I Photowalked on Haight Street [en]

[fr] Je suis allée faire un "photowalk", c'est-à-dire une promenade-réunion dont l'objectif est de se balader en prenant des photos. Voici quelques photos que j'ai prises et que j'aime bien. Je crois qu'il faut qu'on organise quelque chose de similaire à Lausanne. Qui est partant?

Friday evening I met up with a bunch of people to go photowalking in Haight Street. A photowalk is simply an occasion to stroll around and take photos in the company of other nice people. I think we need to start organizing things like this in Lausanne — anybody interested?

Here are some of the photos I took.

Photowalking 11 in Haight 80

Photowalking 11 in Haight 77

Photowalking 11 in Haight 63

Photowalking 11 in Haight 46

Photowalking 11 in Haight 61

Photowalking 11 in Haight 34

Photowalking 11 in Haight 22

Photowalking 11 in Haight 8

Photowalking 11 in Haight 43

Photowalking 11 in Haight 10

Photowalking 11 in Haight 17

Photowalking 11 in Haight 87

Photowalking 11 in Haight 91

Search for photos from this photowalk on Flickr and on Zooomr.

I might add links to other participants’ sets/photos/blogs later, if I have the courage.

David Weinberger and Andrew Keen [en]

Random, scattered notes. Not necessarily understandable. Might contain outright mistakes — I don’t always understand everything. No who-said-what either, sorry.

David Weinberger

Supernova Second Day 29

1993: Too much information. Solution: more information. This has always been the problem of the web: too much info out there. Why aren’t we drowning?

First order: ?

Second order: physically separate. steph-note: great slide with photos of cars demonstrating that we can’t put two physical things at the same place

We like taxonomic trees: everything in one place and the right place. Sorting clothes in a pile. Animal kingdom tree.

We have absorbed the limitations of the physical and applied it to the world of ideas. Terrible limitation!

We take the leaves of the trees.

  1. leaf of many branches (put one thing in many categories)
  2. messiness as a virtue
  3. no difference between data and metadata (everything is online — “I remember a bit of the content” => you can find the thing, and all the metadata. Everything becomes metadata.)
  4. Owners of the information do not own the organisation of that information. We have invented techniques to allow us to find stuff. The web is not flat, it’s lumpy.

  5. We are used to favoring simplicity because that’s how you get the message out. (cf. politics steph-note: slide of Bush) Blog posts commenting on Bush’s speech made it more complex, commenting on little aspects of it.

  6. Experts. Publicly negotiated knowledge. Wikipedia. Usually Wikipedia is better than what we get from any one individual. No matter how much of an expert Howard is, the mailing-list is smarter than him. Kids using social tools to do homework. Doing homework socially.
  7. Understanding. What we do on the web is understand what we know. We have a huge pile of stuff we enrich with metadata (tags!!) We’re creating links between things. We’re building the real semantic web!

Infrastructure of meaning. It’s ours.

Andrew Keen

Supernova Second Day 34

This is supposed to be a debate about the value of authority in a connected year. Troubled by the idea that authority has value.

Power being defined as religious, charismatic, expertise

Are all these changes a good thing? Are they a threat to what we truly value?

What he values: he’s a modernist. Believes in the nation-state, mass-society. It’s good. Radically new access to culture, education. Mass education, mass media, mass literacy — good thing.

Where is this world going? In spite of digital utopians’ hopes (genuine hopes, they believe what they say!) steph-note: sentences too long, can’t keep track concerned about what we’re losing in the withering of mass-everything, bigger divisions between the rich and the poor.

More scarcity of education in this digital world. We’re doing away with the access to education for the masses by taking down the gate-keepers.

Hierarchies: digital revolution is creating profound new hierarchies. Dramatic contrasts in terms of wealth and poverty.

Fragmentation of mass society: we’re seeing complex boundaries of the middle ages reappear. steph-note: to me, he seems to be saying lots of things that ring well with people’s fears, but for me it’s disconnected from reality. “it’s making access to education more difficult” — how? where? when?

