So I was just going to set up the Tivo to record something when I ran across this new show on Discovery called “Cash Cab” – the folks who thought this up are brilliant. Shot in New York City, Cash Cab is billed as the only taxi ride that pays you. In short, a trivia/quiz game show format in a cab. They cruise around picking up fares like a normal cab and then the taxi driver becomes a game show host, awarding cash for every right answer – unless you get 3 wrong before you get to your destination, in which case 3 strikes and your out… of the cab too.

Strange that no one I know talked about this one.

This is just the sort of thing I hoped to see happening with the decreasing cost of media creation tools and our further exploration of creative freedom. Now mass media players are taking a grassroots, bottom up approach towards creating informative entertainment (Cash Cab runs on Discovery). The show has a built in audience with all the people looking for them on the streets, all the people who love New York and the reality show fans – just throw in a random bunch of New Yorkers and voila, instant reality tv meets game show mashup success.

It could have just as easily been done online exclusively, but they are running on Discovery! Great job – now whose great idea is next?

Technorati Tags: citizenjournalism, newmedia, user generated advertisers

Just finished meeting with John Johnson, the manager of the DC Improv, and it looks like we have a venue for our Monday January 30th event! While we may not be able to get WiFi going in there, it is a perfect location, about 1 block from the Farragut North Metro station.

There is room for about 300 people in their comedy club layout, but we are going to cap the registrations at 120 people in order to keep Mr. Dunbar happy. (I realize his limit is closer to 150, so perhaps that can be the Law of 10 Dozens instead 😉

We have a long way to go to pull off this event, but I know we can do because we did it before. I have web pages to put together and we need an event page on the Wiki. We really need some sponsors to step up as well. This will be what I get to do when I get home this weekend (in addition to seeing my friend Chris Magoon race tomorrow, meeting with BrainJams team members to work on the technology plan and spending some time with Kristie after a long week away here in DC.

If you are in Washington, D.C. and want to spend some time sharing ideas, resources and insights with your fellow Washingtonians, this is the place for you. Some basic logistics

• Monday January 30, 2006 from 1030am to 500pm, registration starts at 10am
• Location: DC Improv – 1140 Connecticut Ave, NW Washington, DC 20036
• BrainOff Happy Hour from 500pm to 600pm
• Morning session we will be BrainJamming – knowledge networking which is akin to speed dating concept
• The afternoon will be participant lead discussions on Web 2.0 related topics such as blogging, podcasting, social bookmarks, social networks, AJAX etc…
• The key to the success of the event is everyone contributes, so if you are planning on coming, think about what you want to share with everyone and what you want to learn

Well, it is time for me to go and start heading through rush hour to get to the airport (IAD from downtown DC). Many thanks to my little, little brother, Brian Kellog for making the introduction to John and much gusto thanks to John of the DC Improv. I am really looking forward to working with them to make the next BrainJams event a real winner!

I just wanted to post a brief note about a cool, very new mashup I ran across via the Delicious Popular bookmarks page, Expialidoci.us lets you look at tag clouds from your Delicious account over specific time periods using a sort of time frame selector similar to the one I love in MeasureMap, but much simpler in design.

This is still early, but a good idea – am looking forward to seeing how other people use it and how he evolves the concept. Have some other ideas here, but no time to write about them now…

Technorati Tags: tags, tagspaces, Web2.0

I was doing some research and chased a little rabbit down a hole to find this article from my early Internet days at Guru Communications / Sobe.com / VCN. Some of it is actually useful to the story today, some funny, but mostly it makes me say duh – strange that many people still don’t get it….

So What?

Almost every time you turn on the television or open a newspaper, it seems there is another story about the Information Super-Highway. In 1993 there were 25 articles published on the subject during the entire year. Recently, on February 17, 1995, there were 42 articles published on one day; and that number continues to grow. For the computer novice, which seems to be a large percentage of the population, several questions inevitably arise. What is it? How does it work? Where is it? Who owns it? When will it be available? Why is everyone talking about it?

In short, most of you are probably saying “SO WHAT?”

While the answers to these questions could fill an encyclopedia, every single person on the face of the earth is, or soon will be, affected by this somewhat mysterious development popularly known as the Information Super Highway. Today there are an estimated 35 million people who have access to this new medium of communications. This figure is expected to double by the end of 1995. More immediately, America Online and Compuserve will open up their services so that their four million members will be added to these ranks. When Microsoft debuts its next version of Windows in a few months, the Information Super Highway will be a “mouse click” away from millions of additional consumers with an ease that equals turning on the computer. [same can be said now of Windows Vista and RSS]

This requires an understanding of what these events and technological advancements mean to society and yourself as an individual. It would certainly help if you understood how computers work, but that knowledge is really not necessary. What you do need to know is how the technology can work for you.

