DRM and Control Over Our Own Computers is a Human Rights Issue

...
If we lose the ability to completely control computers we own, these machine can, and will, be used to put us under constant surveillance. If that happens, computers will have completed a trajectory from contributing to human freedom and making the Iron Curtain look like a rusty sieve, to fulfilling the 1984 telescreen vision of pervasive monitoring of every activity of every person.

DRM isn't just a copyright issue, it is a human rights issue.

-- Zigurd Mednieks in response to BoingBoing about the Coming War on General Purpose Computing referencing a talk by Cory Doctorow.

BTW.. why can't we deep link to a person's post in Google+ ? If we can, it's not obvious.

Should an Actress be Suing IMDB Because She Doesn't Want Her Age Posted?

Brad McCarty of The Next Web thinks the IMDb: Age-publishing lawsuit is “a frivolous abuse” and should be dropped.

Reading his piece, I can see that on first glance, it sounds silly. An actress anonymously sues the Amazon-owned IMDB folks because they won't remove her birthdate, claiming that it will adversely affect her career. And now, IMBD has asked the judge to only allow the lawsuit to move forward if her name is made public:

"Truth and justice are philosophical pillars of this Court. The perpetuation of fraud, even for an actor's career, is inconsistent with these principals. Plaintiff's attempt to manipulate the federal court system so she can censor iMDb's display of her birth date and pretend to the world that she is not 40 years old is selfish, contrary to the public interest and a frivolous abuse of this Court's resources."

But this argument between IMDB and the actress points to a much bigger issue, and it's not the one about IMDB making its living trading on other's data, whether from Hollywood or the users who add to the IMDB system for free, which I would understand is a fairly selfish undertaking by IMDB.

Why should IMDB be able to operate "selfishly" by publishing people's personal data, outside their discretion, and the actress in question not be able to "selfishly" make a living by trading in her looks for salary? I would say IMDB is pretty hypocritical here. And do they really think the Judge, the public, or the Hollywood set they make money from, are that stupid that we wouldn't understand that IMDB is selfish too?

I understand from reading the Hollywood Reporter article that the IMDB believes she may be the same actress that years ago tried to change her birthday, submitted by a previous agent to IMDB. Since IMDB believes this is an issue of fraud (they have no proof), they now want the identity of the actress made public. But since the old information isn't part of the case, does it really matter? Yes, I get that actresses have lied about their ages for a long time, but is it really "in the public interest" to out this woman? It's definitely in her economic interest not to out her, so i just think Amazon-IMDB are being nasty and frankly it seems frivolous of them to try to out her.

But this is really beside the point.

The Larger Issue

I believe people should be able to choose what personal information is shown about them on websites.. especially data that isn't or wasn't before the past 10 years, public. It's easy to dismiss this as vanity or frivolous.. but as more and more personal data is out there, and as people lose control of it.. it points to a much larger issue: how do individuals control information about them that doesn't really need to be public?

I can see that by having her age obscured, the people who hire her would just think of her age based upon appearance.. which is actually for an actress or actor, probably a good measure. Giving the specific age will plant that in producer's and public's heads. So I can see her point.

Rather than get into a discussion of harms and "how bad is it" about one or another data breaches, I think the real question is:

What kind of society do we want to have, where everyone's data is public and out of their control? What does it do to us, to devolve into a totalitarian model where everyone is afraid because frankly, everyone has something to hide? Or maybe their friends do.

Right now, life and health insurance companies are telling the press and their investors that they are screening people in Facebook. And it's not just you under scrutiny. It's your friends. This was covered extensively in the Wall Street Journal "what they know" series a year ago. There are also finance companies that are telling users to "unfriend" anyone they are connected to in Facebook with bad credit... because when you are reviewed, friends with bad credit will reflect on you.

This issue of personal data and control is much larger than an actress and her age being displayed without her consent.

It's about how we allow others to show information about us, verses having control of it ourselves. I think for a civil and democratic society to work, we can't leave that up to companies with no oversight and a big profit motive, but instead need to think about giving the individual ultimate control over certain types of personal data.

So while the actress may be vain, may be trying to gloss over her age, or may just be reflecting the economic realities of her profession, which i do think are real, and we may poo-poo this as silly, this lawsuit reflects the much greater tension about personal data and control and actually could be a really interesting test case, given that we don't have much privacy law in the US.

Women and Leadership Roles: How Emotional Literacy Would Solve the Problem of the "Male Dominated" Tech and Business

I just read Sheryl Sandberg's profile by Ken Auletta in the New Yorker (A Woman's Place: Can Sheryl Sandberg upend Silicon Valley's male-dominated culture?).. and some months ago watched Sheryl Sandberg's video on women and success from TedWomen. (For more background, she was also covered recently in Bloomberg or watch her Barnard commencement speech .)

In all these talks, Sheryl notes that women are dropping out of tech and business leadership tracks.

She makes some good points, but only iteratively adds to what we've already talked about for the last 8 years about women in tech.

A little history

About 6 years ago, I came up with a list of things, along with a couple of other women, that we could do to encourage women:
* help women get speaker training
* encourage and submit women to speak at events
* help women pitch their companies to funders and get into the entrepreneurial ring
* help women get mentorship and family support they need to stay on leadership tracks
* help women get into science and technology tracks in school and keep them in those tracks in the working world
* get more women in the room to change the tone of whatever is happening
* when you hire, think about how women will read the ad: kick ass engineer will likely not get women applying
* when you hire, remember the women undersell and the men oversell, and if you even them out they are similarly prepared for the job

... and more recently, riffing on the last two, and I wrote a post last year in response to Clay Shirky's post on how his male students were much more aggressive about asking for help and in pursuing jobs that his female students, where I noted that in tech, often our filter for who gets noticed and appreciated is aggression. In other words, students of both genders need to be aggressive, but if our filters only notice the super-agressive, then we miss out on a lot of qualified people, especially women.

One of the key points Sheryl Sandberg makes is that women need to lean forward. I have seen women lean back even when we have explicitly made space for them. I can highlight one example out of the many I have seen in the 8 years I have been proactively working on this:

In service to the list above, a group of women and I pushed for speaker training by having Lura Dolas who is a premiere executive speaker trainer come to She's Geeky as well as for training for geek speakers at Citizen Space one saturday (coordinated at the time by Tara Hunt). But you know what? We held signups open for women, for a couple of weeks. Few women signed up even though we did lots of personal invites, and eventually opened it to men. All the rest of the spots were gone in a flash. So I get what Sheryl Sandberg is saying: she suggests that encouraging women to "lean forward" would work. I've been trying to get women in tech to do that, with a little different terminology, for 8 years.

I, as well as many others, have emailed (for years) various conference organizers from Mike Arrington to Tim O'Reilly suggesting highly-accomplished women for their speaker line-ups (with links to bio pages from the Speaker's Wiki as well as topic sorts of the many women listed by tags). Mike Arrington is right when he says the very few women at the top of tech are barraged by requests to speak and often turn down event requests. But there are other women who are very well qualified to speak, however the criteria for who is eligible is often heavily in favor of typically male tech behaviors: rabid self-promotion, the ability to speak very early on a new topic or meme, regardless of what they know, and brashness.

Women often eschew these qualities or don't know how to navigate them because they run so counter to women's social norms. So that, mixed with women's usualy less overall interest in having a big "title," which many conferences like to promote in association wifth the event (look: we've got 80 C-level speakers.. come pay several thousand to attend our event !) make women less attractive to conference organizers. Though I would argue that at most events I attend, women speakers share far more data and opinion than the men, and are often much more interesting speakers compared to the men who often hold their proverbial cards to their chests and don't share as much interesting stuff. So to me, the practical reality is that as far as speakers go, women are the brash risk-takers on stage. I often seek women out to get info the guys won't share.

Sheryl Sandberg suggests three ways we can push women in tech and leadership roles:
* keep women "leaning forward" (participating actively) in business, leadership and tech
* stay in the game (ie when they have kids, don't drop out) with a spouse who does as much housework as you do
* think bigger and take more risks

Those three are great additions to the set of things we can all recommend women do. But to me, these lists: our 8 plus Sheryl's 3 (two of hers overlap so it's really about 9 ways to get women more into leadership roles), not to mention complaining about the lack of women speakers at conferences or the lack of women on board's of directors, or lamenting the dearth of women in engineering or getting women to pitch a company, as Women 2.0 tries to support in their annual contest, doesn't get us what we need or want. Which is a healthier ecosystem between men and women in tech and business so that women can more naturally be themselves, contribute, and inhabit leadership roles and overall, products are better.

In fact, over the past three or four years, I'd mostly given up talking publicly about the dearth of women in tech and business. The problem isn't getting solved, despite things like the Speaker's Wiki created so that non-typical speakers could list themselves. For me, the value of that wiki listing is in being able to email a few biographies to conference organizers, which I do often privately. It's a much more positive step than complaining about the lack of women speakers, which I'm so tired of.... But overall, the topic has felt like a waste of time because men in tech look down on women for discussing it, and it doesn't feel like anything ever changes.

Frankly I could see Sheryl getting burned out on discussing the topic (from lack of results) the way so many of us have over the past decade. I give her about 2-3 years to get frustrated and move on to other things, at least as far as speaking out in the New Yorker and at Ted and college commencements and other forums. The topic gets old and you want to be constructive.. so you start thinking about other things you care about that get more traction. It's not that you don't care about women in business and tech leadership roles, but maybe the other things I've done for years like holding personal dinner parties for women business leaders, or the women in tech weekends south of Santa Cruz at the beach, are just more effective at creating connections and support between and for women in tech and business. And they don't have the downside you get when you keep bringing the issue up publicly.

What's new on this topic?

Recently, I've been rethinking: why are we still here in the same place with women in tech? Why is it that our old list of 8 or Sheryl's new list of 3 ways to push women up the leadership and tech ladders may help a little, for the tremendous effort they take, but they don't really effect the overall problem?

What is the deeper problem set here? Why talk about it again? Well, it started for me with a surprising conversation.

I chatted a few weeks ago with a friend who is a man in finance, business and banking (but no tech at all), about the problems women encounter in tech and business generally. I told him I felt often men have been socialized to be on "teams" where there is a team spirit, where they don't look to the coach to discipline someone. Instead, they do it through peer pressure, and they also don't criticize team members unless they violate a big rule that everyone knows.

How does this work in tech? I explained to my friend that often a group of guys will huddle at a conference or some event, and they are playing with their laptops and mobile devices, listening to (mainly male) presenters in sessions, and then back at the group email check and hallway conversations. The guys joke around and mostly none of them looks too closely at what anyone else is doing with their company or their products or pitches. They all joke and get along. There are some guys who do look more closely at products and companies, but you almost never hear them share their real views or anything at all critical of the other tech or guys.

Women, on the other hand, often see the flaws in those companies, or products or pitches and say so. They see how a product or algorithm can exclude or hurt people or create problems for users. How a business model won't resonate with people and why it will take about 2 years to show that no one wants what's on offer. They see what can go wrong. Why? Because we watched our moms and the other moms growing up, and we got socialized to look for the problems and to prevent disasters, and to do things fairly and equitably for everyone involved, because we (the women, the moms) would have to manage the problems, clean up the disasters and take care of anyone who was hurt.

For example, where a Dad might say, "Hey kids, lets climb the tree and we'll jump off onto our new trampoline!" And mom would say, "Wait a minute, the kids are going to jump off an 8' high branch, hit the trampoline at 4', and bounce off onto the ground and probably break things?" She would put a stop to the plan, saying "You can only jump on the middle of the trampoline and not at the edges and no jumping off anything else onto the trampoline." And while mom was a major bummer, she was also preventing broken bones, loss of school days (that might lead to having to repeat a grade if the injuries were really bad), pain and suffering, and oh yeah, if the neighbor kids got hurt, getting sued by their parents for negligence and potentially losing the house and having to move or at least getting into a major fight with those neighbors.

Yeah.. mom is really a bummer here. But in a very good way, because she is socialized to know that she will have to pick up the pieces of problems that get out of hand, nurse the sick, and see 10 steps down the road the implications of decisions. Dad on the other hand, in this scenario, is thinking of the fun.

Now, you can say there are plenty of dads that wouldn't suggest this with their kids, but I actually know a dad, who is a successful risk taker at work who makes lots of money and is considered by colleagues to be very good, who suggested this to his kids, partly because he figured he could manage it and catch any kids bouncing off the trampoline. But his wife put a stop to it. Though one kid did jump off the tree branch later when the parents weren't around and got a compound fracture out of the deal.

When there's disaster, like with the broken bones, it's the mom who usually drives the kid to school every day for three months, instead of having him ride his bike with his friends. She was the one who sacrificed a half hour every morning being late for work, and she knew what the sacrifices might be in advance of disaster striking, when she shut down the jumping-from-the-tree plan.

The real way to think about that mom, and many women's contributions in warding off disaster, is to say those women are caring about the greater good over a longer term. It's a more masculine trait to think about making a splash and more a typical feminine archetype to care about the long term risks.

We all hold both archetypes inside us, women are more apt to express more of the feminine archetype, bringing a way of being conscious of the longer term effects on other people, the longer term business model, the larger effect the business will have on society. Comparatively, men statistically are more likely to embody the male archetype which is often about taking larger, often dangerous risks for shorter term gain in order to break out for the big score and function more in a team mode with the other guys. And our society pushes us through socialization to these gender specific modes by blessing what is socially acceptable.

These gender-specific tendencies translate to a scenario in tech and business where men often show up as more exciting, brash risk takers who if they succeed, shine in the myth of the genius who did it all. Women are often behind the scenes, managing the fall-out of risks, and frankly, putting the kibosh on some proposals (read: bummer) in companies, in tech generally, and in business. And bummer it is if you don't take kindly to women's important role in thinking critically about risks and the consequences.

How many women do you know who you would put in the high-risk-taking category?

But this difference is *exactly* why we want a mix of men and women engineering, directing, creating and sustaining, leading businesses, and shaping policy, so we get a balance of each gender's tendencies which statistically will likely make the company or product or governments far more successful and stronger than if one gender alone works toward success.

So after telling this male friend about men and women in tech, the trampoline story and my general thesis that women are "analyst critics" and that feels like a bummer for the guys, I asked what he thought about the situation.

He said, "Well, whether guys know it consciously or not, most men tend to put women into two categories: bitch or hot. She can be in both, but she has to be very hot to over come 'the bitch' label in terms of whether a guy would talk with her or be 'friends' with her. So, while plenty of guys are socialized better because they are married or with a woman and therefore don't do this 'hot vs. bitch' assessment explicitly, no guy is going to defend a woman if all the other guys decide they don't really like her... no reason given. Or defend her if one guy starts picking on her, either to her or outside her purview, with the guys. Because we are all on the team. However, the unspoken reason is she is in the bitch category because once, once! she 'complained' about something, even if it was done constructively to solve a real problem. She had demonstrated that she could complain any time going forward and the guys know they can't be themselves around her. In other words, they have to be 'good' around her but can 'be themselves' with the guys. So now the set up becomes one where the guys have fun with each other, but are serious when any women are around, even if some of those women have never criticized or done anything to put themselves into the 'bitch' category."

Second, he noted that most men, in the face of even very mild criticism coupled with constructive solutions given from a woman, take her not as her, but rather to a place of fear. This fear is rooted in men's 2-year-old selves, deep down, where their mothers yelled at them or criticized them. So while the woman in a tech project might be saying: "Hey how about doing the project this way where something good can happen, because the other way isn't so good for the users..." the guy goes to a place where the woman co-worker is "his mother," telling him that he's wrong. The man can't hear the woman, because there are too many old filters in the way. And while again, some men have to have more criticism to get that fear going, most men aren't so conscious that they can hear criticism from women of a project, conference or company as being about the actual problem, but rather they take it to be about themselves. The criticism becomes an "ego-threat" and old defense mechanisms kick in. And criticism coming from a woman, well, lands her in "bitch jail", where the man's 2-year old fear is triggered and the woman can't really fix that without changing the larger issue of that man's consciousness about himself.

HIM: "We are all human and feel the emotions similarly in a way: Fear feels the same for men as fear feels to woman. Anger is anger for men and women. But if a man has fear.. he's what: 'a pussy.' If a woman has fear.. 'that's just how women are.' And if a man has anger, 'that's how men are.' But if a woman has anger, 'she's a bitch.' Even if she's just giving constructive criticism. Most men I know interpret any woman's criticism as inches from 'anger' no matter how nicely and constructively it's given, and therefore, she's rapidly entering 'bitch jail.' "

I have to say, I found it pretty shocking that a guy would cop to all this. And he wasn't leaving himself out of the category. Just being brutally honest.

If you're a guy reading this, and you are mad right now, I would ask yourself these questions:
Have you ever felt fear when a woman colleague has constructively criticized your project? Or did you even realize at the time you feared anything? Did you tell her, owning the fear and admitting it was your issue, not hers? Did you make it safe for her to share further criticisms? Or did you just distance yourself from the woman, and not work with her so much anymore, and did she just sort of back off from giving further feedback and instead, move away from the male members of the team? In other words, did she lean back and did you help her to be less involved?

So are you mad because my friend's words hit a nerve.. and this is uncomfortable? Because it only takes a few of these instances for a woman in tech or business to sit back and not participate as much. You may say, she's not tough enough. But she may say: why bother, if no one can take what I have to say.

I have another story, about a friend who is a partner on Sand Hill Road. She never speaks at the weekly partner meetings to review deals, until the end of the meeting (about 4 hours). She's learned that she waits until the chest beating and the competitiveness are over and the guys (the rest of the partners are, of course, all guys) have exhausted themselves and said everything they want to say. Then they look around.. and ask her what she thinks about this week's deals. Then, and only then, are they ready to listen to her. And they do. But she has leaned back. Effectively. I mean, she is a successful partner at a successful and top rated VC firm. But she leans back. Because that's how the guys can take her.

Back to my friend's and my conversation:

ME: Well.. it's true that it's not socially acceptable for a woman to express anger. Most women I know aren't even conscious of their own anger, or how much anger is inside them. They are so used to stuffing their anger, and moving on, that the anger comes out sideways. And men are right to fear that. It's not safe when men stuff fear, or women stuff anger, for anyone, because we are avoiding what is real, but complicated, and not socially acceptable. It comes out sideways for both of us. Men avoid angry women out of unconscious fear, and women try to work with men's fear, but can't, because fearful men won't include women in the real work, reducing women to things that are valued for their looks. That's a lot of sideways behavior.

Certainly I have been guilty of this.. especially prior to doing the emotional literacy work I've engaged in more recently. I have definitely stuffed anger, had it come out side ways, to other's confusion, and not owned what I was doing or feeling. It's probably been scary for men I've worked with, because I've *not talked* about anger, or released the pressure of feeling mad about the unfairness of something ... like not being taken seriously by the men in the room... or like a speaker list where organizers didn't even try to find qualified women, or disregarded dozens of qualified women. Or for example, once when I pitched to a partner's meeting in a Venture Capital firm, and had the senior partner refuse to look at me or ask me questions directly no matter how polite I was. Instead he asked all the questions to my male business partner, who turned every one over to me. Women have all had experiences like this. And we don't get mad. But everyone knows it's in there somewhere. And on and on with examples.

So if emotional literacy is the larger issue, how do we fix this? How do we get unstuck at a deeper level, than suggesting speaker training, or asking women to lean forward?

I'm not proposing we (women) try to change the guys that project the team vibe, consciously or unconsciously, who don't facing their own fear, or aren't honest about their own projections and inability to own what they are doing, or speak and share their fear.

I mean, women could do a big movement to educate men and get them to shift their thinking, a la the 70s, but that's a lot of work for something I don't think, frankly, will work. I don't think women can really change the attitudes and behavior patterns men carry, especially unconsciously.

Instead, I'm proposing we (women) change us. And my friend suggests that he, and other men, have to change men. Because, he too says, "Women can't change men, rather men can only initiate each other and teach each other to feel fear constructively, consciously, honestly and safely, in order to see women as women and not through the many filters they carry now."

So how do we do that? You know when people say: "Change yourself, change the world?" Where if you change yourself, everyone reacts and they are forced to treat you differently and if they don't, you don't care anyway because you've moved on and in a way others are left either changing or being left behind? Yeah. That way to change the world.

So how do we change us?

I'm not proposing that women be more like men.. to be more "fun" or take more crazy risks. Because trying to be something you aren't -- a team player if you've never been on a team, or able to laugh with the guys like a guy, when you aren't a guy, propose highly risky actions -- never works.

Instead, I think the answer lies in facing our own issues, as women, and not only changing ourselves for work, but everywhere. I'm proposing that we look at how we are angry, how we stuff that and don't face it, and aren't honest about it. Which makes us unsafe to many men. I believe that if women were honest about their anger, they would reside in their own power, own it, and reasonable risks and "leaning forward" as Sheryl says, would happen naturally and without a few of us pushing women to do what doesn't feel good to them now. Because most women aren't living in their authentic power which means they haven't faced their own anger or owned it.

As my man friend named it, "Women seem to have slid backwards over the past 20 years.. they are very concerned with their appearance to the sacrifice of their own truths and personal well being." My thought exactly.There's nothing wrong with looking good. But it should be secondary, and yet many young and older women seem to be focused on that to the detriment of their own advancement. It translates into caring more about what others think about you than asking for what you deserve, speaking the truth, and risking criticism to speak what is real and authentic. Which is all pretty much a recipe for holding anger deep down in an unconscious woman.

Not being taken seriously, not seeing women speaking at tech conferences, being on the boards of companies or doing what is high level work, could add even more anger. I know from years ago, challenging the organizers of conferences about how they had none, or one or two, women speakers at an event, didn't work. And women have been angry, when conference organizers react with silence or brush off the issue. But it was an anger women didn't feel they could express, or weren't conscious of.. and yet it was there.. I could feel it. And the men understandably feared that. Because the anger was coming out sideways.. it wasn't clean, owned and direct.

So, HE continued, "If men have taken the feminist messages from the 70s (like "who needs a man anyway?") and defaulted into emotionally illiteracy, where they don't have to own their emotions, or be conscious and share their own fear, then we end up with stagnant gender roles and fear about ever letting those roles shift again. Because the effect of those messages from the 70s have hung around, and a lot of men heard those messages from women as having an underlying criticism of who we are as men and whether we are even needed. For men who come after the 70s, the sons and nephews of men of age in the 70s, those boys are getting their modeling of what men are like, what it means to be a man in the world, how to treat women and how express their own emotions. The effects men felt in the 70s have been passed on to the current generations of men.

"There is a place where it's okay for men to express our emotions in our culture, but there is an invisible line for us, where when men cross it, the rest of the guys all point a stern finger and say to the one guy crossing the line: 'Dude, what are you being such a pussy for?' A guy who isn't emotionally literate will cave. But the guy, if he's emotionally literate, can say: "Hey, I'm feeling some fear / anger / sadness / a threat... " because that man is tired of having to not be himself for the sake of his friends. The truth about this is that there is a quiet revolution in men's circles across the country, THAT HASN'T YET trickled into our business and technology companies across the country.

"And so it's that distinction, that men can't yet be honest and direct. But as men begin to own their own internal emotional truth, to themselves and to each other, they'll realize that women are already there... waiting for them."

The notion is that the genders are secretly eyeing each other, where men look at the women's camp, women look at the men's camp, and if we raise the problem of women excluded from industry (tech, business, etc) and young women regressing to placing their value in the old stereotypical values like: "how do i look, how sexy am i, how desirable to the opposite sex.." this feels like a failure of the attempt women made during the feminism of the 70s to be integrated into male culture, male business and to be seen as equals.

If you accept that that 70s movement failed in a way, then it makes sense that women came into male domains (80's and 90s) and now women are receding from tech jobs from the 2000s on. (There are still women working, but the numbers in traditional male domains are down).

So why is this? Well, one view via my male friend has is that men inherently felt threatened during the 70s and 80s and after. This is partly because of what he called the "fragile male ego" which he says,"...is a reality especially among men who haven't done personal work.. who aren't emotionally literate." But also some of the loudest and clearest women's voices in the 70s and 80s were making men bad and wrong. He says further, "When men talk, we tend to lump all women into one voice.. so the women were lumped together as man-haters in the 70s and 80s."

So to the extent that the women's movement was about "taking power from men" ...this reaction from men happened. And got internalized by men.

So why have men returned to excluding women? My friend says, "Men tended to stereotype what was going on around their own exclusion by 'man hating women,' and reacted out of collective fear, toward women who wanted power." That power being the ability to join men at work, in business, or tech, and be taken seriously.

My friend goes on: "Men have always been at a place of lesser emotional literacy than women, so the dialog men cannot participate in with women is something like this: (to a man) How do you feel about women working in what has been men's world? A healthy male response would be: 'I feel fear of it because there has been incendiary language by a few women and that causes me to want to fight... '."

So in other words, emotional literacy allows for a full bodied conversation, where the whole body is involved in the conversation. Where the emotions in my body can be expressed.. and it's okay on both sides of the genders.

Again, HE said, "But men aren't able to do that yet, with women. But in general they do it with men, but it's limited.. to stomach, sexuality, gut.. but that's it. And many men have been raised by mothers who are emotionally invasive, so there is also a tendency to disbelieve that a women's desire for a full bodied emotionally aware dialog is *not* going to somehow come at a price to the man.

"So men aren't able to have a full bodied conversation with women, and women are waiting on men to get there.. to become emotionally literate.

"The problem is that when men fail to do this work, and when women don't have an equal partner (who is being emotionally aware) then women recede into a place where they try to find their value in the old stereotypical ways: valued for their looks and sexually because an equal dialog isn't really happening and neither party is really seeing each other as fully human."

ME: What about women? Why doesn't it work for us to help men?

HIM: "So if emotional literacy did happen, then men would treat women as more than tits and ass.. and women would feel that and feel able to take the risk of revealing who they are to men. That means women would be intellectually revealing, in board rooms, engineering rooms, with fully available ideas and contributions to the work.

"But the problem is, men can only do this work with men. Women can't help them. Men have to initiate men, men have to work on emotional literacy with each other, men have to make it safe to be masculine and live in their male bodies, and still express fear, even to women."

ME: So while this would change personal relationships a lot, in the context of work, men and women would see each other as humans who all have fear, feel threats, have anger, etc so we could be real about our contributions to projects, technology, development, etc. And women would be included and invited fully into speaking, leadership etc.

So this dialog between my male friend and me gives an idea of how we agreed women generally recede from the business world, because of these generalized dynamics. What my friend said above, and his take on men and women, which we both get are generalizations but also feel are generally true in our working experience, is a way to see that the lists of things women can do, like leaning forward, or getting speaker training, doesn't get at this deeper underlying problem to change what is happening with women in tech and business. Those suggestions are salve covering the underlying tense and uncomfortable relations between men and women in many work and professional situations, and we can see them explicitly displayed on many a tech conference speaker's list.

If men were to become emotionally literate and transparent it would change everything across the board: technology, business, leadership, speaking, conferences, product development, even Wall Street and the recent sociopathic behavior many men there have engaged in with our financial systems, to the huge detriment world wide of our economies and peoples. If women were to become emotionally literate, they would own their anger consciously, allowing men to feel safer in the presence of that anger.

I get that emotional literacy is a very tall order, but becoming aware of the need is a step. Talking about it is another step forward. I get it's very hard work each of us needs to do to face our selves and our emotional truths, so that when we go to work, we are clean and clear.

The upside for our society when men and women become emotionally literate is huge. It definitely extends beyond just tech conference speakers lists. It's just that a conference speaker list is a written testament to the problem at hand. Men and women can't now see each other as just human because of the many thick filters in the way of our communication and shared goals, that hold us in more adolescent gender roles.

One of the challenges with startups and incumbent businesses alike.. is the men are often looking for the splash (an IPO or a big fast score or a big win). But women often anticipate the greater consequences and see the longer term view. If men could invite women into really share the work, with full ability to share emotional and intellectual reality -- without judgements created through a person's own filters and projections, but rather from a place where both sides have emotional literacy -- with full ability to work toward the greater good, and long term success of the company and projects, men would succeed with less risky behavior and achieve more balance, women would succeed by bringing in their more considered approach to receive full acceptance as tech and business co-workers, co-founders and partners, leaders and contributors. And people, society, our economy, would be far more stable and successful by the work of an emotionally literate leadership and creator populace.

Discussion: Building for a Personal Data Ecosystem - A Case Study

Just left the Quantified Self conference where I led a session in the last breakout on "building for a personal data ecosystem." Since we weren't on the official program, i was very happy to be holding something in an Infinity session. Fifteen or so people came, and I talked about Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and our mission for a user centric data model where user's control their data through agents, or Personal Data Stores. I also mentioned what I was seeing at the event, which was lots of folks building apps, making new silos of data, and repeating the model where users' data is in question as to who owns it, and users don't really have access to their data except through the a service's website and possibly an API that might send a little data somewhere else (like twitter or facebook).

I suggested that in a Personal Data Ecosystem, apps makers could take data from their users and send it straight through to the users' Personal Data Stores (PDS). That way if the app or hardware changed or ceased to support their old systems, the user would have their old data to play with in their PDS. And I talked about open formats for the data (think.. what about an open format for Heart Monitor data, where you pulse is described and you can take that data anywhere). Services could think about just providing a great service, instead of trying to manage all the user data storage and security. Users would control their data in their Personal Data Stores/Lockers/Banks, and I said that a bunch of companies were building these PDSs, including Sing.ly which is building the Locker Project.

Sing.ly happened to have someone there, Jared Hansen, who is a developer in the open source project. And there was a guy from Basis, Bashir, who is building hardware (like a wristwatch) that you monitor things like your heartrate with.. though it does monitor many other things as well on your body. We also had a couple of health researchers there, plus other health and wellness companies looking at data, as well as Ian Li, of Carnegie Mellon who is researching data collection and normalization, and a woman from the EFF. And we had a couple of users who talked about what users need.

After a few minutes, Bashir from Basis explained their dilemma around the hardware which isn't all that profitable for them. So initially they were questioning what to do with the data and how to monitize the company. Should they sell the data, or give it to users, or charge uses for it, or give it away to developers who could create a great ecosystem by building lots of apps, thus driving more sales? And who's data is it?

WOW. WOW!!!!

So we were off an running, with the impromptu Basis use case of how to get the value of the data, include the user and let the user have choice and autonomy, and how to leverage what is being done out in the marketplace and with developers creativity with data. Oh.. and don't forget about participating in microformats and Activity Streams creation to make bottom up grass-roots standards for the data formats and exchanges.

We talked through what it would mean to give away the data, support users and ask them if they wanted their data included in studies, get additional revenue for Basis while maintaining the inclusion of the user in the process and what developers could and should do. We brainstormed a lot of things, and covered the good and bad points of how it would all work and how to support Basis' market model while still being good and fair to the users.

I have no idea what Basis will do, but I would love it if they would join the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium in the Startup Circle, to help build out ways to make a user centric data system for user's wellness data collected with Basis hardware.

What an amazing opportunity Basis has for doing the right thing for users, and leading the wellness and personal data ecosystem by creating a win-win for themselves and users. They could create a new market for wellness data, that is user driven.

Frankly, we need more discussions like this. It's not about Do Not Track models where we kill all the data plus the value of it, and it's not about "business as usual" where the user isn't included and businesses do whatever they want with user data.

It's about creating markets that do right by users and have companies making money ethically and conversing with us in the market.

Thanks to everyone who came! We had many representatives of the relevant stakeholders and the discussion was enlightening and rare.. but one I hope to make more common in the near future!

Where is the Personal Data Awareness? And what are the Missed Opportunities at QS2011

I'm at the Quantified Self Conference in Mountain View today and tomorrow.

