what groups will be
www.evident.com
well anyway...[joke]
learning from experience is the worst possible way to learn - clay shirky
why is that we refuse to learn from our experiences in groups?
*health warning* this presentation
group = a set of folks that know one another and have an awareness that they are in a group
community = a group that cares about one another more than they have to
the central premise is that groups are really important
the secondary premise is that the web is really bad at facilitating my participation and management and even understanding of my set of groups.
decentralisation serves the purpose of building the connections necessary for forming groups but that same decentralisation means that the net is poor at managing those groups.
(reads law)
example:
friendster
[laughter cos screen isn't working so david is painting a picture in words...screen fades in and he is pointing at exactly the right place on screen]
friendster's limitations
- is that you only have a binary relationship - either friend or not friend...no room for associate, new peer, etc
- the interests page is really a marketing tool...you are marketing yourself and therefore being highly selective about your choices that you list.
- also it assumes that there is only one "me" and does not cater for the multiple modes of my existance.
the current environments do not encapsulate the wildly complex nature of self description and relationships.
david wary of environments that seek to service all types of relationship building and management.
explicit and implicit -
most of the tools requires that we make things explict...he posits that in doing this you lose the context required and the ambiguity of implicit (ambiguity adds richness in social contexts - i think that was the position).
what comes first the group or the constitution that governs the group...david argues that you cannot establish a constitution initially as the relationships ie. the group has to drive and direct the constitution. also building constitutions requires explicit statements (i think he is using explicitness in the context of actually stating things) which we don't like as it is an act of violence ?? - i think he means that we are uncomfortable defining instrinsics...implied.
knowledge management - the big problem with km as social software is that it ignored the value of ambiguity - really trying to understand what exactly he means by this statement...??
km devised to help try and find the diamond information in the rough..problem with information is that it takes on diamond value to someone while having coal properties to someone else. it ignores the social value in context. you therefore end up with systems that are self delusionary.
it was also devised to capture individual knowledge bases ie. a person's knowledge. it also failed cos most knowledge bases ie. people don;t have the skills necessary to make that knowledge explicit.
if ambuigity (ahh...i think he means that when something remains in its context it remains ambiguious).
good social software allows structure to be developed while understanding that this is inherently an unnatural/uncomfortable experience for groups.
the same point being made that real needs/real context drive groups
1. there will be tons of services for group use
2. the coming age of dID maybe we will think less about managing groups and more about managing our various selves in the public of the web.
3. we are at the beginning of this whole social software - why is it that we are still only at the beginning...why a buzz now - maybe, the reason that we are now buzzed about ss is that we are coming out of our infatuation with binary thinking - maybe we are moving/ready to embrace the ambiguity inherent in "webs" and social networks.
questions/comments:
metadata is crap - context is hugely important - pn. this is really interesting but surely context is just another metadata variable...these folks are having fab conversations about metadata....implicit and explicit - david argues that explicit metadata is crap..reputation models floating in my head...not sure why.
there is a buzz about the netscan presentation yesterday
we need to liberate groups/individuals from db...
YAHOOOOOO - david weinberger just said that the future of ubiquitous group transactions is the use of something like threadsML!
After a hiccup'y start with matt's laptop refusing to show the slides he and james have sweated over for the past 48 hours (ad-hoc ad-libbing), the iCan presentation bursts into technicolor, startling matt into some ad-hoc air-guitaring.
No need for notes, just see the presentation... meanwhile, an excerpt from the etcon rolling irc channel..
malaclyps> _joshua: there's some geo stuff in the BBC i-can talk
malaclyps> "Tipping points trialled with local action groups" - the bbc is trying to kickstart local democracy
Schuyler> amazing
Schuyler> and they're government funded
* _joshua is bitter
malaclyps> Schuyler: no, they're charter-funded. it's different.
Roger> Isn't everything in the UK government funded?
Roger> ;)
* Alice chuckles
malaclyps> it's like the judiciary is "government funded"
Schuyler> the US federal government would never support something as CRAZY and FOOLISH as this
Schuyler> Charter-funded ...?
Roger> Who funds the charter?
malaclyps> Schuyler: it's funded by a licence fee provided by royal charter. govt. has little to do with it.
Schuyler> hmm
Schuyler> you mean, it's paid for with voter tax dollars BY ROYAL FIAT?
malaclyps> yep
Schuyler> yow
malaclyps> think of it as another wing of government in the wider constitutional sense
[ snipped mini discussion on value of monarchy & description of charter funding ]
Schuyler> this is great though
Schuyler> their project is fscking huge
Schuyler> but, properly funded, it could work!
demand for new things - what is it and how do you measure it.
sri are trying to characterise the demand for innovation.
they are focusing on national populations - and then segmenting out the different types of innovation seekers.
existing approaches include
demographics
past purchase behaviour
etc
however demographics and behaviours can mask important differences.
sri seek to insert personality traits into the mix.
how do you systematically characterise populations so as to be able to predict likely response to innovation.
the tricky part is coming up with relevant personality traits to characterise appropriately.
