Unbound Spiral

The following post reflects why I too think there are great possiblities for KM Blogs..

Making group-forming ridiculously easy.

Weblogs have a potential for group-forming like no other medium. However I'm convinced that much of it to this day remains untapped. I'd like to explain an idea that I have been bouncing around for a while. It might well be a reformulation of what others have said previously. I believe that implementing this properly would give a nice boost to the blogosphere's social aggregation capability.

Basically the goal is to push the threshold for group creation to an unprecedented low. I think Reed's Law should be refined to state:

The value of a group-forming network increases exponentially with the number of people in the network, and in inverse proportion to the effort required to start a group.

Here's a sample motivating scenario. Not long ago I wrote an item on professions in the blogosphere. The post caught the interest of other bloggers. A few replies came here and there. If you search diligently enough you'll find them, but it's not easy. Presumably, those who have taken part in the discussion would like to hear about it if the topic comes up again, but currently this will only happen by chance. This kind of situation is very common.

[Charles Nadeau: Knowledge management]

This is my second posting to my moveable type weblog. I'm going to cut and past from my Radio Userland site and see what happens with content. Have to get a few pages filling and a few posts to really see what is happening. This post was from yesterday... Just looked at the preview. It is not picking up the url links... http://radio.weblogs.com/0114925/

The following post reflects why I too think there are great possiblities for KM Blogs..

Making group-forming ridiculously easy.

Weblogs have a potential for group-forming like no other medium. However I'm convinced that much of it to this day remains untapped. I'd like to explain an idea that I have been bouncing around for a while. It might well be a reformulation of what others have said previously. I believe that implementing this properly would give a nice boost to the blogosphere's social aggregation capability.

Basically the goal is to push the threshold for group creation to an unprecedented low. I think Reed's Law should be refined to state:

The value of a group-forming network increases exponentially with the number of people in the network, and in inverse proportion to the effort required to start a group.

Here's a sample motivating scenario. Not long ago I wrote an item on professions in the blogosphere. The post caught the interest of other bloggers. A few replies came here and there. If you search diligently enough you'll find them, but it's not easy. Presumably, those who have taken part in the discussion would like to hear about it if the topic comes up again, but currently this will only happen by chance. This kind of situation is very common.

[Charles Nadeau: Knowledge management]

<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/10/24.html#a500">Doug Engelbart on improving collective IQ</A>.
<P>I don't think I have read as eloquent an explanation of what collaborative intelligence augmentation is and why it matters as <A href="http://www.bootstrap.org/engelbart/index.jsp">Douglas Engelbart</A>'s World Library Summit keynote speech <A href="http://www.fleabyte.org/eic-11.html">Improving our ability to improve: A call for investment in a new future</A>. Here are just a few quotes - but I think it's well worth attentively reading every word of the text. And taking time to think about it.</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<P><FONT color=darkblue>...the investment in C&nbsp;activities is typically pre-competitive.&nbsp; It is investment that can be shared even among competitors in an industry because it is, essentially, investment in creating a better playing field. [...]</FONT></P>
<P><FONT color=darkblue>At the C level we are trying to understand how improvement really happens, so that we can improve our ability to improve.&nbsp; This means having different groups exploring different paths to the same goal.&nbsp; As they explore, they constantly exchange information about what they are learning.&nbsp; The goal is to maximize overall progress by exchanging important information as the different groups proceed.&nbsp; What this means, in practice, is that the dialog between the people working toward pursuit of the goal is often just as important as the end result of the research.&nbsp; Often, it is what the team learns in the course of the exploration that ultimately opens up breakthrough results. [...]

"Source ScriptingNews.

Are weblogs legit business tools? Mike Masnick says yes. Mark Hurst says that Mike's company does nothing but blogs, so of course he thinks they're business tools. To Mark I'd say, one day someone said that about phones, and today every company organizes its business on the phone, and using other communication tools such as airplanes, hotels, notepads, whiteboards, email, instant messaging, spreadsheets, conference rooms, etc. Weblogs are a tool, a good one, but that's all they are. We could stop having these debates, imho. [Scripting News]"

A possible problem is weblogs aren't understood yet by those that have the corporate communication roles. The story-telling possibilities just keep expanding for me. Mike good luck with your techdirt venture. I believe a few more marketers need to sit-up and listen.

Does this discussion also reflects that it's still a little too hard? Or are the doubters the same ones that pooh poohed GeoCities? Dave imho, I'd actually advocate more discussion like this. It's a healthy sign and yet I'm still fighting to do what I really want to do with a weblog. I started with Radio (love the news feature) and failed to get enough easy learning to migrate templates and type to my own site. MoveableType's instructions were easier, despite the additional complexity. One day I may work it all out.

Participating in online communities is not only growing easier, the results more positive. Kuro5hin is also more than a weblog. It's been around for awhile and yet today I ended up giving it much closer attention as I considered voting on an MLP posting on the Nickel Exchange, was asked for other help with editing, etc.

Various links took me to SCOOP and you learn quickly about the collaborative media application behind Kuro5hin and other communities.

My journey started today looking for methods improve my MT posting and reporting options. I've had in mind the opportunity for a MT based community. Clearly plausible yet not self-organizing. When one compares Smart Mobs with Kuro5hin it becomes clear how obvious this is. I will be looking at Scoop further.

Kuro5hin.org is a community of people who like to think. This is a site for people who want to discuss the world they live in. It's a site for people who are on the ground in the modern world, and who sometimes look around and wonder what they have wrought.

Scoop empowers participants to play a role in the newsmaking. This is not the only application however. My searching located Eric Hanson andShouldExist around ideas;as an idea exchange. Check out their description Eric's list also proved to me how sharing can close and create new links... Some we don't even know. While looking at his "people" section I found myself linked back to Seb's Open Resesearch. who has a great blog going on knowledge sharing, communities and innovation.

Note:"ShouldExist.org is a non-profit website, founded on the belief that individuals are more successful when we work together through open standards, modularity and decentralized control." His project list also includes others. Check it out.

Part of my interest in the first place was driven by the question posed to me. Should the NICKEL EXCHANGE story be posted? I'm going to watch over the next couple of days. We will be revisiting "Nickel Exchange" for I still believe the next frontier is in solving highly decentralised P2P transactions. Frankly... the nickel exchange looks premature, needs consumer friendly content, and a little more to give it legitimacy. I didn't yet try to see if it works.

Then today Movielink launched. This is the site offered by the movie moguls to provide downloadable movies to American broadband connections. Incredibly slow to appear, you would almost think the site is down. Obviously checking out my system for compatibility. I'm waiting for it to be cracked, then Kazaa movies etc might take on a whole new meaning.

Author, programmer, tech analyst and future open source entrepreneur David Duval is worth following.

I think he is playing with more than words when today's blognovel picks up the theme below. Is this about SPACES or is the context just paraphased here?"

"You close your eyes, open them again, and nothing will ever be the same. It might not be obvious at first. It might not even be obvious later. But it's still there, that newfound feeling of uncertainty, of something lost, and something found, only you don't know what it means yet. " PlanB

Maybe I will have to read his serial. There are at least three threads here. David Duval - interesting person, PlanB- his blognovel and lastly the software application Spaces. Take some time and follow the links.

THREAD ONE: David lists his research interests as "self-organizing and wireless networks, complexity theory, dynamical systems, and molecular nanotechnology among others....... Other than that, he's clearly a good bloke who knows where to find an Irish pint!

THREAD TWO: His blognovel runs on the serial concept. StoryTelling opportunities, serial, case studies etc. There are many applications here and some new opportunities. For more proof that there is a bigger debate around blogging opportunties see Slashdot. Enjoy the FAQ
Stories usually have a strong element of time built into them, just like a weblog. A weblog, however, is a story where the beginning changes every day: what we see is the last element that was posted. Follow this link to PlanB's description.

