Molecularist

Yes! Yes! Yes! (and I’ve cut out my own similar preaching)

Link: BuzzMachine � Blog Archive � Who wants to own content?.

But in this new age, you don’t want to own the content or the pipe that delivers it. You want to participate in what people want to do on their own. You don’t want to extract value. You want to add value. You don’t want to build walls or fences or gardens to keep people from doing what they want to do without you. You want to enable them to do it. You want to join in.

via Roland

One thing: it’s not so much that content has no value, but that the value of content is to spur conversation. When Nokia was about to come out with the N-gage, a friend of mine and I were in the middle of some research into games, music, and books and banging our heads trying to figure a way Nokia could kick butt in these areas. We knew the N-gage was coming and wondered if, instead of just duplicating the current top-down publishing and distribution model of the gaming industry, what would happen if Nokia flipped the ‘normal’ games publishing model and gave the games away free. What we didn’t really figure out was how Nokia would then make money other than device sales.

Now I know – make money from and with the community built around the games. They could have built top-quality games (call it a marketing expense), distribute them to the community, and make money off of community services (or even with the community). We all know that’s not what Nokia ended up doing. Oh, well, nobody asked us for our suggestions. Nonetheless, since then, I’ve advocated giving content away and finding the revenue elsewhere.

Link: Roland Tanglao’s Weblog: Portable Print Party – Crazy Flickr Idea #88.

I am sure this idea which was inspired by Kris winning a HP 375 mobile photo printer at the OSCON HP Photo contest is not new (I am sure Gail has thought of it for sure since she has one of these cool mobile photo printers) but I’ll throw it out there for what it’s worth:

   
* Announce the party. It costs $5/person to be part of the party (for paper and printer ink).
   
* 1st five to sign up are the "shooters for the party". The rest get to party but not to shoot.
   
* 1st five take photos for half an hour somewhere and then meet back at a WiFi cafe with power.
   
* The next half hour the fab five pick their top 5 photos from the half hour shot.
* Then somebody with a laptop downloads the 25 top photos from the fab five.
   
* Finally the whole party including the fab five pick the top five photos on this laptop.
   
* Then you print out 1 of each of the top five photos for everybody at the party.
   
* Much hilarity and fun follows 🙂 !

Excellent idea! A few too many ‘rules’ for my liking, and a bit too techy, but the heart is in the right place. If it were up to me, everyone would be taking photos and printing them the whole night through (or maybe first posting over the air to a website). Then, at the end, select the best, print, and distribute. But, then again, I am used to doing this with a BT printer and a mobile phone. 😉 Indeed, we (Nokia party-freak phone-geeks) are already doing this kind of stuff at our events.

On a related note: I remember reading somewhere (maybe Mimi Ito’s stuff) that jointly going over the evening’s photos (captured on mobile phones) is starting to become a part of people’s evening habits. Roland’s idea here is certainly a fun twist to that new behaviour.

Now I can’t wait to go to a party as fun as this. 😀

Link: Joho the Blog: Knowledge as conversation.

Knowledge is not the body of beliefs that needs no further discussion. Knowledge is the neverending conversation. And much of that conversation is precisely about what we can disagree about and still share a world.

And it is the conversation about knowledge that brings people together,
not just reading about knowledge in books, but talking about it. And
not just knowledge, anything can be a spark for conversation without
having to be some nugget of info, such as a photo, a Pokemon card, a TV
show, a new gadget.

I have a funny feeling that pre-historic people sat around the fire chatting all
excited about the latest flint chipping technique or bone tool, just
like we do today with all the gadget websites. The specifics might have
changed, but the urge to chat and exchange thoughts about something has
not.