Virtual Surreality
It’s too real to be true

Dropped into this seminar last night to hear four speakers discuss the “new” phenomenon of humans sharing information with each other. Of course, this conversation was set in the content of the Web and mobile devices, and although many of us have been doing it online for years, it’s at the maelstrom level of maturity and adoption now for the masses.

It was fantastic to hear the values and humanity underpinning Jonathan Nicholas‘ core tenents of trust, community-driven equilibrium, and “asking why, before how”. Although he was talking in the context of adolescent mental health it was very much like listening to an Agilist discuss the values inherent to our way of working.

Jennifer Wilson was authoritative on the part mobile devices have to play, not only as content creation and consumption tools, but as non-linear distribution channels, usage paradigm setters, and even subversive tools for those of us who are happy to contribute to an artist’s subsistence but don’t believe it’s the right of Disnewsonywarniacom to either pillage the author or take over our property when we want to enjoy the art. She also talked of the concepts around viral marketing and mentioned a book, which sounded much like the Idea Virus.

Mark Pesce was fascinating, for many reasons. His concise and well-articulated introductory evaluation rang true with me, and from the bobbing heads across the audience (I was at the front, so I merely felt the breeze caused by folicular kinetics), with many others too. In response to some of Mike’s (see below) comments on what News is doing in the myspaces arena, he said a much nicer version of my response which was going to be “if you put your crap on their craft, they’ll go somewhere else”.

Mike Walsh (not the 70’s TV host and cinema mogul) nearly had me snort in derision at his implications that professional journalists and editors clearly know more than the great unwashed and that most blogs circle around stories generated by the news media. I wonder who puts the food on his table at the moment? It’s also interesting as it was basically contradicting his own comments on the the film and music industries.

Anyway, I easily discounted his viewpoint by reflecting on my own experiences. For example, I first heard of the bombings in Baghdad during Desert Storm on IRC from a guy living there (before CNN put up pictures with their supercilious reporters’ supposititious concern for the welfare of the public and the actual concern for their ratings). The world heard of Sony’s DRM shennanigans from the blog of a respected technical practitioner, not from acuity-deficient “technology journalists”.

Update: Cam Reilly just touched on this very thing at another Slattery IT seminar today! Slam dunk.

The most important part of the evening was the chats had afterward. My brainwave (nothing of the sort, given the occassion), was that SlatteryIT ask for the attendees’ blogs and distribute them so we can carry on the conversations and create content of our own, and, as users of the seminar, take control of it’s format in its cyberspace extension. To wit.