On Wednesday Night I attended my first DorkBot – San Francisco. It was great to be in a room full of cool geeks.
Mark Pesce also spoke about evolutions happening in swarming.
Informational Swarms are the most efficient way to get the most information to the most people.
Knowledge Swarms [ Information + Context] Wikipedia is the example where everyone contributes a little bit. It is the ‘black hole of human knowledge’ and as we all contribute a little be we all are invested in it.
Understanding Swarms [Knowledge + Experience] What we can tell each other. Looking ahead being able to google your friends (ahh here is where persistent identity shows up!)
Spot Draves presented the lastest with Electric Sheep.
Jon Philips presented on how to build an online community. The key was having three things:
• 1 mailing list
• 1 wiki and
• 1 IRC channel
Eric Davis (a founder of Planetwork)
Spoke a bit about the network power to interlink machines and amplify human knowledge. He introduced Make Magazine and spoke to the form of magazine – the inter linking of word and image.
The folks from from Make Magazine were fantastic too. I love that magazine. I read it cover to cover when it comes out. Sitting there listening to me I reflected back…emembering my days in electronics class back in grade 9…and realizing that I have been inclined towards technology for a while. Perhaps I will get up the courage to build something from it soon.
Interestingly enough it is breaking all the rules for that business – with a sell through rate of 50-75% (normally 20% or less) and having back issues in the book section. They thought of it as a Mook (a book / magazine format invented in Japan). They also have only 12 pages of ads in 160 pages of space. Their circulation is 3.5 times larger then they expected it would be by this time at 35,000.
Then there was some ‘open-dorking’. I will go back but overall it was a bit frustrating because the evening felt over programmed. Once the room broke for drinks and sociallizing it would have been good energetically to let it continue. It is one of those process things that all communities encounter as they bring people together.