THREAD THREE: DynamicObjects has just lauched an alpha PIM. It is naturally object oriented. I sense the objectives again to create a more collaborative space. Perhaps today we have the answer in the making to yesterday's PLAXO. David writes: "... spaces is qualitatively different. It shares many features with standard email/PIM software like Evolution or Outlook. However, its abstractions over information management are designed to simplify organization and access to information and for collaboration from the ground up. Along with the simplicity of its user interface, these elements will not only make spaces a better PIM, they will also allow it to be an ideal tool for collaboration between individuals and small groups....

......Using self-organizing P2P technologies, there will be no need for servers. Having designed the interface for collaboration from the ground up, there will be no need for five different programs that always do things differently and need a subpoena to talk to each other. The FAQ contains more information on what features are available now and the schedule for additional features.

To this layman... that sounds pretty good.

Then there is the final story of how I got this post. It goes like this. I was again searching MoveableType. Looking for answers. For the first time I noted that MT actually has a list on their home page of recently update MT sites. (I have paid my donation and no I haven't solved my automated ping yet). I clicked on an interested name... Orbitalworks and noted the link to spaces. Captured by Names and a good hour of reading. Hope I've simplified the places to look

I'm convinced, that blogging is reshaping the way we get news. There is plenty on publishing out there. Yet as with so many products it is not until you start using them that the "intangible" start to show through.

Friends, colleagues with e-mail lists, you need to change the way you do business. As marketers, we better start thinking about new collaborative PR. We also have to expect that new "personalities" will emerge. The news is the same but different. My friends in blog world are now in cahoots with me, filtering stories I might be interested in and for which my Radio blog subscribes me. My challenge will be to find the rarified air and new thoughts over time. Potential signals for new directions. At the moment I'm far enough to scan 100's of stories in seconds and post just a few in minutes.

There are more threads in this post. My news clips, more on blog publishing (it's not just individuals that need to rethink how they publish -- where are the companies that are blogging?) an article that led to more sites and an ad slogan generator. It didn't think that much of UNBOUND SPIRAL. So I had to find more crazy quotes on spirals and the creative chaos they suggest.

Stuart's News Clips In less than four weeks I've migrated to MT.and yet continued to use Radios RSS news feeds. It's like having my e-mail subscriptions on steroids. Much faster than trying to scan outlook. I can see I will have to encourage my favorites to start their own new feeds.

As yet Radio... (I haven't worked it out) how can i post my clips in a single one click group and then clear the list. It's also clear that my subscription information like that of my colleagues should be shared. Just like the Napster hot lists we learn faster when we can see the hot lists of other. No doubt this will also lead me to track a random blog a day or more. A random Kuro5hin. Hmm.. does it exist?

I'm pretty sure I will get a news feed directly into my MT however for those of you that want to try out another service try AmphetaDesk and let me know how it goes.

Yet another publish publish... piece Livewire: Publish your heart out with easy-to-use Web tools As usual there are more clips and links to follow. The whole process is bringing back my passion for web learning journeys.

A web learning journey is simply an interactive session, typically uncovering and using illustrative examples to get groups thinking. Yet there are many other ways to do it. Suppliers demos fo online products and GROOVE members are surfing in tandem. Looking for new functionalities and new applications. The blogsphere is ripe for great commentary. The fact is too that most companies and employees don't spend enough time seeking the unknown. The web can often provide an accelerated view.

LiveWire led me to Glenda see agendacide.com/glenda: Wanted: "Creative Maximizer" and the I Can't Believe It's Not The Advertising Slogan Generator!. For a bit of fun try your brand. Not sure it worked for the Unbound Spiral, yet it worked for me. I had a laugh! Suggestions:

Promise Her Anything, But Give Her Unbound Spiral
A Different Kind Of Company. A Different Kind Of Unbound Spiral.
I'd Walk a Mile for an Unbound Spiral.
This Is The Age Of The Unbound Spiral.
We're Serious About Unbound Spiral.
There's Only One Unbound Spiral
No Unbound Spiral, No Comment.

Have a better one?

More links for joining and exploring the blogging community. WSJ.com - ...Find a Blog Then if you have a blog you my like to tryand find new Recommendations. Then every often we make a convert and hope they will keep it up.

I've been clipping notes sporadically as time permits on things that strike me as "signals" or "markers" to simpify finding them later. I've not yet managed to integrate them into mysite. There are themes. Not sure I will ever get to them today.

Picking up on todays CLIPS what's the theme from clips of the day? What is the strategy? What issues are raised? I have thoughts......

collectiveSome Thank's Tom!

"Stuart Henshall (http://www.henshall.com/blog/) deserves credit for this idea. I take credit for retyping it and adding a few minor tweaks (as well as trying to find a market-y sounding name for the service/process.

We reckon this could be a big deal in a pretty broad range of companies...

For the longest time I've had the attached scenario matrix as a plaything. (click on it to full size it). This matrix repesents a tension that exists around an innovative collaborative community. The four quadrants reflect different aspects - dimensions of community. Simply, communities require members, networking, navigation and co-creation. A sustainable community will operate in all quadrants. It's meant as reference points to promote a common language to encourage the experimentation and openness necessary for innovation and new ideas.

There are tensions in a great matrix. On the horizontal axis it looks at personalities, reflecting the individuality and the commonalities in all of us. At one end we have the need for divergent experimental thought and ideas; chasing our dreams. At the other end the need for a common language, alignment and reference points; pressure to conform. The vertical axis highlights the structural tension between open source sharing, contrasted with the need for some value creation engine that makes it sustainable. The top half may also be seen to represent where value is created and the bottom half how we capture it. I suspect the processes and methods around this axis are ready for some real innovative ingenuity!

.
Then there is a complementary matrix which takes into account the knowledge strategies necesary to lead an organization. Rather cryptically labelled, I think the real question is around the Jazz quadrant. As organizations, most of us have our composers, and piano players while the orchestral choir simply hums along. Yet that quadrant represented by the frontline staff (leverage) and the network receives possibly the least attention of all. This is an opportunity quadrant for almost every organization I know. It's a world in which the pace, the collison of ideas, products and services, inspire adaptive responses and insight in both participants and audience. It's the jazz club jamming metaphor and it is crucial to your innovation proposition

My interest in news feeds traces to: 1) Finding a better way to "organize clippings" of digital info I make and improve pass on. 2) understanding how RSS feeds can help accelerate community infomation sharing.

So an afternoon experimenting included Ben Brown's RSS Monkey and Ampheta Desk. This follows a continued experiment with Radio Userland which I've been using as a news service - Stuarts Clips. The good news is Ampheta Desk is a lot easier to use, but lacks the functionality of Radio. Soon I will just integrate the clip system of radio with my MT blog. However, if you are not blogging, and want News try it out. Download, one click install and then click on my new ampehta xml logo. Further subscribe instruction are simple.

Similarly, I've been trying to provoke a UCB colleague on blogging to encourage a learning lab style experiment. With a collection of tools I think learning could rapidly accelerate and build a more collaborative student community. Our conversation so far resulted in an unexpected new link for me KartOO a meta search engine which presents its results on a map. The map is pretty neat. Try searching Entovation 100 now! His comments also encouraged me to clip the following.

The Shifted Librarian: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 is one of my favorite news feeds. Jenny made the following post:

Another "Next Level" Type of Step for RSS
An Introduction to RSS for Educational Designers (.doc)
"Quote: "RSS is the first working example of an XML data network. As such, and in this world of learning objects and metadata files, RSS is the first working example of what such a network will look like for educational designers. Just as news resources are indexed and distributed in the RSS network, so also educational resources can be indexed and distributed in a similar learning object network."

Jenny's comment: "Nice article on RSS (Rich Site Summary)...timely as well - currently at RRC, we are trying to create a culture of bloggers...and use aggregators as a means of accelerating the reading process. RSS is already popular in the blogosphere and news sites. Stephen Downes extends the role of RSS from that of news aggregation to learning object network (which he contrasts with current LCMS models)."

Finally, with more than a little hype ... the link to the K-Logs . However, I wish blogs were available when I was SVP Marketing and Sales. Realtime cross-functional cross-regional sharing would go up n'fold. Anyone want to do a little experimenting? Lots of ideas here....

