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 
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- 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 
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- 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.
Was on the danish national broadcasters conversation show “Deadline 2nd section” in a conversation about “the new reality of the net” (their title) last sunday. Haven’t dared watching it myself, but if you’re adventurous you can watch it.
Interestingly how much attention Secondlife gets since it’s a very small trend compared to the major trends, interesting how such a tv show is produced (apart from the 3 camera people it’s very light staffing), how scripted a conversation show on tv actually is - perhaps that what it takes to do good tv, why there suddenly is such an enthusiasm hype about the net and how much the three of us who we’re on the show actually shared perspective/culture/ideology (net culture at work here).
Participated in an Arup workshop recently with a great diverse group on the future of the business hotel. One insight i had during the workshop seems to be sticking. An emerging travel ethic that seemed to resonate with most of the participants all though it goes against all current trends.
We’re currently in a phase of democratization of business travel due to low costs, more people have international relationships in organizations and many smaller organizations/micro companies. So we’re jetting around the globe, flying back and forth in one day to London, Berlin, Paris, etc. just for a meeting or two. Some people think this is hip and happening - it’s at least something seen as a status symbol to be busy traveller. But i think a very big counter trend is about to emerge because we’re starting to see the extreme liability air travel has compared to other travel forms in terms of global warming. Imagine a comparison between someone biking to work back and forth each day and somebody doing 4-6 business trips a month with 1-4 hour flights in terms of emissions. And technology doesn’t seem to have any easy solutions in a 15-30 year time scenario in terms of big advances of sustainable air travel.
So i propose a travel ethic that i think is like to emerge in 5-20 years:
1. Travel as seldom as possible.
Get as much done with communication tools, really push the need to say “i’ll come to the meeting”.
2. Travel as sustainable as possible (probably means much slower travel).
Take the train, take a ferry.
3. Stay as long as possible.
Get as much done now that you’ve exposed the environment to your travel emissions. See all your local friends, do three months of collaboration in two days, make sure you won’t have to visit the local place again that year/decade etc.
Makes sense? Other points to the ethic?
Paradigm surfing is what i do.
This tidbit from the google quarterly earnings somehow stuck with me.
Other Cost of Revenues - Other cost of revenues, which is comprised primarily of data center operational expenses, as well as credit card processing charges, increased to $223 million, or 8% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2006, compared to $204 million, or 8% of revenues, in the second quarter.
So their raw production costs (which includes the the worlds largest datacenter) is 8% of revenues.
Well, even the title is hilarious, so check out this speech by Sumner Redstone [pdf], chairman and founder of Viacom at a conference about “Progress and Freedom”. Some noteable quotes…
- “Copyright is even more right in the digital age because copyright compels creativity. It furnishes the incentive to innovate. Therefore, limiting the protection of copyrights threatens innovation.”
- “Finally, at the risk of sounding naive, let me state the obvious: copyright is, well, right. It’s inherently right for both the creator and the consumer. It’s the right thing to do. If you slave over a song, invest years in bringing a film to fruition, you ought to reap the rewards of that labor.”
- “To those who champion the death of copyright as the only way to ensure a “free market in ideas,” I respond with these statements of utter certainty. Instead of wealth and jobs and great content, you will strike a lethal blow to America’s greatest industry and the heart of its economy. Instead of creating an outlet for free expression, you will generate a government bureaucracy to control it; a Department of Creative Repression, if you will.”
People across the world connecting via blogs. Iconic post/comment if it’s for real.
Did a presentation yesterday at the Shift conference on the use of language as technology/tool for change [PDF]. The last page is the participants suggestions of words we should say goodbye to and words they’d like to see appear/be used more widely. Shift is a great initiative, more momentum to the power of conferences with lot’s of perspective of human social use of technology and to conferences organized by passionate individuals not for profit or to make a living, but to create platforms for conversations.
Kevin Jones from Good Capital and xigi is in Copenhagen next thursday the 21th of September. So if you’re into talking about investment that serves good purposes, microfinance, social enterprises, social entrepreneurship - wednesday is your evening since we’ll have an open blogger dinner at 8pm @ The Laundromat Cafe, Elmegade 15, Copenhagen N. (If you all ready will have had dinner with your loved ones don’t feel obliged to have to eat - just come anyway). Add a comment here if you’re coming…