Great first day at reboot – blogged, twittered, chatted and talked with a lot of people. Now looking forward to more chats and mingling. Alas, this is still on the slate: “How do I know what I think until I’ve said it out loud in public and wasted everyone’s time?: Babbage’s Noise with David Weinberger. But first some more real-live time wasting with some free beer – you know twitter is down again up …
It’s a week of heavy travel and conferencing, yesterday the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0 in Varese, now I’m at reboot 10 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Started well with a cozy welcome and “conferencing package”:
Talks started off with Howard Rheingold, then it’s Molly Wright Steenson with a talk on Responsive architecture and open society. Interesting blog she has, here I will compile some notes – I may add more links later on, this is just beta work for me – OK?
- responsive architecture (examples by Cedric Price and Joan Littlewood, nice project, sadly never got realized in the original version)
Molly showed some nice pictures of models (done with out-of-the-box prototyping material, I have to think through this, this is partly one of the attractive things about wikis, they can be used as building material when prototyping IT systems)
- adaptivity and flexibility – patterns emerged out of previous successful designs.
- cybernetic, reconfigurable and movable, e.g. for an art center, can be changed by users
- Open and closed societies – see for more Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, Criticism in a Mass Society & WH Auden
- Openness and tolerance, consciousness
- designing for delight and pleasure while giving room for doubt and distortion
- operational architecture, operated by the (israeli? US?) army
So folks, as I am getting my dose of reboot be warned that there will be light posting ahead, but I guess that’s what you’re expecting anyway when rebooting brain systems.
On Science Blogging, in IT Conversations:
Jean-Claude Bradley, an associate professor of chemistry at Drexel University, is a pioneering practitioner of open notebook science. On this edition of Interviews with Innovators, Bradley explains to host Jon Udell that he believes scientific research happens better and faster when the entire process is transparently narrated online (mp3).
Found more interesting things on usability and design – check out this video of Marissa Mayer’s keynote at the Google I/O Developers Conference. Whoa, she’s fast and smart.
Matt Mason, author of The Pirate’s Dilemma has arranged with his publisher to release his book as a free download. He’s doing a Radiohead, i.e. readers can decide freely if and how much they want to pay him. Recommended book by the way, so go D/L and read Matt’s blog too.
By treating the electronic version of a book as information rather than property, and circulating it as widely as possible, many authors such as Paulo Coelho and Cory Doctorow actually end up selling more copies of the physical version. Pirate copies of The Pirate’s Dilemma are out there online anyway, and they don’t seem to have harmed sales. My guess is they are helping. To be honest, I was flattered that the book got pirated in the first place.
Long list – but you’ve got time on a weekend, don’t you?
Jon Udell speaks to Ledeen and Lewis (blog), co-authors of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, reflecting on the rapid and sweeping changes internet technologies bring (mp3). BusinessWeek Columnists Jack & Suzy Welch say that Web Age managers must learn to sift for gems through torrents of data and chatter (“The connected leader”, mp3). Yes, add to this some preparation to tomorrow’s chat with David Weinberger and check out this podcast – originally published by SWR2 Forum in March 2008: “Bildung auf der Datenautobahn – Wie wir Information und Wissen organisieren” (mp3).
BusinessWeek’s John Byrne and Jena McGregor talk about the BusinessWeek-Boston Consulting Group annual innovation ranking, which singles out some smart companies for tough times (mp3). And Bruce Nussbaum chats with BCG’s innovation head Jim Andrew about this year’s list (mp3)
The Smallbiz Podcast takes a look at the life of a freelancer. The podcast includes interviews with speakers at the Going Solo conference – Stephanie Booth, Laura Fitton, Martin Röll, Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman-Anderson and Dennis Howlett – on how to survive as a soloist (mp3).
William Drayton in Social Innovation Conversations talks on the Importance of Being a Changemaker (mp3)
If you’re living on this planet you probably sense that the world is in a time of tremendous change. Ashoka founder William Drayton calls it “Revolution” in his keynote address on the occasion of receiving the Purpose Prize Entrepreneurial Leadership Award. In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Drayton offers inspiring words about the nature of the times we are in, and how becoming a changemaker is critical for seizing opportunities that are emerging in these unprecedented times.
Yes, be the change you want to see in the world. And check out SWR2′s german language portrait of the d.school at Potsdam (“Zusatzstudium für Querdenker und solche, die es werden wollen”, mp3)
An Europas erster Innovationsschule in Potsdam läuft die Bewerbungsfrist. Deutschland braucht nicht nur mehr Experten – vor allem in den Ingenieur- und Naturwissenschaften. Deutschland braucht auch mehr kreative Experten, die ganz neue Ideen entwickeln. Und auch diese Fähigkeit kann man in gewissem Umfang lernen oder zumindest trainieren. Das jedenfalls ist die Idee hinter einem europaweit einmaligen Studienangebot an der Universität Potsdam.
Design-thinking, interdisciplinary thinking, creativity, innovation processes, and more.
And for an extraordinary piece listen to David Mindell of MIT as he shares his experience with reading Thomas Pynchon‘s wonderful 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow (mp3)
The novel, which tells the story of the design, manufacture, and use of the German V-2 rockets in World War II, shows the fruits of a complicated technical endeavor and contains symbols of bigger issues in society.