A few thoughts. There are lots of people here from various disciplines: health care, tech companies like 23andme.com that marry personal genomics and tech, apps makers and health and wellness hardware makers. And lots of folks just wanting to track themselves.

Sessions are preprogrammed (in other words, the conference is all done top down broadcast mode), and now and then in people's statements, a person will pass along the vibe of the old style medical industry (that is: we know more than you and we'll tell you what's true.. that mode was in the opening session where we were lectured to). Though I just walked through all the sessions in round 1 and the individual break out sessions are more discussion mode which is great to see.

There was a near complete lack of consciousness about protecting user's data as I walked in and spent a few minutes in each of the first 6 sessions. The impicit assumption was that "we" (builders, companies, etc) can take data and use it for whatever "we" want. Building systems that aren't just about more silos with data lock-in, or building for a Personal Data Ecosystem model where users keep their own archives and data, and then choose where their data goes, what purpose it's used for and control what is happening isn't on the radar. It is especially important that we look at issues of privacy, control, autonomy, choice and transparency for the highly personal, very sensitive data collected around personal wellness and health.

There is a single session, led by lawyers about privacy in round 2. But the rest of the sessions do not seem to be aware at all that they need to build from concept on for privacy, data control by the users, where users keep their data and the applications, devices and monitoring tools "use" the data with permission.

And there is no session about personal data control, where the QS apps would work on a Personal Data Store. I've asked to have one.. but we'll see if they decide to let me do it. The assumption is developers will just build more silos with more data collected, about you, crossed with other data about you, that after combined, creates yet another silo of data. There may be an API available, but effectively, the data is stuck in another silo, that a regular user can't really get at it, hold it, control it, share it, correct it or delete it.

It's dismal.. thinking about how all this highly personal data is just assumed to be owned by apps makers and companies and users are just cows in a big milking system. The participants of QS are just continuing the tradition started by the health industry and continued by tech company silos in making the users say "Moo." Pick your ecosystem and prepare to be milked.

Lastly, I'm really happy to report that the QS organizers decided to order a really healthy vegetable lunch salad (with either chicken or tofu on it).. Great work on that front!

McKinsey's Research Arm Claims Big Data Mining Will Save Us All

Steve Lohr has a write up in today's NYTimes: Mining of Raw Data May Bring a Surge of Innovation about McKinsey & Company's report on Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity.

I think we need to challenge assumptions about the inputs... compare the inputs from "hoovered" personal data to that of what people assemble in personal data stores operating in a Personal Data Ecosystem.

Execs from Rapleaf and Intellius have admitted publicly, recently, that they know half their data is bad, they don't know which half. I also sat recently with the woman from Experian who is in charge of segregating and keeping separate data from the internet (verses financial data which is regulated) for their offerings about users. When I posited that a lot of her data was likely wrong, she agreed.

User's obscure their data intentionally because they are scared.

For myself, I can tell you that in the last few years, I have obscured data online (birthdate, zip code, name, address, phone number, preferences, email addresses) as well as health info (not to my doctors, but to data collectors whom I do not trust yet claim they never share the data. For example, you can't get a mammogram in SF / Children's Hosp without sharing a huge amount of very personal data.. so i made it all fake because I don't trust the lab and who they sell the data to...). And I fake it to the pharmacy when they ask for more than my basic info to fill a prescription. In fact my current insurance company has my name and birthdate a little wrong and i'm not correcting them.. because it makes it harder to aggregate my data across systems. Oh.. and my bank spells my name: Hoddler .. and has a slightly incorrect address (don't you love how they key in the wrong data!) and i'm not correcting that either.

I fake all sorts of stuff on and offline... I fail to correct bad data... I know many others do too.. I have since 1994 been faking my data online. Somehow even then, without understanding the privacy issues or how the internet worked then, I just didn't trust the system because I knew then we had no privacy protection in this country (US). As I began working with online technology in 1997, and started really understanding it, I've felt more than ever the need to obscure my data and make it difficult to combine in a pivot about me.

I get that this security by obscurity and mistakes doesn't cut it, but it's the best I can do right now.

So my question for the McKinsey research people is: have they factored this in?

And have they factored in that users have obscured enough information that me at one site cannot be aggregated with me at another site?

Or have they factored in that the people at institutions who key in the data from our driver's licenses get it wrong (my bank with my name and address) or the insurance co (my application correctly filled out.. with my name and DOB) or whatever?

The answer is to give us proper protections for our data. 4th amendment protections and rights over sharing of our data, so that we make sure the data is right. We can aggregate our own data in Personal Data Stores. Then we can trade fairly for that data if we agree to being included in the big data systems McKinsey is saying will help us so much.

I agree big data analytics can help us as a society, but not without good data, and not without including users into the system, as equitable players who deserve to have rights over our data, including choice and autonomy to participate in big data systems.

But until then.. big data is working with databases that are half right.. because we don't have choice, autonomy, rights or protections as users, and that's the first problem with McKinsey's assumptions.

Tracking Do Not Track at Morris + King

A bit of Context
Obviously, this diagram is a little cynical (courtesy of Chinagrrrl), but not too far off from how we manage personal data online today. But there are a lot of proposals on the table to fix this dilemma. One is Do Not Track which industry sees as something they can self-impose on an *opt-in* basis (for themselves) and opt-out (for the users) and self-regulate by having advertising trade org.s monitor compliance, with the FTC stepping in as necessary. There are also a number of DNT bills introduced in Congress and various hearings on tracking where the FTC would regulate implementation. And Johns Kerry and McCain have introduce a Rights and Responsibilities proposal in the Senate, that instead of Do Not Track (Kerry's LA, Danny Sepulveda told me DNT is a waste of time) suggest ways that data collectors would have to be responsible with our data. However, that bill lets 3rd party marketing, data tracking and Facebook's privacy bending ways totally off the hook. Both of these plans / legislative initiatives completely ignore the more than 40 startups and companies building for the Personal Data Ecosystem where users would collect their own data, and make use of the value, which the World Economic Forum recently said was "a new asset class".

That said, the rest of this post describes the Tracking DNT panel at Morris + King the other night.

Tracking Do Not Track
Tuesday night I was on a panel at Morris + King, an PR firm in NYC, called Tracking Do Not Track. Our hosts: Andy Morris and Dawn Barber (who co-founded NY Tech Meetup with Scott Heifferman) were very good about putting together a diverse group of people to talk about Do Not Track and the various issues with personal data and the advertising industry that have so many talking these days. My guesstimate was that about 100 people attended, mostly from industry (tech & advertising).

Our group included:
Brian Morrisey (Editor in Chief of Digiday, an ad industry trade publication) as Moderator
David Norris (CEO of Blue Cava)
Dan Jaffe (Exec VP, Govt Relations for the Assoc of National Advertisers - ANA)
Helen Nissenbaum, Professor, Media, Culture & Communication at New York University
and me: Chair of the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium

We started off with Brian's question: who are you, what do you do in a nutshell, and what do you think of the state of online privacy these days?

I was first.. and gave a quick explanation of PDEC which is to say that we offer a middle way between Do Not Track (DNT) and what is going on now online (Business as Usual). Our middle way offers a market solution to users' wanting control of their data, and the tracking and digital dossier building by shadowy companies to stop..we don't believe DNT will work and don't support it, though we do see that some kind of "Rights and Responsibilities" legislation would help create a level playing field for any company that collects personal data. Those rights and responsibilities for personal data collectors needs to include giving user's a copy of their data, so they can then put them into personal data stores (or banks, lockers, etc) and then use the data as the person sees fit.

Oh, and I said the state of online privacy was pretty dismal, though I was optimistic because it feels like this year, it's actually possible to get personal data some basic protections similar to HIPPA or FCRA where user's can get their data, and we can make the Personal Data Ecosystem emerge as a market solution that finally works for people. Granted, it's a 5-7 year proposition to really create a new market, but we can actually start this year because of the 40 or so startups that are funded and building pieces of the PDE and the push in the US Government to do something about the dismalness of online privacy.

Helen Nissenbaum, whom I've admired for years for her thoughtful approach to privacy and usability, agreed that privacy online was pretty bad, and explained her work around Adnostic, a "privacy preserving targeted advertising" system made with some Stanford folks.

By far, the best comment Helen made all night was that tracking and aggregating data that pivots on people is not ethical, that it's bad for people and for the incremental 1% improvement we might see in targeted advertising, it's not worth the incredible intrusiveness of tracking. In particular she said, "Anonymization does not change intrusiveness."

Dan Jaffe spoke next, and surprise, agreed that online privacy is not good, but talked about how publishers need to support their businesses and that behavioral advertising is helping them do it, and that Do Not Track should be self-regulated by the industry because they know their business best. And government has a tendency to screw up regulations and therefore, we should let advertisers figure out what works.

Next up was David Norris, who agreed with my use of the word, "dismal" to describe online privacy and said that Blue Cava was supporting a self-regulatory model because they didn't feel that Do Not Track as proposed for legislation was a good idea.

We chatted about the viability of Do Not Track, and with Norris, Jaffe and me all agreeing it wasn't a good idea. However Jaffe said he didn't like the idea of any regulation, that the industry could do it themselves, and that my "data rights and responsibilities" support for legislation would be just as bad for data collectors.

Folks in the audience, like Esther Dyson, pushed back on Jaffe, saying that she wanted the ability to choose where and when her data was out at some vendors site, and that's why, she said, "I'm supporting Mary and her organization" because it's a market model that gave her choice.

I was very pleased to hear her endorse us (thank you Esther!)

In the end, I think we got our message out which is that tracking individuals is a bad thing, that users should be the only ones tracking themselves across sites, but that sites can track within the site to optimize business. And that users should have a marketplace to trade data, like they do in mileage accounts, and choose when they trade, as partners, and not have it done for them in secret as is the case now. And that we want to see users data protected with a basic set of rights, like Health, Education and Financial data currently is now.

Curiously, Dan Jaffe made a comment about HIPPA, the health data protection law, suggesting that users get their health data so maybe they could get their personal data too. Given that that is a law, and he was opposed to regulation of any sort otherwise, I wasn't sure what to make of this.

However, I was really pleased with the opportunity to talk about PDEC, the startups and tech efforts to create a personal data ecosystem, and to provide a different view than the usual support for Do Not Track as we try to figure out what is best for our society.

Thanks Andy and Dawn for inviting me!

Honestly.com: 5 stars for everyone! Or how useful are public anonymous reviews?

Honestly.com is a people review site that allows others to anonymously review and/or rate a person.

First, a look at what the site is, in case you aren't familiar with it.

What they do:

Here is a screenshot of Cathy Brook's review page (she has 26 total):

Notice a few things if you go to the site: people are mostly given 5 star ratings like Cathy, and also rated highly on skills, relationships, productivity and integrity. Ratings/reviews are anonymous, and the reviewed person can leave comments.

Given how little the site has spread, 26 reviews is a lot. I wasn't able to find anyone else in my networks (mostly early adopters) with more than 5 or 6 reviews. Many only had say, 2 ratings, and those two were nothing but 5 stars, no review, no info on any of the 4 categories, etc. However, if you go to "top performers" (can we say: incentivise getting your friends to review you so you can make the ranked list?) there are lots of people in the 20-40 range of reviews, though the founder of Honestly has 222 reviews.. but i assume that's a lot about testing the site and proving the concept.

You can also sort by the number of stars, and here is a screenshot of 3 star reviews she received (the lowest scores in her ratings):

Notice that reviewers did not say why they gave a less than perfect review, and Cathy responded to each of those 3 star ratings. I found that in almost all the less than perfect ratings people did not specify why they gave 3 or less stars. And the lower ratings without any context, like Cathy's, are useless. Who would actually rely on them?

Some reviewers are "trusted," and some and some are "novice." It's not clear what that means, but Honestly.com is using Facebook logins, so maybe it has something to do with your number of friends/activities in Facebooks (more might make you more trusted) or maybe you have to leave more reviews at Honestly.com to be trusted.. or have more people in your Honestly.com network. Whatever it is, I see no reason why I would trust one reviewer over another in Honestly.com's system. My response is to treat all anonymous reviewers the same since I don't know who they are, what relationship they have to the reviewed and whether I would trust them.

One thing to note about trust around a person or handle online is that often we find people more trustworthy if we see them consistently and reasonably acting online. These of course are subjective and in the eye of the beholder. But consistent and reasonable actions do allow us to think more highly of someone over time. Anonymous reviews don't ever allow us to feel that a reviewer who is fair and consistent over time might be more trusted. We are asked to cede trust to Honestly.com abut who is deemed "trusted" verses "novice." And what is a novice anyway? What should we think about novice reviews?

An interesting side note is that Honestly.com is also placing people at their professions, so Esther Dyson is currently listed as a "director at Boxee" and John Clippinger is a "student at Harvard" and Steve Newhouse is an "employee at Conde Nast" and Stu Gannes is a "student at Stanford" and Clay Shirky is a "student at NYU... and on an on. All of these are wrong. Yes these people are associated with the organizations noted, but their roles are completely and bizarrely twisted causing me to suspect the Honestly.com site more.. because things I know to be false are stated as fact. So I'm asking myself, "what else can't I trust here."

How Honestly compares to other review systems

The old method for some kind of review might go like this: a person asks for a letter of recommendation or a reference, and then gives the letter writer a place to send the letter or asks the hiring person to call the reference. The reviewed doesn't know what's been said, but since they are asking trusted reviewers, the reviewed likely has a good idea that the overall message about them will be positive. The idea though was the reviewer would be able to speak freely because the reviewed wasn't going to know exactly what the reviewer was saying. And the reviewer could be very specific, often putting the letter on university or company letterhead which is harder to fake, and the review would be tailored to the purpose of the event (ie, getting into grad school or applying for a specific job).

More recently online, LinkedIn started public reviews, where folks would all list on their own resume a connection to a company or a school. Then when a review was created about a colleague or whatever, those reviews would be associated with the reviewed's listing of that company or school and the reviewer was connected through that link as well and it created a kind of verification even if it is just personal assertion on a public site. Reviews are generally public, the reviewer and context are named and associated with the time and entity where they have a connection and the reviewed can also reject the review.

The problem with LinkedIn reviews, in my experience is that sometimes people lie about their relationship, get bullied to write a review (I have personally been bullied twice to leave reviews for people.. I declined both but one of the people threatened to sue me as a result). A person can also lie about other aspects of the job (I personally know of at least 10 people on LinkedIn who currently show job titles, time frames and supervisor relationships that are flat out lies). Then the review is post on top of the lies about the job situation and it compounds the situation.. all appearing to be on the up and up. The interesting thing, as I started to discover those lies posted at LinkedIn, was that since two people are corroborating the situation with reviews, links, timeframes and titles it becomes harder to refute.. in fact there is no way to refute it). Given that, I'm not sure it's any better or worse to have anonymous reviews at Honestly.com, because frankly, if I can't trust some of LinkedIn, why would I trust any of it?

One other problem I've found over the years at LinkedIn is that a number of people regularly and actively seek out reviews (including the two people who tried to bully me into doing them). I've noticed an inverse relationship to review value: the more and better the reviews, often the worse the person is to work with as they are focused on the wrong set of goals (ie, getting quick short term reviews and making public statements instead of doing a great job, meeting the needs of a project or communicating well in service to the project). In other words, if someone is terribly motivated to get a rating or review out of the deal.. and this sounds odd but I've seen it a number of times, that motivation can overtake the motivation to make sure the project is done right and the company is happy.

Another issue with LinkedIn reviews is that reviewers can make them to suck up, creating something more generous or not terribly specific in order to make the reviewed person happy and in order to be associated with someone that may on the internet make the reviewing party look good and well connected.

Since Honestly.com's reviews aren't connected to people or specific jobs it's both impossible to tell how a reviewer knows what they assert, these reviews are even less reliable than at LinkedIn (though not that much). If at some point, Honestly decided to turn on the names of the reviewers they could find problems since people reviewed others thinking the reviews would be anonymous. Socially that could be a disaster and frankly I think Honestly has painted itself into a corner here. I also am reminded of the glitch a few years ago at Amazon where reviews of products and media were sometimes anonymous and for a few days, real names were exposed, revealing that reviews were often written by very biased people. That very same thing could happen at Honestly.com. But given that people are the objects of review, turning on real names could all be quite awkward for social and work relationships.

Why Honestly.com won't work in it's current form

So why is Honestly.com (at least in current form) not very honest or real? Well, the set up promotes people just writing whatever they want, disconnected from context and purpose, without any kind of understanding about who is saying what about the reviewed person. How much value does a review have, given that it's anonymous, there is no context for the reviewer or their relationship, or the purpose of the review, and there is no way to verify anything. The setup also promotes people just saying whatever is nice.

Those people I know on the site are all mostly very nice people (mostly, we all have our difficult sides) but getting a good review about working skills, effectiveness and productivity isn't so much about being nice. I do want to work with people who are fun and interesting, but ultimately we do need to get the job done.

In fact, what I see happening at Honestly, which is far worse than at LinkedIn, is that the site is becoming a popularity contest.. you see the jocks and the cheerleaders (CEOs and Marketing people in adult terms) doing very well with 5 star ratings and lots of reviews. What does a nice, non-specific 5 star rating and review mean anyway? My experience with hiring popular people is that the work doesn't happen as much as continued effort to remain popular. And it's also a matter of taste: one guy's 1star is another's 5star and it's subjective as well.

I don't see many geeks at Honestly.com, or folks who's reviews would need to be very context dependent (ie, if I want a mobile programmer, I need to know a lot about what they know and have done.. and wouldn't hire say, a front end web developer unless they also have years of C and Java and coding very stable small things like say, an OS from the 80s and early 90s). And frankly I don't care if that engineer is a little antisocial.. I want them programming, while people push pizza under the door periodically. Yes.. they need to understand digital social environments, but if you have product and design people, that can be managed. And frankly one person's "nice" doesn't work for someone else.. there is chemistry in our interactions after all. But why does that engineer need to be told publicly that he's a little antisocial? Isn't that a little weird socially? Throwing something like that out there anonymously? Being a little antisocial for some jobs is okay.

So does Honestly turn into the 5 star club, where everyone gets 5 or maybe 4.5 stars? Is it an old boys club where you review your friends and they review you and you all agree to do 5 stars and say you are all "GREAT!" ? Can someone hiring or looking for funding rely on these reviews that are all basically 4-5 stars or the few that aren't show nothing other than a 3 star rating?

When hiring I would never use LinkedIn or Honestly reviews unless I was looking for a popular person (might be good for a marketing or PR person). I have an obligation to do the footwork to find out if an applicant can do the work and are effective. These sites are not helpful and I would never rely on them, partly because of the known fake information and the bizarre social contract that a public review creates.

Frankly when I read reviews at Amazon, I specifically look to the bad reviews to see if I can live with the issues around a product or the characteristics that some didn't like in media. Nothing is perfect.. but if Honestly.com creates a culture where there is no reality about how we are as people in the reviews, and the public social contract around criticizing is pretty clear that it's not okay to do it in public, then I don't think the site with ever be helpful for real evaluation. And frankly why should it? We are talking about reviewing people after all and that in and of itself is pretty weird on a public website. I'm not sure negative reviews would work anyway because there is still no context or verifiable connection and what would a negative review really communicate, compared to say, a toaster oven at Amazon? I think negative reviews would just make Honestly.com a really downer and who would want to use it at that point? But what is the point of a site with only positive reviews?

There are other reasons people give good references for jobs not well done (in personal or phone refs): they do so out of obligation, they fired the person and want to see them get hired elsewhere to relieve that guilt, other guilt and pity, or like I experienced twice, they were bullied and it worked. Of course there are also good reviews because the reviewed is great and does great work. But how can you tell the difference between these?

Lastly, people change. A person labeled "great" at 25 could have a crisis at 30 and become unreliable.. or the same 25 year old could be a flake then and terrific at 32. So I'm not sure that a cumulative rating system over time is so great either, in the form of a fixed website.

So let's cut to the chase. Usually it takes 2 years for everyone to figure out that something in silicon valley isn't real. GroupOn will take that time.. as they are currently hot and making money, though the 20 or so businesses that I've talked to that have done a coupon have in 95% of the cases had very negative experiences and won't do online coupons again. I don't think GroupOn is viable long term for many other reasons as well but it's sexy now, though they could change into a long term viable model. But as they exist now, they frankly *need* to get bought by Google or someone proto. In 2 years.. people will see the current set of issues.

Likewise, I think Honestly.com, which doesn't have any great buzz currently, other than it's on Facebook occasionally or because people send me messages asking me to review them, will take a while for people to figure out it's not helpful, not worth their time, and in some ways reinforces the high school for adults model we love to embody at times in silicon valley, where you know, the jocks and the cheerleaders are socially held up and the rest grumble.

I just don't see Honestly.com working out. I don't think we need it.. it's not solving a need in our social and work interactions. And I think it sets up a bizarre social contract that one ups the weird one found at LinkedIn. LinkedIn has other value, but I don't see anything at Honestly.com that would transcend the general or specific people review problem to make it valuable in other ways.

Living the Contradiction

Clay Shirky and Spot.us are doing a survey on objectivity in journalism. More info here from Amy Grahan.

If you register, $5 will go to a charity (automagically -- apparently -- matched to your IP address -- I'm traveling for a conference and my $5 went to local event coverage where I am). You can share what you think (anonymously.. they won't share your name with the answers).

Below are my answers.. upon doing the survey I realized I did want to share.

Is objectivity in journalism even possible? my answer (chosen from their list of possible answers): It's not possible. Let's stop pretending

Can you explain your thoughts on the subject? It's not possible to be truly objective... however, i do believe it's an ideal to strive for... and that information collectors should be trained to strive for it simply as a personal stance when they collect information.. but also trained to look for their own leading and biased behaviors that will change the collected information.

Articles often don't share the wording of the questions asked of subjects in articles.. they just share the answers. And depending on the way questions are asked.. it's easy for a subject to be led or mislead to an answer that isn't natural or that leads to a very subjective conclusion that readers cannot see.

Fairness is the real goal in articles and other kinds of reporting.. but in order to replace 'objectivity' with 'fairness' as a journalistic goal, I believe we would need to develop a whole school of 'fairness in reporting' the same way 'objectivity' has been articulated and taught to journalism students to date in Jschools.

Is striving for objectivity in Journalism a good thing? my answer (chosen from their choices): Always - it's required

Yeah.. I get it's a contradiction to say that journalists and information collectors should strive for objectivity even as they also are trained to strive for fairness and to filter out their own natural biases. The reality for me is that even when I collect information, mostly as I do usability studies, I know my biases can show through, that the framing of questions can radically alter the answers from subjects, and that in the end, I have to do my best, though there is no human on the planet who can perfectly seek information and attain perfection in the results. Therefore I have to be honest about these imperfections slipping into the work product. I think the same is true for journalists.

Information collection is a tight-rope walk... it's about trying to stay above the bias while balanced in fairness. No one can do it perfectly.. but fairness in journalism is the ultimate goal I believe, followed by the physical embodiment of the objective stance, even as journalists and other information collects realize they can't be truly unbiased. It's as tricky as high wire work.. and I think information collectors and reporters need to respect what this is about.. to maintain the balance while making the ultimate expression in their reports focused on fairness.

At the 30,000 foot level, all collecting and reporting work is subjective. Collecting information, choosing what is fair, what is worthy to include in a report, what to reveal about a reporters' questions and stance involves personal decisions and judgments. In a usability study, I always include in my reports the questions and tests, so that readers can evaluate for themselves what I've done in my report. This is not typically done in journalism reporting.

Maybe the new fairness in journalism should combine a sense of personal objectivity as a behavioral stance at information collection, fairness in the choosing of who and what to investigate, fairness in what ultimately makes the published report, and disclosure of how the reporter did these steps. It means bringing forward the reporter into the context of the story.. but maybe the new fairness is about holding reporters more accountable within the story. Since the internet allow articles to go on with as much backup as possible, this kind of accountability disclosure wouldn't cost anything but the reporters time to add in a little context about who they talked to, what they asked and how it was done. And it would radically change the conversation about what is going on in journalism as an objective or subjective medium.

Rant on Aggression Is Our Filter (for Now)

On Friday, Clay Shirky was on NPR talking about why NPR doesn't use nearly as many women sources as men.

I love listening to Clay talk and he's a dear friend. And of course in the NPR On The Media interview, he and the host discussed the irony that *he* was on to discuss this.. instead of a woman. But since he wrote this post: A Rant About Women, about how his women students weren't nearly aggressive enough about promoting themselves as "arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks," NPR decided to have him on their show.

Basically, while I like that Clay and others like NPR are discussing this issue, I disagree with one part of his blog post and his interview answers on NPR about why NPR has a lack of women as sources, or why women aren't getting the jobs men get, or why women aren't as successful.

Aside from the fact that news producers are responsible for finding good interviewees (not interviewees finding news producers) which was the NPR story focus, I have a real problem with the idea that *aggression* is the appropriate filter for quality and relevance. It's not that I think Clay is advocating for aggression as our filter but rather he's accepting it without question. It's just that this Aggression Filter is so implicit that we all accept it without question.

What is the Aggression Filter?

Depends on the circumstance, but it almost always involves someone having to be aggressive in some way in order to be taken seriously and noticed, either through some sort of online or public yelling, or outrageous actions or marketing language spewed out to get people's attention. Often it's a deep loud voice when in person (this favors men) and could involve various ways that people get into something, like the agenda to speak at a conference or camp (diving head first into an agenda wall is going to filter for people literally willing to hurl their bodies at the speaker's wall or who have big bodies to muscle past others). Or it could be the person who gets someone to recommend them with ridiculous language, or gets some other loud-mouthed social media guru to speak up for them. Whatever it is, it's often behavior that could be quelled by peer pressure and social norms that look past the loud behavior to focus on what people do that qualifies them. When the standard for getting noticed is all about marketing language and yelling loudest, pushing through physically or behaving with obnoxiousness, we have a filter that only notices aggressive acts to the exclusion of good work and quality offerings.

As the internet+social media self-promotion machine amps up what was already a problematic Aggression Filter for finding value, we further reinforce our already broken system for how we find interesting, relevant people to talk about ideas, speak at events or create anything of quality or fill jobs.

I don't believe there is any correlation between aggression and quality of ideas, products, new startups, books, jobs or anything else. Yelling loudest to self or otherwise promote just means the yeller is loud and an obnoxious, pompous jerk (Clay and I definitely agree on those descriptors).

The Aggression Filter is what needs fixing. We need filters in tech that de-emphasize aggression to find what is interesting, innovative and risk-taking in any strata where people compete for value. The future of tech innovation depends on it, and so do women.

However, that said, I do very much agree with Clay when he says that women don't dive into uncharted waters with the confidence that men do. I see men all the time donning a new title for themselves for which they have little experience, and then plowing ahead to find the people with experience who can help them learn or do the parts they don't know. Many men may not even say anything about their lack of experience and just fly by the seat of their pants willy nilly. For example, a new startup founded by a guy might find him claiming the CEO role, and then hiring a COO to run the finances and operations. He may never have been CEO before, but he just takes the challenge. Most women I know want to make sure they have all the possible requisite experience under their belts before facing a daunting title like CEO. And if a funder suggests that maybe a more experienced CEO should be brought in, women are often quick to give up the reins. Not always true, and there are prominent examples where this hasn't happened... but often I see this abdication by women in one form or another.

What's key for women? Being willing to take the risk, fearlessly face criticisms, jump into the unknown and ask for the help needed to get things done. What shouldn't be key? Aggressive behaviors bordering on "jerk."

For now, I'm going to call my desired value-set the Thoughtful Risk filter.

What is the Thoughtful Risk Filter?

It's a filter for finding acts and people who take risks, that then includes evaluation of the thoughtfulness or usefulness of the product, book, job-seeker, pundit, prospective student, startup or company offering. In other words, just risking isn't enough, we want to see something of value.

Another example of the differences that fall along gender lines I've noticed comes in hiring. When I hire male engineers, I find they often overstate their qualifications and skills, and not just by a little. Hiring women engineers, I find that they almost always understate what they bring to the project. So I normalize. And I often find that in a room full of those men and women I've hired, they are pretty equally matches (when normalizing for years of experience).

I'd like to see women take leaps more often by founding startups, and see tech development, startups and VCs think smarter about how to build something of value via a Thoughtful Risk Filter, not through the Aggression Filter, which is what I see so often as the proof point for figuring out who gets money and who doesn't. With so many aggressive guys pitching so many alpha-male VCs, and the subconscious, unexamined Aggression Filter in place, we get a lot of garbage funded. Often the premises getting funded are utterly silly, and we all have to wait around 2-4 years for the users, founders, press and the funders figure out "this dog don't hunt."

People taking thoughtful, planned risks is where it's at. I'd like to see more women thoughtfully risking in the future. But in order to do that, we must shift what we value going forward and encourage people to perform for a Thoughtful Risk Filter. However without more women in partnership roles at VC funds, or pressures from Limited Partners (those who give money to VC funds) we may not see this change soon in the tech development ecosystem. But a value shift in the community would likely put pressure on funders.

People in the tech ecosystem can model, teach and support confidence in women to risk thoughtfully, even if these women fear criticism, or the exposure of their weaknesses as they do it. But if we don't value thoughtful, insightful risk over aggressiveness displayed by the "arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks," no matter whether it's a startup funding pitch or a job recommendation, we won't get people performing for a Thoughtful Risk filter.

When aggression is our filter, we burn people out, often women but men also, and fast. It's not pleasant or life sustaining to constantly be in an environment where aggressive measures are the gauge for what has value. Worse for women, it goes against the way we socialize with the world in communitarian ways over competitive ways. Though I don't think most men like it long-term on an endless loop either. We squander good people when we use aggression as our standard, and in the end, get less quality innovative work than we need.

There's a reason Caterina Fake posted this photo below from the Hunch white board stating rules that support a less aggressive and more thoughtful workplace, and it's not just because people work better with defined work times, breaks and single tasks on which to focus. It's because expecting people in a work environment to "do everything at once" and "stay the latest in the office" and "email at all hours" which many start ups do, encourages aggression as a filter for defining who on a project is worthy, who has control and what the best ideas, the best people and the best work are, instead of the most thoughtful, most useful and most well executed work for innovation.

(image by Caterina Fake)

I get that we are far from living with a Thoughtful Risk value set in tech (whether start up or established environment) as a rule, but we need higher minded goals and to convey these values through social pressure in our interactions. Just playing along with the current Aggression Filter value set only steers away women from tech opportunities, keeps women lower down the ladder, and our products just aren't as good without diverse inputs, nor do they speak to the majority of customers who are in fact women. I realize not everyone plays the aggression game in Tech, but most do in some way. Aggression Filters will only shift with conscious effort and social pressure by us to value Thoughtful Risk Filters.

It's us who can make it better for women in tech, as well as better products, services and companies as a whole because we decide to change what we value. We are responsible for enabling a system that supports aggression and we are responsible for changing it to something better.

Information Technology meets Medical: Why We Should All Be a Little Worried

Today I had what I would say was an anecdotal experience regarding data privacy.. calling my OBGYN to make my annual appointment. I ended up using their new website and giving various personal data, only to figure out that they have no privacy policy for data, that the data was going to a third party, and that in trying to make an online appointment, all I really got after sharing data was an email form to request an appointment.

So, here's the scoop.

In calling into the doctor's office, I got their voice system which has always required lots of number punching to finally get through to someone to make an appointment. It's better than 10 years ago where you could literally never talk to anyone in their offices and would just punch numbers endlessly until leaving them a message. That would be followed by a return call that you would invariably miss, having to start the process over, to get another call back.. all to just make an appointment.

