Pebbles, the issue is of governance and framework setting - creative management in a way if such a thing can exist. I think Charlie agreed with this - while there are lots of examples he cited of people coming together in networks to do things together there needs to be a spark or a catalysit - and it seems what we may be talking about is the new definition of leadership, or creative leadership in the networked work place, or the networked world.

What I do know is that the next morning Clay came back to the platform and told us that after that talk and exchange he had torn up his prepared talk and started again with something new - I blogged that at the time. So perhaps the new had been allowed to emerge in those moments of thinking aloud and live - those moments at conferences that so easily get lost to the schedule but which produce lots of new value.

But getting back to creative leadership the session at Picnic that certainly made me happiest was watching and listening to Itay Talgam talk to a packed hall about creative leadership in the form of the symphony conductor. I couldn't have taken notes so spellbound I was by his dissection of the meaning of the body language of the various maestro (maestri?) he showed us. Of course if you go to a classical concert more likely than not you will see the back of the conductor's head and shoulders and not his face. But Itay turned it all around with some clips, and stories and lead us into an understanding of what such leadership could be best demonstrated by Leonard Bernstein. Ethan Zuckerman's description of the talk is terrific, as is the one by Masters of Media. At the end we were left watching a clip of Bernstein conducting without moving his body or his arms. The expressions on his face, a raised eyebrow or an expression of pleasure or suffering were enough to communicate all he needed to after all the work he had done with the orchestra in advance. Just one look and he had them where he wanted them, and they collaborated to give him, and us, what we wanted to hear. No better end to a day of discussions around collaboration and leadership, and boulders and pebbles.

Here is an interview with Itay from Picnic08, followed by a Leonard Bernstein clip (with hands!)

In the last chapter of the book, Shirky—as my 11th grade math teacher used to say—becomes “a Roomstore guy” and puts it all together. The chapter, entitled “Promise, Tool, Bargain,” explains the three key features that work together underneath any successful 21st century social organization.

Every story in this book relies on a successful fusion of a plausible promise, an effective tool, and an acceptable bargain with the users. The promise is the basic “why” for anyone to join or contribute to a group. The tool helps with the “how”—how will the difficulties of coordination be overcome, or at least be held to manageable levels? And the bargain sets the rules of the road: if you are interested in the promise and adopt the tools, what can you expect, and what will be expected of you?

It always impresses me when people think clearly about how systems work and can articulate them just as clearly. Shirky uses this model to dissect online social organizations; however, in this election season, it is a revealing lens through which the presidential campaigns can be examined.

The best I can tell, here are the three components of each campaign:

Barack’s Promise: Change.
Barack’s Tools: Online Media (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc.)*, Press Conferences, Speeches.
Barack’s Bargain: “Elect me, and I’ll make life better than it has been in the past eight years.”

McCain’s Promise: Reform, Prosperity, and Peace.
McCain’s Tools: Town Hall Meetings*, Speeches.
McCain’s Bargain: “Elect me, and I'll put you first--before politics--and shoot you straight.”

One of the difficulties, though, of applying this model to political campaigns, particularly these, is that in many ways the political campaigns are restricted by history, media, and the tolerance of American people in terms of what they should say and look like. History has created a mold for political campaigns that is only beginning to break with the development and more avid use of new technologies. Furthermore, flare-ups in the media and reactions in the polls often create tight-rope walking and doubling back on prior statements, which can often derail the steady track that Shirky posits.

Despite this, I think that Shirky's notions on organizations generally work well and serve as a good model for establishing an organization--whatever type it may be. The model, forces the organizers to maintain focus on mission, to maximize the efficiency, and to connect with their audience.

I do think that--from the outset--Obama had a better hold on the mission of his campaign than McCain did. This is most clearly evidenced in his sticking to the promise of "Change," throughout his entire campaign. On the other hand, McCain has gone back and forth, so as to not appear too aligned with W's presidency and to not alienate too many staunch Republicans. He has cumbersomely walked this thin line, changed the promise of his campaign, and finally settled on three words--as opposed to one--reform, prosperity, and peace.

The tools that the Obama campaign has been using have definitely given him an advantage with younger voters. Likewise, the refusal to embrace the new technologies have given McCain a disadvantage with this same demographic.

Obama's use of technology definitely works well with his promise and message of change. It is something new, exciting, and many people are welcoming it warmly. McCain's approach also works well with his promise and his bargain. His strength lies in human contact and connecting people in small groups. These techniques convey honesty and trustworthiness.

