Editor’s Note: Welcome to the New SupernovaHub
For the past seven years, the Supernova Conference has brought together a incredible cast of thinkers (and doers) from a wide variety of disciplines. Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsysystems, has said “Supernova brings us out of the weeds and into the real action, bringing together the right folks, and right forum, to advance the debate” while Joi Ito, CEO of Neoteny, commented “It was totally worthwhile. I’m addicted now.” Even Mike Nelson, Director, Internet Technlogy and Strategy at IBM, went so far as to say “In terms of the useful stuff I learned per speaker, your conference was the best I’ve ever attended.”
The conference has its groove, but it’s only once a year. It’s time to keep this momentum going year-round.
That’s where the SupernovaHub (http://www.supernovahub.com) comes in. It’s the clearinghouse for all the great things that are going on in the Supernova community the other 51 weeks of the year.
An important thing to note is what the SupernovaHub is not. It is not intended to be Yet Another Social Networking Service (YASNS). It is, instead, a way to find out about the latest thinking that members of this community are doing, as well as keep the conversations going that are already in progress.
Kevin has done a great job of teasing out the four key threads that seem to bind the Supernova conversations from year to year. They are:
- Social – Public policy and social impact
- Infrastructure – How networks are changing
- Business – Ever-evolving business dynamics and strategy
- Life – How our world and online experiences evolve
For the rest of 2009, these four threads will be explored in the context of Supernova’s theme for 2009, Change Networks. In particular, we’ll be bringing together people and conversations on:
- Networks For Change - Public Policy and Social Impact
- Changing Networks – How Infrastructure is Evolving
- Strategic Change – How Change Networks are Changing Business
- The Changing World - How our Life, Experiences and Online Experiences are Changing
If you have ideas we should be covering, individuals we should be interviewing, partners with whom we should be partnering, etc. around these four areas, please let us know.
So here we go…let’s keep this conversation going!
photo: phil hawksworth
Recently I attended a talk given by a neurobiologist and a computer scientist. One the striking things about it were how they reached similar conclusions regarding the nature of consciousnesses and the human brain. I think such interdisciplinary approaches to science will only accelerate in the decades to come, and the “internet” will be a key factor of that. I’m interested in whether there can and should be public policies specifically intended to promote that sort of interdisciplinary approach to seemingly intractable problems.