Jimmy Wales talk at NYU Free Culture Club 1/31/07 (updated)

These are my raw notes from Jimmy Wales’ talk at NYU.
Pictures are here.

Right before Jimmy starts speaking, John Perry Barlow walked in.

First few slides – general overview of Wikipedia, open source, the creative commons license process.

Wikipedia is under the GNU licence.

This is Jimmy’s first very open talk about Wikia.

Wikia - all the algorithms will be open source. Free search – as in transparent, testable, researchable. All the good research has been behind the walls of commercial companies (like Google, Microsoft, etc.) No place for computer scientists to go to do such research.

Want it to be:
Participatory – bring best elements of Wikipedia to the problem of search
Open
Democratic

Question about search privacy;
If you’re searching for Paris Hilton do you want the celeb or a hotel?
If we keep your search history, we might guess, but how do

“I love google but I have this increasing feeling that they’re watching everything I’m doing…[he has the] same feeling about Yahoo making everyone use their ID for Flickr.”

I really like Google. They’re free as in beer, not releasing all software into the open, not transparent though. Blackhat SEO folks try to reverse engineer Google, to put their results higher, but average webmasters have no shot at it.
Not fully participatory, but they do watch user behavior and modify user search results accordingly.

We won’t make the system locked down to keep out spammers. We’ll figure out ways to make it a little more costly for spammers and a little easier for users to use it [and report/demote spam].

Question on the open corpus of search info from Wikia – even though it will be somewhat anonymized, even some sets of data that were supposedly anonymous have been shown to be able to be analyzed (implying the AOL leak).

They want to be careful on this – very tough question for Jimmy.

Question about censorship: Jimmy and Wikipedia have not cooperated with China, for example, in censoring. Support projects that allow people to get around firewalls, etc.

The One Laptop Per Child” $165 computer was on the desk. It is a ’setup question’ so that people can learn more about them and so they could show it off. Pretty interesting - had not seen it before - the screen does a 180 degree turn from the position showed in the photo so it can be folded back flat and used in a ‘book mode.’ The ‘ears’ are antennas to make a mesh network.

Jimmy will spend all of March in Tokyo learning more about the people using Wikipedia - Japanese is the 4th largest language represented in Wikipedia.

BestBuy is using wiki software for all 100k employees - employees can share information about products, procedures, etc for all employees. This is improving customer service in the company.

Several questions about international languages, translations, and how to improve search for other langugages. Kind of technical.

Wrapping up now.

Technorati Tags: Jimmywales, wikipedia, nyu, freeculture

powered by performancing firefox

Sphere: Related Content

Is this really called Social Media? Yes!

Jeremiah Owyang is one of the brightest and most influential commentators on Social Media and Web 2.0 today (I know because I track these things with BuzzLogic, a company I advise), but he writes in a post this morning that he hates [has been challenged on the use of] the term social media, and asks that you help come up with a better term [if you have one]. The discussion on his blog is insightful and very helpful in bringing more people to an understanding of this issue, and the proper usage of the term - something that has gotten way out of hand with regards to the term Web 2.0, with some enterpreneurs calling every piece of software Web 2.0 regardless of how true it is. This is a conversation I appreciate, and one that I had with Mike Hudack of Blip.TV back at Portable Media Expo 2006, which you can listen to here in this ‘Beercast’ entitled “What is Social Media Anyway?” He also felt the same way as Jeremiah, but changes his mind after our conversation - perhaps in part due to the level of beer consumption before noon that day.

As with many other commentators on the naming of Web 2.0, I not only have a problem with the 2.0, but also with the simplification of using only the term Web. If you look really closely, that term is completely wrong on many levels, but that did not stop it from being widely spread as a defining phrase of our era. The thing is, “AJAX Internt Applications for Communications and Collaboration” just does not roll off the tongue as easily - nor does it allow for much individual interpretation that creates personal relevance - it makes it hard for people to ‘own’ the term and its wider meaning. When talking about Web 2.0, I get to the heart of the matter, and it is not much better. I often talk about the idea of Web 2.0 (or Web 2.2 if you were paying attention in November) as the Live Web, Open Web, and Social Web - and so much more. Memes are seldom perfect usage of language, they are really just symbols of a deeper meaning - a linguistic iconography if you will.

