Alan Moore, Tomi Ahonen and me! At Oxford University; Dec 3-4

It's not often you get the opportunity to see both of the authors of the seminal Communities Dominate Brands in the same place at the same time (Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen) - and even rarer that you'll find yours truly joining them in what promises to be an exciting exploration of Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.
Not only is that the title of Tomi's latest book, it's also the title of a course at Oxford University on December 3-4 led by Tomi, Alan and myself.

Hope you'll know someone who ought to be there! Book Your Place

The following is from the University of Oxford's Continuing Education site. 

About the Course

Mobile is emerging as the 7th mass media channel, whilst legacy mass media witnesses a decline. This course presents a journey through some of the most advanced content and media services deployed on mobile phones, in the most advanced mobile telecoms countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Finland.

Intending to build on the content of Tomi T. Ahonen’s sixth book ‘Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media’, the course provides a unique opportunity to explore the taxonomy of the seven mass media, with an emphasis on what lessons can be learned when newer media are introduced.

The course will begin by examining the overall industry and the consumers of mobile content, before moving on to explain how to build compelling content to mobile, and exploding the myths of the limitations of supposedly too small keypads and tiny screens. The most promising early media content types: music, gaming, TV, internet, advertising and social networking will also be discussed.
All delegates will receive a free copy of Tomi T. Ahonen's book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.

Tomi T. Ahonen speaks to CNN - watch the video here

Who is it for?

Anyone in the current legacy media space who wants to understand new media, thus digital media executives in television, print, radio, cinema, recordings industries and advertising; all in the internet businesses who are interested in the future of the web; and those within mobile who work with media and convergence. No prior knowledge of mobile telecoms or media is necessary.

Course Presenters

• Tomi T. Ahonen MBA, Independent 3G Strategy Consultant and Author
• Alan Moore, Author and CEO of SMLXL
• David Cushman, Director of Social Media, Brando Digital

Course Content

The environment of mobile
• Mobile industry ecosystem
• Digital convergence and mobile, 5 industries
• Customer of Mobile - Gen C

The 7 Media
• Legacy mass media Print, Recordings, Cinema, Radio, TV
• Internet as first interactive media
• Communities of Purpose and Long tail

Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media
• Inherently threatening
• interactive
• Seven Unique benefits of Mobile

Clash of the Media
• Print, Recordings, Cinema vs Mobile
• Radio vs Mobile
• TV vs Mobile
• Internet vs Mobile

Mobile Services and Applications
• Evolution of handset - 8 C's
• The Six M's service creation theory
• Widgets

Community and Mobile
• Group forming theory
• Mobile social networks

Marketing and Advertising
• Social Advertising Intelligence
• and mobile advertising

Making it magical
• beyond the obvious with some case examples
• Shazam, AQA, Blyk, Tohato, Flirtomatic, Cameraphone Dictionary
• Summaries, conclusions, Q and A

Venue

Department for Continuing Education, Rewley House, Oxford
First day registration from 8.30am when course materials will be distributed.
Refreshments from 8.30am on the first day plus two 30 minute breaks during the day and a one-hour lunch break.
The course will begin at 9.00am and end at approximately 5.00pm on each day.

• Book Your Place
  

Measure your change-readiness; find your leaders

The core competency of any business today is its readiness to adapt to the networked world.
How much is your business, not just preparing for change, but change-ready?

Measuring your level of change-readiness is the first step. Acting on what you learn from this excercise is the next. So, quite simply measure, the percentage of your people who are living in the network.

They are already adapting to survive. Follow them, encourage them, incentivize them and JOIN them.

What does that mean in real terms?

How many are active users of social networks (score higher for members of total communities - in which to take part you have to create part. Examples include facebook, myspace, bebo, twitter where the minimum requirement for involvement is that you create a profile).

They are learning the simple and powerful disruption of self-forming adhoc communities of purpose - the business units of the 21st century).

How many are creating blogs; with words, pictures, video or audio?
They are learning all about the disruption that we are all publishers now, all advertisers and all marketers now. They are learning how content connects people and people connect content. They are learning how to pool and share and create new value in value webs they control. They are creating networks of trust superceding anything the mass-focused centre can muster. And they are doing it inspite of, despite of, audience and for and with community.

How many have built and deployed their own widget? They have learned the user is the destination now, that it is more important to be taken with the user on their journey than to lead their horse to your chosen water.