With these promises, tools, and bargains largely committed to as the candidates rapidly approach Election Day. Each candidate can only hope that his promise is compelling enough, tools effective enough, and bargain acceptable enough to propel him into office.

One thing is clear from observing these groups throughout the campaigns: 2008 has been a year that demonstrates the "power of organizing without organizations," as stated in the subtitle of Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody.

The campaigns, themselves, are organizations in their own right -- and very high-stakes organizations at that.  But some of the most interesting sub-groups within these campaigns have emerged with minimal or even no intervening on behalf of official campaign employees.

Shirky says that the promise/bargain/tool model is demonstrated in many successful groups. He explains that the promise is the reason why people join a group; tools help with the how of coordinating and managing a group; and the bargain makes it clear what's expected of group members and what they, in turn, can expect to get out of belonging to such a group.

The promises of working for a campaign include personally and professionally satisfying returns; campaigns give ideal examples of promise because people seed so much hope in candidates. This promise is well demonstrated by folks who involve themselves with a candidate from the very start, like the supporters who, back in April when Obama stickers were rare commodities, wore their wrinkled, old stickers as badges of long-standing, loyalty to the democratic candidate.

Pride like this inspires people to see find and create tools that will help a candidate's campaign. On September 15th, hundreds of women gathered in Anchorage, Alaska, to speak out against Sarah Palin and her nomination as the vice presidential candidate for John McCain. Examiner.com, Daily Kos and other sources reported that the "Alaska Women Reject Palin" rally was arranged by a small group of women over cups of coffee. These women printed up flyers and notified local media outlets.  Homemade signs were encouraged, and the organizers counted almost 1,500 attendees by using a hand-clicker.  These women used grass roots organization as a tool to make a statement against someone they don't support, right in Palin's hometown.

The bargain aspect of political campaigns is evidenced by sleep-deprived hours and a lack of social contact with anyone outside of the campaign.  Ideally, if these organized groups work hard enough for their candidate, the rewards will be plentiful.  Such rewards can range from the philosophical, such as expressions of joy and pride of country,  or more substantial, such as when campaign policy is put into action to improve education.

Shirky notes that we're in an period of intense experimentation with new tools. No matter who wins, the results of this year's election will prove that organized groups have redefined themselves by using new and exciting methods of organization.

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[vodpod id=Groupvideo.1615589&w=425&h=350&fv=]

In this video clip, Clay Shirky discusses life, social networking, and love of the internet. He refers to Perl as an act of love. The reason why Perl is so successful is because people love it so much. Shirky uses a 13,000 year old Japanese shrine that is torn down and rebuilt using the same kind of material as a metaphor to describe this. Likewise, he also brings up the idea that Linux gets rebuilt every night.

Question: What do you think Shirky means when he says that  Linux gets rebuilt every night?

Metaforas: Dialog

Charles H. Traub and Jonathan Lipkin

The article about dialogue discusses the creativity of a computer and how it is constantly changing in order to keep users wanting more. Companies wanted to come up with programs that they could broadcast over the internet which were known as web 1.0. The problem with these programs was that there was no form of interaction with the audience. However, all this changed when web 2.0 was developed. The creators of web 2.0 realized that the most important thing in the web was participation. Another point the articles makes is about “electronic identities.” These identities are created in order to give us the ability to discover our true selves. Learning is another important part of this article. One way to learn is by teaching others. A person can not learn without dialogue and in order for one to learn properly we need to figure out what questions need to be asked. Advertising and propaganda are forms of conversations that companies have with the target audiences. Nevertheless, love and romance has changed greatly because of the internet. With matchmaking sites, chat rooms, and instant message people can find romance with the click a button. However, according to the article the number one thing that people are in love with on the internet is pornography. Other than love and creating identities online people use the internet for amusement purposes. Dialogue is an important part when playing games. Games usually involve more than one person and with the internet people can interact with people from around the globe. Games continue to evolve, become more complex, and continue to grow as a culture.

Question: Do you think that people who create an  “electronic identity,” alienate themselves from their families, communities, or societies, and get lost in the virtual world?

The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowieki

Introduction to the Wisdom of Crowds discusses the scientists obsession with the measurement of physical and mental qualities in breeding. At the time the scientist was interested in livestock so he went to the regional fair. He felt that only few people were able to keep society healthy and he wanted to prove this by measuring these characteristics. He felt that most people were dumb and if the power and control was given to these people, who could keep the society healthy, would that society continue to grow. At the fair he conducted an experiment to prove that the average voter was capable of very little. He believed that if you mix a little bit of smart people, some average, and a lot of stupid people that one will end up with a dumb answer. His experiment failed and he was proven wrong. What was learned from the experiment people in groups are rather intelligent even if some people in the group are not. One example used was Google, how the search engine can scan billions of pages and find the exact information that you are looking for. On the other hand, others feel the different about the knowledge of groups. They feel that when people are put in a group they become dumber.

