Wow! I can hardly believe we are doing the first real BrainJams event this Saturday 3Dec2005. Just 72 hours from now, I will be at SRI doing final setup work.

Thankfully, a lot of people have offered to help out and it looks like we will meet our goal of having at least 60 people or so show up, perhaps quite a bit more. At the moment, I know of about 50 or so who are planning on coming and we are still doing new outreach to bring even more people in. As of yesterday, with the addition of Scissor, RateitAll and Keller Williams Golden Gate as Patrons with each putting up $100, we think we have enough money for lunch, snacks and the after party! (though I won’t be drinking so we can keep the bar bill reasonable 😉 Still, it would be nice if we could get just one or two more companies to step up since the suggested donations of $10 are not really rolling in too fast (which is OK as the events are supposed to be free as long as we can sustain this model)

What we really want to ensure though is that we get a diverse crowd of professionals, particularly for the mornings experiment in BrainJamming (my notes are rough and scary, so please only read them if you have the ability to live with ambiguity – I will be building some graphics to explain this later today) In this vein, Andy Kaufman is bringing a friend who is totally outside the technology industry, which lead us both to come up with an idea that should really make the event worthwhile by extending the diversity of the audience. It’s called “Bring-A-Friend”. The simple idea is that every technology person who is coming should reach out to a non-techie friend and invite them to the event. It might be that one opportunity for a significant other or BFF to finally understand a little bit more of what you actually do, as well as a chance for them to meet 24 cool people who are doing important things.

The afternoon sessions in particular should be really interesting and open to all levels of understanding as we talk about how we use the Internet to get things done. This is not how to develop a new technology or program something in Ruby – this is covering things like how to do a viral marketing campaign with the new tools, how to search for a job, how to build a reputation as an expert, how to hack memeorandum (ie get attention from the GeekSet), how to pull off an event with no money, how to build a community, how to tag (and why bother), how to organize knowledge with social bookmarking, how to create a cool podcast, how to keep the family closer when far apart, and how to make money from affiliate sales. These are not the set topics though, this is the direction we want to take the afternoon sessions – as Howard Rheingold says, “what it is —> is —>up to us”.

During lunch, a sheet of paper will be put up on the wall where you will be able to sign up for one of the “Break-Through Rooms” to lead a session. This is not going to be a typical conference session where the person leading will be doing all the talking, nor even one where the leader has to prepare some sort of presentation – the leader will facilitate a conversation (which they will begin with their own personal story and demonstration) on a particular aspect of using emerging Open Web technology to get things done (ie Web 2.0 for those of you still versioning things). As many have pointed out to me, this makes it sort of like a “Web 2.0 User Group” where we share our knowledge of which services we use along with hints, tips and tricks for getting the most out of them. Each session will need a “note-maker” who will be responsible for capturing all the knowledge that is shared – this will hopefully include someone podcasting or shooting video of each conversation as well.

[Please note, no company representatives will be allowed to deliver their canned ‘use case’ pitch. If a company representative wants to participate or lead a session that is totally cool, but they should show how they actually use the service, with their own personal account (as opposed to one with dummy data). We will try to work this out as we go, but I just don’t want it to be a company pitch fest – this is about real people using real solutions that are available today.]

We will end the day with a collective BrainJamming session where we create a MindMap of all the sessions that were held, the key user stories that were shared and the services that people use. This will be a guide to the knowledge discussed at the event as well as the beginnings of a way for us to collectively organize and share knowledge about how real people actually use technology, what tools they use and why they use them. I think this is a pretty amazing opportunity to develop greater levels of understanding between the creators of tools and the people who use them. But since this is an attendee lead event and we are just facilitators, this may change a little bit once we get everyone together. As I said with Web2point1, we just want to set some basic structure and a good intention and watch in amazement as it unfolds.

Any other thoughts? Suggestions for sessions? Go to the event details page and add in your thoughts or simply add a comment here.

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, brainjamprocess, brainjams, brainjams:3dec2005, brainjams:bayarea, brainjams:planning, brainjams3dec2005, Web2.1

Well, I have lots to do in the next 3 days and I won’t have time to manage this, but I do need to start looking for someone now who I might be able to hire in January. Basically I need help keeping my organizer straight, ensuring tasks get complete, making travel plans and general administrative stuff that Kristie and I don’t really have time for. The pay is not much in the beginning ($400-600 per week for 30-40 hours plus overtime as needed), but could grow as life moves forward over the next year and we establish better working rapport and more cash begins to flow. Would be working mostly on site in the home office with myself, our 2 cats and occasionally my fiance will be working from the home office. It will be challenging, but I can also promise it will be fun, exciting and a growth opportunity for the right person.

Ideally the right person would be a blogger (at least livejournal diary writer), know how to get around a Mac as well as a PC, understand the Internet really well, enjoy going to networking events/parties and be able to deal with a lot of different projects. A desire to understand marketing, event management, new media, emerging technologies and entrepreneurship is key, because this is what you will be exposed to. Startup/Small Business experience in a similar role would be ideal. It would be best if you live in the city of San Francisco but not required.

If you read this and know of someone, please let me know by contacting me directly or by posting a comment with a link to the person and their blog.