Looking round the room, where's the youth, majority ageing males. Are these the ones that are creating a decentralized future? See at least one guy with a web cam in the audience. Haven't seen any tablet PC's here yet. Couple of Trios visible. No Cyborgs -- disappointed! My guess is 60% are connected wirelessly to the pulver.com network.. Must be at least 10 blogging this event. In the crowd here I recognize many from the P2P conference nearly two years ago. Sense of promise seats for approximately 100. Room is full with a general buzz.

As Kevin warms up to the audience, his conviction in the decentralized future is obvious. It is an ambitious undertaking to start a new Tech conference in Silicon Valley these days. His reasoned commitment is to the developments taking place around decentralization, WIFI, weblogs, web services, changing architectures, --- still a lot happening that is not yet realized. Notes "decentralization" is an ugly word, --- not a hype concept -- for scenarist it just one of the driving forces for the next decade. There are not many centralists in the room I think.

Notes from Kevin's Introduction:

Decentralization is a fundamental issue for the next decade. Not new, eg PC was decentralizing in itself, but in this environment it takes on an even more important role. Business and social aspects. If you base your business model on central control, then decentralization is a threat. However, embracing it opens new opportunities…

1. Only way to scale. Why so important. Trying to manage at the center becomes impossible. Internet --- take it up a level. Take it beyond.

2 People. As people have these tools, want to collaborate, use to communicate across different boundaries, must have a decentralized approach. More decentralized approaches.

3 connected computing is becoming a commodity, Incredible pervasive networks.

Reflecting on the value chains. There is a ongoing tension between structured centralized and unstructured decentralized. I suspect that in the end we need both -- and a pragmatic view.

Increasing complexity. So how do we get there from here? What must we deal with?
Ø Reliability, security, manageability
Ø Reinventing value chains - business models and ways for people to add value.
Ø Balance openness and control

These may be different. The most decentarlzied approach doesn’t always win. Decentralization won’t always triumph but how far must we go?

I'm looking forward to Howard's presentation. It may well be a revelation to kick off a technology conference with a focus on social implications. I sure hope it makes the tech heads think. Many in the audience have probably read his book Smart Mobs.

Introducing collective action --- imploring us to take a look at the terrain from 60000 feet. His contention this that---every time power is decentralized there is new opportunity for new collective action. The audience responds to this theme. Howard’s objective is to provide examples of things that may be coming. His purpose to stimulate the understanding and debate - not only about technology, but socially, politically, and for innovation.

An interesting aspect of his presentation was around trust and reputation systems. Clearly a huge area for experimentation. So iImagine a world where connections are mobile in the street and not limited to a room PC. There are quite some hurdles to go to get there.

Notes and words from Howard’s presentation:

Starting with texting messaging, and introducing flocking. Borrowing examples from the book. How do young kids all arrive at a destination to hang out all at the same time? How was Astrada over thown in the Phillipines by thousands arriving within minutes in the square all wearing black. They are all mobilizing by text messaging. Text enables easy forwarding with two thumb strokes they send it on to everyone.

HR sees a threshold being crossed where the obstacles have been lowered and new forms of collective action empoweered as a consequence of these new technologies. HR thinking seeing something that is the beginning of a cycle just like the PC 80, Internet 90. Characteristics that come to mind. Two techs converging.. to make a third technology that is not easily predictable, (Eg PC to telephone --- got the internet.) the critical uncertainty here. The users of the technology shaped the medium that emerged. If it hadn’t been for the teenage enthusiasts, or the millions putting up web pages, where would we be?

Notes: Technology that happened by collective action… 4 billion web pages in 2000 days. Moore’s law etc. hold today in hand 1000 time the power vs 1980, at 1/5 of the price.

Mini internet terminals we are now carrying around. What happens when we have them 1000 times faster than today? P2P methodologies point towards something. Eg Napster 70 million people put their hard disks together. The architecture of the way that it was put together made it certain that it would continue. Eg the Seti at home example.

Science is a form of collective action.

Alphabet was a tool for encoding knowledge. The printing press created the opportunity for literacy to be decentralized. Large groups begin to think they can solve things themselves. Many people taught how to do experiments. Each time new forms of collective action emerge. Doesn’t mean utopia is round the corner. Will be new benfits and pitfalls.

The telephone reaches places that the PC never did. Eg fishermen in gulf of Arabia. In the slums people San Paulo people are using telephones, those that didin’t have it before. Technology is widening the pool of potential contributors. It is also going into every part of the day Changing when and how time is dealt with. Predicts it will have significant impact on cities very quickly!!!

Another element --- whether reputation systems will evolve to find people with similar needs. Markets are a form of collective action! Money is a result of a meta communication and trust system that has evolved over the last five hundred years. If you could ask in your telephone to offer a ride to work, who is someone I would trust, enable ride-sharing, could you run a reputation system that doesn’t require people to fill out forms. Don’t watch what people say watch what they do. Eg Repeat riders, vs non repeat riders. LOTS of room for experimentation. Know from Internet that you can share with people that have common interests. For the most part the connections are made by people alone in rooms. Now take it to the streets, Dates, bicycle to sell, etc, when it becomes possible when you can identify and qualify those people. Is is rally a farfetched specutialiton. These devices do know where we are. Eg Cell phones. The Survelance possibilities. Danger, What do my friend say about it? I’m new etc. Will the associations be open or closed? Eg at 5th and main?

Also possible to information into things over the next few years. RFID tags. Labels are political objects. Will that information become open? Recent Experiment. Laptop and wireless connection, UPC to Google. First object box of prunes. The vendor of the prunes was Sun Diamond First reference… US vs Sun Diamond Cooperative… Bromide barrons, subvert democratic process, largest contributor to methyl bromide. The friend cracked open the closed system… by connecting it to google. Kellogg Crackling… FDA warning, unlabed egg and dariy…

How does information, and things and people with this capability to link in their pocket think? .... How does it change how you go through the world and with whom??? Those are really the questions. There are important political discussions going over all of the structures we are talking about. Whether spectrum labels, etc. All have to do with two things. Closed systems trying to maintain their closure, vs… Who controls innovations. Will this platform again be some thing part oa a platform you can innovate around. The more people understand the more opportunity.

Power and knowledge there is a cycle between d and c what people know and how quickly is a component of power.

How open a system will Google remain? Would a change make it less useful. Is there competition in what you search for? What will be controlled?

Comments: Discussion…
How do we translate these thoughts into sustainable collective action? Are there mistakes we might learn from?

The freedom to innovate.. Need to get the message out. HR when talking about scenarios. Interesting to look at demographics, eg texting. The ones most adept are 15 years old. Not seeing it so much here. But there is a 15-20 years old group now to use and summon social networks. They are tuned to using this technology to to gain control. People are very accustomed to affect things. 10 years form now they will bbe 25 and the tool that they hold will be a lot more powerful. How do you communicate with them. And over the long run how those people see the technologies they have and use. If every idle moment is taken up with communication …. Do we lose something? Opinion on the matter may be dependent on how old you are. These 15 year olds may have very different perspectives.

Nice intro to this session by Jeremy Allaire (Macromedia). Looking at my notes. This was probably the best session of the day. From a consumer perspective the most important. WE NEED AN IDENTITY SYSTEM WAS THE CONCLUSIONS.

Karl Jacob was most impressive. His P2P Spam busting company Cloudmark (brand??) currently has 230k users. However more than anyone all day he put the case for consumers. From the internet forcing us to doing it our way to good examples re Amazon profiles, and the likes of Classmates. A clear evangelist. In a P2P world solutions to questions emerge from the network.

I rather like the opportuntiy for his business. A a spam buster he is involved in real-time trust evaluation. With an emergent community that can eliminate spam he'll have an opportunity to also link the magic mailbox, phone number and e-mail. The community that emerges could well aggregate other powers as a result. Interestingly there was a chaordic comment from the floor. Whether Cloudmark makes it or not. It's worth watching.

