Archives for May 2006
Dispatches from NetSquared — Day 1
31 May 2006 | miscellaneous, elsewhere, news, socialsignal | No Responses
Wow. Day 1 was amazing.
The conversations were inspiring, the presentations were interesting and very lively, but overall, the best part by far is hanging out with all these cool people. Having worked remotely on the NetSquared site for the last 6 months, I've developed great relationships with a lot of the folks at Techsoup and Compumentor, so it's been awesome to finally make f2f connections with these super-super-super people. And meeting the 'strangers' in the room has been equally amazing. It's impossibly exciting to me to be in the company of so many people doing good work in the world.
It's exciting to me to see all the activity that's been happening on the NetSquared site, too — site traffic is through the roof, the community blog is on fire with people live-blogging and commenting on various sessions, and the remote conference rooms are totally buzzing. The community has really come out. If you haven't checked it out lately, you really should. It's awesome.
I've been taking some notes on the conference sessions I've attended. As I mentioned above, there are lots of folks doing a great job of live-blogging and notetaking the conference, so I'm not going to try to re-create the sessions in great detail. But I do have a lot to relate, and I'm excited to go over the high points of my day. I'll try to include notes for finding more info where I can. I'll start with the morning sessions, and I'll post about the afternoon sessions later today. Ok, here goes…
Blackwell Conversation
The conference opener was an introductory conversation with Angela Glover-Blackwell from PolicyLink, an American nonprofit policy research organization. She spoke very articulately and passionately on the importance of scrutinizing elected representatives, industry leaders and policy-makers on the basis of their progressive social agenda first, and their use of technology second. To paraphrase:
"look to the people who lead with their social agenda. Don't get snowed by tech-savvy-ness or cutting edge use of technology for its own sake. Look to the folks who have real, big ideas about people. Because if the progressive and compelling social agenda is there, the progressive technology use will follow. It has to. It's in the air now."
For more info on Angela's session, check out her session page on NetSquared. And be sure to check out the great work she and others are doing (particularly around race issues in the US) at policylink.org.
Making the most of disruption
The first plenary session of the day was about disruptive technologies (technologies that cause significant changes in the way that individuals live, businesses operate, or society behaves). Howard Rheingold and Paul Saffo were the panelists, and for experts on disruption, they were exceptionally well behaved.
They took us on a kind of casual tour through pivotal disruptive technologies of the 20th century. One of the most interesting (IMO) themes that emerged from their talk is that tools are tools, and they're nothing more until you use them.
To illustrate the point, Paul related a great story of early thinking on the implications of air travel. Apparently there was a wide-spread and popular conversation going on after the invention of airplanes about the fact that from the air, one can't see natural borders at all. And the implication of this observation, of course, was that if we can't see natural borders anymore, their importance will diminish, and we'll (finally!) see the emergence of a truly global community. Airplanes will usher in a new age. Airplanes for world peace!
Obviously (and not all that shockingly), though, airplanes have not actually brought us world peace. Similarly, emerging tools will not bring us peace on their own — tools, however cool, don't do anything on their own. Revolutionary changes come about through the strategic use of these new tools to achieve the greater good. In a room full of technologists & tool-geeks (among others), this was a brave and welcome sentiment, and it helped to set a great tone for the rest of the day.
Check out the session page on the NetSquared site for more info.
We the Media: the rise of grassroots & open-source journalism
Next up was a great panel discussion on citizen journalism featuring Dan Gillmor, Hong Eun Taek and Ethan Zuckerman, moderated by Michael Rogers.
This was perhaps the most familiar conversation of the morning for an Indymedia wonk like me. It was interesting to hear someone like Hong Eun Taek (from the Korea-turned-international news phenomenon Ohmynews.com) speak about the power and popularity of citizen-driven media, especially when it comes to predicting the future of media, on and offline. One of the nice highlights from the session was this comment from Ethan:
Whether we ask them or not, people will make media. And they'll do it before the media gets there. This idea — the citizen witness (& the citizen witness with a camera) is not a new phenomenon. (remember JFK?) But nowadays, where formerly there was maybe one image from one observer, there are now thousands.
The conversation went on to outline some of the new and interesting ways that people are contributing to and creating media, including Wikipedia, mashups & the ever-popular internet video satire, as well as blogs, vlogs, podcasts & the like. Plus, Ethan Zuckerman (of Global Voices) is a real 5-star speaker. Check him out.
For more info on this session, check out the session page on netsquared.org.
Well, that's the morning. As I said, I'll post more about day 1 later today. For now, I'm back to paying attention to the ever-inspirational Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow. Awesome!
Daniel’s intro
30 May 2006 | miscellaneous, elsewhere, netsquared | No Responses
Daniel Ben-Horin just finished giving the opening to the NetSquared conference.
He articulated this as the key question and statement to shape the next two days:what if hr could be mobilized? — Imagine the difference we could make!
He gave us a nice definition of the social web (as opposed to the buzzword term 'web2.0'): the social web is 'the adaptation of internet tools for human interaction, communication and activism.' And he went on to underscore the idea that it's this need for interaction and communication that has brought us all here this week. Here here!
San Fran: Day 2
29 May 2006 | miscellaneous | No Responses
SF is a big town. I think I walked it all over today without finding the elusive burrito place of my dreams. I couldn’t be happier, walking around hunting burritos, but you know, when you don’t even find any in the end, you can kinda get discouraged. (more…)
San Francisco: a never ending hill
29 May 2006 | miscellaneous | 1 Response
I’m in San Francisco this week for the NetSquared conference. I arrived yesterday to meet up with Billy and Gina (who are both lovely, by the way). Our plan was initially to head to winecamp, but as it turns out, the napa valley is far away. So we went hiking in Marin county instead. It was insanely beautiful. (more…)
Net2Learn Theme of the Week: Wikis for Nonprofits
15 May 2006 | miscellaneous, elsewhere, netsquared | No Responses
Check out the new Theme of the Week over on Net2Learn: Wikis for nonprofits. This resource center provides a crash course in wiki use for nonprofits, including an explanation of wikis, their history, and some great wiki tools, as well as great tips for using wikis strategically to help your nonprofit.
And whether you're a wiki newbie or a seasoned wiki-warrior, we hope you'll share the insights and resources that have helped you along the way. Join the wikis for nonprofits resource center and you'll be able to add your ideas to our feature on getting started with wikis; or add your favorite resources to our collection of weblinks. And even if you haven't joined the resource center team, you'll be able to add your comments to almost all the content that's there, to help us keep the conversation going.
Net2Learn Theme of the Week: tagging and social bookmarking for nonprofits
8 May 2006 | miscellaneous, elsewhere, netsquared | No Responses
Check out the new Theme of the Week over on Net2Learn: Tagging and Social Bookmarking for nonprofits. This resource center provides a crash course in tagging and bookmarking for nonprofits, including an explanation of tagging and bookmarking tools (like del.icio.us & flickr) as well as great tips for using tagging and bookmarks to help your nonprofit.
And whether you're a newbie or an experienced tagging guru with hundreds of del.icio.us bookmarks to your credit, we hope you'll share the insights and resources that have helped you along the way. Join the tagging & bookmarking for nonprofits resource center and you'll be able to add your ideas to our feature on getting started with tagging and bookmarking; or add your favorite resources to our collection of weblinks. And even if you haven't joined the resource center team, you'll be able to add your comments to our forum discussions on how to use tags to collaborate with other nonprofit groups.