Anyway, calling in today only requires two selections, before being told my call was in line to be picked up after approximately 6 minutes of estimated wait, OR I could use their online system. Whooppee! I could make an appointment using what I imagined was a calendar with available timeslots to book appointments? So here is Golden Gate Obstetrics (GGObgyn) big chance to show how they are using information technology to help people organize this process of getting an appointment better and faster!

Super cool!

Er... NOT. So. Fast.

Following the voice system at GGObgyn, I go to http://goldengateobgyn.medem.com/ which redirects me to http://www.ggobgyn.mymedfusion.com/:

The branding all over the site is "Golden Gate Obstetrics" so I'm thinking: okay, this is their site, even though it's got some other root domain name (mymedfusion.com).. in other words, Golden Gate Obstetrics is responsible for my health info, and I just need to get in to see their calendar and choose a time or something. So I go to "create an account" (Note below I've made screen shots of the *second* account I made, called 'testacct' to see what was going on a second time.. since the first time when I made an account for myself, it went by quickly and I wasn't suspicious until the end of the very end of the process):

I put in my name, SS # and DOB and email. After submitting, I was brought to this form (screenshots are in two parts as it was a longer page):

As you can see, there's enough data request there for someone to do some damage if they wanted to. At this point I was getting a little concerned about where this data was going, but keeping in mind GGObgyn's history where getting staff on the phone to make appointments is so difficult, I went ahead and submitted my data.

The screen instantly took me to a logged in state, saying "we are now your Health Record provider" which I found totally freaky. I don't want them to be my Health Record provider. I just want to schedule an appointment. All this, without requesting any sort of email verification or other checking... just gave me an account. At that point, I could go make an appointment:

To say the least, I was shocked. So I just put in all this personal information, dinked around with forms etc, to be given a glorified email form to request an appointment? With structured data about which day of the week I want the appointment? How about a calendar with available time slots? So I could just pick based upon my availability? No... it appears they are going to email me back or call me with times so we could go back and forth over schedules again, in email? Really? This is the promise of information technology for scheduling? I mean aside from the privacy issues, I really felt like I'd been had in terms of my time sink for their silly email form.

I notice there is no help or privacy statement on any of the pages in their system (and I clicked on all of them), and the "ask a question" page is all about medical stuff, not using the website. But I figure GGObgyn is responsible for this site. So I call them, and after a lengthy wait, get the appointment receptionist. And I ask, where did my data go? And she says she doesn't know, but they own the site, so therefore my data is safe.

This seemed reasonable given the interface on the GGObgyn website was so incomplete with so many important things missing (like a privacy statement as I entered in my SS # and DOB and address, etc. or even a privacy policy in the footer somewhere, or a help page, or real contact info), it had to have been done by people who don't normally develop websites.

I asked if the receptionist could give me the privacy policy, or tell me where my data had gone, and she said she would pass me to the "online manager" named Olivia. Olivia started off my telling me she sits on the system "all day long... as account requests from users to join their online system appear on my screen.. I look the patient up and put through the approval if the new user is in fact a patient."

ME: "Really? because my account approval seemed instantaneously to happen on my screen."
Olivia: "Oh yes.. I did that."
ME: "Wow.. you're fast."

Then Olivia reiterated to me that she's there literally every minute at work approving patient account requests.. because she manually approves all new accounts and also is there to pass along requests of appointments.. etc. And she was sure there was a privacy policy somewhere on the system. Her description of the account approval process sort of contradicts the fact that I could make an account called "testacct" and get right into their system without any approval but I didn't bother mentioning that. I just wanted to know where my data had gone from my first real account made with them.

After that, she could only talk about how to use the system from her perspective, not mine. In other words, Olivia had no idea what regular users face (ie, There is no privacy information, as I typed in my personal data, and no real idea other than from reading the URL in the address bar that maybe a third party was collecting my data, etc. Reading address bar URLs is something most users don't do.)

I told Olivia she literally wasn't getting the problem, because she just kept repeating to me how she uses the system (as an administrator over user accounts and for appointments where, I'm guessing, she has to be seeing an administrator version of the Medfusion system or some kind of much more powerful interface than the one regular users see when they log into the system). So she said she wanted to pass me to their office manager, Laura, who said, as she picked up the call:

"Mary, i've been listening to your call with Olivia" ... er.. okay.. no one disclosed to me that my call with Olivia was going to be monitored by others listening in. Unsettling. And possibly illegal. But whatever, that's really the least of my concerns here.

I told Laura there was no disclosure to me in advance of having a third party get my personal data.. and after Medfusion had it, I had no way of finding out what they are going to do with it.

I asked Laura about GGObgyn's ownership of Medfusion, but she replied that Golden Gate Obstetrics *did not* own Medfusion as the receptionist had told me. Instead, GGObgyn used them because they could not email "using Gmail or AOL" about appointments because that "wasn't safe." I was thinking really? Because having a website where my data just goes to third parties with no written privacy policy seems pretty unsafe.

So she explained that every page on their site (see all the screenshots and look hard for it!) have some sort of key symbol in yellow (it's not on any of the screen shots I took of the site, and I took shots of every page on their site), which if i click on the key, "will take me to their privacy policy." Okay.. so ignoring the obvious question of why they have a yellow key to signal a privacy policy (totally not intuitive from a user perspective), I look all over all the webpages that I can get to from the left side navigation, read them to Laura, and confirm that I cannot find the key.

Laura replied, "Well I can't help you anymore, because this is a waste of our time.. if you didn't want to put your information into MedFusion then you shouldn't have."

ME: "But your voice system told me to. And your name is on the website, and you aren't really disclosing that you are giving my data to a third party, MedFusion or telling me what they or you are going to do with it."

Laura: "Well, I can print the privacy policy and fax it to you."

ME: "But I don't have a fax machine. Can't you email it?"

Laura: "No.. maybe i could scan it and send it in email, but I'm not sure... and there isn't anything else I can do anyway." (It was clear she was trying to end the call.)

ME: "Er... Okay." (And then I hung up.)

A few hours later while writing this post, looking at the GGObgyn site, I noted that they added a privacy policy to the left side navigation, though that policy doesn't govern anything about what I entered into the GGObgyn site because it wasn't there when I gave my data. Medfusion and GGObgyn are under no obligation to keep my data safe or private, based on that policy.

No help or contact pages appeared afterward.

The privacy policy, which I read through, has a few issues. First, it starts off just saying "we" .. and my question is, We Who? I mean.. is it Medfusion? or GGObgyn? Me and GGObgyn together? Or someone else?

At the end of the privacy policy, it says under a section called OUR NOTICE OF PRIVACY PRACTICES:

By law, we must abide by the terms of this Notice of Privacy Practices. We reserve the right to change this notice at any time as allowed by law. If we change this Notice, the new privacy practices will apply to your health information that we already have as well as to such information that we may generate in the future. If we change our Notice of Privacy Practices, we will post the new notice in our Center, have copies available in our office and post it on our website.

So basically, they have to follow the policy, but can change their privacy policy at any time and it's retroactively applied to my old data and old terms? Well, I can see why GGObgyn wouldn't even bother having a privacy policy before because essentially, I have no rights over my data anyway.. because they can just change my rights whenever they want to suit themselves? I feel really good about my personal and medical information held by Golden Gate Obstetrics now.

And then, under COMPLAINTS:

If you think that we have not properly respected the privacy of your health information, you are free to complain to us or to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights. We will not retaliate against you if you make a complaint. If you want to complain to us, send a written complaint to the contact person at the address shown at the beginning of this Notice. If you prefer, you can discuss your complaint in person or by phone.

So.. GGObgyn seriously expects me to complain to the USDoHHS? Why do we have to escalate this to a federal agency? Why can't they discuss it directly with their patients? I would rather just start by telling GGObgyn (which as you can see from the above dialog was incredibly successful, but they really ought to be open to hearing from their users about issues). In looking at the complaints section of the GGObgyn privacy policy, I note that I can contact the person listed "at the top of the privacy policy." Except, surprise! There is no one listed at the top of it. In fact, I don't even really know who "we" is in the policy language. So.. I guess I won't be contacting the "we" in this policy.

If I did want to complain about a privacy policy and questionable data usage problem, frankly I would use the Federal Trade Commission form because the FTC governs these things (see their most recent list of cases here where they go after companies that fail to protect user data and medical information, including the recent CVS case where they violated financial and medical data privacy rules). I have zero confidence that the Office of Civil Rights at the USDoHHS would even have a clue about privacy and my data on a website.

One thing.. after the GGObgyn privacy policy appeared, no one from GGObgn emailed me, or called me, to say that it was now up on their website. Of course, they have all this contact info and my name in their patient files and in their online system that Olivia who runs their website presumably could pull up very quickly and easily send me an email telling me to look at the policy.

I would also recommend that businesses like Golden Gate Obstetrics use the FTC page on Protecting their user's data and privacy which is very helpful when trying to figure out how to present privacy info on a website.

Frankly, I have no way to alert anyone at GGObgyn to this blog post, or to my thoughts on the subject, other than to call back, sit on hold, and talk with the three people I already discussed this with, who were ranged from unhelpful to hostile. Since GGObgyn doesn't seem open to discussing their websites problems and the fact that the cat is kind of out of the bag now with my data going God knows where into various company's hands, I'm posting this example of how companies, particularly *medical* entities, with no experience or understanding of information technology systems and websites need to use extreme care, and not assume that office staff trained to run a medical office has any idea what users need or will face with a website collecting personal or medical data.

I hope people at medical or other data collection companies will realize the importance of protecting user data and being straight with us about what's happening to personal and medical information. My experience is just one, but if this becomes representative of people's experience with their medical providers, we ought to be very worried.

Note: I took a look, when writing this post, at ratings for Dr. Wiggins, whom I really like and have enjoyed having as my doctor. You can see from the ratings at Health Grades that Dr. Wiggins is well liked by patients but the appointment system and her office staff.. not so much. I hope GGObrgn does an overhaul on all their office administration and website that interacts with patients before they venture further with information technology as tool for communications.

Transparency Camp West: Observations

(image by Beth Kanter)

First, Kaliya Hamlin has written a great post on how to manage an unconference so that participants get the most from the event, and feel connected to the topic and solving a particular problem set as well as make stronger social relationships for future potential workings (in this case Transparency Camp West, held yesterday in Charlie's old cafe plus a few small conference rooms at Google in Mountain View).

I attended Transparency Camp West (#TCamp09) from Saturday Afternoon through Sunday's brief closing. It was structured more like a BarCamp or FooCamp (with minimal facilitation) than an unconference using the Open Space method (pdf) (which has a bit more social and activity facilitation and structure). I attended TCamp because I'm interested in, as well as want to help with, Transparency which I feel strongly is a very good thing for government to engage in.

The first Barcamp was formed as an alternative to FooCamp, O'Reillly's "friends of oreilly" camp held at their headquarters annually (note I have attended FOO and really enjoyed it.) That first Barcamp had the social cohesion that forms around the shared hurts which many there felt as insult and exclusion, because of an unfortunate and ill-worded blog post about FooCamp inclusion. So that particular Barcamp's lack of facilitation wasn't an issue. (Note that I didn't personally feel the insult because I know the people who run FooCamp and knew it wasn't directed at me personally. Yet I felt it for the other young folks there who couldn't understand whether they were the ones being called out as unworthy to attend Foocamp and therefore felt hurt. I spent a fair amount of time that first and second day of the first Barcamp consoling young developers, explaining that I didn't think they were the targets of that Foocamp blog post either.. but they were hurt anyway. And hurts do bring a certain cohesion.)

But subsequent Barcamps have suffered from the lack of a Beginning and Ending. They have a start and a finish, but they don't really begin in any formal way, where a facilitator helps the event process and participants to plan the event agenda, announce each session proposal, and then push for documentation of learnings, nor do they have an ending where the participants are brought back together to share learnings and insights, and close properly as a social group who may, hopefully want to see each other again one day. Barcamps often just start. Organizer announces a wall. And that's it. Dive in. Left socially flapping in the breeze.

When I've attended Barcamps in NYC or Austin or SF or other local barcamp styled events, I've alternately been pleased to see everyone show up and many present something interesting, and yet dismayed by the lack of social cohesion or shared learning and evolving that I know from experience is possible at an open space style unconference. This is especially true for the wall-rushing of the Bar/Foo style, which is great if your 22 and male, and want to dive head first into a pile of bodies to get your slot. But if you're not (and say female or not 22) then you would likely really enjoy the ability to announce one at a time your session without having to dive ass in the air into the sweaty bodies just to get your slot. Filtering agenda creation through that process has nothing to do with whether a session will be any good, and everything to do with 22 y old male "f-u" culture.

But think about an unconference as a story: there is a beginning, a middle and an ending when it's done well.

Open Space unconferences provide that social structure, without filling in the content. The participants do that. It's still an unconference but it's got social support in a way that Barcamps don't.

So why does it matter that Transparency Camp was more Barcamp than Open Space? Because it felt like they squandered the opportunity to get the most out of the participants brainstorming solutions and connecting socially around the tough problems that many, most notably the Sunlight Foundation are attacking. In fact, I didn't realize until the end of the event that there was any particular leader leading the event (I missed the beginning because I thought it would be really hard to get in but in fact the event was in a huge cavernous space with tons of room and comparably few people.. sparse even.. though the break out rooms which were tiny were often packed -- that said, I missed their beginning and only heard it later). At the brief ending, when the leader said, "Anybody have anything to say, or any criticisms?" to that giant cavernous room with a few people milling about at the end, it felt so awkward. No.. I'm never going to share anything under those circumstances. Certainly not criticisms.

::shudder::

I think he was a little out of his depth in terms of facilitation experience. Though I did love the singing he did to call everyone back into the ending time.

One thing the FooCamp/BarCamp method sets as an expectation is that everyone will "come present something amazing." Well, not everyone has something amazing to present. Or is an expert. But what TCamp had was a bunch of smart people in the room interested in a particular problem set: transparency of data.

I did work for a congressman long ago for 4.5 yrs, 1.5 of which was in Washington, but I'm a technologist now. I work with hopefully-structured data and make algorithms and create systems and interfaces.. I don't work in government currently -- hate bureaucracy -- but I do want transparency in government and so I'm strongly aligned with the Sunlight Foundation's mission. In other words, I gave TCamp a day and a half of my time as a non-expert in current government transparency to try to help as a civic gesture, not because I do it for a living.

So why not instead use Open Space, which sets the expectation that some will present amazing things, but the rest will attack a problem from different angles in a discussion format? This is a subtle, but very important social distinction about session formats. However, including both session formats requires an Open Space facilitation method to get people thinking in the direction of question and answer, not presentation broadcast and competition, so that they are socially aligned to work together, but also not so structured that it takes the life out of the budding, thoughtful ideas these participants might come up with around the problem-set.

In other words, it's a balance: structure and openness. This balance is cultivated in the Open Space, camp process where there is a real opening and closing plus announced sessions. Also important is the social evening event between the two days, where all organizers of the event should attend to give even the this time heft and importance as an integral part of the communal event, as well as to receive informal feedback on how things are going. Aside: when I walked into the TCamp evening event and saw none of the organizers there, and a sea of people I mostly didn't know, I though.. oh it's not that important to be here and I'm tired and want to go home and eat something simple and light and just chill. But before I saw that, I was fully prepared to spend the evening continuing to socialize around the Transparency Camp problem-set.

(image by Joseph Boyle)

I really enjoyed Dan Gillmor's session on governmental dissemination of information in an open, and individuated media world. Dan is thoughtful and sincere in his desire to chronicle and assist with the transformation from broadcast to social and individual media as we navigate this new world, especially around government data. I also liked the session on Lobbyists which was hilariously and spontaneously focused on how to understand and better map their activities. The session on transparent data, by Natalie Fonseca of Techpolicy, and how far should it go in exposing personal, governmental and corporate data was great.. though the strides were likely lost to Twitter's short horizon of maintained tweets. I do hope someone took notes about what we discussed and posts them. And Esther Dyson's session on genetic data sociality and exposure was terrific, if not totally on topic about government data transparency.

One last thing, overall I enjoyed TCamp and would attend again. But there were a number of incidents where I saw people puffing themselves up as they presented things (sometimes great, sometimes ill conceived) or otherwise talked in sessions (the amount of reactionary eye rolling confirmed for me that I wasn't the only one surprised and dismayed by this behavior across sessions). It may be that in order to be a technologist / player in Washington or other governmental locals, that being pompous is a job requirement in order that the old guard in WDC or California take you seriously. But considering the problem set: transparency for the common man, I felt there was some irony in this behavior. And since some of it came from Sunlight folks, it made me worried for them. I know we could do the typical Silicon Valley thing where some engage in something stupid, and we all don't say anything and two years later they fail. But Sunlight and these other orgs don't have two years to figure out that this behavior is counterproductive. They are non-profits and there is a public good to what they do, and they need to deal with this now, not figure it out in two years after no-one has said anything.

Thankfully Sunlight has people like the extraordinary Ellen Miller and the very thoughtful Esther Dyson, whom I hope can help school these youngsters in the idea that self-puffery gets you nowhere in Silicon Valley, or for that matter outside the Beltway or Sacramento. Not to mention it makes it very difficult to listen well. Simply presenting something without your own ego inserted in front of the presentation or your contributory statement is the best way to get us all to say: WOW, what a great idea.. I want to help too! And since what you are presenting is interesting, you must be smart too!

That said, I was very impressed with Sunlight's Policy Director, John Wonderlich, who was thoughtful, socially pleasant, listened well and didn't seem to have any personal agenda to advance his own ego and stature. Maybe he even pets small children and dogs on the head and helps little old ladies cross the road as he walks to work each day too, I don't know, but Sunlight could use more people like him because he really added to every session in which I encountered him, both in terms of smart thoughts and socially to make people feel comfortable with the thoughts and ideas being passed around.

Celebrity Worship in the Post-Modern Internet

Doc Searls in a post on celebrity, black holes and productivity comments on celebrity as a form of coasting. Below is my reaction. I think there is more to it. Let me know what you think.

I've been talking about celebrity a lot since Thurs afternoon re: MJ, FF, EM, etc. Doc and I discussed this a month ago in depth too. I've been trying to figured out for the past year what the hyperdrive of microcelebrity is on Twitter that so many run after. And then the real celebrities hit twitter en masse and the hyperdrive of real celebrity is there as well. That drive diminishes at times one's ability to have a real conversation because some of those diving into conversations have agendas like trying to get the attention of the perceived AList (whatever that is.. oh yes.. the high follower counts, goosed by the twitter suggested follower list, provide us with a definitive answer... thank the gods).

But the triple-hit celebrity death match on Thursday drove me to my thought which is that most people need to follow, most people need something to worship, and most people have given up serious religion (of the type where you spend like 20 hours a week in church and the pope or the ayatollah or the supreme leader or whoever is your celebrity representative communicates with god for you and leads you and makes the decisions and you worship him to get to god because you can't talk to him yourself).

Michael Jackson and other celebs are the replacement for that sort of seriously time consuming difficult religion, because media and post-modernism make it easy (where premodern means god is above man, modern has everything equal: god, man, nature, and post-modern means nothing is more important than you). If nothing is more important than the individual, but he/she needs to follow something bigger than the self out of insecurity or whatever and there is very little ritual left post-old-style-religion to set people on their own course of confidence, productivity and humility in the world, and you have the media machine the past 100 years that now includes internet and self-publicity on things like twitter, well.. you have the perfect primordial soup to grow the MJ, etc worship replacing organized religion we see now. And of course, the celebrity version is so much easier and more fun, kind of like fast food.

Doc is right, celebrity worship is a tremendous form of distraction, but I would argue most don't have the confidence, discipline, or for that matter the interest in spending their time on more constructive things. While most are capable of much more, there is safety in worship. That's why the church/temple/mosque of old was so effective. It filled the rest of your time after work and set the order that god was first, then the supreme leader as the physical manifestation, then puny you, so you would worship up the hierarchy. Oh, and you were given a structure to think about life and death. Which is frightening to many. And there was a structure for work and discipline, however messed up these organized religions have been over the centuries.

In Post-Modernity, celebs fill the worship channel, effortlessly, where the celeb hierarchy is the order and the media connects you. Microcelebs are the long tail of this channel. Nothing going on with the top? Well.. there is always Guy Kawasaki or iJustine. And if you as the worshiper can get nearer to the celeb so much the better. People used to say: god is my savior. Now they say, "I remember exactly where I was when I heard MJ died." It's a way of placing yourself close to the worshiped thing.

Not to mention that you don't have to think about death if you go with the celebrity distraction mechanism, except when Farrah and Michael and Ed McMahon leave us, at which point people seem to just increase the worship but don't really have to face facts about their own lives.

It's utterly silly, and of course the internet and socialmedia send this tendency and need an order of magnitude higher than before. But I think it's a rat-brain need for the masses to worship something, and celebrity is the post-modern fast-food solution.

Opiates anyone?

Mobile Engineering: Why Coders with Old World Discipline Have the Advantage

A month or so ago, someone (I can't remember who) said to me that mobile engineering was hard for web engineers to do because it was so different. I've worked over the nine months on product development for several mobile applications at Apisphere, and more specifically the last couple of months seen coding for handsets up close. I can see why those who are great at coding the front end of websites that will go out to people with beefy computers might have trouble coding for tiny devices with limited memory, harddrives and processors. Even smart phones are no competition for the latest desk or laptop.

Working with engineers on Android, iPhone and Blackberry apps, where GPS data is involved, and each of these phones' quirks are being exposed, I've come to realize there is much more to this than just the difference between webcoding and mobile engineering. I started in tech in the 90's working on boxed software. Huge projects with 60 engineers making things for big machines of the time. Those kinds of projects required enormous specs, Market Research Docs (MRDs) and Product Research Docs (PRDs), etc. When I later switched and started writing algorithms for web apps, building little classification systems, and working closely with engineers on web apps creating the information architectures and meaning on sites, through interfaces and algorithms, I didn't think all that much about the differences between installed boxed software and web development, other than the specs I was writing were far smaller and we iterated a whole lot more on the web development in tighter cycles, and often the usability was built in a bit more from the beginning instead of bolted on at the end.

But now seeing development for mobile and creating mobile apps, I realize engineers who learned to code way back when have a huge advantage over web and large app engineers who've never been forced to economize. Those early coders know what it means to optimize for tiny amounts of ram and hard drive space, to create truly elegant code that is compact, efficient, and doesn't take over a device or machine.

In contrast, I find my Firefox usage often pushes my laptop out of control as javascripts go crazy on tabs in the background. Those pages were written by programmers unschooled in the art of system management, who may believe the system resources are unlimited or worse, dedicated *only* to the running of the browser+their webapp. They don't even seem to know they ought to be considering users and their resources based upon the pinwheel of death I regularly experience. I'm often climbing through FF tabs on pages open for work and play as I go through my day, trying desperately to locate that one tab that's going crazy, pushing FF to 125% according to Top. When I get it shut down, after massive frustration and system hangs, waiting to see if the next tab is it, I realize another tab is out of control. And so on until I get my machine back.

Building mobile apps, there is no way we can put that sort of strain on a smart phone, much less a little tiny phone. At this point after watching 9 months of mobile development, I'm realizing the preferred mobile developer is someone who has hardcore coding experience with languages like Java and C++/C#, who had to optimize for old computers with minimalist ram, hardrives and CPUs. People who code as if their program will be the only one open or up in a browser need not apply.

In fact, I would say that older coders with this sort of discipline will often have a distinct advantage over the young new web-only coders, and will be the ones who help us move mobile forward as a viable industry. Of course, those who embody all of these skills for all environments will have the best chances to work in mobile going forward, as I see mobile delivery of webpages as also key to this industry.

The Life of a Tweet

Twitter (and the ISchool -- or one of my poor brethern -- I have a masters from UCBerkeley's iSchool) seem to be in the tweetsphere over one ill-found tweet tossed off by a student and found by her summer internship employer likely via search.twitter.com. For background, you can see this: FattyCisco.com. The poor girl is likely humiliated and horrified over what she thought was an innocent and also, likely, a fleeting thought that didn't really reflect how she felt overall.

We've all had those momentary thoughts where when we are ambivalent, we toss something out of our mouths and once it's out there, we think, wow, that doesn't even ring true or, it did for a nanosecond, and now it's changed, or gee, that's about 5% of the way I actually feel about this. But out of mouth, truly ephemeral (unless recorded in some form) is different than written down and searchable in the grand database of the Googlezon and search at twitter. Or maybe it's just a joke.

This is one of the problems with online communities and specifically twitter:

You don't know who's listening, and because of search tools, you are findable beyond your follower list
or your "community" of known tweeters (ppl you @ with or read) unless your account is private.

I don't think we have at all sussed out what it means to tweet in the long term, or what the power of the tweet is, or where the tweet goes and what sort of life it has beyond the first few minutes or hours of it's life in the Twitter / client context.

This is another example of something that happened recently:

A PR exec going to Memphis to meet with a client, Fed Ex, insulted the client on the way to the meeting. The clients wrote a letter to the PR company and him, his bosses, and cc'd everyone at Fed Ex as well. Ooops.

The problem is, tweets go to those paying attention at the moment, those who may save tweets in clients (i leave my twitter client open and check it now and then as I have time -- right now I have 15k tweets from the past couple of days), those pivoting on a single user, those searching for key words, those looking a related conversations.

But when you tweet, in your head, you're often just thinking about those you expect to read it, like only a few your followers paying attention at the time. What happens with some tweets (some reading by some followers) is not what can happen with all tweets.

The interface and interaction at Twitter's website doesn't lead you to believe that what happens most often there will happen in incendiary examples. And different twitter clients (an android or Iphone app for example) don't lead you to understand the permanent nature of tweets, through use, that say, search.twitter.com might, as you see something you deleted appear there anyway.

It takes experience with all these different modalities to inform you because there is no advance disclosure or warning of the elasticity of a single tweet.

What is most interesting is this pushes me to think harder about what the interface of "aged information" online looks like (and I don't mean google search results that move from page 1 to page 3 over time).

And I have to ask myself what it would mean to have what Judith Donath discussed on the panel, Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused, moderated Saturday at SXSW by danah boyd. Judith discussed having some kind of a "mirror" for you of your digital self that would reflect all your online presentation and communications and expression... just so you might get a sense of what you show people and what you project at a moment in time. Right now it's really hard to gather that sense of yourself. Right now, you don't really see it in any sort of complete way. But others see pieces of you digitally represented at different times. It would be like re-disclosing for yourself what you've done, discovering how others view you, in slices or on the whole, in order to see the effect you have. It would probably be helpful to know what had reach and where, and what was for now at least, forgotten.

But frankly, the privacy implications of that are huge as well. So, I'm thinking. No answers on that one yet.

Trademark Tyranny by Jones Day: We Don't Like Your Stinking Linking Expression

So it turns out that Jones Day, the utterly clueless lawfirm, sued a small real estate reporting company, BlockShopper, for talking about Jones Day the normal way we all do online: with the name of a person or thing, linking to that person or things website underneath the name. The settlement agreement (pdf) says future linking must to changed as so:

... instead of posting "Tiedt is an associate," the site will write "Tiedt (http://www.jonesday.com/jtiedt/) is an associate." (The agreement also calls on BlockShopper to say that the lawyer in question is employed at Jones Day and that more information about the attorney is on the firm's Web site.) Via Wendy David at Slate

The first way is perfectly normal and the way everyone does it online. The altered version required by the suit is just silly. No one does it that way.

Though some do some creative linking expression like so:

Clueless bullies with no thought but for their own pride

and

Federal ninny making decisions who doesn't get trademark, the web, linking expression or his own ass from a tale pipe.

Groups like EFF, Public Knowledge, Public Citizen and Citizen Media Law Project tried to file an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief but federal district court Judge John Darrah rejected it. And he denied BlockShopper's motion to dismiss before trial.

The only reason Jones Day "won" is because they are big, litigious jerks who found a judge that doesn't get social norms on the web. 15 years of social norms. Across the world wide web. For hundreds of millions of people.

PS. just in case Jones Day is worried (per their ideas in the suit that linking to them means the public could be confused), or anyone else is wondering, this website is not connected in any way with Jones Day.

Happy Data Privacy Day!

Apparently, last night the US House of Representatives passed HR 31 declaring January 28, 2009 National Data Privacy Day. 402 votes in favor, none opposed. Jolynn Dellinger of Intel Corporation, working with Congressman David Price and Congressman Stearns, spearheaded the effort.

More info for today's events at The Privacy Association.

She's Geeky

Hey.. She's Geeky is a few days away, and you can still sign up.

The list of great women attending is here: She's Geeky Attendees and Registration

Really looking forward to interacting with all those awesome girl geeks on Friday and Saturday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View!

She's Geeky Again! Jan 30-31, 2009

The second She's Geeky will happen at the end of this month! The first was held 14 months ago in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum, and this year it will happen there again.

Here are all the important links to get you going:

Website: http://www.shegeeky.org
BLOG: http://shesgeeky.org/sg/blog/
WIKI: http://shesgeeky.org/wiki/

Registration:
on site: http://shesgeeky.org/sg/register/
on eventbrite: http://shesgeekybayarea.eventbrite.com/

Facebook Group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=5010135719
Event on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/event.php?eid=53885344492
LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=39189

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/shesgeeky

PLEASE be sure to register for one day $59 or two days $108 and get the early bird price.

Let's face it, this conference is just covering costs with those prices... if you are only able to come on a weekday, you'll be able to come Friday, and if weekends are all you can do, Saturday is it, or even better, come both days!

Also, check out this totally great video shot at the last She's Geeky:

Eniac Programmers Documentary at Computer History Museum

Check out the notice below about the documentary showing on October 22, 2008 about the Eniac Programmers. Should be a fantastic night!

The Computer History Museum Presents
An Evening with Jean Jennings Bartik - 1945 ENIAC Programming Pioneer
7:00pm
Computer History Museum | Hahn Auditorium
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd. Mountain View, CA 94043
Wine provided by The Mountain Winery
To register: click here or call (650) 810-1005.

We hope to see you at this celebration of pioneering women in computing -- an event 60 years in the making!

Kathy Kleiman, Historian & Executive Producer, ENIAC Programmers Project
eniacprogrammers.org

About ENIAC Pioneer Jean Bartik. Jean Jennings Bartik was one of the first programmers of the groundbreaking ENIAC computing system in 1945. She later assisted in converting the ENIAC system into one of the first stored-program computers.

Born on a farm in Missouri, the sixth of seven children, Bartik always went in search of adventure. Bartik majored in mathematics at Northwest Missouri State Teachers College (now Northwest Missouri State University). In 1945, at age 20, Bartik answered the Army's Ballistics Research Lab's call for women math majors to join a project in Philadelphia calculating ballistics firing tables for the new guns developed for the WWII effort - she joined over 80 women calculating ballistics trajectories by hand (differential calculus equations) - Her title: "Computer."

Later in 1945, the Army circulated a call for "computers" for a new job with a secret machine. Bartik jumped at the chance and was hired as one of the original six programmers of ENIAC, the first all-electronic, programmable computer. She joined Frances "Betty" Snyder Holberton, Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli, Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer, Ruth Lichterman Teitelbaum and Frances Bilas Spence in this unknown journey.

With ENIAC's 40 panels still under construction, and its 18,000 vacuum tube technology uncertain, the engineers had no time for programming manuals or classes. Bartik and the other women taught themselves ENIAC's operation from its logical and electrical block diagrams, and then figured out how to program it. They created their own flow charts, programming sheets, wrote the program and placed it on the ENIAC using a challenging physical interface, which had hundreds of wires and 3,000 switches. It was an unforgettable, wonderful experience.

