PDF 2007 - Final Panel - TechPresident eCampaign Directors Roundtable

The final panel of the day has Zack Exley and Mike Turk moderating a panel on this cycle's eCampaign Managers: Joe Trippi from John Edwards 2008; Christian Ferry from John McCain 2008; Mindy Finn from Romney 2008; Peter Daou from Clinton 2008; and Josh Orton from Obama08.

Mike: Discussing how the CIO ended up creating things to move on tech within business. Similar to campaigns - once someone has the insight into managing the implementation of technology across an organization - they have the responsibility of the increased performance through technology.

Zack: DeanTV - back in 2004 was a big deal. how the whole campaign going to ask for money - every big decision was coordinated with the campaign team. Joining the Kerry Campaign, we were in the basement, in a closet - it was not John Kerry talking, it was the "beer" (Ari-Rabin Havt and Zack in their own little hovel in the campaign office - my addition).

Trippi: the issue is about command and control structures. Campaigns have problems decentralizing campaigns. In the Dean Campaign, the Internet team was huddled in a small office. This year, integration of the web team within and throughout the campaign. Some of it is due to the toolset and the opportunities to impact across the landscape.

Four years later, we now have to manage YouTube, Facebook, eventful, MySpace - need to integrate with the rest of the campaign. Have to be involved with the net. Scheduling (though eventful) is being used to pull the campaign into interacting with the web.

Zack: is your job essentially the integration of the new technology within the campaign?

Christian: they are being pulled in. Part of the reason they are involved is because of the goal of the media campaign. Someone who understood how technology integrates well into the campaign (and knows John McCain well). In our campaign, yes - I am in

Mindy: that is my job - that is it integrated. It is incredibly important, that at the very beginning, that from the beginning that they consider what it means to have the web team to be integrated into the campaign effort. Tough to think of things differently.

The challenge is getting the philosophy is that the best way to build a movement is important. There is a challenge, but it is my job that it is integrated.

Mike: integrated might be devalued. I thought that the cmapigns online was because the eCampaign person was buried down low. Discovered that at the senior staff level, even though he sat at the table, he realized that the decisions were often made and the only issue was the implementation of action rather than having the web included as part of the policy.

Zack: being on senior staff at Kerry did not mean we were where and when the major decisions were being made, rather we were about implementing the decisions.

Trippi: best example was the "We, the people" - the culling came from the web team and the senior staff, which got the fund raising, then the scripts, then the team already built up the effort - then ran it in Washington, DC. It was the senior staff being influenced by the web team and outside efforts. You see it with Obama and with Hillary and the way they announced. There is an impact. Problem with the members of the campaign not understanding the issues within the campaign.

Mike/Zack: Hillary video - how did you get her to make that video?

Peter: the trajectory has been absurd. Now that the Internet touches on so many parts of a campaign, that it is impossible to avoid the Internet. Now there are people that consult on how to do this (Josh Ross from Mayfield Strategies). Not always three people making decisions on everything.

In terms of this video, it was very direct and personal - she chose to make light of the National Anthem video. Internet decisions is at the top - there is real buy-in at the top of the campaign. Came on board as "blog advisor" in 2006.

Josh: I was not involved in a presidential in 2004, when I got to the Obama Campaign - by tone, action and attitude, we just slipped into the stream of the campaign. Hope, Action Change - the rest of the campaign see the tools that we have, and how the people are using them. Not just a segmented, isolated par tof the campaign. People are now asking questions about
I do not know what the experience was in 2004, but it must be different.

Trippi: in 2003, everyone was laughing at the Internet. Half of the senior level thought it was crazy. In our own campaign, we had to explain why we had to put up a blog. Now, the candidate calls and asks - when are we doing a video? There is a major change from before.

Zack: Can the enthusiasm be a "curse"?

Peter: People used to come to the Internet group at Kerry and ask for us to fix their computer.

Trippi: Warner's SecondLife announcement - while it was a great exploration and risk taking, when avatars were changing clothes and suddenly naked, it was a bit of an embarrassment.

Mindy: as many have written in the papers, this is the "Year of the Internet Campaign". Sometimes it is good (people dropping by with ideas) and sometimes it is bad (too many things overwhelming the tasks), could possibly set us up for failure.