Question: Do you think that people are smarter as individuals or in groups?

The Ignorance of Crowds

Nicholas G. Carr

The article by Nicholas Carr discusses the importance of “open source software.” He describes the open source project as a collaboration of different ideas from a vast amount of people. The collaboration of people can help any organization or business become even more successful. It can create innovate ideas that can bring the company to a whole new level. However, some people feel that working in groups can have a negative effect on production. One example given is Firefox and its lack of the production of new ideas. Raymond counters that belief with the idea that group collaborations can cause a problem to be fixed at a faster rate. When fixing “bugs” in a computer, the more people attempting to solve the problem saves a lot more time. I think that this is because many different people can come up with more ideas to help solve the problem instead of just two people. Every group needs to have leader to maintain order within that group. One open source program that the article discusses is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become extremely popular with more than 150 million visitors a month.

Question: What are some advantages and disadvantages of group collaboration?

A History Department Bans Citing Wikipedia as a Research Source

Noam Cohen

Even though Wikipedia is extremely popular it may not be the most reliable source. At my community college most of my professor did not allow the use of Wikipedia as a source when writing papers. I did find it interesting that some professors are actually assigning students assignments that require work to appear on Wikipedia or even assignments that require editing of information already on the site. I do not think that students will stop using Wikipedia because it is usually the first link that is given when using Google.

Question: Should Wikipedia be banned in college, why or why not?

squared circles - Clocks, originally uploaded by Leo Reynolds.

Breve post de lunes.
Estoy chocho de felicidad con la llegada, después de casi dos meses de espera, de los libros de Sir Ken Robinson y Clay Shirky. Tarde pero seguro pude sortear el cerco cultural que supone tener prohibido gastar más de $400 por internet. Pero no quiero hablar de cómo los venezolanos no podemos acceder a la “larga cola” que define Chris Anderson. Lo que quiero es compartir una reflexión de Robinson que leí esta mañana en su libro “Out of our minds: learning to be creatives” y que me sacudió profundamente.
Dice el Inglés que para tener una idea de la magnitud y la velocidad con la que vienen ocurriendo los cambios en nuestro planeta es bueno imaginarse los últimos 3000 años de historia representados en la cara de un reloj. Así, cada minuto de ese reloj equivale a 50 años de historia. Visto así, fíjense la contundencia de los cambios ocurridos, por ejemplo, en el campo de las comunicaciones:

• El código Morse se inventó hace 3 minutos
• El teléfono, hace 2 minutos y medio
• La radio, hace 2 minutos
• La TV hace 90 segundos
• El Fax, hace 1 minuto. 
• Las computadoras hace 25 segundos
• Internet, hace 12 segundos
• El teléfono móvil hace 6 segundos.

No sé a uds, pero verlo así me pareció increíblemente ilustrativo. Gran truco el de Sir Ken al cambiar la escala temporal y mostrarnos, de manera sencilla y contundente, lo que el mundo ha vivido en los “últimos minutos”.

Estamos en el umbral de un cambio significativo en la manera de entendernos como sociedad y como seres humanos. No podemos esperar mucho, es preciso que empecemos a estudiar los cambios inmediatamente.

Dos minutos pasan volando, ¿No creen?

What a cool conference! Picnic08 (for "media entrepreneurs, thinkers and creators") is über-trendy and fun, but also very useful. I went just for one day, in order to interview Clay Shirky about his book "Here Comes Everybody" (I have written about it earlier). I also got an chat with Ethan "big geek" Zuckerman (ups, reading his blog, I realize I delayed him for a meeting... Sorry!), one of the founders of the impressive Globale Voices (quality bloggers from all over the world).

And while in beautiful and creative Amsterdam and at the Westergasfabriek, I picked up some other useful stuff you should check out:

Zemanta (developed by Jure Cuhalev) is a plugin that suggest photos, videos, hyperlinks and tags for your content, based on what you have written. All of the suggested content is copyright cleared, either licenced as Creative Commons or approved by stock providers. I will test it!

Afrigadget - an blog about how to solve everyday problems with African integrity.

Fablab - a place where you (ordinary people) can solve and build technical stuff, and get help from experts around the world. Started by MIT. There is also one in Norway.

The Designers Accord - a global coalition of designers, educators, researchers, engineers, and corporate leaders, working together to create positive environmental and social impact.

