DISQUS

Great point Andrew! This is critical to me, that what so many people that come from a traditional media/marketing/PR background do not understand is that part of the reason that people meet online is that they want to meet great people in real life!

People want to meet each other around their shared passions and then take action, which is its own reward and which creates a new incentive to take another action.

How does Brand fit into this? Well, Brand can hope to enable and get some of the afterglow to rub off on it. Otherwise, it is probably just getting in the way.

Great piece Amrita! The perspective of an artist-creator is one that inspires me, because of the way an artist engages with the world - not as a supplicant, but as an agent of change, with intent. Finding that perspective means finding something inside oneself together with a curiosity about the world that is unique and personal. Your post has me thinking about artists and social media creators as both engaged in acts of meaning-making. Thanks for the stimulus!

This is great news! Congratulations to Alex and Ali. I've been waiting for some smart startups to bridge the social web world with traditional media. Great model!

This is great news! Congratulations to Alex and Ali. I've been waiting for some smart startups to bridge the social web world with traditional media. Great model!

Fascinating correlation and thank you for sharing the Burnett TED video link. He is a provocative, passionate and entertaining speaker.

Great post David. What is interesting to me is how technology and social movements in general appear to be co-evolving, locked in a dance with no apparent control centre. I think Paul Hawkens' ideas (Blessed Unrest, http://www.wiserearth.org/) are important here, which I wrote about recently.

The starfish of the Open Web movement mirrors that of other global social, economic and environmental justice movements. There is no central control, no unifying ideology; only a set of values and a complex, decentralized network of humans who hold those values and collaborate (sometimes explicitly, sometimes serendipitously) to solve practical problems of human need, usually with the intent (expressed or implicit) of dispersing pathological concentrations of power.

Taking these lessons and applying them here, I think that attempts by individuals to create an ideology out of this decentralized movement will fail. I also think it is unrealistic for believers to expect any one organization to take on a central role organizing a set of values, beliefs, standards, technologies, products and ideas as complex as those we could wrap up in the term the "Open Web".

I'm sympathetic to Chris' hopes and dreams for what Mozilla could be. But maybe we all need to take a step back, try to see the bigger pattern of what is emerging, and realize that there are many strategic points of influence in our movement(s).

Great post Jevon! This is absolutely critical - we will not ever BE Silicon Valley. We have to stop making Silicon Valley = success. We are BECOMING us, the question is how to make US more successful. In a knowledge economy, we need to respect the cultural and creative resources of our age - our people. It is for this reason we are sometimes frustrated at the lack of engagement with community demonstrated by our institutions. Keep up the good work at StartupNorth!

Great post Jevon! This is absolutely critical - we will not ever BE Silicon Valley. We have to stop making Silicon Valley = success. We are BECOMING us, the question is how to make US more successful. In a knowledge economy, we need to respect the cultural and creative resources of our age - our people. It is for this reason we are sometimes frustrated at the lack of engagement with community demonstrated by our institutions. Keep up the good work at StartupNorth!

I too have been completely enthralled by this speech. I read it. Listened to it on my iPod. Watched the YouTube (>1.6 million views!). Read the reactions.
The words "universal president" popped into my mind today. Your description of him as "conduit" is apt. Can an individual tap the energies of diverse communities of interest, identity and ideology and actually channel them towards real change? It is remarkable, inspiring and motivating for anybody that thinks about social change and the possibility of progress.

Michele Perras and I were talking about this last night. Michele was concerned by the tone, particularly of the pile-on on Toronto TechWeek. As an event co-producer (ICE08), she felt the sting that any event organizer feels from criticism. I argue that this level of passion is not only good, but necessary. Something is at stake when passions flare. Canadians tends to shy away from open conflict, preferring to save criticism for passive-aggressive backchannel conversations. To me, bringing conflict out in the open is a critical step in shifting the conversation, of actually taking on some really important questions.

So pile on everyone! Comment, be angry, give praise, get engaged, don't be silent. Fear not for giving or receiving offense. Fear only passivity and the mediocrity it engenders.

Michele Perras and I were talking about this last night. Michele was concerned by the tone, particularly of the pile-on on Toronto TechWeek. As an event co-producer (ICE08), she felt the sting that any event organizer feels from criticism. I argue that this level of passion is not only good, but necessary. Something is at stake when passions flare. Canadians tends to shy away from open conflict, preferring to save criticism for passive-aggressive backchannel conversations. To me, bringing conflict out in the open is a critical step in shifting the conversation, of actually taking on some really important questions.

So pile on everyone! Comment, be angry, give praise, get engaged, don't be silent. Fear not for giving or receiving offense. Fear only passivity and the mediocrity it engenders.

