One of the highlights of BlogHer for me was my first podcasting experience with Halley Suitt. I was sitting around at a ‘podcasting’ station and she showed up and the John Furrier who runs PodTech was there and so we did a spontaneous recording… here is the result. Wow! listening I actually don’t mind my voice.
How do we make the internet a trusted place?
Is the net a more dangerous place for women?
Halley discusses her digital identity experiences – writing about sex on the net, and lingerie photos of her on the net.
I mention the founding of Virtual Rights to address this new era of personal representation online. I share what inspires me how we can use these tools to empower us as citizens.
Digital Identity
People like Gnomdex so there is BAR Camp
From Marc Canter
Doc and I are doing a panel on the ‘OpenWeb’ so I hope folks come or at least tune-in via webcast or IRC. But the AO conference WILL be propogated by VCs and rich people – and I prefer hanging out with normal people the best.
That’s why I love Gnomedex. I sure hope there’s another one – soon – like at the end of September.
I found this in my list of saved but not posted blog posts. Seems like Marc’s wish is going to come true – BAR Camp is this weekend. I just found out about it from Eugene Kim’s blog (he has been posting some great stuff this past week about wikimania and collaboration patterns). Likely I will go down with Mary and share the demo of i-names sso working on wordpress that I did at DrupalCon in Porland two weeks ago.
TLD Craziness
.mobi
DESPITE FIERCE CRITICISM from Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web, ICANN has decided to go ahead and create a new TLD (Top Level Domain) aimed at mobile phones and other mobile devices.
.tel
ICANN hasn’t posted it on their website yet, but according to one of their board members, the .tel top-level domain was approved.” notellmo.tel is going to be one of the first domains sold.
Perhaps there is one good thing about xdi – there is one organizational names space @name.
Building for Peace | Cell Phone Presence
One of the things that I have always been inspired by since first going to Planetwork’s first conference in 2000 is the potential of these tools do do good. Johannes posted this on the Empowered citizen after the London Bombings and is a great reminder to consider why digital identity is important to continue building. While we must continue building we also must think about what we are building and how it can be used. Below is a post I found a while back that reminds us we must think about the implications of the powers we build into these new gadgets.
Empowered connected citizens are what changes the terrorist dynamic.
As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur whose very life is centered around building things, not destroying them, I watch in utter disbelief and complete incomprehension. How can anyone’s goal be total destruction? How can any of them believe anything will come out of these acts, except for more destruction? What sick world view is that?
There is a clear line. There are those who build, and those who destroy. Those who construct, and those who destruct. Deep down, I feel there is little middle ground. You are either with us pushing forward for positive, constructive change, or against us, killing and burning. There cannot be a compromise.
Many asked the question last week: “what can I do, how can I help?” My answer is simple: “Keep building.” Whether you are in high-tech, building new companies, products and markets; or a street sweeper, helping to build a beautiful city; or a parent or teacher, building understanding and new lives; or wherever you are. We, the builders, can build more than they can ever destroy. We can build better and stronger. And we will. We, the builders, will prevail, and there is no doubt about that.
Some interesting issues from the CTO forum on the Entrepreneurship Blog.
Presence information Cell phone providers could exploit.
- Cellular providers know who you are and where you are as long as your cell phone is on. If you are with a group of people they could detect who you are with.
- The aggregate statistics and behaviors that could be mined from cell phone presence/position data must be worth billions.
- The identity and security implication are fun to think about. Your cell phone presence information becomes another part of your digital identity.
- How much presence information should a cell phone customer share with their peers?
- Maybe the customer would like to place delay loops for some of their contacts. Do you inform a peer that the information they see is delayed or do you want them to believe it is in real time? Perhaps you want you location to be fuzzy like consumer GPS. How fuzzy? It probably depends on who wants to know.
I was surprised Digital Identity wasn’t discussed.
Tagging back and forth.
Tagging using XRI
Drummond just posted a fantastic articulation how on might use XRI to do open tagging. Some of you may not be following the emergence of Tagging in the blogoshpere but it is really real with many services now empowering their members to tag. It has exploded so much that they have begun he World’s First Social Social Tagging Site Tagging Site site Supercilious. Tag Tuesday is the real hub of this emerging developer/social media creator community. Perhaps Drummond has just created the outlines for a presentation there I know Nile was asking for suggestions about who could present the next month so let them know when you will be in town D.