Fransesco Federico had an interesting presentation about the miserable state of virtual Italy (Italy is basically a 1.0 country). You will find his slides when the conference is fished, he writes in his blog. However, he is mentioning two positive elements in New Media in Italy, the extremely popular blogger Robin Good and the social network Badoo.

Polymeme - a site that allows you to "to discover news from areas that you may not otherwise discover". I look forward to test it.

Disclaimer. I am not a live blogger and this is now an hour after the event. More links and photos to follow. I am paraphrasing in some areas - and hope you will correct me, dear reader, if I miss a trick

Story 1 was about Flickr:- He talked about the High Dynamic Range (HDR) group and the kind of discussion that has grown up around the photos. So going from one photo , with one comment to several comments to the photo with one url delivering a whole seminar on how to do better HDR photography can diffuse through the community and this happens in about three months - instead of formerly a few years of waiting for an essay to come through in a Photo journal. Every photo is potentially a seminar. It's a social object. Every url has this potential. First a photo, then a comment, then longer comments so the photo became the locus for the conversation about how to become a better photographer.

He then talked through the downside. Black and White Maniacs, another Flickr group....It's about sharing but with some extra dimensions - not just look at mine and I will look at yours. On the about page is a description of the group - in that description is a para describing the ground rules. It's four sentences. .

Post ONE photo, then immediately comment on the PREVIOUS TWO photos (to the right of your photo) and include "Black+White Maniacs" with your comment. Wait until two more photos have been posted before posting again. IF YOU DON'T HAVE TIME TO COMMENT IMMEDIATELY, PLEASE WAIT TO POST YOUR PHOTO. It's unfair to expect people to comment on your work when you're not able to give them that same courtesy. (**NEW RULE: If you consistently leave one or two-word comments like, "nice," "good b+w," "great catch,"....etc. you'll be removed from the group as well.)

So - the dilemmas that are being faced here are not design dilemmas, but social. Working out those problems are now the design problems.

Story two: : The Bronze Beta - is a Buffy fan site, When Warner Bros was selling Buffy to UPN - they told them that they had also set up a community bulletin board. UPN said please tell the users the old board will close down and we will set up our own. Clay told us that the users were not happy. They pooled resources and paid for a new site. They had fallen in love with each other and just wanted to be there. When they got their new site they didn't want lots of new features, just text really.

And so this story confirms for me (Clay) that social software is the only area in software that I know that the later products have fewer features than the previous products - not the same in other areas. If someone a few years ago had told you that most of what would be published in 2008 will use the simpler tools not the more complicated tools. You wouldn't have believed that if someone had predicted it as you want as many toys in your box as possible. If the tool is social then it matters a lot how you use it and how I use it.

Social media tools are tending to shift now with fewer and fewer features. It's the easiest way to synchronise the mental models of the users. Nobody wants a door with 37 handles. Twitter launched with two features, and now they have six. Bronze beta has very few features - but look at the rules page They have 10 x more rules than they have features. Most of Bronze Beta runs in the minds of the users. For example ...No changing the colour of the text without express permission of the management.

Sharing is the simplest pattern - and even here rules proliferate. Collaboration is harder. I have to do something with you to synchronise with what you are doing to create something shared.

Story 3: the Wikipedia article on Pluto - I use this as Observatory on Wikipedia. It got kicked out of the planet club a couple of years ago. It came in for a lot of edit revision. and got a lot of attention as a result. If you want to show someone the best kind of Wikipeda article show this one. But if you look at the Galileo article you will see an icon on the top right of the page so it's semi protected. What you are seeing reflected on this page is a 500 year old flame war that has been raging in the Catholic Church and has landed here.

In social media design as you can see here you have to give up on the idea of designing for the user. It's not just about users. But you are designing for one side of the argument or the other to take advantage and win the argument. So programmers are not just designers, but an avant garde wing of political philosophy...

Story 3.5: Clay referred us back to the talk Aaron Koblin gave yesterday when he decribed his 10,000 cent project .

Ethan Zuckerman did a write up of that session here:

What this story showed Clay was that when we are now operating at a global scale in this way we have (design) problems that we have never had before. You could say that Aaron had 10,000 people working for him as in a way he did - he only payed them a penny - but they were working to collaborate with him and each other. If this were a real company then that would put him high up the list of employers with a large staff. The largest groups in the world that are working collaboratively are working like this.

What we are seeing now is spontaneous conditions of labour springing up. The Division of labour is spontaneous and there is a spontaneous division of motivation. No-one who runs a large company with a management structure cannot understand this.