I've been using GigPark from time to time during the beta, and found it really useful and relevant. For the indie/freelance/free agent type, we need all the good professional services we can get, and GigPark has proven its value.

Smart implementation, fueled by rockstar programmer Paul Dowman's code and a really nice design sensibility.

I've been using GigPark from time to time during the beta, and found it really useful and relevant. For the indie/freelance/free agent type, we need all the good professional services we can get, and GigPark has proven its value.

Smart implementation, fueled by rockstar programmer Paul Dowman's code and a really nice design sensibility.

Thanks for the link David! (Unfortunately as I write this Stikipad, the TransitCamp wiki host, is down. Hope it comes up soon.)

Benton's question is a very good one. I would argue that it is an organizational question for the public agency rather than for the community. Innovation needs freedom for play as a starting point. Ideas are free, execution is hard and is the job of professionals.

Great post by Will Pate. In policy jargon, it's called "competitive intensity" and you need more of it to create the conditions for innovation and commercialization success in a global market. As Michael commented on my recent post on the subject of Canadian innovation culture, we're both coddled by a nanny government and operate within a business climate ruled by an entitled cadre of UCC graduates used to being big fish in a small pond. It's myopic and provincial and it's fast becoming unsustainable.

As the global economy switch gets flipped to recession, those economies that nurture the mammals scurrying in the underbrush are those that are best positioned to adapt and remain resilient during the accelerating change of so-called "hypercapitalism".

Great post by Will Pate. In policy jargon, it's called "competitive intensity" and you need more of it to create the conditions for innovation and commercialization success in a global market. As Michael commented on my recent post on the subject of Canadian innovation culture, we're both coddled by a nanny government and operate within a business climate ruled by an entitled cadre of UCC graduates used to being big fish in a small pond. It's myopic and provincial and it's fast becoming unsustainable.

As the global economy switch gets flipped to recession, those economies that nurture the mammals scurrying in the underbrush are those that are best positioned to adapt and remain resilient during the accelerating change of so-called "hypercapitalism".

Amazing work last night! There was a lot of excitement in that room - it was buzzing from a cluster of really significant announcements. Congratulations!

Amazing work last night! There was a lot of excitement in that room - it was buzzing from a cluster of really significant announcements. Congratulations!

Bravo! This should be a regular feature: silicon valley corporate hissy fits in gurl-talk. Love it.

Great post. You raise the essential question: should/can an OSS enterprise open source its strategy?

My gut tells me that (in at least some circumstances like the Mozilla case) open sourcing strategy may be a way to optimally balance impact, legitimacy and long-run sustainability in the context of an adapting competitive threat and evolving community aspirations.

My gut also says that such a prospect is terrifying to employees of the enterprise for many legitimate reasons - some emotional, others completely rational.

If desirable, is true open source strategy even possible? The practices for it do not currently exist as they do in software development. What is the "source code" of strategy? (I'm speaking metaphorically here.) How do you break up "strategy-code" into discrete work packages that can be reassembled into a coherent whole? How do you interrogate the quality of strategy-code submitted by contributors and approve moving it into the core of an organization?

These seem like hard problems worth working on. If desirable and possible, then the best candidate to lead innovation in this area is Mozilla. Success would be nothing less than revolutionary - a true meta-innovation.

Developing an open source strategy development model would be a fascinating project that I would love to contribute to!

I second the motion on getting Sean Wise to host the show - he would be great! He was a very entertaining MC at the Toronto Venture Forum, obviously knowledgeable in the startup and venture capital space and a natural ringmaster for this circus.

I second the motion on getting Sean Wise to host the show - he would be great! He was a very entertaining MC at the Toronto Venture Forum, obviously knowledgeable in the startup and venture capital space and a natural ringmaster for this circus.

Thanks for the post: yet another book added to my lengthening reading list. This seems like a good place to start for a Library 2.0 conversation.

Some Barcampers have been talking about organizing a LibraryCamp to bring together the web 2.0 and Information Architecture crowd with the librarians.

Mathew, great question and one I'm wrestling with myself.

From a user's perspective, I believe that television is a passive living room experience with a remote in hand. So if internet video is streamed onto a large screen with a remote to control it from the couch we should be able to call it "television".

However, I speculate that Rogers, CTV and Canwest would not call that television because it doesn't fit into standard broadcast channels, pipes and business models. i.e. if the traditional broadcast industry doesn't own the distribution channel and content, it's not television.

So who's right - the user or the industry that invented the word in the first place?

Better late than never, I'll add my two cents here.