Tuesday, July 27, 2004
I didn't even know he'd left
Steve Gillmor, on various potential derivative effects of Adam Bosworth's move from BEA to Google:
...perhaps it’s Microsoft who should be very afraid. Integrate RSS with Gmail, bridge the desktop and mobile spaces with Alchemy, and it’s gonna be “Redmond, we have a problem.”
Con(tra)vention
Dr. Weinberger: So, there we have the irony in the space of eating a single bagel for breakfast: The Convention folks think their job is to script an event for the news media, and the news media don't want to cover an event that's been scripted.
Mydentity at work
Googlenym is spreading. Current count: 155.
Inside the Blogway
Dave Sifry at CNN: Blog Roundup. First in a daily series.
Scoblization at altitude
Soapboxless Journalism
I just heard a Democratic Convention honcho on NPR talk about how the purpose of the event is to "deliver entertainment" or something to that effect. I understand that, but it kinda makes me wanna barf.
Oregon Pacific Northwest News (on Oregon Public Radio) just gave a little promo for the upcoming Morning Edition story on bloggers at the Democratic National Convention.
I'm concerned that it will be another "what ______ is/are saying" piece. We'll see. Meanwhile, dig Jeff Jarvis' instructions to bloggers, especially this:
1. Prove that you are the party that listens. Hold sessions -- not panels, not speeches, not lectures, not platform meetings, but sessions on the BloggerCon model -- with experts and citizens (and politicians listening and not speaking unless spoken to) brought together to have conversations about the issues and solutions that really matter to all of us: health care, education, taxes, defense, terrorism, the economy...
Of course, it won't be a controlled message. That's just the point. It's about listening. It's about having the conversation. If markets are conversations and news is a conversation then politics and government certainly should be a conversation. Democracy is a conversation. Thus Cluetrain meets McLuhan: The medium is the message and the message is, "We are the party that listens."
I have some additional nonpartisan suggestions: Prove that bloggers are journalists who listen. Prove that we're in conversations, and not just standing on soap-boxes, or "delivering content". Prove that we're about making and changing minds, and not just small-bore op-ed cannons.
Try this idea out for size: The most important principle of blogging is the #5 habit of highly successful people: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Then help the mainstream media understand what bloggers are, and how they work.
Okay, the NPR story is up, opening up the story with Dave Winer. Now Jay Rosen. Now Matt Gross. Now Dave Pell. Here's the audio (via Real). Other Links at the story.
Have fun, get well
Julie Leung: I immediately thought that "learning by dying" should be a principle for life.
Reminds me of the refrain to Mike Cross' Uncle Josh, the lyrics of which seems to be nowhere on the Web:
Livin' at its longest
is just a short trip to the grave
So you might as well go ahead and enjoy
what you can along the way
'Cuz if the doctor said you were goin' to die
wouldn't you do what you please?
Listen here brother
life's just another
terminal disease
So the first thing I read after I get to OSCon is Reality Open Source at SNAP Development Center. The chilling excerpts:
When I got back to the room tonight, I got some shocking news. My brother had been in a serious motorcycle accident. Although he was already out of the hospital, I heard that his heart stopped at the scene of the accident and received CPR. I don’t see him often but we are close, so you can imagine how bad this felt to hear. He respects that I’m doing my thing down in Puerto Rico, and we try to talk as much as possible. The thought of losing him while I’m out here listening to “Presentation Aikido” has left me confused and less happy to be here...
But unfortunately, the sad news didn’t stop there. I then got an e-mail from my wife telling me a women she knew died after having an emergency ceasarian delivery of her twin babies. This additional shocking news has rocked my wife’s world. It was just last weekend that they were talking and now she is dead. This has made her very confused and left her needing me there, while I’m here...
For these events and so many million others that happen every day we never really know how great things are until they aren’t. For me that is the crutch I lean on when things like this happen. Sure things are bad, sure I’m bumming, but I got to keep going. I’ve got to keep chasing my dreams for those who no longer are able, for those who never got the chance, and for those who will follow...
Elevations
That's Mt. Shasta, from 37,000 feet on the sunward side of a 737 headed to Portland from Los Angeles. The clouds suggest eruption, even though Shasta, an active volcano, hasn't burped for a couple centuries or more.
Shasta's continued creation has been rapid, as current recent geology goes. But the last big really huge event happened down near Mammoth, in the Long Valley Caldera, which was produced about 730,000 years ago, in an event that made Krakatoa look like a firecracker. It involved 150 cubic miles of magma, and deposited a layer of tuff so thick would have buried skyskrapers, had there been any there. The ashprint covered the entire Southwest.
It wasn't as big as the largest Yellowstone eruptions, but still, it ranks up there.
How about this... the flood basalts that cover much of Washington and Oregon (including the ground above which I can't sleep, or I wouldn't be writing this), total 25,000 cubic miles, all spilled from cracks in the ground in Idaho, a couple hundred miles from here.
Anyway, when we landed I noticed a plane that looked like Air Force One, only smaller. I suspected it was Air Force Two, the Vice President's plane. Leaving the airport, I passed a number of road blockages, including one that featured an accident involving two cars.
Turns out the veep was in town, stumping.
Nublog
The Commons: Markets Protecting the Environment. Found via the Adam Smith Institute blog, from the free makret think tank in London.