reboot 8 preparation

reboot 8.0 is happening on June 1-2 in Copenhagen, Denmark. I have been exchanging ideas via email with Thomas about what I would like to see happening. I am delighted that this idea has found good resonance on his side as it is something along the lines of what he wanted to do. Here is my thinking on how to start creating a new connected conversation on intellectual property at the edge of the values paradigm shift:

1. who we are: reboot is a gathering of 400 or so people all with a vested interest to some degree or another in internet technology, software, social software, technology itself, society. the kinds of people whom we are so fond of calling geeks. that is, those rare souls that dare to break a few old worn out patterns and to explore new territory. most of these geeks blog in one form or another, all think. we are coming from a bit all over the world, mostly from the more connected affluent world, mostly europeans, but also people from canada and the usa. i expect the danish blogger community to show up en mass. is this right? 2. the world that we live in: whatever it is that we want to call our age - information, digital, knowledge, techno-freaked-muddled, post-industrial, web 2.0 - it is an age where resources are plenty and easily sourced. logistics and knowledge do play a major role. part of the logistics is the communication, and that is where most information technology finds itself. yes, we all know that africa exists, some of us have been there and it does not change the fact that we live in a world of abundance. clearly not all logistics problems are solved, to say nothing of the mess in communications. counter-arguments are welcome in comments here or directly via email. 3. my observation/assertion: there is a paradigm shift currently taking place in what concerns creating a thriving business. a thriving business is a business that is sustainable . to me a business is sustainable when it makes its community prosper (read, happy, fulfilled, satisfied, peaceful). note that for a community to prosper, maintaining the status quo is not a requirement. all to say that business is about people . business is not  about goods or money, but about people making their world - this world now - work for them and allowing all to live in dignity . the business paradigm shift in progress is from capitalism to values. the shift is from humans serving things, to things serving humans. 4. my inference: in a world where resources are abundant and that is dependent on both logistics and communication, the key resource is intelligence . ok, this is not mind boggling, but what does that mean? that means that the advancing edge of evolution resides within intellectual assets. what does that mean? it means that we eat potatoes and rice, and that we thrive on culture. education is more important than ever, and the ability to work together in a win-win mode is imperative. i could quickly digress and jump into much philosophy too quickly, so let me get back to what i want to say. given that you (the reader) is both of more than average intelligence and used to thinking out-of-the-box, you will either very quickly follow my line of thought or you will not be shy about asking questions that will further your understanding of what are sometimes in my mind huge leaps in logic. present day intellectual property tools (laws, jurisdiction, systems, treaties, agreements) were tailored for the needs of the industrial revolution and were created in the late 1800's. these instruments did not anticipate the evolution in technology with which we live in day in and day out, or with the fast development of digital devices or instant communications. the situation is bit like trying to drive a car by pedaling: ridiculous. if the crown jewels of our age are intellectual assets, how are we going to deal with intellectual property rights? 5. this is the scenario. before reboot, what i want to do is to pick the brains of a few people attending and other geeks around me, and to ask them what questions they have about intellectual property (IP). in particular, what i want to learn about is what they are thinking IP-wise and where the needs and confusions are. in obtaining this information in an informal way, it will inform me as to where the issues are and how i can ask the questions of the plenum (those gathered at reboot) that will get us all some answers that can be actionable. 6. how do i work in an interactive sweatshop (forum) is to ask questions and get answers from the participants. the questions have to be provocative enough to get both good quick thinking and a good level of participation. having several bloggers online in the room will make this interactive query into intellectual property and assets all the more interesting. having people in back-channels getting information from the outside, would make it all the more interesting. individual intelligence is great, collective intelligence is what this inquiry will be about.

This is the starting point of the public conversation. I welcome all input, commentary, counter arguments and brilliant insights. In particular I am looking for a few good people working in IT, what I would like to call the digital practitioners, to contact me so that we can set up a phone/skype/iChat/in-person interview as soon as possible. NB: Send email to nexe at mac dot com (or any other mac email of mine that you may have) and/or leave your comments here. Comments are moderated and will only be published after approval. For the next two weeks I will be accessing the Internet via UMTS and will not be online continuously. There will be delays until comments are published or until I respond .

