Lunch with David Crow

Boarding the cluetrain is one thing. Getting your clients to board another. And then there is the whole matter of staying on. A couple clicks from now you may find yourself behind it, watching its taillights fade. Then you turn around and there it is again, about to run you over (”We are watching. But we are not waiting”). This whole 24/7-participatory-attention-intention-economy-slash-Me2-revolution can be scary. But it doesn’t have to be.

That’s why it is always good to talk to people who’ve been riding the cluetrain for a while. Last week David Crow (bio) came to High Road for a lunch discussion. We had a great discussion about blogging, Web 2.0 and his adventures in unconferencing. Thanks again, David!

Since David started TorCamp/BarCamp/DemoCamp in Toronto, the number of DemoCamp participants, for example, have increased from 26 in December 2005 to 151 in March 2006. Clearly, David and his fellow organizers are on to something.

Based on all the grassroots enthusiasm out there, the mesh conference in Toronto seems to become another success story; one blogger suggests that it may have even helped push the professional event management firm for Syndicate Canada to cancel their conference.

The same principle that has made blogging popular and forced traditional media to incorporate new online features into their offering, also seems to change event management: the participatory model has become a hit. While I doubt that the old top-down organization of conferences will die out any time soon, it will make other tech conferences continue to re-think their approach.

Many bloggers, including David, have debated what makes a good conference and what makes un-conferences different or better, so I won’t repeat it all here.

But during our discussion David mentioned the rise of sponsorship and support enquiries for BarCamp/DemoCamp [Disclaimer: High Road offered to host one of the Barcamp/DemoCamp events]. It will be interesting to watch how much - if any - ‘commercialization’ they will agree on and what kind of changes Barcamp/DemoCamp will undergo when continued growth turns this startup idea into a mature event series.

‘Commercial grassroots’ events are not necessarily a bad idea. The key is the participatory element where people can help decide what they will see and how they get the most out of a conference. The mesh conference, for example, has a blog and - thanks to David - a wiki where people can provide their input and exchange ideas and information before the conference.

The new model is all about participation and engaging in conversations, and that includes new approaches to conferences. As long as long as particpation means more than banter between soap boxes, and those conversations actually contribute to better outcomes, I’m all for it. 

Don’t be afraid, upgrade to simplicity! - Ars Electronica 2006

Simplicity is the theme of this year’s Festival Ars Electronica which is held from August 31 to September 5 in Linz, Austria. A blog about the festival program will be launched in May. Last year’s festival featured 450 particpating artists and scientists from around the world, and 33,000 vistors came.

The challenge of the future will be to make complexity comprehensible and manageable. Thus, simplicity in a positive sense means developing intelligent strategies to facilitate access to technologies, to make them more convenient, and to enable users to see what actually happens with the information moving through them.

Gerfried Stocker, artistic director, Ars Electronica

What is the quality of all this knowledge?

What do you think about blogs and wikis?

I think, in principal, it is good because people share information and share knowledge, which I think is always good. The question is, however, what is the quality of all this knowledge? This is something I watch from a distance. Somebody has to be accountable. If it becomes too much into the areas where it is critical for customers, then I think it is better that they rely on the office resources.

SAP CEO Henning Kagermann in The Brains behind SAP (via CNET News.com)

What is innovation?

“Innovation is, first and foremost, a business philosophy — that’s the message that must be sent to Canadian businesses. Change the workplace culture first, otherwise your IT investment achieves little. Innovation is little more than a buzzword if you can’t see that.”

ITworldcanada.com’s Dan McLean on innovation in When bad practices happen to good IT concepts

Pandora vs. Radio Paradise

After reading about it on Mark Evans’ blog, I’ve been trying out Pandora for a few days. It is a great idea to let listeners create their own music radio station based on their favourite artist(s) and then provide recommendations of ’similar’ music. 

The intelligence behind the recommendation engine is still a work in progress, though. For example, how I got from my selections Buffalo Tom and Heather Nova to a recommendation of Def Leppard is still a mystery to me.

I did like some of the songs Pandora came up with and it is definitely a site I will return to. But Radio Paradise is still my favourite Internet radio station. Bill and Rebecca at Radio Paradise put together a program that I prefer to my own Pandora selections. They have introduced me to many artists that were new to me, and some of them I would have never come across on my own - even with a recommendation program.

Maybe it is a little bit like the chess matches between Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue. It is fascinating to see what technology can do. But I always wanted Kasparov to win. When it comes to Internet radio, I’m still in Bill and Rebecca’s corner.

mesh Moments of Fame

The mesh conference organizers have introduced a new event segment for “entrepreneurs, start-ups and do-gooders with great stories“. Submit your written pitch here and you may get the chance to present your idea/venture for five minutes on stage at the conference. Three people per conference day. Neat idea. Before you submit your elevator pitch, you could test it first with this web service.

Opportunities for IT Vendors

According to an IDC 2005 survey of medium and large businesses that is mentioned in IDC Canada’s April 2006 IT Matters newsletter, 70 per cent of large companies agreed that they’d be “open to dealing with new IT vendors”. That’s good news for vendors who are trying to get their foot in the door with Canadian enterprises.

My guess is that the openness varies considerably depending on which part of the IT system the new vendor is targeting and how big the pain is that the solution addresses. IDC says that “addressing less glamorous business challenges” may help close the sale.

JAlbum update

I love JAlbum. I downloaded it a few weeks ago because I wanted a better way to put photos on my website. Now I finally got around to trying it out. It is a fantastic program. And it is free (users can donate money if they like). JAlbum comes with the option of choosing different skins for the albums, and there is a whole “ecosystem” of people who design skins.

I have used the Fotoplayer skin for my new galleries (to see an example click here). Fotoplayer.com has a free trial version and can be upgraded to a Lite version and a Pro version, which even includes online shop capabilities for professional photographers. For a snapshot photographer like me, the trial version is enough, although I may upgrade to Lite at some point.

I keep reading about Flickr and Bubbleshare, which are easy to use and have great blog integration. What I like about JAlbum are the features, flexibility and design options. Blog integration would be nice. The Fotoplayer skin already comes with an RSS feed, so who knows what features may get added next. I also like that I can keep the photos on my own website, and don’t have to store them on Flickr or Bubbleshare. But I can see the attraction of their services. Now if the people behind Fotoplayer and JAlbum got together and offered a hosted online version… well, just a thought.

The Web has doubled in size since 2003

According to Netcraft’s April web server survey, there are 80 million hostnames on the Internet now. This means the number has doubled since reaching 40 million in April 2003.

(via heise.de) 

Links of note - April 7

Do PR people need new media skills? - Good post by Tom Murphy on “what skills and knowledge do practitioners need to effectively communicate with their audience(s) using traditional and new media tools”.

Media Relations Measurement System launching - David Jones announces the launch of a new “Media Relations Rating Points system” in Toronto on April 20. The system has been created by by the National Measurement Committee of the Canadian Public Relations Society. More info will be available on the new MRP blog.