SRI's approach is called VALS.
teh vals tool has two levels of segemtnation
- primary
- niche
they have identified three primary motivations groupings:
ideals - inner driven, internalised, principles, seek understanding
achievement - goal orientated, peer group driven
self-expression - action orientated, adventurous
on the other axis of segmentation is resource availability -
resource include
income but also things like education, self confidence etc.
the segmentations then fall into the following groupings -
thinkers
believers
survivors
strivers
achievers
experiencers
makers
this is very tool based discussion...
this is really about further defining the early adopters group or conceptual understanding of a group.
interesting use of group definition - they use the groups to help understand and motivate product designers (much like we use personnas).
how do they innovate?
first - they have a clear and universally understood mission statement
"organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
keeps them on track and focused but gives them enough to get on with for ...oh...200 years :)
second - do things that matter
this means that people want to work for and with google.
third - relentless focus on the user
eg. google labs, usability focus
fourth - recruitment - brilliant people have good ideas!
hire the right, smart people.
attracting these folks means thinking about environment but more importantly ensuring that they have interesting things to do.
fifth - creative environment.
so the process is -
recognise that ideas come from everywhere
- both inside and outside the company
design for users!
- keep the interface and usability at the heart of the product. it is thought about right from the beginning. this requires work.
example: the original homepage was so easy, simple and fast.
compile, discuss and prioritise
- top 100 - a list of the most important projects that google would like to do. It doesn't represent all the projects they are doing but what they want to do.
compilation means gathering ideas. they have explicit tools that allow folks within the company to submit and record ideas.
discussion takes place in discussion forums (f2f) - these don't eleminate ideas but serves to flesh them out and give feedback to the creator.
prioritise - they use the market to re-prioritise these ideas. every week they meet to prioritise ideas.
how then to deliver -
small teams are fast and agile
and they have really small teams - 3 people from start to finish and management after launch. this is a great motivation for staff.
communication is key
small teams are really good but it does have challenges when you have maybe 100 teams. it is therefore really important that broad, regular communication is encouraged. original design specifications are shared with the entire company - and discussion is encouraged. groups must share techniques, experience and ideas. they do really regular codereviews - this is a way of communicating activity as well as ensuring that code is not reinventing the wheel. they also do usable code reviews - focuses on commenting etc.
they have explicit teams that are responsible for processes - these teams are volunteer positions - ie. they have to commit to time away from their projects.
tech talks - folks speak about their projects. these are recorded and put up on the web. this is really useful for new staff to catch up on projects.
tools to organise -
they have tools that allow for idea capture, knowledge management ( a search engine!), tools that communicate weekly updates and reports that allow comments to be added.
blogs - use internal weblogs
test, experiment and iterate
first user study - they used to put it on the web but now they do smaller studies before release.
experiment - they use google labs to experiment.
iterate - they iterate again and again.
He reiterates again the importance of recruitment. they have a small hiring committee that oversees all the recruitment - they separate the head count growth need from the recruitment processes in order to ensure the best possible staff. they have a very conservative hiring process - this has meant that they have only had 2 folks that haven't worked out.
what makes this process work. ..
management open to ideas, clear recruitment goals that hires folks that sustain the culture, processes and ideas generation, all the food you can eat whenever you want it :)
staying true to their mission!
question:
management of ideas is handled by gatekeepers - it is not a democracy, the system is based on trust that ideas will be heard - and evaluated by people capable of evaluating and trusted by others to do so against relevant and understood criteria.
what are the limitations to developing this kind of culture -
must hire against criteria.
there's plenty of room at the bottom - innovating for the other 90%
tichard fewnman's 1959 lecture to the american physical society - www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html
how do you make ict (information and communication technology) relevant to the developing world.
there are great opportunities for countries to leapfrog technology - a good example is that some countries completely skipping the landline infrastructure and going straight to cellular. This means that some countries that are really without at the moment will end up having much more interesting infrastructure than developed countries.
