The Social Tools in the Enterprise Symposium had fewer corporate attendees and more academics and consultants than I expected for a business conference. Then again, it's mid-July.

Stowe Boyd was a great host, a cross between David Letterman and Columbo. If you've never seen him in person, he has the voice and affect of actor Robert Patrick. (congrats on the brown belt, Stowe.) In the run up to the event, Stowe wrote an piece for Darwin on the convergence of social tools, blurring the lines between "the four co's": coordination, collaboration, communication, and community. This theme came through in the symposium.  

Some high notes.

My presentation (maybe a low note) was a recap of the positive feedback that conditions blogger behavior. A collection of aha! moments that promote expression, control, ownership, sociality, and introspection in a blogger. Before managing a fleet of bloggers (always looking for that plural), let's understand that virtuous cycle and create tools and behaviors that support it.

It was great seeing George Por again. He extracts layers of depth with quick comments, often from his collective intelligence view. [note to self: I think this fits into the third layer of maturity in collective blogging.]

Marc Eisenstadt showed some of his team's tools for knowledge workers: hacks of maps, presence integrated with a video wall, and instant messaging. Marc Canter would have been yelling "Dude! That's a Digital Lifestyle Aggregator!" if it wasn't so workplace focused. This brings home the hard fact that most blogging tools are still too hard to use. Industry needs a ten-fold improvement in user experience in writing, reading, and navigating blogs (imho, especially the writing). Why is UserLand the only vendor using WYSIWYG authoring?

I enjoyed the Q&A about Lee's presentation. It's a great case study, one that will be repeated.

Martin's write-up of the sessions is thoughtful, although I think there are 40,000 blogs in China, not 400,000 (but give them a two minutes).

After the show, Allan Engelhardt said content is the slug’s trail in social software:

But the real value of social software in the enterprise is not in the content. Content doesn’t do anything. People do; and what makes a difference to the enterprise is people coming together innovating and changing the organisation. The value of social software is in creating social connections where none existed, or in strengthening existing connections.

Other items:

• No Internet connectivity during the conference because the local tech/facilities guy didn't know what a proxy server was.
• Doc Searls was in town, showed up for the night-before and night-after dinners. Between Doc and Stowe I'm starting to look harder at low-carb, or at least looking at my sugar intake. Shots of Doc and others lost while attempting upload.
• Talking blogging, small business, etc. with Matt Mower on Friday, during an extended walk from Holborn through the city center. Matt knows why I no longer trust him to pick random pubs for a beer. Suffice to say I didn't pack my leathers.
• The Bonnington Hotel in Bloomsbury is a three star hotel with five star service. Dozens of problems, only a few from the hotel, but all of them addressed promptly with cheer, courtesy, professionalism, and concern. I'd stay there again.  
• All the walking and tube hopping helped me connect areas I'd thought of as disconnected. It's reassuring that long time Londoners still carry or consult street/underground maps.
• Most of the underground network is intentionally bright, with extra lights and white tiles on walls and ceilings, to stave off claustrophobia. It was sad that emerging from the Holborn station on Saturday, it was darker outside midday than inside the station.

During my UK visit I forgot to:

• Visit with the Big Blog Company folks. If I haven't said it before, great blog, great work, spread the word.
• Hit the museums. I just wasn't in the mood, too nice outdoors.
• Visit Oxford. They had three guys at STES, so they must be up to something.
• Walk. I walked for a bit, took the tube too, but there was much more to do.
• Take time in the country. England isn't London, though it likes to think so.  

• The virtual's not that rich.
• The virtual's mainly broadcast.
• And you miss the interactions that occur during breaks, meals, pub crawls, and the other cracks in an official programme.

So I leave my computer, my home, my city, my country.

Recently, AD:TECH ("Eyeballs for sale! Fresh steaming eyeballs!") and PlaNetwork (Kumbaya embraces digital identity), both in San Francisco.

Coming up:

I'm going to try for the Bio 2004 conference exhibit hall, this week. Especially interested in new bioinformatics and the publications systems that try to promote innovation without giving away secrets. Innovation World's Michael Boland and Mary Kate Stimmler are blogging from the conference.

