Author: JP

Supernova and unconversations about unconferences

I’m mildly confused by all this kerfuffle about Supernova 2006, apparently kicked off by Marc Canter’s comments on his blog. I don’t know Marc, and I do know Kevin, and I intend to be at Supernova again this year. [Disclosure: I have been on panels at Supernova before, and cannot rule out being on one again some day].

I do not understand all the arguments, and don’t claim to be an expert on any of this. I am perplexed as to how Kevin can be accused of Having the Same Old Faces at the same time as Not Inviting Some Of the Same Old Faces. I do not believe Esther Dyson bought her right to speak by CNET being a sponsor. I do not think Skype was a large company when Niklas spoke two years ago.

But maybe it’s me, and I’m confused. Of Calcutta.

All this made me think of conferences, why I go, what I expect to get out of them, which ones I go to. And it made me think of all this in the context of the way we connect and co-create today.

And here’s my take:

  • There are no audiences any more. It is better to call them communities. Gone are the days when people spouted pap from the front and people lapped up the pap in the back. Today good conferences are conversations. Active and participative.
  • There are no speakers any more. It is better to call them moderators. Moderators with some stories and some tools, but moderators nevertheless.
  • Conferences have become rites of passage, ritual meetings of communities and subcommunities. So there is always an element of Same Old Faces, and an element of Missing Same Old Faces, and an element of New Faces we’ve never heard of.
  • Community conversations take place before, during and after the ritual meetings. In many shapes and forms. Including if necessary at unconferences across the road. This is not a big deal.
  • Yesterday’s on-the-edge ritual meetings are tomorrow’s establishment programmes. We already live in a world where Skype and Amazon and Google are called “Incumbent to Watch” in the Next Net 25 by BusinessWeek. So maybe Supernova and PC Forum and O’Reilly are already establishment. And reboot is moving there. And geek dinners and barcamps and unconferences are tomorrow’s establishment. Plus ca change….

So I’m looking forward to saying hi to some of the same old faces; meeting some new ones; listening to some new stories and occasionally some old ones as well. And learning more about what it means to be at a conference in this day and age.

Especially for people who fly in from places other than the US, people like me, the Same Old Faces argument doesn’t wash. I’m looking forward to meeting Amy Jo Kim again, even though she was at Supernova last year. I think she has forgotten more about communities than I know. I’m looking forward to meeting Esther Dyson again, having missed PC Forum. I guess she sees a few Same Old Faces on her travels. I’m looking forward to finding out how Saul Klein is doing, if it’s the ex Firefly guy via some DVD rental outfit in between. Because I want to know more about collaborative filtering.

And I’m looking forward to meeting Marc Canter for the first time in Amsterdam before that -)

Butler, Ribstein and Sarbanes-Oxley

[Now how on earth did I move from Technorati rankings to Sarbanes-Oxley in one Saturday step? Easy when you know how. File Not Found to SOx via 404….]

The latest Economist, in an article entitled The Trial of Sarbanes-Oxley, reminded me of this document. It’s written by an economist and a law professor and well worth a read for those who are interested in such esoteric things. But then I’m told Einstein never wore SOx……

One paragraph in the Economist article stood out to me.

“Much of the blame for this should be pinned on accounting firms, which, despite being seen by the public as big offenders in the Enron and WorldCom scandals, have emerged as the big beneficiaries from SOX. According to Joe Grundfest, a former SEC commissioner, the audit industry has several incentives to “push Section 404 compliance to a point of socially inefficient hyper-vigilance”. To avoid further damage to their reputations, and to minimise the risk that they will be sued over accounting irregularities, audit firms are adopting the most prudent possible interpretations of the Section 404 rules — rules that are vague and open to argument. And, as Mr Grundfest points out, the “more onerous the requirements of Section 404, the more money the audit profession can earn” by selling its services.

Again, for those who are interested, please read Michael Power’s pamphlet The Risk Management of Everything, where he pretty much predicts the SOx debacle in style. Note to myself: must arrange to have lunch with Prof Power again soon.[An aside: I bought the pamphlet after reading a synopsis of his PD Leake lecture in 2004. Then, the only way to get the document was via Demos. Now Demos itself points you to Amazon, with no difference in price or conditions. Interesting]

Boing Boing knocked off perch

For the first time in yonks, someone’s knocked Boing Boing off the peak of Technorati Mountain.

Who?
It’s someone called Page Not Found News Tools MSNBC.com -)

I guess that’s one way to make Number 1.

Check it out here.

“Incumbent to watch”

I was re-reading The Next Net 25 on Business 2.0 at a more leisurely pace than the first time around, you can find the whole article here.