Notes - speaker comments:

Jeremy Allaire Macromedia:

Three broad trends
1. Rich clients and the transformation of the user experience particularly on client side
Look at it from x years ago. As a document publishing environment. The container for applications and content haven’t evolved. The fidelity and quality hasn’t evolved The run time model hasn’t really evolved. That model looks decentralized yet is highly centralized. Rich clients break thought this. Support desktop applications. Integrate all forma of media into the runtime itself. Streaming voice, graphics, text, etc integrated into the processing model. They enable are real time P2P arch. Supports a new programming model that leverages a rich capability. Push action out to the edge.

2. Web services and distributed logic
Using XML important to decentralization. Industry too focused on backend and integration of enterprise applications. Really misses what is happening in web content… eg blogger, RSS, early manifestations of the Semantic Web. Grassroots rather than the enterprise groups that are driving it. Second the original vision was software as a service, but a fundamental piece missing was the run-time …. The fullness of software service. Large approached on enterprise integration. Broadband was failing,,, etc.. a few years ago. This perspective is turning around. Across the board broadband is growing. New wave of marketing product development in that area… eg yahoo broadband etc.

3. Significant momentum for broadband technology.
WIFI broadband is growing, hotspot operators, many adding this offer as part of full service bundling. Over 300 cos in the wifi software area today.

When you put these trends together with a new access platform. --- becomes interesting.

Carl Jacob…
Optimistic. A consumer software guy. How do consumers use these services? Cloudmark is a Spam co. P2P system. 230,000 plus users. Before had to go to website to interact. Forced consumer to do it there way. Amazon… end to end controlled by Amazon. Next ten years. Consumers will define how Internet is used., They will have a lot more power. Eg Classmates. Enter all this information. In a P2P world it simply emerges from the network itself. Classmates in a P2P world it becomes a question? It is not just the power of the computers, but the people at the edge of the network, Eg buy in interest.

Mike Helfrich. Groove Networks. P2P collaboration platform. We are dealing with disruptive technologies particularly in the enterprise organizations. Decentralization speaks to some emerging themes. In commercial sector, see activity around Innovation decentralized networks popping up, serendipitous interactions where it is important, while ON the federal side decentralization has a different value proposition. In FG, absolutely require flocking, swarming, rapidly pull together cross coalition threats, responses, end driven user nature of these d architectures is important. Realm in adaptive systems. The end user determining the application to work on the fly. Particularly the federal government must look at the war efforts, to continue collaborating despite elements being brought down. There is resurgence in the notion of person to person types of actions.

Doc Searles…
The idea that something explosive is going on while literally making a new world. Nothing but ends. The middle makers don’t make things. What do we do at the ends of things? Technology trends start with technology. There is a imperative with that --- ask god what the net can do for you ask what you can do for the net… dave winer…??? The idea of place. No one owns it. Everyone can use it. And anyone can improve it. Point made that google … technorati….if you want to look at what your own cosmos is doing. $5.oo.. Arraycom --- cellular broadband? Do it yourself! There is a collection of internet services that we don’t have yet. We need identity services.

Beginning of discussion:
How do we build these things in? Eg RSS… PINGID? RSS? Create infrastructure on which everyone can build? What are the types of policies we put on our vendors? Do we get interoperability so the meta data is published to …. Defense Service Standards. Eg 411 directory.. A rich client

Karl… Is this a change is as significant… this forces so powerful, turn into a community ….. turn into things a lot faster than ever before. This is the way the world is going to be. We may all do it wrong in the first instance. A trust system at keen, rating, review… trust in a P2P network the trust is real-time. Real-time trust evaluation. IT is a force that is very powerful. (Comment (Example temper enthusiasm with the fact the more complex ideas may find it more difficult to spread.)

KW session started with notion beyond the web… do you believe.. etc… ??? The web won because of simplicity openness? Do we need. JA web is very good at displaying content, not good at a high degree of user interaction, too many burdens under html, and not great at immersive media. Eg for Kids, for corps expect in training. Not good for multiple users interacting with page models in real-time. For publishing it is the dominant medium. More sophisticated it breaks down more quickly.

Doc. E- mail not a rich experience. We need identity services, before customers become truly empowered. Consumer is a relic…. Directory and Security … really simple is required.

Round trip HTML mentality is really holding us back. Not time dependent, not designed for media, Rohit Khare…. Knownow is now open sources. Innovation can go on the web???

KJ P2P with ratings, commerce, ….. Amazon cost of goods, is all the hundreds of server to have to scale. If you are eBay what do you do… Can’t use your rating s elsewhere. The hard thing is that what they have created so far but they may find it a noose. Audience ? Is Karl is smoking crack???)

Many of these communities are incredibly self-regulating. Simple rules. “Trust the network” do a great job of thinking in the small! Like nature, in terms .
How do we leverage infrastructure? Infrastructure is just about setting out part of the rules out into the marketplace. Commerce transactions. Centralized some kinds of rating system? Change in the way we establish trust. What is common?

Tom… What can we learn from multi-player games? The original groove intro story. Illuminated how quickly these rich small groups grew up.

Doc… infrastructure… 1 inet itself. History of protocols.. no one owns. Like sub-platform stuff. What happens when the geologies change under it.. The protocols change. Like decentralization,,,,,, need a name for some for this. How does this change. E.g. changes because we add stuff to it. RSS, WIFI..

Feeling some group of companies… that need to take this sense of IDENTITY… whether amazon… chaordics… comments…. Sharing customer information…

How do we create that environment???

This panel includes John Hagel (New Book: Out of the Box), John Parkingson (spent $1b on tech to promote collaboration), Narry Singh (service - architecture market world), and moderated by David Weinberger.

DW: A panel on collaboration ---what do we all mean by collaboration?

JP "No good collaborative software around!" "Corporations have lost control of the user experience! Collaboration is a very personal experience. To much focus on the "and" rather than the "me"."

That really seems to sum it up. The structured versus the unstructed debate. Lovely bloggers floor comment: "We are hacking the sh** out of you guys."

Panel notes:

This panel includes John Hagel (New Book: Out of the Box), John Parkingson (spent $1b on tech to promote collaboration), Narry Singh (service - architecture market world), and moderated by David Weinberger.

A panel on collaboration ---what do we all mean by collaboration? Not a focus on technology. Intend to talk about how human interaction and social effects happen. Adhoc vs structured, collaboration within, or across the enterprise, or between machines. DW good collaborative software around / efficiencies the business --- why isn't it being used all the time?

JP no good collaborative software around... how do you instrument.. we have applied the metrics.... over seven years... 90% of the difference is called e-mail. JH Notion of coordinating activity. Why do we still bundle so many items within an enterprise? Across enterprises too much manual carry - connect, Can we free up people for more creative problem solving. NS Now one process has many companies. The mandate for collaboration is increasing the impact difficult.

Summary Challenges:
* No collaboration software
* Problem with the integration
* Unprecedented demand for collaboration. How make it stick?

NS need to think / include the governance. JH business processes increasing include a broader range of issues around collaboration issues. Think about taking a loosely coupled approach.

HR people are fixated on the artifacts. Rather than how to use it. A training discussion. Seems no one is trained in the use of e-mail and many apparently are untrainable.

Some interesting floor comments re games. The gaming collaboration -- where is it in business? Yet we see kids doing it now. Others have been trained -- eg military in how to use the headset.... I'm thinking Socom PS2.

JH Levels of collaboration: First level is structuring relationships -- most have failed to fix the structuring across enterprise, 2nd level coordinating the activty levels - info is not flowing, third --- problem solving exceptions and enhancement.

DW Seems less than certain about this gloomy outlook. Mentions Open Source, epinions, ebay, smartmobs, workflow applications, sales mailing lists for salesforces. There is lots of collaboration oing on. Yahoo groups.

This presenter group seems pretty down. It doesn't bode well for the organization. If this is the energy level advising them ---- then let's not be optimistic about traditional organizations making rapid progress in collaboration. Are these guys being too top down? Enterprises are not making the leaps.

JP Corporations have lost control of the user experience! Collaboration is a very personal experience. To much focus on the "and" rather than the "me".