The Information Super Highway, now being paved as a network known as the Internet, is not so much about computers, as it is about communications: About removing geographic and cultural boundaries; About eliminating financial barriers to commerce; About developing new opportunities; About being more efficient. More importantly, the Internet is about the people who use it and what they do with it. [still working on that cross boundary stuff after all these years]

Society is about to cross the threshold into the new millennium. As we review our history, we have marked the evolution of mankind with important milestones and technological advancements. The use of fire, stone tools and the wheel. The use of paper, ink, the written word and the Pony Express. The cotton gin, the mass produced automobile and the telephone. Radio, motion pictures and television. The personal computer, the fax machine and now the Internet. The culmination and integration of thousands of years of evolution of mankind is requesting your presence and it is not going to wait for you.

“Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures-in this century as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.” — Antoine de Saint-Exuperay, 1939

What is the most important knowledge we have gained from witnessing these milestones in society? The single most important insight is that change is inevitable and necessary in our continuing evolution. We have also learned that resistance to change is also inevitable. Through the efforts of a few brave souls willing to challenge the status quo and bring forth change everyone will benefit – even those who may oppose it. Today, once again, we are witnessing this revolutionary change and it is happening at a staggering pace through numerous technological advancements.

The Internet, however, is delivering more than mere technological advancements. The Internet is creating a political, economic and social revolution on a scale so large that it will change your life regardless of your interest in it. Representing what is known as an “enabling technology,” the recent union of man, telephone and computer enables you to perform old activities in exciting new ways, and entirely new activities in a manner previously discussed only in popular science fiction.

For perspective, imagine being one of the first people to see the Wright brothers fly at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Imagine hearing a startled Alexander Graham Bell shouting -Watson, come in here, I need you.” Imagine all of your neighbors and individuals from around the country watching moving pictures of “Uncle Miltie” in a dress. Imagine communicating with a frightened student from China during the recent attempt at revolution; his only link to the outside world was through the Internet. You do not need to imagine these events because we know that they are possible, they have all occurred, and they changed our lives forever……such is the importance of the Internet.

Now, imagine reading the newspaper, communicating with a friend in Europe, virtually traveling to Africa, following an expedition up Mount Everest, or watching portions of a Rolling Stones concert live at your desk. Imagine researching important matters in your life, without having to search the library for countless hours. Imagine buying all of your groceries through your home computer, or buying the latest Compact Disc without shopping the racks, or paying all of your monthly bills without wasting countless hours on tedious errands. These time saving, relief filled devices are all possible, or soon will be, through the Internet.

Does the Internet sound like something that merits a little more of your attention? Unless you live in another dimension or want to be secluded from the world at large, you cannot avoid this important development in the history of humankind. By beginning to gain a greater understanding now, and coming to terms with the many ways the Internet can begin to benefit your life today, you will be prepared for tomorrow. Tomorrow is not a far off distant place of unknown potential and technology. Tomorrow is here today, and it is called the Internet.

For a somewhat funny photo of me in my vest wearing, goatee sporting, Mac SE surfing best, check out the original article (complete with a ‘sand’ tiled background)

Technorati Tags: thereframers, Web2.1

Been really struggling with what to say this year in my irregularly annual Christmas message. So many great and important things are happening in the world right now. Yet many of us carry a heavier heart when considering all of the not so great things that are going on as well. So many things that we would love to see made right, and so little of our effort available to help make it so. It all seems too overwhelming at times – so much though that we get caught in analysis paralysis, considering the thousands of possibilities for things to go wrong with different appraches.

But I know a secret which you also know deep down inside. We all have control over one thing that trumps this sense of overhwheling if we can only remember it is available to us. We have absolute, 100% control over ourselves and what we do with our focus and our energy in the present moment. In other words, we should not worry about what happened in the past, we can nor worry about what might happen in a far off distant future. Rather, learn from our past, imagine the best possible future and put all your efforts into making the most of this very second.

The most important thing each of us can do is to be present, awake and aware of each and every moment in our lives, be happy and make the most of it. I try to meditate in order to hone my ability to be present and pay attention, but it is hard. I will be trying harder in 2006 for sure. I may even try to get together with a small group of people to meditate together since I never did find a sangha that fit me.

