Supernova: The Backchannel Mole

Whilst I was at Supernova, I acted as a sort of official backchannel mole, monitoring IRC for amusing or insightful quotes to project on the screens during breaks.

These were my slides. Warning: They may not make sense if you weren’t there. Although, frankly, they may not make sense even if you were there.

Jonathan Schwartz: Authenticity is absolutely paramount. Hiring people to write your blog is like hiring someone to write your email.

TomCoates:The panel is awesome

TomCoates:Ev versus Mena versus Cat versus Lili versus er…

Buzzmodo:When was the last panel with 4/5 women?

TomCoates:This is interesting – you probably don’t want people to get into a state of total comfort with their representation because things will clearly go worng. You want people to be a bit self-controlling. I mean – even at home, people don’t tend to sit around naked scratching themselves. People have an internalised sense of what’s appropriate for them.

hodder:the problem with teenagers is that they have no experience and they nothing to lose

direwolff:or you’re gonna hate that you have your past stuck to you for life

debs_:i don’t agree there is more out there and there will be more so more is forgotten and forgiven

TomCoates:can I ask people in this channel, do you use your mobile phone for phonecalls

direwolff:yes

TomCoates:do you like it? I mean – basically – I’m interested in this because I have no problem with the idea of talking about stuff on my weblog, but I find people ringing me up incredibly invasive and intrusive. I never used to.

Suw:tom: that’s what skype is for, I hardly ever phone people anymore because i don’t like to interrupt them

TomCoates:so what I’m interested in is why people don’t look at things like phonecalls and ask about the horrors and invasions of that and don’t look at how these new technologies are LESS invasive, MORE easy to control, LESS privacy releasing

anildash:if a person searches for the band “chicago”, yahoo should say “before phil collins made it suck?”

Suw:TomCoates, what was interesting about the Yahoo thing? what caught your eye?

TomCoates:Well basically it was that when you added something to your search repository, it wasn’t that you searched your metadata about it, you seemed to be still searching the page. that’s interesting to me, anyway – that you can bracket off things that you find interesting and search them as a subset rather than as a layer about it.

avantgaming:”we’re not really sure what the revenue model is yet”– but we’re playing with it. That’s cool.


jjgnet:it’s actually a good fit: baseball fans have always been multi-channel and participatory. people have been going to games with radios to hear play-by-play for generations, and keeping their own boxscores for generations before that.


njt_:”so mark, has SBC considered supporting people who bring their unregulated ducks to the ballpark?”

TomCoates:loose-coupling versus long term relationships

TomCoates:a typically san franciscan dilemma

Dick Hardt: Digital Itentity is just authentication to prove you are a directory entry.

TomCoate1:The balance between what technology is good for and what people are good for is important. Often people think that improving the technology means firing people. Which I guess it could do, but the core of the enterprise is letting the computers do what they’re good at, and the people what they’re good at that may result in fewer employees (if you’re late in making the change and can’t repurpose your staff), but the ones you have left will be happier and more creative.

TomCoates:that fucking rocked. Interesting questions about the kind of organisational structures in working environments that make that kind of sensation good. that make us feel supported, and safe and comfortable and able to focus and be creative.

Dave Sifry: People would rather be strangled than be forced to put something into a taxonomy or explain why they did something.

wseltzer: we’ve gone without data privacy so long we barely notice.

KevinMarks:Odlyzko’s point is that communications services between individuals and organisations are way mroe important than media, but much harder to count as they are so small

TomCoates:so I went to an event a while back and in the event the guy queried the distinction between marketing and content saying that he put ‘content’ in scare quotes because really – all content was was good marketing, which completely freaked me out

KevinMarks:If you’re calling it ‘content’ you are halfway there

rossm:whenever i hear the word ‘content’ I reach for my gun

njt_:hey dinosaurs, go back to your tar pit and die already!

TomCoates:yeah – fuck you dinosaurs!

KragenSitaker:there’s a knitter ethic?

hodder:don’t stab your seat mate with your needle

njt_:children treat parents as damage and route around them

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