Debate

Supernova Second Day 37

steph-note: DW asks a question, don’t have the feeling AK is answering — asking another question. Noticing I have lots of trouble following conversations. DW engaging more than AK who tends to just ask questions back at DW’s questions.

steph-note: AK now answering questions, but I’m still crap at taking notes in this kind of situation. I still think he’s somewhat hindering the conversation by going on tangents and flying out in abstractions with no examples. Sweeping generalisations and references to how we’re going back to medieval times.

AK: people need authorities and experts.

DW: the web is more of everything — the good, and the bad.

Tom: there is actually very little authority in the world which is derived from expertist.

AK: the media system is relatively meritocratic regarding to society steph-note: couldn’t disagree more, and the audience visibly doesn’t agree either

Update, July 25, 2007: Full Text: Keen vs. Weinberger

What Do You Care About? [en]

[fr] Hier soir, au lieu de me demander "alors, qu'est-ce que tu fais?", David Isenberg m'a demandé "de quoi te préoccupes-tu" (ou, peut-être, "quels sont les thèmes chers à ton coeur" -- traduction pas évidente de "what do you care about").

En bref, je m'intéresse à l'espace où les gens et la technologie se rencontrent, particulièrement sur internet. Plus précisément:

  • les adolescents et internet
  • le multilinguisme sur internet

Yesterday evening in the skyscraper, I met David Isenberg, who instead of asking the very conventional “so, what do you do?” question, asked me “so, what do you care about?”

What a great question to ask somebody you’ve just met. It kind of blew my mind. Personally, I’ve come to dread the “what do you do?” question, because the answer is usually something like “uh, well, I’m a freelance consultant… blogging 101, stuff, teenagers, talks… bleh”. Which actually, does not adequately cover what I do and who I am. Actually, the evening before, somebody told me “you need to work on your sales pitch.” To which I answered that I didn’t have a sales pitch, because I don’t want to “sell myself” — if people want to work with me, they call me up or e-mail me, and I’m in the lucky situation that this provides enough interesting work to keep me busy and fed.

So, what do I care about? Mainly, about people, relationships, technology (particularly the internet) and where they intersect. That’s the whole “internet/web2.x consultant” thingy. And in a bit more detail, these days, there are two issues I care about a lot:

  • teenagers and their use of the internet, and the educational issues it raises (what the risks are and aren’t — insert rant about predator hysteria here — what is changing, what parents need to know)
  • languages online, particularly doing localisation right — insert rant about “country = language” here — and providing tools and strategies to help bridge people bridge language barriers better, and creating multilingual spaces (“multilingualism” stuff).

So, what do you care about?

Supernova 2007 — John Kneuer [en]

[fr] A la conférence Supernova en train d'essayer (et d'échouer) de prendre des notes. Blabla politico-gouvernemental.

Random, scattered notes. Not necessarily understandable. Might contain outright mistakes — I don’t always understand everything. No who-said-what either, sorry.

Announcing the next speaker, John Kneuer. Some stuff about government and Washington and some acronyms I’m not familiar with (FTC etc.)

Supernova First Day 39

DTV transition. Everything will be digital. Interesting and important from a broadcasting perspective. Consumer demand. Really significant changes in the market. Spectrum, transmission of that spectrum.

steph-note: sorry, this is gobbledygook for me…

Single-cell tower, four tower-system. Technology one generation beyond incumbents. Access layer. Open access to the wireless network: problem is, government sets terms and conditions for access. steph-note: too many four-syllable words for me here.

Pro-consumer benefit of open access. Significant… steph-note: something. Market forces are going to provide an open network… Opportunity forgone… people in this room… global reputation of the Bay Area… innovation… shattering the business models… overcoming… large incumbents…

Questions:

David Weinberger: basically, the US markets are closed. steph-note: not understanding what this is about, but filming part of the response. Video below contains another question and answer, and a point made by Doc Searls and a very incomplete response (ran out of memory card space — maybe I need a real video camera)

Feel free to add tags and comments to the video. I hope the audio is understandable.