Josh: Another positive, it forces everyone to very quickly, especially if you do not know what another department is doing, you have to learn very fast. Now you have to integrate to make things happen.

Peter: It really is revolutionary what is going on - the transformation of politics. Trying to work your way through the use of all of the tools and how to use them. 20-30-40 years from now, this will be seen as the time when things changed politics.

Christian: what drove this was the ability to raise money on line. When we won the NH primary in 2000 and raised 1M, then everybody bought into the web campaign.

Zack: danah boyd gave a proposal on how to do the digital handshakes - why shouldn't the candidates make direct contacts with each of the constituents.

Peter: Hillary blogging on firedoglake, on her own (my addition: did not clearly answer the idea behind danah's suggestion)

Trippi: we had Howard do that - but he was not comfortable as a blogger. We did not have "walls" back then. In the eCampaign manager's role, the "to-do" list is getting unbearable. This time, you can get inundated with each department asking for things to do on the campaign.

Zack: at the present time, candidates are going to be spending time on call-time and shaking hands. Will we see candidates spending blocks of time on the web?

Peter: we will have a live webcast - beauty of the online media an technology. In the end, it is individuals on a one-to-one or one-to-many.

Mike: campaigns tend to look at things regarding extending the moment. What they tend to do, they tend to "extend" the moment.

Peter: there is no difference between internet people and other people. It is the level of connectivity. If a high-dollar donor donates online, are they an Internet donor?

Josh: can people on the campaign understand the abstraction of an Internet team? Unlike it was a couple of years ago, it sticks out much more.

Trippi: we ad a problem with is the "authenticity" of the candidate. We could have someone write on the wall, which is more than likely a staffer. is it really the candidate or someone else.

Zack: we are not "feeling" Obama.

John: there has to be a balancing point - you lose something you gain something - no matter what you do. There will be people organizing to "Take Back the Senate". Is it a zero sum game?

Mindy: we are all working for people running for President for the United States. Do we really want this to have the candidates making the time to email be online. Do we really want them speaking to everyone?

Open To Questions:
Matt Stoller: do you believe that candidates have less perceived control over the message. If that is true, does that mean there is a shift of power away from the President? Is power flowing away from the Executive Branch?

Trippi: the big shift is to the bottom - power is moving to the people. Numbers are participating even more than before. Glen Reynolds - great book - but you have Goliaths and Davids. Is the Edwards Campaign building the slingshots so they can do something about these issues. Now it is about change.

Aud Mmber: Trippi felt that there was a difficulty. Bush had a moment where he picked up the phone and it was replayed over and over. Hitting one person was valuable.

Zack asks: What would it take for you to believe?

Trippi: one example - Dean's tuna fish sandwich in front of the computer when Cheney was having a $2000 a plate dinner. People could not believe that it was happening - it was incredibly "authentic".

Peter: the moment is magnified by traditional media - it just expands on its own. It can be magnified on its own.

Josh: there is a level of cynicism: call three TV crews and have this

Ari Melber: Will we have a "justin.tv" like candidate?

Mindy: absolutely. Unedited information will happen. (my opinion - not in this cycle)

Josh: there is content with Obama talking to others, much more personalized, the mechanism is there - much easier.

Ari Melber: How do you plan on taking input on things other than theme song. For example: minimum wage, etc and take it into the campaign so the feedback can be placed within the campaign and the governance. Or do you not see that role that way.

Peter: most successful initiative was the petition for the resignation of the Attorney General. While humor is important, the information.

Audience Suggestions:

• Less control of the message, let the people speak
• Use eventful to make an event happen by the people
• Forget the swing vote
• If the candidate can not blog, get a group to blog together.
• Post your calendar
• Register people to vote with a widget
• Create a widget on google
• Have a real debate

PDF 2007 - Embracing User Generated Content

Coming in late...

Josh Marshall: imput from the readers is key to everything you do. Sort of open source journalism. But use it in a highly mediated way. On Talking Points Memo does not comments - legacy concept. Josh got used to email communications and filtered/mediated. Very little user generated content.

Want to ensure quality content - best way editorial is the best way to highlight higher quality content versus wiki work that allows for user-generated. Started this in 2000 - never heard of open-source journalism - he just responded to the positive feedback and it was not until 2004 that he started using the blog as a tool for mobilizing. It was the Sinclair Advertising effort that he made an efort and wanted to get things to happen and work with people to accomplish something. Did something similar with Tom Delay, Social Security and then the ball started to roll.