This week and next are full of East Bay Kerry stuff. A Democratic Party Meetup where East Bay Kerry recruits volunteers. Committee meetings for Fundraising, Chairs, Media Relations, Visibility and GOTV, and Writers. We're having our first Speaker Training & Kerry Teach-In. And a big bunch of us are going to the Oakland A's vs. Pittsburgh Pirates game to show Kerry love to all those Pennsylvanians watching the game. Gary Hart is signing his latest book. And we're sending envoys to other political meetings, like the Lamorinda Democratic Club and the MGO Dem Club. All the time compression of a startup, none of the cash flow, and hard deadlines.

I've started going to Mark Finnern's Future Salons. Smart people, challenging topics. Next one June 18th at SAP Palo Alto. Saw him at Planetwork, first time in daylight. You owe yourself a venue to talk about 10, 20, and 50 years out. Great context and fodder for work and life planning.

In two weeks I'll attend the first day of Supernova, blogging a technical and policy discussion of today's convergence. Time to bone up on spectrum allocation, grid computing, WiMax, and more. I'm glad the wiki (thank you, SocialText) and rss feed (thank you, TypePad) are up.  

I'm spending July 4th in Vienna, Austria, for BlogTalk 2.0, the conference by Thomas Burg and the Center for New Media at Danube University. Getting there a little early to spend time with the Actionable Sense Troupe ("How do you switch between Discussion and Action?") and BlogWalk 3.0 in beautiful Krems. 

Then to Bloomsbury Square for the first London Symposium on Social Tools For The Enterprise, 12 July. This scans like etiquette and finishing school. It's really about blogs, wikis, social networks, IM'ing, and the like. And turning them into workplace tools. Matt Mower of Evectors Software put it together. Stowe Boyd's there too. I'll have a week in London. Favourite pubs, bookstores, museums, clubs, bordellos? Blogger events?

Back in town for the BlogOn conference. Read Susan Mernit's post. They have a boot camp, similar to workshops I proposed for London. What do bloggers know that others don't? To understand social software, managers need the insights that make blogging and other social tools "click" for users, and to frame those "Aha! moments" into a useful context.

What should I do this fall?

Dan Gillmor wonders about blood lust as searches for the executed Nick Berg top the major search engines.

So you're asking, why does traffic slow down at a car accident, why do people crowd a murder scene, who pays for boxing matches and hockey games? That's one trigger.

Another. We've just fought a war where none of the violence was televised. We're hearing death announcements but no coffins, high school snaps, but no bodies. This video is unfiltered truth about the conflict, our conflict. Bloody, wretched, simple. 

And. We trust our federal government less than before. They admit to screening what we see, hiding "morale damaging" evidence from the general view. We trust our media less than before, wimps when we needed courage. So we scavenge for facts, for truth, for context and interpretation. For sense.

Click. Click. Click.

p.s. Almost no mention that Nick Berg is a Jew. He's not the first Jew executed on TV by Islamic terrorists after being captured working in a dangerous zone. Talk about derivative cinema.

Scaramouche (1952, George Sidney) The Bride versus Johnny Mo fighting on the railing.

An influence across generations.

While I'm reading how memes diffuse through the blogosphere in hours and days.

I love the web.

Tonight is the first night of Passover, the night when we tell stories. For the kloggers among you, storytelling is part of Jewish tradition, one way our memes propagated and persisted through millennia.

The stories we tell on Passover are as political as they are spiritual.

Speak truth to power. Moses telling Pharaoh "Let my people go" despite being young, of common blood, on bad terms with the emperor and a speech defect.

Social networks aren't new. Get the word out to mark your doors tonight. To everyone in your community. Without the Internet. Without email, or Orkut, or AIM, or SMS. Just people telling neighbors to pass the word, spare your firstborn.

Freedom is worth a fast march out of town. When we had the chance, we ran out of Egypt. We ate crackers on the go. And it was worth it. Freedom from a state favored religion. Freedom to gather and assemble. Freedom to teach your children to read, to write, to know their heritage. Freedom from state approved murder and torture and rape and all the other trappings of slavery.