So why has cellular telephony been so successful -
it met local needs - the abillity to communicate has had profound economic and personal implications for people in developing nations.
innovative business models - pay as you go etc. receive only service.
www.grameenphone.com - gsm provider to rural bandglasdesh, operates on mcirocredit model. profitable, sustainable, growing wildly.
the business model - someone takes out a loan, buys a phone which they then lend out the phone for a small fee. the upfront is $250 and they then gross $700 a year...this vaults these "phone women" into the middle class.
they took the r&d that the developed world had undertaken, but flipped the business model to fit the local need.
some examples out there...nsp/isp in ghana, voxiva building cellular feedback tools for gathering info about disease spread over the phone.
www.simputer.org
IML - supports multilanguage, voice markup
technology needs to be repurposed to suit local needs and context.
diaspora - brain drain - can be a good thing if you can build in the mechanism to get the experience, capital and education to eventually return. This is a slow process. To bridge the gap you need to put geeks on planes...
www.unites.org
www.techcorps.org
www.thinkcycle.org
www.geekcorps.org
netscan - microsoft
identity, reputation, exchange, incentive
this guy works for microsoft - he is a sociologist
the challenge - offline it is easy to determine: where people are, where they are coming form or going to how they are grouped and roughtly what they are doing.
online is is difficult to determine: the size and composition of the crowd, the distribution of people into clusters and variations in the social character of groups...
so how do you learn about these groups, individuals - you data mine :)
they process and analyse posts - based on use figures.
interesting thing - core group is ~2% of the total population - they calculate this figure based on return ratios.
13.1 million unique authors in 2002 into newsgroups.
microsofts interest is because they want to encourage use of newsgroups for support purposes.
third buffy reference for the day!
netscan.research.microsoft.com
this stuff is stats heaven -
they have an interesting idea that cross postings provide a way of understanding the focus level of the group.
they organise threads according to attributes (ie. they don't care about the content itself) like the aggregation properties - ie. a large thread prolly plus short growth period may mean controversial thread.
they do the same about authors - how long have you participated, how many posts, how many replies, days seen in environment, etc in order to evaluate the value of the author/contributor.
He has just put up the most beautiful picture of a visualisation of a thread...i want it on a t'shirt - it is fantastic. oh another fab image...a visualisation of the whole of newsnet - awesome - looks like a satelite image - cool.
they are trying to infer reputation from some raw numbers...
something is tickling the back of my mind here about microsoft mining this information - I am sensing a dependency model in the making here...they gather (not many others could gather this depth I am guessing?) and we consume and we get hooked on it...in return for our consumption...mmm
some more great visualisations - really cool thinking
they are using the data mined stuff to allow better access to newsgroups.
something weird...object blogging...he is suggesting you scan objects that you an then annotate it
every object has a story -
netscan.research.microsoft.com
full title is -
university, library and museum content meets xml, web services and p2p by raymond yee, uc berkeley.
raymond is looking for answers from the alpha - geek community...doesn't sound like there are going to be answers here...just restating of issues that we (cmc) are all too familiar with.
some examples of cultural institute projects-
california digital library - lots of images etc.
mitopencourseware
university of texas at austin - the knowledge gateway
merlot.org
article archives - pre-print archives - FOS news (www.earlham.edu/~peters/)
the things that link all these examples is that they all want the material housed to be used - freely. they are more interested in sharing as much as possible.
Ray wants better tools -
users can look but not easily manipulate digital content -
they want a digital reference box - called a scholar box
this is an aggregation tool that allows users to gather materials from all the repositories that they want to draw on, then be able to organise and of course create their own material. they want to be able to rip, mix and burn!
Ray is showing us a mock up of what he wants...he is really pitching to the audience to provide these tools :)
The mock up is pretty much a shopping cart metaphor that captures references materials.
METS - markup for library - xml
this is actually kinda sweet...basically this guy really wants this community of alpha geeks to really get into the idea of developing tools for managing and distibuting content housed within what he calls - cultural institutions. Not much of interest for us however.
tom coates -
sorry this morning was a bit thin on content but both alan and clay were awesome and the middle keynote was awful so I will ...
what happens when you tie web social software to precise physical locations? this is the question that tom is going to try and answer.
tom is just going through some of the background info on ums - stuff we all know and love...que to visit ums while you still can.
tom also has to explain the differences between the UK postcode and US zipcode.
the ums ethos is about encouraging local civil engagement.
using area profiling (backing into data sources such as acorn) then ums identified that neighbours were quite similar folks. In order to facilitate the ethos they wanted to get neighbours talking to each other.
what is ums conversations?
- geocoded message board
what kinds of conversations are people having?
organising real world scoial events
infomration gathering about other areas
organising and debating local politics
debating national interests with their local communities
why now?
the online discussion or real world stuff is not new...there are loads of implementations of discussions that serve these purposes...
the concept of location -aware content or geocoded content isn't new either, although it is coming inot its own now...
but in order to pull those two things together you need ubiquity
tom makes the interesting point that discussions started around genre because their wasn't enough folks online to sustain local discussions...this has changed.
issues:
privacy - local discussions mean that people are able to be "found"... this means that ums have really tried to find a balance. if there was not a risk inherent in physical location then they would love to be as specific as possible about where folks live. in deference to the privacy issues they have pulled out a little to an area rather than a 14 house zone.
location can be used as part of a reputation model - if asked for an opinion relevant to an area then your proximity to that area is a useful piece of validation for your response or opinion.
all sites that geocode user generated content have to think long and hard about how to protect their users from realworld abuse.