Moderator: reporter - it is your credibility, your name. politician - projecting an image, then you have an outsider making videos and comments that becomes associated with something outside of the mainstream.

Why is mySpace doing a two-state poll? Jeff Berman (mySpace): political activity: Katrina, mid-term elections - after Impact Channel and the Presidential MySpace pages. Friend do have benefits in this community. Straw polls make sense - and the users desire it.

Question to Steve Urquhart - why are the electeds not allowing for transparency showing the bills that happen? The Republicans have crippled themselves with this issue.
Rep Urquhart - candidates are open during campaigns, after being elected are being closed. Understandable bills are needed. We need to clarify the neutral description supporting pro and con argument. people need to understand the arguments. Words really matter - and, instead of an or. Need to flesh-out all of the people. Need informed discussion.

Queston to Eli: maybe we need to do our own hosting.
Eli: network theory - barriers to exit. The more important myspace becomes the next email, it becomes more difficult to generate the social capital elsewhere. Mysapace is becoming the next email - espcially if there is not democratic structure. Myspace and FaceBook are walled communities where they have control or they are a "true community" which has trials by community to make the decisions, instead of the company only.

Jeff Berman: invites all to come and be involved.

Question to panel: who is building the next organization to allow them to form natural organizations?

Question to Eli: the challenge of "gotchas" becoming the defining moment.
Eli: it is not just about user-generated content, we (as citizens) have to become more sophisticated at being more capable of understanding the complex dynamics.
Rep: just the fringes are just talking amoungst themselves.
Audience: fringes

How do you engage the moderates in the public conversation?
Rep: engage them in the issues that they care about (IMHO - not particularly enlightening)

VideoVoter - voter education - Betsy: centrist voter education is boring. people think they want to make their own decision, but they often just want to be guided. Too many choices out there to be guided in some way.
Jeff Berman: mySpace My Syate of the Union - the winner was a centrist - one one hand, on the other hand.
Betsy: It really has to be both sides. You are always going to "piss someone off".

PDF2007 - Godin Speaks on Political Conversations

Politics is the "fashion business"

Great presentation

Middle people are average - who are professional at ignoring

Geeks and nerds want to be heard from - connect with them. The message starts with them.

Web is the biggest haystack of all time - your website is a very small needle.

Stand for something that the geeks/nerds will choose to talk about.

750,000 years ago - we were hunters or farmers. Politicians are all about hunting - everyone else is about hiding from the hunters.

Human beings love doing what human beings are doing - you can not do the macarana by itself. Why do orgs focus on having private stuff, when public is so much more powerful.

Cumulative advantage - huge reward of being part of the shorthand.

Candidate to voters - targeting, now work the grapevine.

The most powerful non-elected official: Ralph Nader - 1962-1994 he spent $0 for advertising. Instead of looking at the world as a funnel, turning it into a megaphone. Amplifying people who agree with you. Get lots of people doing it for you.

Get the current conversation and

The Fashion/Permission Complex:
Be remarkable -> Tell a Story to Your Sneezers -> They Spread the Word -> get Permission -> follows the cycle

PDF2007 - Create the first techPresident

Andrew publishes the challenge of being the first techPresident:

1. Declare the Internet a public good
2. Commit to providing high-speed wireless Internet access nationwide
3. Declare "net neutrality"
4. Instead of "No Child left Behind" to "Every Child Connected"
5. Commit to creating a "Connected Democracy"
6. Create a National Tech Corps

Almost sounds like Andrew is running again. Nah....

Tags: PDF2007, Andrew Rasiej, techPresident, National Tech Corps

PDF2007 - Live Blogging On the Front Lines - Part 2

Micha is talking about tools they are evaluating on the PDF website - sounds similar to what I was doing for PoliticalWarez.

At techPresident, they are showing us tubemogel - showing the content as to how the presidential videos are performing. Adidtionally, allowing for widgets of content from techPresident.

Danah Boyd (danah boyd) - Digitally Shaking Hands
ow do we define a "public"? Physical space. What we take for granted in the physical world versus the networked world. How we can identify how people enter into space? How candidates engage others n the physical space? Very push-driven idea access of information. The national political campaigns focus on how money is pulled from online.