The language wars (like that we went through around the broader idea of what I have been calling the Social Media Release) are a part of what we go through in conversations and deliberations to get to a deeper, and more widely accepted meaning. This process is good to a degree, as long as good intentions are at play and people are focused on supporting one meaning over another rather than predatorially attacking and pushing down another. Unfortunately, there are still smart people who resort to slinging mud and derogatory aspersions at those who disagree with their view on the world instead of being engaged in the longer discussion required to come to an understanding of the real points of disagreement. Personally I feel that if it is that important, people should take the time to consider and discuss all viewpoints of other respectful participants - as I am doing now, even though I am serving as Conference Chair of Content Week in San Diego at the moment.

To get back to Jeremiah’s concern though, I do think the key word is Media [definition 2, noun specifically from that link]. What makes this era and this medium different is not possible to perfectly encapsulate for everyone’s agreement - becuase what is different is unique to everyone based on their socialization and prior experience. It is really some different versioning of the broader concept of media - which can only be called Media 2.0 because of the broad acceptance of Web 2.0 and its wicked sisters. How about “New Media 49.5″? Perhaps we should take into account cave paintings, Guttenberg, the penny press, radio, television, interactive and all the other versions of media we have experienced? Yes, what makes it different is the interactive nature - the read/write Web - the conversational media - participatory culture through media - knowledge sharing - collaboration in the commons - blogging - podasting - convergence and so much more. But aren’t these all just subsets of the broader term already?

The phrase that is gaining wide acceptance amongst real people (not just early adopters and technologists), is indeed Social Media - I saw this sometime ago actually, registering our domain name in March of 2006, watching it gain wider acceptance with each and every passing day since. While I appreciate Chris Saad’s perspective (most especially his insights around the importance of attention), I feel that Media 2.0 is a term that appeals to a technical audience more so than my grandmother, and is only practical because of the success of the meme for Web 2.0, not because it would stand on its own. It will work for some people and I am sure it will gain traction, which is fine, and the Media 2.0 Workgroup will be successfull (with such bright writers, it darn well should) but the reality is that the phrase Social Media ecompasses the key aspects of the deeper meaning we are speaking to, for the broadest group of people. It is a medium for communications between people - this is about bringing people together through communications and collaborations tools within the context of the different passions and interests they care most dearly about.

I came to the naming of Social Media Club through looking at the brilliant insights of branding shown by 37 signals and their approach to the symbolic use of language through widely understood terms, rather than nonsensical words which needed meaning created for them. BaseCamp, where we come together to prepare for our journey and organize our stuff. BackPack, where we keep our stuff to take with us wherever we go. CampFire, where we gather with colleagues for warmth and conversation. Wow - they are smart aren’t they!

In regards to whether or not this is a buzzword, or a meme with legs, I think it is here to stay. For some it replaces the use of the term Web 2.0 - for others it represents something completely different. David Blumenstein talked to me about Web 2.0 being the tools and technologies and Social Media being the content (can you please chime in here David). To an extent, it is the content produced within different forms of Social Software, but again it is so much more, and we could debate that term for quite some time as well, but let’s not just yet - after all, we do need to get some work done between these deep conversations from time to time…

Community Marketing could work well - but again, only to a degree and only for certain people. I am sure this will be discussed widely at the upcoming Community 2.0 Conference if you are interested in that conversation (BTW, I am speaking there and will be blogging there occasionally). In a sense it is related to the idea of using the word ‘audience’ to refer to people. It is the view of the world seen from inside an organization looking out, rather than looking at the world as a whole which is an important underpinning of this era - with the people inside organizations, participating in the communities, interacting with other people, realizing their common ground and working together for their collective benefit.

