I'm in London this weekend on business, so its a shame to miss RecentChangesCamp in Palo Alto. Hosted by Socialtext, the event is more than a Barcamp for wikis. It draws people from afar with in interest in wiki spirit.
If you are in town, definitely stop by.
Slideshare, to which I am a big fan and advisor, just closed $3M with Venrock. Here's an announcement:
1,000-squared words.
I twittered that Triggit was the coolest thing I saw at Web 2.0 Expo. Later on, they won the Launch Pad contest. I've been watching these guys since they started showing up a Barcamps. They've hit upon making adding widget content and ads on a blog or site dead simple.
By doing so, they make the act of placing an ad engaging. When everyone is a publisher, the gestures they make empower influence which is far greater than basic impressions. So bear with me for a while I experiment. It won't show up in RSS feeds, but basically I'm learning Blinglish on my blog.
I'm in London next Thursday and co-hosting a social software dinner with the good folks at Headshift. If you can join us, here's the details:
- Pre-dinner drink and gathering at All Bar One, Shad Thames waterfront, from 18:30.
- Followed by dinner at Cantina, also Shad Thames waterfront, at 20:00.
- Map
- Nearest tube stops: London Bridge, Tower Hill, Bermondsey
- RSVP the old fashioned way by calling Lars at 020 7357 7358
Hope to see you there!
JP Rangaswami, in a delightful read, muses on Drucker's quote "people make shoes, not money" and how information has no value until it informs a decision. Our institutions value sharing, cooperation and trust -- but create cultures of hoarding for advantage and control out of fear. Perhaps this is because we haven't learned to manage when information wants to be free. JP notes that "Information is changing. And it is becoming more valuable to us all by becoming less valuable to any one of us."
But this except sparked a thought:
Take a completely different perspective on all this. Privacy. Why does someone worry about who has access to his medical records? Not because the records themselves have value. But because someone can misuse them. Because, for example, someone can refuse to insure, or raise premiums for, some hitherto undeclared medical condition. Or even worse, for some future projected medical condition, projected as a result of discovered habits.
It’s not about the information, it’s about what you do with it.
Privacy and security paradigms focus on controlling the flow of information. I wonder not only if this is possible. But if its the right focus. Information precedes action. Now I'm no Bruce Schneier, but perhaps the security industry should be focused more on controlling action than information.
I recall a panel on Data at Large at PC Forum, way back in 2003. Jeff Jonas from SRD shared how they were at the frontier of using social network analysis for security in casinos. In hallway conversation, Gilman Louie, then with In-Q-Tel, clarified an interesting tension around homeland security and civil liberties. In a top-down manner you could data mine communications for patterns and profiles to discover threats. Or, from the bottom-up, you could work with a lead to reveal a graph of conspiracy. The latter is much closer to traditional intelligence or the practice of private investors, just with new tools. And with less risk of infringing upon civil liberties.
I recall when we introduced wikis into a bank in London where JP was the CIO. The compliance officer's initial reaction was to demand that he approve every edit before it was posted. Of course we could have developed that feature, and the attempt to control would prevent any collaboration whatsoever. But we showed him the audit trail inherent in a wiki, revision history where you can see who did what at what time. We gave him some smart search feeds for basic monitoring. If someone did something inappropriate, he could prosecute the lead and potentially fire them.
Perhaps the need to know basis has less of a basis than we believe. Perhaps there is an opportunity for security systems to be more effective as a whole system when it focuses on what people do with information instead of controlling its flow.
Larry Lessig's Change-Congress.org seeks to reform the influence of money on politics by enabling emergent pluralism. It calls for citizens and candidates to take a pledge. Click on the badge to see mine. The principles behind the pledges are:
1. No money from lobbyists or PACs
2. Vote to end earmarks
3. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency
4. Support publicly-financed campaigns
Lessig put out a call to action yesterday:
I'm asking you today to go to the site and first tag the candidates in your own district. When that's done, then please work on as many other districts as you can. You'll get points as you do this (we're not sure what those points will get you beyond whuffie among reformers). And please spread this please of mine around to as many others as you can. Blog it, spam with it, talk about it at parties: We need to complete this map as quickly as possible and it will only get done with your help. Here's the link to get started:
Would you prefer I take my del.icio.us Linkorama out of my RSS feed?
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