Time:
most filtering of posts relies on timeliness within genre, when you add in location then you need to decide how to filter.
geocoded filtering alone ends up being a very boring discussion.
in order to compensate ums offers thread tracking - ie. you can subscribe to an interesting thread and have it surface in a private management environment.
they heavily flag time and replies
and they added time as a vector - therefore you can choose to see conversations located within x distance from y location that have been posted within the last z time. this becomes the here/now axis
moderation:
there's no default view which a moderator can share with all teh site's users as the users are by definition contained to a location view. this makes it hard to prioritise problems on the board.
the message board is potentially vast - because of the local view even though their may be a vast number of posts overall they don't necessarily overwhelm the local areas.
...more moderation issues...later
local solutions to moderation -
rely on local people to surface problems
help people set their own LOCAL standards around behaviour and governance. the moderation team is localised...so you find you nearest moderator.
what's next:
what else can be done with kind of messageboard
- political activism
- network fans
- mother and babies
what else can we do beyond message boards:
local calendars
add local landmarks that are geocoded such as schools
and he concludes with the profound reminder to ensure digital projects are enmeshed in the real world and...
to get building.!
good stuff folks...
clay speaking to his "cult"
degines social software as software that supports group interaction - finally, someone prepared to define!
groups are their own worst enemy - humans are fundamentally individual but also fundamentally group immersive according to byann? psychologist from the 50s that identified groups need to find name
social stickiness - the party phenomena : the paradox of groups
interesting idea that sex talk is an important requirement for group identification
identification and vilification of external enemy really brings a group together
religious identification - find an icon: then worship together
group structure is necessary to defend the group from itself and keep it on focus
example - bbs called communitree - open access/open dialogue - they had too much openness as the environment was taken over by a group of high school students...therefore there wasn't enough structure in order to defend themselves from each other. the students "overrun" the environment and it ended up closing.
you can't separate the technology from the social
part ii -
multimodal discussions
ubiquity - all access lets you take some things for granted. software is now coming out that assumes online access and components.
clay's meetings all have at least bimodal access - ie. f2f and online
part iii -
what is it that makes a good long lived community
"it depends" :)
the normal experience is that they fail.
things that make good groups -
accept 3 things
-you cannot separate tech and social
-you can't program social issues into the technology - the group will asset its rights
-members are different from users -
all groups of any integratity has a constitution - "how we do it around here" is the least formal version of the constitution.
you need a handle that matters - ie some kind of handle that persists. you can change but you loose reputation with it.
reputation is not portable across situations - eg. someone can cheat on their spouse but not cheat at cards.
example of reputation - referral to join and that referrer is explicitly stated in your handle as their handle is appended to your handle.
cost for use - ease of use is wrong - the user of social software is the group not the individual. therefore ease of use should be for the group not for the individual.
spare the group from scale - scale alone kills
health warning - the network was broken so this entry is just a dump of different bits in an effort to at least get it saved.
kevin from macromedia
user interface on the web for applications is very poor.
they are thinking about how to improve the application experience and
mmm...a big thing about flash future. sort of interesting - watergate hotel site check it out for rich client online.
alan kay
the last 20 years have faiolled to deliver on the grand dream conveived in 1963 which was that human brains and computinjg machines will be coupled together very tightly
uses the sketchpad UI from 1963 as an example of some cool software and was the first ovject oriented software that alan
pdf file from mit library - ivan apologises cos it wasn't better
original video game - mit 1963 - pdp1
called spacewar
lisp - mccarthygreg needs to pay attention to alan.
spatial mapping with event information - engel
the central theme here is that we neglect our history - that much of the things we want to do have already been done.
we have not made the progress that alan envisaged 40 years ago.
enduser computing - the simplest interface in the world to get computing scripts developed...used how to drive a car program as exaample
what is scalable group collaboration?
alice in wonderland...this is very cool shared space - installing squeak as i type
jeff barr is our speaker today - web services technical evangelist
I hadn't realised that their mission is to provide anything...not just the stuff we think of as amazon core business.
they have 4 different customer sets
buyers (us)
sellers - merchants augementing the product sets
web site owners - referrers
developers -
simple value chain...ultimately ends in selling products to buyers
they invest
300million in distribution centres
700million on marketing
900million on technology
the more information they have ie. the bigger their data bases the better service they offer - someone should be telling this to bbc
it's all about the api's - merchandising, selling and buying - in other words you can access the product information, the buying mechanisms and the selling (or product distribution) mechanisms.
they consider all the points along the value chain and ensure that you can add value at every step therefore you can earn at each point.
