Tag: blogs

leverage each other

An experiment in Ridiculously Easy Group Forming, if you are going to OSCOM, simply trackback, pingback, link to (assuming you have full content in your rss and an rss autodiscovery link tag in your weblog), email, or simply comment on this weblog entry.
By using trackback, pingback, or simply linking, you are helping spread the word about this weblog entry, and hopefully others who are going will then see it and do likewise.
Then check back periodically (or subscribe to this comment’s rss feed) to see who else is going.

very nice idea. it has been my goal for this conference to make it interactive, and let people schmooze even before the first day of the conference. meeting people is such a central element of any conference, and blogs can greatly increase the value for the conference goer.

sociology vs technology

we had our first blog course last night. it went rather well considering 🙂 the bottom line seems to be that i’d like to talk about the social impact of weblogs, while the audience expect the technical nitty-gritty. it will be interesting to fine tune the program, find the target audience, and go live.

Davos of the mind

They work very hard, attending sessions from dawn to nearly midnight, but expect the standards of intelligence and analysis to be the best available in the entire world. They are impatient. They have a hard time reconciling long term issues (global warming, AIDS pandemic, resource scarcity) with their daily bottom line foci. They are comfortable working across languages, cultures and gender.
Welcome to Earth: meet the leaders.

such starts an inside account of a WEF participant. the account is rather different from just 3 years ago. much gloomier. we learn that

The global economy is in very very very very bad shape. Last year when WEF met here in New York all I heard was, “Yeah, it’s bad, but recovery is right around the corner”. This year “recovery” was a word never uttered. Fear was palpable — fear of enormous fiscal hysteria. The watchwords were “deflation”, “long term stagnation” and “collapse of the $”. All of this is without war.

on the brighter side

Serious Islamic leaders (e.g. the King of Jordan, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, the Grand Mufti of Bosnia) believe that the Islamic world must recapture the glory days of 12-13th C Islam. That means finding tolerance and building great education institutions and places of learning. The King was passionate on the subject. It also means freedom of movement and speech within and among the Islamic nations. And, most importantly to the WEF, it means flourishing free trade and support for entrepreneurs with minimal state regulation.

time to add some analytical blogs to my daily dose. such as british think tank demos, novelist bruce sterling, and of course, former WEF co-organizer lance knobel.
apologies to lance for the blatant title rip-off.

blog meetup

just discovered this blog meetup (which is stillborn in zurich, so far). an opportunity to try it out, maybe good things will come out of it. i have opted to be a host for the first meeting:
Wednesday, Mar 19 @ 19:00
the location is not set yet. i wonder if my homies feel like joining? 🙂
i’m usually not a big fan of these regulars tables, but having been at the junto i’m convinced that there is some appeal to the idea, and assuming it attracts the right people, lots of serendipity to be had.

the wall

America’s oldest university has hopped on the Internet’s hottest new trend, hiring software developer Dave Winer to help get students and faculty blogging.

lets hope other universities get a clue too. harvards influence will make sure that many who would otherwise dismiss the topic are now exposed to blogs. i wonder when zurich university will bite. there are lots of walls to tear down for sure.