Those who make widgets understand the content isn't theirs it is owned by the person who adopts it, who adapts it, who will pass it on with the same understanding to the next adhoc community of purpose they converse with.

So score your business for your social networkers, your bloggers and your widget makers.
You need to be beating the global averages - around 8% of internet users blog, more than 40% use social networks. The number of widgetisers can be lower - at present. We'll let you off with 5%.

Anything less and you need to take urgent action. Organise workshops, call in the experts but critically - listen to the people who are already doing it within your organisation. They are your keys to indiginous change - the most powerful kind. Listen and learn. This is an an important element of the next step: identifying your leaders.

So now get your venn diagram out.

Where those who blog, those who use social networks, and those who create widgets intersect, there you'll find those refusing to sheepwalk. They will be challenging your status quo and beating a path to success in the networked world.

These are the heretics. These are the people ready and willing to create and to be the eighth mass media. They understand WE are the distribution, the content, the 'user journey', how messages are transmitted... WE are the medium and the media carried within it.

We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.

Support them, encourage them, incentivize them. They get the disruption - and what to do about it.

Be led by them.




As always, this is a work in progress, some thoughts in beta. Your adaptions welcome.

Twitter explained. A white paper to download

If you need to get up to speed on the phenomenon that is twitter, there are of course a few posts on fasterfuture which have a stab at explaining its power and value.
But for one hit, and one you could share to bring others up to speed relatively succinctly; try Luke Weaver's (@weaverluke's) downloadable paper.
It must be good; he's quoted me! (ah hem...)

"Twitter's value is in keeping the conversation open, visible, synchronous and consistent.”

Excerpt:

It is kind of weird, even in terms of a Facebooked contemporary culture, to hang out in a virtual space exchanging 140-character messages.
The whole notion of privacy, a concept that is, after all only as old as the City, seems to be shifting and morphing with great rapidity (at least in the developed, hyper-networked world).

Who knows if Twitter will prove to be a decisive driver and/or beneficiary of social change, or a flash in the pan that attracts a few million wild-eyed wannabe visionaries before collapsing under its own selfreferential weight?

My own twitter-in-a-nutshell? Distributed microblogging for adhoc fuzzy-edged communities of purpose. Yeah, I know. Too brief. Read Luke's paper then.

Bonus link: via gregory lent: The Wisdom Project. Give it some of your time.

Sony-Ericsson X1 developer competition NOW ON

The battle for hearts and minds of developers is well and truly on - and it's a battle all the major players are tackling head-on.

The iPhone has Itunes, Android is offering developers an apps marketplace too.

That's all well and good for the software houses, for the companies, for the bigger guys.

Now Sony-Ericsson's X1 is entering the fray with a competition for developers. I'll be able to share exact details of the prize later this week. They want you to create panels for the X1. Details here.

If you're one such, here's an early heads-up. The site hosting the competition doesn't go live until November 14.

UPDATE: In the meantime the competition site is live already AND the closing date is sooner than I'd been led to believe, Nov 30.

But take it from me, it's coming (I know, because the company I work for is building it right now!). Drop me an email for details when it goes live.


So, best get cracking!

In the meantime, get a lead by downloading the FREE Developer SDK.

Watch a video of how the phone and its touch panels works here.

From Gizmodo

Developers can use the Windows Mobile SDK, free of charge, to produce a wide variety of panels to meet the consumer’s demand for a rich, individualised multimedia experience on their phone. Users of the Xperia™ X1 will be spoilt for choice as they personalize their handset with panel applications to suit their mood and lifestyle. Whether it is a search engine, advanced calendar or social networking application, music or film catalogue, sports or news related content, the panels enable you to access any information – quickly and directly – with a simple tap on the 3” super high resolution touch screen.

The X1's panel interface runs on Windows Mobile 6.1

Happy Halloween: Don't fear the adaptor

Almost a year ago I wrote a post that called on those who would 'do viral' to remember who actually 'does' viral: The humans doing the interacting with one another.

And to that end attempts at 'viral' work which enables co-creation gives you both engagement and relevance.

One example I remember well from a previous life was an excellent and funny video - expensively made with high production values too. It was on topic. The seeding strategy was sound.

But it was essentially broadcast, broadcast which USED the user as the distribution channel.
So the message couldn't be adapted by the receiver. There was no room for their input. No adaption = low adoption. And if I don't adopt, I'm not going to pass it on; as simply illustrated as I can, here.