...i really want to talk to these folks about management and distribution
they are demoing simplest-shop.com again
amazon light demo - www.kokogiak.com/amazon2/default.asp
essentially they are excited about retemplating amazon content.
techno.starcd.com/proto/yesbar-signup.cgi - radio station example shazaam
note to self - maybe the yesbar would be a good example to sell content snippets (ie. cmc thinking across the org - is cool, simple and compelling??)
the distribution model is familiar... they do xslt transformation - this is cool...they do the whole thing - they do it on their own server so facilitates basic sites having quite dynamic presentations. keep in mind for syndication to community sites.
the soap and rest debate - they do both
shopping cart example - www.nba.com
branded order pipeline - branded shopping experience
presentation is at - www.syndic8.com/~jeff/amazon.html
archive.org
public domain - what is it?
the book mobile is designed to demonstrate what is the public domain
essentially the book mobile is just a mobile printer and book binder hooked up by satelite to source - oh cool we get to see the book mobile and print out our own book! :)
these folks go around and print books for $1.00 a book this compares with the cost of lending/shelving a book of $2.00 (library of congress)
brewster kahle - public access to the public domain
India is building 30 book mobiles!
Anywhere books is going to be taking over the bookmobiles.
universal access to all human knowledge
challenges - we keep burning, destroying our libraries.
alexandria
library congress - already burnt once
we are good at collecting but not very good at distribution so the answer is -
digitise and replicate
"dark archives" - burying archives bad idea
brewster estimates that there are about 16 million books in the public domain in US libraries - only about 20K are digitised and accessible
archive.org and creative commons are working together to copyright fix against all books.
Digitised Public Domain=Public Domain
Raises the issue of potential for resetting copyright clock when a published work is digitised.
Heroes -
Rick Prelinger - movie archive - he has taken his top films and put them on archive.org
Michael Hart - has keyed in books - they re-key books - they are up to 10K books.
Gretchen Phillips - scans childrens books
Charles Franks - proof reading and scans and ocr book - he distributes across volunteers the proof reading of the ocr product.
Million Book Project - scanning books in india
Tim O'Reilly - because he has gone with the founders copyright law - ie. 14 years copyright.
what is working against the growth of the public domain -
copyright laws...just keep on getting longer and longer
access...can't get to it even when it is digital
license...adding licenses to digital products ie. even if they are public domain, some companies are taking digital versions and licensing them - licenses are pertual. the tricky bit is that even though you can take your own digital copy the raw product is often very difficult to get to...dark archives!
no metadata - no problem
its possible to infer semantic relationshiops form docujent content
patterns of workd use reflect highter level concepts
this is dumb math masquerading as smart maths
a case study - steven johnson notes
stecen had a flat-file collection of 1146 paragraph length clippings from 15 books
there are typed in by an assistant with no keywords or cats assigned
eclectrive but coherent collection
127.0.0.1/~macie/etcon
this looks like the kinda stuff we see in metadata automation generation - semantic search engines
relecance feedback
latent semantic indexing -
the phrase "a chilling effect" is used a lot - refers to patents, copyright etc.
contextual network graphs -
sharing searches -
opencola.com -
lazyweb
valley of the shadow archive uni virginia
NITLE represents a consortium of liberal arts colleges.
www.nitle.org
www.nitle.org/semantic_search.php
www.nitle.org/etcon
waypath.com
distributed search
city of san francisco - network development
trying to get wireless installed throughout city of san fran. - very cool
this appears to be a discussion about tim oreilly's world
the future is here it just isn't evenly distributed yet - william gibson
big hairy audacious goals
alpha geeks
image management of oreilly is quite interesting...we have a room full of infamously questioning folks...very anti-big business, very anti commercial yet this is a packed discussion about oreilly the business and products! marketing departure will be deeply happy :)
They really play the "we are part of this" not just observers of - very clever and frankly compelling.
Amazon web services presenter is up first - interestingly the only black participant I have seen at the conference.
amazon now consider themselves a platform -
the vision - be the platform that website owners and application developers use to serve and manage product information, manage shopping carts and handle orders through an easy to use pipelije and product display solution.
sounds a lot like a business plan I heard a few years ago from another e-commerce company I worked for. the interesting difference is that the pitch is to developers...ie. they are not providing -
Oh Oh - wait...a whole 5 minutes talking about the fab things that xslt does! a really big rap and a central component of their offering.
what is exposed in aws 2.1 -
xslt, sellersearch, seller profile search, marketplace search, exchangesearch, quick click, quick picks, content type switches, xml and soap, remote shopping cart
XSLT - wahooo
www.simplest-shop.com - this is a 19 yo guy in romania that is front ending and extending amazon's catalogue and is offering the ware to developers.
there is a tie in....really!
tivo is just down the road from where the conference is :)
In the fragmented world of my brain a number of thoughts have been
jealously guarding their borders. In an effort to encourage them to
start chatting over the fence, James (Cronin) suggested I write them down and
(shudder) share them with a larger audience.