Creating Spaces for Innovation and Conversation
I have just gotten back into the swing of things – reading all the blogs I should be etc. I am starting off where I put things down about two months ago (I have 4000+ posts to scan/read in my identity streams folder).
Reading this post by Mary I remember the citizens jouranlism day that was less then ideal. The whole event got me thinking about the art and skill involved in creating good containers for people to gather in. The day was a disaster on a bunch of levels.
- First of all there was no clear map to get to the location. After we arrived Mary and I made a sign out of a paper bag to make sure others coming after us would actually know where to turn in.
- It was summer in SF at the Precido – for those of you who don’t know that means it will likely be very cold, windy and foggy. People were not warmed of this and so basically everyone was freezing.
- This was a meeting about internet citizen journalism – I had assumed we would be meeting in a building with wifi – not the case.
- When one calls an event and it has a start time – it is good for the host to actually show up prior to that time to welcome folks. Our host that day arrived an hour late and got to saying hello to everyone at 1.5 hours after the stated start time.
- It is good to feed people at events – so there was some effort made in this direction – hotdogs and hambergers. No one was really organized to actually cook the food. Two of the women who were just there to participate ended up taking the lead in preparing food. They had not volunteered for this role before hand but no one was doing it so they stepped in and cooked.
- After introductions concluded we all moved down to the internet archive – this was a packed room and 30+ people were trying to have one conversation. We were all looking to the organizers for some structure to the conversation – none was really provided.
- I am told that after I left the conversation did get better.
I am not writing this to be purely critical but to highlight some real world examples of the challenges that aries when organizing in person event. Consciousness about how to bring people together could be further cultivated in this community. 40 amazing people were asked to and willingly volunteered 6 hours of their time on a SUNDAY to join this discussion. More attention and for thought could have been given to the container created.
This metaphor of the container is one that comes from my work in spiritual activism. How are you going to honor peoples time and the gifts they are bringing to what ever purpose you have. This container involves the whole of the event:
- the initial intention
- who is included in manifesting the intention
- who is invited
- choice of process and facilitation
- proposed goals outcomes
- the physical aspects of the event –
- Location – inside/outside – bigroom/lots of small rooms – bathrooms or not
- nourishment needs (food and drink)
The creation of a strong community container is one of the keys to success for online worlds too. Claire from SUN has this post referencing Caterina Fake about how they (FLICKR) focused (and continue to focus) very strongly on the container of community. This positive field of feedback has drawn energy towards them.
People are more likely to work well together well not only when they have a common interest or shared set of goals – but also when there is a personal connection. I try to work well with most people, but I’m much more motivated to to cut people slack when I know a little bit about who they are, when I can tease them about their taste in a band called FloggingMolly, when I know that they like to delve into 1337 5p34k on occasion, or if I know that her talented brother went to RISD and is friends with the infamous creator of of Andre The Giant Has A Posse.
Caterina Fake of Flickr fame recently blogged about building a flickricious sense of community (gotta love that word) – and the importance of personal connections caught my eye. One relevant quote from Caterina – the part about personal – and authentic – communication is at the end of the paragraph:
“In the beginning, the creators of the community space have to create the tone and attitude of the place, set the parameters of what is and what is not allowed, and participate heavily, engaging directly with other people, mercilessly kicking/banning trolls, creating a real sense of there being a there there. Friendster, and the banning of “Fakesters” is often used as an example of a misunderstanding of online community — but I think this misunderstanding went back further, to the beginning. I was an early member of Friendster and, the first message I got was from the founder. “How do you like the service?” he asked, and not — and this is really the crux of it — “Pynchon! Man, how can you read that stuff! DeLillo is 10X better.” or “ZEPPELIN ROX! Zoso is my favorite album!!!” I’d filled out a profile. See what I mean?”
What’s the conclusion? Growing the OpenSolaris community is going to involve building lots of these personal connections. Personal and authentic, not stiff and corporate. Cool.
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