Seems to imply that collaboration will be a very personal issue. Sharing stories with how many other groups are collaborating might accelerate the process. JH in co's very structured collaboration --- granular transfers --- to get things done. Often being driven by non-IT individuals. The IT is often the barrier or resistent point.

Lovely floor comment: We are hacking the sh** out of you guys. Talk about a structured vs unstructured dialogue. Chaos reins in the seats.

How intense is the debate around sharing content online? Are sharers pirates? What types of models might get us out of this mess? TIVO and Listen are doing things that may enable things to work. EFF has a different perspective.

Panel consist of: Cory Doctorow EFF, Sean Ryan Listen, Morgan Guenther TIVO

Great meaty discussion. Unedited notes/ comments of speakers and audience.

CD... Entertainment battles trace right back to 1908 and piano roles. battle continues to this day. Today new fight around fcc DTV they can shut down analog spectrum and then sell it! The broadcast flag, is clear. The broadcasting industry have said unless there is some copyright material they will withhold the release of digital content. They have asked for a broadcast flag. Compliant chip, is a fragile measure, check for response for the bit. Hollywood has asked to restrict everything that come in contact. Anticompetitive practice. Summary reps from all the industries that this was a good idea. The tech co's that agreed had the solutions. So they signed on. Dissenters ---- did see any complaints. Now at the FCC, what do you mean a regulatory regime for commodity hardware. First piece is the broadcast flag. Second is blocking the analog outputs all will have to have a cop mark. Step three is the Darknet whitepaper. The network of computers that continues find ways around all this stuff. The solution is redesign the internet; so every packet is checked for infrin gement. Why is it that technologists coming out against?

Sean Ryan Listen: Started as a directory of common music. They had built a way to find music. "Hard to be a Label apologist!" Laughter!.. Last two years developing a compelling service. Proprietary streams. And adding greater portability, though all systems. 95% of a broadband company. Doesn't offer the unlimited portability. Our crowd doesn't want to burn and get music in their life. Free is better. Access and rediscover and not just the hot stuff you get from target, but the small, lost almost forgotten stuff. Legitimate license service. Music industry is becoming more flexible. Think they can create a compelling service. Excited about digital medial.

Tivo. 36% of audience has TIVO. "TIVO thinks I'm Gay!" Focused on three things. Execution, marketing and financial cash generating, changed etc. have to have. 2) transition from a straight consumer acquisition model, now going to licenses etc that enable it to be pervasive. DVR's will be in 40'-50% of home in 5 years. Third innovation still in core area - system software and at the applications - where we really bring value. Business model focused on consumers 12.95 per month. less that 1% churn 500 k customers. Other applications, file serve TV etc everything on the home network. Advertising, the death of the 60billion dollar industry. Real estate in the living room, secure distribution of content is there.... 7 hours of TV per day. What do you want to do there? With the space? With the living room? Will meet an inflection point. content distribution, sharing, moving content to other devices, withint the home. Taken an industry approach. Knew it was a disruptive technology.

KW... Why doesn't Sean's story ring true? CD -- Music industry spent millions to develop a Princeton Professor, can talk about math. Every DRM vendor will tell you that real pirates can just continue to.. THe DRM solutions are controlling private performance. Restricting the uses in your own home. DVD... region system.

Floor
Can’t rip a piece of a DVD, and put it up for a review. At what point is all of that on a DVD. At what point can I critique it? If you can't do fair use. Then is it wrong?

TIVO as a buffer.....
Two smart guys, riding the buffer, surfing a wave of change between what was and what could be! The focus is thus more portability, more pricing, more availability.

Re TV... Different ways that file-served TV will play out. All about distributed computing, storage on the edge, more scalable, rather than any streaming for high quality TV. The cable cos' will serve up more standards, re IP based delivery. We can deliver content into the box via ip. Also meta data, how find it access it? Over the long run you will see programming, we don't care, all types of content, don't care where it comes from. Requires work with the cable co's.

Comment: Interesting contrast between TV adn PC industry. Tivo was rogue, interesting language, bucket at the end of the pipe and the engine... the mix the distribution model and about the edge.... DO you see downstream other Tivos coming in? Is there a platform you are part of that enables more TIVO's to come in. MG There isn't the bandwidth to handle that type of alternative. TIvo i setting standards in the industry today. It is all about deployment. Have to get it currently though satellite and cable.

Summary Supernova: Interesting day. The kick- off reconfirming that decentralization is one of the driving forces and aided with an unconventional tech conference start. Howard's pitch taking consumer examples reflecting the potential longer term shift in the power structures. I was never completely sure how many techies were really paying attention. I hope they were listening!

The reality then that for much of the rest of the day, real implications for consumers weren't tested. The Microsoft presentation failed to mention customers, much less consumers and while IBM is clearly more customer centric, their focus remains facilitating integration amongst their enterprise clients.

The Beyond the Web discussion began to fire. Take a look at what Karl Jacob is doing with Cloudmark a P2P spam filtering system. I'll revisit it after the conference. He had probably the most provocative consumer centric comments the whole day. Breaking just before lunch, an active discussion around digital identity, scalability of Amazon etc. emerged.

After lunch despite David Weinberger's best attempt to focus in on collaboration discussion away from technology and back with communites and socialization, --- the enterprize factor seemed to kill ingenious new ideas. This was a group significantly restricted by structure, and current rules of govenance. The decentralized world --- is not being created in these organizations. If you are interested in collaboration, the answer is look outside your organizations --- forget about the "and" and just simply start using - experimenting with tools out there.

The last panel - almost in stealth provided the most useful degree of pragmatism. Nice clash between Cory's -- EFF thoughts, and two realistic emergent businesses in Listen and TIVO. They are perhaps closer together than we think --- and I'm sure they would disagree with that comment.

Final SUMMARY: We need an IDENTITY SYSTEM! Don't expect traditional enterprises to provide any solutions. If you are in business remain pragmatic, and continually negotiate the shift between structured and centralized and unstructured - empowered and decentralised. Consider carefully the risks to the Innovation Commons. Update your organizations IP policies. Make them work cross-platform, cross-industry and for the benefit of your customers customers.

Kevin summing up: What have we learned? Two conferences. One physically as the one in cyberspace by blogs. Interesting to watch the interplay. It is pretty remakable how many concepts were just thrown out 3-4 years ago. It is remarkable how much is still happening. Thought we would be talking about the unanswered issues of the web era. But still haven't worked out some of the implications of the PC. Couple of words... infrastructure... what does it mean and how do you dreaw the line. That is the theme tomorrow. Reinventing infrastructure. What forma of control are acceptable, how do we process?

There is also plenty of other content and perspective recorded. See Doc Searles weblog.

Kicking off Day Two, room 80% full and still filling, looks like the majority have returned.

KW: Infrastructure is the starting point for a revolution. Unfortuantely Clay Shirky who is always entertaining isn't here. Dan Gilmour (a reporter) is going to present on Journalism. How is the Business of Journalism Changing?

Dan presented a view for "we media". Journalists are apparently learning the lesson all marketers do. The customer probably knows more and they may well check out the facts.

He sent us on a couple of missions - One story linking to Max Croyden who was quoted as a 15 year old but turns out to be 23. Max blogged from his phone. Quite a fuss made about it. Now just need a good discussion around phone camerad. They will have more impact.

Mitch Radcliffe asked Dan about ethics and an interesting discusion ensued. Apparently bloggers were paid by Microsoft to go to earlier conferences. sure Doc Searles will have the facts.

Notes from Dan's talk.

Dan Gillmor's Journalism 3.1b4

The exponential view of change is not changing. Old view of new media was refreshing the CNN homepage. This convergence then was superceded as "we media" became more clear in the aftermath of September 11th. Weblogs and personal media became vital. In the following days Dave Farbers newslist (get on it) next day we get the e-mail exchanges including international exchanges. Then we have something that bubbles up... Afgan letter, first as an e-mail then blogs, etc... on to national news.

New tools. Anyone can publish. The old for is like a lecture, the new form is more conversational. It's something more perhaps more like a seminar. Journalists of the future - Sherpa Guildes"? The people out there are now part of the discussion --- can now check the facts.