Are you more free now than you were in 2000? in 1990? in 1776? Is your government broadening and protecting your freedoms?

Invest in your future, not your fears. The lifetime wandering in the desert was worth it. For their children and the preservation of all they believe in. How are we repairing the world? How are we leaving it a better place?  

Some people just won't listen to biological warfare. Ten plagues. Countless deaths and deformities. And still the Pharaoh would not relent. In our time we've seen anthrax used on American soil, and other WMDs used in Iraq. So today's Paharaoh's and downtrodden have bioweapons. Asymmetric warfare with power in mankind's hands, not God's.  

Remember the little guy. Rabbis of 1800 years' ago set the seder plate with bitter herbs and a sweet mixture. You eat them together. The mixture to remind you of bricks our enslaved ancestors made. The horseradish to remind you of their sweat and tears. So we make the connection between ourselves and those still in physical and spiritual bondage. And if we're lucky, we act on that connection. What are we doing to assure that every kid gets an education? What are doing to eliminate hunger in our country? How are we forcing our criminal justice system to protect a poor person's civil rights? How are we protecting women better than we did last year?

Set a place for the stranger. You leave a cup of wine for Elijah, should the prophet come calling. But you open your door to anyone who is hungry. Hospitality is the least gift we can give to a stranger or to ourselves. We don't ask for ID or check with Homeland Security.

If you're looking for a haggadah for your seder, I like the Open Source Haggadah Project, a spinoff of Douglas Rushkoff's Open Source Judaism. It helps you roll your own from traditional and modern sources. In our civilization's spirit of inquiry and dialog. Chag sameach. 

Jacques Demy's 1964 films is one of my all time favorites. Beautiful to eye, lyrical to the ear, touching, and oh so French. Proof that Catherine Deneuve is a national treasure.  

I read Editor: Myself, Hossein Derakhsan's Persian/English weblog. Hossein (or does he go by Hoder?) covers domestic affairs for the BBC and metablogs the Persian blogosphere. I don't believe bloggers and politics mesh with each other the same way in Iran as they do here (the consequences of speaking out are a little different), but they seem of a kind.

Last week I dined with Pedram Moallemian who blogs the eyeranian. He wants a secular Iran. I asked him what he thought America's policy on Iran should be. He answered:

• Respect the right of self-determination for Iran and Iranians.
• Condemn any possible military action against the people who are doing a great job fighting tyranny by themselves.
• Acknowledge big mistakes were made on both sides in the past and choose to move on towards a better relationship.

Tyrants ruled Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no meaningful chance for reform, no hope for self-determination. Do the people of Iran, at home and in diaspora, have enough faith in the current system and the system's ability to change incumbents? 

Pedram clearly does. He and others are drafting a new Iranian constitution. This is an ambitious exercise, imagining a new government that fits a whole people. It's an embrace of liberty worthy of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. He wrote:

One of the bases for any true democracy is to accept the people’s prerogative to occasionally make wrong choices and even more often, to make choices that you and I may not like or agree with. But at the end of the day, the choice is completely theirs. By that I mean that if in a free and open election Iranians choose to keep the current regime, it would be vital for people like myself to value and honor their choice, yet reserving our right to oppose it in peaceful fashion and by non-violent means.   

Back to the three points...

Kerry is more likely to negotiate with Iran's government than Bush, but no President or candidate worth anything will rule out future options.

Israel is America's friend, and the threat of American force is part of what keeps it safe. Why rule out military action against a country who is still technically at war with a US ally? Some of the terror organizations that operate in Israel are funded by Iran. So there's a lot to work out between us, more than self determination.

Acknowledging mistakes on both sides, well, sure. Why not? Moving toward a better relationship? That's Motherhood and Apple Pie (at least in America). But actions speak much louder than words. Secular government that doesn't position America as Satan; defunding and disarming Hezbollah and other terrorists and turning them in to law enforcement authorities; acknowledging Israel's right to exist; and full women's suffrage would be great starts.

P.S. It seems both of our countries could do with a little more regime change and fairer elections.