Background:
PVRs have long fascinated me. They are cool tech but more interesting
for me is the fundamental change in the relationship between consumer
and broadcaster that must(?) ensue with the use of PVRs.
PVPs - hands up who can view a/v on the move? John just got back from a
trip OS and commented on the level of excitement around PVPs. In itself
not big news but when this thought set up house in the same
neighbourhood as "PVRs" a bunch of other thoughts came out on their
verandas to say hello.
So loosely under the grandiose heading of
what might the bbc look like some years hence...?
the following seemed kinda interesting to think about.
PVRs find and digitally record broadcast products according to personal
criteria. You want Buffy - it figures out when buffy is broadcast and
records it.
Key points here are "digital" and "it figures out". This is an informed
device that captures broadcast products digitally.
Combine this with PVPs and you have a really interesting world in which
TV consumption becomes much more akin to audio consumption - "always
with" kinda consumption rather than "at home sitting on my couch" kinda
consumption(unlike audio consumption however, it is not completely
mobile consumption - you don't walk along watching video) .
So I imagine a scenario where I am sitting on the tube watching my fave
show (Buffy & Angel - together again) completely oblivious to the fact
that my PVR recorded it at 3.36 am and downloaded it to my PVP.
So what does this mean in the context of the BBC -
I think that it means four key things:
1. Content Making
We at the BBC need to start thinking about how an increase in the
diversity of environments (and devices) in which we consume tv media
products might/should effect the kind and format of programming we
create. If we look generally at media consumption we are seeing a desire
for small, snappy media products - you know the arguments, media
rich/time poor et al. In some areas we are already producing little
nuggets of broadcast content - News & Sport for example. We also have
nuggeted programmes when we buy tv products originally intended for
commercial release - Joss Whedon makes ~8 minute segments, often repeats
frames across segments to allow for ad breaks. But what about BBC built
drama, docus, natural history etc...they are explicitly geared for what
I think of as "event viewing" - that is they are geared to a continuous
viewing experience that is ad free, sitting on the sofa, completely
absorbed by the programme for an extended period of time.
2. Branding
Old ground here but bear with me. Large capacity PVRs (Tivo currently
offers 80hours of storage) encourage us to build our own channel. Why do
we care that buffy is on SkyOne? - we won't - all we care about is that
we have Buffy stored.
I would argue that channel brands become much less important (see a
future post on "reality tv becomes realtime tv - event viewing" for a
revised role for channels) and that new collective brands take over - in
BBC terms this might mean genre + BBC becomes a much more meaningful
brand - eg. BBC natural history.
I need to be clear that brands become more important not less, it is the
channel brand that I question.
3. Scheduling
Does scheduling still exist? Yes but not in the sense that you think
about when will people be around their telly. Scheduling becomes more
about release dates.
A bunch of thoughts start to knock on the door at this point -
programmer creators faced with new variable...to be continued
NOTES:
notes to self:
why broadcast at all? is broadcast cost effective distribution
mechanism? if so then retain limitation around amount of programming
available.
stuff to work on for above -
CONTENT MAKING
programme makers already make programmes in short sharp bites - Joss
Whedon makes ~8 minute segments, often repeats frames across segments.
Ideal for consumption in mobile environments. News, sport also ok. Only
folks not ok are the made for bbc drama, doco, entertainment cos they
plan for ad free longish stretches. How do we make programmes for the
diversity of consumption environments? How do we think/plan for new
formats that cater to niche consumption environments?
SCHEDULING
traditional scheduling...still have a role to play? or does "release"
time become more important - also random thought on the definition of a
finished media product - when does a programme start/finish - tie into
interest on Interactive tv in the "making of" - does the programme now
start (get released?) from the first production meeting? do you pay a
premium to have a say at the first production meeting :)
ROLE OF BBC
so assuming channels are dead or live on but as news 24 - realtime tv.
what role does bbc play in this world?
market failure - this becomes completely defining - can't possibly
justify populists media products in a world where you are not competing
for timeslots or trying to build channel brand. only media products bbc
should make/commission are those that fulfill gaps left in market.
Industry builder - bbc as distributor on grand scale for indie/niche
programming. Commissioning would really only be for those media products
that the industry has completely failed to conceive and deliver.
Otherwise role of BBC is to distribute (?? - think about
terminology)...particularly if broadcast proves to be the cheapest way
to distibute?
Filter - how/should bbc leverage incredible brand values by
providing filtering service - uber kazaa? or maybe it is at the creation
stage...does bbc have role in devising/maintaining/policing standards
around metadata associated with media products that means consumers can
safely(?), confidently find quality products?