Look at how people are engaging with life ONLINE - how they use it as a form of "public life". Understand the practices and how they are employed. Friend networking - do it really work? By and large, they disappear. Friends are the main audience as the places they are watching and who are watching them. Politicians - are not engaging.

Major feature - comments - allows for people to comment on the site which raises a persons face to being someone who comments and is visible to their friends. By having politicians commenting on a profile gives people a feeling of connecting. The people connecting already are fans.

People outside of NYC - they congregate online in the online spaces to hang out. Properties are fundamentally different. For properties in mediated publics:

1. persistance - what you do now, will last for ever
2. searchability - today's young people can be tracked, find their friends where ever they may be
   
3. replicability - people can play out as a bullying
4. invisible audiences

Students and young people are already developing the skills that allow for handling public lives as much as politicians and celebrities

Farouk Olu Aregbe - The Million Strong for Barack
Giving the story of how he started the effort - waiting for the world to change. Taking Democracy into his own hands.

Matt Stoller - The Making of the Netroots
"Only challenge is between you and your imagination" - Tom Friedman

"Crazy Uncle" theory in politics - said things that were true but was very uncomfortable. These kind of candidates did very well online all the time. This says something about internet politics.

1. Unlike traditional - they got peer-to-peer
2. These people appealed to the people who emailed

"The Open Left" - all organizing around a set of principles.
Started in 1998 - Clinton's Impeachment - moveon.org petition became 500K - response to impeachment. 2000 around the recount, 2002 rose in parallel in Dean and the issues regarding Iraq - each betrayal (media, political elites)

Now bloggers run research, raising money, running candidates - parallel to the existing political process.
Civic participation built the system today, demanding global, open system. This will be built into our model of government. Back to a decentralized model of government, not the centralized model.

Series of actions that betrayed and materialized to fight against the issues today. The New Right using the tools of the 1970s, who brought us direct mail and George W. Bush.

Openness is incredibly compelling - we have had a taste of the power. It is as if we are listening to the crazy uncle and discovering...that he was right.

Tags: PDF2007, matt stoller, danah boyd

PDF2007 - Live Blogging from the Front Lines

Here I am at Pace University in New York City, and just got amazed by the presentation from Lawrence Lessig, focusing on opening the debate on copyrights.

Lawrence Lessig
In 1881, we were a pirate nation, did not respect the copyrights of foreign nations. While some is good, ALL is not better. As Obama said, there are plenty of methods for addressing the deate. We do not need the proprietary controller. Looking for the freedom of the Presidential Debates - but with the proprietary networks (e.g. FoxNetworks), there are the use of copyrights that go against the inherent freedoms. Lessig makes some compelling arguments during his speech.

There are at least two ways of looking at the issue...

JD Lascia: Brewster Kayle and JD to make a Remix system

Tom Friedman and Eric Schmidt chat
TF: Where are you guys going? What s the new, new thing? The macro frame?
ES: Integrating search information into "universal search" - all daa into one search system, no more silos.

TF: Internet the new dial-tone?
ES:

TF: Moores Law in search?
ES: Network effect - makes the network more valuable. Can use iGoogle which personalizes the results to your personal search based on what you do. 10 years from now, google might say to you: "Good morning, you are already late"

TF: What do you think will be the personal aspect/impact on politics?
ES: Negatives: very small group can analyze the natural mistakes in human life and exploit them. No one is perfect, and if a politician makes a single mistake, someone can use the power to take them down.
Positives: before TV-way and after TV-way: when a TV camera in their face changed their persona. They now have to understand life in the world of personal media
50 personalized reading that would sound kind of hocky, but would actually work.
"Truth detector"? The tools and energies are availabl e to the citizenry to keep politicians honest.
Fighting urban myths - snopes - how the Information Revoluton will teach students how to navigate and search and learn on their own/from their own.

TF: Book called "How?" because you are so transparent - GWB could not be president if he want to Yale now, especially with camera phones and such. Resume was okay - because you got to write that proxy. Now, current employers can look across the web and see what you wrote an what others say.
ES: I think we should allow students to change their name with minimal efort at age 21 . It is not until after college that students begin to realize the impact of "over-sharing". People are always now in the "media frame". All of us are individual agents of photography.