The quality was high. But the relevance was low. And relevance, as I so often say, beats quality every single time.

Allowing people to put a little of themselves into 'your' viral makes it 'their' viral.

And as Alan Moore - and by osmosis I, am so fond of saying: "That which we create, we embrace."
It allows us to work with the user rather than targeting them, based on the understanding that the User Is The Destination Now.

It makes it their message, not yours.

So I was delighted to walk into my new job this morning to be met with this new piece of work from Brando-Digital (yep, that's where I'm working now).

(By the way, we're so new the company site is nothing but a holding page right now. If you'd like to know more about us, drop me an email at david AT brando-world.com )

Despite the he-would-say-that-wouldn't-he inevitable in this; I think it's pretty cool. It allows the adaption of the message which will encourage that adoption.

It's promoting a new phone, the Sony-Ericsson W595 - so the youtube element is not only relevant (you can upload direct to youtube from the W595) it's also a helpful viral aside.

Technically, some may be interested to know the creation of this effort has involved mashing-up apisfrom youtube, googlemaps AND facebook.

And importantly, it uses not only the silo'd social networks (in this case facebook) but also email - the most ubiquitous of all the social connectors.

Yeah, yeah, yeah but it's also a bit of fun people can have together at Halloween. We've given people, as Mark Earls would say, something they can do together - we've made the human interaction element the important element.

Have fun with it. Pass it on if you think its cool and think someone else will do to. Here's mine, below.
BTW I'm not 43 - yet! But I am odd.

Listening to Tribes: The need to lead

Book cover via Amazon

"Work is too time consuming to be dull"

I discovered (via Todd Sampson on twitter) a free download of Seth Godin's new book Tribes (pre-order it for £8.57 here).

You'll find the free audible download here (hint; say you're from the US even if you aren't when you register).

It's also available on itunes for 99p!

Seth talks about Tribes needing leaders, and all of us needing to belong. There is much of Mark Earls' Herd in this and much of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody and even echoes of my own thinking about Communities of Purpose and the adhoc nature of group forming and who gets to be famous/a leader within each, as Seth would describe them, tribe.

But Seth's usp is his call to action. Tribes is a clarion call to the heretics - those of us who see the need for change. He demands that you take the initiative and make it happen.
He calls the heretics, our leaders and says that the technological tools available to us today make it easier than ever to effect change, to become a leader, if YOU take the initiative.
It's an energising message. Don't just pontificate; activate. Blogs, email and social networks give you the tools to not only to organise but to lead.

He demands YOU start your own movement. And he fears that people like you and I (we are the heretics, right?) are in short supply but therefore of the highest value.
Seth's message is writ through with the sense that this change to a purpose and passion driven mode of production is good (and, for the record, he ain't wrong there). Hence the repeated message that we need YOU.

It's ok to follow. But if you want to and need to lead then you can and you should, because it's never been easier, he says.

Seth has often talked about how everyone is a marketer now (much like my own claims that we are all publishers and advertisers now).
Tribes take this a step further. Not only are we now all marketers (publishers/advertisers) but everyone is a leader now.
Tribes offer something to believe in (again, echoes of Mark Earls' purpose idea). We heretics have visions that function as emotive drivers of action - action intended to change the status quo.

How does that fit in the factory-style process pipe of traditional business? Not so well, I'm guessing...

The second big theme of Tribes is that the individual has more power than ever. Good people with ideas that matter are now able to step forward with the power to turn things upside down. And he keeps on insisting that they should.

You are not a 'sheepwalker'.

So what are you the heretic about? Where are you ready to lead?

And why aren't you doing it already?

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Aww shucks!

I've been overwhelmed by the many very kind emails, tweets and comments following my announcement yesterday of my departure from Bauer and my arrival at Brando Digital.
So many wonderful people saying so much that is positive and encouraging. But none can top this.
Jonathan Macdonald. Simply - and truly - thank you. Wow. :-)

Goodbye Bauer Media - hello Brando Digital

I'm delighted to say I start a new job on Monday October 27. I'm leaving my role at Bauer Media (formerly Emap Consumer Media) to join the world's largest full service Social Media agency network: Brando Digital.

Brando Digital is a start-up with truly global reach, based in Camden, London.

I'm going to be Director of Social Media and work with a team of brilliant people to take companies, brands and organisations on their journey through and to the networked world.

