Unusual instruments of inspiration (day 199)

Another long day keeping up with three lives: social network, sxsw, work.  I'm pretty sure I couldn't do this full time.  I'm not sure how other people are doing it and partying too.  Again, I'm wondering about my gene pool.

Today I woke up too late for the first panels which sucked.  Seriously my only excuse is a 2am bedtime and a totally blackened hotel room which let no daylight in for me to cue to.  I thought the birds would wake me as they had done the morning before but the miracle of selective hearing had happened in the intervening 24 hours.  You see there are these birds here called Grackles and they deserve their name.  They can make sweet sounds but in a group they make a range of grackly sounds that are very distinctive.  And when I say there are these birds, I mean there are LOTS of these birds.  They line the telephone lines for long distances, perched side by side so the line looks like a thick black marker.

Too me so long to recap yesterday that I'm thinking I'm just going to do very quick highlights for today.  I tried to go to a 'battery life in Africa' panel but ended up being at a 'twitter and Tolstoy' panel which had usurped the canceled Africa timeslot.  The amazing thing is about this twist is that before deciding to go to the Africa panel I had made my way to another panel and at the very last moment changed my mind.  Unfortunately the venues were almost as far away from each other as possible so I rushed over to the Africa panel, probably just in time to miss the person saying it had been canceled.  But I wasn't the only one that was late and when we collectively realized that we were not in the right panel we left and talked in the hallway.  I talked with this guy called Peter Vesterbacka who had two gadgets to show me.  One was a solar-powered battery charger and the other was a golfball sized bluetooth interaction device called Blobo which has both orientation, force, and pressure sensors.  Very cool.  You can even drop and bounce this thing.  And it's only $49.  I was hooked.  I tried to find them at the Trade show to see a demo but a dyslexic brain turned 402 into 204.  I'll see them tomorrow.  Anyway, as I was walking away I marvelled at the sequence of events that would have me meet this guy.  Sometimes these types of coincidences are more visible and I become amazed for an instant.

Then I went to a conversation on democracy in the workplace and found out about WorldBlu from Traci Fenton.  She was very impressive and I left the session thinking, "yes we can".   Turns out there are many organizations (some large!) that are switching to a democratic way of operating.  There are core principles they outlined on their web site to get started.  Every year they have WorldBlu awards they give out, and they publish a WorldBlu list.

Then I went to the keynote which was an interview with Twitter CEO Evan Wiliams.  I knew it was really boring and I was desperately trying to connect to the twitter feed but my iphone wifi receiver was just too weak to pick up an overloaded signal.   I would have been a witness to a live backchannel lynching.  Oh well.  I also missed the leaving the room in a coordinated swarm.  I just watched a bunch of people leave and just thought they had to be somewhere (wasn't a huge swarm).  Slowly, the room emptied to about half full.  It had been standing room only.  I honestly don't remember much of what he said except he announced a new API feature (@anywhere).

Then I went to a talk by James Fowler on how networks influence our habits and emotions.  I think I may have blogged about this before.  The idea is that you are influenced by people up to thrice removed from you.  So a friend of a friend of a friend being happy will increase your chances of being happy.  Same thing for obesity.  It's not news that we influence each other.  It's surprising that it's more spread out than I assumed.  The talk was good but I am triggered by evangelism and this had some of that.  They wrote a book.

Then I went to see Jaron Lanier.  That was a definite highlight.  I arrived early to get a good seat thinking he would pack the house.  He didn't.  I'd say the (large) venue was about a quarter full.  Fools, I thought.  And miss out they did.  He started and ended his talk playing unusual wooden wind instruments, one he claimed is a precursor to the computer.   He asked us all to turn stop using our gadgets during his talk.  He then proceeded on a meandering discussion of the state of social media and asset exchange.   If the social network guy was an evangelist, Jaron was a prophet.  There is something about the way he is that reminds me of Richard Stallman.  A kind of slightly off genius quality.  Anyway, while he was talking my mind was the most stimulated it has been in a very long time.  I even got lots of unrelated ideas pop into my mind and it occurred to me that being in the presence of someone who has such a grasp of a wide-ranging set of ideas is enough to make anyone creative.  Next time I'm feeling in the grey zone, I'm switching on a Jaron Lanier talk.  Hopefully they'll put it online.  Maybe I should say a few things about the content of his talk.  There was so much there I'll just scratch the surface.  He was riffing on his current thinking that he summarized in a book "You are not a gadget".  (He was signing copies later on but there were no more left when I got there.  Bummer.)   Some highlights:

• The current thinking of make information free and sell merchandise is flawed.  It assumes that there is a special 'creative' class and a much larger 'lump' class that does nothing but lazily consume.
• Ted Nelson had it right with his Xanadu design.  Unfortunately he was a terrible manager ("Imagine the worst possible manager, Ted is worse") and the idea never got anywhere.  His model assumed everyone is a first class citizen and can be producer and consumer of information.  They can make information available for free if they want to but there are no gatekeepers to keep them from publishing for a particular device.  There is only one logical copy of every file.
• The 'walled garden' approach does not work.  Why should we accept to have multiple devices each with their own formats and marketplace?
• Facebook is preventing young people from re-inventing themselves.  They are so busy maintaining a representation of themselves that they don't have time and have too much at stake to change.  
• To much 'meanness' and 'me-ness'.  We need to design systems that are not so ego-driven.

There's so much I'm probably forgetting but I didn't have my usual Evernote application open because of his opening request.  Besides he was talking so fast there's no way I could have kept up.  And he sped up as time went on.

Okay that's it for today.  So much for just highlights.  One more half day tomorrow.  I head back mid-afternoon.

A song for this post.