Without a lot of promotion or pushy salesmanship, we have managed to get enough cash from Patrons to at least cover lunch. Mike Arrington from TechCrunch was first up with $100 almost as soon as Web2.1 was over. Then David Gutelius came through with the venue from SRI, along with great A/V and much good will. Laughing Squid came through with a big $150 when it was much needed, and then Nate Koechley from Yahoo! stepped up with $100 from himself personally (that is so cool). After speaking with Tim Westegren at the Pandora party, Pandora stepped up with $100 and help with music for the day of the event. Out of the blue, Tom Blossom from MindJet contacted me and between him and Hobie Swanson, they came up with $250 and a few copies of MindManager Pro 6.0 to give away. (which completely coinciedentally I use and love as a great Mind Mapping software) Kristie, being the smart girl she is, contacted Whole Foods about getting some breakfast sponsorship and they kicked in a $50 gift card.

This is so cool!

But, we still need a sponsor (or sponsors) for our BrainOff after party from 5-7 at British Bankers Club. If you know of someone, please do have them contact us.

Also, if you have not yet done so, please register today so we have an accurate count of who is coming and who is heading to Paris for Les Blogges 😉

We are back in the USA (well sortof, we are in Miami still) and just checking back in with everything that is going on. If you are waiting to hear from me, that will most likely be tomorrow, though a few things are going out shortly. Lots of personal and professional blog posts to come over the next 48 hours.

Very excited to get back to BrainJams and finalize preparations for the event this Saturday 3Dec2005. Lots of other cool ideas to go through in the coming days – we are full throttle until SAT night when we have our BrainOff at the British Bankers Club and then head off to Tahoe for the first shredding of the season!

Life is good mon!

It’s kind of surreal, but was oh so cool. I asked Kristie to marry me, and she said yes. More photos on flickr soon.

So you wanna know how much MeasureMap rocks? I have been waiting for such a solution for so long that I had to do the signup down here in Jamaica on Thanksgiving – took less than 5 minutes (including republishing my blog) – and now I can’t wait to see the 12 of you readers visit and see this piece so my stats can go up…

I had read something about this the other day, and given that I blog, it really did not strike a chord (especially since the report came out after the Forbes “Attack of the Blogosphere” piece). Being the wired city that I live in, the 16% drop in circulation for the San Francisco Chronicle was the highest among the big 20.

I have probably picked up a daily 4 times in the past 2 years, and that was only in airports. This morning I noticed something strange while getting onto the Metro in D.C. which made me search out this report. There was a man standing next to the entrance of the Braddock Road station handing out newspapers and over half the people taking them. It turns out this is a new effort by the Washington Post to regain some of the 4% readership it lost. I don’t have time to research this further, but if anyone knows more details, please post a comment.

Those of you have known me for a while have heard this probably way too often, but it really bears repeating (at least until the whole world embraces this seemingly simple truth). A friend (sorry I cant remember who) pointed me to Jack Welch being a big proponent of this, even to the point of crediting the success of GE to his efforts towards cross-boundary collaboration. Sitting here with my friend Coleman in DC just now, this subject came up again. He wanted to know if I had a quote to cite, to which I replied, hold on a second, lets find it – all you need to know is how to search (to his point, most people dont, which is one of the ideas behind TagSpaces) Anyway, for those of you who want to see cited proof, here is what Jack Welch had to say in a letter to GE shareholders (found here as #1 search on Google for my query)

“Boundaryless behavior is the soul of today’s GE…. People seem compelled to build layers and walls between themselves and others….These walls cramp people, inhibit creativity, waste time, restrict vision, smother dreams, and above all, slow things down…. The challenge is to chip away at and eventually break down these walls and barriers, both among ourselves and between ourselves and the outside world.”

– Jack Welch, Former CEO Letter To GE Shareholders

Cool eh? Turns out I am not just making this up. This is one of the reasons I think BrainJams and my new idea for the format will be so successfull.

If it were not so difficult for the different types of people I hope to bring together, I would make the event more of a BarCamp weekend unconference in order to fit in everything I have in mind, but that is not what I want BrainJams to be about. We want to help support BarCamp by leading more people to join that event, but I think it is really a different audience we have in mind with some beneficial overlap. Since we only have less then 8 hours, here is what I would like to propose we do instead of what I suggested earlier.

900am – Arrive at SRI, Register, make name badges, drink some coffee and speak to your friends/associates.

930am – General Session / Introductions / Overview

945am – BrainJams Session 1

I had envisioned the “BrainJams” concept itself to be a knowledge networking equivalent of speed dating, but after speaking to Christopher Allen at Web2.1, decided to take his advice and style them more along the lines of a “Knowledge Cafe”. This time out, in thinking about the bigger picture and my original intention I want to organize everyone into groups of 12 and have everyone spend about 5 minutes sitting down, one on one and talking about their passions and projects (preferrably not with people you already know). As with speed dating, everyone will have a little book within which to take notes (more on this later). It is perhaps logistically challenging, but in contrast to most networking events where the people you meet is largely based on levels of fame and/or external appearances, this will be out of attendees control during the session with the hopes of expanding people’s horizons.