Besides, we also know that “Social Media” Club is adaptive once all media is digital, we live in a 3 screen world and have fully realized persasive connectivity with very rich read/write tools through integrated hardware/software solutions like that I imagined for sharing and annotating television programs in my post on Twitter from a few weeks ago. As the term Social Media loses prominence in a few years, the pronunciation merely changes to “Social” Media Club. The focus on media however, is a part of our roots and our desire to bring all media producers together to understand the Importance of Social Media.

What do you think? Am I on target here, are we going to be ok a year from now known as Social Media Club? Or is Jeremiah right, and we are still in need of a better term?

[update - just heard from Jeremiah, and we are in general agreement - he is merely responding to challenges he is getting from those against the usage of the phrase, with a challenge to them to find a better one]

This is the third of my weekly columns we are calling “A View From The Middle” - it is still in its birthing phase, so the format might change a bit, but they are generally deeper posts about the important things I see happening, not on the fringes, but in the middle with everyone else. You can subscribe to the feed for these posts here which will be my specific musings on Social Media, Social Software, Web 2.0 (uggghhh) and the broader socioeconomic transfromations that are underway.

Sphere: Related Content

Share your Corporate Blogging Policies

At the Social Media 2007 conference there was a discussion about sharing blogging policies. Someone at lunch has asked if Social Media Club had a repository for this. We do now: please share your blogging policies here by putting in a link or upload a file at our Wiki.

Thanks to Racquel Wright of Acuity Brands for this great suggestion.

Sphere: Related Content

Revolution in Marketing Mini-Conference (more)

Today’s Arizona Republic had a wonderful story about the “Revolution in Marketing” mini-conference that Scoble and Chris are speaking at on March 1 in Phoenix, but didn’t have a link to the web site.  To register for the conference, click here.

Sphere: Related Content

They Get It #2 - Shel Israel

I had the distinct pleasure of having lunch with Shel Israel on Friday January 26, 2007 over in South Park. We talked about a number of interesting topics, but most of all, got a chance to get to know one another as humans. Afterwards, we sat down for another installment of our Podcast series entitled “They Get It”. We talked about what it means to ‘get it’, what it really means to understand social media and what tools he uses. This is a fascinating discussion with a long time communicator, whose life was forever changed by the Cluetrain Manifesto. This impacted me deeply as well, as did the inspired writings of Rageboy and Doc. In fact, I believe that this wave of social media is the manifestation of the ideals first set in motion by the Cluetrain. Rather than saying “get it”, we could be saying “are you on the train?” Our conversation could have went on for hours and hours. Now that we have had the chance to become friends, I am looking forward to more of those opportunities in the near future.

Recap - Social Media Club NYC - 1-23-07

On Tuesday, January 23rd, Social Media Club in New York met at Fleishman Hilard. Almost 50 people attended, and the meeting was covered and blogged by Donna Bogatin at ZDnet blogs (Monetizing the Conversation).

For those who missed the meeting, a podcast will be uploaded shortly that contains the entire meeting. You will find pictures from the meeting on Flickr here. Below is a summary of the meeting by David Blumenstein, who took the notes, (as verly lightly edited by Howard Greenstein.)

Social Media Club says “Hello World”

New York’s most recent Social Media Club meeting put itself out there for all to see. Howard Greenstein, the organization’s co-founder, has gone “all-in” to borrow a Texas Hold’em poker expression, leaving his day job to pursue this full-time.

The Social Media Club (SMC) was presented as the second disruptive wave after the World Wide Web in the mid 90’s. Coincindentally, Howard and the author of this report were founding members of the WWWAC, the World Wide Web Artists’ Consortium back in the day, and this organization, as such, has a similar feel to it.
SMC is designed to assist its members in leveraging their online and in-person relationships, building upon credentials, and shared knowledge within the group, as well as reaching out to the local communities, schools and not-for-profits. One of their programs is to have members “adopt a blogger” and help them get on the right track online.