I will also be investing more energy in what I do best, which is generating innovative ideas for new companies, new programs, new projects and other activities. Unlike in the past though, I will be giving many of them away here in my blog and tagging with ‘freeideas=chrisheuer‘, One of my latest realizations concerns the need to capture and share the ideas we generate more quickly, in their barely formed state. For if it is true that the universal consciousness does bubble up the same ideas in different forms in different places (like we have seen with people powered search during Q4) it is truly best to engage with those other people in conversation. It is even better when these same people can find a way to collaborate with one another by sharing their insytes and building upon them with even greater innovations.

It seems this is another aspect of what we are doing with BrainJams. It is also why I will be using my blog to give suggestions to companies for how they might improve – some unsolicited advice. It makes you wonder how different things might be if companies had a deep understanding of how to listen to the conversations people have about such things. It makes you wonder if it is even possible for them to listen and respond sometimes. These posts will be tagged with ‘suggestionbox:COMP_NAME=chrisheuer‘.

It just seems to me, that if I can be more present as I meet each moment of my life, bringing my whole self to each moment, that I could develop some understandings that would make things right in many small ways. So rather than being overwhelmed at the size of the task, I need to embrace each moment and take charge of my attention, connect with my true intention and take action in some way. Cumulatively, these small acts will make real impact.

Better still – as more people become connected wth the open web to also do these things. The power will be magnified a hundred fold. I am proud to say, “this is my Noble Pursuit“.

I like what Google is doing with their Google Doodle. I am actually interested to see what it becomes when it is all lit up. Let’s hope it is worth the wait…

Yesterday Ted Rheingold and I organized a Geek Field Trip to the Anchor Steam Brewery. Totally forgot it was the winter solstice when booking the reservation, but it worked out just right. Unlike most other tasting rooms, the folks at Anchor Steam are pretty generous with their pours and we all got a good buzz on for the afternoon. The photos that Kristie and I took are over on her Flickr account.

A few interesting things we learned during the tour:

• The first Christmas Beer was the Liberty Ale (a mighty tasty one still)
• Their Steam beer was the first brewed in the US after the end of prohibition
• They produce about 85,000 barrels every year with only 54 employees

Pretty cool folks, excellent facility and great beer! We were very honored to meet the owner/saviour of the brewery, Fritz, who graciously signed our Magnum’s of the Chrismas Ale.

We are planning to do other Geek Field Trips next year – stay tuned for more details…

This is from a Press Release that I wanted to send out, but did not after conferring with others. It is just too long for a piece of PR. Writing for the blog has let my brevity skills wither…

The emergence of the knowledge economy is changing how we gather and share information, transforming business, community and social networks. BrainJams, a new not-for-profit social venture, takes this idea to the next level by applying the ideals of the open source community and new ideas around knowledge networking to connect ordinary people with extraordinary potential. The idea is to get people outside of their traditional ‘box’ to see the world from different perspectives.

With the primary mission of “connecting the dots” across traditional organizational boundaries, BrainJams facilitates knowledge networking events where people can share their ideas and experiences within a loose structure often referred to as an “Unconference”. While contributing relevant insights to many different people, participants receive much more than they give, just as they do with online communities. The intention of the event is straightforward – share your knowledge with others and everyone gets ahead. These ideals have been proven in the open source community across multiple cultures with diverse people working towards common goals. In essence, BrainJams is striving to apply the knowledge learned from experiences within such virtual communities to real world, real time, real space communities.

The format of BrainJams events can be ‘borrowed’ by anyone and improved upon under the Creative Commons Share and Share Alike license. BrainJams is in the process of building a community of unconference practitioners to share best practices and learn how to best organize similarly intentioned events. Aspiring BrainJams organizers from around the world can use the BrainJams wiki to promote and organize their events. It is expected that there will be no single format that defines BrainJams events other than each event having a simple organizing principle, setting the intention of sharing knowledge and utilizing some basic forms of structure for facilitating the given event.

According to Chris Heuer, founder and Executive Director of BrainJams, “There is no box. The only constraints we have on our thinking are the ones we imagine. Why not get people together from different backgrounds, set a good intention and see what happens? Everyone has their own noble pursuit, and mine is getting sharp people together and watching the magic unfold when they are engaged in ad-hoc collaboration, talking about their individual passions and ideas. The world will only continue to be the way it is as long as people believe it will – getting people to talk about their ideas and how they might affect change is the all important first step on a very long journey.”

