YiTan Tech Conference Call - Tempest in the Blogosphere

From Jerry's original email:

In early April, some teasing and badgering online ran out of control. Anonymous commenters became abusive and threatening, and blogger Kathy Sierra responded in a way that lit up cyberspace.

Soon the story ricocheted out of cyberspace, making stops on Salon, BusinessWeek and eventually CNN. The first week ended with Sierra and Chris Locke, publishing a joint statement that helped calm the waters.

Jerry started out with apologizing for what could be perceived as framing the call in a potentially negative way - wanted to be sure that this call was a discussion of feelings and how we personally felt, rather than finger-pointing and recriminations.

Jerry: what were your personal responses in regard to these issues:

• What is the general state of cyberspace discource? Civility in general?
• Discussion on gender in the blogosphere
• "Cute Kitty" moniker - how this became an issue
• Labeling in blogs - what can we do to minimize the negative discourse

Quick and dirty history of the story:
Meankids.com by rageboy, then Bobsyouruncle - all sorts of threats, Kathy was targeted and chose not to go. Got a lot of attention in the world. Blew up into Salon, MSM. A week later, Kathy and Chris showed up on CNN and issued a joint statement (potentially brought together by Tim O'Reilly).

Nancy White and David Reed - discussing the issue in general.

Nancy: was not online when it first unfolded. If we rush to judgment, we will screw up.
First rush, Kathy is a friend - and immediately made her defend Kathy. Her personal reaction was as a friend, a mom, a blogger and immediately had a defensive reaction in terms of the attack. Then she thought - waitaminute - we do not have all the facts. Online, we immediately rush to judgment.

DocSearls (on IRC): It isn't just a rush to judgement. It's about where that rush ends up, in aggregate. You don't so much get a "piling on", but a kind of buzzy hive swarm, where everybody makes the same sounds about the subject. It's a kind of amen corner.

Nancy: People were immediately passing judgment - you should be tougher, men were trying to advise as if they had true experiences like this. The issue migrated from Kathy to gender, then the conversation totally shut down.

DocSearls (on IRC): In the absence of facts, the ratio of opinion to facts reaches the infinite. It becomes better to say nothing than to issue yet another opinion. I reached the point where I realized I *couldn't say anything* to help, unless it was to provide more facts. Black-hole status had been reached.

DocSearls (on the call): was brought in when Kathy mentioned his name. "Blackhole" issue - no more facts were forthcoming and opinions were becoming the dominant factor. We had to take things "offline". Blogs are really the new pulpits. Maybe it is broken.

Jerry: blogging is not a dialog, rather a duologue.

Something about blogging makes opinionating too "newsy" - there is no commons on the Web yet. Like a real "public place" - blogging is not it. (e.g. Tim O'Reilly's call for "code of conduct"was him getting on *his* pulpit). In Europe, they understand the need for public spaces FIRST, then you build your personal and business around that. In the US, we overserve the individual and underserve the collective.

Doc's reaction to the story: shock and frustration. First call received was claiming the Chris *must* have done it - especially since he was "so good at Photoshop". Immediately became a blandishment of opinion. It became a huge time suck - that he resented. It brought the enemies to the forefront and (ed. opinion) friends were stalwarts.

A lot of good work did not get done because of this "thing".

Weren't there good lessons in this to be found? Yes and no - blogging has been something I have enjoyed, but not a large part of my life. Considering stopping blogging - much more work that is being accomplished with real progress (VRM at Berkmann Center, other projects). Doc felt the release of the VT files/Cho materials by NBC on his blog may have been a big mistake.

Hives gather around the "black holes" - becomes a large "suck" of time.

Nancy: interplay between blogs and MSM. Pandora's box is opened - reaction rather than analysis.

Jerry: MSM did not help in the healing, rather helped in the controversy.

SWITCH OVER: Heather - go back to thinking about this personally. Situations of where people have power and do not have power. Despair in should she event get engaged - is this really an opening of conversation. Where is collective engagement?

Pip: Blogging seems to be able listening more than speaking on. Wants to be in the receiver position, not a specific position - to allow one to evolve themselves. In a meeting, better to listen since you know what you know, and what others know. Want to be where people are "open to discussion".

Nancy: spaces online - nurtured online - by deep relationship and trust. Anonymity can happen, but often destroyed. Was extraordinary in the Israeli/Palestinian forum - first three months was good and then it fell apart.

Dennis: Saw a lot of gender and power relationships. When Danah Boyd posted - it was a light on the issue to show what was happening and gave him an appreciation of what happened. Had not thought it was happening STILL.

Posted without fact checking - because he wanted to help. What he could be responsible for and how he would conduct himself. Very much aligned with Nancy's perception of "personal responsibility" versus "code of conduct".

Nicole Lazzaro: lampooning and satire might have gotten misunderstood. By violating social norms, created more emotions. Shocked that it was happening to an individual.

