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December 11, 2008
Ulrike Reinhard has posted a video of my talk at LeWeb on webby leadership. The slides and notes are on SlideShare (although, because I uploaded a PDF, it doesn’t have the animations).
What really thrills me about the new question tool the Obama administration has posted at Change.gov is not the tool itself — although I like it very much — but the webby way it was introduced: Put it up, see what happens, adjust it as necessary. Imagine this approach applied by the federal government off the Web when appropriate.
I also like that the explanatory text for the “Skip question” button is “meh.”
Apture, a free app I’ve been using on this site for many months, enriches links. You select a phrase in your blog and click the magic button, and Apture suggests links to you from multiple sources and in multiple formats. You select the ones you want, and Apture then puts a link in your post that, when clicked, pops up the selected info, and will play even play the selected video or whatever that. For example, here’s an Apture link that will display info that I’ve selected about Madonna.
Now Apture has done a special data collection for Congresspeople. Great idea. Click on the little Congressional dome next to the Nancy Pelosi’s name to see an example. (The Washington Post has started using Apture for this.)
December 9, 2008
Abraham Maslow is famous for his Hierarchy of Human Needs:
Self-actualization
Esteem
Love/
Safety
Physiological
(RageBoy has a different take on Maslow.)
In discussion with Thomas Crampton, we have come up with the Hierarchy of Traveling Geek Needs:
Free wifi
Power outlets
That’s as far as we could get.
December 8, 2008
I haven’t researched this — I’m in Paris for LeWeb and am too beat to actually look stuff up — but it seems to me that I haven’t read any of the “First 100 Days” speculation that usually fills the newspapers during the transition. I assume and hope that’s because the media — and we the people? — understand the magnitude of the problems. Why, 100 days is like a billion dollars these days … a drop in the bucket.
December 7, 2008
Seb Chan blogs about the fascinating possibilities opened by the OCLC connecting their WorldCat record of library holdings with their collection of info about authors (WorldCat Identities), and making it available via an API. (Via Hanan Cohen)
Ethanz has a great post — abstract yet grounded in the personal — about the difference between those who can explain one culture to another and those who simply fall in love with another culture. Fascinating, as always.
December 6, 2008
NYTimes.com has come a looong way.
At first, all the links on the site pointed to more of its own content, except for ads, as if the NYT was the only place ever worth reading. Then the NYT took a big step backwards with the Times Select program, locking its most valuable content behind a pay wall. But the Times saw that, although they were making money, they were losing influence. So, they came up with Times Topics as a place where we could point our links, enabling the NYT to climb up the Google rankings. And they unlocked their oldest archives, which is a great social boon.
And now they’ve started Times Extra: Articles on the NYTimes.com site now are suffixed with links out to other newspapers and blogs that talk about the same topic. So, at the end of an article on, say, Obama’s economic pledge, there may be a link to a Washington Post story, a post at Crooks and Liars, and maybe even a comment section.
Consider how unlikely such a thing would have seemed ten or even give years ago. Well done, NYT
#hohoto is shaping up to be a good-works good-time for all. It’s using the digital media we love so well to organize (in a bottom up way with scare quotes around it) a real world charitable event and party that will also push back out into the digital world. All the money goes to the Food Bank.
You have to love the way in which Twitter, which seems like the most evanescent means of communication since the polite nod, is enabling our deepest need to connect. From Twitter to community to social responsibility. +1 all around.
Latter that morning: From Michael O’Connor Clarke, one of the “organizers,” via email:
Quick update: we’re now at $8,000 raised in just a tad over 72 hours. 300 tickets sold, and some great sponsorships.
This thing is rocking. The venue have agreed to waive all costs. Everything – rental fees, staff costs, they’re even giving us the booze at cost (so we can mark it up a tiny bit and direct all the proceeds to the Food Bank). Eventbrite have agreed to eat their usual fee for the registration page. The outpouring of love around this thing is just outstanding.
December 5, 2008
I haven’t listend to this (I’m in an Amtrak station riding on some good soul’s free but flaky wifi), but here’s a podcast interview I did a couple of days ago as part of the LeWeb prep ‘n’ PR. I talk sort of about what I’m going to be talking about there, which (unless and until I rewrite it yet again) has something to do with leadership as the age of information ends. In the current draft of my overheads (Yes, I called them “overheads.” I’m old.), the connection seems to be that both the Information Age and leadership as we’ve generally known it assume/create scarcity. When the scarcity goes away, so does the primacy of information and the old idea of leadership.
I’ll try to say more about this as my overheads (Yes, overheads, dammit! And dittos that come from the mimeo machine!) go from draft to locked-in objects of fear and self-loathing.
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