A disappointing start. The discussions have been a bit wishy washy - perhaps it is because people are taking a while to wake up, or presenters are still finding the level of the room but both presentations have really been the standard, evangelical presentations. I suppose I may also have unreasonably high expectations - I formed the opinion almost on arrival that this is a forum where we can actually draw up the blueprints for progress around the issue areas covered. There are certainly the right people gathered together and we are tapped into a much larger contribution base through the almost maniacal blogging that is taking place around me - so as always my view is why phaff around the same old issues - lets exercise that power and get some solutions sketched out.
lunch now...maybe food will help :)
next up..panel discussing DRM in practice: rights, restrictions and reality.
cory doctorow, dan gilmor; joe kraus, wendy seltzer, benny wong
DRM - digital "restrictions" management - as always jack valenti is discussed within the first 5 minutes! and is referred to as charming again! what is it with this guy!
Joe Kraus - digitalconsumers.org
represents the general consumer in what he thought was a debate dominated by hollywood and government - fulltime lobbying group in washington. hollywood spent 40million on lobbying with the tagline "do you believe in theft or not". suggests that silicon valley is in its political teenage years ie. it has a leave me alone, "we" make decisions on facts way of thinking which is a real cultural mismatch with the political decision makers.
DRM (including legislation - DCMA) is having an impact on innovation - if the existing environment was in place years ago we would not have the fax machine, copying machine et al.
wendy seltzer - eff
legal
digital restrictions management - this is not about what you can do it is about what you can't do as a creator. restrictions creeping in at all levels - media, devices and now even networks. having trouble keeping her presentation clear in my head...will try and translate later.
i can't wait for this audience to get going on this subject...
wendy is really struggling...seems very intimidated by the audience...
buddy wong - xbox hacker - he is at the coal face of dcma because of his hack on the xbox
palladium - %^$£"* scary stuff...*must pay more attention*
cory:
articulate as ever
napster in 2 years build the largest creative library ever built. - they burnt it down but the next day it grew again...cool
drm - is the answer to the question that we shouldn't be asking...that question is how do we burn down the library of alexander for good (earlier used library metaphor to describe napster)
I sense a t-shirt in the making "why do we want to burn the library"
questions:
encumbants vs innovators -
we need to focus on the things we know about...the dampening effect on innovation.
pn. connections/distributablity is key to value of work...more barriers to distribution then more difficult to gain value
q. what can we do in the entertainment industry - we need to develop the easy way for non geek folks to set up micro payments.
cory - stop doing what you are doing. go to the lobbiests and tell them that the broadcast flag is wrong.
as always it seems the law is a central barrier...it is so complex to get clearance for material. if the same efforts that went into getting the dcma in place were spent on simplifying laws and finding alternative business plans then we would be in a much better place.
I think people must still be a bit sleepy cos this discussion is a bit -....ooh...this just go interesting...a very articulate individual arguing for rights holding...and he is wearing a very cool bowler hat! - he wants to be able to develop business plans that explicity define his rights and the relationship with his consumer.
this is old news for us so far.
politics online...using the massive communication and aggregation power of the internet. examples such as kenyan elections, antiwar demonstrations, moveon.org ect.
OK - here he goes...i hope
we need to be users not consumers -
consumers = passive recievers of what is broadcast by a few - radio, tv, movies, recorded music *sound familiar anyone?*
users= actively shape media, create as well as consume, link together for collective action.
howard warns we need to fight to remain users in the following areas -
politically: control of innovation under attack - already happened...think war
think war
technically: think about how to innovate in favour of user-power
we have to defend our freedom to invent - ahhh...here's an idea - a reserve of the electromagnetic spectrum available for experimentation.
applause...rheingold wants us to figure out the answer to the next business model for distributing music - without recording industry he suggests that music quality would be better.
we are really not being challenged with ideas here... we discuss this kinda thing over sandwiches in the park. more interesting discussion taking place on the discussion board.
ahh...trust and reputation have made it up on the slides - he poses the question -
will reputation evolve? social capital is just leaking into the air...we are not capturing it...
- just to expand a little on this - howard was talking about ubiquitous connectivity/mobility etc and how this could be used to transmit/gather social capital (ie. our voiced opinions/experiences etc). Not much detail just a slide.
need to fight for the right to contribute to the body of data
need to fight for access to body of data - eg. barcodes
- another example that howard gave. a friend of his has developed a mobile bar code reader that pulled in the product info from the universal product db and then lets you go google against any of the fields. So howard points it at a packet of prunes in his kitchen and gets the manufacturer name, googles it and finds that the first link is a news story about the manufacturer and case against it for political persuasion tactics (giving politicians packets of prunes!?)
effectively unique object identifiers or product identifiers like barcodes means that every "thing" has a story - we need to be able to both read and write these stories.
open source principles seem to be at the heart of what howard is talking about...plus social networks
question time:
how do we protect ourselves from each other in a world of individual connectivity?
only geeks play with defaults..so we have to make defaults easier to access, understand so that everyone can make informed decisions about how, when, where, what data is sent, gathered about and from them. we are already being "gathered" cctv? do we have control over this?
digital identity - in order to trust someone you need to know them - if we are going to see dID become prevalent - finding the balence between the power that dID provides and the personal protections required is key.
