Archive for June, 2009
Open Flow is what happens when information moves freely among users, websites, and organizations. The power of networks is magnified when technical standards and business practices allow different communities and systems to leverage each other. This “conference within a conference,” sponsored in 2008 by BT, brought together leading thinkers and practitioners to discuss innovation at the edges through social networking platforms, microformats, open source, social software, and other manifestations of Open Flow.
Interested in sponsoring Open Flow 2009? Click here.
Visualizing OpenFlow2008
www.flickr.com
More images from Open Flow 2008.
Open Flow Conversation
“The conversation, featuring myself, author and consultant Elliot Maxwell, BT’s... Read More
The 140 Characters conference is taking place today in New York, and the online buzz is reaching a crescendo. Here’s where to follow what’s happening:
On Twitter
Video Stream (reg. required)
Howard Greenstein from the SupernovaHub team is there with video camera in hand. We’ll have some video highlights later this week. Subscribe to the feed or to the Twitter stream to make sure you don’t miss them.
We've listed some planned session topics on the About page. We welcome your input. What are we missing? What should we make sure to address at this year's event? And what topics are stale or overdone? Comment on this blog post with your suggestions.
| Kevin Werbach | June 11th, 2009 | News
Paul Kedrosky had a very interesting take on entrepreneurship this week on “Marketplace.” In an interview with Tess Vigeland, he suggested that access to healthcare, and not access to capital, was a key obstacle to entrepreneurship in today’s economic climate. An excerpt:
Vigeland: So then you have these non-20 somethings who are opening up these businesses. What is standing in their way? You do talk about in the article about how health care is a really big issue.
KEDROSKY: Right. Exactly. One of the myths in entrepreneurship is this idea that the primary obstacle is the availability of capital when most entrepreneurs are ego-driven people who believe that they can... Read More
Back in 2002, I thought it was modestly innovative to hold a conference where online interactions were a core part of the experience, participants helped to co-create the content, information flowed in and out of the event in real-time, and the subject matter ranged across traditional industry boundaries. Modestly, because those developments seemed inevitable in an increasingly connected world. Yet here we are in 2009, and I still get asked about those features of Supernova, as though they were wild and novel. I haven’t changed my view about inevitability. And frankly, Supernova has moved forward a great deal since 2002.
Today, with so many fantastic online tools and information sources,... Read More
Interesting excerpt in the Technology Review on altruism in social networks. The excerpt:
“How altruistic behaviour emerges has puzzled evolutionary biologists for decades. From the point of view of survival of the fittest, the unselfish concern for the welfare of others seems inexplicable. Surely any organism should always act selfishly if it were truly intent on saving its own bacon.
One explanation is that altruistic acts, although seemingly unselfish, actually benefit those who perform them but in indirect ways. The idea is that unselfish acts are repeated. So those who have been helped go on to help other individuals, ensuring that this behaviour spreads through a group, a phenomenon... Read More
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... Read More
| Supernova Staff | June 8th, 2009 | News
David Weinberger, a writer and fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society is interviewed by Howard Greenstein about the theme of Change Networks for Supernova 2009. They discuss the concept of the Web “exceptionalism,” the idea that the Web, as opposed to some other media, is really a game-changing phenomenon. Continuing, they consider how things like the “End-to-End” principal make the Net different than other media, and how the hyperlink changes the book culture of the past.
For more, please watch part two of their discussion.
In this part of the interview, we discover the third piece in which the web is exceptional – the ability to allow collaboration on a scale previously unprecedented. David and Howard also discuss the ways that networks connect us, and note the fact that there’s a need for new words to describe friends (because of the use of the word “friend” in social networking services) is yet another reason to consider the shift in our society that the web is causing. Finally the two discuss “Networks for Change,” specifically how the Obama administration’s shift towards transparency is changing how governments react to people.
In case you... Read More
In part two (see part one) of Kevin Werbach’s discussion with Howard Greenstein on the theme of Change Networks for Supernova 2009, the two discuss how self-organizing movements like the Obama campaign influenced the thinking around this year’s topics.
Kevin notes how Supernova 2009 is not just the conference, but also an ongoing community online, with discussion throughout the year. One topic Kevin mentions is “The Stream” – the idea of the increasingly real-time web and how our interactions with content and with each other are changing. His experience on the transition team for the Obama administration will certainly influence Supernova this year, as will ideas and cultural trends... Read More
| Howard Greenstein | June 5th, 2009 | Video