To be clear, this is a membership organization running as a “not-for-loss” and there is a dues structure, which can be found here: http://socialmediaclub.org/membership. The stated benefits of being a member are: a social network, discounts to industry conferences and organization
Discounts, and of course a t-shirt and other organization paraphernalia. The intent is that the organization be funded by the members for the members.

The mantra for SMC: “Stop telling people they don’t get it, and them get it, by building a broader understanding, establishing standards and ethical guidelines. Throughout all of the SMC meetings I have attended the concepts of transparency and disclosure have been made paramount.

In a period of 4 months, 800 more than1000 people have met in 8 cities around the United States, with four more locations coming on board: Dallas, Austin, Atlanta and South Florida.
This New York meeting was held on the premises of Fleishman Hillard, a leading Public Relations firm. David Bradfield, Senior VP and leader of its Digital Team had been the only member of the group to put agenda items on the wiki, so he was able to set the agenda. He served as one of the meeting’s facilitators putting forth the evening’s agenda:

* What tools are people using to track Social Media Content?
* What is the perception of Social Media? What matters most?
* Is Social Media redefining Advertising, Public Relations & Marketing?

Tools:

Even with 40+ people in attendance it became readily apparent that the environment fostering Social Media and Web 2.0 development is still so new to so many. The responses to what tools are being used barely scratched the surface: News Readers (Ranchero’s NetNewsWire, Google’s Reader, and EspRSSo), followed up by:

Touchstone - http://www.touchstonelive.com - Stay Informed Without Getting
Distracted

and

Netvibes - http://www.netvibes.com - Personalied news, data feeds, pod and video
casts aggregated on personal website.

All of the above are worthy of merit, I (David) was just struck by such a small list and the lack of vocal enthusiasm on the part of the attendees to champion their respective favorites. Time to stop preaching to the choir. We are far from a common toolset and as for barriers to entry, let’s just agree that they are not physical.

From the assemblage it was clear that both measurement and metrics in a Social Media/Web 2.0 world are wholly subjective. People were hard pressed to agree on how to gauge success, let alone what constitutes it. For those of you reading this who do “get it,” understand that you are clearly in the minority and that there exists such a chasm - the size and scope of the Grand Canyon lends itself to understatement.

Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations are three wholly distinct and separate discipines. This is what I was told and had drummed into my head growing up. Well, these times are a changing. There’s a mad scramble for all these folks to establish their footholds and much like the automobile industry, there definitely will be more hybrid organizations encompassing the three disciplines. It will be interesting to see who runs out of gas first.

The evening was capped off by the attendees breaking into small clusters and banging on about authenticity online. Four distinct groups with their own take.
Here is a sampling:

• The environment is self correcting, and the audience will decide for itself
• Disclosure above and beyond all, maintain relevance, manage thresholds
• Online journalism become the new traditional media
• Greater emphasis on friends and colleagues to prioritize and legitimize

FWIW

David says: I am not sure I trust the general public, or more aptly the audience. There are a lot of television programs that I liked, which got cancelled due to ratings, and more than enough trial verdicts I wish were overturned. The idea of bloggers as journalists and as our “new media” is indeed evolutionary, even revolutionary, but do you really want to have just anybody be your messenger? The idea that we are now relying on our friends and colleagues to help us sift through what is and what is not speaks volumes as to how overwhelming this has become.

The online video space has come full circle. Much like television in the 1950’s, a whole new generation is re-discovering this visual medium and how it can be exploited. Media people are elated. The Internet has doubled back a point in time, a paradigm, which they not only understand, but can sell, albeit in much smaller chunks.

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under About SMC, Education, Events, Social Media Tools, Uncategorized · Leave a Comment  

NewComm Forum: Social Media Conference

January 25, 2007

NewComm Forum is the premier conference that brings together industry leaders from around the globe to explore the impact of Social Media on professional communications, business and traditional media. There are 28 interactive sessions in four conference tracks focusing on corporate communications, PR, marketing and advertising, new media and journalism. Get hands-on training, learn best practices for Social Media program implementation and hear the latest case studies.

