SxSW Interactive has been informative/interesting in an evolutionary way, not a revolutionary way (at least to-date).
Given that, day 2 is a minor upgrade to day 1 – welcome to SxSW Day 1.1.
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SxSW Day 1.0 – Money, Money, Money!
I’ve been thinking about money all day. It started with Eric Rice’s breezy dismissal of my question on the ethics of product placement in videocast.
Sure, I expected some pimping of products, speakers, books – that’s the way of most conferences (but not all). I didn’t expect SxSW, with forums on social responsibility and the wisdom of crowds, to be so overwhelming pecuniary in intent.
SteveR pointed out that “everybody wants to make buck” but this emphasis on monetization of content is making me a bit ill.
So, to settle my stomach, and in honor of Eric, Chris Pirillo and the rest of the monetization gang, I’m suggesting we develop Tivo for the Web 2.0 generation.
The “Pirillo Pillow” will automatically smother product placement ads.
No ads, no ethical problems.
Maybe effective distribution of “the Pillow” will even reduce mammon worship next SxSW ;-)!
SxSW Day 1.0 – Mob Rules?
Next session has James Surowiecki speaking on The Wisdom of Crowds.
BTW, I caught the 2pm keynote which covered “building big things with small groups”. Their wisdom: KISS.
Title compliments of SteveR
Tapping the collective wisdom of a large group of people – “under proper conditions we can leverage the intelligence of the large group”.
Hey, I ran on the idea that we could tap the collective wisdom of Chapel Hill to solve some seemingly rather intractable problems.
JS: Google is an excellent example of the power of the collective. “Google is tapping into the intelligence of the ‘net” via page ranking to sort the most relevant links to the top.
Over the long haul, the bettors at the racetrack function, collectively, as a perfect forecaster of the future. Rather remarkable considering that the pool of bettors include “old-hands” quite knowledgable on horse-racing, folks betting their Mom’s first name, those using lucky numbers or “systems” – in general, a normalized mix of people, the common factor of which they’re interested in a positive outcome.
Of course, JS’s basic hypothesis is not too different than that posited by the Delphi Method, described further in this 1975 work The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications
SxSW Day 1.0 – Telamonian or Locrian Ajax?
Local Austin developer David Humphreys opens the panel by introducing Jesse James Garrett, who coined the term AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) – which describes a mix of web technologies used to provide a much more fluid web experience to the end users.
Humphreys kids that by coining the phrase, Garrett has gauranteed himself many years worth of invites to panel discussions ;-)!
SxSW Day 1.0 – Looking for Mr. Goodxml
Looking for XML in All the Wrong Places is supposed to cover all the vagaries of XML usage in the Web-world.
Finding well-formed XML on the ‘net can be quite a chore 😉
As I walk in they’re discussing XML micro-formats. The discussion shifts to namespaces and namespacing your documents.
Oops! The classic namespace boner cropped up – “namespaces are the like tm:”. For XML wonks, the confusion between a tag’s namespace prefix (the “tm:” in “tm:title”, for instance) and the namespace itself is neverending. Essentially, the prefix is malleable and can be arbitrarilly assigned while the namespace is invariant.
I jumped in to point out the difference and asked the panel if they thought the namespace should be well-defined – like with a schema. Panel split on this.
Best reccommedation on namespaces, etc. – use RDF to help tease out the structures for micro-formats, extending formats (like RSS) using namespaces.
SxSW Day 1.0 – Podcastiong 2.0
[UPDATE: Podcast of this session.]
First up, Podcasting 2.0, a panel discussion crying out for the unconferencing talents of our local Audioactivism’s BrianR:
Chris Pirollo on podcasting “It’s not a lack of tools, it’s a lack of talent.”
One person asks – “Is there anyway you can do to make a podcast sound professional?” Pirollo – “garbage in, garbage out – without talent, without decent equipment it’ll sound like garbage”.
On video and monetizing content (how come making money drives so many of these discussions?) Eric Rice “we’ll never video something unless it’s a taste test – don’t give it for free.
Audience member – “you seem to be saying that most podcast are produced by technical people – that’s why you’re saying podcasters “need talent”.
Pirillo – NPR has raised the quality of podcasts overall. Before NPR, the poor quality of podcast was generally acceptable – NPR set the standard.
Pirillo – “Because the tools are so simple, everyone and their grandmother can podcast, and now everyone and their grandmother is…”
Rice – “That’s good” Pirillo – “No it isn’t – if you want to do a podcast for 5 people, leave a voicemail”
Laura Swisher – “let people do a podcast for 5 people” – if they’re good they’ll rise up
Once again, how do we monetize our content?
Rice talks about using product placement on his video ‘blog – I wonder if he told his consumers that he was touting a product?
So I ask Rice – What’s the ethics of product placement? He quickly ducked that question.