Building on the recent success of the BrainJams event held on December 3rd, 2005 at SRI’s headquarters in Menlo Park, CA, the community continues to grow with numerous volunteers and contributors joining our efforts each day. BrainJams is now officially establishing itself as a non-profit entity with 501c3 status to further promote the sharing of knowledge across traditional boundaries, and educating people in the practical uses of Web 2.0 technologies (in other words, teaching people how to connect with other people using Open Web technologies). Today, Heuer is pleased as punch to announce that David Gutelius of SRI, Jennifer Myronuk of Storyfield and Kristie Wells of Gupta Technologies are joining him on the Board of Directors. Wells is Heuer’s fiancé and his right arm in developing the organization, while the advice and support of Gutelius and Myronuk has been invaluable in solidifying the plans for BrainJams’ future.

Heuer has also formally announced his intention to raise $1.5 million dollars in 2006 for the purpose of touring the United States, hosting BrainJams in communities large and small. Before the national tour however, BrainJams will be held in select cities as we work out the logistical and ideological nuances of the event format. Dates have been proposed for BrainJams events in Washington, D.C. on Monday January 30, 2006 and Berkeley, California on February 13, 2006. Volunteers and patrons are actively being sought for each event as are event locations. (Heuer prefers to call those who donate money to sponsor the event ‘Patrons’ in the same way that Renaissance artists had patrons who supported their creative work.)

BrainJams is striving to make all of its events free of charge, preferring to seek donations from those who support our vision. Through the generosity of several participants and event Patrons, the BrainJams event in Menlo Park made $290.15, which will go towards incorporation fees. The first BrainJams event was held in San Francisco in October 2005 under the name of “Web 2.1: A BrainJam for the rest of us”. That event garnered enough support to cover all expenses and to donate $1,300 to the Internet Archive and $130 to the Creative Commons.

BrainJams will be operated as a transparent organization with open accounting principles and the open deliberation of issues via Open Web technologies. Notably in this regard is the use of Heuer’s insights on TagSpaces to facilitate conversations of importance to the organization across the blogosphere, through social bookmarking sites and other community tools. The knowledge from the event is captured and shared for others to build upon.

Heuer further states, “The time is right for good people everywhere to rise up and tear down the traditional silos within corporations, across organizations and within their various industries. BrainJams enables people to make new connections across traditional boundaries with the people, ideas and resources that they often could not access elsewhere. These diverse connections are very powerful with the potential to inspire new insights, create new organizations and empower people to make a difference in their communities.”

The BrainJams community Web site is still under development expected to launch late February 2006 though some information is available there today along with a Wiki and a Blog.

Technorati Tags: brainjamknowledge, brainjams:planning, socialconference, tagspaces, The Open Web, unconference, Web2.1

I was thinking about the political map of the US and the whole Red vs. Blue thing just now. What would it look like if it were colored based on musical interests. In particular, I was thinking about who listens to more heady acid jazz like Groove Salad radio and who listens to poppy mainstream and who listens to country music. I think we could all find some interesting insytes and understandings from such an information tool when correlated with other data points (like overlaying the musical interests against a red/blue map or perhaps a blogger feedmap).

We would need some sort of music sales data coupled with Zip codes overlaid onto Google Maps – but I think the results would give us something pretty interesting – probably already a commercial version of this in some record industry office somewhere being used for a different purpose already. If we could find the data source and get it built somehow it would be pretty cool. I would suggest a UI that enabled people to create their own sorts of comparisons based on different data sources and displayed vis-a-vis zip code based maps. People could then write insytes and commentary on the results. When people entered combinations that had previously been entered, they would see other people’s entries and be able to comment on them as well as create their own new insytes. Certainly valuable for a multitude of business purposes as well as for creating a broader sense of understanding.

Anyway, just the seed of an idea at the moment as I am thinking about new forms of community forming social media tools. I am going to start blogging about more potential social media models over the next couple of weeks since they just keep coming and I don’t have time to pursue them all. Maybe someone else does…

Technorati Tags: brainjams:freeideas, freeideas

Just a quick note of thanks to everyone who showed up last night. We had a blast and stayed up way past our bedtime…

An interesting piece of news I overheard and wanted to break here – there is now an ‘unconfirmed’ rumour that The Onion is buying Supr.cillo.us for $50 per Feedburner subscriber. Not only is this cool news for the snarky Web 2.0 site, but good news for the rest of us as we now have a new metric upon which to value our blogs! Mine is now worth over $1200.00!!!!

My bet is that if they wanted Snarky Web 2.0 stuff so bad that they bought Supr.cillio.us, they will probably be buying Geek Entertainment TV next!

Congrats guys – you deserve it!

Technorati Tags: Web2.0