PhilWolff: surprised it spiraled out of control so quickly.

Trudy: came at this very late - learned about what happened. Was not really surprised at what happened and the comments on public spaces. Which is why she does not spend time there. Lots of blogosphere places which do not have the tools or the spirit (interested in the depth of the connection, not the quantity of connections). There was no community manager to take care of the negative posts - on DailyKos, trolls are there to clear the negative comments.

DocSearls (on IRC): "Black holes as entertainment = Blogging as television, as tabloid culture, where celebrity is everything and no minds ever change but merely swim in trivia."

HowTo:
Doc (on call): need something new - blogging is ten years old - tagging works, syndication - very early in the development of whatever we are going to make of the 'net. We need the "geeks" to invent something new. We are trying to aon a 'planet' that has not terriformed. Blogging has turned into People Magazine - 70MM bloggers.

When AOL opened the pipes, the web changed. There are downsides to having everyone getting involved. Need more conversation to happen, instead of lobbing opinions. (Jerry's opinion: very diverse).

Heather: having a person "present" will overcome the need for a 'code of conduct' - how to have your true self. Scaling civility well or intimacy - has anyone seen it happen?

DocSearls (on call): open-source community - very brutal, someone at the top, very challenging - maintains civility through management. "brutally meritocratic", but have developed methods over time. Scaling civility should be possible, intimacy can be more difficult.

Dennis: example would be in the Euro acceptance in Europe.

Heather: when you blog, you are very naked, and being naked on a blog is being very vulnerable. "Being intimate in public" - intention is created. Witnessing in public.

DocSearls (on IRC): I love what Kurt Vonnegut said: "You've got to be kind." That's very hard when you perceive other people as "bad", deserving of rebuke, and at a distance.

Nancy: how can we be in communities in the networked world. The boundaries are in motion - we are trying to refigure them. The North American view is that anonymity and privacy is very different than the rest of the world.

Most communities have four stages - the way to true communities is through chaos. Either by leader (lead us) or MTA (emptiness).

Credits to Jerry on his recap and Peter Kaminski (and others on the IRC) for their quoting abilities.

From the ground on PodCampNYC...

Got here a little late today and was meeting with various people before coming in. The sessions I have participated in are:

Video Compression for Podcasters

• Discussion on video compression techniques from Andy Beach from Zoom In Online
• Great set of links for video compression (send Andy an email at andybeach AT gmail)

The Power of the RSS Feed as a Marketing Tool

• Discussing the use of RSS feeds as a marketing tool from Bruce Chamoff of Long Island Podcast Network
• The discussion was more about how RSS (kind of) works - a little confusing, but trying to get people to understand the concepts of RSS and syndication
• Lots more discussion on how RSS is truly NOT SIMPLE for normal human beings

AxL - The Attention eXchange Language

• Discussion by John Frederico from On Digital Media on the models of how to exchange attention information between podcasters, viewers and marketers
  
• Difficulty with iTunes and the closed-nature of iTunes with giving viewership information
  

Punch Cards, Ed Sullivan and 8 Track Tapes - What the Facebook Generation Can Learn from an Ex-Hippie Chick

• Discussing the metrics of trust and engagement by Nancy Shenker of theOnSwitch Consulting and how very undifferent the marketing tools of the past are appropriate for today
  
• The New Awkward Moment by Howard Greenstein - great article to read about handling strangers on social networks and "link sluts"
• Nancy's points for "Timeless Truths" (T^2):
• Host: T^2 = quality - variety - excitement
  
• Chat: T^2 = manners - timing - freshness
  
• Community: T^2 = mutual interests - respect - symbiosis
  
• Friend: T^2 = connection - trust - fun
  
• Eyeball: T^2 = connection
  
• Engagement: T^2 = true interest - loyalty - spending
  
• Post: T^2 = know your audience - good timing - good penmanship
  
• Shuffle: T^2 = listen
  
• podcamp: T^2 = camaraderie - new growth - new rules
  
• Come and post some of your favorite points-of-view on Nancy's blog
• Discussion of avatars and trust
• Barry: social network allows for ability to reconnect with friends and there is nothing that will substitute for eyeball-to-eyeball, belly-to-belly connections
• Twitter: why do I twitter? To keep connections...reduce the distance
• Know that people who have been using social networks for years are more saavy on the use of technology the way gear heads of the 50s and computer geeks of the 80s were are able to use the technology for their benefit.