1st amendment and reputation
fuzzy answer
this has been unsatisfying...a real opportunity to push discussion but howard has kept things overly simplistic - fiona discribed accurately as too "101"
the room is very interested in reputation models...fundamentally how do we build trust in dIDs - keeps using ebay as example...but this is being knocked on the discussion group as being an example that does not move beyond a very simple model of reputation.
applause..all over... my brain cells have not been tickled.
OK...this conference is underway! first up is the keynote from smart mobs author - howard rheingold - stay tuned.
title: innovation and collective action
publishing company - activism? oreilly
my lord the shirt is enough to blind me...
hey - howard thinks we are unique :)
sounds like howard is going to emphasise political activism and innovation...
howard wants us to innovate our way out of the enclosures growing around us...think ican here folks...even the graphics look eerily matt jonesish (but much more simplistic)
howard defines collective action as people volutarily working together to create, communicate, deliberate, coordinate, agree, exchange, link
suggesting that the technology itself promotes collective action - unix, internet, open source et al.
at the same time as i am listening and typing I am also participating in a community environment that is made up of the folks in the room...cool!
*rolls eyes* - honestly I try and improve the user experience with a little continuity in naming...
anyway - already a hotel full of interesting folks...all staring at their laptops - wifi'd to the gills and blogging like crazy...in other words not much f2f going on.
I haven't managed to find much on this morning's law and emerging tech. Angel Gambino went so I am hoping that I will be able to get the lowdown from her.
Tomorrow sees me off to see/hear -
howard rheingold - smart mobs
DRM in Practice: rights, restrictions and reality (wahoo...looking forward to this one)
The coming ubiquity of geospatial annotation
p2p semantic search engines: building a memex
under the hood of the internet archive's digital bookmobile
The making of an RIA: how intro (see alice's entry re. social software we are playing with) came to life
amazon web services:technical and business perspective
rich internet apps: would you like some steak with that sizzle?
then off to the journalism bof in the evening...
stand by for a big day of blogging...
Social Software gives Paula a whole new look...
;)
I got CONTENT MANAGED so now I obey the titling laws ;)
We're in the bar now, watching the to-ing and fro-ing of various industry superheroes. Matt L is a hit with his Receding Technology medium format monster camera (11 pictures to a roll! Woo!)
... we're living in the Outlook....
... and here's Dick, last seen at Digital Identity World, with a message for Lorna and Ant...
1. So I'm at an Emerging Technology conference and after hours of fiddling with LAN settings, reconfiguring network setup, enabling bbc-disabled hardware and generally tinkering under the wifi bonnet plus shouting at lapworth about how broken my new toshiba laptop is, Paula points out that I haven't switched the radio to on using the big switch on the front of the machine.
Please shoot me now before I start using the CD tray as a coffee cup holder.
2. San Francisco is very, very nice indeed. Great cocktails and shopping, wifi in most coffee shops, Industrial Light & Magic, nice cars, etc. The Golden Gate bridge is apparently orange, I jeered at Paula when she told me that and then was horribly proven wrong, it IS orange and International Orange at that, although it's clearly rusty poo brown and you're all weird.
3. Some neat pieces of social software to play with so far. Two things being demo'd here as part of the 'show', Intro and ConFab. ConFab has a neat map of the hotel, plus group chat and messaging, so you can wander around the conference virtually.. or do it IRL. It reminds me of Bianca's, although now when you hang out in the bathroom or pool, you really CAN hang out in the bathroom or pool while you're hanging out in the bathroom or pool, if you see what I mean.
Intro I've only touched on, but it has a lovely way of allowing you to describe yourself with drag-and-drop interest words... and it then maps you to folk like yourself. So it maps me straight to the bloke who designed ConFab, and I spent the morning in ConFab talking to the fellow who made Intro.
The emerging world is a small world... ;)
haven't actually seen out of the hotel yet...I didn't arrive until 3am last night (san francisco - mecca of all things swing dancing!) so things were a little dark. Alice assures me however that the sun is shining. I will endeavour to venture out of the radius of the wifi network in order to bring you an eye witness description. :)
well...we had a slight hitch this morning. it seems that we weren't enrolled...ooops...anyway...a couple of terse conversations with beeb base and we managed to get things sorted. Unfortunately it has meant that we missed the tutorials that were scheduled today. So this afternoon I will be catching up on the notes and bloggers material on the law and emerging technology tute..will let you know as i wade through it.
yes folks...once again alice and paula will be reporting live from a conference. stay tuned for all the details from etcon 2003.
Please use the comments facility if you have an item, speaker or tutorial you would particular like us to pay attention to and report on.