So yesterday I was asked what are the optimal conditions for collaboration? The answer is we don't know. We can look at optimal conditions but it's more like the weather as Linda Stone said yesterday "cloudy with a chance of collaboration". So like the Linux community you can't recruit you can only invite. Noone who runs a large company with a management structure cannot understand this.

Point 4. Collective action is harder. Clay told the story of the HSBC Bank and their recruitment of students to a no interest account. When the bank changed the terms and the account was no longer interest free they did not predict that not only would this be covered in the usual way in the press, but also there would be a Facebook page where people and people affected could go and find out what they could do. So Publishing is also for Acting. What the Telegraph does is to say - "just look what the bank is doing reneging on its terms". But what the Facebook publishers are doing is saying "just look what they are doing, and here is what you can do about it"

So the big design challenge is around the fact that all these stories are about stop energy. Around getting people to stop doing things. But when we look at the phenomena of the explosion of intellectual and creative community and all the creative energy unleashed it seems long lived - so we are missing something ( ie where is the community collaboration with creative energy that is long lived and not about stopping stuff)

In 1980 Xerox delivered an important printer to the lab at MIT. Richard Stallman realised that it had no source code ..and he saw the future. He developed the GPL (Gnu Public License) and solved the Black and White Media problem for software developers by saying these are the circumstances in which we can share. Now we don't have a license for collective action. If twelve friends go to a bank to open a bank account to do a project they can't open a group account unless they are incorporated. Society recognises groups via incorporation or embodyment . But we need something like a group license that can be recognised. In Britain they have the CIC (community interest company) which has an assett lock on community value. In Vermont state we see the first state to allow virtual companies. We are seeing things like the MeetUp alliance - but which is going to work out we don't know.

What I do know is the right area to be thinking about. The need is there and the potential. We have seen the explosion of creativity in the area of the intellectual, social and emotional spheres. But not around collective action . So we need to work this out in the area how we act and the way in which we act, as well as in the way we think....."

There is so much here that resonates with most of what I am doing these days and thinking about I need to stop and think myself before editorialising in any way. But more later. Definately.

Clay Shirky in the video below says what I was trying to get at so elegantly and so much better. A big part of his argument is that since the days of the printing press we've been saying that we have an "information overload" problem, but the difference from those days from today, is that the costs of production were very high. This pressured publishers to filter out for quality, so they won't lose money. In todays' world of blogs, wikipedia, and twitter, that pressure to filter out is no longer a priority since the cost to publish is zero. 

This is why he concludes that it's a "filter failure" problem.  He explains that a century year old problem can't be a problem. If you have the same problem for so long without resolving it, it's not really a problem. It's they ways things actually are. 

He talks about other filter failure examples of "inbound" and "outbound" information, with particular examples of Facebook's newsfeed and groups. It's a very intriguing talk. The video is 24 minutes long.

The first is Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody, he makes the point that with new advances in technology people mistake broadcasting media (1 to many) for communications media (1to 1).  New tools allow people to use broadcasting media for communication.  He gives this example - if you read a blog of someone you don't know and see that they got wasted last night and today when shopping for clothes you think what's the point? Who cares? Yet if you went to a food court in a mall and eavesdropped on the same conversation it would be clear that you are the weird one. We're so used to the old web that we think if we can read it, it's targeted towards us and with the new Social Web this just don't hold true anymore.

The second is this article from The New York Time Magazine.

“It’s an aggregate phenomenon,” Marc Davis, a chief scientist at Yahoo and former professor of information science at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. “No message is the single-most-important message. It’s sort of like when you’re sitting with someone and you look over and they smile at you. You’re sitting here reading the paper, and you’re doing your side-by-side thing, and you just sort of let people know you’re aware of them.” Yet it is also why it can be extremely hard to understand the phenomenon until you’ve experienced it. Merely looking at a stranger’s Twitter or Facebook feed isn’t interesting, because it seems like blather. Follow it for a day, though, and it begins to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.

Both of these illustrated the point that just because you can read it, doesn't mean it's intended for you.  If you precieve something as blather, you're probably not the target audience. This is a new occurrence that has developed with social web tools. The line between what's public and private becomes blurred.  If you come across the blog of someone you don't know and start reading it are you violating their privacy?  It's out there for anyone to read.  What if they only started writing it to keep their family updated, and you're not the intended audience?