Update, Tuesday 26th: David Isenberg has a transcript of the video.

Update, Friday 21st

Check out:

Update, Saturday 22nd

The video was broken, sorry. It now works.

Taking Photos at Supernova [en]

[fr] Je suis toujours à la conférence Supernova, où je prends des photos plutôt que des notes (vu l'état).

I’m still at Supernova (gosh, third day!), feeling a lot more human now but still taking more photos than notes. I’m sitting in the second row now, so we’ll see. I might take notes. Do check out my photos, though — as for Reboot, I’ve organised them into sub-sets and one general, recapitulative set which contains all the photographs. Here are the sub-sets so far:

Supernova Open Space 7
Supernova 2007 Open Space

Supernova Twit Jaiku Party 1
Jaiku/Twit Party

Supernova Cupcake Party 52
Cupcake Party

Supernova Cupcake Party 29
Just the cupcakes…

Supernova First Day 1
Supernova, First Day (today!)

Update, Friday 21st

Please add tags as you look through them (particularly names of people, I really don’t know everyone!) and if you take photos of Supernova, consider opening up tagging to the whole Flickr community.

San Francisco Skyscraper Party 62
Reception in a skyscraper, with a view you shouldn’t miss!

San Francisco Skyscraper View 44

Broadcasting Supernova Live [en]

[fr] Je suis à la conférence Supernova à San Francisco, et on m'a recrutée pour retransmettre en direct une des sessions.

If you’re not at Supernova but would have liked to, you can follow the sessions live online. I’m broadcasting one (finally, after solving a bunch of logistical and technical problems).

The three other sessions are being broadcasted too but I’m not sure at what address. Add them in the comments if you have them and I’ll update this post.

Flickr: Open Up Tagging Your Photos to the Community, Please [en]

[fr] Permettez à tous les membres de Flickr de taguer vos photos. Moins de travail pour vous et de meilleurs tags pour vos photos!

Tagging one’s photos precisely on Flickr can be a bit of a drag, especially when you upload over 200 conference photographs full of people you don’t necessarily know. Personally, I go through my photos once before uploading them, and the last thing I want to do when I’ve uploaded them is go through them again to add tags.

However, I find myself looking at other people’s photos with interest, and it doesn’t take much effort to quickly add a tag or a name while I’m doing that.

Tagging a Photo

Unfortunately, many Flickr users open up tagging only to their contacts (the default, IIRC). My account was like that for a long time. When I met Derek Powazek in Lausanne, he told me he had opened up tagging to everybody on Flickr, and that people really participated. I decided to try, and it works. And you do retain control in case somebody does something stupid (happened to me… maybe once?)

People are Tagging My Photos!

(I could show you pages and pages and pages like that for my Reboot photos.)

So, please, do us a favour (and do me a favour, if you’re taking photographs of me and not tagging them stephaniebooth).

Go to your Photo Privacy Preferences page (this link will take you there if you’re already logged in to Flickr) and make sure it looks something like this:

Open Up Your Tags To The Community

Then, add tags like needstags or needsnames to encourage people to help out. And pass the word around to your friends…

Thanks!

Update, Friday 21st

I just realised this is not retroactive. So it only applies to the new photos you upload. If you want to change those permissions on your previously uploaded photos (which I recommend!), you need to go through the organiser. I’m not sure there is a way to do them all in one go.

Flickr: changing photo permissions

Flickr: change photo permissions

Je suis à San Francisco [fr]

[en] I'm in San Francisco until July 22nd. Just now, I've been "recruited" to film some of Supernova2007 (which means I'll be there, behind a camera), so I haven't really had time to settle down (I was at Supernova Open Space yesterday).

Juste un petit mot rapide pour vous dire que j’ai fait bon voyage jusqu’à San Francisco (avec très peu de “jetlag” grâce à la mélatonine). J’y serai jusqu’au 22 juillet. Il fait chaud la journée mais froid la nuit, et j’ai été “recrutée” pour faire camérawoman lors de la conférence Supernova2007. Donc, journée un peu occupée, mais entrée gratuite à la conférence.