Beyond Monetization - The Currency of Relationships

• Discussion by Chris Brogan, Whitney Hoffman, and Julian Smith
  
• Internal conversation with yourself, know it and be able to express it with themselves and others
• One-to-many conversation starts with a conversation with yourself
• Check out the video by Mitch Joel at the PodCamp Tornoto video archive
• If there is something you are passionate about, there is always a community out there on "the Internet" that you can connect with and share the connections
• Listen to Your Kids - get parents to anonymously talking and gets parents listening. He spends money to get in the sharing of the content for the listeners and bloggers are connecting to it.
• Goodnight Burbank - discussed the extra legwork that Hayden did connecting with other bloggers, videocasters and others that have grown the viewership and relationships with our shows. Gordon is now "twittering" at http://www.twitter.com/GordonWSmythe.
• Bruce from LI Podcast - share and be generous and you will find the karma that connects in the long run.
• Concrete Takeaway - meet someone at Slate, make them a rockstar on your podcast/blog and see what happens. Pick someone other than the speakers.
• Chris Brogan - makes sure he can build up people when he meets them and he generates such good karma without asking
• People talking to people - the main premise with social media
• Famous podcaster - community rallied around him, Internet connects people and empowers others to make an effort
• When you connect things to a person, you become invested and make a difference

Making a F*&$ing Difference in the World with Social Media
The session speaker did not show up, so Noel Hidalgo (www.noneck.org) and I took over the conversation. Topics included:

• the efforts of kiva.org in terms of microfinancing via widgets
• various sites that support individual advocacy and aggregating the efforts like:
• worldchanging.com
• treehugger.com
• Celeban - social network, Witness from Peter Gabriel
• care2.org, change.org, commongood.org
• globalkids.org - reflecting efforts within SecondLife
• discussion on how the technology we have today is an evolution of the way we exchange information - from spoken word, to written media, to recorded audio and video to exchangeable content in all forms
• I recommended The Starfish and the Spider by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom

Tags: podcampNYC, social networks, social media

Yi-Tan Tech Conference Call - Space Travel

Conversation about space travel with Esther Dyson:

1) Where have you got your interest in space travel initially?
There are three magic reasons: father built a rocket ship, dot.comers are now moving into space. The Silicon Valley is the remainder of the "truth" - really hard work and creates all the value. Love frontiers - Eastern Europe. This is the new frontier.

Following Elon Musk - X-Prize people are using their own money - no one can complain if they waste that.

2) What is the landscape for institutional investors?
In the realm of air-taxis in space. When she did FedEx, the rounds of money - the round three people made money, but would not have been in round three if they were not in round one and two. She is an investor in Zero-G and Space Adventures which are quite ready for institutional investors. Someone will more than likely die - which will shake out the companies/industries. She is going out to Russia to watch Charles (the guy who wrote Microsoft Word) launch into space. Fee: $25M.

SpaceX, Virtual Composite - building rockets. Still a way to go.

3) When will this start to materialize? How many years from now when we see space differently?
It is here, just early. Five years from now, will be a small launch of effort.

4) What role has the X-Prize been responsible for this?
Clever form of financing - $10M purse. Not only did it encourage numerous teams, but it was also funded with a $3M insurance policy. Very creative financing.

5) What is the role of the "priesthood", the establishment?
NASA - is, in part, encouraging private enterprise. But still a frictional component. NASA funds interesting research, financial markets fund real projects.
Large companies (Lockheeds, Boeings) - not used to dealing with small companies. Environment is hostile to indifferent.

6) Why space and not under the oceans?
Space is just much more romantic - the ocean is swimming and getting wet. Space is freedom and liberation. While we may be wrong - that the oceans are also the same sense of freedom and liberation. The Whole Earth Catalog is about space. Photo spurred on the ecology movement.

7) What are the reasons to go into space? Mine resources? Travel speed?
All and other than the sheer pleasure. We may want to do terraforming - terraforming Mars: can not do it with machines, must do it with biology. Why not do it on Earth to fix global warming? Because there are people here and if we help people on one side, we might hurt on the others. Might need the "extra space".

Pip: over the past 5-10 years, have there been 2 or 3 "ah-ha" moments on this problem that could be looked at in a different fashion?
Still love the "space elevator" - just create an elevator instead of rockets to get into space.
Essence of space tourism are people who have more money than time.

8) Is this going to change our moving from point A to point B? Did we miss the intercontinental boat?
Air taxis speed things up immensely. Supersonics will speed things up if you go up high enough.
Nova Spivak on one of the MIG flights that took him up to the stratosphere.

9) What will this do to "earth culture"?
Creates a new sense of possibility, in the end, people will perceive borders differently. Tremendously exciting - still places we have not explored. Draw the attention of kids to space and science - key to our success in the future.

10) If we had a backup planet, will be end up taking care of our planet less?
Poor people usually are the ones who move on - to push the bounds.

David Spector: The Bush Adminstration will control space for American interests at all costs? When will the conflict occur with the military and the private interests and what will the outcome be?
Space race is now between us and the Chinese. US will have a hard time thinking they have control of space. They simply do not have control over it - and there is no legitimate claim.

Everyone going into space, forcing Americans and Russian to work together. The Russian government is acting like a commercial player. No private ventures happening.

She loves the zero-G flights - feels like swimming with flippers.

Had to leave for another meeting...