On February 15, 1946, the Army revealed the existence of ENIAC to the public. In a special ceremony, the Army introduced ENIAC and its hardware inventors Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert. The presentation featured its trajectory ballistics program, operating at a speed thousands of time faster than any prior calculations. The ENIAC women's program worked perfectly - and conveyed the immense calculating power of ENIAC and its ability to tackle the millennium problems that had previously taken a man 100 years to do. It calculated the trajectory of a shell that took 30 seconds to trace it. But, it took ENIAC only 20 seconds to calculate it - faster than a speeding bullet! Indeed!

The Army never introduced the ENIAC women.

No one gave them any credit or discussed their critical part in the event that day. Their faces, but not their names, became part of the beautiful press pictures of the ENIAC. For forty years, their roles and their pioneering work were forgotten and their story lost to history. The ENIAC Women's story was discovered by Kathy Kleiman in 1985. Bartik will discuss what it means to be overlooked, despite unique and pioneering work, and what it means to be discovered again.

In conversation with Linda O'Bryon, Bartik will also discuss:

* Leading the programming team to convert ENIAC to one of the first stored-program machines (and working with Dr. John von Neumann on ENIAC's first instruction set)
* Working in "Technical Camelot" at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, as programmer of BINAC and logic designer of UNIVAC
* Sexism and stereotypes at Remington Rand and her first-hand experience with the abuse of women and the misuse of technology
* Friends and pioneers computing history should not forget, including tributes to Betty Holberton, Kay Mauchly Antonelli, the other ENIAC programmers, Dr. John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
* Some pieces of advice to live by.

About the ENIAC Programmers Project. Founded in 1997, the ENIAC Programmers Project is dedicated to recording, preserving and sharing the stories of women computer pioneers. Its founder, Kathy Kleiman, discovered the ENIAC Programmers as a passing reference in an computing pioneer's autobiography, sought them out, researched and recorded their oral histories. Her nomination of Jean Bartik for the Computer History Museum's 2008 Fellow Award led to this special recognition -- after 60 years!

The Computer History Museum's VIP reception honors Jean Bartik and recognizes the ENIAC Programmers Project's long quest to make a feature-length documentary about the women of ENIAC, WWII Rosie the Riveters who invented many of the concepts of modern programming!

To learn more about this inspiring story and opportunities for documentary support and sponsorship, please go to www.eniacprogrammers.org or contact Kathy Kleiman at Kathy@eniacprogrammers.org.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The ENIAC Programmers Project
Honoring Computer Pioneers and Preserving Their Stories
Feature-length documentary "Invisible Computers: The Untold Story of the ENIAC Programmers" now in development & fundraising.
www.eniacprogrammers.org

Obama New Yorker Cover Remix

Based upon the Kevin Drum/ Washington Monthly suggestion, I remixed this week's New Yorker Cover based upon Barry Blitt's Illustration. It is much funnier with the thought bubble and McCain. I think it will be easy for people in the current climate to misunderstand the original. But the remix makes it easier to get that it's supposed to be funny.

Girl Geek Dinner, Zivity Sponsor Recap, Part I

(Part 1 of a 2 part post.)

It's been 10 days since we held an alternative event for women who wanted to attend something for girl geeks, but didn't want to be at an event sponsored by, with speaker from or with photographers by a porn company, Zivity because it felt like Zivity was trying to use credibility of girl geeks just after their founder took off her shirt in a video at the top of Techcrunch. Many women I spoke with were amazed at the lack of understanding of this by the Girl Geek Dinner organizers.

In discussing this event with people the last few days, it's become clear that what we: me, a couple of women who blogged this, as well as numerous women and men who expressed support for our criticism of the GGD event, understood a few important things that weren't public.

When people found out how hard we'd tried to meet with the GGD event organizer, to discuss this before it became a controversy, and what our perspective was verses just the blanket view that we opposed the event in conjunction with a particular sponsor, they really supported the view that we held, which was that we'd tried to talk about it first, were forced to go increasingly public, and that we had a supportable point that women at work, and networking events are included in this, should not be involved with porn, porn companies or photographers paid for by porn companies. And they really supported that we held an event, however last minute, as an alternative, to the GGD event.

I've also learned a bit more about the situation, that I wasn't aware of at the time, which I wanted to share. And I wanted to tell what happened at the Girl Geek Revolution event (that name is, as I mentioned earlier, tongue in cheek, because we really felt we had to have a revolution in order not to have porn related things at work).

So.. here's what I know about the events the past couple of weeks surrounding the Girl Geek Dinner event:

* I was sent an invite to the Girl Geek Dinner event, by @bayareagirlgeek on Twitter on June 16th.

Looking at the website then (Located here, but it's been updated from that time three weeks ago; I saw then that Zivity was a sponsor, but later their sponsorship was removed, the link name was changed to remove "zivity" at the end of it and the title the link was created from, and the language around Zivity sponsored photographers was lightened up.) The event, slated for June 26th in SF, showed Cyan Banister, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Zivity, as a speaker, as well as talked about the Zivity sponsored photographers in the post describing the event.

* Several of us responded on June 16th to the tweet from @bayareagirlgeek, not knowing who it was who was behind the event and the tweet, saying we were uncomfortable with Zivity as a sponsor because it's a porn company and that didn't feel very supportive of women. We didn't hear anything back:

* Again, not realizing who had organized the first Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner that I'd attended on January 31, 2008, I left a comment on the BAGGD blog post announcing dinner #2 on June 26. My comments appeared to be posted, but then later the blog said they were "under moderation." Two other women posted comments, but none of our comments were posted, and appeared based upon the interface to have been deleted. We weren't sure what happened, but discussed this with the "@bayareagirlgeek" in our tweets on twitter, to get the person using that Twitter handle to discuss this with us, as we tried to resolve the issue (see the Summize list of tweets going back to the original invite, and open the "show conversation" links to view the complete conversation.)

* On June 17, I decided to post the comments I'd tried to leave at the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner post to my blog, because I felt really strongly about what was happening, and that porn, in a work environment was not good and would make many women feel uncomfortable and unsupported. And I felt that Zivity in particular, because of the Techcrunch stripper video, was using GGD to get girl geek cred. Those comments are here, and while they didn't comprehensively cover the issues and tell everything that was going on at the time, because they replied specifically to the BAGGD blog post, they were meant to catch the attention via the link (many bloggers follow their inbound links) of whoever had written the post so we could discuss the issues.

* On June 18, I checked back at BAGGD blog and the comments had all been removed and the interface said nothing was "awaiting moderation." But I did see in very small type Angie Chang's email as the organizer. I was really surprised, because Angie and I had been through a similar set of things before.

In 2007, Women 2.0, an organization I believe Angie co-founded and which runs an annual pitching contest for women entrepreneurs, called Women 2.0 Napkin Business Challenge. That contest required that *only women under 35* be allowed to participate. I had tried to leave a comment on the corresponding blog post at Women 2.0 in 2007, but it was not approved. Note also that while this post now says there are 46 comments, they are currently invisible on that post now for some odd reason that probably is a technical glitch though because many of them are critical, and Angie seems to have a history of not publishing criticism by others on her blogs, it could also be that she simply told the interface not to post them anymore. I have no idea.

I wrote a blog post to publich my comments not published at Anglie's blog about the Women 2.0 pitch contest excluding women 35 and over.Angie responded in comments at Napsterization saying she disagreed with me that this was a problem. My thought was first-time women founders need help, no matter their age, and age discrimination in any event was a real problem.

Ten or so months later, Angie pinged me, asking to meet because someone (can't remember who but Eve Phillips formerly of Greylock and currently of Chirp comes to mind) had suggested that I wasn't unreasonable, and that she really ought to hear what I had to say about Women 2.0 (btw, I also spoke at an event Women 2.0 held 2 years ago).

We had coffee in early 2008, and I explained why I really felt that first time women entrepreneurs needed the confidence boost, and the support of an organizations like Women 2.0, as they go out to pitch VCs for money for their startups. This year, for the 2008 contest, Women 2.0 removed the "under 35" requirement, and made the contest open to any team with 6 or less founders, where 50% were women. Though I couldn't attend I thought that was terrific and congratulate Women 2.0 and Angie for opening up to all women the opportunities the pitch contest gives.

So, knowing in June 2008 that Angie was organizing the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner, and had likely produced the blog post and tweets, I pinged her in email, to say that I'd really like to get together to talk about this issue.

After that, I also talked with two other women, who told me they had already pinged Angie, asked to talk on the phone or meet for coffee to talk about the same issue with GGD. That I know of three of us reached out to Angie sometime between the 16th and the 18th trying to talk with her.

* June 20, Angie replied to two of us, requesting to meet on the 21st. Since I was leaving the night of the 21st for NYC, and we were having a 100 degF heatwave, I suggested that instead of meeting at 1pm as Angie suggested, maybe we could do 10am? I both phone texted Angie, and replied in email, as did Kaliya Hamlin, about meeting Saturday for a total of 6 messages between us to Angie offering the option of meeting at 10, 11 or as a last resort, the 1pm time Angie had proposed. I was an hour away from the proposed meeting site in Berkeley, but despite having a busy day and workout planned, not to mention packing and a red eye, I wanted to see this discussion happen. Kaliya also spent the day waiting around for the meeting, skipping working out, and other errands, as she too was just about to leave for a conference in Southern California.

I also found out about the Valleywag and San Jose Mercury News blog posts. (Neither posting showed up in my RSS feed tracking links to my blog).

* June 21. We heard at 4pm Saturday from Angie, who disregarded all the messages to her, but proposed Sunday the 22nd at 11am. By then I was on my way to a family 30th wedding anniversary, and then headed to the airport. Others were off to meetings and dinners, but I replied and suggested we do a phone call (with me in NYC) for 2pm EST/ 11am PST and Mary Trigiani meeting in person with Angie.

No reply was received to our suggestions to Angie's proposed meeting time and no phone call took place.

* June 22, as I was in NYC, I met a woman who was part of Girl Geek Dinners in London, and friends with Sarah Blow, founder of the entire organization (loosely affiliated as it is, though it it branded the same around the world). This woman, as did approximately 20 other women who were attending Personal Democracy Forum in NYC, told me during the PDF party they were appalled that GGD was having a porn company sponsor and sending photographers, and most had read my blog post, seen my tweets or heard about the issue. They all wanted to do something constructive to voice opposition, and expressed support for my efforts. I asked all to write blog posts about their understanding of the events.

* June 23. I received an email from Jackie Danicki who spoke with Sarah Blow, founder of Girl Geek Dinners. Apparently Sarah Blow was "annoyed" with the Zivity GGD situation, and "made GGD remove Zivity as a sponsor."

Because of this, I decided to do a blog post to share this new information as well as more completely explain the entire situation to that time. This post, More on Girl Geeks - Yes, Zivity - No was much more direct in analyzing the situation compared to my previous post that had been just the comment I'd intended to leave on the BAGGD blog, and just responded to their announcement of sponsors and the dinner/speaker event.

* June 24, I pinged Angie again about doing a call with us. She replied that she was "taken aback" by our reactions to the dinner and Zivity's involvement, and would rather chat on Friday, *after* the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner, on June 27. I'm not sure what she expected, but as we were trying to talk with her, the dinner was approaching and I felt that the only way to get my views across and mobilize support against the combination of Zivity and Girl Geek Dinners was to blog it publicly. We didn't seem to be getting much direct talking done. In my post, I had directly addressed the issues of what Zivity is, and why I believed it was a bad choice to have them sponsor the event, speak and send photographers because that was the only option I had at that point.

* June 25, at the Structure 08 conference I bumped into Calley Nye, and later in the press room, she asked me very directly if I'd like to do an alternative event. I did but definitely didn't have time to do it myself. I told her if we did it together, I'd do it. We went to work on holding our own event, in order to have an alternative event that didn't have Porn photographers shooting the attendees. And more importantly, to make the point that porn and it's associated issues don't belong at work.

Part 2 of this will be posted in the next few days and I'll link to it here when it's up.

Quick update on Zivity

SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM.

Cyan Banister has written Calley Nye to tell her to tell me that Zivity was never a sponsor of Girl Geek Dinners. Okay.. all I can go on is this: Zivity was listed as a sponsor, or implied as a sponsor on the GGD SF site. I believe they removed it later, and I got email from the London GGD folks (who founded GGD) that they asked the SF folks to remove Zivity as a sponsor.

Wha? Cyan didn't realize this blog has comments? You can reach me here, and leave a comment. Or you can blog about it on your own site. Or you can read this blog, find the email, and tell me directly if you don't want to use social media tools to tell me.

Since Zivity, a social media porn company, is unwilling to use social media tools to set the record straight, well, I'm mystified but updating you to say, I *think* Zivity is denying they were a sponsor of the Girl Geek Dinners, but they won't say it publicly or to me directly.

In any event, we are still holding our Girl Geek Revolution (without the porn site speaker/photographers in attendance) at a networking event tonight at Sugar Cafe. Why revolution? Cause you gotta have one to get the porn outta your work, apparently.

Come have fun, network with girl geeks, eat a cupcake and have a cocktail. More info here at Calley Nye's blog.

UPDATE 7/3/08:

Note: I went back and found this tweet, written by BAGGD (@bayareagirlgeek on Twitter), to announce the event. And in their own words, they describe Zivity as a sponsor:

A few days after the event, I learned from a documentary filmmaker, Cianna Stewart, working on a piece on Zivity, that Cyan had told her that Zivity had in fact paid for the photographers directly. So to my mind, they *were* a sponsor of the Girl Geek Dinners. This is akin to when an event is held, and a sponsor pays a vendor, say the lunch provider or a cocktail party provider, at an event directly. But they are listed as a sponsor in the event web page, and they are posted as a sponsor at the event through some signage. But that sponsor does not write the event makers a check.

So the idea that Zivity would send me a message through a third party, to tell me they had never sponsored Girl Geek Dinners, "never written a check directly to BAGGD" as evidence of this, and therefore I had the story wrong was, to my way of thinking about events, meant to mislead me and Calley Nye into thinking they had never been a sponsor. In fact, Cianna Stewart did confirm for me that she had seen the Girl Geek Dinners web page, and noted that Ziviity was originally listed as a sponsor below Facebook, but also later saw that Zivity was quietly removed from the sponsor list after our blog posts criticizing the combining of a porn company's sponsorship with GGD. Cianna also told me that Cyan/Zivity told her the sponsored photos would "belong to" Girl Geek Dinners. Which means Zivity paid for something at the GGD event that was akin to sponsorship.

Additionally, I went back to look at an early email from almost three weeks ago, when we were trying to meet with the Girl Geek Dinners organizer, Angie Chang, who describes "the Zivity and Girl Geek Dinner partnership" in an email to us. To my mind, a partnership, when you just invite someone to speak, is not necessary and people don't usually describe speaking arrangements that way. Lots of us speak at events and have no partnership with the event organizers. A partnership for an event is pretty much always around some kind of sponsorship, regardless of whether the money is paid directly to the event organizer or involves payment to a vendor who performs a service at the event, or a media sponsorship where a sponsor and event organizer essentially exchange advertisements about each other. In all instances, these are sponsorships.

So to me, Zivity *was* a sponsor of Girl Geek Dinners, and it was disingenuous at best, and lying at worst, for Cyan and Angie to claim that Zivity "never sponsored" GGD.

Come Tonight: Girl Geek Party Without The Porn Company

Tonight in SF at Sugar Cafe, 6-9pm.

More info here at Calley Nye's Blog. Food sponsored by She's Geeky!

We're calling it Girl Geek Revolution (okay that's a bit tongue in cheek, but apparently here you have to have a revolution to get a Girl Geek networking event without a porn company as sponsor, speaker or sending their photographers to use their photos for who knows what -- but I'm sure when they stick them on flickr or their own site.. they'll be playing up your girl geek reputation and name to help legitimize their porn company).

Re: Zivity, the porn site. I checked out their site with a friend's login. He told me "...yeah.. it's a porn site by my standards." He went on to say that it's more analogous to Playboy, as in, you can see naked girls, posed in retro pinup style, with just a little twat showing, and while he thinks most men who watch hardcore porn (he characterizes that as video of one or more people actually having sex) will think it's cute porn.. and hopefully catch women they know there so they can tease them into going out with them, especially if they work with them, but they won't really use it because it doesn't have the porn they really want day-to-day, if they use porn, which is more hardcore.

That said, when I looked, I did note that it was basically full of Playboy style porn. Or like my friend's company in Berkeley, who for the past 10 years has done retro porn. That company gets real homemade "porn" from the 50s, 60s and 70s, mostly like Zivity's stuff. And he does well.. it's a beautifully done site, making him around $200k a month for the past several years. Anyone can submit and he approves and styles the pages. He's a designer by trade, so everything looks like the Zivity site.. which is.. very well styled.

However, there is a big difference between my friend's porn site and Zivity's porn site: Zivity lies to me in their tagline, by saying "It's not porn."

Red flags. Sorry.. I just don't like to be lied to.

And, they want it both ways: they want to say, "We're women founded (1 of the 3 founders is a woman), and support women by sharing the money, via our social network for porn but we're not porn!" That's nice.. better than many porn sites do with their "models."

But it's still porn, which is defined as, "Sexually explicit material meant to arouse people" according to the dictionary both online and at my house. It doesn't matter if you style it nicely.. it's still porn.

The other way Zivity wants it is to be not thought of porn, but rather to trade on Girl Geek cred, by sponsoring, speaking at and providing a photographer to the Girl Geek Dinners. They want to be "in the community" of geeks and use our reputations to gain legitimacy at a work event, for their VC funded company. They want to seem like a woman founded company (33% wouldn't even cut the Women 2.0 pitch contest requirements) but Zivity's management is publicly stated as being all male, which is very similar to most porn companies where the men sell the women's images (straight men in porn don't get paid a lot and aren't what sells.. it's the pretty women that get you the cash.. hence Zivity's decision to just post women "models"... men may come later but I'll bet you it's gay men.. whose porn also brings in lots of cash).

But oopps, their founder (and former CEO CMO) Cyan Banister (someone asked me if that was a real name, or a made up porn star name... don't know if it's made up or not.. sorry) took her shirt off at the top of a Techcrunch post. Exposing the lie that it's really a porn site. And using her body to get to the top.

And we are supposed to respect that on a business level, and lend our geek cred to this company that lies to us in their tagline? Don't think so.

Once Zivity decides to be honest, and just state that they are a porn company, and not use the porn to get legitimately geek press or work events to stand next to people and insinuate credibility as a VC funded startup just like everyone else (the porn just makes them different, and not at all appropriate for work), I might like them again. But until that changes.. I don't trust Zivity at all.

More on Girl Geeks - Yes, Zivity - No

Just a quick update to my last post.

Apparently the founder of Girl Geek Dinners, Sarah Blow, made GGD SF remove Zivity as a sponsor. I was told this from someone I met at PDF2008 who emailed her, which she forwarded. I didn't hear this directly. But it does explain why I had seen Zivity sponsorship there as a sponsor at the GGD SF website when I wrote about this originally.. and then it was gone without explanation. Couldn't figure out what happened.. but just got word of why it's gone. Blow didn't like Zivity sponsoring.. apparently she picked up on Zivity using the GGD sponsorship to buy cred with GGD.

A thought about the many women who work in jobs where they would prefer to not be sexualized at work because they are working with their brains don't have the power or control over their situations some of us do.

For example, I worked with a woman who was a single-mom legal secretary, w/ 7yr old son, severely mentally and physically retarded, who desperately needed the office provided insurance. The person I watched harass her, chose sex as the tool, knowing she was in a week position. It's the same as a child molester choosing the weakest kid around to go after because that kid doesn't have a good support network. Catholic priests come to mind, where there are many cases where they would pick a weaker kid over another stronger one to abuse.

The problem is, the weakest are vulnerable, without protections and standards for behavior. I wish it weren't the case, but I also recognize that when people can abuse someone, sometimes they will. Which brings us back to my point around GGD, which is that people feel bad about speaking out (I'm witnessing all the people telling me in person how upset they are about this GGD dinner/Zivity and yet, I'm one of a few writing or talking about it publicly. I'm trying to get them to blog about, but they are scared of being pinpointed as the woman who whines about this. I don't want to be that either, but someone has to say something).

And people who feel bad about it are often also the ones coerced into doing something they don't want to do... like allowing themselves to be sexualized at work, to be forced to be "hot" first and maybe then be good at their jobs, worth funding, worth hiring for a leadership role. It's unfortunate that we live with that in our culture. But why put women even more in that position, with a Girl Geek Dinner originally to be sponsored by Zivity (sponsorship has now been removed by the founder, as I mentioned above) with Zivity speaking and taking photos.

By going to the dinner, it feels as if you are asked to support and agree with Zivity in this implicit way... to put up with the photos thing (where do the photos go, and you have to ask: who owns them and when do they show up on Zivity's blog to show how cool they are associating with Girl Geeks?). It's just bad for professional women to be put in this position.

What's interesting about Zivity is that they want it both ways: tech company with woman founder, girl geek cred, sort of a "we're just like everyone else so don't segregate us for being in porn" thing, and at the same time, they really work the porn to get as much publicity as possible. Cyan wants geek cred, and wants to take her shirt off for Techcrunch and did their thing at Techcrunh40 where they walked around with company promotion on their breasts and ass. In the end, they are a porn company, and if it's okay for them to sponsor/speak/photograph Girl Geeks, then why isn't it okay for Girls Gone Wild to do the same? And how bout Penthouse and Playboy?

In the 70's Playboy tried to sponsor a lot of women's groups and events, but most wouldn't take the money because those women felt it was "blood money" derived from the objectification of women sexually, and here were those groups trying to make a place for women where they didn't have to be "hot first," where they wouldn't have to be sexualized at work, where they could be successful the way men can be, and it didn't have to be about their bodies first.

So one founder of Zivity is a woman. Have you looked at their team page? Of the three founders, one is a Cyan, but she's not CEO, and there is only one other woman at the company (user experience analyst). It's not like they went out and aggressively hired women engineers. They are like any other porn company.. mostly all men, exploiting women, to make money. They share 80% of their income with the women? How generous.. just a bit more than Suicide Girls. But isn't it really just the same thing?

Girl Geek Dinner Yes; Porn Sponsor No

I just left this comment on the Girl Geek Dinner Site, but my comment is "awaiting moderation," so I'm posting my reply to their post here:

Glad to see you are doing another girl geek dinner.

I wanted to pass along my thought when i saw that Zivity was sponsoring the dinner and speaking.

I'm guessing that they got a lot of flack for the CEO taking of her shirt at the top of Techcrunch from women in SV. Seeing that hardly any women get a Techcrunch feature, many women, myself included, concluded that the message was the way to get on TC was to take your shirt off. I thought the video itself was funny, but it just didn't belong on TC and sexualizes the business of creating a startup by women. It just feels uncomfortable.

Then seeing that Zivity was hosting and speaking here.. I'm guessing that they were trying to get back into the good graces of tech women by doing this.

About 10 women have commented to me today (at Supernova) that they are appalled by Zivity and Girl Geek Dinner collaborating.

It's not that we object to porn, just to the using (or appearance of using) girl geeks to get back their cred. Even if that’s not what's happening from their perspective, the rest of us who would like to *not* be sexualized and objectified in our work lives really find the Zivity association disconcerting.

I hope you aren't being used, but I also won't attend on Thursday night because I don't want to support Zivity.

One other thing not in my comment: I would not want to have a Zivity photography taking photos of women at this event for Girl Geeks. It's a professional event.. and further promotes in this context the sexualization of women at work. It would be fine at a fun event.. but not this dinner.

Associated Press C&Ds Rogers Cadenhead, Gets Boycotted by Bloggers

What's going on is this: Rogers Cadenhead received 7 C&Ds from the Associated Press, because he quoted from their articles in Drudge Retorted. My view in looking his quotes is that they fall absolutely under fair use (they are all within the range of a paragraph quotes from 39 to 75 words) per Saul Hansell of NYTimes.

Jeff Jarvis, Culture Kitchen and others have been reporting and opining..

AP has said: "when we feel the use is more reproduction than reference, or when others are encouraged to cut and paste" they will go after people, but Saturday, Jim Kennedy of AP backed off some and said the C&Ds had been heavy handed and they would review their blogger policy. And now, their executives have decided to suspend the earlier decision to go after people like Rogers Cadenhead due to links to their articles (um.. those bloggers were doing AP a favor linking..) and quotes. But at least according to other's reports, AP hasn't withdrawn the C&Ds from Rogers.

Jim Kennedy also said they want bloggers to use "summaries" of their articles, not direct quotes (huh? Fisking is impossible and quotes are key to getting at issues!) and therefore will keep the C&Ds in place because they "... feel the use is more reproduction than reference..."

I've been watching this with a lot of consternation the past few days.. I think AP is wrong here, and until they remove the C&Ds and agree that quotes are fair use, I think the blogosphere, and the IP crowd are right to push back and call for things like boycott.

Richard Kastelein of Atlantic Free Press created Unassociated press and has even come up with a badge for the boycott:

Culture Kitchen is reporting on the boycott here with a great summary of events.

Updated: Jeff Jarvis reports on the giant hole.

Alice In Wonderland Remix

Luv this remix (noted on Cartoon Brew) by Nick Bertke. He says 90% of the music is remixed from audio from the Disney (1951) film. You can download the mp3 here.

If I Had Twitter

IF I HAD TWITTER (The Twitter Song)* **

If I had Twitter
I'd tweet in the morning
I'd tweet in the evening
All over this LAN
I'd tweet out danger
I'd tweet out a warning
I'd tweet out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this WAN

If I had a cell phone
I'd txt in the morning
I'd txt in the evening
All over gsm
I'd txt out danger
I'd txt out a warning
I'd txt out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this closed-source nightmare of overcharging dinosaurs

la la la

If I had a photo
I'd flickr in the morning
I'd flickr in the evening
All over this land
I'd flickr out danger
I'd flickr out a warning
I'd flickr out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Well I've got Twitter
And I've got a cell phone
And I've got flickr'd photos
All over this open web
It's the tweet of justice
It's the txt of freedom
It's the datasharing love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this LAND

* words and music adapted from Lee Hays and Pete Seeger

** corny parody of online culture by me.

Webguild Sez Lack of Openness in Web20 Land Hurt Them, and Behaves in Closed Manner Themselves

Webguild sent out a very disturbing email this morning, saying that because they held evening events named "The Future of Web Apps" (also a Carson company conference series event name) and "Web 20 Conference and Expo" (also an OReilly conference series event name) that Google had ceased to sponsor or host the WebGuild events.

WebGuild's post is here: called "Shame on You Tim OReilly." I read it, and found it disconcerting, because if true, it implies that OReilly (not Carson) went to Google, instead of approaching Webguild directly, and used its "old boy's network" to get Google to pull support, because of the naming conflicts.

Then, I left a comment tried to leave a comment on the WebGuild post, which said (which was up temporarily but has now been deleted):

Hi,
From the outside, this does sound disturbing, but I'm reserving judgment until I see answers to a few questions.

First, I agree with Michael Slater above that it's strange to name your evening event after The Future of Web Apps conference (not an OReilly event, but rather a Carson event) and your conference after the Web 20 Conference and Expo which is an OReilly event.

Why not change the names a bit, to avoid confusion in the marketplace (the point of trademarks)?

Second, I don't think OReilly sued IT@Cork but rather sent them a Cease and Desist letter. I think you should correct your post as such. They subsequently worked things out, without a lawsuit.

Did OReilly and Carson contact you directly about the naming conflict? You don't say in your post but that's a very important point.

Lastly, I don't think you help your argument by conflating the "old boy network" as you call it, with your issue, which is that Trademark holders went around you to your sponsors to put pressure on you.

Pls let us know the answers to help us understand more about what's happened.

Thanks,
mary

Note that the Michael Slater comment is now missing(note: Slater did a post on the missing comment and issues here) (as is mine now.. a few minutes after it was briefly posted) from the WebGuild post, which was legitimate but negative, suggesting that it was really strange to name *two* events after two other conferences. Other later comments are there. For a while, they didn't post mine, but now it's up, listed before others that appeared before it in the list.

Anyway, I have to say, based upon seeing the Slater comment disappear, and now mine, they just lost a lot of points.

I've attended their events in the past, but now I'm not so sure I would go, or sympathize with their issues.

I'd really like answers to the questions I wrote, so that I can make up my own mind about what they are doing. But getting lots of people to blog negatively about Tim isn't the answer here.

We need better community solutions than that for solving IP issues and community confusion for naming issues with events.

Updated: Techcrunch wrote about this same topic Jan 1, 2008 which gives more background on Webguild.

Data Sharing Summit Report

Last Friday and Saturday the Data Sharing Summit was held in SF. I attended a bit on Friday, but not Saturday. It looked like a lot got done by the participants, and so they did accomplish a lot!

Kaliya Hamlin has posted notes and goals for the next meeting in one month.

Here is an excerpt of the results:

Do-able Now
* Portable Identities (OpenID, LiveID, FB-ID)
* OAuth (sever to server) delegated auth.
* Contacts Portability (FOAF, XFN, Microformats, like MicroID)
* Sync (feed sync)
* Social Network Portability (Open Social FB platform)
* Social Application Portability

Do-able Soon
* Standard Schema for Profile
* Standard Schema for Address books
* Media portability + metadata + permissions
* Linking ID’s of different ecosystems?

Looking forward to the Data Sharing Summit 2 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on May 15th.

Revolution is Not An AOL Keyword

Eddan Katz wrote this piece: Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, and I acted as his editor, 5 years ago. We posted it to the bIPlog on the first day of the war in Iraq.

We had a real uphill-behind-the-scenes fight about it at the Journalism School, where the blog was then hosted, because some of the other folks on the blog thought it wasn't really under our mission to publish something about the war and culture and the internet. But we convinced them; we knew we would get it published when John Battelle, one of the profs, lent his support for us. And it got slashdotted. And Revolution was made into a tshirt. Which was all a blast after working on it all night messing with the language and placing links ... some of which are broken but I think it matters to keep them intact and original. I think the linking is a kind of expression in this piece.

Eddan and I thought up what Napsterization could be here at this blog, but in the end only I've posted to it. I still wish Eddan would, and maybe someday he will. He's really great.

Anyway.. here is Revolution. I got all misty-eyed when I reread it and moused the links, because it's passionate and it means something, even if some of it is a little out of date. Cause the war ain't over. I can't believe it. I just didn't think things could get this fkedup. But as Robert Fisk says, The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn. Right on.

Revolution is Not an Aol Keyword*

You will not be able to stay home, dear Netizen.
You will not be able to plug in, log on and opt out.
You will not be able to lose yourself in Final Fantasy,
Or hold your Kazaa download queues,
Because revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be brought to you on Hi-Def TV
Encrypted with a warning from the FBI.
Revolution will not have a jpeg slideshow of Dubya
Calling the cattle and leading the incursion by
Secretary Rumsfeld, General Ashcroft and Dick Cheney
Riding nuclear warheads on their way to Iraq,
Or North Korea, or Iran.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be powered by Microsoft on
The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base
And will not star Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee
Or Larry Lessig and Martha Stewart. Revolution will not promise penile enlargement.
Revolution will not get rid of spam.
Revolution will not earn you up to $5000 a month

Working from home, because revolution is not
An AOL Keyword, Brother.