I believe that listening to, learning from and participating in the networked world are the keys to understanding it, benefiting from it and becoming a humanised part of it - and so does Brando Digital.

You'll be able to learn more about Brando Digital on our website (Brando-Digital.com) when it goes live. It's a holding page at present - that's how new we are. Brando Digital is part of Brando World - of which more, here.

One of the big reason's I'm joining is the enlightened attitude of the organisation: They've been happy to recruit me on a four-days-a-week basis.
My fifth day (in a kind of self-funding google 20%-rule-model) can be used to take me outside the silo - doing my own consultancy work: from advice and analysis to workshops, speaking and conference organising. More about that will be published at http://fasterfutureconsulting.com when that url goes live in the next few days.

In the meantime, if you want to contact me about either working with the most faster-future-thinking, most globally networked* full-service social media agency there is (that's Brando Digital folks!) or about FasterFuture Consulting, drop me a line at: davidpcushman AT gmail DOT com

*Brando Digital has community and blogger outreach capabilities in EMEA, North America, Central and Latin America, Asia and Oceania; across English, Spanish (Catalan/Basque), Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Chinese (Cantonese), Russian and Arabic languages.

Eighth Mass Media makes it into the Wall Street Journal

Image by Enrico Fuente via FlickrPeggy Salz (founder of MSearchGroove) wrote a great piece for the Wall Street Journal (Asia) recently. I've added a pdf of the article (breaking usability barriers is key to seamless services) to scribd (see below) so you can view and share it.
You'll find it of particular interest if you're interested in digital convergence, and mobile tech.
Tomi Ahonen is in there talking about Mobile as the 7th Mass Media (and I'm co-hosting a course on exactly that with Tomi at Oxford University on December 2-3. Check here for the latest on that).
And I'm quoted on what happens after the sixth (internet) and seventh (mobile) mass medias - the concept of the Eighth Mass Media. You can view my Widget Web Expo slide deck and presentation on the subject here.

Wall Street Journal (Asia) Ceatec1 - Upload a Document to Scribd

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Zemanta: One great way to kick down the silo walls

Image of Jure CuhalevImage of Jure CuhalevI came across Zemanta some time ago. Probably via Fred Wilson, who I spoke alongside at Widget Web Expo in New York in the summer.
And Widget Web Expo in London last week closed the circle. Because I met one of the Zemanta crew. Jure Cuhalev came up to me after seeing me present on 'The User is the Destination Now - Widgets role in the Eighth Mass Media'.
No surprise given my central theme - my vision of where the networked world takes us, if you like.
In a nutshell, if you can connect in real time with people who share your purpose, globally, you get to solve more problems and create more value. One extra node on your network doubles its value, as Reed's Law would have it. People and what they say to each other are the way those connections are made.
But, the thing that restricts this exponential growth explosion is silos. In twitter I can only connect with people in twitter, who have already connected with me etc. Facebook is worse still.
Blogs are good, blogs and rss feeds and readers etc.
Zemanta does what BlogFriends tried. It introduces you to stuff and people you didn't know you need to know. And that's how adhoc communities of purpose form.
Zemanta takes this beyond silos by introducing me to things beyond my current network. It's an ambitious grab at creating that global hotdesk I've written about before.
They are still stuck in one crucial silo: language - it's primarily an English language tool. But Jure tells me they are working on that.
Wishing you luck guys - and from today, running it on this blog.
Zemanta (in their own words) delivers: "relevant content from all over the web... instantly as you blog.Builds traffic with immediate tagged links created between your posts and others sharing related conversations on all popular browsers and blogging platforms.
In short it connects people who share the same concerns. A great enabler for Communities of Purpose.

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• zemanta.com - Jure Cuhalev
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• We're All Publishers Now: My presentation for Digital Asset Management?
• A Response to Fred Wilson's Talk at Widget Web Expo

Mashing the music (again). Memory of a Free Festival

Regulars at fasterfuture may recall this (Rewritten for the networked world) and the rewrites of lyrics it inspired.

Here's another, from the brilliant mind of Ivan Pope. (good to see Chris Saad joining the JS-Kit party, btw, via Ivan. Congrats all round on the series B funding too, guys.)

David Bowie wrote Memory of a Free Festival after playing at one (in Beckenham of all places, I believe, way back when).