Technorati Tags: actionable, change, collective intelligence, connected conversation, evolution, intellectual property, interaction, interviews, IP, question, reboot, reboot8

Blogosphere interrupted, not

Until April 23 I will be without internet access. I will not be reading emails or aggregators, and I will not be approving comments pending moderation. I will be unavailable on skype and not reachable by mobile either. My voice mail will faithfully register your delightful voice message, maybe. For those curious as to what I may be doing and where I might be, I do recommend that you visit the next. For the the truly adventuresome, there is fluage.

Technorati Tags: communications, fluage, the next, uncondition

Something about keeping my words soft

Well, I was wrong, and Hugh is right. Rats! Hugh is right about people not buying art. Here is the story. Here I am plowing extremely slowly through all my pending items that has assumed the form of a formidable pile that feels infinite to me. I am doing this because I have yet to adopt the the attitude of not giving a damn about it all. From Saturday on I will be offline for a week while participating in an Aikido week-long training. However while doing this I get distracted - or exercise multi-tasking skills -  and realize that I better go into town and run a few urgent errands (groceries, mail, bank, train ticket office) and buy some tea-bags to take with before the silly shops close at 16:00 (that was a while ago). Tea-bags! I have a whole economic theory developed around tea-bags, and I rarely do use them, unless of course I am going to be stuck in the boondocks and need my warm watery comfort somehow, anyhow. Restaurant tea bags I have found to be appalling, disillusionary, and the true source or all evil and marital discord. Well, perhaps not all of that, I despise them restaurant-tea-bags anyhow. I got my tea bags from the super-duper-market in town and proceeded to walk down the street to a shop that sells porcelain painting items because my aunt asked me to get something there. This porcelain shop is sort of an artsy place and I have no connection with it other than my aunt's requests. I had just turned my last cash Swiss Francs into Euros and I did not have enough cash with me to get what my aunt asked for since this place being itself a museum piece did not accept direct-debit cards. I walked down further the kramgasse to the next bus station, and on the way I walk by the Münsterkellerei shop,  one of a few Hess enterprises and a place of choice to pick a good wine or spirit right here in Berne. In my spiritual quests, this is one place that I go to, and in walking by the shop it occurred to me that I did not have a single drop of Cognac in the house. I went in, walked directly to the Cognac shelves and waited for the shop keeper to be free and answer all my questions.  I left the shop with a Jean Fillioux  Cognac Vielle Grande Champagne. Unlike the artsy place, the Münsterkellerei did accept direct-debit cards. Still, this is not the story, although, it might be part of it. While waiting my turn to be attended in the Münsterkellerei I glanced past the Cognac shelf onto the magazine rack, and saw a brochure that caught my eye,  "Du öffnest ein Buch. Das Buch öffnet Dich." (translation: You open a book. The book opens you.) printed in white on an orange cover. I picked said brochure up, and had to take it home with me. This brochure published by the Buchlobby Schweiz is full of great insight for anybody in both the book business and the blogging business. The only thing that surprised me was that indeed said lobby does have an internet site, but otherwise seem totally oblivious to the fact that the internet is indeed a publishing medium. In the brochure, much ink is spilled lamenting the sad state of affairs in which most publishers find themselves in these days. For those without knowledge of German, let me add that I am talking about books now, not Cognac or tea-bags. The Buchlobby is a swiss pro-book lobby sponsored by both PRO HELVETIA and ProLitteris. The brochure that I brought home with my bottle of Cognac can be downloaded in German, French or Italian from the lobby's website. I love books too, and indeed I am delighted to have found in said brochure a quote attributed to Jorge Luis Borges "I imagine that paradise is some sort of library." Add a good Cognac, and I have Nirvana! There is no moral to this story, but I think that the book lobby in Switzerland could use some out of the box thinking in how to cultivate the culture and pleasure of books. Now, the question to  me is, are books art?