There will be no screen grabs of you and
Jeeves the Butler one-click shopping at My Yahoo,
Or outbidding a shady grandma on eBay for
That refurbished iPod 20-gig.
MSNBC.com will not predict election results in Florida
Or fact-check the Drudge Report.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

There will be no webcast of Wil Wheaton boxing
Barney the Dinosaur on the dancefloor at DNA.
There will be no mob- or wiki- blog of Richard Stallman
Strolling through Redmond in a medieval robe and halo
As St. iGNUcious of the Church of Emacs
That he has been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Survivor, The Osbournes, and Joe Millionaire
Will no longer be so damned relevant, and
People will not care if Carrie hooks up again with
Mr. Big on Sex and the City because Information
Wants To Be Free even while Knowledge Is Power.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

There will be no final pictures from inside the
World Trade Center in the instant replay.
There will be no final pictures from inside the
World Trade Center in the instant replay.

There will be no RealVideo of 2600-reading,
Linux-booting white hat hacktivists
And Mickey Mouse in the public domain.

The theme song will not be written by Jack Valenti or
Hilary Rosen, nor sung by Metallica, Dr. Dre,
Christina Aguilera, Matchbox 20, or Blink-182.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.

Revolution will not be right back after
Pop-up ads about eCommerce, eTailers, or eContent.
You will not have to worry about a
Cookie in your browser, a bug in your email, or a
Worm in your recycling bin.
Revolution will not run faster with Intel inside.
Revolution, dude, is not getting a Dell.
Revolution will increase your Google rank.

Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword,
Is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will be no stream or download, dear Netizen;
Revolution must still be live.

*See generally Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Posted by Eddan Katz at March 20, 2003 05:45 AM

Real Life Demonstrates and One Hopes The Virtual Might Follow

On Monday I had a sort of intense, momentary experience that happened on a sidewalk in Menlo Park, reminding me of my blog post on Facebook and Slide, and a comment a friend of mine made recently.

That friend said that in my Facebook/Slide post, where I said that "young boys" with little social skills and little mentoring were making social applications that are antisocial at times, was maybe an unfair characterization. When the sidewalk incident happened, I realized I'd witnessed the public demonstration of what I was talking about in the Facebook post, and that I wanted that to happen with the young guys in my prior post that make online products for others.

So what happened on the sidewalk? I was walking toward the door of my friend's office building, and within a couple of feet of the door, a guy, maybe 16, driving his bike kind of recklessly and fast and weaving in and out of people brushed past me. Two guys who were maybe 70, in Bermuda shorts and short sleeve button down shirts and sandals yelled at him, "Hey, you almost hit that lady, you're being an asshole, you can't do that in our town." At which point they grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him off his bike, and then he denied it, and I was at this point, inside the glass doors but could hear everything, but they told him he had to ride in the street and forced him to get off the sidewalk. It was so confrontational, as I was lost in my own thoughts and then jarred out of them, that I felt kind of embarrassed. But as I walked upstairs, and met this same friend mentioned above, I told him about what just happened. And then I said, sort of surprised, that well, this was kind of the in-person demonstration that would be nice to see at any of these companies where your social software behaves antisocially. In other words, older men who understand the value of good behavior can teach that well to younger men.

Well, I also want to explain in response to my friend above, about why I said what I did about "young boys" who need some mentoring from older men. One reason I feel comfortable saying this "group" verses another has a problem, in this case, is that while I know it's possible for "young girls" to make antisocial software, I ask, have you ever heard of that? I never have. There are very few women coders, compared to vast number of men coders, and most of the women coders I know gain the confidence to build their own companies or software systems a little later in life, if they ever do at all. Women are socialized to think they can't or shouldn't create or speak out aggressively or publicly criticize and it takes some living often into their early 30's before they are willing to put themselves out there and take a huge personal risk like building a product or company. I mean, why is it that factories in poor countries (Asia, South America, Eastern Europe are all reported to do this) only hire women under 25? Because they are looking for docile workers and you just don't get that with young guys.

At the point all coders are a little older, they tend to be more socialized, and also, at least in my experience verbally express more desire to build tools that take better care of the user. But it's the young guys I'm worried about coding social software, because they are more likely to have ego and aggression without experience. Which is a scary combination. Like the guy on the bike. I realize it's not politically correct to say so, but I wanted to talk specifically in that post earlier about Facebook and Slide about where I think responsibility lies for the social problems that have come up on Facebook with apps like those made by Slide. And to ask for help from older men, who fund these young guys, to help with the problem.

And that was my point. I hope this clarifies.

Data Sharing Events Coming Soon!

There are two new events coming up for the Data Sharing group (we met last August in great camp type open space event where many interesting things developed, came to light, got solved, etc.) I'm on the advisory group, and will definitely be there and would love to see anyone who cares about attention data, both the control aspects at a site, as well as ownership issues, get moved forward in a community oriented way there as well.

Also, Mitch Ratcliffe wrote a great post today on these issues which you should totally checkout.

Here is the write up from the Facebook group entry:

* A Data Sharing Workshop at the Downtown San Francisco State University campus on April 18th and 19th.

* Data Sharing Summit 2 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View on May 15th. (This is immediately following the Internet Identity Workshop May 12-14).

Hopefully at the first event some more clarity will emerge about how to actually do and get adoption of data sharing technologies. The second event we can see progress (it being a month later) and may have more 'decision makers' considering data sharing implementations and vendors that have ways to do it.

The goal of these events is to work together to build consensus around and get adoption of emerging data sharing standards. As with the previous summit, the upcoming event will follow the open space (un)conference format. The agenda is created on the first day of the event, allowing everyone to participate in the discussion.

Although Marc Canter was a key organizer of the first Data Sharing Summit, he has stepped back and his involvement is just one of group of advisors:

* David Recordon, Six Apart
* Joseph Smarr, Plaxo
* Chris Saad, Faraday Media
* Mary Hodder, Dabble
* Luke Sontag, Vidoop
* Kevin Marks, Google
* Marc Canter, Broadband Mechanics

The events will be produced by Kaliya Hamlin and Laurie Rae, who are collaborating with the Data Portability community and the SFSU Institute for Next Generation Internet.

We would like to invite you to attend one or both of these events.
Please go to http://datasharingsummit.com or to go ahead and register right away to to our Eventbrite page to register. We will be charging admission to cover the costs required for organizing these events.

The Early Bird rates are as follows:

April 18-19 Workshop
* Regular, $110.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $80.00
* Student, $50.00

Workshop One-Day Only:
* Regular, $65.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $50.00

April 18-19 & May 15:
* Corporate, $200.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $140.00

May 15th Summit Only:
* Corporate, $100.00
* Independent/Startup/Non-Profit, $70.00

The Early Bird cut-off dates are April 7, 2008 for the Workshop and May 7th, 2008 for the Summit. Prices will increase by $50.00 after the cut-off dates.

We can bring you this event at such a low admission fee because 1/2 our costs are paid by sponsors - both small ($200) to the large (several thousand). PLEASE contact Laurie Rae at laurierae@datasharingsummit.com if you would like to sponsor.

Please contact us if you have any questions identitywoman@datasharingsummit.com & laurierae@datasharingsummit.com

We look forward to seeing you in April and May.

Trashing Our Social Relationships (with Porn) to Get Your Numbers Up

Ok, there's a lot in that title. Let me explain (though I did blog about this earlier).

First, yesterday at the Supernova / Wharton event, in Jerry Michalski's session on business and social media (can't remember exact title) we spent much of the time talking privacy, online communication, games and social networks (er, social graphs but i really hate the fad where we make up a new word for something that is already working just so we can dink around with a new set of conferences, etc. but I digress. Though I would point out that one friend who attended SGP said the women at the event all seemed to get it, and then men all wanted to run calculations on our "social graphs" entirely missing the point. Oh well.)

At the end, Jeff Clavier, who apparently was at the Social Graphing conf/camp in San Diego earlier this week, gave a wrapping up of what happened. He mixed in a little of his perspective due to his investing in apps on Facebook, and threw in some perspective on the Stanford class that did some experiments on Facebook apps and their results. One example Jeff gave was about an app maker from the class had gotten 5 million people to click into his app (though they all immediately disappeared just after) in 5 weeks (correction, not 5 days -- as Jeff said to me later, correcting this, "damned French accent" because many of us heard "5 days").

I had to wonder, why would five million people do that? What's the benefit to them? Apparently the app maker, some young guy, is thrilled (and it sounded like Jeff might want to work with him or even invest). His experiment (with all of us, the greater Facebook community, as guinea pigs) worked for him, though I'd guess it wasted 5 million people's time, for a couple of minutes each.

I commented about the aspects of Facebook applications inadvertently trashing our relationships, at times, in order to get their numbers up, and using deceptive practices and features to do it, and said it thought it was really uncool. But there wasn't time to explain what I really thought, or the background of why I think this, and so, here we go:

Ok, imagine you get some sort of email message from a friend in Facebook. This is a real friend, someone you do business with and/or socialize with and maybe have known for a long time (as in, a lot longer than Mark Zuckerberg has been out of his teens and been (on paper) counted as a billionaire). Or maybe it's someone you work with (note that there's a lot of caselaw around sexual harassment.. so accidentally sending porn spam to people you work with or work for you, or you work for, doesn't seem like the greatest thing you would want to do either).

The message asks you to click into Facebook, at which point, you are asked to "install an app" (and, why? Just to read a message do I have to install an App? Oh yeah, this is about getting the applications numbers up ... so you do it, because you want to see your "real" friend's message). Then, once installed, you are taken to Slide's Fun Wall App, which shows you some porn, and says, "Click Foward to see what happen."

See this screen shot of the first round of porn spam I got (NSFW btw so be careful opening it).

I almost clicked "forward", but scrolled around past the fold. Turns out, if i'd clicked the "forward" button, Slide would have forwarded that spam to EVERYONE I KNOW in Facebook. All 500+ of them.

Now, let me explain who everyone is. Yes, of my 500 or so contacts, maybe 300 are in the tech community (and as such, expect early-adoptor screw ups and experimentation). But 200 are not. About 10 of these people are people I grew up with (we've been together as friends since nursery school). They don't know what the "tech community" is, much less care. Some of these people are religious and I would venture have never seen porn before or it's very rare in their lives. They aren't early adoptors. They expect that any communications are going to be real, and not some tech community experiment to figure out some thing that later promotes some business/VC investment, in order to see how the world of advertising can advance.

Or, take all the people I do business with, or the people who I work with, or work for me, or I work for. It would be just great to send them some porn spam. Or my brother and sister. They would luv to get porn spam from me. Not. Or how about my extended relatives in Europe? I think they are ripe for a little porn spam. No?

So.. I unchecked all 500+ contacts that Slide had checked, and wasn't able to view the message further (what was going to come next after I was asked to hit the "forward" button). So I figured out one profile I could link to who was a friend, and then forwarded the message there, "...to see what happen."

Well, guess what? Nothing "happen." Except that the message was forwarded to the one person I left checked. In other words. It's trick porn spam, features courtesy of Facebook and Slide.

So I sent in complaints to both companies (neither have contacted me back after a month -- guys, it's a social network, you know how to reach me.. give it a try!!)

After a while, I called people in each company that I knew through the tech comany. And was appalled at the responses I got. Now, these are people I know socially, and they gave me the real answers, but with the expectation that I would not attribute to them. However, I am confident that their answers reflect the culture and real value sets within these companies.

Facebook pointed the finger at Slide (the app maker in this case), and said, "There is nothing we can do. We have no control over the apps people make or the stuff they send." Oh, and if I wanted Facebook to change the rules for apps makers? I'd have to get say, 80k of my closest Facebook friends to sign on a petition or group, and then they might look at the way they have allowed porn spam to trick people into forwarding, but until then, there would be no feature review.

Slide said that they thought Facebook was the problem, because as the "governing" body, Facebook makes the rules and "Slide wouldn't be competitive if they changed what they do, and their competitors weren't forced to as well." In other words, Slides competitors use the same features to get more users (or trick more users as the case may be) and Slide didn't want to lose out on getting more users with similar features, regardless of the effect the features have on us and our relationships.

Also both companies told me that blogging doesn't affect them, because they don't read blogs. The only thing they pay attention to are Facebook groups. Because they don't look at problems that a single person discovers.

So in other words, a person with a legitimate complaint needs to have massive agreement and numbers in a Facebook group before these companies will even discuss a problem.

And, Slide and Facebook are willing to trash our relationships (real relationships) in order to get more numbers.

Now, note that many of the folks who sent the various porn spam (not just the ones in the photos above) sent very apologetic notes, because they were mortified that they had send their contacts porn spam.

Think about that. Your social networking / application software tricks you into doing something terribly socially embarrassing and you have to apologize? Wo. That's really messed up.

In other words, your social networking software / applications are, gasp, anti-social.

One guy in the Supernova / Wharton session yesterday asked how many people were in my Facebook list, and when I said 500, implied that most regular people have say, 50-100, and therefore it's not a bad problem. Well, I'd say each relationship is probably pretty important and this is an appalling justification for these applications and social network's feature sets and behaviors.

So I have to ask, if these young boys (Zuckerberg, the app makers in the class at Stanford, etc) are so clueless about relationships and social protocols, that they would build apps and a system that promotes bad behavior like this, where are their mentors? Where are their funders (who presumably have some input and sway into what's going on)? Why aren't Peter Thiel and Dave McClure or even Jeff Clavier (who sounded like he was trying to or has invested in some of the guys from the apps class at Stanford) advising these people that while they are experimenting, that these are real established relationships, and Facebook is now mainstream, and therefore the apps can't do this to people? I mean, it seems logical (and has happened in cultures around the world for millennia) that older, wiser men would advise young, clueless hormone driven boys how to act in the community. And what of Max Levechin? I mean, he's kind of in the middle, age wise, but shouldn't he know better than this?

Is the desperation for fame and money so great, that people would simply eschew social concerns in favor of ratings which then equal higher company valuations, and more billions on paper? Or do you want your claim to fame to be: "At least 15 million minutes wasted" from your experiments on Facebook (as I would imagine the Stanford student described above could claim)?

I guess the answer is yes, and so my response is, I can't trust Slide, or Facebook. Nor do I have respect for their founders if this is the way they handle themselves and their companies.

And where are the advertisers who might put pressure? The ones on the page I show above (not all the porn spam trickery I got, but the first batch) are Toyota and Gartner?

I deleted all my Slide apps after my last blog post, a month ago, and since heard from maybe 20 people in person that after reading my post, they'd done the same. But I guess we don't count, since we only have a few people concerned.

I hope the folks who attended the session yesterday at Wharton have a better idea as to why I find this upsetting, and upon hearing that more "experiments" with Facebook apps are happening, why I might get worried and distrust the process, the results and the motivations behind them.

Note: I am aware that Facebook did recently force apps makers to default turn "off" the checked names in forward (as far as I can tell from my own analysis of Facebook and via other blogs explanations). But I have yet to receive replies to my original support notes to these companies, and feel confused about an unspoken, barely there response. It's as though after barely changing one thing aspect of a feature, in order to mitigate the problem, they want to sweep it all under the rug. But I don't feel confident that these companies either care about the spam problem, the porn problem or the social abuse problems they are allowing.

For now, the answer for me is to use Facebook minimally and Slide not at all. Interestingly, at recent social gatherings I've mentioned these issues. At almost every one, people have said they are getting off Facebook and not going back, for precisely the reasons I mention above.

I guess that's the only way to make an impression on Facebook and Slide. Shut down your own use.

The NY Times on Girl Geeks: They are Fashion, Not Technology

The
NYTimes Stephanie Rosenblum has an article in today's *Fashion* section on Girls in Tech. Wo. Not in the *Technology* section. In Fashion.

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain talks about how girls are coding up more content online: webpages, web art, blogs and podcasts.

And then they decorate it with an image of a girl at her laptop with a devilish tail. But instead of asking one of the girls they interviewed to make the artwork, they ask Adam Strange to do the art for the article:

So when they interview people like Doc Searls, Loic Le Meur or David Weinberger, all of whom are very smart about tech, those articles are in the tech section or business, but when they talk to girls, who for the record, are far more technical in this article than these three tech experts, girls are put in Fashion. I've never seen coverage with Doc or David or Loic in fashion. Maybe they should be there depending, but they aren't put there by the editors that I know of....

This is not about David or Loic or Doc (all extremely supportive of women in tech, btw), and certainly they don't choose the section the paper puts them in, but rather the way the editors and writers at the NYTimes see them, verses the girl geeks in this article.

My point is that the NYTimes puts men who talk tech and trends or social impact in tech/biz, and women who code web art / pages in fashion.

Can you tell I'm pissed? WTF?

However, the number of women in tech isn't great (Which is why we need more articles in the Tech section about this people!)

The article says that less "...than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology."

Chaos, In Pakistan and Silicon Valley

Today are the Pakistani elections. Why do I say chaos? And why also in Silicon Valley? And how are they at all connected?

As Amra Tareen, who is in Pakistan covering the event, says in her report about the elections:

As the day progressed more people started to show [to the polling stations], people were staying back home enjoying their morning off and due to concerns of violence. In the last 24 hours gunmen in Lahore and surrounding areas have killed 8 people and injured 40.

Check out this ballot from Pakistan, which Amra explains:

For example PML-Q (Musharraf's party) has the symbol cycle, PML-N (Nawaz's party) is represented by the symbol Tiger or a Lion and PPP (Benazir's party) is represented by the arrow. People caste their vote by placing a fingerprint and a seal over the symbol.

I've been helping Amra, a friend in the Silicon Valley for 4 years, with her company All Voices. Amra is from Pakistan, though she spent some of her educational years in Australia, including getting an engineering degree, and then went to Harvard for an MBA. She was also a VC in Silicon Valley for 6 years. Now she has founded All Voices with Erik Sundelof and the help of a great team of engineers and other folks.

I'm still working on Dabble, but I just find what is happening at All Voices so compelling, that I wanted to help her do this. She's raised VC money for a news and a conversation site that is meant to foster discussion from people around news events.

And how many Silicon Valley founders go to Pakistan to cover the elections, to kick off their companies?!?!

That's incredibly unusual, and to me, shows tremendous passion and guts about both the company, and her desire to see Americans and Middle Easterners talk about what goes on in their world. Anyone can talk, but she specifically wants to see these two groups getting to know each other on a more personal level, as opposed to say, an AP report.

So what is the chaos in Silicon Valley? Well, it's not on par with the Pakistani Elections, but the alpha All Voices is out, and people are commenting, talking about the election (finding a few bugs too!), making events, posting videos and photos, and it's the first big exposure the team has dealt with.

The site is pretty simple, really. The idea is that events happen in the world, and an event within AllVoices can then be assembled by pulling in news stories, photos and videos by news sources or blogs and say, creative common's licensed Flickr photos.

But you can also make an event, which is really more factual in nature, than opinion, about whatever has happened in their world. Then you might blog or add photos or videos to your own event, or you could add those elements to events made by others or the system. For example, Amra has put video here and here and here of the people in Pakistan talking about the election, onto the event she made noting election coverage. After you make your event, the system will match blog posts, articles, images and video to it, and more folks can come along and share eyewitness stories, comment, ask questions, etc.

All this gets put onto the map and front page which lists recent and active events.

So when others come to the site, they can find your stuff based on where it happens as well as by searching or by finding your list of activities via your profile. Amra's election reporting is, of course, located in Pakistan on the map.

The sites definitely is an alpha, where there are bugs and things. Her engineers have been working on this for about 6 months, and it's really great to see what they've done.

As I said, I've helped with a little consulting on the side. Normally, I wouldn't blog about things I offer consulting for, and normally I'm too busy with Dabble, but I think this site and Amra's work has the potential for so much social good, I'm breaking my own rule.

So take what I say with a grain of salt due to my work and bias. Go visit the site yourself and decide if you think it's worthwhile. But more than anything, I encourage you to get involved in supporting Pakistan as it hold its election. Pay attention, comment, blog, make a stink, but support democracy and the people of Pakistan as they stake a claim for their future!

Fiber Optics in Sherborn Massachusetts

I'm visiting with some friends in Sherborn Massachusetts. They previously had dial up internet access, but sometime in the last two years, everyone (3,000) in this town, as well as more surrounding towns, got fiber optic lines put in by Verizon.

They have 5 mbs of downstream service for $35 a month, and if they pay $7 more per month, they can get 15mbs. It's rocket fast, so fast, as my host says, "it's too fast to take advantage of much besides video and VOIP because no one else has a fast connection to talk that fast with you." But it still rocks.

Everywhere I go in the Bay Area, work, home, friends offices, public places.. I wait for every website, video, voip connection, etc that I use. It's just amazing the contrast here. And every window I look through in my host's house has gorgeous forest and fall colors .. it's at least 100 yards to the next house., and all the houses here have that sort of spread. How do they do it when we can't get this in the denseness of Berkeley, San Francisco, Mountain View?

I'm sure the telcos that took $200 billion from the FCC and then didn't install fiber optic service have some excuse, but it's BS. They just need to install it since we paid for it, and then we can all move on.

James Cicconi of AT&T On Net Netrality

James Cicconi, Senior Executive VP Legislative and External Affairs for AT&T was at Esme Vos' Muniwireless conference yesterday, spewing what I would kindly call the greatest of spin, and unkindly as BS.

Net Neutrality is not about people telling network providers what to charge for tiered service. That's bull. Net Neutrality says that video packets, no matter where they come from, will get through at the same rates. Same with text or photos or VOIP or anything else. The network can't under Net Neutrality distinguish and discriminate because it doesn't like where something came from or the place the packet came from didn't pay the telco's any money to prioritize the packet.

To quote muniwireless (emphasis is mine):

It's Day 2 of the Muniwireless Silicon Valley Conference and they have an executive from AT&T talking about municipal wireless networks.

AT&T has not changed its tune. It is still against cities using public funds to compete with private enterprise and believes that communications should be left up to private firms like AT&T.

James Cicconi, Senior Executive VP Legislative and External Affairs for AT&T claims that there is no duopoly and there is enough competition in the market for telecommunications services, so cities should stay out.

What is AT&T's position on net neutrality?

Net neutrality is a challenge for all companies. You spend billions to deploy your assets and net neutrality means someone telling you what you can do with your assets - what you can charge, tiers of service, etc.

"All bits should be treated equal" is a problem for network engineers because one bit is porn another bit is heart surgery, another is email, yet another is voice, another is spam. That everything should be moved equally end to end is ludicrous. It's a more costly way to do things. It's not efficient, according to AT&T.

AT&T cannot build and maintain assets quickly enough to meet the demand. They are spending $19 billion this year. Some of the demand is driven by video. What happens when people start delivering high definition film? They can't build networks fast enough! What's the answer? Effective traffic management.

The antitrust laws can deal with the problems of net neutrality (side note: unfortunately these are not being enforced today). Why should AT&T want to degrade traffic? They will go to someone else (side note again: in a duopoly, you've got Comcast which has been blocking Bittorent traffic).

I don't know about you but where I live and work, we have two choices: AT&T for dsl or Comcast for cable internet access. They are both Mid-band services, and not great but better than dialup. And we pay exorbitantly for them compared to other countries.

So of course they want to take their AT&T/Comcast duopoly and spin Net Neutrality as being all about people interfering with their pricing models for tiered service when it's really all about prioritizing packets. They want to divert attention from the reality which is that they want to put their videos through first, their media, their VOIP or media/VOIP from people who've paid them off. Instead of letting users have what they want. The telco's want to own the pipes and the content.

It's wrong and we can't let the telcos win on this.

It's Not So Black and White, These Issues of Gender and The Tech Community

Today at She's Geeky, during the session with Jodi Sherman Jahic of Voyager Capital and Patricia Nakache of Trinity Ventures, we talked about a lot of different things.

Patricia and Jodi are really wicked smart, accomplished women, both of whom have engineering degrees and MBA's, who articulated some of the subtle and complex issues we face as women in the tech community, or as technologists starting ventures or as business people trying to figure out what is going to happen next in markets and with funding.

Jodi had a great list of the four things that matter for VCs when assessing an investment:

technology risks
market adoption risk
financing risk
execution risk

And we spent some time on board composition, funding questions, how people become VCs, why they may have different backgrounds than entrepreneurs (they often have MBAs) and why VCs don't necessarily want to fund MBAs (in other words, being different is good because getting an MBA is a risk-averse step and they want to fund risk-takers). I really liked that last one, because I've heard from time to time from other women founders that they can feel intimidated by the pedigrees many VCs have (often Harvard or Stanford or other Ivy League schools) and yet, it's a plus to not be just like them. The answer is to have as much diversity on your team (the founders, the rest of the team, the investors, the advisors and the board).

Another thing I brought up were a couple of stories I'd experience when working through funding issues.

One was about how a year ago, with a VC who has a small fund and targets companies at the stage Dabble was then, who decided not to fund us. About a month ago, I saw him, and asked to tell me why, for real (at the time I got a sort of "non-excuse"). He said that, and I do think he was sort of thinking aloud, that well, he thought at the time I might not stick with it. And I asked why, what did that mean. He said that when a founder is by themselves (no cofounder), he often assesses whether he thinks they'll quit, and he realized as we discussed it more recently that he had a sort of idea in the back of his head that I might quit easier than a man in my position. He knew this was wrong, but he hadn't thought it through until I pressed for feedback, and he'd only been willing to tell me this after the target size and stage of his investments didn't match where we were.

I think this is one of those things that isn't really black and white. I mean, of course I'm angry by the idea that this why he didn't fund us, but at the same time, I really appreciated that he was honest with me, and that it became a learning experience for him as well. That he learned he had a stereotype he didn't see in himself previously. My hope is that he thinks about it and stops himself the next time he finds himself thinking this sort of thing. I don't think he's a bad guy, and in fact, I think the better of him for sharing it and noticing the problem, for agreeing that it was wrong and he should do better.

I think that's all you can ask of someone, because frankly, we all have our stereotypes, our biases, our prejudices. They aren't going to go away unless we can face them, and it's hard to face them if you can't discuss them or bring them out into the open. Women are just as much a problem for other women as men with these issues. And one thing VCs for sure face, as Jodi pointed out, is a lack of upside for being honest. She said one motivation is that a VC will shy away, because they don't want to miss the chance to do a Series B if they pass on a Series A with someone, and tell them why. If they instead hedge on the reasons, they keep their options open. But she encouraged women to ask anyway for feedback, because it does help with what you are doing.

But I have to say, with the man in my story above, if later he wanted to do something with me, I wouldn't say no. Because I believe he's open to change and learn, and to figure out how to do what he does better, with a more diverse crowd than the men that so typically start companies in Silicon Valley.

Anyway, regarding the black and white nature of these issues, or lack thereof, Mike Swift of the San Jose Mercury News wrote up She's Geeky, with this article, and as many reporters do, wrote up my story in two short sentences causing it to seem more black and white:

A venture capitalist who rejected Mary Hodder's start-up for funding later told her he did so in part because Hodder had no male co-founder, and he thought she would quit because she's a woman. Hodder didn't quit.

And while I appreciate the need for this way of telling it, and it is technically true, I also think the issues are more complex. If we chastise folks for having "bad thoughts", we won't air them and make it better, and they will sit, just under the surface, keeping anyone but the default culture from succeeding.

I believe that Silicon Valley culture is pretty open and accepting of people. I'd suggest that compared to many other industries, it's a better place for a woman to start a company or work again type than most. But the reality is many people in positions of power and authority -- often men but sometimes women -- have some variation on the thought themes that keep people out.

But I also think we need to support our geek sisters, make better networking and figure out how to up the numbers of women VCs, women founders and women engineers. Or our products and companies will suffer, and our ecosystem will remain stilted and in some ways, closed.

Legacy Media Gloats About Fake Steve Jobs Outing

There's been a lot of gloating over the outing of the author of the blog, Fake Steve Jobs (see article below this link for gloating), which has been written by Dan Lyons, a Senior Editor of Forbes and where Brad Stone of the New York Times broke the story yesterday.

The interesting thing to me is that legacy media in NYC thinks that they are so clever for finding Lyons, or at least Lyons and his friends think this, when lots of bloggers on the west coast have spent months speculating and looking for FSJ. They even have pointed out how geeky the new media people are because they were doing things like checking the headers of email from FSJ, which appeared to point to a Boston location but that was all they got.

Brad Stone figured it out because he looked through Manhattan back channels to find a book agent was shopping a book proposal from FSJ (a few months ago, the book is due in October), and because the agent was telling publishers that the writer was a "the anonymous author was a published novelist and writer for a major business magazine," he could compare the FSJ writings with Lyons blog and figured it out.

Well, the point is that if you are part of legacy media, and more specifically, are in Manhattan, you probably have access through your network to other media entities in Manhattan. (Note that Brad Stone doesn't live in Manhattan, but as a member of the Times, I'd consider that very strong "local" access.) Of course if you get a clue through people you know that tell you about the FJS publishing package and mysterious writer status, you figure it out this way. No bloggers out in the hinterlands have that sort of access to be able to put this together.

It reveals both positives and negatives about legacy media, that bloggers have know for a long time and that legacy media has tried to sweep under the rug now and then. Bloggers over the past few years have pulled back the curtain on legacy media, and legacy media is now better for those conversations. But it's hard to break any story like this without both online and off-line access. You need both, and so it's not so much that Brad Stone of the NYTimes did the breaking, but rather Brad Stone, person with access Manhattanite and local connections to the publishing industry who broke the story. Could have been anyone with friends in publishing who figured it out.

But to say that it's "ironic" that a legacy media journalist was the FSJ and legacy media broke it may be true, but it's gloating at the same time. And it's that gloating attitude that got legacy media into trouble in the first place, and made the public so angry with them, after things like Jason Blair and Stephen Glass. So it may be a small victory, but often what legacy media doesn't understand is that there isn't a battle. Many conferences over the past few years have devolved into an either or battle where public demonstrations of these attitudes come out. But both sides need each other and if one went away, the other would be in deep trouble, at this point.

Bloggers drive a lot of traffic back to legacy media, as they discuss news print stories, and journalists get a lot of stories out of blogs (I first noticed this five or six years ago when my intellectual property stories started to get lifted a couple days after I published them.. by.. the New York Times. They added to them, but they took the arguments, the phrases, and never said a word about where it came from. I noticed this same thing with other IP bloggers like Law Meme and Copyfight as well.) News reporters report and bloggers opine. Bloggers opine and poke and reporters go looking for more.

We also need reporters who have access, not so much of the example above, but with access to important things, in order to get good information out. This is critical for the democracy and the reason reporters are given special dispensation in the Constitution. But reporters also need not abuse that power through gloating or arrogance.

This isn't about getting over on new media by the legacy guys. Many legacy guys have become new media guys.. Lyons and Stone each have blogs and write on the daily. The much more interesting story is how legacy media is using new media tools, changing their habits (like writing anonymous parody blogs !!!) and how everyone is interacting on and off-line to get better knowledge as well as entertainment. I have to admit, I have loved reading FSJ the past year. It's been totally entertaining.

Check this out: Fake Brad has come on the scene. Maybe a little less than FSJ-clever, but it is amusing. And ironically, it's amusing partly because it makes fun of legacy media arrogance. And as Geek.com notes, FSJ and FB may be the start of a whole new genre.

Consumer Comes Up Again: We Need A Better Name

Pete Blackshaw, CMO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, made a group on Facebook called "Consumer Generated Media." I posted to the group's wall the first post below, objecting to the use of the word Consumer. He replied and I replied. In the meantime, Ted Tagami saw my first post the consumer generated media group and made "People Generated Media" into a new group and so far, 70 people have joined.

I think we really need to put our heads together to come up with a term that isn't consumer, prosumer, amateur, maybe even user (even though I like being one), to describe the production of media by anyone. Maybe it's producer but it doesn't feel specific enough to the idea that it's not professional. Don't know. But it's comes up again and again, and I think it needs to be solved.

ORIGINAL POST

Mary Hodder (Berkeley) wrote
at 11:35am on August 6th, 2007

Hi Pete,
Why do you use the word "consumer" for this group?
Why not "user generated media" instead?