Ivan Pope wrote this after FOWA in London.

Memory of a Future of Web Apps (MOFOWA)

The Children of the bubble's end

Gathered in the conference

We showed our decks and felt the London web

Resting on our laptops

It was God's code

It was ragged and naive

It was Heaven

Code, We coded the very soul

Of building each and every app

We claimed the very source of joy ran through

It didn't, but it seemed that way

We kissed a lot of people that day

Oh, to capture just one drop of all the Twitter that swept that afternoon

To paint that love

upon a #FFFFFF balloon

And fly it from

the topest top of all the tops

That man has pushed beyond the web

Funding must be something

just the same

We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw startups of every shape and size

We talked with tall VCs passing through

And Scoble tried to climb aboard but Arrington shook his head

And away they soared

Climbing through

the wifi vibrant cloud

Someone passed some schwag among the crowd

And we walked back to the office, unchained

"The Funding Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party

The Funding Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party

The Funding Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party

The Funding Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party

The Funding Machine is Coming Down, and We're Gonna Have a Party."

Full 35min Clay Shirky interview now available to download

I've just added a new post to /Message - the full 35minute version of the Clay Shirky interview regular visitors to this site will have seen sliced up over the past week or so.
On /Message you can get the whole thing in one hit AND download it all for playback on your pc/iPod etc.

The User is the Destination Now

I was lucky enough to present at Widget Web Expo in London earlier this week (which ran on October 6-7).
It gave me an opportunity to speak about the eighth mass media for the first time. The title of my talk was The User Is The Destination Now: Widgets' Role in the Eighth Mass Media.
In the usual manner, I've made the slidedeck available via slideshare. And I was also recorded on a Flip Mino, so you can see and hear me talk about the topics on the slides, while you view them.
Some credit where due: The eighth mass media builds on Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's concept of mobile as the seventh mass media. Find their work at Communities Dominate Brands. It's an idea in prototype and one I've been working on with Jonathan Macdonald.
The notion of widgets as great enablers of emulation is inspired by the ideas of Mark Earls' Herd (and particularly the Homo Mimicus reference).
The video is hosted by google, which means (unlike youtube) you can download it AND it can be more than 100mb and 10 mins (it's actually about 35 mins and 120+mb).

It's all below. Hope you'll enjoy.
It's messy at the edges - so do pick up the tools and join in.

By the way, I'm in Amsterdam today. Drop me a tweet if you are too.

The User Is The Destination Now

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cushman david)

Gin, TV... and What Comes Next?

The seventh and final part of my interview with Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky appears below today.
Previous six parts are available on the blog already titled:
1. How algorithms caused the credit crunch
2. Why email stuffs Facebook et al
3. Humanising brands
4. Scoring collaboration in education
5. Is technology changing us
6. Why Here Comes Everybody avoids the copyright debate

In this seventh part Clay discusses his famous ideas about Gin, TV and cognitive surplus.
And we consider what comes next: a world of participatory media. The question remains - is this just the next heat sink (ie something we commit more and more time to as a way of coping with the huge societal shifts that mass collaboration (the power of the network) will bring?

Clay believes we are entering a period of massive experimentation to discover what kind of amateur work and global collaboration will work. Expect to make plenty of mistakes along the way.

And from this the new organisational rules of a group-forming world will emerge.

Watch the video below. If you want to see Clay live and in person, he's back in the UK in December.



I will be adding a full, unedited and higher-quality version (joining the seven parts together) soon on /Message. It'll be on google video.

I'm headed for Amsterdam today for an interesting co-creation project. If you're there this evening, look me up on twitter?

Music 2.0: The quick hit mix

Regular FasterFuture visitor and contributor Jamie Burke has just had his Music2.0 slidedeck featured on the homepage of Slideshare.
It's a pretty cool fast-track through the shifting sands of music and its value chain.
Take a look below:

Music 2.0

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: music 2.0)

Why Here Comes Everybody avoids the copyright debate

Part six of my interview with Clay Shirky has Clay defending himself against Felix Strader's criticism that Clay's book Here Comes Everybody fails to address the copyright/DRM issue.
Clay feels the battle is way less important than some might have it. It matters a lot to the broadcast media industry, but everyone else is quietly working around it with innovations like the creative commons.

Watch his answer below. See Clay speak live and in person here. Read his own words here.