Technorati Tags: art, bern, berne, books, buchlobby, cognac, pro helvetia, prolitteris, tea

My other pet project: Switzerland

For a couple of years I have been observing albeit at a distance the Swiss Blogosphere, and for a while there was not much to be seen, so I did spend a lot of time in the Algarve or in California. These days the Swiss are blogging, and although it may not become "the next thing to do" for all the folks in Heidiland, there certainly is momentum and a lot of people whose voice I like to see on the the web, one of them is Bruno Guissani. Bruno is Swiss and he writes in English, that makes him my kind of guy, so to say, one of the swiss anglophone boys albeit born with an Italian passport. Today I found this post Tom Friedman flattens Switzerland on his blog "Lunch over IP" (a blog title that annoys me beyond imagination, to me IP is intellectual property, not necesarly internet protocol)  on my endo aggregator (another fabulous pet project of mine is Japan). I do recommend that you read Bruno's post in its entirety. Just the opening line is one that makes my head bob up and down in all sorts of agreement. " It sometimes happens with journalists, even with those that we admire the most: when they address a subject about which we are knowledgeable, it is not uncommon to find in their articles mistakes, inaccuracies or ill-informed statements - and that makes the reader question the reliability of what they write on other topics." Then again here I think I can only second what he writes, except that I was born naked and given a Portuguese passport to start with, and the Swiss passport was the third nationality that I acquired in 1982. "I don't want to come across as a Swiss hurt in his national ego, which I'm most definitely not (there is much to be perfected here, and the country has its share of problems and abuses) but Friedman's statement deserves a little debunking. I'm one of those that were born with another passport - Italian - and became a Swiss citizen (so now I have two, because contrary to the US, the Swiss that Friedman believes to be so hostile to new citizens don't ask them to trash their past). I'm not alone. Out of a total population of 7'415'102 (2004 figures) there are in Switzerland some 1'524'663 residents carrying a foreign passport (20.6 percent, proportionally one of the highest foreign populations in Europe) and another 429'430 foreigners that have acquired the Swiss citizenship in the period 1981-2004 alone. Numbers that don't seem to describe a "closed" country. It's actually easier to get Swiss citizenship than that of much of Europe, and it's certainly not that different than the US procedure." Well, having gone through both the US and Swiss citizenship procedures, I can tell you that the Swiss procedure for me was extremely easy, but that is another story altogether.

Technorati Tags: journalism, swiss, swissbloggers, switzerland

25peeps

25peeps.com: blogger's faces and a few other body parts. I have been informed that I am there somewhere... this must me my 3 femtoseconds of fame or something along those lines. So go ahead, visit the site and look at the pretty pictures, and register your blog.

Technorati Tags: 25peeps, fun

Wifi at the Lisbon Airport

April 1, 2006 I am right now sitting in the departure lounge at Lisbon Airport waiting for a flight to Faro. ANA the local airport authority has set up a wifi system and there is a choice of ISP service providers from which you can buy airtime. Since I have a PT Vodafone number I have opted for that. It is 5€ for an hour, and you can log off in between and do your thing offline, however there is nothing to gain since the time is accounted for in a continuous manner. Of course you also have the option of buying airtime while roaming on your non-PT phone, however be warned that roaming charges by your provider can be very high. Sounds like a good deal. What am I doing here? March 31 Update March 4: due to an issue with Blogger I could not post this while at the airport. Since I wrongly assumed that the error I was getting from ecto might have something to do with the wifi, I did not even try to post via the browser blogger tool. It was not until I got back to Switzerland and fixed connections that I realized that the problem presisted and then once more I blamed the wrong culprit, this time ecto. Conclusion, I out to check on blogger status when I have problems posting.

Technorati Tags: blogger, ecto, lisbon, portugal, vodafone, wifi