Last Friday I was at TechCrunch’s big mondo party. I met the guy who built del.icio.us. Guy Kawasaki. Dave Winer. Kevin Rose. And many other “famous geeks and technologists” and I spent more than six hours at that event.
So, why did I, in the first hour today at nofoo learn more Web sites and hear more original ideas discussed than at that entire six-hour event? Keep in mind that at today’s event. Keep in mind that for the first hour there was just one guy, Bud Ozborn, there. And he’s not a famous technologist.
Anyway, he told me about Joe Satriani’s “Guitarist TV” that is done using Brightcove, an Internet TV service.
Later as a few other people showed up I noticed we all were learning a lot faster and riffing off of each other’s ideas a lot more than at most of the other events I’ve attended this summer.
I learned about Swaptree, which will let me trade books, DVDs, and other things with you.
Joseph A. Paolantonio joined us and we started talking about identity and presence (he wrote up what he remembers of the afternoon on his blog). I forget why we were talking about Anne Galloway’s blog (she’s a PhD candidate at the department of sociology and anthropology at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) but I’m glad we did cause she talks about stuff I would never consider. Ahh, it was when we started talking about how we relate to each other and physical spaces.
Anyway at the end we all noted that we had a great time and a great conversation — better than we usually have, even at events where the people are smarter or more accomplished — and started thinking about why that was?
I realized that you can really only talk with three other people at one time. If there’s more than four, then you’ll actually start spliting up into two separate conversations. Get to about six or seven people and you’ll have two conversations and you’ll want to pay attention to both.
So, we’re now already in ADD land for conversations. Pay attention to the interesting one.
It gets worse the more people that get added. Then you want to “graze” for the best conversation — at TechCrunch there were so many interesting people that you couldn’t spend more than a few minutes talking to any one (and there was the social pressure of knowing that the guy behind you listening in could have been a journalist or a blogger that’d put your stupid opinions up for the world to make fun of). If you’re stuck talking to someone at such an event, even someone who is damn brilliant and interesting you keep looking around for someone who is even MORE brilliant and interesting.
And, even if you are a brilliant conversationalist and stay focused on the person in front of you the noise level goes up and up and up. I remember talking with one guy at TechCrunch and I literally couldn’t hear his answers so I gave up on any type of intelligent conversation.
Out of my two years when I attended FooCamp I remember only two conversations clearly. And both of them were in this very small-group clustering and stayed in that cluster for a very long time. One was where the two guys who started Google walked in on Patrick and me at about 11 p.m. in an empty cafeteria. That was an experience I’ll never forget.
Another one was where I was sitting at lunch with Esther Dyson, Stewart Brand, Jeff Bezos.
In what setting have you learned the most in one hour from other people?
Scobleizer 
Looks like a link from Scoblezier might have been more than Joseph Paolantonio’s blog could handle. It was still up when I clicked through, but now it’s showing a default Plesk page. Same thing with his company website. Ouch.
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Looks like a link from Scoblezier might have been more than Joseph Paolantonio’s blog could handle. It was still up when I clicked through, but now it’s showing a default Plesk page. Same thing with his company website. Ouch.
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The Joe Satriani interview is great. He’s always interesting to listen to.
His podcasts promoting his new record Super Colossal did a great job of introducing the music. How about getting him on PodTech?
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The Joe Satriani interview is great. He’s always interesting to listen to.
His podcasts promoting his new record Super Colossal did a great job of introducing the music. How about getting him on PodTech?
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Re: the first part of your post (learning more at foo than TC). I think this effect you are observing is also related to the explosion in UGC as we are realizing that there are plenty of people with ideas and skills – not just the few who get the usual attention. It is one of the big myths of the last century that only the smart and talented make it to the top and the rest don’t deserve to be there otherwise they would be. No, there is more going on, and we are only beginning to understand it. It takes an open and unprejudiced mind (like yours) to allow this to weigh in, and for me is one of the most interesting aspects of your blog.
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Re: the first part of your post (learning more at foo than TC). I think this effect you are observing is also related to the explosion in UGC as we are realizing that there are plenty of people with ideas and skills – not just the few who get the usual attention. It is one of the big myths of the last century that only the smart and talented make it to the top and the rest don’t deserve to be there otherwise they would be. No, there is more going on, and we are only beginning to understand it. It takes an open and unprejudiced mind (like yours) to allow this to weigh in, and for me is one of the most interesting aspects of your blog.
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Try being at a female only event for a change and you have the additional problem of the higher voices getting on your nerves in well visited events! 😉
Yes, you do feel like you have achieved more because you do not need to hop around to “take advantage” of all the people out there, so your ratio of ‘how many percent’ you had a talk with will rise.