KEYNOTE

TIM O'REILLY

• Laughing about the fact that some of the smartest people out there are working on Facebook apps v. saving the world.
• "Create more value than you capture."
• "Learn and live Pascal's Wager."
• Looking at the sobering facts of how much of the world's and your personal energy allotment goes into a plastic bottle.
• Read "Struggle for Survival" - how do you cause change in a world that seems out of control?
• Learn about instedd.com, witness.com - a fantastic web 2.0 application.
• Great challenges do equal great opportunity - the Berlin airlift for 15 mos 1 flight landing per day.
• Great achievements come from the big challenges, from human struggle, from how we create tech to affect positive change.
• Make bold commitments to big hairy audacious goals - Built to Last.
• Web meets world, create value, build greatness, we aren't close to being done yet. Make a difference.
• Stop what you are doing & read The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke
• @timoreilly "We don't always win - we lose often." Losing the good fight, learning from the counter-side - This is how he grows. By being defeated.
• "Bad politicians are elected by good people who don't vote." -William Simon
• I'm wondering why so many awesome developers are focused on FB Apps v. real-world apps?

CLAY SHIRKY

• Brooklyn Boy made Good Clay Shirky takes the stage
• Clay comments that - Brooklyn Boy made Good = Biggie Small's bio too.
• @cshirky discussing challenges of information overload and filtering, economic logic of printing - @oreilly laughing backstage.
• Can't we filter for quality before we publish? Quality is way downstream.
• @cshirky Discussing total privacy meltdown (self inflicted) via a friend who tried to change relationship status engaged to single.
• Is Facebook just an extension of the real world?
• Small groups defends themselves against free-riders, large groups don't. Internet facilitates large groups/free-riders.
• If you have the same problem for a long time maybe it's not a problem but a fact.

Session 1: Good to Great: Achieving Product Excellence in Web 2.0--Dan Olsen, YourVersion

• Olsen's hierarchy of Web User Needs - adapted from Maslow, which is kind of cool.
• Chrome (not the browser) takes away pixels. I'm experiencing this at @plumtv myself (inherited design).
  

Session 2.
Why Brand Advertisers Will Be the Biggest Beneficiaries of Social Media & How You Can Participate--Michael Lazerow, CEO, Buddy Media

• Social advertising sucks.
• Learning about engagement marketing, apps v. ads. It's the future, but it's also happening right now.
• Facebook age-gating for advertisers to target ads/apps better - learn from the Bud Light "Dude" campaign.
• Getting to see the end-result metrics for successful Advertiser Apps on Facebook, contemplating old "advertorials" in magazines myself.
• InStyle.com "Your Makeover" on Facebook - brilliant. Did not work on the website, worked as a FB app: 185k installs in 6wks on FB
• Term: Branded APP-vertising is the new model.
• The days of viral growth are OVER. It's the dirty little secret.
• Trailer views are directly related to box office sales - it's the same graph as ticket sales. How do you get people to watch, engage?
• Go to www.slideshare.net/lazerow for today's presentation & to grab metrics of successful APP campaigns

Session3.
Best-kept Secrets to Search Engine Optimization Success: the Art & the Science--Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts

• Flowing page rank
• 301 Redirects - 301 passes page rank v 302 that does not.
• Link-building is the most missed opportunity (importance score.
• Go to www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo

Session 4.
The Seduction of the Interface: Merchandising in Interactive Product Design--Christopher Fahey

• Open question at session: How many of you believe in love at first sight?
• Do YOU believe in love at first sight?
• The process of falling in love requires both parties to finally get it together.
• There is not a metaphor for designing a product "box" (packaging) for online products- instead these are products that sell themselves. Read: Designing for People, Henry Dreyfuss
• Need for continuous seduction of/for the user.
• Tagline for @twitter if it were on TV or in print ads: Alive with pleasure!
• Talking about "conversion" and "submit" - the object of seduction is not to have someone click submit - we want soft sell & cause LOVE.
• Replace "conversion" with "connection" in your online product strategy. Stir emotion, seduce, love and get love.
• Go find Yahoo's "Competitive Spectrum" to learn about user's emotional qualities. Integrate them into your UI design.
• Silverback.com created initial mystery to create buzz - so smart.
• It's not about conversion, rather it's about an endless cycle of commitment and seduction to/of your users.
• Plan for the delight in the user experience - don't just hope that those great moments will happen. Make it an explicit objective.
• Where are the moments of "wow" - ask your stakeholders, show them, convince them they're needed. Like 3 min of WOW!
• SEDUCTION is a user-centric design job.
• Use the word SEDUCTION in your creative briefs - don't get squeamish about it. Embrace it for your users.