TF: We knew each other when the world was round. How has that changed when you are now a global figure?
ES: We can all be absorbed with media. Public features have to maintain their reputation - and little things can form memes. We tend to make a comment and then a fact. The brain works such that patterns are formed. One data point is a start, two points become a "fact-pattern" when the points might be totally incorrect. About biases: one they are set, it is very difficult to unset. Confirmation bias: everything you see confirms the original bias.

With google, google becomes the "facts" that people rely upon.

TF: Bharain story last year. Ruling family lives in a palace. This time, the election was using google Earth to understand the the impact of the ruling family on the local territory had impacted to land, things were emailed and threatened the election. How will google handle the potential "national security threat" that google could impact?
ES: When they shut down the google Earth and then turned it back on, it made the original story even more important. Every phone has a GPS, every phone has a camera, why can't the photos captured have the GPS coordinates connected with the photo itself? How do we handle that? Painfully and a lesson we address one incident at a time.

TF: What's happened with China? Are the Chinese finding ways getting around?
ES: Appears to be something called the "Great Firewall" - does prohibit access of some content to China. We had to be subject to the media laws in order to affect change. There is more than one legitimate point of view. If we omit any results, we tell the Chinese citizen that the information that was omitted. This seems to cause the citizen to find ways around to find the content in others ways.

Chinese political discourse has changed. google marketshare is growing. The arrival of broad access of information has to be good for the eventual arrival of content.

TF: Should google be regulated as a public utility? Become transparent?
ES: We are trying to be transparent as muh as we can be. There are plenty of governments trying to regulate us. Principles: 20% time - tech folks can work on projects that can change the world, 70/20/10 - 70% of money spent of search

Five years ago were about growing, 18 months ago - we started focusing on outreach and transparency. Using YouTube providing us a channel for documenting what we are doing.

TF: What are some trends that are emerging AFTER you purchased YouTube?
ES: Incredible complexity of the media world - insane rights management structure. Slows down a lot of decision making (inertia). People get much more excited about video than about words. YouTube is following a different pattern than TV. Average person was that one user watches ten videos, 3-5 minutes each. Looks like video is on of the keystones of social media. Explosion of content is very valuable - very long tail distribution. google has the best answer for some kind of information.

TF: If I want to get hired at google, how do I go about it? How do you filter?
ES: Number of hundreds of recruiters - try to find the top talent. We have tried to put in a scientific method to analyze with a unique interest. First VP of Engineering was an amateur astrophysicist. More important metric for success if recruiting. Most of you are in the creative world - you need o have a group of people with a broad set of interests.

Rhoads Test - it did predict eventual success in school. The fact that you could take the test and pass it was the best indicator of passing school.

TF: Synthesis comes from people who can connect dots
ES: Innovation is the strength of America. Internet has been the place were a small group of people can create more. In he Interent, all of the ideas will be "tried" - bopdiversity effect.

JeffJarvis: what would you recommend to candidates do?
ES: YouChoose 08'. People are not used to using the medium for the best effect. Simple thing - I want everything I do/record be available to one person. All the other stuff, after the professional content - this will lead to an openness and excellent seize the medium

Sanford: What lessons can we take from international campaigns?
Will accelerate a more open dialog - they are sensitive to the will of the people. For eample, you become a dictator and close off the country. The population could be physically "shut down" but Internet has been the single greatest expression of personal freedom.

Andrew Rasiej: why do politicians not understanding the authenticity of the current medium
ES: it is generational. Video has always been about delivering sound bytes. On line video tends to need more humor, people lose interest quite rapidly.

Comment on blocking of social networks in the military: ES - we would prefer they would not.

Another: how can the internet/google help in the narrowmindedness.

BobF: old technologies - the Internet can empower the individuals
ES: I do not think politics is going to go away - I think it will increase the conersation to increase. Balance between group interests and individual. How does the Internet help strengthen the conversation/exploration. When their voice is heard past their village - does the world become more flat or more polarized? Become more sensitive or more aligned with their like groups. We are learning this now in the great experiment now.

