Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 24th September 2008
3 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
The first keynote at PICNIC today was by Charles Leadbeater who repeated his usual ‘Power to the People’ speech and gave us a preview of his upcoming book. Ernst-Jan wrote an excellent article just minutes ago about his story.
Leadbeater is a great storyteller who knows how to keep 1000 people in a room quiet which is impressive because one of the things he promotes is user intervention. One of the themes he spoke about was the “Doing to me VS working WITH me”. We are all part of the generation that get things done to them by big corporations and government. Leadbeater spoke about his education where ‘Learning was being done TOO me’ and a visit to a hospital where the doctor will tell you he is working ‘for you’ but everything he does feels like it is being done ‘against me’. Now we are entering a new world where we, the consumer, patient, worker, are part of all processes and get to work WITH people who used to be solely in charge. The internet is the big enabler in this, of course.
After his inspiring speech Clay Shirky entered the stage to ask Leadbeater a few questions. His first provocative question was ‘Where WON’T this work?’. Leadbeater gave a few examples of which one was ‘You wouldn’t want your hernia operated on by someone who read about the procedure on the Internet’. Good point.
At one point Clay opined that the formula for influencing crowd controlled systems were too simple. Shirky:
“Digg is supposed to be a user controlled medium. But I know that if I post an article titled “the 7 Hottest Women in Science Fiction” it will reach the front page of Digg in no time at all just because the title has a number in it, has the promise of NSFW images and ‘Science Fiction’ in the title. There is only the impression of democracy…”
Lets find out if Clay Shirky is right…
Oh, and here is the undisputed #1:
Written on 17th June 2008
6 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
First speaker at the Supernova Conference was Clay Shirky – writer, consultant and adjunct professor at New York University. His field of interest is the influence of Internet technologies on our societies and economies. In his latest book “Here Comes Everybody” he wrote down all the things he’s sure about and saved this keynote for some uncertain thoughts. His main message: we should transform the STOP-focused collective action into START-focused collective action.
Flash mobs as a political tool
Shirky started with an example from Belarus. In 2006, some kids from this Eastern-Europe country organized a flash mob via Livejournal. They asked 10.000 people to come to the October Square in Minsk for some massive ice-cream eating action. Their president, old-fashioned dictator Alexander Lukashenko, isn’t really fond of civil action, so he has forbidden any group forming on the important square. During the flash mob, he sent a small army of secret police to arrest the kids with ice-creams. Despite these arrests, the flash mobbers had reached their goal. They wanted to show the world what life looks like in Belarus. “For them”, Shirky said, “Livejournal was a tool to make their political lives better.”
Why is there no online barn raising?
These kids from Belarus are not alone. Shirky showed that all over the world, people are using social network groups to protest against undesired actions. This emerging trend is interesting and it stimulates positive action, yet they’re only concerned with stopping things. Real world collaborative action is often all people starting, creating, or building things. Yet this kind of collaborative action doesn’t seem to work in the digital world. “Why is that”, Shirky asked, “Why isn’t there an online barn raising? (more…)
Written on 16th June 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Sometimes it’s frustrating being an Internet entrepreneur in Europe. It has all kind of advantages – such as the localization, small and easily accessible communities, and more that I probably don’t have to tell you about. But there’s one thing missing, the magical vibe of San Francisco and the Valley – the “we’re changing the world” kind of thing. As the European industry is fragmented in a dozen cities or more, yet in the Valley everybody’s gathered in one creative focal point. So for us, Europeans, there’s a limited community experience going on.
Esther Dyson talking to Clay Shirky (photo by
Geodog)
And now I’m in San Francisco at Supernova 2008, where “CEOs and bloggers, entrepreneurs and academics, practitioners and visionaries, policy experts and industry thought leaders share insights and build relationships.” See? That’s the “we’re changing the world”-mentality I was talking about. I’m surrounded by influentials and leaders like Esther Dyson, Hugh MacLeod, Clay Shirky, Bob Iannucci, Scott Beale and Jeff Clavier who are shaping and defining the future of our beloved industry.
I think we – meaning European web professionals – can learn a lot from conferences like these and I’m looking forward to the day we can welcome such a conference in Europe. For now, I’ll live blog the key notes I think are particularly interesting for you. Would you like me to cover a certain speaker? Go ahead and ask me in the comments or on my Twitter account.
By the way, you might also want to follow Hugh MacLeod’s Twitter feed.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
