Cohere

This may be heretical, but I question if social is a foundation for the current networked capabilities. It's a nebulous term that is often promoted as the raison d'etre of Web 2.0. However it looks to be the result of innovation and participation, rather than a means in itself. The innovation of sites like flickr, YouTube, etc. that connect people based on common interests. The participation of users who create connections that are meaningful to their current work, needs and interests. The result is social, but it has no meaning in itself.

My prior post, Your Plazes in the Sun, led me to think about the result of technology seamlessly integrating with people. The outcome is people leveraging each others capabilities for their purposes. People will be able to dynamically associate and collaborate for achieving ends bypassing the long drawn out process of joining into a corporation or other entity that have like-minded purposes.

I was sitting last Saturday, Nov. 19th at the San Francisco Indie Club meeting waiting to speak on videoblogging. As I watched speakers talk and talk, making explanation after example to prove points leaving a few audience questions at the end, I thought of how to implement communication through discourse.

3. an extended communication (often interactive) dealing with some particular topic; "the book contains an excellent discussion of modal logic"; "his treatment of the race question is badly biased"

It's the interactive capability of discourse I want to do. So I thought of this reiterative approach:

1. Show (or demonstrate) an example of the topic.
2. Ask what was shown.
3. Answer (if needed) and/or discuss -- then back to 1. for the next element of dicussion.

1. So the first I showed one minute from two clips on my iPod:

• The preview of the Peter Jackson "King Kong" film.
• "Widow Maker" made last year by members of the SF Indie Club.

2. Then I asked everyone what they saw? People saw that I was holding and manipulating my iPod as I played the clips. They responded that I was showing clips through my iPod. I asked what's unique about that?

3. Since my time was short -- ten minutes -- and since an audience reponse wasn't immediate, I said I'd answer that: That both the preview of the Universal release of "King Kong" and the local film "Widow Maker" were distributed throgh the same method to the iPod. That there was no intermediary barrier to marketing and distribution to iPods, rss enclosed films on the web, and such.

This led to a lively discussion which went on for a couple more minutes. I wanted to show more films, websites on how this is done and such, but I didn't have enought time. Glorinda, who organizes on the meetings, said there would be more time for me to present at the next meeting.

The short experiment in interactive presentation was entirefly successful to my goal. I'm going to continue this in presentations reaching points through discoursing with the audience. I'll have to see how this works for longer presentations containing more points.

This brings the audience into creating the ideas presented, not just a speaker pontificating. It takes away the static one way interaction of (speaker->audience) to (speaker< ->audience). At any point anyone can be the speaker to the rest being the audience and the presenter directing the discussion path.