Tags: PDF2007, Eric Schmidt, Lawrence Lessig, Tom Friedman

googleNYC Speaker Series: Chris Dibona

Just came over to googleplexNYC for the tail end of the Open Source Talk at google with Chris Dibona (his website, company project site) and discussed about google's contributions to the open source community. Interesting to me, while I missed the opening of the talk, Chris is incredibly friendly and affable with everyone who comes to the microphone asking all sorts of questions. My best part of the presentation has been Chris' answers to some of the questioners:

1. What is the favorite thing you would like to be coding?
   Chris has not coded in majorly in five years - his wife often suggests, "why don't you code this weekend?"
2. What can we do to help out if we are not good coders?
   We need good writers, lawyers (Software Free Law Association), bug reporters
   
3. How is a person like "me" (a hipster artist looking for visibility) going to benefit from open source? I use WordPress, is that open source?
4. Can you tell us how many exist in google?
   I can not give any specific numbers about .
5. How can you teach people how to participate in the open-source community if you are creating a new open-source project?
   Ed Note: I will have to look at the YouTube site for the replay of this presentation for the answers
6. Open Source Applications
   I see slow adoption of the open-source Linux desktop.
7. What extent are the google apps going to be open-source?
   Not easy - the infrastructure is almost prohibitive and we need to maintain the code base. but we are investigating portability of the applications at some time, but I can not say much more.
8. I think being a manager teaches you to code in "memo"
   

Interesting conversation and very accessible. Will have more when I see the YouTube video.

Recap this semester at Cooper Union...

I have never been so busy in the past week as I have been this week. A number of terrific things have been happening, and I am so proud of the accomplishments of my students for their entire effort. Please, let me explain.

Cooper Union has a wonderful history of innovation and entrepreneurship in the areas of art, architecture and engineering. This week, the school celebrated the groundbreaking of its new Engineering Building that is to be completed in 18 months, in time for the 150th anniversary of the creation of Cooper Union. A lofty goal, but one that has magic in it for the future of New York and the tech community within it.

I have been an adjunct professor here for about two years and have been amazed at the students and their work, especially their ability to work themselves to the bone when faced with almost impossible tasks. This semester, I got to instruct in "systems" in Mechanical Engineering and "emerging software paradigms" or Web 2.0, for short. The two classes were very different in style and content, but the students were the heart of what Cooper is proud to show as their very best.

ESC161 - Systems Engineering, Mondays 6-9pm
In a former life, I was a robotist - working on a new robotic manipulator at Stanford, building a control system that would allow a mechanical arm to work with incredible speed and precision. I have always been fascinated with "systems" and how they work, and I remember fondly my control theory classes (yes, sounds kind of strange, I know) where were would determine the equations that would govern the operation of a system and then design a control/compensator to deliver the performance we desired.

In my class here at Cooper, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the mechanics of systems so that my Mechanical Engineering students could understand how the physical world could be modeled by mathematics and how, when they take Controls next semester, they would understand how it all "works". It was a tough first half of the semester, and the first test was a killer. But, I was impressed with the students resolve to understand the material after the test, and how we - yes, me - worked to figure out how to get everyone to understand the material. The second test, which I am in the midst of grading, was longer, but fairer (IMHO). But, the thing that impressed me (and infuriated me) was the simulations that the students accomplished. No, they were not that magical. But the extra effort that some of the students made was extremely impressive, and made me smile that they had gone that extra mile. And I wanted to say thanks to them.

ECE463 - Emerging Software Paradigms/Web 2.0 Paradigms
This class was borne out of the Red Hen Spectra project - where I had built a team of students who are working on a collaborative curation project for chemical spectra (yes, extremely esoteric) but discovered that programming done in schools is primarily about simple problem solving with one customer, the professor. For my class, I chose to come up with a different customer, the owners of problems that could be solved by using Web 2.0 paradigms (e.g. collaboration, mashups, fast applications). The class was brand-new, and 10 students took on the challenge to help me build the course.

The first half of the course was a survey about the concepts of Web 2.0 and migrated to how to do rapid application development and product requirements. Instead of being handed an assignment, the students had to find "customers", address their problem, and define their own deliverables due at certain dates. We spent a bunch of time on processes, but we also did an excursion on user interface and usability so that, instead of a simple, command-line interface, the goal was to build a full application, from database to user interface - complete with wireframes, use cases, feature specifications and a marketing requirements document (ala Garage.com).