P.P.S. Check out iranFilter, a collective blog/mefi system built by... wait for it... Hoder. More links, pithy. Overall source on internal reform, student life, American policy re: Iran. Now in beta.

P.P.P.S. My conviction is much greater than my influence within the Kerry campaign.

P.P.P.P.S. I had some naan with the tandoori lamb.  

[a klog apart]

TechNoir: "I met this man years and years ago and I have seen him repeatedly over the years even had dinner with him. If you really knew your comic history and you were on the con circuit you knew Julie Schwartz."

ABC reported the death of Julius Schwartz, Editor, DC Comics. He "rescued the superhero genre from near extinction in the 1950s. Revived and modernized Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern." Hawkman, Atom, The Justice League of America, and Superman too.

Maggie Thompson: This is the man who, more than any other, can take credit for the fact that we can still buy comic books today. The field continues to evolve — and maybe he’s been better equipped to handle that evolution, simply because science fiction was old stuff to him by the time he entered our field six decades ago. But — no matter how much we do admire the writers and artists who have entertained us — it’s Editor Julius Schwartz who came up with a formula that turned out to be a winning equation for our field.

This was important.

His rework of character, plot, theme, and visual design showed that each stupid little work can be reincarnated. Adapted to the times. Repurposed for other media. Giving power to authors and artists, and birth to entire media industries.

Where do you think West Side Story came from? Hollywood and Broadway made Romeo and Juliet over and over for decades. Then Julie showed that something old can be made new again. 

If you haven't followed graphic novels and comics for the last twenty years, you may not know that Batman has been interpreted and reinterpreted by more than a hundred different creative teams. Schwartz paved the road so we can enjoy the Caped Crusader set in times Edwardian and apocolyptic, as a boy and an old man, broken hearted or beyond vicious, political or anarchic, isolated or a family man. All being true to Bob Kane's central character while infusing their own imaginations and visions.

So what?

When the American masses stopped reading literary classics and listening to opera, the storytellers of Hollywood and Rockefeller Center turned for stories to the franchises of the dime novel, the genres of the comic book. Westerns. Science Fiction. True Romance.

Before Disney opened theme parks, DC Comics proved even little cartoons have enormous market potential. Properties long dead can breathe new cash flow.

So we have media conglomerates. And a war for the intellectual property commons. I can repurpose Beowulf and Icelandic sagas, and Shakespeare. But when does Time Warner's Batman franchise enter the public domain? When can I put on a Batman school play or write a short Silver Surfer story without their permission, without paying for the privelege? 

I love that storytellers renew and reinvigorate modern myths. So when you see Spiderman 2 and the Punisher this summer, or Hellboy, Starsky & Hutch, The Stepford Wives, Man-Thing, Catwoman, Alien vs. Predator, Astroboy, or Scooby Doo, give a nod to Julius Schwartz.

[a klog apart]

I have a bad case of blogstipation: pent up posts rattling in my head after two weeks on the road. My first was in Whatcom County, Washington, the week before their Democratic caucuses, with a day in Vancouver. I had part of a weekend home, then off to the Electronic Democracy Teach-In and O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference in San Diego. And I'm back. And catching up on email, sleep, surfing, the local campaign (how strange that they're prospering without me).

This by way of letting you know that I'm about to go running off at the blog for the next few days.

[aka propagandart]

I'm coming up to Vancouver, B.C., on Thursday. Anyone for lunch or dinner? Call me: 510-444-8234 or email philw et dijest. com. Can you suggest spicy noodles, or other fare? Roland? We can talk about social software, politics, the horrible commercials on the superbowl this year, blogging, whatever.

I saw a picture of the Queen Mary 2. Ten lifeboats on a side, 20 in all. The ship can carry 2620 passengers and 1254 crew. So 3874 into 20 is 194 people per life boat. But you need to plan for some boats being more full than others, some breakage, etc. So let's assume 10% overcapacity, or about 215 per boat. Most restaurants don't have that capacity. Do the QM2's boats? Who built them? Do the lifeboats have boats, food, electronics, storm shells?