/Message

SocialU: It's All About You, If You're A Virtually Materialistic Narcissist

SocialU is a new lifestreamingish social application, that goes to enormous lengths to create a cheesy social environment centered on fungible social gestures, like giving a contact an electronic package of french fries. To 'buy' the fries, users can apply their initial stake of $500,000 social dollars or earn more cash by doing various social things: adding friends, making comments, etc.

socialu - it's all about you v0.0.3287, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

I am all for giving friends gifts, but the ersatz quality of SocialU is depressing. I can't see myself participating in a meta-community -- the system allow you to open tabs on Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, Bebo, and just about any other social app out there, in various tabs -- that is principally focused on translating social gestures into virtual currency, and then distributing that cash by buying virtual bling, property or other e-goods, and possibly gifting other contacts.

Forgive me for being subject to social physics, but I would like my socialization to be about something, like tachnology, or saving the world, or collecting toy trains. But this 'hall of mirrors', self-reflecting social hypodermic needle doesn't add anything that we need.

Perhaps the sort of obsessiveness associated with Tamagotchi pets plays here -- another fad I never thought added up to much.

And it is not the materialism per se that irks me. I am all for sites like ThisNext, where people share recommmendations about stuff -- furniture, gizmos, jewelry -- because I buy in on the idea that all e-commerce will be social in the near future. But this is phony, like giving food pellets to pigeons in a Skinner box for going through the motions of social interaction. I am all for social karma (or "swarmth") building up in the innards of social tools, but directly tying actions to specific economic inducements, instead of an algorithmic authority or reputation is a terrible way to go.

Seth's Blog: The first law of mass media

[from Seth's Blog: The first law of mass media by Seth Godin]

Organizations will work tirelessly to de-personalize every communication medium they encounter.

Massification = de-personalization.

[via @davidcushman]

Going Solo: Leeds Event Cancelled

I spoke with Stephanie Booth, yesterday, the organizer of the Going Solo conferences, and she has determined to cancel the upcoming event in Leeds, planned for 12 September 2008:

[from Going Solo » Not Enough Attendees For Going Solo Leeds]

Yesterday mid-afternoon, I had to take the difficult decision to cancel Going Solo Leeds. The reason for this is that a bit over two weeks before the event, there are simply not enough registrations for it to take place under the conditions I envisioned for it.

After discussing the situation with my advisors, I reached the conclusion that the most responsible course of action right now was to cancel as soon as I could.

I’m aware that for some of the people who have arranged to travel to Leeds, it’s already too late to cancel travel plans. If you’re going to be in Leeds anyway, how about doing something together? Let’s gather on the 12th for a free SoloCamp where we will discuss soloist issues amongst ourselves in an informal way.

The Going Solo conference concept and the community around it live on. There will be a third edition of Going Solo — I’ve learnt a tremendous amount of things preparing both the Lausanne and the Leeds editions, and will be taking advantage of those lessons to do things slightly differently. How, when and where are still unknowns, but if you are subscribed to the newsletter you’ll be informed in good time.

I am sure that Stephanie will regroup, and come up with a plan for the next Going Solo that will push the energy we had in Lausanne out to new areas: perhaps the US? I noted in the comments that some people thought that having a different crop of speakers might have led some who had attended the Lausanne event, only a few months ago, to attend again. Others suggested that London might have been a better spot.

I am an advisor and participant, and I think that Going Solo should take on more of a workshop feel (perhaps an extra day of more intense working sessions), as well as a bit more of a mixture of a local, community-oriented unconference with a smaller number of formal sessions. I am sure that Stephanie will continue to tinker, and get the formula right.

Turns out that I will be in the UK for other reasons, as well as the Going Solo event, so I will be supporting the informal 'Solo Camp' event, anyway, if it gets off the ground.

Office 2.0 Conference: That Which Does Not Kill You Makes You Stronger

Saw some big news from Ismael Ghalimi about the upcoming Office 2.0 conference, to be held 3-5 September in San Francisco. First of all, Ismael always challenges gravity by concentrating his execution of the conference into a two month period, which is astonishing, considering the professionalism of the event. But this time, some last minute jitters led to a major sponsor dropping out. But Ismael, undaunted, has regrouped and added a launchpad to the event as a means of countering the loss of revenue:

[from Office 2.0 Conference : Office 2.0 Blog: Community Power]

Losing our Diamond Sponsor 10 days before the conference was definitely a huge blow ($75,000), but it forced us to be creative, and focus our efforts on what makes this conference unique, as Susan and Gadi so eloquently pointed out — its community-driven nature. The Office 2.0 Conference would not exist without the help it receives from its sponsors, but many early-stage startups cannot afford even our entry-level package ($2,500). In fact, they can barely afford the cost of flying to California today. Yet many innovations come from the smallest companies with the tightest budgets, and we've always been looking for ways to engage with them. The Office 2.0 Launchpad might be the answer.

Less than 24 hours after announcing it, we confirmed the participation of 8 companies, and are reviewing another 5. With a little bit more help from the bloggers community, we should easily reach 20 to 30, creating a nice balance with our more established paying sponsors. This is a perfect example of how powerful a community of online contributors can be, and a real-time illustration of how this event is put together, in less than 2 months.

I am a strong supporter of the event, and plan to help Ismael however I can in the next few weeks.

Update: 27 August 2008 - /Message readers can get a $100 discount on attendance at Office 2.0. See here.

Disqus Gone Haywire

[Update: 4:30pm ET 25 Aug 2008: The nice support folks at Disqus have moved the comments so that this post is now moot.]

I apologize to those that posted comments here in the past week or so, since I set up Disqus on /Message. I broke the templates that I worked on for so long (see ), and managed to link /Message comments to the /Mind blog: a cut and paste error.

If you'd like, please redo your comments. I am sending a help message to Disqus to see if I can reassociated the comments with the correct blog.