Saturday, November 18, 2006

IT Conversations: Pierre Omidyar on the Omidyar Network - looking for businesses with a social impact


Listen to a conversation with Pierre Omidyar interviewed by John Batelle on the philosophy and business model for the Omidyar Network.


I have tagged selections of the speech here on Veotag - click on the key characteristics tag at 09:30 for the punch line of the speech for entrepreneurs seeking funding from Omidyar.

Veotag Player

The full 34 min audio can be found here on IT Conversations:

IT Conversations: Pierre Omidyar

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Want to drive yourself crazy?? Watch the Blinkx video wall


Blinkx

Robert Scoble believes that videocasting is the next big thing - In this day of YouTube and Blinkx who will have time to do anything more than watch Robert Scobleize his way around the tech world?

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

A Graphic Portrayal of the 9/11 Report - Slate Magazine



In "comic book style" Slate brings the 9/11 Commission Report alive. Pictures emphasize the key elements of the Report and graphically portray the horrific story and the confusion that reigned in the government and the military preceding and following the attack.An indictment of our ability to deal with complexity.

After reading The Starfish and the Spider, Thoughts Illustrated: The Starfish and the Spider - The Unstoppable power of leaderless organisationsI am convinced that terrorist organizations are like the Starfish - and we need to develop better solutions to protect ourselves and to reduce the effectiveness of terrorist Starfish.

Thia is important history to know- click below for the Slate Story:

The 9/11 Report - By Sid Jacobson and Ernie Col�n - Slate Magazine

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

The Starfish and the Spider - The Unstoppable power of leaderless organisations

I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing Ori Brafman the co-author of this book give a PPT presentation of the key concepts of their book. It was also interesting to learn that Tom Barnett was instrumental in helping Ori get connected with his book agent - small world indeed.

I am hopeful I can persuade Ori to upload his presentation to Slideshare so that it can be shared with others who were not present for his talk. If that can be done, I will post it here and provided key exccerpts.

The more I think of the use of slideshare, the more it appeals to me as providing great microcontent leverage for remixing and personal "casting"

Tom Barnett's first best seller, The Pentagon's New Map was greatly influenced by Tom's PPT briefings at the Naval War College and the Pentagon. Perhaps they are still available for sharing on SlideShare.net.

This is a great read for anyone interested in the Network effects of " leaderless organisations" Click here to buy it :
Amazon.com: The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations: Books: Ori Brafman,Rod Beckstrom

Monday, November 06, 2006

Mark Anderson-Welcome to the Blogosphere!


I have been waiting a long time for Mark Anderson ( publisher of the Strategic News Service newsletter and producer/curator of the annual Future in Review (FiRe) conferences to join the blogging world. (The picture above captures Mark's lively personality in action at the podium of FiRe)

WHY? As a regular reader of his predictive newsletter I have always wanted to share with others Mark's wisdom and his uncanny ability to predict the intersections of key trends in technology, markets and global finance - to be "ahead of the curve"( which happens to be the name of a new version of his newsletter designed specifically for the investment community.)

Now that Mark has joined the blogging world, it will be possible to share the gems of Mark's wisdom and his broad global connectivity to key influencers in tech and finance with others who have not yet heard about this amazing guy.

Click here Strategic News Service Blog � Blog Archives � Welcome to the SNS Blog

Although the intro to the SNS blog is a bit stiff, I am sure Mark will find his unique voice in the blogosphere and I hope others will find his pearls of predictive genius as insightful and pragmatically useful as I have over the past decade. Welcome, Mark!!

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

From Sex,drugs & Rock&Roll to Cyberculture ICON -the Odyssey of Stewart Brand



Originally uploaded by ddavison.
Had the great pleasure of a conversational presentation by and dialog at the Institute for the Future on Monday nite with Fred Turner, Stanford Professor of communications and author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture.

I will attempt to get his presentation up on Slideshare, but in the meantime I will append my version of his key slide which visualizes the book in one frame. (image placeholder)

Here is a link to reviews of Fred's book:
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner, introduction

Stewart Brand was significantly guided in his early counterculture days by his correspondence and deep interaction with my hero Gregory Bateson. Fred offered me the opportunity to visit the Stanford Library to read Stewart Brand's diary and his correspondence with Bateson - which I will try to do next week.

From 3 decades of practicing Bateson's process of seeking "the patterns that connect" I believe my search may be nearing a point where the patterns may be coming more visible - Exciting potential for both an increase in my metaview perspectives and the opportunity for a deep dive into the history in which Brand and I lived ( albeit in separate spheres)

In this book narrates Brand's role as the "Barnum" of the co-evolution of :

• the Whole Earth Catalog
• The Well
• The Co=Evolution Quarterly
• The Global Business Network
• Howard Rheingold and Virtual Communities
• Larry Brilliant and SEVA Foundation and now Google.org
• The Grateful Dead
• Kevin Kelley
• Wired Magazine

It's an important history lesson for all of us who have lived the odyssey in tangential ways and as Fred says: "this is history where almost all of the actors are still alive" .... and actively continuing the odyssey.

Click here to see the graphic "capture" of the Future Commons dialog that followed Fred's illuminating presentation. From Counterculture to Cyberculture on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

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