The 3rd Annual New Communications Forum, takes place March 7th-9th at the Venetian in Las Vegas, NV.

Chris Heuer, SMC Co-Founder, will be on hand to moderate a session on ‘How to optimize the Social Media Release for the future of PR’. We will also be organizing a blogger dinner for Thursday night (8th) - so stay tuned for additional details which will be posted on the Events page shortly.

For more information on the NewComm Forum, or to register, visit the NewComm Forum website or call +1.800.493.4867. We are proud to announce Social Media Club members are eligible for a $200 discount, simply reference discount code 612SHN to save $200.

We hope to see you in Vegas!

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under Conference, Education, Events · 7 Comments  

Blogging for retailers?

January 24, 2007

One of our good friends from Vancouver, Dave Olson, who produces some awesome (and zany) social media in his own right away from the day job, just released this great white paper today on “Blogging for Retailers“. Not only is it a great piece from a very deep thinker, you don’t even need to register to download it. Be sure to check out the accompanying podcast for additional perspective.

After you get a chance to read it, please let me know what you think about it. Did he hit the mark? Are you a retailer who was won over with his ideas? Or do you think that retailers don’t have a place at the table of the blogosphere?

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under Uncategorized · 1 Comment  

Social Media Cafe 1 Introduction

January 23, 2007

This is the introduction to our first Social Media Cafe, a project of Social Media Club and The World Cafe Foundation. The show begins with introductory remarks from Chris Heuer about Social Media Club and an explanation of The World Cafe from Thomas Hurley, President of The World Cafe Foundation. We are then joined by Jimmy Wales of Wikia.com for some insights he learned on collaboration in the commons from his experience with building Wikipedia.

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under The SMC Organization, Uncategorized · 1 Comment  

Social Media Club Dallas Launches

January 23, 2007

First off, thanks to Yahoo! for understanding the importance of Social Media and for stepping up to be the location sponsor for the launch of the Dallas Social Media Club. I was pretty concerned about space at the Yahoo! offices as we were limited to 25 registrants. We filled up the seats exactly for the launch and I couldn’t be happier.

As for the event itself, after introductions and a brief history of the Social Media Club, we dove right into a discussion about the Social Media Press Release. The discussion was lively, constructive, revealing, and educational. As the moderator, I chose to let the discussion continue for the duration rather than cut it short because the group was getting a lot out of the back and forth. I will need to have a discussion via wiki or Google groups about the direction of the local chapter or we will need to discuss that topic first next month.

With the attendance and reaction (all positive) I will need to find a new location for the next meeting as it is clear that Yahoo! will not be able to accomodate the size of the second meeting. Fortunately, Big In Japan has already stepped up and offered a bigger space for the next meeting. Thank you Jake!

We will be releasing the audio recording of the event soon in multiple parts. I’ll post a link to the podcast here once it is published.

Special thanks to those who came including folks from 12comm, @visible, American Airlines, anthonyBarnum, Big In Japan, BrainBand, jambo, JH+P, Kinetic Results, Mdirect, PRWeb.com, Rapp-Collins, Samsung, sbig, TagMyCity.com, and Trabian among others.

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under About SMC, Events · 3 Comments  

SMC in London - January Meetup

January 23, 2007

Despite large parts of the UK trying to blow away with the attendant travel chaos that staggers those from less civilized climes, we had more than 25 hardy souls braving the elements from as far away as Bonn (yes, as in Germany) and Cardiff (yes, as in Wales), for free beer, wine and nibbles (Thanks, Fleishmann Hillard!) and some incidental chat about social media.

There is quite a churn in these meetings so far, though some suckers keep coming back for more, so we started with round-the-room introductions. There was a wide variety - media consultants, media creators, bloggers, photographers, marketers, entrepreneurs, geeks, visual-thinkers and many more.