Session 5: Video 2.0 Session

• Appreciating @kenyatta's moderating abilities (everyone laugh and cheer now!) - he gets a W00T!
• Amazing to hear how cheaply you can do great online (viral) video v. Meetup.com's recent $50k investment in a gorgeous-but-failed animated video.
• Go scrappy and cheap, because you don't have the budget (it's coming though) for much more.
• Video 2.0 panel just didn't do it for me - moved over to Local Advertising to learn more from @outsidein

Session 6.
Hitting Them Where They Live: The Emergence of Local Online Advertising

• Geotagging news content semantically, but there weren't enough stories to fill pages, so gave people the platform to build themselves.
• The problem: Not enough local content btw papers, radio, television. Only 22k stories for 30k zip codes.
• 22k stories v 30k zip codes = bad user experience (listening to Topix Chris Tolles)
• @outsidein @markjosephson "Everybody (online) lives somewhere."
• People buy stuff where they live. Market for local ads is $8 billion 12 billion by 2012.
• Geo-tagged content is already in place via @outsidein @topix and it's available in VOLUME today.
• @outsidein skews towards New York and San Fran (optimized site for Brooklyn), but there's less media competition there. Local data.
  
• @outsidein working on a technology called "nearby ads" find the advertiser closest to a person and serve up directions, etc.
• What happens within 1,000 ft of where you live or are at any moment. I'm still not convinced it meets individual needs yet.
• Potholes v. exploding trucks - content that scales, what do people care about?
• The long-zoom - look to @outsidein's Radar product: http://outside.in/radar
• I wonder if the users are solely local, or if the users can be anywhere interested about a place. Seems like that's missing.
• @outsidein @topix Also, are you covering the "fire" or "sifting through the ashes" with this content coverage/aggregation?
• Geo-contextually relevant advertising - local content, local advertising. Interesting that we discussed news v. local weather content.
  
• RE: Local content, local advertising via @adrianholovaty check out EveryBlock.com, follow @outsidein @topix

Session 7.
We Are Smarter than Me: Unleashing the Power of Crowds in Your Business, Barry Libert, Mzinga

• At "We Are Smarter than Me" listening to Barry Libert from @mzinga deliver with great great energy and humor!
• OH: @alexa is my "Social Sidekick" (wondering if she comes in a pocket-sized version)
• Barry Libert We sat at the same table yesterday & you looked like the scariest guy, and I wrote that about you, but you're nice & open.
• Barry Libert responds: I wasn't even here yesterday!!!! But, thank you, you're proving my point! Not all white corporate guys are bad!

APRES-SESSION SOCIAL
Crif Dogs (@bre, @dlifson, @iamcal, @innonate, @kenyatta and a couple more)
Wine 2.0, @garyvee

• Discussing our fake jobs at Wine 2.0. We're tired of talking about the real ones.
• @garyvee @janerri Wine 2.0 was just lovely. I've never seen Webster Hall so dignified. Wine Library TV from the moon rocked my world.
• @garyvee We're changing the wine world! (show over)

Mitch Wagner at Information Week had a good summary of the talk: "The problem is that our filters are inadequate. And privacy breakdowns are a similar problem -- privacy is threatened because the filters we relied on to keep our private data confidential are broken, and we haven't evolved good mechanisms to replace those filters yet."

Suspension of disbelief, tänker jag när jag ser Alexander Skarsgård som marinkårssoldat i "Generation Kill", det verklighetsbaserade Irakkrigsdramat som hade premiär på Canal plus i förra veckan. Den svåröversättliga engelska termen beskriver det som händer när vi ser något på bioduken eller tv-skärmen som vi vet är på låtsas, men som vi ändå lever oss in i som om det vore på riktigt.
Det blir påtagligt för mig när Alexander Skarsgård, några avsnitt in i "Generation Kill", förvandlas från den där svenska dussinskådisen i fåniga "Hundtricket", till en livs levande marinkårssoldat, bataljonens kyligaste, på plats i Irak.
Skarsgård gör en smått fantastisk rolltolkning i sommarens mest omtalade tv-drama, baserat på journalisten Evan Wrights upplevelser som inbäddad reporter under Irakinvasionens första veckor. Men "Generation Kill" är ett klassiskt ensembledrama utan tydliga huvudpersoner; en långsam, realistisk på gränsen till dokumentär skildring av krigets absurditet, brutalitet och tristess. Att tv-serien följer den journalistiska förlagan utan att krydda med extra action och dramatik gör den bara ännu mer spännande. Långsamt växer marinkårssoldaterna från stereotyper till hela, komplexa porträtt av livs levande människor. "Generation Kill" tar sig tid att skildra något besvärligt utan att hänfalla till enkla knep.