It's true for all journalists. New foundation principle. "My readers know more than I do." "The blog has helped my dead tree journalism."

Look up Max Croyden a 15 years old??? who blogged Supernova via phone yesterday. Apprarently great insights on a music conference. Check also Joi Ito's blog on moblogging. Next time in Tokyo moblogging will send the pictures through before the news feeds can ever get to it. Then journalists may get it!

Dan's paper will be put on line. We shall see.

Interesting audience development in terms of the ethics of disclosure raised by Mitch Radcliffe. What is the role with bloggers, and disclosure? Example exists on web around recent conference

From web services to distributed infastructure. Panel consisting of Brent Sleeper a consultant, Anne Thomas Manes (Author) Christian Gheorgh and Dick Hardt (Active State) who is doing interesting stuff (more later I hope).

Opening question for the panel. What does web services mean?

AM terrible name... middleware technologies.. it is application to application technology. XML is required. Protocols etc up to you. Reason you do it is to make things work together.

CG Marketing - When as web services, what is the impact of quality of the experience? Is it working for different touchpoints. What needs to happen in the context of one's interaction? Seems out of place

DH Web services is first a big a dream and the second is the manifestation of what is actually out there. Unfortuantely more limited. All real uses of Web Services are in the Enterprise. Probably not true either.

Less clear now what they all mean than before!

Interesting floor comments around Amazon and Technorati: They are looking at web services for an ongoing service. If any part breaks then there is no back-up. Larger social issue as web services develop when it becomes almost a utility. How do we make sure it is robust. How do we get reliability?

The focus of this session seems to be breaking down. Web services appears to have been a lousy definition for a number of years. Presume but don't know if people other than IT - Tech really want to know how to use these tools in integration environments. Falling into technical definitions. Can't I get an auto plug-in?

Rohit Khare --- In what one way should we believe that this web service will play out. --- Web services plumbing alone is not viable enough to change the software market.

Majors see opportunities around integrations. Thus MS and IBM are creating a position for it. Exciting when personal data get's in the cloud. The Hailstorm example. "stuff in the cloud" is the vision. Yet the room talks about plumbing. Stuff in the clouds is not a vision that consumers can act on. I've noted this speak in Radio. The cloud is not something we look forward too. Funny really, hear clouds.... think rain. Should consumers act on this? Note, check up on WSRP WSIA? Allow people to consume web services dynamically from a browser.

Not a highlight

The following panel should be interesting. With Dave Winer now on stage we should be in for something. Interesting thing is Weblogs are probably getting more than their fair share of attention. Many blogs going here. Clearly there is a need for a Webloggers Conference. The Trott's (Moveable Type) are also in the audience.

The Panel also includes Nick Denton, Meg Hourihan Apologies in advance for my paraphrasing.

KW --- Are the Weblogs the next platform? Are weblogs and web services the same things? (It's a little like asking GOD and diciples if the world will be made in seven days)

DW Weblogs are like the word processor, opening up writing for and to the web for everybody. Need to use tools that are very much like what you use today. He wants to ease the migration. There is a human reason why this needs to be done. (I think Dave hopes everyone will write.)

ND is it possible to publish online media at a much lower cost point. Online media is unfinished business. Weblogs provide one way to produce editorial property to move things out to the fringe.

MH How it can be transparent to the users. Still using it for a browser interface. What happens when we use phones, where ever we are? How does the content and the people come together. What's cooking is the "writable web" it took time... but now need to take to the next level.

KW Why should it go to the next level?

MH because people want to talk to their friends. ND there was a snowstorm in NY - the times ran other stories, but what peoople really wanted was pictures covered in snow. Digital cameras uploaded in an hour... good local coverage, DW adds... send me your pictures request.. like, art.. they flow in. News on west coast too. There were tools that let you build web pages. Weblog is like starting a mazazine. For a people that likes to write it is an advance. It is deceptively simple. Lot of trial n error, to get to where we are now. Continual process of evolution.

KW VC Based Question. Is this relevant? Tend to get two types of answers. One personal kind of martket and two will it expand it beyond?

ND already using at personal level using for outreach, small businessses marketing. Example Amazon affiliate site cool products, 1000 to write it and bringing in 5000-10000 per month. Pretty profitable small media enterprise. (I'd like to know the example).

DW this may be more like word procesors in the 80's. Who know what this industry looks like.... ND Tina Brown Talk magazine for a mag launch... 5 years and millions (50m?) before profitability. You can do a weblog for such a miniscule fraction of that?

KW Dave is this wp or hypercard? DW it is not going to happen. Quite a few products are here. MH Hope the buzz dies down. It is the format that you use on every page that needs the ongoing update. It won't go away. That's the way you format that kind of information.

Bob F: Tools make it possible to do a certain class of things much better.
Speaker as a user not interested how it got posted. Blog as a tone of voice.

MH Weblog is simply a format! Reverse chronological order... trackbacks.... comments etc.

RK If weblogging a platform? Are weblogs a platform? In what way is a drawing or writing tool as a platform.

DW There is some programability. Do bloggers see it as a platform? MT developers see it as a platform. ND Can you build other things on a weblog platform. KW What's missing? ND A great way to define the writer. Personalised news service. Is there a promise for building a personalised news system. Even define online dating service? MH How do you find all this stuff? How do you get to it? Information to people when they want it? GF As we get beyond monolithic, 95% men... there are anecdotal --- what can you find out? Look at livejournal.com (16 year old woman). KnowNExt?? DS, The first blog put up was tim berners lee. Links are something that are important. Blogs do a great job of linking.

KW Will the blogging community become the general population? Will it follow the same demographics Good or Bad?

ND The politics are very interesting. Will this be like talk radio? NICE METAPHOR. MH traffic, many start just to get connected with a small circle of friends. They might get more traffic. Lot of people forget how easy it is to see people out there. The photo blogs may well have a different impact. DW where many need to be informed. Can be very interesting.

KW in 5+ years from now. What % of people will be blogging out there.
ND There may be 10 times the number that are writing public. That is a pretty major change in western society. DW can pick it up on by structure, two by two style of writing... MR more people will be communicating in their own voice. In the future will the net be primarily a consumption mechanism or interaction? Where the edge is important.

KW You are the center of your publishing world. Where does it fit in the nature of 1 to 1 , 1 to many etc, aimed at small communities and a broad network? Not as urgent as an email. Also have a flame retardent built in. Each of these media change the way people behave. How does it differ. DW Weblogs demand respect. You have to listen to the person. If you choose to you can get it done despite MH thought of it as an IM to the world. Comment... doesn't demand response in the same way. MH thinking as sending it out... asynchonously. Different interaction. Has an off the cuff message. PW David you use it in the operation of your businees.. How does it work in collaborative work. We needed interfaces for webcontent management systems. 99, became a thing until itself. The instant outlining stuff... (next generation) in a few years will we have new ways for browings this stuff. Brent Simmonds... Phillip Person this idea that have a tool that can browse based on that assumption.

MH Starting pYra working in a living room wanted to share info, within a week made an internal weblog called stuff. Ten most recent entries. Had a space we worked together, rem day... lisitings to helped to build this corporate culture, so they started running this weblog on the frontpage on the site. Send via a check box. Then it became blogger. CD the thing that makes it interesting, blogging allows people to write that have never written before. Despite demographics. How use for business. Numerous examples who because of the informality (homeless guy in philly that has a blog) so speeds up the feedback loop with the public services. In santa monika found out the showers... were opening too late. At EFF needed vetting by lawyers, it was too late, blog a para at the time, killed the standards setting effort that they had spent 20m on!.... Friend paid to blog. but he emails in the stories to the magazines.

DW it slips in looks like a printer on a budget. Enable people to get the job done!

"Windblogs", pontificating... the mass market doesn't care as much. However there is great potential for tribes, but need semantics for searching.

KW one two or three new tools... What's next? AGAIN ASKING!

