bootstrapping.net

Ok, this is something that really has been puzzling me for months. The Second Life hype. Today was the tipping point - i need to understand the dynamics of the hype - hope you can help.

A danish IDG arranged event called webchamp honoring great web solutions devotes about 80% of it’s full-day conference to Second Life. Rest aside that Second Life has got nothing to do with the World Wide Web (Web) it’s interesting how mass media is pumping/hyping up Second Life.
Overlooking the very low user numbers compared to for example gaming/sharing environments, ignoring that each decade have had it’s own graphical virtual worlds (the 80’s: Habitat, the 90’s: Active Worlds and ignoring more complex trends like participation, blogging, sharing, etc. Evidence-based the hype is so disproportional to the major trends that are seeing user adaption and the trends that are shaping us, our organizations and societies.

I think ideas like Second Life will have an impact in a 6-12 years time span - especially if they become open standards and open source.

So help me, what is it that makes Second Life so good to hype up?

Did a presentation in the afternoon for a couple of hundred online marketing professionals at the DIA07 conference/award show. A basic cluetrainish message representing the individuals view on the future of marketing customer/company relationship combined with some context and thougths on the customer-driven intentional marketplace.
Started by reading aloud 14 statements from the Cluetrain Manifesto - since they so beautifully captures the zeitgeist - even though they were written in 1999, soon almost 8 years ago. The statements/worldview apparently was somewhat controversial with the crowd, or at least with one of the other panelists, which set the scene for the most confrontational and aggressive personal attack in a panel debate i’ve ever seen or experienced. Still puzzled and somewhat shocked here many hours later trying to gear down. We live in interesting disruptive times…
PDF Presentation in English, 16,8 Mb

Did a gonzo presentation for 100 danish library leaders today. Ended up calling it “Excitement, Fundamentals and Implementation”. Discussing the excitement about the future many people are experiencing. Calling for the library to go back to the fundamentals of giving free access to information. Calling for the libraries to actually implement their core in a digital context by digitalizing all information in their archives and providing danish citizens free digital access to all material published whether in books, journals, dvd, etc. - effectively bridging the copyfight vs. the copyright cartels war. But also calling for world class product design implementation of all their services and modern decentralized organizational principles. To stop accepting losing meaning every day and start winning.
PDF in danish here if you’re adventurous.

Happy Hour is 9 to 5 is the title of my friend Alexander’s new book (aka. Mr. Chief Happiness Officer). Read it online for free or buy a pdf/physical book to support Alexander and his work. Comes very well recommended.
(photo of the friendly Laundromat Cafe staff admiring the first physical copy of the book - big parts of the book was written in the cafe).

My kid brother gave me a wonderful christmas gift - a gift card to do micro lending with Kiva. You can check out my portfolio and follow my adventures.
Kiva is a great prototype - but would love if the system could be more P2P than the current implementation - which is more of an add-on to existing instutional micro lending systems. (a lot of transaction costs that could be taken out of the system).

Ted Rheingold tagged me to do a 5 things you may not know about me - so here we go.

- I’m a high school dropout with no formal education. (technically probably still on leave from high school).

- I’m 29 years old and live in Copenhagen, Denmark with my girlfriend and our two kids.

- In my teens i was a hockey dj, actually the reason why my family got a real computer. DJ’ing for 1.000-2.500 people for ice hockey games - a great learning experience about the symbiosis of top-down creating a motion and the crowd self organizing chanting - finding the balance between the two, feeling the vibe of the game/augmenting the game, but not becoming the game. I still believe great hockey dj’ing is deeply underestimated .

- I ran a pirate radio station in school broadcasting 30 minutes each day with Christian Schmidt. Still one of the neatest hacks ever when we (or he?) realized that a specific old cassette player connected to the school broadcasting system meant we could broadcast from the class room to the school at large. (along the way we went a bit over the line and it got institutionalized and quickly got very boring - going to the headmasters office and putting on the tape was a different experience .

- In the months before each years reboot i have frequent night mares about all that could go wrong (apparently something many conference/festival organizers have). My most bizarre nightmare is a reboot held on a beach (!) with 500 people without having done any planning having to make it up as the day goes along…

I’m tagging Nikolaj, Pind, Hartvig, Trine-Maria and Ralf Beuker to do the same.