bootstrapping.net

Discussing the idea of rebooting things/minds/societies with friends today a simple insight i astonishingly never had thought of. (not wanting to stretch the reboot metaphor too much).
Even though a preventive reboot of the system now and then could avoid a hard crash, most things first get rebooted when they’ve crashed hard and reached a standstill.
Could explain an absurdity or two in societies and organizations. And could point one’s energy towards rebooting the things that have crashed instead of doing preventive reboots of things that are still functioning somewhat however an awkward, slow and meaningless state they might be in.
But then, the world is a continuous flows of small reboots of direction and one shouldn’t stretch metaphors too much…

So today is the day.
Would never have believed 10-12 years ago that i would experience so much, make so many mistakes, meet so many interesting inspiring people, mess so many things up, try so many things and yet realize how little i understand of it all.
And as all the wise “elders” tells me these days - it only gets better if you let it. And that i guess is the hard part becoming more and more settled in one’s mind and relations.

I’m instigating and sponsoring The Copenhagen Project.

A couple of months ago i “met” a talented bloke Jeppe Kabell in a comment thread in the latest flamebait between mainstream media folks and edge-media folks about protecting old business models, free vs. paid, amateurs vs. professionals, paper vs. digital and objectivity vs. subjectivity. All discussions that in our opinion is taking us away from the essential issue “how do we as humans keep up to date with what’s happening in the world and make sense of it all” - in a world where our capability to deal with complex issues is urgently needed.
We’ve therefore started an open research project to look at interesting projects and experiments, research theory of sense making and the tools people use to stay up-to-date, interview interesting people, challenge core issues of complexity, objectivity and commitment and highlight possible tools, directions and improvements that would represent the media ecosystem of tomorrow.
The project runs until the end of 2007 and might turn into a nonprofit, a startup or who knows nothing - but everything will be done openly and shared.
I strongly encourage you to participate and follow the project - i think it’s the core issue we as societies and humanity are struggling with and need to find solutions for quickly if we want to leave a world worth living in to our kids.

A bit harder birth than normal for reboot9, but now everything is rolling. Below the invitation to participate.

Calling all practical visionaries of the world!

It’s time to reboot our minds once again; reboot9 will take place in Copenhagen Thursday, May 31 and Friday, June 1 2007. Two days away from implementing, away from the status quo. Two days together with old and new friends in an informal and open festival spirit…

THE CHALLENGE
The theme for reboot9 is “human?”. A big word, but a word that saturates what’s happening and all ready on a deeper level has been transcending reboot the last couple of years.
We’re connecting to each others as human beings once again. We’re building tools to empower humans - not institutions. We’re creating new iconic collaborative human manifestations. We’re finding ourselves as humans and our human voices. We’re humanizing our organizations and our socities. We’re reestablishing links to nature we’d long forgotten. We’re looking at the world together as humans - not as consumers or workers.

So when all is in going away from mechanical industrial models to human natural models where this is leading us?. What is our shared understanding of “human?”. How do we organize ourselves in human institutions and organizations?. How are our tools shaping us as humans, how are we shaping our tools. Is it leading us to chaos without organization and government or nirvana?. What do we as humans want to happen, what can we imagine?

reboot9 is about looking both backwards and forwards. Backwards because history has a tendency to repeat itself but also for staying power of the discussions that we had at reboot8, reboot7 and earlier even. Forwards in order to predict by implementing and to obsolete the pretensions we forget to dismiss.

Explore human and comment on the challenge at www.reboot.dk/set-69-en.html

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE
Like last year there isn’t a final speakers list or a black box creation model. reboot is a platform for bringing the European (and beyond) community together, a platform for conversations and relationships, a platform for sharing visions and meeting the people you never knew you’d meet.
So the platform is all yours, and this is an invitation to participate and help co-create reboot..:
- an invitation to submit topics you would like on the agenda for reboot,
- an invitation to submit pointers to interesting people you know in your country or industry that has something to contribute, and help us recruit them to come as speakers or participants,
- an invitation for your proposal to host or present if you’ve been doing some interesting thinking the last year or have created something that’s worth sharing,
- an invitation for you to help make sure that we have the people that have open minds and are ready to make a difference at reboot. To connect Europe, to widen the community, to add perspective.