MH want push for weblogs. and capability to rank. eg some stuff on a phone. Whole system to my context to me and when I think it is important.
DS wants search on blog. Google misses alot. not enough.
DWeinberger Blog threads... Trackback is helping not there. Topic Server?
ND Wants a news onepage of that item day hour etc. Locate myself within a social network, 1 -2 -3 degrees out recommending things to me.

This last thought is interesting. It reflects that bloggers really are doing it because they want to learn faster! However, I've not heard anyone say... it accelerates learning. Yet I know if I ask Dave, Doc, Dan et all they would agree. Blogging needs more "learning" aspects --- measures etc and more listing capabilities. Blogging Instrumentation needs developing. Similarly and I must return to it. Blogging has no formal market research going on around it.

Sergey Brin turned this into a wonderfully frank conversation. It's no wonder they are killing (killed) all the other search engines. Their strategic intent is clear.

KW What is google?

The truth is that it is a search engine coming out of Stanford plus hacks on. Not a lot of strategic reasons. Eg Googles groups. One engineer just got excited and put together. That's the way things happen. There is a search component to almost everything we do.

KW What's your sense of how you got to where you are today? Google is essential. Not the first. What is it?

It's a surprise to me how much people rely on Google. Larry & I use search a lot. We had a frustration, continue to be involved and want great search for ourselves. Bring our user empathy to the fore. Unlike some of our competitors who have moved from their calling. Presume he means Yahoo.

Gooogle API came about -- to make it easier to use in applications. Now there are thousands of applications out ther using it. Now we have registered users for screen scrapers etc?

The web API is no business model. Currently limit the number of queries. Fundamentally want to see what people develop. Example Plagiarism detection. An app submitted and then checks to see if this document already existed. Then there is a spell check plug in. All done with Google.

MC How and if I sort on images.... Will Google associate images with.... the way people write is not the way people read. Can you make the technology better, what is this image really about. Finding pictures because no key words attached to them. In other object structures, ... Usually some text that discusses the image. There will be an easier time to start finding them.

DW... Will Google always be centralized? Google for the desktop? The pricey client currently $25000 and up. Google for Desktop --- want to be able to search from everywhere. It depends on how you do it! Technical challenges...

By taking the Google API can then index the blog etc. Is it recentcy issue. Freshness issue. May be a larger problem. CD too much GOOGLE juice. What about more frequent updates. What would the the adoption be.. Consensus it would be widely adopted. Weblogs... Link.

Suicide searches. Example of the responsibility that must stay with the searchers. Will be sites out there where rankings changes. More important that the right information is there. Sometimes we show tests. Repeat user tests.

We want to index as much as possible. Data behind certain sorts of databases where the info isn't quite available, or simply not online. Want to bring it there.

DI How is Eric Schmidt doing? SG He went to Burning Man! Great cultural fit. Hang out together. More co's should look at the cultural fit and make sure you find someone that really melds there.

CD Does anyone at Google think about how the world is reorganizing / rebuilidng itself around the GOOGLE?

Nice to reconnect with David here. He's just returned from New Zealand where he was working with Citylink in Wellington a small broadband wireless provider. Yesterday I was asking him about bundling telephone, cable, and broadband access from a consumer perspective. We may have to wait for that answer. So I’m looking forward to his update " Why Stupid is Still Smart". Many moons ago we had a great conversation around his paper "Stupid Networks". My argument then as it would be now.... Can’t we apply this same logic to companies? "Stupid Companies are really Smart".

This turned out to be one of the best talks of the day. Of course I was tuned in before. David had his screensaver playing pictures of NZ as we walked in after lunch. Yet finally we were looking at something tangible. David showed us wire that goes in the ground. It has last mile potential. So small and powerful I can have the equivalent of a city exchange in my house in a few years and they don’t even need to dig up the streets.

But take a look at the VOIP example POCKET PRESSENCE and GLOBAL IP SOUND. I you are like me and already use IM to talk direct internationally, then say goodbye to telecom profits with this one!

DI "Most of the important applications haven't been discovered yet. We are really in the green screen era." Now that's a radical thought about POTS!

KW Stupid Networks remain current. Years after it was first written. David will frame from a network perspective.

Detailed notes -- paraphasing David's comments:

DI. Conduits in the ground are infrastructure. Nice modules etc yet it is not infrastructure. It's POTS is still really important and the future for it really uncertain. Headline TELSTRA in slump as PM stalls sell-off. Telco's all over the world are struggling find themselves in hurt city. Verizon, SBC and Bell South, and Qwest...? Qwest is not an exception. It is the first sign of serious trouble. Customer Calling card from Australia. $10. Called Japan put on hold maybe have a few minutes left. Talked for 45-50 minutes. Still had $7.79 cents left. DISTANCE IS DEAD FOLKS. Except where is being held back by regulation or government intervention. 2.9 cents Aust. to call the US. In Japan the news was standing in subway giving away 12mb adsl modems Yahoo BB has gained one million customers from April 2002 to Sept 2002. First Million. now 1.3m In Japan now there are 5m adsl subscribers. In Japan there are 120k fiber to the home vs 50k in the US. Lots of growth! In Japan this growth is on a steep slope. Cost of customer acquisition makes me cringe. Was an old business model just like with with quest. was good for us folks. The fact regardless of the business model they are snapping them up and using them for $15 per month!

The future has arrived it is not just evenly distributed yet! Small co called Global IP Sound. In Pocket Presence there’s Microsoft pocket PC operating system Vanilla 802.11b all in an internet shrink wrapped telephone application and it sounds better than PSTN. Better than toll quality speech. NO TELCO in this model! When the standard vanilla Internet become more useful than the Telco the cash cow goes away. ? Who then runs the network?

What is SIP? What http did for documents SIP is going to do for phone systems! Picture of the "the intelligent network” the best network today is the stupid network that supplies simply connections but no services, Instead service are created by smart network-enabled products. It becomes the connectivity piece for your application designed for any network application.

New cable fiber options coming for the home. Will be easy to light it at a gigabit! In two or 3 years each of us may be able to have the bandwidth of the company... Benefits of Moore’s law are being held back by the telephone companies. Depreciation for Telco’s are holding us back. 5 years depreciation. Assume the bean counters assuming it will be replaced in 5 years. From bicycle to rocket in a qualitative change. Fourth trajectory required. It doesn't scale to anyone’s law. It becomes a new Engineering effort. This means we have to ride the things that do scale and keep the future network simple and stupid.

The major action is the end-to-end principle. David Read, et all conceived of it earlier. If you can do something at the ends don't do it in the middle. That preserves your options. Internetworking shifts control from the network owner to the end users. The Internet says take the features and put them at the edges. Internet's job says ignore network specific differences. (e.g. call waiting - cool features don't confer advantage to the owner of a network.

Telephony intelligent way wires network - service - vertically integrated. In the end-to-end way it is just a shrink wrapped application in an 802.11 connections. There are now a whole lot of new connections that came along with the network. email ecommerce, audio instant messaging , blogging etc. Most of the important applications haven't been discovered yet. We are really in the green screen era.

Old version new business model. They charged for voice applications. In the Smart Network model the potential for a vibrant marketplace exists around applications, data, voice, and ideal anything. The network layer Internet Protocol is a commons. The big question is what the business operating model in the physical layer designed for anything digital. What do you do with who runs this?? Who is best to run this?

Not the telephone co. Difficult to make the transition from the vertical model to the horizontal model. Sailing to Steam ships. Even though much was shared. The method of propulsion killed all the sailing ship lines. This is a bigger transition.

Will it be the cable co? Maybe in this country. Not elsewhere. They have better options. They unfortunately own the current information paradigm. Not sure them it’s them,

Municipalities? Own fiber netwroks 125 cos.
Utilities?
New kind os cos Stokad??? 3 years to put fiber in Stockholm.
Customers?

There are politics in the decisions. Remember Goliath Lost.

Ross Mayfield. Trading bandwidth as a monopoly. Rights of use agreements. The basic thing is SDNA highest relative to any industry. It is not prepared to operate leanly , as a utility. Will require brand new co's co's coming in. By offering different services. There is a model there. DI only one.