In the article, all Gaul is divided into five parts:

  • Social media
  • Mashup and filters
  • The new phone
  • The webtop
  • Under the hood

An interesting list, one that I want to look at more carefully in the context of Four Pillars.

Against each of those classifications, they name five companies to watch. Interesting as well.

Also against each classification, they named “incumbent to watch”. Here’s the list of ITWs (I know, I just couldn’t resist the TLA -) )

  • Social media: Yahoo
  • Mashup and filters: Google
  • The new phone: Skype
  • The webtop: Microsoft
  • Under the hood: Amazon

 

There’s something obsolete-making about being called the “Incumbent to Watch”. It feels a lot like being called The Establishment during the 60s.

 

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I can’t help hearing Terry saying “I coulda been a contender“. The question is, who’s Charlie?

And thank you BBC for the photo.

 

Stepping into my personal Wayback Machine: or, 1984 Revisited

I’ve been reading the Summer 1984 issue of the Whole Earth Software Review. Some unbelievable quotes, makes me feel truly humble. Read them and see for yourself.

From Richard Dalton’s editorial titled “Enabling Computers”

  • ” A very liberating environment where you bump into electronically-linked communities of people you didn’t know were out there. Where your physical limits or disabilities don’t count. And an indicator of how revolutionary the whole computer thing may turn out to be”.

From an article called Telecommunications by Art Kleiner:

  • …Mike Greenly writes articles about the computer industry on The Source, a nationwide dial-up network. “The difference between me and a print journalist is (1) my coverage is immediate (readers had info on Steve Jobs’s launch of Macintosh just minutes after he’d finished speaking) and (2) readers can interact with me. They tell me what they’d like me to report on, and we swap information.”
  • …People play games, order products, use large-computer systems, retrieve public-domain (free) software, spin mutual fantasy stories, seek romance and stock quotations, and track their bank statements through computer networks.

Art Kleiner writing on The Personal Effects of Networking:

  • Some people move on to addiction: signing on a dozen times a day………[…..]…. Fortunately, addiction is usually short-lived. You get overwhelmed by overload and cut back, learning to filter out material. You don’t have to lose appreciation for the physical world; you can become more sensual elsewhere to compensate for the hours spent online. You can use the telephone more sparingly, scheduling calls and exchanging agendas for them in advance.

Robert Cowan on Virtual Business:

  • I believe we will soon see the emergence of “electronic store-front firms” wheren potential users will look through a computer network’s directory for service providers and contract with the most appropriate one. That provider might be located on a farm in Washington or in the heart of New York City. Geography is becoming less important as our focus shifts to […..] .. human intelligence and creativity.

Charles Spezzano (a diehard IBM PC man seeing his first Macintosh) on Breaking The Chains That Bind:

  • My real conversion to Mac, however, wasn’t spurred by anything the salesman showed me during the demonstration. I realised it on the way home. Mac has sex appeal, like an Italian sports car: it’s compact, stylish, soft and quick looking. Even without knowing exactly what I’d do with it, I’d like to have Mac sitting on a table in my living room…..[…]If I could get near it, that is. My wife and daughters would love this machine. They respect the PC, but no one loves anything made by IBM. I think that may even be an official psychiatric perversion.

From Learning/Playing by Robert Scarola:

  • The following articles and reviews all discuss products that offer a vision, selection or experience of an alternate reality. Some of these products are at the cutting edge of learning simulations and games in which the computer is an active player. Others are designed to make learning specific skills less painful, or even fun. At the moment, there are very few high-quality learning simulations for adults or for kids. But necessity is the mother of invention and I have no doubt that, even as I write this, somewhere out there in the twilight zone twentieth-century wizards are envisioning new, dynamic grand illusions and translating them into technological realities.

Art Kleiner on piracy:

  • Software piracy just brings already contradictory issues into sharper focus. If information is not free, what are public libraries? And what’s to prevent a public library from lending software?

Alfred Lee on the same subject:

  • In the state I lived in it used to be “unethical” for civil engineering firms to bid against each other for highway and other contracts. Now it is a violation of statute for the engineers to follow their ethics. Most of the software I have ever handled is accompanied by a lot of fine print alleging that by using the program — or by previously having torn open the cellophane wrapper — I have consented to a “licensing agreement”. This stipulates, usually, that I will use the disk on my own computer only and will notify the vendor and relicense my program if I change computers. Yes, an ethical question is being raised when I read that. Those lying sons of bitches and their California lawyers are trying to con me and every other God-fearing patriot out of our rights as Americans — namely, the copyright doctrine of “fair use”.

1984. What more can I say? Thank you everyone who made today possible.