Previous parts of this interview published so far on this blog
1. How algorithms caused the credit crunch
2. Why email stuffs Facebook et al
3. Humanising brands
4. Scoring collaboration in education
5. Is technology changing us

Clay Shirky: Is technology changing us?

Part five of my interview with Clay Shirky has the author of Here Comes Everybody answering the charge (contributed via this blog by Matt Edgar) that he may have chosen the wrong title for his book; since we were here, being social, all along.
But Clay explains why he feels the sheer scale of collaboration available in a digitally connected world changes society and us.

"I'm not a technical determinist.... it's the novelty of scale, " he says.

Clay also tackles one of the toughest silos to overcome - language.

Watch the video below. See Clay speak. Buy his book.



The four previous parts of this (in total) 35-minute interview are available on this blog. More will follow
Those so far are:
1. How algorithms caused the credit crunch
2. Why email stuffs Facebook et al
3. Humanising brands
4. Scoring collaboration in education

Clay Shirky on scoring collaboration in education

Another day, another part of my interview (the fourth) with Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody). And today's topic is education.

Clay rates the question (which came from Rebecca Caroe via twitter) as one of THE toughest and most important facing our generation.
It is "How do we examine and score collaboration in education?"

Clay is an educator himself - at NYU. He believes there is a collision between the internal message in colleges and universities, which values and encourages collaboration, and the external message - which is that the education system does quality control of individual minds. (image via flickr by kokeshi)

He has no quick fix, but instead believes finding the right solution will be "the work of a generation".

Watch the video below.
See him in person here. Buy his book, here.




I'm speaking at Widget Web Expo in London today. If you're there, come and say hi!

Clay Shirky on humanising brands

Today I'm pleased to share part III of my interview with Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky (recorded in London on September 30 at the offices of Incisive Media).
It is part of a 35min interview.

Parts one: 'How algorithms caused the credit crunch'
and two: 'Why email trumps facebook et al'
can already be found on this blog (dated Oct 1 and 2, 2008).

In part three Clay discusses the different qualities of interaction required to humanise brands - and how creatives can welcome collaboration rather than seal it out.
As Clay puts it: "Brands aren't people. They don't interact. People do."
And he warns creatives who seek perfection in their campaigns: "Something cleaned up right to the edges has no room for me. Perfection says, you don't belong here."
Clay's contention is messiness is human and acts as a welcome matt for interaction.

Watch the video below:
See him in person here. Buy his book, here.

Clay Shirky on why email stuffs facebook et al

I interviewed Clay Shirky earlier this week. Here's part two of the series.

(part one: How algorithms caused the credit crunch)

In part two Clay explains why he thinks email is the most effective tool for group-forming (and therefore for influence on social and political change) right now. He describes the impact its 'dull' ubiquity is having on the US Presidential elections.
And we talk about the future of mass any-and-everything (though particularly broadcast TV) with reference to solidarity goods (value gained from shared experiences). Clay reasons that far from dumbing down, the fragmentation of the internet is demanding increasing quality from its hits.
When media and channels were scarce you got a share in the value of solidarity goods simply for showing up. Now you only get a share by being truly excellent.
Watch the video below. Buy his book here. See him speak here.

Clay Shirky on how algorithms caused the credit crunch

I had the great good fortune to meet and interview Clay Shirky (author of Here Comes Everybody) yesterday at Incisive Media in London.
He was in town for the AOP conference among other keynotes - and meetings with Government Ministers, no less.
So to get a one-to-one for any length of time was fantastic. We had a scheduled 20mins... but things got interesting so we stretched it...

The result is the video you see below. At least, that's part of the result. It's part one of seven. The interview lasts over 35mins in total and Clay answers not only my questions, but all those put through comments on this blog or via twitter over the last few days.

I'll be adding the next six parts over the next week or so - and for those who can take it all in one go - I'll add the full and unedited (and higher quality) version to google video before too long (youtube limits me to 10mins a pop, anyway).

In part one we talk about Clay's journey - what is in his background that makes him place the human element so high in his consideration of group forming network theory. (image by matlock via flickr)

And the new ways value are created in self-forming communities of purpose leads us to Clay's fascinating analysis of what the bankers did wrong and what they can learn (how social capital mitigates risk) from reconnecting with humans.

Hope that's whetted your appetite: Now hear from the man himself. And if you've missed Clay on his current trip to the UK, you can catch him again here. (blog of the event here) And you can buy his book, here.