Waiting on the Sidewalk

J’ai commencé à mettre des photos sur Flickr — vous pourrez donc suivre mes péripéties depuis là si vous le désirez.

Avec un peu de chance le rythme de vie devrait s’être calmé d’ici la fin de la semaine (quoique… il y a tout le temps quelque chose qui se passe, ici, c’est effrayant) et je tiens vraiment à profiter de ce séjour pour écrire, bloguer, me reposer…

Supernova Open Space: Presence [en]

[fr] Notes de conférence/discussion.

*Random, scattered notes. Not necessarily understandable. Might contain outright mistakes — I don’t always understand everything. No who-said-what either, sorry.*

Classicly, presence comes from IM. Now, more to do with context.

Systems try to define presence for us, but in a way completely broken (“Away”: often not true). Kids: using SMS — just send it, get (or not) a response. Something muddy in the waters, because doesn’t really tell us, from a communications point of view, what we want to know. Can I talk to you? Can we chat? Fragmenting presence (Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook).

Different types of interruptions. Buddy list groups.

*steph-note: damn, really incapable of participating AND taking notes. Really really spotty notes.*

Difference between “conversation” and “communication”.

Jaiku as stream of consciousness of your community. *steph-note: that’s why it feels different (finally nailed it!) — it’s more about thoughts and intellectual/media production than about actual presence. Twitter has a higher ratio of presence. It’s more focused (yes, even though it’s chatty/microbloggy).*

Social etiquette.

Supernova Open Space: The Economy of Free (Chris Heuer) [en]

[fr] Notes de conférence-discussion.

*Random, scattered notes. Not necessarily understandable. Might contain outright mistakes — I don’t always understand everything. No who-said-what either, sorry.*

Popcorn round: what is the issue?

– Money taboo (seen as hurting open source)
– Zero times anything is always zero, whereas a small something times something big ends up being something
– Rival goods vs. non-rival goods. How do you make money out of non-rival goods? Need to introduce a kind of exclusion mechanism (ex. Movies).
– Free building materials
– Discrimination that patronage causes (*steph-note: seems to me we’re aware of this in EU*)

Supernova Open Space 8 Chris’s core point is precisely that. Hidden patron model. Independants don’t have the ability to go to some of the events employees go to. Everybody does it “for free” — actually their company is paying for it.

Age of abundance.

Patronage: potentially disturbing effects. Women. There’s money behind this for some people but not others.

*(steph-note: ew. I need to work on my US accent parser.)*

Most of the programmers of “free stuff” are youngsters or people who have a day job — so who are supported in some way to do that.

Popular: The End of Free.

Trying to find patronage for a project involving chemists doing spectroscropy — get them to communicate/have compatible software.

Beginning of the century: huge numbers of mini-newspapers in Chicago.

In an economy of abundance, where do people make money? Make money out of being to apply knowledge/information, rather than the knowledge/information itself. (Debate: “knowledge” or “information”? Data.)

Problem: denial/taboo about patronage. We need to talk about it, and about how it works. We’re not teaching companies/individuals how to be good patrons or how not to be.

Perception: money = manipulation.

Free vs. non-measurable. Air isn’t free, we just don’t know how to measure how much it costs (keep it clean, etc).

Funding medical research for profit. Exploiting profit vs. “reasonable profit”.

Gift economy is different. Property. Money: when you fall out of relationship.

Barter.

Organisation has been vilified by the abuse of power for personal benefit and bad behaviour of a few.

At some point, if you want to produce/achieve something, you need some kind of organisation.

Chris: conference model. Exploiting profit from the knowledge of the speakers, session participants and participants. Just organised a conference co-produced by the speakers. Need to continue to think about new ways for cocreating value.
*Feel free to add notes about this session in the comments. I really didn’t capture everything that was said, and probably missed the most interesting bits.*