1100am – BrainJams Session 2

Same as above with a different group of people – this way you should get to know what 23 other people are doing and learn from them so they can help you with what you are doing!

1215pm – Lunch

We are trying hard to provide lunch for everyone, but really need many more Patrons to step forward in order to make this happen. At the moment, MindJet has stepped up with $250 towards lunch and we have $100 each from TechCrunch and Pandora which will go towards snacks and refreshments.

100pm – Teen Panel moderated by Noah Kagan

While the topic of the day is still a bit up in the air and will ultimately be decided by Noah and the teenagers he recruits, I would really like to see this as a discussion with them about how they use social networking services, how they blog and what communities they belong to. Though Tara will be at Les Blogs in Paris, I know her heart will still be in attendance for this one.

200pm / 230pm / 300pm / 330pm – Open, user lead sessions on how people use Web 2.0 tools

(OK, I cringe every time I type that dreaded word, but until a viable, widely understood replacement for referencing the meme, we are all stuck with it)

So the idea here is to have people choose from multiple sessions with projectors (3 will be available at the moment, but there is room for a 4th if someone can bring one for the day) where the topics will be along the lines of:

How to Blog – How to read blogs – How to manage subscriptions – How to do a job search – How to start a community – How to find people, places and things – How to plan and promote an event – How to take and share photos – How to tag things – How to build the brand called You – and similar themes I hope people will suggest.

Each session will have a Jam Leader and a Podcaster/Vlogger who will help facilitate the conversation and keep it on track, but this is not about company demos – this is about real people sharing knowledge about which tools they use to do things and how they use them. It is a chance for new comers and everyday people to learn from the “powerusers” and other real people just like them. It is a chance for people to suggest new ideas for making the tools more useful. It is a chance for us to begin gathering stories of how people actually use the tools many of us are building. This is really drive by conversations at IIW2005 with Mary Ruddy, numerous conversations at TagCamp and many other events I have attended.

410pm – Closing general session to wrap up the day and talk about what comes next

430pm – Day ends

445pm-700pm – BrainOff after party

The location is still being finalized and we are still looking for a Patron to sponsor the party – if no one steps forward we will have a cash-bar somewhere near the SRI campus, most likely the British Bankers Club

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Please check in on the WIKI and let us know if you are planning on attending.

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, barcamp, brainjams, brainjams:3dec2005, NPTECH, Web2.0, The+Open+Web, Web2.1

Seems like it always happens like this, but after talking with several different people and thinking about it some more, I have a new idea for what we can do on Saturday 3Dec2005. I think this one will stick too. Before I get into it in detail though, first let me say thanks to David Gutelius, Michael Arrington, Alicia Preston, Tara Hunt, Andy Kaufman, Enric, Chris Messina, Noah Kagan, Nial Kennedy, Nivi, Chris Pirillo, Brian Shields, Christopher Allen, Brian Sullivan, Kaliya and of course the wonderful, blogging addicted Kristie Wells. Talking with all of these people and so many more has really helped me clarify the format quite a bit and reading David’s post form last week really cemented it in my mind.

To be honest, I never was in love with the idea behind “Anger is a better emotion than worry…” but I did love that phrase and do believe that people are more easily motivated to find a solution about something that angers them. Personally, I just don’t like that emotion all to much (who does?) and strive more towards peace and happiness.

A lesson here is that when you are thinking in the open commons, you are bound to say or feel something that you will later want to revise. The good news is that the type of event we are doing with BrainJams allows for this sort of major overhaul that would not be possible with a traditional conference. As Christopher Allen pointed out to me at Web2.1, the idea I have for BrainJams is really based on an “Open Space” principle – an idea that has been used by the knowledge management community for years (though I honestly was not aware of it when thinking about this idea). This means we can change the “organizing principle” of the event several more times before the event, even up to the day it happens (though I really don’t want to do that).

While we talked about the Web 2.0/Social Media/Open Web issues being central to the success of the Web2.1 event, I really wanted the events to be more than that – I want them to be catalysts for socioeconomic change by crossing traditional boundaries and smashing long standing silos by sharing knowledge and forming new relationships. As Alicia points out the technology is at the core of what we do and what we talk about most, and indeed was going to be the focus of the events we do locally. So perhaps it is best to just accept that as the focus and stop trying to make it more complicated than that as I occasionally do. (side note: despite what Mike was saying to me the other night at the Laughing Squid party, this is a capitalist idea with potential social, intellectual AND financial gains for participants)

The fact that I wanted it to be more than technology was a key aspect of why I was originally thinking about the day in 2 parts, talking about problems in the morning and then talking about solutions in the afternoon. To a certain extent this can still be a part of our gathering, but need not be the sole focus. The space is big enough to do the problem/solution track and to embrace this new idea and even perhaps setup for a mini HyperCamp styled blogging station. In the end though, it will all be up to the participants, so please blog about your feelings on this and let us know.

So in the end, what this means is that the day is about people first, and how they use technology second. If we really want to make this shift happen – we need to stop thinking about users and start talking about people, even if the distinction adds some complexity to how we create things.

More on the proposed agenda in a moment…