Category: AlwaysOn

There was an amazing, emergent effect at the AlwaysOn conference this week. Although the conference was set up in the “traditional” conference format (talking heads on stage, audience in neat, supplicating rows), there was a balancing factor between the two groups. Perhaps, actually, it was more than a “balancing” factor…it turned the “balance of power” in favor of the participants.

Take a look over at Denise Howell’s photo over to the right. See the HUGE screen, stage left? That was a live text chat, consisting of people both inside the room and from around the world who were “participating” in the conference via the streamed webcast. Sometimes the commentary, floating above the heads of the folks on stage, was civil. To whit:

Chris Heuer: a bad strategy – mostly because we are bad at storytelling and getting the people behind our casue – but this is changing with the blogosphere

mike symmetry: NOW WE’RE GETTING SOMEWHERE!!!!

Lisa: ok – so this is what I was talking about in tems of being disatisfied with having my options limited by the entertainment chain of power

Ed Daniel: everyone should read Lawence Lessig’s the future of ideas

disrupter: THIS IS SMART PAY ATTENTION

(from here)

Then again, sometimes the chat was less-than-civil. This, from the opening panel on Wednesday night that went awry:

Chris Heuer: you know, we could always start talking about innovation between ourselves and not get into flamable conversations

PA: change the questions!

Tom: yet we wont attacck North Korea will we?

Doctoro: Please bring up subjects common to silicon valley and uncommon to cable news.

x: innovation summit?

whats going on:: okay..if on politics..

Allan: Wait, wasn’t Shock and Awe(TM) innovation?

(from here)

By the second day of the conference, the chat became as much of a participant in the conference as the individuals on stage and seated in the room. And, wisely, Tony and the moderators chose not to control it, but instead embraced it.

As expected, some of the very public comments were spot-on, many were snarky, some were downright rude. But they were there, a part of the event. The Fourth Wall had been not broken, but obliterated.

One challenge with the chat, however, was that it was pseudonymous (was that really Ray Kurzweil asking Bill Joy a question via the chat window? If it was a good question, does it matter? What if it was asked by Ramona?). This seemed to allow more incendiary ranting than would have taken place in a face-to-face situation, or even in a situation where someone needed to stand by their words in perpetuity (say in the case of a blog by a named author). Although some of the comments were perhaps inappropriate, the words on the wall added an element of reality to the conference, a check-and-balance that wasn’t afraid to call B.S. when the folks on stage were perceived to be acting below-board. (The folks on stage knew this was happening when the chuckles would roll through the audience in response to a particularly sharp riposte on the screen.)

And, judging by the number of people commenting on this, I hope this meme continues to spread, and becomes integrated into conferences across the board. Web 2.0, indeed.

Liveblogging the blogging panel…

Dan Gillmor: “Blogs are a proxy for something bigger. Increasingly, media that are not text will be included.”

Gillmor, cont’d: The issue is that we need to find the “good stuff,” and not go through 500 slashdot comments, or thousands of pictures of the London bombings.

David Sifry, on London bombings: Access via blogs was key. There aren’t enough journalists to get there, to get there in a timely manner and once the area was shut down to gain access.

Sifry, cont’d: Other powerful feature of blogs was that people who were near the area on 7/7 (and today) could post “I’m ok.” When the phone lines were down, relatives and friends could find out that people were alright through a parallel mechanism.

Gillmor, on Blogging and PR: “PR is a lot more than just dealing with the press…if you have to have conversations with your various constituencies.”

Allen Morgan: “You can use blogs to have conversations with your customers.”

Rich Karlgaard: “Blogs are also important with respect to product development.” Also, quoted a great story about an airline company that is being forced to address a set of product issues that were initially denied, but were brought out due to blogs (a la the Kryptonite example).

Sifry, quoting David Weinberger: “PR is no long ‘public relations,’ but now ‘public relationships.'”

Sifry: We get our best feature ideas from our users.

Ned Desmond: Editors are a tyrrannical force in the print world, but now are wanting to blog. Also are now running PopWatch, the writers love it, they can’t stop posting, and the audience loves it, sometimes getting 100 comments in an hour.

Gillmor: Protections should not cover “journalists,” and not cover “bloggers,” but should cover “journalistic acts.”

Tony Perkins: People own their words in the blogosphere, and are representing themselves. Blogs are opinion…and so are newspapers.

Sifry: The NYTimes brand stands for something, so does Forbes, so does Glenn Reynolds. “I pretty much know where the slant is.”

Desmond: Bloggers as reporter. Three top stories…Trent Lott. Dan Rather. Christmas in Cambodia, all moved by bloggers.

Gillmor: Has begun to dislike the word “objectivity.” Dropped it in favor of four other words: thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, and transparency. If those things are met, readers/viewers can get a view as to what’s going on.

Sifry: Number of blogs can’t keep doubling every five months…there aren’t that many people. What is more interesting is the number of posts. What’s going to matter is attention…we all have 24 hours in a day, whether you’re Bill Gates or a Masai warrior. Additionally, blogging brings accountability to the author; you have to back up your words the next day.

Morgan: Remember, everything you write lives forever. Looking out 30 years, everything kids are written today will be discoverable.

Karlgaard: This will increase our knowledge base. The business model will be for the aggregators of this information.

Gillmor: The ecosystem that is being created around media is underway. The persistence of what we say…it’s not just text…but we’re building a surveillance society. One outcome, if we’re lucky, we’ll have a society where we’ll learn to cut each other some slack. We’ll not hold against a future President what she wrote on her weblog in high school.

Perkins: I think if big media is smart, in the future they’ll see their journalism as a “first post” and a “best guess”…and when the readers interact, big media will adjust.

CEO Pitch winners just announced.

Winner
PeerFlix
http://www.peerflix.com/

Trading platform for trading DVDs amongst users…no rentals. Very cool…a socially-driven version of NetFlix, but at 99cents per DVD. Depending on your movie watching volume, may be cheaper than NetFlix (perhaps significantly so). Neat idea.

Runners Up

Application Security
http://www.appsecinc.com/

Blue Lithium
http://www.bluelithium.com/

A gem that was nearly obfuscated by George Gilder’s rantings yesterday.

“The concept that you can be successful by pushing things on the customer is doomed. The user becomes the producer.”

The Long Tail is the embodiment of “life after television.” Customers don’t want choice…they want their FIRST choice. A first choice culture is superior to a multiple choice culture, or a least-common-denominator culture (like television).

“TV stultifies its viewers, and kills itself. Book culture, and blog culture, can reproduce itself.”

When he’s not talking utter crazy-talk, he’s spot-on.

Sitting on the floor at the packed-to-the-gills AlwaysOn conference next to Doc, who is also blogging away. Bill Joy is up on stage, being interviewed by Steve Jurvetson.

Joy is talking through his six “modalities” of the web. These include:

• The “near” web…your desktop computer.
• The “far” Web…simple interaction through a remote control device, e.g. on interactive TV
• The “here” Web…mobile Internet devices
• The “weird” Web…voice and presence activated devices, such as door that opens on your command
• The eCommerce Web
• The “pervasive computing” Web

Although Joy’s been talking about these items, broadly, for a while, the distinctions still seem to hold. In the near term, mobile devices such as the Treo are going to be the most ubiquitous applications of the web…the “here” web is it, according to Joy.