Consumer sounds like we are baby birds, where you poor undistinguished junk down our throats, and in exchange, we poop cash.

I'm a user, a producer, a thinker, and I when I make media, I'm conversing with it. I'm a customer of some companies, but I'm not a consumer, mindlessly taking anything any legacy media company will scoop down my gullet, sending them money in exchange.

I think you should seriously reconsider the use of this term, here and elsewhere. It's demeaning and intentionally used to condescend to those of us who create media non-professionally.

Thanks,
mary

Pete's Response:

Respected blogger and Web 2.0 innovator Mary Hodder left a thoughtful message on my wall questioning my use of the term "consumer" versus other terms, and I thought I'd post both my response and her original post below (sic, it's above to keep it in chron order). It's a good, and important, conversation, and I welcome any thoughts.

Mary,

Great, thoughtful note – as always! Every once and a while I get taken to task by someone for using this term. Four years ago I was at a “future of media” conference at MIT and I was practically thrown out of the room for using the term.

Still, I’m quite passionate about the word consumer -- have been since I was kid soaking in lessons from a cost conscious, value-seeking, injustice-fighting mother of seven kids. My favorite show while growing up was “Fight Back,” hosted by consumer advocate David Horowitz. I’ve always read “Consumer Reports.” When I started PlanetFeedback, a consumer feedback portal, my tag line was “Viva consumer.” (We even had a “Consumer Manifesto.") While some may see it as demeaning, I see it as empowering.

That not to suggest the other terms – citizen, user, people, we, participants – don’t work as well, and I certainly use them here and there. We should all be sensitive to context. And I don’t deny for a second there’s a broader conversation going on that transcends so many of the issues and themes I write about in the marketing zone.

But at the same time, I really don’t want to confuse folks about my core focus and intent via my blog, this Facegroup page, my ClickZ article, or even in my present work. My target audience is marketers and the business community, and the word “consumer” is deeply woven into the fabric of their everyday vernacular…at least for now. I’ve sought to use language they can understand and relate to, and I know it’s working on many levels.

I also wonder whether against the backdrop of escalated skepticism and consumer distrust toward marketers, we may need to overcompensate on using more explicit labels and transparency tags to achieve clearer understanding in the marketplace. With all the co-mingling, mashing, remixing, reshuffling, co-creation, and occasional co-optation between seller and buyer (or, in the case of PR, messenger and recipient) such clarity of language may the world seems less fuzzy. Consumer may border on the conservative, but it does drive clarity.

Let me also confess that aside from my mother’s influence I also have a strong P&G bias. The word “consumer” is like religion at P&G, and I’ve carried that religion with me in all my pursuits. I am proud to say I am a “Consumer focused marketer,” and when I say it, folks generally understand what I mean. When I applied to P&G out of business school, I sought their deep expertise in “consumer understanding” and figuring out “unmet consumer needs.”

The same logic applies to why I focus on the term “media” versus content. I settled on the term “media” out of my ups and downs of trying to sell the vision and idea of listening to companies. No one really understood what I was talking about until I started to emphasize the word "media." My goal has been to convince marketers that both positive and negative word of mouth was having a big impact on their brands. But while everyone intuitively got the concept of word of mouth, it always carried a connotation of being touchy-feeling, ephemeral, fleeting, and non-quantifiable. One, it suddenly occurred to me that the term “media” was perfect. CGM, while not like a impression you just buy, nevertheless acts like “media.” It leaves a digital trail, and those comments impact the awareness, trial, and purchase behavior of other consumers.

Anyway, happy to continue the conversation. It’s a good one, and I wouldn’t rule out my evolving on the topic over time.

I wonder what William Safire would have to say?

Pete

Post #2
You replied to Pete's post 3 hours ago
Hi Pete,
I appreciate your answer, and the passion and connection you feel to the word, consumer.

I think my objection partly comes from the variable ways I see people using the word at events, conferences, online etc. I was at a conference of mostly PBS people at Channel 13 in NYC a year ago. There were older, very established people in the room who objected to my use of "user" onstage while I talked, who insisted on consumer. I asked why, and one man very gruffly replied that the people didn't know how to make good media, only the professionals did. He was very condescending toward people who unprofessionally made media, and said they were simply consumers. That's it.

I've seen people as recently as the Web 2.0 Expo use the term onstage presenting technologies. I've continuously seen it in print used to separate the people who consume the media from those who produce it.

The interesting thing for me about social media is that it's not just about media, as in, a single discrete piece of media produced, and then another, and then another. In the other world, these might have been newspaper articles, that people would read. In the new world, these could be newspaper articles, blog post reactions, videos made by anyone, etc. But between these discrete chunks of media is an implicit, socially derived media that we can trace or understand, follow and engage with as dribbles of more media.

Almost everyone at some point in their online lives probably makes some sort of social media, even in the rating, recommending, tagging, posting, linking, emailing, editing, discussing, IMing, of discrete pieces of media (most often delineated by a single URL to each piece, but also sending the media removed from any URL.. either way, the chunking and adding happen.)

Whether they make the chunks is another story. Only a small portion of the total edits Wikipedia, creates a video, writes a blog post, records sound, or whatever. Any many are very bad at it. But that's okay. Some will learn and get good and may go on to work professionally. Some will get good and add to their professional lives with their media creations.

But using the word consumer, with so many from legacy media having so much trouble with the notion that anyone can publish now, and with so many more who don't subscribe to "consumer" doing publishing, makes the word really difficult to parse for a common meaning for all of us.

The guy at PBS was very clear in his use of this word. He uses it intentionally, because it is condescending.

I would like to see us work here, if this is the right place, to come up with better terms. Some object to user because of drug use connotations (though from what I can see, we are all pretty addicted to information and the internet, so i don't think we are that far off there). Some object to prosumer because it's clumsy and does really get at what we want.

I think we are looking for a word that we all haven't thought of yet. I've talked a lot about with with super-word-smith Doc Searls over the past 4 years. And we are stumped.

But still, I think we need to find the words to describe more accurately what is going on, and distinguish it with the old sort of consumer. Yes, consumer rights, consumer reports, consumer advocacy are good, but they wouldn't need to so much if so much of what being a consumer meant to companies and marketers was about dumping products down consumer's throats so they could poop cash.

The internet gives us a way around this mode of interaction, and I think we need to name for it.

Email Has Evaporated As a Social Tool

Yes, I still get the occasional social email. But I looked through my email over the last week, and I have two (yes TWO) social email. The other 5,000 or so are business (though I have even talked with VCs using Facebook and IM recently), or mail lists about things I'm interested in, Google Alerts, or spam.

But nothing much social, nothing of pure fun.

Email I think it's safe to say, is 99.9995% over for me as a social tool. And that makes it a whole lot less fun.

Now I use Facebook, IM, Twitter, blogging and commenting, txt messaging on my phone, MMS on my phone, the phone itself for things social, Dabble to see video recommendations from friends, and Flickr for my friends photos. Email is a pure notification and mail list tool.

Yesterday I got a demo of the new Plaxo from Mr. Plaxo (Joseph Smarr) and the "open Facebook" as Techcrunch called it. Was really interesting because it pulled everything into one place, everything except Facebook and personal phone messaging that is. I'm trying it out on my own now.

Harry Potter on The Pirate Bay, Pls C&D Me!!

So, I just realized I probably know Mark S. Seidenfeld, mentioned on Techcrunch today. I believe I worked with him at my first job out of college and would love to catch up with him. I tried looking him up on the Scholastic site but they don't list General Counsel or make it easy to reach people.

So, here's the deal, if I link to Techcrunch on their C&D story, who linked to Torrent Freak, I'll be linking to the linkers who linked to the linkers who pirated something. Harry Potter, in this case.

This reminds me of when I was C&D'd by Diebold for linking to the linkers who linked to the linkers... blah blah which produced a C&D from them. It was all totally bogus and just a form of shutting down speech, but as I said, I'd love to get an email from Mark because I'd like to be in touch.

Whatever works. Mark, my email is mary at hodder dot org. Ttyl.

US Internet Speeds are Really Slow..

Via Dave Farber's IP list from Press Etc:

Average broadband download speed in the US is 1.9 Mbps. It is 61 Mbps in Japan, 45 Mbps in South Korea, 18 Mbps in Sweden, 17 Mpbs in France, and 7 Mbps in Canada.

I've talked about this before.

Americans are falling further and further behind, in socializing with technologies like high speed interent access as well as cell phone tools and service that are much more dynamic than the rest of the world has. This is due to terrible public policies around these technologies and selfish companies who provide the services in monopolisitic ways.

Two to four years after I first talked about this, we are further behind than ever. It's appalling but you can read about the $200 billion scam on the US by Verizon, QWest and the Bell companies here.

Getting Real

Bob Lefsetz explains why the music industry is even worse off than I thought, pushing them deeper into the hole they've been digging for years. They are so far removed from what is real and passionate in the art of music and in how people connect to the artists that this must seem perfectly reasonable to them, from a business point of view.

This summer in the east hamptons there will be a 5 concert series, costing $15,000 per ticket which buys entry into all five shows, with Prince, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Tom Petty and Dave Matthews.

He aptly compares this concert series to Mitzvahpalooza where Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks spent $10 million dollars in 2005 on his daughter's bat mitzvah, and hired Don Henley, 50 Cent and Aerosmith among others to play two floors of the Rainbow room in NYC for the event.

Bob's right, it's disgusting for the fans, not to mention the idea of the artform, as well as commentary on the state of our society, which has gotten so gluttonous and cynical that even to people who can't afford it, which is most of us, this kind of thing seems reasonable and in no way a slap on the soul of music as an artform.

IIW Project Recap

Today at the IIW (internet identity workshop) at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, I took notes on the presentations of the projects in existence for more than 6 months. They are below. But I also noticed that they all said they did the same set of things, to make their own projects play with all the rest. Yes, they all have slight variants, like one or another is in php, or java, or ruby, or whatever. But they talked about trading identity bits around like they would send around email. And let's face it, we all have different email clients written in different languages, but the email itself moves around regardless of that.

So I'm wondering what the real differences are. If this is a matter of semantics, between projects, I'm hoping that by the end of the conference (Wednesday afternoon) they've all combined and will work for a less confusing and more aligned identity space.

I had the sense, while taking notes, that each project was slightly restating the same terms, so I aggregated them below. But this could have been buzz word bingo, for all the similarities we were hearing about each. Help us out here, tell us why we really need all you!

Notes start here:

1. OSIS -Dale Olds, Johannes Earnst

Open source identity selector
Johannes
Kim Cam
Dave Winer
Michael Graves
Early 2006 met to work on this and it became what is now called cardspace
Aligned multiple distributed systems for trust
coordinated MS cardspace project spec for making it open source
they want to do more with open implementations but don't endorse standards per say
want to collaborate multiple systems into something interoperable
steering committee / working group
they've worked on a bunch of the projects that will be in the speed geeking session

they focus on:
interoperability of standards, meaning of data, and types of information
determine relying parties and help make agreements for that
help determine consistent user experience

2. SAML, Liberty Alliance, openLiberty, and Concordia - by Eve Maler
federated identity means distributing identity tasks and information across domains
XML Based frameworks standardized at OASIS for marshaling security and ID info and exchanging
SAML is about assertions about subjects
Comes in layers
-- assertions get used by protocols to get used by certain tasks
-- specifies single sign on

History: SAML, Shibboleth and Liberty framework have converged over time
Shibboleth is now part of SAML2 as of 2005
Liberty is == to SAML

LIBERTY ALLIANCE = 150 governmental agencies, businesses, orgs and agencies
mission: foster a ubiquitous interoperable privacy
dev. open tech standards
human to application standards
Liberty people service: groups and roles are defined and shared
they are starting to offer

CONCORDIA PROGRAM
initiative to make umbrella standards to harmonize identity protocols

3. CARDSPACE - Mike Jones, MS
About bringing about convergence in identity space with MS and other partners
Care about threats to online safety
Criminal situation is bad
Try to bring usable, safe DI to users
Think about claims made by an issuer by a subject
7 laws of identity
-- Consistency is very important
usability, usability, usability

Microsoft Open Spec: cardspace.netfx3.com

4. THE HIGGENS PROJECT - Mary Ruddy
higgens is a species of tasmanian long-tailed mouse
open source
user centric and privacy centric
interoperable system for authentication
-- example where no password is required
doesn't share some info.. let's users choose
powered by interoperability framework
-- interoperate with lots of situations: financial, employment, etc
multi-protocol
all tokens/protocols/ systems
modular

5. OPEN ID - David Recordan, Bill Washburn
interoperable, single sign on
control URL in OID 1.0
added / extended to support iNames last summer

Single sign on
FOAF support - ex. could pull in AIM list
consumer level light weight ID
90 million Open IDs
(including every AOL/MS user)

problems: yes.. but solutions will be discussed here

Bill Washburn - openID Foundation
foster and promote openID for user centric ID on the net
Dick Hardt
Scott Kveton
Johannes Earnst
Drummond Reed
David Recordan
Arthur Bergman

join!

6. SHIBBOLETH / INTERNET 2 MIDDLEWARE - Bob Morgan (Univ WA)

They focus on attributes - work with Higgens
Shared identity with more than just handle style login - need more assertions
Education focused - work with universities

iiw2007

David Weinberger: Everything is Miscellaneous

Salim Ismail and I are hosting a blogger meetup for David on May 9 in SF. Details are here.

25 books to the first bloggers in the room! And David will sign and give a talk.

Come!

BOB is so ALIVE

So, secretly. Who is your favorite guilty pleasure read in the blogosphere? Mine is Bob Lefsetz. Actually, I've subscribed to his email list the past few months, which is easier because he only posts once or twice a day and I really want to read it the minute he puts it out. He's HILARIOUS.

I have been blogging about the music industry, IP, security and privacy, the napsterization of anything but in particular digital media, and how stupid legacy media is for about 5 years. So it's not like he's telling me anything I don't already know. But he's just so DAMN'D funny that I can't help it. He's so totally alive and passionate about music, the music business, the integrity of some people and the loss of control by others. And he podcasts about it too, like the Stubhub/Ticketmaster thing.

SoI love reading him, the minute he puts anything out, because he totally believes! It's great stuff.

Don't expect to see anything you haven't read on the music business before, but do expect to be completely and utterly entertained.

Thanks Hank for turning me onto Bob.

Teach Your Children Well

The Kathy Sierra situation has now been in full meltdown in the blogosphere for two days. I've been talking with Doc Searls a bit about why I'm so bothered by this situation.

I know that the people Kathy named did not themselves write the posts or comments that are most disturbing. But I have a lot of trouble with their inability to acknowledge that by participating, or hosting, or linking to two group blogs, Meankids and unclebobism, where their fellow posters wrote misogynistic and racist things, posted photos like the one with Kathy and a noose, and by fostering an environment that allowed the perfect troll to get out of control in the comments, they allowed a kind of condoning relationship to those words and photos. I understand Jeneane was in the hospital for the second blog's life-span, but she hasn't really said much about the first.

Chris Locke thinks you own your own words. I understand that as far as not censoring or editing those you host. But I think Chris and Frank Paytner had a responsibility to not just slink off, when the posting got rough, deleting the blogs altogether, but rather to acknowledge what went wrong and condemn it publicly, not condone it in its absence.

Some of those blog posts are still out in caches, out of context and without their full data attached. Earlier today I saw a post reprinted here attributed to Frank Paynter. In fact I think it was written by a "Rev Ed" who posted to Meankids (with links to Listics, Frank Paynter's blog) -- Bloglines has the cached version. It's a terrible, racist, misogynist post that should have been condemned by the rest of the bloggers on Meankids. And it may have, but with the blog deleted, we can't know that right now. I hope that Frank Paytner is keeping all the data about the activity and will share it with us. Or at least with someone like Doc who I would trust to make sense out of it and lay it out for us. But that needs to happen now.

In some ways, by having most of the blog posts "disappeared" we are all in a situation where we cannot go back to the evidence to look at it. Rather, we can only imagine what happened. Which I think leads to something far worse: people talking about something they can't see and judge for themselves. It's like having a Baptist preacher denouncing the Passion of the Christ in the news, and then seeing the movie and feeling disappointed because it wasn't so bad .. you know he disagreed, but frankly, it's not the end of the world. In other words, our imaginations can really run away with us, when we hear a generalized story. Which leads the the unknown taking on far more power than it should. Getting the facts right is really important here. It's not that I'm saying that Kathy didn't get some pretty awful stuff. She did, but I think we need to know what it is and who exactly did what to judge it correctly. Otherwise, we just imagine and conflate and get it all wrong.

So figuring out who spoofed Alan, who "Rev Ed" is, and who Joey is, would be very helpful, and knowing what they said and did specifically would be helpful as well. I'd really like to see the whole blogs, first hand.

I don't believe we should condemn the folks that Kathy names yet, but I do think we should look hard a why they didn't condemn the behaviors that took place right in front of them. That's what I have the problem with. I believe this lack of responsibility and leaderships is why we will continue to see people behave this way in online communities with no word from those around them. Until the leaders condemn it, and everyone else feels safe calling it out as bad behavior right when something happens, and we have established what social norms we'll tolerate that are reasonable, we won't stop this from happening again.

I'm also sorry to say that I had no idea that Michelle Malkin has had these sorts of things written about her, photoshopped around her, or directed at her. Because I don't read her, I didn't know. But it's equally as appalling as Kathy's situation.

It's time men and women in the blogosphere took back the network and repeatedly and publicly condemned this sort of behavior. Let's take back this power from cyberbullies. Andy Carvin proposes Stop Cyberbullying Day for Friday and I'm all for it.

Making the Mean Kids Bad Isn't Going to Help

What the meankids did was not good: tolerating posts from some of their members that were bad and making a playground for bad comments. But let's not make them bad, let's make their actions the target of judgement. My experience with them, Jeneane Sessum, Frank Paynter, Chris Locke, is that they are good people, though my experiences have been limited. They made a mistake in creating a community blog that Frank, Jeneane and Chris have all acknowledged went out of control. A very bad one, and one that will cost them a lot.

But let's take this opportunity to include them in the conversation about why making fun of *who people are* is bad. Of course in most cases it's fine to make commentary, parody or other fun *what others do*. But there is so much hatred of women in the tech community, just under the surface and it peaks out it's head in some really ugly ways. Before joining the tech community, to mention Kaliya Hamlin's point on the deeply geeky list, many of us had not thought about gender differences and never focused on them. But in this community, it's a festering problem.

Let's use this opportunity to discuss this and make it better.

On a list with some other cc's, I said this to Robert (and Maryam) Scoble earlier today:

Robert,
I understand your pain and feeling that people who behaved badly shouldn't be in our communities.
And you or anyone else is under no obligation to associate with anyone.

But I do believe that rather than throwing people out, we will do a lot more to have a frank and open
conversation about what is right, and invite people to stay and learn from those mistakes.

Banning people really is the start of the meankids going off to taunt the rest of the kids, because they've
been punished. I don't want any more of that.

I want people to stay, and understand why this is so hurtful, and learn how to express themselves,
with humor if they like, without taunting others over race, religion, gender or anything else.

I'm asking to have that frank conversation. Maybe it's too early because we are all pretty pissed,
but let's do that. Because exclusion will for sure breed more of this.

mary

Robert replied that he was really angry but coming around to this view.

Kathy Sierra: Stepping Back after Abusive and Violent Threats

Earlier today when I read Kathy Sierra's post, I was really stunned and very sad to see it. She has had death threats and abusive behavior directed at her, both in the comments of a blog (seems to have been removed) called Meankids.org and on what sounds like a spinoff: unclebobism. (Also, these abusive acts manifested in comments on her blog, and in email.)

Those two blogs were made to vent and the commenters on the blogs took things way too far. It's a slippery slope, making a publication that is mean to make fun or be a little nasty. How nasty is too nasty? And how far do the writers let the rest of their direct community of readers go in extending the fun?

It's really sick and chilling to have this happen to Kathy, who is one of the kindest people I've met. And very smart and reasonable. I can only imagine the cumulative effect of all the communications coming toward her over a month period, that would lead her to cancel speaking engagements and want to drop out of this community for a while.

After seeing her post, and the rest of the community rally around her (yea! great job blogosphere!) I searched for cached versions of meankids and unclebobism because I wanted to see what was up. I know the people who started those blogs and I wondered about how bad it could be. Well, I was disheartened to find some really nasty stuff about the Scobles that I would put in the racist, misogynist and vulgar category. By people I respected! Not funny at all. Just really mean. So I can imagine based on those words that whatever they said about Kathy wasn't good, and their readers took it as a cue for the worst.

Leading a pack of rabid animals is not something to be proud of... I hope people will think hard before they decide to create an online community like meankids again. I don't think mean speech should be illegal, but I do think the rest of us have responsibility to condemn it if we see it getting destructive and to protect the targets. And of course, threats are illegal.. so I'm happy those sites removed once they went from mean, to threatening abusive acts.

I hope Kathy sees, over time, that the vast majority of people are good, and that we will support her and stand up for her, and not let abusive and violent people win over the good she contributes to our community.

Women 2.0 Gets It So Wrong

First off, I really hate all this 2.0 naming. Why plant yourself in a time that is on the verge of obsolescence? Women 2.0. What can I say? Are we software that needs an upgrade?

Anyway, Women 2.0 is running a pitch contest (great idea), but for the rules way down at the bottom which say:

Women 2.0 Napkin Business Challenge Eligibility and Rules

The business plan must represent the original work of members of the team. You can submit as many business ideas on napkins as you want. You may have a team of up to four individuals. At least half of the team must be female and at least half of the team must be under 35; else the majority shareholder must be a woman and under 35. This is a Women 2.0 and Entrepreneur27 production after all.

Nice. So Mike Moritz and Tim Drapier are the prizes (meetings with them for another pitch). And the judges are mostly women, over 35.

Isn't the issue that women who are first timers need a lot of help getting started in terms of making a startup, pitching and getting funding? And, there are so few women anyway. Why on earth would you limit it? If you are really concerned that the few women over 35 that might submit ideas are going to wipe out the few women under 35, why not divide them into categories by age?

There is so much to know as you make a startup, and you need experienced people around you to clue you in, because almost none of what you really need to know is written down or even bloggable.

My best learning experiences have been with people who have a lot of experiences with the VC community, who can explain how things work, the quirky hand done ways of VC land, and what the various relationships are between people, and just how connected they are in what appears from the outside to be invisible.

I also am well aware that women over 35 are often seen as invisible in our society. If women are only valued for their looks (not how I see the world, but there is certainly a large percentage that treats women this way, and they aren't only men), then a woman over 35 is a stereotypical 'fading bloom.' And a women over 35 making her first company, pitching for the first time, in this Byzantine and fairly undocumented world around funding can be very difficult, because people may well be seeing right past her.

I don't believe I've had this experience myself, and maybe that's because people don't see me at about that age. Or maybe it's because of other things.. I don't really care. The bottom line is for women who are older, it's more difficult.

The thought of going to Sand Hill Road and standing up for yourself and your ideas can be intimidating. VCs meetings can be hard. One VC interrupted me 12 times (after the third, I started making tic marks) to say that with his startup (10 years before) they never had to do anything social. And he didn't belive in it now and why on earth was I even thinking about it? I don't mind defending what I work on, but you really have to have it very together, and often they actually don't want a real answer. They are looking for the right code words to provide comfort that this is a good investment. If you don't speak the way they understand the world, you will not be taken seriously. They also may be looking for push back instead of inclusiveness if they challenge you, and women when they first meet someone are often reluctant to push back without more relationship building. Right there in the first 5 minutes of a meeting, that can be a confidence undermining event for both parties. Women do communicate differently than men, and it doesn't change at 35.

One adviser I have talks about how Silicon Valley (or Silicon Village) is run on fear and greed. Greed comes first, but fear trumps all. And listening to the years of stories does make that world more understandable and feel less scary, more like something you can work with in an acceptable way.

Anyway, my point is, Women 2.0 needs to focus on what the barriers are: going out the first time with your first company. Doesn't matter whether you are 25 or 70. It's going to require a support network and information no matter your age. Women do have different needs than men, and we do behave differently in these situations. We tend to network differently, and that can be a barrier as well.

Women 2.0 isn't helping by institutionalizing and making acceptable agism. On top of everything else women face going to Sand Hill, that's just not something we need, especially from our own.

Update: I took this photo at Mesh07:

All the more reason I think this post was necessary to point out that first time women entrepreneurs and not young entrepreneurs are the ones who need help. I don't care if it wasn't towing the party line. Age discrimination isn't right.

Dylan Does Seuss

The Napster Nation at work.

Dylan Hears a Who:

SXSW Ramblings

Ramble alert.

Ok.. people I missed who I wished were there:

Liz Lawley
Halley Suitt
Caterina Fake
Salim Ismail
Emily Davidow
Jerry Michalski
David Isenberg

That's all I can think of at the moment. But I remember missing more! Pls come next year!

Ok.. the hotels.

We stayed the Hilton Garden (around the corner from SXSW and the main Hilton) which had just been bought, renovated partly and had a gym with 4 (four!) treadmills which no one wanted to use and 1 (one!) eclipse machine, which everyone wanted to use. Nice distribution guys. Oh, and the two broken bikes didn't help.

But they had free internet access. But it was only for one night.

Then we stayed at the big Hilton across from SXSW. Very convenient. But, they charge for their gym (supposedly because they have attendants.. which I could care less about and just need an eclipse machine thank you). And they charge for the wifi.. which I paid for, and every third page (yes!!! was so messed up!!!) redirected my browser to a Hilton ad.

Ok... I paid $10 for wifi, and it was slow as molasses. So I would load up a bunch of pages, do email for a while, and go back to find that 1/3 of the pages had been hijacked by Hilton. I'm already staying there.. so do I really need an advertisement? I mean come on. I paid already. I showed it to Kaliya who was totally appalled. What a rip off. Needless to say, I didn't buy it for the rest of the stay. So for three days I kept getting my computer at 1am or 8am, and going to the lobby to get the free, fast, ad-free wifi. Which was annoying as hell.

I won't stay at the big Hilton ever after that. Esp since the big Hilton is literally double the price. I'd rather get a free gym and wifi from a cheaper hotel than pay more, and then pay again, and again. And again. Stupid.

Ok.. so the BBQ, with Joyce and Lili rocked, as did all the fun parties, the people (every day I'd be walking around Austin and see like 80 people I knew.. was totally fun), the interesting talks, etc.

So, the only thing that wasn't so convenient was the rain. Which had massively affecting the party schedule for lots of people, and then delayed planes on the way out.. mine to Oakland was delayed for hours, when we were checking in, so Joyce said, hey, just take my plane to Las Vegas and then go to Oakland, which got me there 25 minutes earlier than my other flight. Yea!

SXSW is My Favorite Conference

It's really just spring break for geeks.

Yum.

RE: Women and Conferences

This again is one of those CC the world posts. Earlier today, a list I'm on for women in tech had this subject line: re: women and conferences.

Someone asked:

I wonder why is this is the issue on which the most energy is expended on this list? Is the future of women in technology truly tied to the numbers of us speaking at conferences?

I replied (and a bunch of folks asked me to blog this reply):

I think it's an important part of what goes on, speaking. There is a feedback loop:

Speak -> be seen as a leader in the topic area and eventually be considered in leadership positions
Be in leadership position - > be asked to speak because of that leadership position in area

If you aren't in the loop you aren't as important as others with similar skills sets and expertise in the eyes of those who fund, engage for consulting, hire for leadership positions, take in PhD candidates or whatever it is that requires discernment between people.

It's not that anyyone has to speak, but it would be great if more women were speaking, because it brings an additional layer of diversity that right now is lacking in many labs, financial firms, development perspectives (the focus of software and websites, etc) and in their leadership circles.

Girls also need strong confirmation through repeated messaging from parents (mothers and fathers) as well as others who can relate to kids but are in leadership positions. Most people are very bad at visualizing. Example: when you go to Ikea they set up a room, so you can see it in person, instead of being asked to visualize something based on items inside a cardboard box and line drawing with measurements. Good contractors even mock up a kitchen in cardboard and shims so the owners can "live" in it to see the traffic and usage patters.

Girls need that same help with leadership. Boys get that help much more often, which is why they can visualize it better.

My dad, when I was little, took me to work all the time. He was a CEO in a company with several hundred people onsite and 45 offices around the world that he established. He used to let me help him write his speeches. I grew up believing I could do that, because he showed me how. And on the weekends, he actually enjoyed spending his time doing things like digging up the sewage system in our backyard and replacing the pipes, or rewiring our bathroom, both of which I did with him, as his assistant, and after a while he let me do the stuff with him as my assistant. I know I'm lucky and unusual to have had those experiences, as well as a mom who was managing partner in her lawfirm as an example, and not everyone gets that.. but I think the "speaker" issue is a huge code word for "...My God, we need to get this together for girls whether they want to be engineers, CEOs, Scientists, Exec Dir.s of Non profits, VCs or whatever." In other words, if girls want it, let's make it possible for them.

Last night I went to a tempura party, and there was a Phd in neuroscience from UCB there, and I asked what she was doing when she's done at the end of the semester. She replied that she would teach because having a lab is out of the question. She didn't want to play the games the boys play to raise all the money and compete in those ways to lead her own lab. %$#@^$%&

This is what I hear from women who would like to start a software company, about VCs. It's too much to play those kinds of games without some mentorship and help, and we need to make it easier. I don't think it's that women don't want to compete, they just want the competition to be about something, not just an arbitrary game to weed out the people with no patience for that game.

I know there are many issues, but speaking is one piece of this puzzle.

We have discussed it so much here (on this email list) and elsewhere that it's loaded with subtext and frustration and expectation and desire and to some degree, the wish to just force the issue through exposure, shame (on conference givers) as well as educating them, and brute force. It may not be the best way, but I think this is some measure of what is happening on our list, where people spend a lot of time talking about the number of women speakers.

My two cents.

This is one of those CC-the-world posts

So, my sweet Mac got smashed. I'd maxed out the 1 gb of ram a year and a half ago, and was constantly both backing parts of it up (my movies and photos mostly, a few key documents, but it's maxed out on those things too) and either deleting files or removing big video files to the external drive I have in order to make room. What a pain. I've needed a new computer for a while, but I was trying to hit a particular milestone before I bought a MacBook pro. Well, once the corner got smashed a few days ago, that was it. I had to do it because it won't close. And it's acting really funny in that I can't seem to get it to shut down properly or backup the past week or so. Yikes.

I was on the Apple site, comparing prices with other sites that sell Macs, and figured out I could do better with Apple, by $350, but the remaining question was: which harddrive? The one it comes with is 120 gbs, at 5400 rpms, or you can upgrade to a 160 gb, 5400 rpm, or (and this is very tempting, in that I edit a lot of video on my laptop) a 200 gb HD with 4200 rpm.

The only person I could think of who I could call and possibly get a recommendation at 8:45am on Saturday morning in order to press the "buy" button now is Doc Searls. So I rang, and he picked up from the UCSB Newspapers 2.0 conf (yeah.. I told him I'm waiting for Kitchen 2.0 or Carburetors 2.0 conf. I mean WTF.. why is everything 2.0.. I'm so tired of 2.0. And he agreed that even though it had been named months ago, it was all a bit tired, that 2.0 thing. How about if we just talk about stuff and include social interaction and the web as part of all universes now that it pretty much is, online?) Anyway, Doc says, Dan and JD are here, and we start in 7 minutes. I said I need your one minute assessment of harddrives for MacBooks (Doc is the one who got me to get the external harddrive I have now, which is really an internal harddrive, in a case, for a mac.) A second passed and he said, I know nothing.