This year there’s an all new collaborative site to do it on, please sign up and participate in the creation process at reboot.dk

ACTION
So what’s next if you want to reboot…
- signup now for reboot9 to secure your ticket, only 195 euro if you sign up before April 20th, register.reboot.dk (share travel tips on hotels/flights at www.reboot.dk/set-217-en.html),
- spread the word via blogging, email, im, etc. about reboot9 and extend the invitation to participate to the people you “just” know should be at reboot9
- anything else, email mygdal@reboot.dk

Thomas Madsen-Mygdal

Ok, this is something that really has been puzzling me for months. The Second Life hype. Today was the tipping point - i need to understand the dynamics of the hype - hope you can help.

A danish IDG arranged event called webchamp honoring great web solutions devotes about 80% of it’s full-day conference to Second Life. Rest aside that Second Life has got nothing to do with the World Wide Web (Web) it’s interesting how mass media is pumping/hyping up Second Life.
Overlooking the very low user numbers compared to for example gaming/sharing environments, ignoring that each decade have had it’s own graphical virtual worlds (the 80’s: Habitat, the 90’s: Active Worlds and ignoring more complex trends like participation, blogging, sharing, etc. Evidence-based the hype is so disproportional to the major trends that are seeing user adaption and the trends that are shaping us, our organizations and societies.

I think ideas like Second Life will have an impact in a 6-12 years time span - especially if they become open standards and open source.

So help me, what is it that makes Second Life so good to hype up?

Did a presentation in the afternoon for a couple of hundred online marketing professionals at the DIA07 conference/award show. A basic cluetrainish message representing the individuals view on the future of marketing customer/company relationship combined with some context and thougths on the customer-driven intentional marketplace.
Started by reading aloud 14 statements from the Cluetrain Manifesto - since they so beautifully captures the zeitgeist - even though they were written in 1999, soon almost 8 years ago. The statements/worldview apparently was somewhat controversial with the crowd, or at least with one of the other panelists, which set the scene for the most confrontational and aggressive personal attack in a panel debate i’ve ever seen or experienced. Still puzzled and somewhat shocked here many hours later trying to gear down. We live in interesting disruptive times…
PDF Presentation in English, 16,8 Mb

Did a gonzo presentation for 100 danish library leaders today. Ended up calling it “Excitement, Fundamentals and Implementation”. Discussing the excitement about the future many people are experiencing. Calling for the library to go back to the fundamentals of giving free access to information. Calling for the libraries to actually implement their core in a digital context by digitalizing all information in their archives and providing danish citizens free digital access to all material published whether in books, journals, dvd, etc. - effectively bridging the copyfight vs. the copyright cartels war. But also calling for world class product design implementation of all their services and modern decentralized organizational principles. To stop accepting losing meaning every day and start winning.
PDF in danish here if you’re adventurous.

Happy Hour is 9 to 5 is the title of my friend Alexander’s new book (aka. Mr. Chief Happiness Officer). Read it online for free or buy a pdf/physical book to support Alexander and his work. Comes very well recommended.
(photo of the friendly Laundromat Cafe staff admiring the first physical copy of the book - big parts of the book was written in the cafe).

My kid brother gave me a wonderful christmas gift - a gift card to do micro lending with Kiva. You can check out my portfolio and follow my adventures.
Kiva is a great prototype - but would love if the system could be more P2P than the current implementation - which is more of an add-on to existing instutional micro lending systems. (a lot of transaction costs that could be taken out of the system).

Ted Rheingold tagged me to do a 5 things you may not know about me - so here we go.

- I’m a high school dropout with no formal education. (technically probably still on leave from high school).

- I’m 29 years old and live in Copenhagen, Denmark with my girlfriend and our two kids.

- In my teens i was a hockey dj, actually the reason why my family got a real computer. DJ’ing for 1.000-2.500 people for ice hockey games - a great learning experience about the symbiosis of top-down creating a motion and the crowd self organizing chanting - finding the balance between the two, feeling the vibe of the game/augmenting the game, but not becoming the game. I still believe great hockey dj’ing is deeply underestimated .

- I ran a pirate radio station in school broadcasting 30 minutes each day with Christian Schmidt. Still one of the neatest hacks ever when we (or he?) realized that a specific old cassette player connected to the school broadcasting system meant we could broadcast from the class room to the school at large. (along the way we went a bit over the line and it got institutionalized and quickly got very boring - going to the headmasters office and putting on the tape was a different experience .

- In the months before each years reboot i have frequent night mares about all that could go wrong (apparently something many conference/festival organizers have). My most bizarre nightmare is a reboot held on a beach (!) with 500 people without having done any planning having to make it up as the day goes along…

I’m tagging Nikolaj, Pind, Hartvig, Trine-Maria and Ralf Beuker to do the same.