Anyone who uses a grilled cheese sandwich as a metaphor is OK in my book. Ed Van Herik does just that in his recent post entitled “Who Melted my Cheese?” Ed gives us a nice reminder that social media web 2.0 is not really , about predictable algorithms, but about reinserting the the mutable (and powerful) human element. No tool can substitute for having something interesting to say, nor can any program yet effectively substitute for the very human mission of building a community. It is our idiosyncrasies and adaptability that are our best assets in this changing media landscape. We must put them to practice however, to sharpen our skills, yes, but also to nurture our own social web (social safety net?). Much as I love a melty cheese sandwich, I like the metaphor of a garden: you can’t expect to plant a single seed and grow a prize-winning bloom. Nor can you control the weather. What you can do is tend to your little patch of land, nurture it, plant seeds, feed it, weed it, and encourage a little cross-pollination. Because it is a process not of automation, but of attention that will be resilient and adaptable as the seasons (and the fads) change.
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Left Brain + Right Brain = My Blog
This blog is chock full of joyful drawings and a few musings on personal branding, startups, creativity and being a beacon.
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"I adore your doodles... I swear looking at those bunnies lowers my blood pressure, calms my mind and makes me smarter. Who needs meditation when there are bunnies?"
~Caitlín Mowbray - Meditation Teacher, Astrologer and Soul Provocateur
Not-Live from Barcamp – Day 2 – Session 6 [for me] Future of Democracy – Social Media
Presenter: Tim Moenk
OK at this point I was getting tired — hitting the Barcamp ceiling for information absorption. Also the room was packed and awkward for typing in so here’s a post-session recap:
Tim presents some thoughts on the quad-umverate of Social Software, Gaming, Law, and UI. Basically he contends that the increasing wave of social media is causing fundamental changes in how we interact at a national and global level. Game designers are becoming social architects, and that law is lagging behind the progress, but there are experiments to try and catch up in areas such as patents. He also points out that we are capable of self-organizing in a reasonable manner as evidenced by events like Barcamp.
I personally think he raises some very interesting points and wish there had been room in the time allotted for some Q&A. It is a very meaty subject, but I do think Tim was stretching the term Law over not just laws, but also things like etiquette, and governance. This made for some oversimplifications, IMHO, in some of his statements. Nonetheless, I’d love the chance to follow up with Tim and talk more about how he sees these vectors impacting our collective futures.