Alexander Skarsgård dyker upp i ytterligare en dramaserie från amerikanska tv-bolaget HBO i höst, som vampyr i "True Blood" med premiär i september. SVT har ett avtal med HBO, så räkna med att både "True Blood" och "Generation Kill" dyker upp i statstelevisionen så småningom.

***

Det är alltid lika tråkigt när branschens interna ryggdunkande ska legitimeras av "folkets röst". Tv-priset Kristallen röstades fram av tittarna, och Årets program blev fyrans underhållnings-hit "Let's dance". Ett effektivt och omåttligt populärt program, javisst, men hur kul är det att lyfta fram något som alla redan känner till och gillar? Populariteten (för att inte tala om annonsintäkterna) borde få vara sin egen belöning. Tittarröstandet suddar ut trovärdigheten från ett tv-pris som skulle kunna vara ett effektivt sätt att sätta spotlighten på kvalitet och nytänkande.

***

I en föreläsning från i våras berättar författaren och it-filosofen Clay Shirky om en bekant som tittar på dvd tillsammans med sin fyraåring. Plötsligt går ungen fram och börjar rota i sladdarna bakom tv:n.
- Vad gör du?, frågar hennes pappa.
- Jag letar efter musen, säger fyraåringen.
Shirkys poäng är att det passiva tv-tittandet i längden kommer att ha svårt att konkurrera med medier som ger publiken en möjlighet att delta och interagera. Vilken fyraåring som helst vet att det är något fel på en skärm som saknar mus, menar han.
Föreläsningen finns förstås inspelad och upplagd på interaktiva videosajter som YouTube...

DAVID HYLANDER

Down there a short part of the transcript. Read full transcript here. Or watch the video.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.688339&w=425&h=350&fv=]

"Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened—rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before—free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV. We did that for decades.

(...)

People asking, "Where do they find the time?" when they're looking at things like Wikipedia don't understand how tiny that entire project is, as a carve-out of  the cognitive surplus that's finally being dragged into what Tim O'Reilly calls an architecture of participation.

Now, the interesting thing about a surplus like that is that society doesn't know what to do with it at first—hence the gin, hence the sitcoms. Because if people knew what to do with a surplus with reference to the existing social institutions, it wouldn't be a surplus, would it? It's precisely when no one has any idea how to deploy something that people have to start experimenting with it, in order for the surplus to get integrated, and the course of that integration can transform society.

(...)

This is something that people in the media world don't understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race—consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

And what's astonished people who were committed to the structure of the previous society, prior to trying to take this surplus and do something interesting, is that they're discovering that when you offer people the opportunity to produce and to share, they'll take you up on that offer. It doesn't mean that we'll never sit around mindlessly watching Scrubs on the couch. It just means we'll do it less.

And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we're talking about. It's so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 98 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation. I think that's going to be a big deal. Don't you?"

In World Without Oil, people told the truth as they saw it, from the perspective they were at, about the days when oil was no longer cheap. It's important to note that they were the experts at this: no official can say what any given person will do when oil prices go higher. And it's turning out, of course, that this means that no official can say what individuals in the aggregate will do: every week it seems there's some new story about an agency or a business or an organization that's struggling to adapt to some change in public behavior that they had not foreseen.

The old political ARG manipulates the media to keep its spins spun and its secrets secret. A nominee or an officeholder can refuse to meet the press or answer questions or even appear in any forum that's not tightly controlled. To use Clay Shirky's term, the model is "filter, then publish." But the Internet is all about "publish, then filter," and this is a whole new game. Photo by hatcher.library via Flickr.

This summer I bought, read, and enjoyed Clay Shirky's book Here Comes Everybody. Finishing chapter five I soon realized that several parts of this book deserve the attention of my high school technology classes. I set out to buy a digitized version at eBooks.com but was disappointed to find out that if I bought a copy, the Digital Restrictions Management would prevent me from using the book in useful ways with my students.

I wrote eBooks.com to explain the problem and they directed me to Penguin Publishing. Penguin Publishing said the DRM is on "all" of their ebooks and exists to "protect authors". They stated that they wouldn't sell me a copy that I could use with students in the ways I needed. Resulting in this "protection" was a canceled $26 US transaction and 60+ minds not exposed to Shirky's ideas.

I wonder what Clay Shirky thinks of being "protected" this way. I also wonder if Penguin Publishing asks authors to opt-in to this "protection". After all, if the intent is truly to protect authors, then each author should be free to request that Penguin Publishing distribute their ebooks with or without DRM. That is, they should be free to decline the offer of "protection".