The topic this time is ‘harnessing collective intelligence.’ It wasn’t hard to come up with a real-world example. The Finnish sci-fi parody film Star Wreck by director Timo Vuorensola and producer Samuli Torssonen has been downloaded over 4 million times, and translated to over 20 languages. Our studio guest Timo Vuorensola estimates over 300 people have contributed 3D models, translations, promotion, etc.
We had a chat with Timo about the future of peer-produced & peer-distributed film and wrap up with musings of how this relates to the broader change in the social nature of the internet. “If King Tut lived today, he’d build his pyramid online.”
It’s like kite surfing except with a sailboat. The kite boat goes faster than a standard katamaran and you get very wet. It’s totally awesome. We used a 21 meter kite that Saul designed for his sister’s company Monkey Kites.
On Sunday I went out on the kite boat with Saul and Patrick another Squid Labs friend. The wind was stronger and after some wrestling shoulder-deep in the water we got the kite fastened to the boat. As soon as we climbed aboard the boat shot off like a bullet. We jigged for a while before the rudder snapped and Saul and Patrick had to manouver the boat back to the beach.
Saul fixed the rudder with some wood and inner tubes and soon they were off again.
Nicole Simon has interviewed a bunch of Digital Lifestyle Day speakers for the pre-conference podcast. In the one she did with me we spoke, among other things, about the potential of open mobile devices to open up the global conversation to non-bloggers, and mobile services that would make for a sensible part of people’s everyday lives.
The Wall Street Journal called him a “marketing guru”. He’s the co-author of the The Cluetrain Manifesto, the bestseller that cut through the hype and told business what the Web was really about. His latest book, Small Pieces Loosely Joined has been published to rave reviews hailing it as the first book to put the Internet in its deepest context.
So I’m totally stoked to announce that David Weinberger has agreed to give the next Aula talk on Thursday, December 1st at 6 pm. The place is the PWC-lecture theatre (G-112) in the Chydenia building at the Helsinki School of Economics (Runeberginkatu 22-24). Thanks to folks at The Center of Knowledge and Innovation Research at the Helsinki School of Economics for offering the space.
David will speak on “The New Shape of Knowledge.” The summary he provided is worth quoting at length:
As businesses and media have looked at blogs, they’ve seen reflections of themselves. This continues a misunderstanding of the Web so persistent that it probably should count as a form of denial. Blogs are not a new form of journalism or primarily consist of teenagers whining about their teachers. Blogs are not even primarily a form of individual expression. They are better understood as conversations. This makes them just one more part of the transformation the Web is working on our social fabric, including the relationship of customers to businesses, employees to managers and business to society.
Ulla and I are apartment-hunting on the cover of the October issue of Suomen Kuvalehti, which is like Time in the Finnish-speaking world. The story is about the possibility of a real-estate bubble. Ulla and I both expect prices to adjust slightly but think it’s unlikely that interest rates will shoot up drastically in the near future. We didn’t buy the apartment, and I don’t know any chords although I play guitar in the picture.
