It felt like an acid trip and swings in blood sugar and the five seconds of a family reunion that are sheer delight.
Stuart Henshall, always gracious, hosted Dina Mehta at Boobo di Beppy where staple busting portions stun you with their fat content. More on the restaurant later.
We talked about Skype, blog uptake, and other things until I realized that I was at the social scientists' table. Michele Chang is an ubicomp goddess researcher. Dina is a behaviorist. danah boyd (no caps for typographical balance) is getting doctored in social network behavior. Denise Cheskin comes at behavior from a marketing view, and I'm a demoblographer (I blog demography) and labor market analyst. Clynton Taylor is a full tyme ethnographer for business (from where do I know him?). And Stuart has x-ray vision when it comes to models, business and management models I mean.
We were a worldly bunch. Dina from India. danah originally from England but sans accent? Stuart from NZ but with a courteous American drawl. I'm from New York but work has taken me to strange places like Houston and Lausanne. Liz Goodman's from the Big Apple too, an actress artist become ubicomp sociologist en route to Oregon. Denise went to grad school in France. It felt so cosmopolitan to be in such a faked up Italian joint.
More topics:
Dina thinks technology diffusion will be slow in India, to the point where Dean-like campaigns may take 15 years to work. I'm betting on five years, optimist that I am. I think some will do it just to get a better return on money, faster cheaper to reach the small middle class online. imho, the magic will happen when (a) we figure out how to run a Dean campaign via SMS, increasing reach and (b) when we build the social software and cultural models organizing the middle class to reach out to the offline masses, something the Democrats are attempting to do in the US. But I'm an ignorant slut when it comes to the subcontinent and am likely wrong.
Business cards. Mine with Google keywords. danah's in black so nobody can write on it. Clynton's with a form on the back for notes: event, date, was wearing, talked about, follow up with call/email/visit.
Dollars are the universal currency, you can use them in Costa Rica and almost anywhere interchangeably with local coin and paper.
Fun stories of interviews with gay men about their computers, including the minimalist who hides it behind the clothes in his closet, the pious who adorn their technology with icons of angels and saints.
How men worth anything will follow their women from state to state as they pursue their careers.
Being neither fish (academe) nor fowl (one of the kidz) at one of danah's dance parties. If you haven't met her, danah lives both in her body and her mind, and her parties reflect that. Oh to be younger again, but I was never that cool.
How kids who've grown up with the Internet only use email to communicate with parents or other adults. They use IM (meaning AIM) among themselves and will jump to MSN for private conversations. What happens when non-email kids grow up?
danah who monitors her self-monitoring started us on how many bloggers write with purpose instead of just uttering. Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? Aware of consequences now and maybe in the future. My thinking: The reemergence of Google and the Wayback machine as our Permanent Record casts a chilling effect on personal disclosure. Will I share that cute story about the cat's claws coming too close to the vibrator and clit if it might affect a future relationship, job or political office? Or will I censor myself? LiveJournal shows the way: controlled layers of disclosure let you write to the world, your friends, a friend, or just to yourself.
The restaurant was all about experience marketing. Sculptures of popes, photos of Frank, bottles of chianti, meals served family style. Appealing, satisfying. And contrived by marketing folks at the chain's corporate headquarters. Their business relies on the illusion of the place, on customers suspending disbelief enough to enjoy the space, service, and food. They are careful to hide everything that might break that illusion. Kitchen stuff, admin staff, computers, break rooms. And they are not alone. Hotels depend on you accepting the illusion that no one ever slept in that room, in that bed before. Theme parks don't let you see characters slip out of costume or see staff lectured on crowd control. This conflicts with the marketing blog meme of letting the world see what goes on inside your enterprise, see how the sausage is made. Are the benefits of having a large choir of voices singing to the Internet, bonding to customers with sincerity, are the benefits worth your customers' lost innocence?
The GoGame, that builds new teams independent of prior rank or status by forcing people to notice their urban environment in great detail (phone powered scavenger hunt). Teletwister, a game of twister where a community votes on the players' moves.
That of course the lessons of emergent democracy and the Dean campaign (putting the tail of the power curve to work) can work inside organizations, but not at my company.
How the power to read more people (newsreaders are TiVos of the blogosphere) means everyone is becoming more like Oprah. Oprah's shields manage her 20 million "personal connections" rising from her broadcast media (tv, books, magazines). Setting expectations so people don't feel I'm rude when they get a form letter, a challenge, or a request for references.
Blondie's big gulp martinis. And then it gets fuzzy.
Other postings from this dinner:
. Updated: 11/2/2003; 7:33:31 PM