Back to branding,monetizing and money, money, money.
SxSW Day 1.0
I’m attending SxSW Interactive in Austin this week. Interactive is a growing adjunct (attendance up %270) of SxSW (South by Southwest). Panels cover a range of topics, technical to political to social.
I thought I’d post a few comments on the sessions I’m attending/monitoring/ease-dropping on throughout the week.
And then there were fourteen…UNC appoints Carolina North Board
The DTH has just announced the UNC’s picks for the new Carolina North leadership advisory board: Continue reading And then there were fourteen…UNC appoints Carolina North Board
Last chance?
UNC announced a new committee whose functions the new leader Ken Broun describe in this Jan. 11th column and current UNC Chancellor Moeser described in this subsequent Jan 22nd column.
Two years in the making and as a sign of good faith UNC released their response to the 2004 Horace-Williams Citizen Committee’s Report.
I applaud this first step though I’m a bit disappointed that, given two years and substantial debate over those ensuing years, the response to the HWCC report wasn’t more thorough.
The Daily Tar Heel published my response and suggestions on how to move the process forward in their Feb. 1st edition:
There are many questions surrounding the proposed Carolina North project.
Will it be as vital to North Carolina’s economic development as Chancellor James Moeser has claimed? Are the financial assumptions for its capitalization sound? What are the true environmental and neighborhood impacts of this $1.5 billion, 50-year project?
And, chiefly, how do we move the planning and design process forward?
My interest in Carolina North is not academic.
I’m a 14-year neighbor of the Horace Williams Citizens Airport, and a vocal watchdog of UNC’s development plans.
I’ve joined the town’s Horace Williams citizens committee. As a 2005 council candidate, I called for a drastic rethinking of UNC’s predicate parameters for the project.
And I volunteered to join UNC’s new community leadership advisory committee for Carolina North.
Echoing the rhetoric from my campaign, professor Ken Broun, former Chapel Hill mayor and new leader of UNC’s advisory committee, said, “Let’s start from the beginning and have a full discussion, as if we had a blank map.”
If we’re entering new territory our citizenry will have to put some old hurts and hard-earned lessons, for now, off the table.
The disappointment of UNC’s failed 1997 community outreach on “Outlying Parcels Land Use Plans,” the outrages along Mason Farm Road, the high-handed behavior during the 2003 chiller plant negotiations, the recent muddled planning process and the other bumps and bruises throughout recent years should not be forgotten but, instead, be put aside in good faith as we attempt to craft a new process.
Continue reading Last chance?
Concerned Citizen
The winds of change are blowing….
I’m working on a new version of my ‘blog, retitled Concerned Citizen, to better suit the new year. Within short order I’ll be posting some articles on last year’s election – including an analysis of campaign finances, my ideas on what to do to bootstrap Chapel Hill’s municipal networking initiative, comments on my new appointment to the Town’s Horace-William’s Citizen’s committee and other issues I’m concerned about…
Since the election
- the Town Council, the DPC and the Tech Board has inched forward with muni-networking
- the Town Council is discussing a town-wide economic development office (one of my platform planks)
- UNC has co-opted my campaign rhetoric on Carolina North, set aside current plans and called for a community-oriented rethink
- the Town Council agreed to let the Tech Board “experiment” with Internet-based reporting of our deliberations
Hey, it’s only been two months, more to come….
Wrap up….
At this point, with 38 precincts reporting, it appears I’m headed for a solid 5th place. If the trend of a vote for Thorpe is a vote for Harrison continues, I imagine that by the end count I’ll still be out of the running. Of course, it isn’t over until it’s over – 45 of 45 reporting.
Win or lose, the campaign has been great. I’ve had an opportunity to express some ideas and viewpoints not generally found in our races. I’ve also had an opportunity to see some interesting character emerge in our candidate field.
I also made the unprecedented move of releasing all my financial and contributor information prior to the election. I hope this is something the current candidates will do ASAP and that the next slate of candidates will do as a matter of course.
To the 2005 SPCH endorsement class; Laurin and Mark, great top of the ticket. Jason, good experience for your next run. And thanks for all the Pit sits.
I’m sure there will some great post-analysis: Was turnout a factor? Did more money equal more votes? What was the role of all the signage?
That will all be interesting but in the end the Town will have spoken.
Thank you to all my supporters, the folk that voted for me and all the folk that turned out to vote on one of the loveliest election days I’ve ever experienced.
Finally, thanks to my great family – E. and Ellie. Without your support I would’ve never gotten as far as I have….
Goodnight folks, it has been a long day.
5:45am The Balloon is Going UP!
The balloon is going up! Headed out from campaign headquarters 😉 to take a quick tour of the key precincts in town. Putting a few last flourishes on and checking for sign “corruption”.
