After a hair-raising ride from the airport — I was driving, ’nuff said — I’m here at Esther Dyson’s PCForum. Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union is the second speaker. (I got too late to see Howard “multiple intelligences” Gardner.) It’s unusual for PCForum to have a union represented. It’s part of the theme, “The World Wide World.” It’s not just about tech. I don’t know how I’m going to manage…

(Gender Note:: Of the 31 featured speakers, 10 are women.)

Stern talks about the importance of unions to the American dream. [My father was a pro-union lawyer for NY State.] The largest employer 30 years ago was GM. Now it’s Wal-Mart, and it takes multiple Wal=Mart jobs to earn a living wage. Our children are on the way to being the first generation to do worse economically. He says unions havew made big mistakes, such as focusing on work rules when employers need flexibly. We’ve gone from 1 in 3 to 1 in 12 union members in the private sector.

We should try something else, he says. We should follow Diana Farrell of the McKinsey Group Institute. She suggests that we use some of the savings gained from off-shoring to supporting our unemployed workers.

Esther inteviews Jerry Yang of Yahoo!

Yahoo has hit its tenth anniversary. Jerry says that, as is typical in tech, we think that in the next ten years we’ll get to do what we thought we would have been doing in the past ten years.

Esther pushes him on whether he finds any ethical problems dealing with China. Jerry refuses to say Yes absolutely. He says that when Chinese officials explain their position, it make sense to him: China doesn’t have a tradition of free press, so when people have access to sites, they worry about the “lack of veracity.” They’re trying to do an “orderly transition” to an open Internet. “That transition is going to be managed by the government.”

Esther: “My sense is that they’re terrified of disorder.” Jerry points to the scale of the changes they’re managing, in order to say (I think) that they, and we, don’t want the disorder that would come from not “managing” the change.

Esther: Which way are you heading? Personalization and community? Or are you going to turn Hollywood on us?

“We are good example of a company trying to figure out how to marry content to this new medium.” Yahoo is only concerned with “the best stuff,” wherever it comes from. “To be able to build your personal networks, that’s really hard to do. No one’s done it right.” We have to be good at both: Watch the latest content and be a “place where users congregate and discuss things.” It’s an integration process.

How much by acquisition and how much by in-house development? Both. Acquisitions are primarily for the people. Well, also for the product. [Yahoo bought Flickr today, as everyone already knows.] He refers to Flickr as a community site, which is [imo] better than talking about it as a photo site.

Esther brings up Andy, Howard and Jerry and asks them about courage. They all talk about the courage of others and deflect the idea that they have any particular courage themselves. Howard says that he’s surprised at the distance between what his colleagues are saying about Larry Summers in private and in public. He says that courage is a muscle that needs to be developed, and points to Ralph Nader and Margaret Thatcher. But, he says, both over-reached.

Howard says we’re too big a country to have one best educational system. The Jesse Test: Is there a school that would be right for Jesse Helms, Jesse Jackson and Jess Ventura.

Jerry wants regulation to increase trust, although he thinks that’s not going to be enough without community norms. [Ack]

Scott Heiferman (meetup.com) asks how unions work as organizations become napsterized. Andy responds that they’re trying to figure it out.

Mitch Kapor comments that the folks in this room who run companies should wonder if the standard 80-hour work week gets in the way of education. “This stuff isn’t abstract. The way we run our companies has a direct impact…” [applause] Bob Frankston says that the best educators teach students how to learn. He does this in response to Andy’s repeated references to Catholic schools as models. Andy responds that we need to measure if we’re going to have an impact.

Howard says he’s working on a book about the five minds we need to cultivate: Disciplined, creating, synthesizing, respectful and ethical minds.

Mitch Ratcliffe asks Andy unions perpetuate the idea that employees can be treated as a fixed aset. We should recognize that all the industrial age models are broken. would the SEIU be willing to be treated as a group of contractors… Andy says the premise is right, and that we should think of unions as a community and ask what we can do with such an entity.

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