The final grade was determined on their product (did it work as specified) and their presentation to a group of investors, entrepreneurs and other interested parties. As you can see on the two articles, the students did exceptionally well:

I was very impressed by what the students have put together in the very short timeframe. Each of the ideas could be marketable with some tweaks. The teams focused mainly on what the tool would do, not as much on revenue or go-to-market plans.
I could tell that a couple of the students were nervous. I think colleges and universities need to offer more classes and make public presentations so that students can gain confidence in this area. This becomes more important as everyone wants to create the next Google. Pitching to a VC or other parties can be a make or break and these forced presentation opportunities are critical.

Allen Stern, Center Networks, "Cooper Union Web Projects Review -- creative and innovative!"

and from CNET,

This afternoon, I went over to NYC's Cooper Union to sit in on the final project presentations for the Web 2.0 Paradigms class, a hands-on course in the school's electrical engineering department taught by adjunct professor Sanford Dickert. In this course, the students--who were required to have software development experience--created their own Web applications from start to (very beta) launch, with a focus on the end user experience and what kinds of consumers would use such a service.
...
But who knows? These are projects that were conceived and launched in a span of six to eight weeks. The students clearly all knew what they were doing, development-wise. If they continue what they started, some of these could turn into interesting pieces of webware.

Caroline McCarthy, CNET: Webware, "Web 2.0 Gets Schooled"

When you get a chance to see your efforts turn out in such a way, all I have to say is thanks to all of these students for their hard-work and dedication. They did an incredible job and deserve the kudos they got in both of these articles.

Now, I have to finish grading these exams (yikes!) and get the scores in. Red Hen is still moving forward (we spent Friday cleaning the lab from top to bottom) and I am only now getting a chance to reply to emails and to put up this post.

Thanks to Caroline, Allen, all of our visitors on Wednesday and I wanted to make a special thanks to Profs. Fred Fontaine and Carl Sable who helped me put the Emerging Software Paradigms course together and Prof. Stan Wei for giving me the opportunity to teach the Systems Engineering course.

See ya after the summer. And keep an eye out for Red Hen Spectra.

Yi Tan Tech Conference Call - twitter

Social Network/twitter top with Ev Williams, Howard Greenstein (Social Media Club), Deb Schultz, Ben Rattay (change.org)

Ev talking about twitter is a social networking tool, SMS less. All sites will eventually be SMS. Categorization as a social network is becoming increasingly helpful.

SMS as it gets blends in and gets mainstream.

OpenID is becoming more mainstream.

Change.org - give people a way to get involved with activities with change.org

Alot of sites are becoming really good at one service, and not being ubiquitous. Valuation is equal to number of names/email addresses/mobile numbers.

Joining each social network is the heavy lifting - not really - in each social network,

Social network is already in your address book.

Uber-networking services: sixdegrees.com - never got to the opportunity.

Ben: Dopplr and no specific value. Couldn't LinkedIn/Facebook do it? Not easily - it is about information architecture. Could so a crossover of stuff since it will never be good enough as using Yelp.

Are we see an explosion of innovation and variety - and the one with the best "information architecture" - Yelp adds compliments for social credit. Basic functionality is the same, but the community incentives determine the "feel" of the site.

Deb: architecture helps to define culture. The hub and spoke mentality (Facebook) versus OpenID which is owned by the individual. The architecture helps determine the "temperature" in the room.

Jerry: open architecture allows the platform to be used into other services/repurposed functions (e.g. LinkedIn could not easily be used to become Yelp).

Plasticity: can the products be made to be plastic. Ev: big fan of being a very focused product. twitter is just the right balance of focus and openness. Too many people widen the product they build too quickly, and do not stay focused.

twitter is gearing toward the usual crowd - maybe when the size grows, it will skew more toward the younger crowd (Sanford's opinion - nah)

Likely business models of social networks three years from now?

GoodContacts: multiple business cards. Allowing people to have multiple identities.
Experimenting on the "patterns in the wild"

No physical/tangible metaphor in the "real world" - it is a verb, not a noun. Ev: look at "blogging" - it is now in Microsoft Word. So, the features migrate to the main process.

TRIZ invention (see wikipedia)

Is this some federation of peer-to-peer data collaboration? Ben: very similar to NetVibes model. Allow you to see the niche services in one place. The incentives in the big companies will keep from being "open" - big companies are very, very proprietary. We do not want one big social network - I go to a social network because I want "something", I do not want a big bloated social network.