Then another second passes, and he's off on a tear telling me that having more room means having faster access so the rpm speed matters less, and when he got his HD that was bigger at 5400 rpms he thought it was faster than his smaller HD with 7600 rpms and that there isn't that much difference but on the other hand the fragmentation of the drive matters much more in terms of performance and so using the defrag utility regularly is key and then some stuff about heat and the machine came up as well as density of the information and corruptibility and so actually I should in the end, considering all all that, get the 200 gb HD with 4200 rpms. 1 minute.

So I ordered. Hit the buy button. We hung up. And Doc went off to talk about Newspapers 2.0. Whatever that means.

Thanks Doc. That was perfect.

Oh, and I'm going to frame my old cover because I do really like it:

Putting Order to the Chaos of CES, Not to Mention Making New Media Proud

at the Bloghaus. By Podtech.

John and Linda Furrier and Maryam Scoble rock for putting it all together.

Wow. Made the chaotic CES scene fun and cool. And the video uploading.. 80 mbs up and down. It rocked!

An example of their work, vlogging the CES 2007 Keynote: Ed Zander, CEO Motorola:

Bloghaus is the best!

Learning Mandarin

I talked with my mother this morning, and she told me she's been taking Mandarin since June. My parents travel a lot, and spent the month of September in China. She said that it was really hard learning the characters (she knows 6 languages, but they are all European, latin based languages). But walking around in China , she could converse and understand people.

One interesting thing, she said she started out online with the Rosetta Stone system, and lasted a month. She is on dialup a lot, because of their travel schedule, and lack of easy wifi networking on their window's machine (I suggested a Mac to solve that, and the digital photo sharing issues they also have). Rosetta Stone just wasn't set up well, she thought, for a dial up user, because the files were so big and the assumptions were all about the always-on mindset. And there were no "hooks" for her, since her lack of experience with that kind of language didn't give her the cultural context to frame the language around it.

She hit on the idea of trying the SF public library. They have an apartment in SF so it was easy. She buzzed down, and took a course that was made by a professor at Hayward, who set up the structure entirely around cultural explanations and frameworks so she hooked right in, figured out what was going on, and was speaking in simple terms in two months. Then the trip to China, with some small successes in conversations with people there. And now she's really excited about learning more.

She still says the character recognition at her age (68) is hard, but she's really into it and planning the next trip over there.

The Future of Video

I'm moderating a session today at 10am on the Future of Video at the Web 2.0 Conference:

Future of Video: We Just Wanna Watch, Or Do We?
Mary Hodder, CEO, Dabble
Josh Felser, CEO, Grouper Networks
Mike Folgner, Jumpcut/Yahoo
Tod M. Sacerdoti, Founder and CEO, BrightRoll

YouTube has done a terrific job of leading the way for video 1.0 online, where watching is everything. But as people get more comfortable with watching video online, the old broadcast relationship they had to content changes, and they start to want more. What do users need for video 2.0 where watching is just a part of the story, where remixing and online editing, arranging, playlisting, searching, and most importantly, discovery through other sources are expected by users? What are the barriers and what is being done now to make regular users into power users, and give everyone more control and access than just watching in an on-demand style?

Come join us if you are at the conference. Should be a great discussion!

Update: Here is a Wired blog post on the session.

The Best Blog Post goes to....

Sorry.. that was left over from the Vloggies.

Guy Kawasaki says this is one of the best blog posts, and as a truffle and wine lover, and someone who loves fun media, well, I say WOW! too.

Look now, look now!

The Amateur Gourmet: Chutzpah, Truffles & Alain Ducasse.

One Web Day! It's here!

Celebrate how the internet has changed our lives and made it better with people around the world!

Okay, that's a lot of explanation points, but the internet has made my life so different than it was before. And so much better.

First wave was email and research, in 1992, when I needed Supreme Court case law from the Cornell Law School website, or a news article from Dialog, or bulletin boards. Oh freedom from the law library for every little task!

Second wave was IM, more email with many more people and the web. Instant. Communication. Conversation. And all that primitively laid out info on the web. That was never so easy to get before.

Third wave was blogging (which has totally changed my life the most of all these waves) and lead me to research the live web, search algorithms based upon human behavior in many different types of circumstances and make my company. And introduced me to a whole huge circle of friends and colleagues.

Right now I'm staying with a friend in Amsterdam who I first new on the web. She's amazing. And her husband. Both of whom sustain themselves very nicely through their online blogs, which are entire businesses where the storefront, or office space, as it were, resides on these blogs. Partly our friendship bloomed out of respect for each other's work, visible online. And partly because our work on the web led us to meet in person and gave us a rich foundation to start our first conversation. About fashion. And online advertising and how we each hate marketing, are geeks, but wish the right shoe ads could show up in the right places, without violating our privacy.

Well.. it's One Web Day.

Tell your story on your blog, on the One Web Day wiki, or anywhere you like. But let people know how much richer your life is because you can communicate over the collapsed barriers of time and space the internet allows.

I'm going to be in London filming a proclamation from the Lord Mayor on One Web Day.

Throw up your own video at Blip.tv, tag it "onewebday" and it will end up in Dabble here: One Web Day video page.

Or throw your video up at whatever video hosting company you choose, tag it onewebday, and we'll do our best to get it posted to the One Web Day video page right away.

See you later today in London!

One Web Day Announcement

I'm on the Board of One Web Day -- celebrating the internet once a year.

Here is the official announcement:

OneWebDay, "Earth Day for the Web," First Global Holiday to Celebrate How the Web Has Changed Our Lives Taking Place Sept. 22, 2006

Craig Newmark, Craigslist and Scott Heiferman, Meetup, to Kick Off Activities

New York, NY--Sept. 20, 2006—OneWebDay, an "Earth Day for the Web" www.onewebday.org, the first global holiday to celebrate the web and how it has changed our lives, is planned for September 22, 2006 (and every September 22 thereafter). As with Earth Day--an inspiration and model for OneWebDay--individuals, organizations and communities are celebrating in a variety of ways.
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, said: "OneWebDay reminds us that the net really is a democratizing medium, that everyone gets a chance to participate. If you want, you can stick your neck out and speak truth to power." Scott Heiferman, co-founder of Meetup and Fotolog, added: "The internet is under-hyped. It’ll only continue to re-shape lives across the globe. Surely it deserves a day. OneWebDay is a day for more people to think about how the internet can help solve problems for people around the world."

OneWebDay is creating an historic, grassroots event to mark the launch of OneWebDay. CNET Networks' Webshots (www.webshots.com), a global photo-sharing community, is working with OneWebDay to enable the largest global, online photo collaboration. Web users are invited to post a digital photo on webshots.com and label it “onewebday.” OneWebDay will then create a visualization of the web made up of these photos posted by millions of users around the world. This will show the power of online collaboration.

"The internet has become such a ubiquitous force in our lives that it's easy to forget how it has changed the world," said Susan Crawford, associate professor at the Cardozo School of Law, the architect of OneWebDay. "When people around the globe can 'see' the web, we'll think about how the web helps humans to work together and how much it means to us," Crawford added.

Events are happening across America and around the world: So far, we have events happening in Austin, TX; Belgrade, Serbia; Boston, MA; All over Canada: Chambolle-Musigny, Burgundy, France; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA; Chicago, IL; London and other places in the UK; Los Angeles; Milano, Italy; Naples, Italy; New York, NY; Phillipines; San Francisco, CA; Second Life; Slovakia; Sofia, Bulgaria; Tokyo, Japan; Vancouver, Canada; Vienna, Austria; Westport, CT updates at: http://www.onewebday.org/wiki/index.php/In-person_Events

In addition to the webshots.com giant collage, online activities in conjunction with OneWebDay include:
* Tell us the wackiest way you've used craigslist and if your story is selected, you will win a prize and get to share your tale on OneWebDay. Send your story to volunteer@onewebday.org.
* Join others celebrating around the world by making a OneWebDay video, post it to blip.tv, and Dabble.com will make it available for the world to see.
* Encourage your friends to take one web-related action that helps someone else: Teach someone how to edit a wiki, start a blog, or post a photo online.

Newmark of craigslist fame, Heiferman of Meetup. NYC Council Member Gale Brewer, and Drew Schutte, publishing director, WIRED, will speak at an event in New York.

Council Member Brewer said: "One of the key ideas behind OneWebDay is increasing public web access around the world. I'm proud to have been an active promoter of this effort in the City's parks and public spaces. More importantly, the Internet opens up the world to so many people, particularly our young people."

"WIRED has reported on and been inspired by the web from its infancy. We recognize its power to connect and influence. We are honored to be part of One Web Day to recognize the critical role the web plays in our lives," says Schutte of WIRED.

OneWebDay, Inc. has been formed and is seeking nonprofit status. It has an independent Board of Directions. The Board includes: A-list bloggers (Doc Searls, David Weinberger, David Isenberg, Mary Hodder), business executives (Don Telage, David Johnson, Rick Whitt), a NYC PR person (Renee Edelman, Edelman), a key researcher (Gregg Vesonder, AT&T), and a former state AG (Jim Tierney, Maine). Its president, Susan Crawford, is committed to working on this holiday for the next 10 years. OneWebDay is supported by Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, Cardozo Law School, Union Square Ventures, Edelman, DFJGotham, CNET Networks’ Webshots, CIRA, and individuals.

Thought Fashion: Are You In or Out?

It's true. I peeked.

Yes, I downloaded the AOL files. And I peeked. Why? Because I wanted to write this blog post and I wanted to see for myself what sort of gestures people were making as they searched for porn or socks or how to bury their pet birds or wives they'd just killed. I also needed to see the form the data was in. And I'm a voyeur just like everyone else in and around this story, and I wanted to rubberneck my way into other's private intellectual spaces.

But it's not right. The part where I and every news outlet, blogger, reader and looky-loo has been engaging in, judging people by their searches, making assumptions and behaving as if we ourselves have never made any searches or expressed any thoughts that would not look funny to someone else.

It's also not right because the data is personally identifying. Reporters have been tracking down people based upon their searches. It's not that hard, if you yourself are a good searcher.

What was it Bob Blakely said? About how "dragging all human behavior into the public is literally totalitarian." He is the chief security and privacy scientist for IBM's Tivoli Systems. "If you erode privacy, you erode liberty, because people don't tolerate things going on in front of them that they don't approve of." I was struck by how succinctly he answered the question that is always asked of people who object to the government or some other large and powerful entity as compared with you: What do you have to hide? If you're not doing anything wrong?

Every article on AOL's mess up that says something like AOL's Disturbing Glimpse Into Users' Lives is buying into this whether they know it or not. Thank you CNet for reaffirming our intolerance.

Let's get clear on the definition of "aggregated" data. For us geeks, we use this term often, as we reassure those whose data we work with that aggregation means we are removing anything personally identifying, and placing it with other user's data, so that it's just a pile of anonymized data that could never be distinguished by the person. An example might be the aggregation of all the searches on "dog," where who did them is removed but we know that 38 people searched on that term during a particular hour and day.

But users don't think that way. They hear the word, aggregated, and they think the data handlers are aggregating everything the system may know about just them, specifically and personally, and lumping it all together. Talk about miscommunication. And it terrifies the non-geeks.

What we really should be saying is that the data is "anonymized" and therefore you are safe. AOL's data was not safe because it was not anonymized, and for users, it was their definition of aggregated.

The AOL data which lumped each user's searches together with a user ID over three months, making profiling and finding them easy, meant that AOL provided enough data in some cases to indicate a lot about who the data related to very specifically. Leading to judgments by the rest of us. About the people who do or think things on the edges of society.

And why is this wrong? Because it hurts people. It makes them feel defensive about their own thoughts and ideas.

So, well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, what *do* you have to hide? Well, everyone has something they do or think about that would be an edge thought or that in one context would be in the middle, but in another, must be defended as it resides on the edge. And that would be disapproved by someone. Something the rest of society might not tolerate.

Intolerance leads to the totalitarian. We, the human race, have been intolerant since the beginning of time. What we are intolerant of is a moving target depending on the fashion of the day. In the 30's in some places it was fashionable to be intolerant of Jews and gays. In the 40's it was Germans and the Japanese, and in the 50's communists and socialists. In the 60's it was civil rights proponents and hippies and in the 70's liberals. In the 80's we were back to communists, and in the 90's it was Hispanics (remember all the state propositions outlawing them from medical care?). And what is it today? Islam? Are thoughts you think today and the cultural references associated with them that are in the middle going to fall to the edges in the next decade?

We have used the fear of all these intolerable people and their thoughts as excuses to hunt for more proof of their intolerableness by surveilling everyone in society and searching through all the detritus of our lives. With digital data more available, we think we can find the proof we need in these edge thoughts. And then we will persecute the people having them. And what better way to do it now that the internet, ISPs and heavily used search systems can provide one or another level of very personal, thought data. Search terms, or a database of intentions as John Battelle has talked about so much, are one slice of your data that tell a lot about you. And if we can get it in a neat little file, machine readable and searchable and quantifiable, then well, why not?

If you believe that sacrificing freedom to keep freedom is the way to go, then you probably don't see any problem with demonizing people who have thoughts you don't like. Especially if those thoughts are in the form of passing gestures such as search terms plugged into a browser.

But until we decide (or default) into a Minority Report society (and change our constitution), we are not yet convicting people for thinking things. Everyone has had the thought that they'd like to kill someone once or twice in their lives. But people, the vast vast majority, don't do it. The idea that we demonize someone for searching on this, which is a gesture I would put into the fleeting thought category for almost everyone, is taking an edge thought, which we all have from time to time, and putting it firmly under the scrutiny of the middle. I believe we really only want to find people who make serious plans to hurt others, or actually carry it out. That is what our law it based on, and the premise of our society. But to track everyone, their searches, their every digital gesture, and expose it in one or another ways is going to be troublesome. And it begs a question I've asked before: is your digital identity your personal intellectual property? Is your Google identity yours or someone else's? And by extension, is your clickstream a personal expression (carefully chosen and shaped by you)? In other words, can you copyright your clickstream and exert ownership?

There are at least two choices. One of them is to do what we are doing now: have ISPs and search services collect this data, and when asked by the government, have it turned over. But that means the data is still in many ways secret. Of course the companies don't want the data getting out because it is proprietary. And neither does the government, because they don't want anyone to know quite how much is out there about you, in case you are trying to cover your tracks or you want to defend yourself. But having all the data, the government has the upper hand. And secrets are powerful. How do you show, if you are being accused of something based upon your searches, that everyone else searches on those same things too? That it's actually a social norm? If you can only ask for your own searches to defend a case against you, and not everyone else's, in order to compare yourself to it, you won't be able to argue social norms which judges rely heavily on when making decisions.

But there is another choice. And that brings up the Attention Trust premise (I'm a Board Member) which is that people own a copy of their own data, no matter where they do things: Amazon.com purchases, Google searches, or AOL clickstreams, or anywhere else you might land in a browser on your computer. As a co-owner of your data, you can take it anywhere and do what you wish. There could be many business models built upon this data controlled and shared by users. Google takes all the data they collect and plugs it into AdSense. If lots of users took their own data and made it available voluntarily, a new and more 'open source' style AdSense could be created.

But much more importantly, something like Steve Gillmor's Gesture Bank, where users opt-in their clickstream information, in an anonymous form, exists to open up this kind of data. The Bank will make the aggregation of anonymized data available to anyone for any purpose. While this may lead to businesses working from this pool of searches and clicks, it also means that a growing pool of data is there to show the edge thoughts and potentially unpopular ideas people may exhibit. The pool can be used to defend against totalitarian efforts to single out in secret those who are out of fashion politically. Which may turn out to be you. Or someone who uses your computer.

That I think is far more important than an open source AdSense, though a business built upon this data would likely justify and make a better case for us to have a Gesture Bank of ideas and thoughts that support political freedom.

Seth Goldstein and Steve Gillmor already offer Root. net users the opportunity to put their data into the Gesture Bank if they wish, though any person can contribute to this anonymous pool of user data. And for that matter, attention streams can be sent to multiple services.

And, at the October 4 Attention Conference, Steve and Seth will announce Attention Soft. Stay tuned.

Dabble Blog Goes Live

The Dabble Blog has long been inside our invited beta pages, and not accessible.

It's now public, as we move toward opening our site. We'll be putting all kinds of things on it including news about Dabble, development issues and interesting things we see people doing when they use Dabble.

But we'll also use it to point out cool media and users doing interesting things, and post videos (we aren't a hoster.. we link to hosters and act more like a guide to video, made by users, as well as straight search and browsing).

Check it out.. it's cool!

Totally like whatever, you know?

See the excellent poem below by Taylor Mali. Or listen to it at Soapbox, part 2, at the very end of 24 minutes of excellent political discourse, clips from the last several president's inaugurations, and literary eloquence. Mali gives an outstanding reading. Very entertaining and fun.

20 years ago, one of my friend's mothers, an actress who disassembled the emotion behind every word, and then reconstructed it in new and real ways that always seemed so much richer than what had existed before, hated it when we said "like." I remember she wouldn't allow us to say it. Got upset every time. Said we weren't committing to our words. And what was the point of speaking if we couldn't commit to our words? Once in a magazine, I remember an interview with her, where the opening paragraph describing her said she had the courage to live the contradictions of her life. I remembered all those years of her berating us over and over for "like" and "whatever" and "you know?" when I saw the article, and again hearing Taylor do his reading in Soapbox. I agreed with her, but I felt too tentative then to have the courage she had. It was hard for me to give up the words that let me off the hook a little. But she and Taylor are both right. If you're going to do anything worthwhile. You have to commit in your words to yourself.

Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Core Values at Bloggercon

Mike Arrington is doing the next Core Values session at Bloggercon IV. I want to wish him well, and note the information from the Core Values session at Bloggercon III that I led, because I think that session was extraordinarily productive.

In fact afterward, many people kindly said that they felt it was most useful and interesting, because they left with something tangible (the list) and they really liked that rather than me telling them what the values are I see online, or that I feel are important myself, I just asked questions, and let them come to the conclusions about the values they share and the controls they felt should exist to support those values. They appreciated the light touch guiding them to find and develop their own conclusions.

Here the list the group of 80 made during the session, of what they feel are core values for the blogosphere:

Things we value:
Democracy
Non-exclusivity
Attribution
Transparency – disclosure
Innovation
Personalization
Accessibility
Honesty
Creativity
Knowing who people are
Editorial Independence
Connectedness
Anonymity

Things we devalue:
Power law economics
Lack of Attribution
Anonymity
Wuffie-hoarding
Links for money

Good luck Mike! I'm sure you'll take us to the next level. I hope the last sessions list is useful as a starting point.

Where are we? Rise of the Videonet

At my session today at Supernova, with JD Lasica (Ourmedia) as our moderator, and Jeremy Allaire (BrightCove), Jonathan Taplin (USC Annenberg Center), and Robert Levitan (Pando), I mentioned some stats and ideas, and I said I would blog those items. The are below.

The first two sets of stats focus on video hosting sites (places where users can upload video) and their use, as far as uploads and user visits or traffic. The third set of data reflects trends in the types of video we see users making and posting online, with an example or two of that kind of video.

1. Users per day/Uploads per day on a few sites we have seen info about:

ClipShack : 2200 users per day. (source: AdBright).

Google Video: 12.5 million users in month of April. (source: Washington Post).

Grouper: 8 million users per month (source:
PR News but on Alexa, that traffic appears to be a one time spike, where their traffic seems to hover around 3 million users per month) and 500,000 registered users (source: Alexa).

Ourmedia: 28,000 users per day (source: AdBright).

Vidiac: Streaming 2 million videos per day and 3 million users per month (source:
Silicon Beat Comment by Adam Beat)

Vimeo: 20 thousand users per day (source: USA Today, 11/21/05) and 50,000 registered users (source: Vimeo's about pages)

YouTube: 50,000 uploads per day, serving 50 million videos per day, with 6 million users per day (source: You Tube Fact Sheet).

2. There is a list ranking the top ten video sites by market share or traffic, published by Hitwise), May 24, 2006. (Several of the traffic stats found in articles, press releases, advertising, etc., also credited Hitwise for the numbers):

1. YouTube 42.94%
2. MySpace Videos 24.22%
3. Yahoo! Video Search 9.58%
4. MSN Video Search 9.21%
5. Google Video Search 6.48%
6. AOL Video 4.28%
7. iFilm 2.28%
8. Grouper 0.69%
9. Daily Motion 0.22%
10. vSocial 0.09%

3. At Dabble, we are seeing different video genres coming up over and over. Users, as opposed to top down TV video producers, seem to work in areas that are accessible and interesting to them. They are not just copying mainstream production styles. The list below is in no particular order as far as prevalence or audience viewing. We just see them a lot:

1. Mini tv show-style -- It's Jerry Time or Ask a Ninja
2. Videobloggers: telling their own life stories like Ryanne Hodson
3. Genre guys: snowboarding or car videos
4. Commentary: Rocketboom or the Bush Blair video.
5. Indie film shorts like Four Eyed Monsters
6. Random.. silly.. funny.. ridiculous... ephemeral Tag: momwalksin tag: lipsync
7. How-to's that actually show you how to do something in detail or teach: French Pod Class
8. Remixs and mashups: The Presidency Then and Now or Matrix Reloaded or Brokeback to the Future.
9. Interviews like those at GETV.
10. Parodies like the 8up commercial.
11. AMV or anime music videos: Loveless
12. music videos - lipsync sitting at the computer, dancing around with music playing, that in effect, remakes the artists own music video into ones the users like, that stars themselves. Here is Hips Don't Lie.

Anti-Copyright and Anti-Fair Use: The Broadcast and Audio Flags

Broadcast and Audio Flags are provisions in Senate Bill 2686, up on Thursday. They are bad for users, bad for balanced copyright, bad for fair use, bad for innovation, and bad for new companies (including Dabble).

This is about incumbent media companies fearing the internet, much like the RIAA in 2001, and trying to get the government to protect them against digital media, instead of working with it to create new business models.

Call your Senator (there are some numbers below provided below in an except from an EFF email.

I just called Senator Boxer's office (212 number is below, or SF: 415-403-0100) to register my opposition, and I noted that Boxer's office takes phone comment anonymously. Interesting.

From EFF:

* Action Alert - Tell Your Senator To Take Out the Flags

The Communications, Consumers Choice, and Broadband
Deployment Act of 2006 is a monster name for a monster bill
-- in its latest form, it contains 159 pages of densely
plotted telecommunications reform. But while politicians
struggle with its major clauses, the RIAA and MPAA have
piggybacked their own agenda: the broadcast and audio flags,
which restrict innovation and legitimate use of recorded
digital radio and TV content. Your call today could force
the flags to find a home of their own.

The Committee markup of this bill is on Thursday, and your
Senator is on the Commerce Committee. One last push from
you could get Congress to remove the entertainment industry
mandates from the bill.

IF YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES

Please call your Senator (numbers below). Here's a sample
script:

STAFFER:
Hello, Senator Lastname's office.

YOU:
Hi, I'm a constituent, and I'd like to let the Senator know
that I don't think the broadcast and audio flag provisions
belong in S. 2686, the Communications, Consumers Choice and
Broadband Deployment Act. These are anti-consumer
provisions, which would give the FCC far-reaching powers,
and give the entertainment industry a dangerous veto over
new technologies. I hope the Senator will insist on
excluding these provisions on Thursday.

STAFFER:
Okay, I'll let the Senator know. Thanks.

Chairman Ted Stevens (AK), (202) 224-3004
John McCain (AZ), (202) 224-2235
Conrad Burns (MT), Main: 202-224-2644
Trent Lott (MS), (202) 224-6253
Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX), (202) 224-5922
Gordon H. Smith (OR), (202) 224 3753
John Ensign (NV), (202) 224-6244
George Allen (VA), (202) 224-4024
John E. Sununu (NH), (202) 224-2841
Jim DeMint (SC), (202) 224-6121
David Vitter (LA),(202) 224-4623
Co-Chairman Daniel K. Inouye (HI), (202) 224-3934
John D. Rockefeller (WV), (202) 224-6472
John F. Kerry (MA), (202) 224-2742
Barbara Boxer (CA), (202) 224-3553
Bill Nelson (FL), (202) 224-5274
Maria Cantwell (WA), (202) 224-3441
Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ), (202) 224-3224
E. Benjamin Nelson (NE), (202) 224-6551
Mark Pryor (AR), (202) 224-2353

Respecting Open Space

Open space, in the camp conference style, requires some key elements to work well. I'm noticing after watching two different events develop that they may be missing what is important about Open Space.

A couple of months ago, I attended a conference on the east coast. The organizer told me he wanted to do an Open Space day, the day after his event. That day arrived, he bailed, and there were six of us who actually attended. And he insisted that I go, even though I really have a lot of other things to do. The Open Space day was meant to brainstorm ways to organize Net Neutrality support.

After the event, others who attended it suggested that Bar Camp a failure. Well.. I totally disagreed. They thought that somehow, calling an open day "Bar Camp" would make it happen.

They had a wiki with about 22 names on it, and a stellar group of people slated to attend. They had great space, in a lovely lawfirm with wifi, and everything we might need. What they didn't have was a leader to organize the space. Although one person who attended in the middle of the event suggested that if things weren't working, he could vote with his feet. And he would if he wanted to do so. Though considering there were six people in the room, it sounded more like a threat: you don't do what I want to today, or I'll leave. So everyone started doing what he wanted. The point of course of "the law of two feet" is that you don't stay somewhere where you aren't learning. But that applies to Open Space where there are maybe say 100 people, and multiple rooms where you can move and not be disruptive, not six people where you are an integral part of deciding what is happening. But with such a little group, that misapplication of that particular Open Space principle further caused the day to deteriorate as a camp. What little emerging leadership was happening was killed right there, though he wasn't wiling to lead. He just wanted everyone to do things his way.

Without a clear leader, supporting a basic framework for a day of sessions or some kind of plan, just didn't work. It wasn't the concept of Bar Camp that failed. It was a failure of the people proposing it and carrying it out.

Anyway, I'm wondering how Open Space is going to work at the Identity conference at Harvard, where today and tomorrow are regular top down conference days, where the broadcast model is followed. On Wednesday, there will be an Open Space day, led by Kaliya Hamlin and Jon Ramer. (I'm not attending this event, as I have too much work to do, but I'm noticing a trend here....)

I know the Open Space day is happening, more due to the Identity list I'm on, than the event web pages. After there was discussion on the list, I asked about the lack of information supporting the Open Space day on the website, and Paul Trevithick and John Clippinger did add a little information about the day on the session page, to let people know it was even happening. However, I had suggested on the email list that they make a page for the attendees to show that they were attending and add the speakers to the schedule and speaker's page. They did not.

The point I'm making is that I think people who do top down, broadcast style conferences are interested in what's happening with camps and Open Space, but they don't understand the dynamics of them or Open Space sensibility, and so in applying top down controls and information styles to their camps, they potentially harm the good that can come from the camp. And since the leaders of the camp are not traditional speakers, the organizers of the larger top down conference probably think they don't need to list the camp or Open Space leaders as speakers on the larger conference site because the camp facilitators aren't speaking in a traditional way. But this is not true. Listing them is critical to fostering the process of the day.

For example, we know from past successful camps that having a page where attendees say they are coming is key, because the agenda is made the day of the camp. Therefore, people choose to attend because other interesting people will be in the room, not based upon pre-arranged sessions. Secondly, the leaders of the day are key. They have to balance the right amount of support for the Open Space while leading just a little so that attendees make the agenda the morning of, and that things are pulled together at the end of the day. People choose to come, or not, based on who will be leading.

Currently, the leaders of the identity Open Space day are not on Harvard'sthe speaker list, nor does Harvard's the schedule note them, even though speakers the previous two days are listed on the schedule with their corresponding sessions.

I believe the Open Space day will go well due to Kaliya's and Jon's attention, because at least Kaliya has done this before (I don't know about Jon's work with Open Space) and understands well the dynamic needed to make this kind of day work. But the fact that the Open Space day at Harvard's Identity Conference has not been adequately supported with proper information at the event website shows the lack of respect for the dynamics of this kind of event. Since there is no sign up page, they will likely have a vastly diminished attendance compared to the broadcast conference days. A signup page might have actually brought in more people if they'd opened it up to more than just the attendees the first two days. In fact, bringing in new people to understand Identity in technology development is very important and this is a missed opportunity as well.

I do wish them good luck with it, but I wish that the Paul and John, with control of the conference website, understood better why what they have done with both the attendees of the open space day and the leaders may not help the day succeed as well as it should have. They can't blame the camp style for this, but rather themselves. If they day succeeds, it will be in spite of these problems, and due to Jon's and Kaliya's personal networking and leadership for the day.

idmashup06

Net Neutrality for the Little Guys

USA Today interviewed me and some other folks the other day. The article is here:

Internet Fast Lane Plan Worries Small Companies by Michelle Kessler.

Basically, it's that part of AT&T's and the other telco's new internet pricing plan, where they would charge the provider of the material to send their material through to subscribers, that is the problem.

As I've said before, we didn't make the internet to turn it back into cable tv.

The New Someone Is The Old Someone Else - Characterizing Company Cultures

For the past two years, I've been joking that:

the new yahoo is the old google
the new google is the old microsoft
the new microsoft is the old IBM
the new IBM is the old novell

part of the joke is about reputation and standing
in the cycle of being loved, then successful, then vilified
and/or bloated, then obsolete.

i kind of wonder if this still stands this way, two years later.
things have shifted a lot over this period.

frankly the new yahoo is just out innovating google for now..
but that could change.. and google is being very backward with
social things.. trying to just "engineer" everything as if there
was nothing subjective in the world, only objectivity (and the
attendant stats that back those objective understandings up.

i definitely hear a lot more 'evil' stuff about google than
before, remarks about the incredible bureaucracy at yahoo,
which might put them further down the chain now, and
how IBM, with their patents going out open source, is getting out
front again as an innovator.

what changes a company from one category to another?
these aren't even defined, and are totally in the realm of folklore..
as these ideas are more about cynicism and schadenfreude
and simplistic impressions than anything all that real.

and yet, every time i tell the joke (more in the past than recently)
people laugh a lot. so there must be something there.

We Didn't Build the Internet to Turn It Back Into Cable Tv

You know, the kind of cable TV where big entertainment companies pay off cable companies to get their channels on your set top box?

Congress didn't accept it, so net neutrality lost.

So we are keeping the system that started a year ago. It's the one that will make the internet like Cable TV.

It's critical to innovation, our companies (mine is Dabble.com) and to freedom of speech that we have a neutral net, where anything can move across it, where there is no fee to get some piece of information through to someone who wants to see it.

This isn't about tiered pricing. This is about who's packets paid the telco's fees.

This is about Hollywood keeping us from speaking, because if I'm watching my friend's video, I'm not watching Disney. Hollywood stands to benefit the most, after the telco's who charge the fees.

And Disney can afford to pay off the telcos to pass through their info, but my friends can't.

I'm going to Vloggercon today!

Hope to see you there, though you should know they are sold out!

It should be a great event. I'm speaking tomorrow on the Mashups and Remixing for Vloggers Dave Toole, Josh Leo. JD Lasica, David Dudas and Jan McLaughlin.

But we talked yesterday about making it an audience discussion, which I think is much better than a panel.

Josh Leo's We Are The Media, three times in one week!

I also suggested we play Josh Leo's video from the first Vloggercon because I think it's a great representation of user generated content, mashups, and for many other reasons, it's representative of the interesting and entertaining things going on online. In fact, I played it at the Culture, Commerce and Public Media conference during my session last Monday on User Generated Content with Kenyatta Cheese, Sam Klein, Dave Marvet. I also played the first two minutes of Kent Bye's Overview of his Echo Chamber Project, as an example of news and commentary video made by users, The Guinea Pig Dreaming video, and the Bush Blair Endless Love remix. I wanted to show the audience there (typically from archives of TV, PBS or other libraries of video projects) that users were doing an interesting variety of things.