MR Need for identity - framework for decentralized environment. How can we not have servers with directories of information to propagate the system? DI Server is really at the edge of the network. Don’t need to own the wires to own a server. Just an application running at the edge of the network.

Thought provoking and a useful update; the telecoms are in real trouble.

The conference is wrapping up. Positive crowd. It's surpassed my usual criteria... one great idea / insight and at least 5 new connections. Those thoughts will wait for some more reflective time.

A great group of people here. The decentralised future remains challenging. Be thankful if you are not working for a large telecom. Embrace Wi-Fi. There are clear government issues and yet this group has not yet built a consumer case, whether for innovation, spectrum or costs. Rules of law, property, digital rights, implications for digital identity need more commentary. Particularly as I believe technology will just run round them.

We require a more reporting on metrics - from David's cable example to blogs hotspots etc. We should open up the social discussion around access and learn from third world structures. Ultimately it's consumers that will flip the communications infrastructure. The presure is coming. Whether from 15 year olds, spam, high communications costs, new products etc. Some consumer research is required. Is there a dynamic segmentation round blogs? Who's really explored IM behavior? More granularity is required. Gamer Segments?

It is big! The methods and means we use to communicate are undergoing the most radical change since the move from morse code to the telephone. The disruption is much larger than the move from the LP to the CD or mainframe to PC. That to me is what is really at issue here. "How we communicate, socialise, connect, interact. Decentralization can take us into a world of business models, structures, networks, plumbing etc. Infrastructure clearly is what makes it what it is....

And that's not what people buy! Or how marketers can market. Enterprise solutions aren't how you talk to them. Vision can take us into a world where reputations, trust, access, exchanges - simply people come alive. Always on mobility will be a given. Let's enrich the experience. Perhaps Sony, Nokia, EA Arts? Like IM there are a whole lot of new products that will move into the workplace. BLOGS is just an example.

That brings me to my final thought for now. I mentioned in the blogging piece that no one mentioned they do it to "accelerate learning". In a decentralized world with so much brain power in the room we need to set aside a portion of the time to rub heads in an "OPEN SPACE" style forum. There are also additional opportunities to connect people in new ways. Some bloggers did. The friction points in the room could have easily prototyped some new solutions. We should ask for ideas and enable them to be prototyped!

KW wrap... conference is a starting point. What haven't we talked about enough here? What might we talk about in the future.

Government and Digital Identity. What we haven't learned.

Mechanisms for connecting in a decentralized world. The schema...

Centralized vs Decentralized theme and understanding the pivot points. Things you never want to centralize. What are they?

What are the economic reasons for decentralising? A way for different people to pay for the whole thing? As a business model?

More resolution on the categories of infrastructure..
Business models, what is it creating the ability to create all this stuff at the edge? Organizational models for decentralised centralised

SIP, Instant Messaging and .....
Grid Computing ... Lack of discussion
INSIDE The firewall ... why is it such a hassle. Grass roots tech in the enterprise...

DRM vs Fair Use.

Consumer Electronics and non PC devices... eg Cameras.

KW We know the internet has changed the world. Our task going forward is to explain it!

Nice post by Renee Hopkins: IdeaFlow - Creativity & Innovation

As she puts it a nice docking maneuver between two metaphors. "Collective Creativity" and "Edge Power". Note the references to Amazon's and Google's recent web services efforts. These will have unintended consequences. Let's hope Amazon really opens up their profiling capability. It would make them much more adaptive longterm.

Elsewhere she notes: But that’s not really the way blog creativity works. The blogosphere is more like a big pool of ideas - we toss new ideas, and re-thought ideas that we've pulled out before with our poles and nets. In other words, collective creativity.

That's incentive enough. Time to throw out some new ideas and explore new avenues.

Sharing Knowledge - Respecting Culture I've keep checking up on Tom's blogging experiment. Combine what Peter says below with Tom's thoughts:

We learned how terribly crucial it is to remember that people bring a lot of their behaviour, their assumptions, and their needs to 'new things.' Bringing new technologies to people is easy. The delightful challenge is making sure those technologies mesh with how people really do things, how they interact, how they learn --

Peter Merholz made a nice Supernova observation after John Parkinson referenced burning through $1b in collaborative tools and KM that failed to live up to promises.

His post is similar to David Isenberg's thrusts... Why Stupid is Still Smart" which updated his original paper "Stupid Networks". My argument then as it would be now.... Can’t we apply this same logic to companies? "Stupid Companies are really Smart". A stupid company implies empowerment, connectivity, and filtering at the end points.... not centralised or hierarchical.

The contrast with KM systems is useful. For few KM systems work P2P (Groove does), unless we start including whiteboards, supersized post-its and more.

Stupid Smart Companies don't invest in the KM systems referenced in Peter's review. They do invest in creative friction. It's called rubbing heads together. Asking better questions that accelerate learning.

This contrasts with most KM systems which are repositories for capturing knowledge that has been made explicit. The argument is that explicit knowledge can be multiplied thus trapping it gives it value.

Here's an old story tracing back to an oil company with a large KM investment. They had spent lots of time working out who the experts were and who had the answer. There was a large oil drilling fire. No one knew how to put it out. Their system said "Joe" knows... The screen blinked "Joe" for days... he was on vacation..... Joe couldn't help them put the fire out, and finally they put the fire out themselves.

Clearly linking to the person with the answer didn't help. They needed to link it to what he knows. And that is one of the dilemmas. Individual currency. Codify expertise and then??? Not everyone responds with.... ah that will provide new opportunities... Yet codification has a role too.

Stupid companies have the capability to trap - capture - nuture items at the periphery that traditional smart companies can not touch. Fundamentally highly structured co's can only learn as fast as their core. Whereas our Stupid Company can learn much more rapidly driven from the fringe.

Technology Review - December 4, 2002

As Gerd Kortuem, an assistant professor at Lancaster University in England, sees it, the crowds who surround us every day constitute a huge waste of social capital. If you live in a city for instance, there are many who pass within a few yards of you each day who could give you a ride home, buy an item you're trying to sell, or consider you as dating material. Dynamic networking makes it possible to tap those resources through a momentary alliance among transient interest groups. But in a world of wireless wearables, computers embedded in clothing could form networks on the fly, prompting software agents to carry out mutually beneficial transactions

Following the Lego post yesterday I'll state that companies don't need "Lego Serious Play". What they need is great strategic facilitation.

3d modelling is neat, draw out of it real-time stories and that's better still. Lego is a prop - a tool for illiciting the stories. The strategies emerge from the discussion, the search for clarity, common understandings. For my two cents, it's too easy to draw the wrong conclusions from Lego models. Lego is simply too structured. Better to use clay, more mouldable, messy, more suitable to complex ideas, more intuitive, and tactile to boot. So if Lego Serious Play is really encourages us to think with our hands. Then follow it with a more maleable tool kit. Tools don't make strategies --- people do!

This example was facilitated by a friend of mine. Now think Lego. Which will provide more emergent insight?

My thanks to Christian Hauk and compleXimple for the insight. Chris responded to the Group Jazz session and the Discovery Capital pyramid:

"really don´t like the pyramid as a metaphor too much. It seems to me that you are thinking networked, but that you live in a world where others - your clients - need pyramids."

My clients generally need pyramid busters, and busting pyramids probably accelerates learning. So there is no excuse for using a Pyramid around Discovery Capital. It's wrong! Yet even when wrong sharing it created a new insight for me. I may have been thinking building blocks at the time. When thinking spiraling innovation triangular and pyramid metaphors clearly aren't the right ones.

Christian comments:
1. On my office wall, I startet collecting metaphoric models of pyramids in a business environment, with all these nice words in and around. I stopped, thery are all so similar.
2. about half of what is to be said about pyramids is written in Terry Pratchett´s book pyramids
3. about "the pyramid and the net": this link is about biblical studies, but ignoring that, one get´s a really good comparison of the shapes.

Tom blogs today about Geocachingis an entertaining adventure game for gps users with a device and a hunger for adventure. There are caches in 156 countries.

While Euanprovides a link to Geourl a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you.

Do I need a new sense of direction?