I for example missed Guy Kawasaki at blogher – bummer. I would have liked to give him a short thanks for his books because I really like them. There are a few other people I read about I did not meet and it feels like “damn! you where there! so many people you did not talk to! why did you not talk to them?!”
But on the flipside, I would not have time to have a longer conversation with them, if I wanted to be the butterfly. Instead I had some deeper conversation with the “same old and a few new people” over two days. But you know what? They where cool as well. I now know a Fashion Journalist from NY and an engineer from Toronto better.
Which Rick Segal asked me to connect him to as in it is only a good thing to know more people from where you live – only to find out they both already knew each other. 😉
But back to your question: I think we learn more when we make sure to remind us that it is okay to have one conversation that evening even if that means leaving out 699 others.
I am for the exact reason interested to see the differences on my next trip: Portable Media Expo is supposed to have 3000 attendees where as office 2.0 seems to me a smaller event with like 200-300 people.
Barcamp London next week will be even smaller, 80 people. If it will be as Barcamp LA, it is going to be great.
PME: I know I will feel bad looking out for some special people I really want to meet on the possibilities I would have.
Lesson for myself in those cases: If you do have such a monster event, try to get a notice of the people you know are coming and decide if they might be interesting to each other and try to hook them up because you know they might have a great chat that they.
‘Pay it forward’ as netweaving.com is calling it. 🙂
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Try being at a female only event for a change and you have the additional problem of the higher voices getting on your nerves in well visited events! 😉
Yes, you do feel like you have achieved more because you do not need to hop around to “take advantage” of all the people out there, so your ratio of ‘how many percent’ you had a talk with will rise.
I for example missed Guy Kawasaki at blogher – bummer. I would have liked to give him a short thanks for his books because I really like them. There are a few other people I read about I did not meet and it feels like “damn! you where there! so many people you did not talk to! why did you not talk to them?!”
But on the flipside, I would not have time to have a longer conversation with them, if I wanted to be the butterfly. Instead I had some deeper conversation with the “same old and a few new people” over two days. But you know what? They where cool as well. I now know a Fashion Journalist from NY and an engineer from Toronto better.
Which Rick Segal asked me to connect him to as in it is only a good thing to know more people from where you live – only to find out they both already knew each other. 😉
But back to your question: I think we learn more when we make sure to remind us that it is okay to have one conversation that evening even if that means leaving out 699 others.
I am for the exact reason interested to see the differences on my next trip: Portable Media Expo is supposed to have 3000 attendees where as office 2.0 seems to me a smaller event with like 200-300 people.
Barcamp London next week will be even smaller, 80 people. If it will be as Barcamp LA, it is going to be great.
PME: I know I will feel bad looking out for some special people I really want to meet on the possibilities I would have.
Lesson for myself in those cases: If you do have such a monster event, try to get a notice of the people you know are coming and decide if they might be interesting to each other and try to hook them up because you know they might have a great chat that they.
‘Pay it forward’ as netweaving.com is calling it. 🙂
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It was interesting that at TC it was truly impossible to get more than a few seconds attention out of anyone (I didn’t even try to have a talk with you under the circumstances), whereas at the WOMMA conference, which you and Shel attended, I got to talk with each for a few minutes, the only pressure being the vblog guys trying to get their interview done.
IMHO it’s not about the amount of people at an event but the physical space. It’s easier to be able to maintain a civilized conversation when you have room, and thus lack the three dozen other conversations going on within three feet of yourself. The TC apparently was more a meet & greet than a real place for discussion, as I have read in couple of places 🙂
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It was interesting that at TC it was truly impossible to get more than a few seconds attention out of anyone (I didn’t even try to have a talk with you under the circumstances), whereas at the WOMMA conference, which you and Shel attended, I got to talk with each for a few minutes, the only pressure being the vblog guys trying to get their interview done.
IMHO it’s not about the amount of people at an event but the physical space. It’s easier to be able to maintain a civilized conversation when you have room, and thus lack the three dozen other conversations going on within three feet of yourself. The TC apparently was more a meet & greet than a real place for discussion, as I have read in couple of places 🙂
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Interesting that you found conversations only worked with up to three other people – Robin Dunbar’s book Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language has a pretty plausible explanation of why this is – it’s to do with how many people we can hear at once, and how we process the sounds we hear.
Nice to see his theories validated by practice – I’ve always found it to be true too! 🙂
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Interesting that you found conversations only worked with up to three other people – Robin Dunbar’s book Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language has a pretty plausible explanation of why this is – it’s to do with how many people we can hear at once, and how we process the sounds we hear.