We then broke into smaller self-forming discussion groups for the bulk of the time we had together. Broadly summarised there were people talking about:

• Living life completely online vs offline, the problems associated with life-cacheing mixed in with speculation about the shelf-life of YouTube videos and timeliness of social media generally.
• Visualisation as a global language - ask Dave Gray for a picture of this one
• The variety of perspectives and channels in using social media for marketing (pictured above), the problems of measurement and the difficulty of matching ‘channels’ and ‘audiences’ ( not to mention the difficulty of using those words or finding others to use…)
• Where does trust come from? Knowing the source? From the content itself?
• Global perspectives - diverse and complex developments in other parts of the world and the predominance of the mobile phone rather than the desktop as social media tool.

I plugged membership, pointed people to the London wiki and the mailing list as tools to keep in touch and encouraged people to come up with suggestions for topics and activities. I’d very much like us to *do* stuff at these sessions as much as *talk* about doing stuff. We’re going to go with the Third Thursday of the month as a regular slot, though we may shift venue around Central London - 15th February will include a post-Valentine speed-datingnetworking spot

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under About SMC, Events · 6 Comments  

NMRcast #13

January 22, 2007

This latest episode was recorded live from the The Third Thursday meeting that took place at Shine SF in San Francisco on January 18, 2007.

Mike Manuel announced the new partnership between the Third Thursday group, SNCR and the Social Media Club and then we delved into the main topic for the evening, the Social Media Release (’SMR’). The panel discussion was led by Chris Heuer, and featured Shel Holtz, Brian Solis, Tom Foremski, and special guest, Joel Tesch from BusinessWire.

The SMR topic fueled quite a bit of conversation following the event, most of which can be followed through Technorati, though I am finding some folks tagged it with social+media+release, others with social+media+press+release so it is not as easy as I thought to round them all up. Which is why we have Brian Solis who did a bang up job in collecting several key points on the topic to get everyone up to speed. Thanks Brian.
You may download the NMRcast here (MP3, 34.6Mb, 1:15:23). You may also subscribe to the Speakers & Speeches RSS feed to get these and future podcasts automatically. For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon. To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

A big ‘thank you’ to Shel for hosting and managing the NMRcast for us, and to the folks at Shine SF for opening their space to the group.

To listen to previous NMRcasts, please check out the For Immediate Release website.

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under Education, Podcast · 2 Comments  

Social Media Now 1.21.07

January 21, 2007

Marketing Roadmaps: What’s so wrong about “audience?” - another social media press release flap. Susan Getgood argues that the term “audience” is a way to describe the people who actually care about a particular story being told or information provided. I think she’s on to something, as the term “audience” has evolved into meaning two-way communication that recognizes the importance, value and contribution of all parties.

Like It Matters: openid, portable social networks and the darowski problem. If you’ve heard of OpenID, but don’t yet understand exactly what it is or how having a central, verifiable identity could benefit you, read Brian Oberkirch’s detailed post.

Six Degrees. Actor Kevin Bacon created SixDegrees.org to “be a force for good by bringing a social conscience to social networking.” Participants can donate to a celebrity’s chosen cause or list a worthy cause of their own, create a charity badge, enter up to six e-mail addresses of friends whose financial support they’d like, and track donations. 

A Message from Barack - Video. Barack Obama releases a video statement about his decision to form a Presidential Exploratory Committee. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton have also used new media techniques to announce their intention to run for President, as will likely all others who throw their name in the ring. This’ll be the election where not using these techniques would really stand out.

Below the Fold: Goodbye, Virtual World. Gary Goldhammer writes, “I’ve got news for you: every online destination is virtual. That’s just the reality.” Right on.

 

Social Media Now is written by Andrea Weckerle, New Millennium PR.

Sphere: Related Content

Filed Under Uncategorized · Leave a Comment  

Next Page »