These are my Delicious links for September 29th:
These are my Delicious links for September 11th through September 15th:
I just came from checking out Lucas on a Social Media Club LA panel on something about technology and music, apparently there’s some kind of intersection there. Who knew? Anyway, the organizers projected a live stream of all the tweets tagged with #smcla on a screen behind the panelists during the entire panel.
This has become a pretty common “feature” of tech panels nowadays, and I’m heareby asking organizers to knock it off.
There are a couple of reasons I feel this way. First of all, I don’t know how anyone in the audience could really pay any attention to what the panelists were saying seeing as the *entire audience* seemed to be on their mobile devices or laptops writing things to show up on screen (myself included). Secondly (and more importantly), the majority of the shit that went up there was totally lame (with the noted exception of this Sarah Palin tweet). Most people who get up to speak during Q&A time at panels are really doing it to hear themselves speak and try to impress the panelists and/or audience (”I’d like to pose my question in the form of a statement about how awesome I am, please validate/hire/sleep with me”). The good news is those Q&A sessions are generally short, and there is a physical limit on how many people can actually speak on the mic at any one time. Well when you put that Twitter stream up there, every self-important douche in the room can post his/her little cry for attention, and they generally do (again, including me).
Don’t get me wrong, I think real-time audience feedback is a valuable tool to keep any panel on track (I’m too lazy to search the web for the numerous stories of panels turned around by moderators monitoring audience tweets or find the right link to the Sarah Lacey SXSW debacle). But, the devil’s in the details and you’ve got to implement it in a way that preserves the right incentives for the audience to participate — i.e. improving the conversation, not trying to steal the spotlight. I was actually at what I believe was the first conference to use an interactive real-time feedback system. It was the >play conference in November 2006, and I blogged at the time about how Michael Arrington was a total prick for asking the organizers to take the SMS-based audience feedback system powered by Mozes off the screen behind the panel (ironically, this panel and the Valleywag story that came out of it may have driven the first significant tipping point for Twitter adoption).
As much as it pains me to agree with Arrington nearly two years after the fact, I do think there is a reason to have a moderator and a good moderator should be entrusted with the power to steer the panel discussion. The moderator should definitely be watching the conversation about the panel on Twitter in real-time and reacting accordingly, and individual audience members who want to have *virtual* side conversation should feel free to do so on their laptops or devices. But, don’t give individual audience members the opportunity (and encouragement) to distract the rest of the audience by putting their comments on (or above) the level of the panelists.
If your audience is that smart, put them on the panel. And if your moderator needs to be babysat by your audience, get a better moderator.
These are my Delicious links for September 4th through September 10th:
I woke up this morning to find out several pieces of important news. First, the Large Hadron collider was switched on and didn’t destroy the earth (yet). So, that’s good.
And in other news, my friend Joel WON $100,000 FOR WRITING A SONG ABOUT A KLONDIKE BAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This news cut through my hangover (from ruining Andrew 
) like a hot knife through butter. Not only am I unbelievably proud of Joel for succeeding at his lifelong dreams of becoming a professional contest winner (even with his raging coke problem, $100k should hold him over for a while — well, after taxes…hrm, maybe not), but I also feel a little bit of pride in whatever small help my mercilous shilling to my social network may have contributed to this mighty achievement.
(And yes mom, that last parenthetical was a joke. Joel doesn’t have a cocaine problem. He’s just a sex addict. However, his primary interest is sex with marine mammals.)
Joel also happens to be the first client of my new company (more on that soon). And even though I said before we’d do the work for free, we might have to start charging a little bit now .
Way to go Joel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As my (legion of) followers on Twitter know, I’m at the TechCrunch50 this week. I’m here helping an Israeli startup with the launch of their product Flyscreen in the Demo Pit yesterday and today (cause I just *love* booth duty that much).
As painful as booth duty is, yesterday was actually fun because there were some cool people to hang out with. I smuggled in Eric, ran into Debs, and got to meet Andrew and Ben. I’m not sure if it’s just TC50 or the “Web 2.0″ conference scene in general, but there was definitely a pervasive vibe of shark jumpage in the air and anyone worth caring about was basically taking the piss out of all the other people taking this thing way too seriously. And now, for the footage…
There was a dude walking around dressed as Abraham Lincoln (don’t ask), and I had recently been told that my current ’stache made me look like John Wilkes Booth. So, we decided to film a dramatic reenactment of the assasination of Abraham Lincoln in the TC50 Demo Pit. Andrew was on camera, Eric made it happen by being the only one with the balls to proposition Abe, and the dude playing Abe was a real sport (and a seriously talented actor ). Enjoy!
After that, things really started getting out of hand. While I got pulled off to do some demo work, the crew decided to move on to trying the world’s worst pitch on an unsuspecting VC. Hilarity ensues…
P.S. Even though Eric claims to have come up with this pitch idea independently, there is actually prior art.
These are my Delicious links for August 28th through September 2nd:
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