Nice to see his theories validated by practice – I’ve always found it to be true too! 🙂
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Learning about what? Web 2.0 flameouts and “trade things online” and “physical space” space-cadety theories, all complete with the usual obligatory name drops. Tho I find it hard to believe that anyone can recall or make much sense out of any conversation with the Supreme Space Cadet herself, Esther Dyson, the world needs a new Plutoian Rosetta Stone for that…
Small groups, were you can hear people, work better than big-large loud ego-fed High School-popularity-redux parties, where everyone is ‘constantly-looking-over-your-shoulder’, freshly stocked with all sorts of ‘Hells Angels’ Security goons actively keeping the riff-raff out, type of Events. Geee, I must need a PhD in Anthropology, to figure that one out.
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Learning about what? Web 2.0 flameouts and “trade things online” and “physical space” space-cadety theories, all complete with the usual obligatory name drops. Tho I find it hard to believe that anyone can recall or make much sense out of any conversation with the Supreme Space Cadet herself, Esther Dyson, the world needs a new Plutoian Rosetta Stone for that…
Small groups, were you can hear people, work better than big-large loud ego-fed High School-popularity-redux parties, where everyone is ‘constantly-looking-over-your-shoulder’, freshly stocked with all sorts of ‘Hells Angels’ Security goons actively keeping the riff-raff out, type of Events. Geee, I must need a PhD in Anthropology, to figure that one out.
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I can’t recall the last time that I had the opportunity to do any of that. I work for a large blue company, where the attitude seems iminical to that kind of free-range intellectual association, save only for certain individuals, on occasion. It is encouraging to see that it does still exist. Wonder if there is a relationship between skill level, unwillingness to accept the status quo, and this kind of tech-connectedness?
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I can’t recall the last time that I had the opportunity to do any of that. I work for a large blue company, where the attitude seems iminical to that kind of free-range intellectual association, save only for certain individuals, on occasion. It is encouraging to see that it does still exist. Wonder if there is a relationship between skill level, unwillingness to accept the status quo, and this kind of tech-connectedness?
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Kevin,
Sorry about the sites being down – they were off-line for the nightly backup.
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Kevin,
Sorry about the sites being down – they were off-line for the nightly backup.
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Thanks for the Swaptree link. That looks like it will become quite a usefull FREE service. Truly, this is what the power of the Internet should be about.
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Thanks for the Swaptree link. That looks like it will become quite a usefull FREE service. Truly, this is what the power of the Internet should be about.
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“Free-range intellectual association” is called academia, and is vital and necessary, but after all the talk is said, something must be done. It’s not the ideas or the eternal-noised chatter, it’s the implementation and the delivery, witness all the horrible-coded test apps from Microsoft R&D PhD types.
“Unwillingness to accept the status quo”, from this crowd means instant riches at whatever cost, dot.com fraudish dreams, nothing pesky like actual work, and dealing with actual customers, as that will be automated with an RSS feed, you know.
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“Free-range intellectual association” is called academia, and is vital and necessary, but after all the talk is said, something must be done. It’s not the ideas or the eternal-noised chatter, it’s the implementation and the delivery, witness all the horrible-coded test apps from Microsoft R&D PhD types.
“Unwillingness to accept the status quo”, from this crowd means instant riches at whatever cost, dot.com fraudish dreams, nothing pesky like actual work, and dealing with actual customers, as that will be automated with an RSS feed, you know.
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Howdy, Just wondering about Brightcove. I’ve been following them since Jermey Allaire left Macromedia for them. I still don’t get it. What is so remarkable about hiding fabulous content deep within some kludgey flash. Where’s the RSS feeds!? Where’s the mechanism to deliver this content to me? Or at the very least let me know a new episode has been posted. I love Joe Satriani, but Brightcove mine as well sold him an really expensive really hard to us invisibility cloke for marketing. It makes absolutely NO sense. They’re not the first people I’ve seen buy into this either… Brightcove has been courting and winning over some pretty big players but I have yet to see a single innovative idea or success story.
Hell… the least they could do is offer something a little bit more youtube like!?
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Howdy, Just wondering about Brightcove. I’ve been following them since Jermey Allaire left Macromedia for them. I still don’t get it. What is so remarkable about hiding fabulous content deep within some kludgey flash. Where’s the RSS feeds!? Where’s the mechanism to deliver this content to me? Or at the very least let me know a new episode has been posted. I love Joe Satriani, but Brightcove mine as well sold him an really expensive really hard to us invisibility cloke for marketing. It makes absolutely NO sense. They’re not the first people I’ve seen buy into this either… Brightcove has been courting and winning over some pretty big players but I have yet to see a single innovative idea or success story.
Hell… the least they could do is offer something a little bit more youtube like!?
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i use http://www.greenlush.com for web hosting, there accualyl better service than mediatemple wich is pretty hard to understand but i have heard more good things about greenlush than anyone
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