That last one got a really big laugh.

I also played Josh's We Are the Media Video again yesterday at The Hyperlinked Society conference at UPenn and the Annenberg School of Communication. The point is, digital videos are a series of edits, and each edit, with an in and out point as hypertext, is like a video map, of links. Since it was a conference on links, I wanted to show a couple examples of linking that working in ways other than what everyone there was talking about.

I also showed some Attention Trust data, with a visualization of links a user might use to see where he goes day to day.

Anyway, if we play Josh's WATM video again tomorrow, that will be three times in a week. It's that great. You should check it out.

Haven't we been here before?

Digital Maoism vs. Voice

Isn't that much like the issues we've looked at over the past few years:

Wikipedia vs. Britannica
Bloggers vs. Journalists
Remix culture vs. TV
Flickr vs. Getty Images
Wiki's vs. Blogs

All the talk this past week about Jaron Lainer's essay, The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism is another one of those 'or' things that keeps coming up around the internet. (Or Internet with a capital 'I', if the NY Times is your style guide.) As an aside, Sam Klein of Wikipedia at the on Monday, asked everyone to please (smile) stop calling it "the wikipedia." It's just "wikipedia." Ok, back to Wikipedia. So Wikipedia is not a replacement for Encyclopedia Britiannica. Instead, you use one for some things (I use wikipedia for finding links because Google's search results for many kinds of items are too polluted and unhelpful) and a reference like Britannica (well, not Britannica, but I have lots of other traditional old style references) for things that those top down, traditional reference sources cover better.

We use reporting from professional journalists for reporting, access to places individuals can't get into, and some kinds of news, and blog posts for voice, commentary, and some kinds of news and reporting. We use remix video for humor, smaller stories and short form video, and TV for long form, high production video. We use Flickr for the stream of photo images that comes from our friends and for some kinds of reporting, and we use Getty for.. well.. they are hard to use. So we don't buy a lot from them. Wikis are used for the collection of information around a topic or event, blogs are used for voice and commentary. Collective tools are used for collective action, and voice tools are used for voice.

The thing is there are choices, based on purpose, goal, need, process and style. And the choices are based on nuances that the arguments above cannot reasonable reduce to an 'either or' situation. A single thing is not meant to work in all instances. And the beauty of the internet combined with information technology is that together they give us lots of choices. Both for production and consumption.

I think the rest of the folks who responded to Lanier's essay did a great job of discussing the subtler ideas and arguments, so I'll let those stand as they were terrific. There is no need to restate the idea that some of Lanier's criticisms do not necessarily apply to Wikipedia, or that some others do apply, in specific contexts, but that wikipedia is supposed to function the way that it does.

I just wanted to point out that online, as everywhere else in life, we make choices, and the idea is to choose the best thing for the circumstances, not to expect that all things will work in all circumstances. The internet is no exception.

Net Neutrality

First, watch the video. And then the other video. And this other video. Yah. It's worth it.

Then, check out David Isenberg's most terrific eTel talk about your freedom to connect.

And check out Save the Internet. They have tons of great information.

Then read below. Here's how I see this:

Another way of looking at this issue of net neutrality is... remember the old Highway system. Where El Camino Real on the peninsula in the Bay Area used to be a toll road, where you would not get mugged and the road was nice and fast, but it was expensive. And the Alameda (parallel to ECR) was the slow road, which wasn't taken care of, where you would likely be ambushed and was free?

Well, that's what the telcos would like us to see when they talk about two tiers. And think about what that kind of road system does to the economy of information? It's not very democratic is it? This isn't just a small or large bag of potato chips. Or dial up and broadband. It's about whether we support basic services for all people to get information. Cause if you are on dialup, you are missing much that is useful and interesting about the internet.

Secondly, the part that's different about the types of information that would be available in the slow cheap road verses the fast expensive road (dialup verses high-speed bandwidth) is that the packets would be treated differently.

The perverse part of the telco's proposal is that packets of certain types (VOIP and video, for example) that paid an additional toll, would get to you faster than those that didn't pay.

So it's not just the user who has to pay for the speed of their service, it's that the other side, the content maker, would also have to pay for you to get fast packets on a fast road. Disney and Viacom will pay their side of the tolls, but can PBS? Can little joe video blogger pay? Or will he get the same deal as the

What that means is is that the Hollywood and bit content producers would have the edge over the average person who wants to get a message out. So if you have a fast connection but joe blogger didn't pay, well, sorry, those packets won't get to you quickly. Instead, even though the user paid for faster service, they would not get all packets at the same speed. The content maker who didn't pay would have their packets come through slowly. And of course, the slow speed service buyer, who asked for a video from the content maker who didn't pay the toll would never see that video, it would be so slow.

AO Hollywood

I'm at Always On Hollywood, speaking on Thursday at 3:45pm. We're hearing Peter Hirshberg (one of Dabble's advisors and a great video story teller) talk about online video and things people are doing when they create and play online. People are eating this up -- it's a great time. I'll find the videos and bookmark them shortly.

Blog Spam from Netscape, and Netscape's Inability to Deal With It

I keep getting blogspam notifications (more than 500) after a Netscape blogger keeps trying to post what looks like automated blog comment spam with a link payload to my blog. They are here: http://mywebpage.netscape.com/ followed by pizdetcc/refinance.html (if you go to this link, it redirects to a search site for refinance and mortgages, but i don't want to publish the link, even with a nofollow).

I emailed Netscape at their policy2004@netscape.net privacy policy address. They have no abuse address, and their Terms Of Service doesn't say anything about how blog spam creation is against the TOS. So, my only option was to email the only address about any policy on their site, to let them know they are hosting spammers and not only do they not know, but it's not against the rules at Netscape.

Well... they wrote back. See below for the full correspondence, but they responded that I should contact MY HOSTER for MY BLOG. Wo.

Netscape is hosting blog spammers and this is their answer? Talk about not getting it.

Below is the original email, and their reply:

From: policy2004@netscape.net
Subject: Re: spam from your user at http://mywebpage.netscape.com/pizdetcc/
Date: April 21, 2006 6:57:11 AM PDT
To: mary@hodder.org

This mailbox is only able to address inquiries related to Netscape Network privacy. For assistance with your blog, please contact the hosting company directly.

Regards,
Netscape Privacy Team

-----Original Message-----
From: mary hodder
To: policy2004@netscape.net
Sent: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:14:53 -0700
Subject: spam from your user at http://mywebpage.netscape.com/pizdetcc/

TO: Mywebpage hosting

I have gotten hundreds of blog spam in comments and trackbacks
from one of your users.

NOTE: I read your TOS and there is no where in there to report abuse, or to tell users
that "blog spam" is against the TOS. This needs to be changed so that blog spam is made illegal by your TOS.

Below is a notification I received from my Blog's software (my blog is called Napsterization) where your user is spamming me. I have received hundreds of these attempts to leave comment spam, where the payload is a link to that uses commercial site.

Please block this user.

Thanks
mary hodder

....................
An unapproved comment has been posted on your blog Napsterization, for entry #291 (Blog Comment Spam - A New Low and So Bizarre). You need to approve this comment before it will appear on your site.

Approve this comment: =17465&blog_id=1>

IP Address: 196.40.43.74
Name: misty
Email Address: foloolk3@potran.gu
URL: http://mywebpage.netscape.com/ pizdetcc/refinance.html
Comments:

I like your website alot...its lots of fun... you have to help me out with mine...

--Powered by Movable Type
Version 3.2
http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/

Tonight: "Email -- Should the Sender Pay?": EFF Fundraiser, Debate Between Esther Dyson and Danny O'Brien

Details below about this event at EFF.

At eTech, Esther and Annalee Newitz were talking about Goodmail, innovation in spam control for email and the controversy with EFF and others around this topic. I asked them both about stats. What I wanted to know was how much (number and percentages) email is spam, how much is non-profit email, how much is educational, and how much is political speech?

My feeling was that with those kinds of stats, and an agreement that we would let the IRS decide who should get free email if we instituted a pay for send system, we could give this a try. The issue with the IRS is this: they give tax exempt status to entities who are non-profits, some political organizations and others, and if an organization has that piece of paper from the IRS, we should exempt them from fees. The additional step for political organizations might be that we also use state and federal Fair Political Practice Commissions that also have organizations categorized. But with these kinds of certifications and exemptions from fees, we could try, innovate, experiment with different email systems that might help us solve some of the spam issues we currently have online.

One thing, when I was having this discussion with Esther and Annalee, I realized that I don't really get spam. This, even though my email address is on the front of my blog. I'm sure the spam is coming in like crazy, but because the ISP that hosts my hoster is clearing away some, and then my hoster clears more at the server level, after which the remaining batch has to go through the specific email system I have set up with my settings and training about what is spam on his servers and then I have more clearing going on at the email client level on my computer, I see about one spam email every week or so. It's rare, especially considering I get 1000 email a day. So I hadn't thought for a while about what a problem this is at the email level. In fact, I see far more spam blog, or splog, spam, via comments, trackbacks and in posts and through live web search, than I do in email. So my sense of the problem was really underwhelming for email and overwhelming for live web stuff.

Anyway, come to the debate tonight, to hear the arguments for and against!

Roxie Cinema
3117 16th St (Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps)
San Francisco, California

* "Email -- Should the Sender Pay?": EFF Fundraiser, Debate
Between Esther Dyson and Danny O'Brien

In light of AOL's adopting a "certified" email system, EFF
is hosting a debate on the future of email. With
distinguished entrepreneur Mitch Kapor moderating, EFF
Activist Coordinator Danny O'Brien and renowned tech expert
Esther Dyson will discuss the potential consequences if
people have to pay to send email. Would the Internet
deteriorate as a platform for free speech? Would spam or
phishing decline?

WHEN:
Thursday, April 20th, 2006
7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

WHAT:

"Email - Should the Sender Pay?"

WHO:

Danny O'Brien

Danny O'Brien is the Activist Coordinator for the EFF. His job is to help our membership in making their voice heard: in government and regulatory circles, in the marketplace, and with the wider public. Danny has documented and fought for digital rights in the UK for over a decade, where he also assisted in building tools of open democracy like Fax Your MP. He co-edits the award-winning NTK newsletter, has written and presented science and travel shows for the BBC, and has performed a solo show about the Net in the London's West End.

Esther Dyson

Esther Dyson is editor at large at CNET Networks, where she is responsible for its monthly newsletter, Release 1.0, and its PC Forum, the high-tech market's leading annual executive conference. As editor at large, she also contributes insight and content to CNET Networks' other properties. She sold her business, EDventure Holdings, to CNET Networks in early 2004. Previously, she had co-owned
EDventure and written/edited Release 1.0 since 1983. Recently, Esther authored a New York Times editorial called "You've Got Goodmail," defending a sender-pays model for the future of email.

Mitch Kapor

Mitchell Kapor is the President and Chair of the Open Source Applications Foundation, a non-profit organization he founded in 2001 to promote the development and acceptance of high-quality application software developed and distributed using open source methods and licenses. He is widely known
as the founder of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, the "killer application" which made the personal computer ubiquitous in the business world in the 1980's. In 1990, Kapor co-founded EFF.

WHERE:
Roxie Film Center
3117 16th Street, San Francisco
(between Valencia and Guerrero)
Tel: (415) 863-1087

See the link below for a map:
http://www.roxie.com/directions.cfm

Local Muni are the 22 and 53 (both at 16th & Valencia), 33
(18th & Valencia), 14 (16th & Mission), 49 (16th & Mission).
BART stops one block east at 16th & Mission.

Public Parking is available on Hoff Street, off of 16th
between Valencia and Mission at very reasonable rates.

This fundraiser is open to the general public. The suggested
donation is $20.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Please RSVP to events@eff.org

Adaptive Path is the generous sponsor of this fundraising event. Founded in 2001, Adaptive Path is a leading user experience consulting, research, and training firm that has provided services to a range of clients, including Fortune 100 corporations, pure-Web startups, and established nonprofit organizations. The company is headquartered in San Francisco. To learn more about Adaptive Path, visit the company website at:

To learn more about the DearAOL campaign against AOL's planned system:

For Esther Dyson's editorial, "You've Got Goodmail".

The Conversational Middle: Maturing of the Blogosphere

On Saturday at Kinnernet, the last session I attended before leaving was led by an Israeli guy named Uri Baruchin who asserted that something had changed in the blogosphere, and we were starting to have a problem because a meme (my word, not his, and it's what I called it as I disagreed in the session) would not spread so fast in the blogosphere now that A-list bloggers were waning in link counts (a popularity scale because it uses a single digital social gesture, the link, and does not weigh at all the many other conversational gestures of a blog over time -- that would require multiple digital social gestures and a much more complex "algorithm" than just counting links). He was worried that the number of smaller discussions required to spread news would make the blogosphere as a whole less effective in broadcasting news, and somehow this meant there was some loss of power bloggers had been holding and was now waning.

I disagreed with his thesis, and gave some obvious statistics but also some ideas. First, I said that the blogosphere's purpose was not singular. This goes for both individual bloggers and on the whole, if there can be a "unified purpose," which I don't think there is because there are too many different kinds of blogging. Remember blogs are tools, and each person takes it and uses it in whatever way makes sense, which probably means there are 33+ million slightly different to extremely different variations of blogs now.

Anyway, back to disagreeing with the "unified purpose" idea. So, if you look at this from one view -- through the State of the Blogosphere reports put forth a in October 2004, where counts for the NY Times and MSNBC were in the neighborhood of 17 or 18 thousand links, and top 100 bloggers like Boing Boing and Instapundit had 6 or so thousand links.

At that point in time, Technorati tracked 4 million blogs and 400 million links, and now, a year and a half later, Technroati tracks 33+ million blogs and 2.2 billion links. In January, 2006, the NY Times has 55,000+ links and CNN has around 53,000+ but Boing Boing has 18,000+ and Instapundit has 5,600 links (the are no longer the number 2 blog, as that position is now held by Engadget at 15,600+ links) you can see that while the blogosphere has grown 7x and the links 5.5x, the inbound link counts of the top blogs and media has grown 3x.

Also, take into account that Technorati changed its methods of link counting last August, after several things occurred (Robert Scoble complained about its link counts in comparison to Bloglines which counts every link since it started counting, and I had reported on how link counting worked across 5 services and then other's reports of frustration with the Top 100 and A-list counts where sparce posters' links were favored over frequent posters' links). So Technorati changed from counting just links on the top pages of a blog (those posts that linked but dropped off the front pages were dropped from link counts) to any link that had occurred in the past 6 months. Technorati still counts one link only per blog, no matter it's location on the blog posts or blogroll, no matter how many links come from one blog, but all link types age out after 6 months. So these statistics for the later time frame are different and not exactly comparable, but let's do it for the sake of argument here.

So, what does this mean? Well, since there are 5.5 times more links in this 1.5 year time frame, I believe it means that there are more links made to non-A-list bloggers than bloggers further down the power law curve about , that are in what I call the "conversation middle of the power law curve" (the curve for specifically link counts), than those A-listers at the top are receiving. It means to me that while a year and a half ago, when I explained the conversational middle to people like Peter Hirshberg and Francis Piscani and thought it was far more interesting than what most people were discussing then (the top of the power law, or the existence of the power law curve at all), that now there is some evidence that as the blogosphere goes main stream, it is moving more to the middle, at least as link counts go, to more personal conversations rather than pointers to a few top media sites or the blogs that are act more like broadcasters. The broadcast model for links in blogs means that many more links went to a top blog, than they were able to link back to, because it was just physically impossible. Those top bloggers are 1-to-thousands in their distribution, and yet for inbound links counts, they have thousands of inbound links as opposed to far fewer outbound links to others.

From February 2003, here is one distribution curve showing bloggers inbound link counts in the Shirky article on power law curves:

But the conversational middle, then, and now, is both say, 12-to-12 for distribution and receiving links, or 50-to-50, or for larger blogs, maybe 500-to-200, depending on the size of the conversation verses those listening and linking back. And now the mainstreaming of the blogosphere supports this hypothesis more.

As modified from Chris Anderson's Long Tail article here is a representation of what I'm postulating:

The top of the power law curve has been referred to as the A-list, and certainly last summer, when Blogher discussions erupted at the last and well packed session of the day, and so many women expressed extreme anger and frustration at Technorati's link counting methods and particularly the there was a lot of interest in figuring out ways to reveal topic communities lower down that power law curve.

At Blogher, I suggested we work on something that would show not just a few bloggers in topic areas that were at the top, but rather sift the entire blogosphere, using as many as 22 different metrics, though some are not currently available but tool builders were welcome to build some of these out, to show "conversationalness" and "influence over time" instead of the "popularity" of link counts as the Top 100 or Top 500 that was subsequently built by Feedster, currently shows. Lots of people responded with lots of interesting ideas on the subject of how to approach this. A system like this could more accurately reveal the conversational middle, to make it much easier for more than just the participants in smaller communities of say 50, to find and expose their interests and conversations. This would also, for some of the women at Blogher, make them feel more validated or exposed as leaders in their topic areas (not politics or tech stuff), or if that was not their interest, make the Top 100 less validating and congratulatory of those who by virtue of being on the list seemed dominant, which clearly was their desire.

The idea that bloggers are not passing memes as effectively because there is less influence by broadcast style bloggers, even though more small conversations are experiencing more links going blogger-to-blogger, further down the power law curve, is silly. If people are genuinely interested in something, and have something to say, they'll blog it. These conversations occurring in the middle pass and discuss memes just as before, but the linking and diffusion of the conversation is evidence of a more mature, and interesting use of the internet, not less so. And now, if a meme crosses lots of blogs in the blogosphere, I believe it's a sign of far more interest by people, than under the earlier broadcast mode of meme spreading in the older, more early adopter blogosphere. And this certainly isn't a problem. The internet as a medium is more supportive of spread, edge conversation, than the amassing of top down broadcast distribution. The act of blogging is the act of subverting old broadcast methods of communication.

The maturing of the blogosphere with less broadcast distribution and more conversation between people spread far and wide is a welcome and more democratic way of bringing together people who want to discuss like interests. Certainly there are still bloggers who are more highly read with more inbound links that resemble broadcasters in some ways, and who PR people will continue to try to manipulate, but still, there is a shift to conversation with more symmetric linking, and that is positive overall.

Our next challenge now is how to see how small conversational communities and the attendant tools that sift these conversations can use more than one or two digital gestures, and create topic awareness of blogger groups with more than just the early adopter or blog-tool favoring metrics that post categories or tag indicators do now. These metrics too are subject to power law curves and the current uses of them one or two at at time only reflect top bloggers, or early adopters, just as link counts did before, emphasizing them over the conversational middle. When the tools of exposure change, the conversational middle will become accessible and apparent not just to those in and around a particular conversation but to those outside it.

Can you say 'it's only water' if you're in the Middle East?

I arrived in Tel Aviv, at 11pm, and around midnight, my taxi driver dropped me at the Dan hotel, instead of the Dan Peninsula as I'd asked. The man at reception was very sweet. It was midnight, and he couldn't find my reservation, and started looking for alternatives. Eventually he wanted to know again where my reservation was supposed to be and I told him the Dan Peninsula. We figured out the problem; he called a cab. I asked for some water. And he said, "For you, I'm going to bring you two glasses." After drinking them, I said, "Thank you so much." He said, "It's just water." I replied, "Can you say 'it's just water' if you're in the Middle East?" He smiled.

Israel is really an intense place. I didn't consciously think about it as an experience for travel or a country when I bought my ticket. Afterward, I was going to cancel up to the last minute because of my work, but everyone at home said to go anyway, that we were at a stage beyond where I was needed for a few days, and I should just do it. So I left them.. and it was only about 5 days away, before I'm back in the US and doing my regular work again. It's kind of hard to turn down a trip to Israel that once you arrive is all arranged.

It's a beautiful place. The road to Jerusalem is like Tuscany. The Sea of Galili (which is really a lake) and the surrounding green hills, wildflowers and farms are like California, (except for the guns a few people sport). I'm at Kinnernet, a camp conference made by Yossi Vardi, talking with people about their projects, my work, what's going on in the world of tech, and playing with robots and gadgets. It's held at a place on the edge of the Lake. There is snow on the Golan Mountains, to the north which I can see across the Lake through the window of my room. Jordan is over the next hill.

It's also been an opportunity to look up my relatives, some of whom disappeared in WWII but some of whom are alive and living in Slovenia. I can't find the main person I wanted to, but I did find some people in Jerusalem I can email later to keep researching. Being here and seeing the Holocaust museum was not depressing, as my hosts suggested it might be. Instead, I felt like I was more connected to my family and had a better understanding of what they experienced. That has been the most changing feeling I've had here.

The food in Israel is amazing. I wasn't expecting the croissants to be so good. Like Paris. Or the artisan cheeses and salads to be so subtle and delicious.

People have made art projects and are playing music, a woman who designs unusual kites is flying them in a field, and there are loads of interesting 'projects' much like Burningman without the dust and naked people around. It's a laid back environment, and maybe a much needed rest after working around the clock for months.

At one point, someone told me about how the evening news reports nighly on the water-height in the Lake of Galili. The water level doesn't look low at all, but it's a big concern. People talk about the snow melting on the Golan mountains, and we splashed water in the Jordan River. These were mythical places in my mind, coming from the US. Somehow the myths ended up there, through a combination of media and some religious references, but seeing these places and hearing people speak so matter of factly about them was dissonance inside me. Snow doesn't melt in a mythical place. I was listening, but also feeling the myths unravel.

The Live Web

Newsweek put up an article late last night on The New Wisdom of the Web, which I'm in, and quoted mentioning the "live web." This idea is something I got from Doc Searls, who told me he first heard it from his son Allen Searls. I have to thank Doc for all of our conversations about this. He is kind of an information shaman, and very wise about the web.

I do think that the difference between the web of 5 years ago, and the web now, is very much the liveness of it. The static web is email and static webpages.. and the live web is all about change, time and people conversing across time and place online.

We also put this up on Dabble, for our invited beta. We expect it won't be long before we can throw open the doors.

Dabble Announces Private Beta

We're pleased to announce our first private beta, and we'd like to invite you to join! Just send us an email address so you can be part of one of the most exciting online video communities on the Web. OK, the most exciting!

Dabble is a video remix community that makes it easy and fun for people to create, browse, and find video online. We provide the tools that put you on the other side of the lens, whether that’s a digital camera, cell phone, or video camera. Once you log in, you can:

* Drag and drop the Dabble bookmarklet into your bookmark bar so that you can easily link media you find on the Web or in your inbox to Dabble.
* Gather and organize your own videos, your contacts’ (people you know) videos, and all of the videos in the Dabble database.
* See you contacts online and share your favorite media bookmarks.
* Track the most popular tags and browse tags for new video.
* Organize your video play lists, and check out your contacts’ playlists.
* Ask for video if you can’t find it, look for film festivals to submit video to and see what others are looking for in our Ask section.

Upgrading to Web 2.0

Yes.. folks, it's time for your upgrade for the internet.

So.. I met these very sweet folks from Dalla, Texas at SXSW at a party late Saturday night, and I asked what they did. They said, we're web designers, and right now we're working on upgrading all our clients from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.

So I asked, what does that mean? And they said, well.. they have all these clients who haven't changed their websites in years and years, and now, with this concept of an upgrade, are open to improving and spending the money.

Well.. that just changed everything for me.

I thought Web 2.0 was some amorphous, meaningless, ridiculous term that no one could possibly take seriously except those VCs who write checks for fancy executive conferences. And a term that when used seriously, would tip you off to the fact that they didn't know it meant nothing and was silly.

But shoot. Now I get it. This term means something to IT consultants across the land, as they work with their clients to take them from the static web to the live web (my terminology, not theirs.. I don't think any of them will ever use those terms).

But it makes so much sense, and now I don't hate the term. I feel like well, if this is helping little mom and pop shops get a few people into better, more usable websites (we hope... they kept mentioning ajax over and over, plus blogs and wikis, and my highest hope for them is that they do it well, making things more usable for their client's users) then who can hate that? How can we begrudge them this terrific opportunity to explain the new social web to their clients, simply by putting it in terms of a software upgrade they can understand. I mean.. they all went from IE 5 to IE 6, yes? Well.. now it's Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.

So I now have complete respect for "web 2.0" in this context. Live long and prosper.

And now there is a certifier. How handy. (Note that 'humor' is one of the things that will get you certified by the Certifyr.) Too bad I didn't get their cards to send it along.

Attention or Eyeballs.. Attention or Intention.. Attention or Identity

"The eyes are the window to the soul." - Unknown
"If the eye is a window to the soul, then, the heart is the doorway to love." - Unknown.
"The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

What's the difference between the static web and the live web?
Participation.

What's the difference between consumers and users/amateurs?
Participation.

What's the difference between attention and eyeballs?
Participation.

What is attention? Lot's of people have discussed it, including Nick Bradbury, Steve Gillmor and Seth Goldstein, all of the Attention Trust. I'm on the board too, but my interest in joining it was a little different, though I believe in the core idea just as they do. To quote Seth's blog: "Attention is the substance of focus." The idea for the Attention Trust is that "users own a copy of their data" or attention stream or intention stream or whatever you want to call it. I'm going to leave the intention debate to others because while I agree with John Battelle, that these kinds of recordings can form a sort of 'database of intention' it's not my interest in this post to pick that apart.

Caterina Fake also blogged about this idea of users owning their data.

Etech's theme this past week was attention, though I don't think anyone there except maybe Michael Goldhaber really got anywhere near the idea that the difference between the eyeballs of old (10 years ago) and the attention question is really about participation, at least as far as users collecting it on themselves and reusing it, or sharing it as they desire. Not to mention the digital social gestures that people can now make, and collect, through participatory media online that go much further than the simple mouse over or clicks that were all that could be collected before. Now the aggregate of both, clicks and gestures that are much more participatory in nature are richer and much more meaningful, and quite a bit different than "eyeballs".

And what is participation? As far as the AT, it's about user control and choice, and an absolute right to participate. Or not.

Surprisingly enough, since last August, when the AT was formed and announced, it's been just so easily accepted by anyone asked, from the top to the bottom of those "database of intention" makers, that you should own a copy of your data. They own one copy of course, but we really thought it would be much harder to gain acceptance of this ideal. And yet, here we are. Pretty much everyone has said, "...er, yes, users own a copy of their data." The hard part is, how, how much, when, in what way, will all these companies share a user's data with the users.

So the reason I joined the AT board was because I feel strongly that users should own a copy of their data. But I also feel strongly that users should be able to keep that data private, have complete control over their copy, and shared control over other copies depending on circumstances, and those users have the absolute, unequivocal right not to participate in the attention economy, at least as far as sharing their own data goes, if they are asked to by some vendor or company or other entity. No question.

If Visa wakes up one day and decides to tell me I must give them my attention stream or kiss my credit card good bye, well.. the AT would need to step into the middle of that one pronto. I cannot abide by that sort of coercion, and so, my real interest in the AT is making sure that it's as much an advocacy organization for user's privacy and security from coercion, as it is for making a place for people to come to learn about how to own and user their own data and possibly interact with entities that might trade them for it, or share the rewards of turning over leads for marketing.

Omidyar, the foundation established by Pierre Omidyar to fund both for profit and non-profit ideas, has given the Attention Trust its support to explore this idea of having a non-profit, independent group supporting user's rights.

I'm also going to work with EFF (and hopefully EPIC and Markel) to make sure the AT work and the recorder tools are the most user-friendly and affirmative of user-control, privacy and security as possible. I would also appreciate any help from people in covering this as well, so if you have thoughts, please send them to me in email to mary at hodder dot org .... or comment below.

Tonight there is a talk on attention, at SD Forum if you want to come check out some attention ideas. I encourage you to attend if you are interested and in the area.

"Consumers In Charge"

I'm at PC Forum, speaking later today about "me media." There are some people using the term "users" while on stage, but in the halls and at meals, as well as from many onstage, there is a lot of use of the term, "consumer." At one point, I'd heard it so much, that I said I disagreed with that terminology to someone. After-all, the guy using it was talking about funding some company that was all about users publishing their work. He said, "... whatever, they are consumers...".

This conference feels very cynical overall, and the terminology is one of the main reasons though there are others. It's like the difference between the eyeballs of old, and attention: it's the participation. And people who participate are not consumers.

There was a guy on stage yesterday that Esther Dyson kept trying to get to say that the users could create on his site, and he finally blurted out, ".. we just let them think they are creating...". (You know there was a publicist in the back of the room saying "Take him out. I repeat. Take him out" to a sharpshooter on an ear radio somewhere. In fact there are tons of publicts and PR folks here.. many more than last year.)

It's too bad because "Users in Charge" is a great topic and Esther and company have put in a lot of work to frame these issues thoughtfully. But most of the attendees can't help themselves... they can only think of consumers buying things, being fed something packaged and consumable and neatly branded from these companies and making boatloads of money, with seemingly little care for the users, the experience or anything else.

Part of the issue is that many of the most interesting thinkers on this topic are at SXSW, where I was for a couple of days before coming here. I'm sure things would be different if danah boyd or Doc Searls or Joi Ito were here talking about users and participants.

Course, there has been a little fun:

My response to Techcrunch/Crunchnotes regarding One Web Day

So.. Mike Arrington posted this on the One Web Day dinner coming up: Is there a point to this that I am missing?

He doesn't understand that getting big political behemoths to take a look at why net neutrality is critical is really hard. So, for those of us not in the digerati, Susan Crawford created One Web Day, to get non-geeks to pay attention to how the web has changed our lives, and how unhelpful CEOs like the one at AT&T (who totally don't get it, I mean how does he even send email? much less surf the web !?! or for that matter tie his shoes?) who thinks there should be tiered pricing for every little thing, and those who serve lots of data should pay extra. I mean, dude, they do pay extra already. They pay a lot for their hosting .. and we the users pay a lot.. and geez.. isn't that enough? Or do the servers of data need to pay yet again? It's a triple pay, he's proposing. It's ridiculous!

Oh, and did I mention he wants to make the video and VOIP protocols move really agonizingly slow? Unless they come from him and his buddies. Okay, dude, it's my choice, what I click on! I don't want you altering my clicks, my internet experience... hands off!

Anyway, okay, back to Mike. So Mike doesn't understand One Web Day and I can understand that... I mean.. it does appear namby-pamby at first. But then.. think about all the bureaucrats in countries all around the world that are just starting to get a handle on all this internet stuff and still haven't even read Techcrunch yet. And if mister AT&T-clueless has his way, Mike will have to pay even more for all of those new readers to see Techcrunch, because Mr AT&T wants to charge Mike for people to see him, on top of the hosting Mike already pays for, and the charges the readers already pays to get access.

So.. One Web Day. It's for people who are not digerati.. but still.. we need geeks to get in there and spread the meme. So we proposed a dinner.. for Susan, to make her case and meet some folks on the west coast who can help with that. She's smart, she gets it, she's not namby pamby. She just cares about making the web free and accessible. For Techcrunch. For Mike. For all of you. So suck it up and sign up for the dinner. And you too Valleywag. Thanks.

One Web Day dinner in SF, March 9 2006

Next Thursday night, there will be a One Web Day dinner in SF.

Susan Crawford will be visiting and we want to roust interest in this annual event that will take place September 22nd. The event will focus on the "one web" we have not (no tiered pricing! and no keeping people away from what they choose to click on!) and on the ways the internet has changed our lives.

It's a great cause and we'd love to have you there.

Please join us, by adding your name to the wiki!

Info from the wiki is also here:

OneWebDay is coming up on September 2