Declare Your Interest - So what would you like to discuss at Amplified 08?

We'll be running the first event from 4pm until 8pm and you can get a feel for the space here as well as the rules of engagement here.  You may also wish to register a position for your topic at the schedule page.

So now so many people have expressed an interest it seems a good idea to throw some ideas around here in regards to areas of interest and expertise so we can use these topics as kicking off points on the 27th. For example you may want to talk to like minded people about publishing and web 2.0 or how social media can help during the credit crunch. Feel free to throw some topic ideas below:

1. #01 The future of online video #01: We had a great discussion about this at the Tuttle so it'd be nice to expand on it here. Maybe take one of the 'pods' for 30 minutes and roundtable the discussion (@sizemore)
2. #02 The Fringe #02: Amplified 08 leads to a huge event in 2010 which we hope will feature a fringe event. We have so many talented artists and musicians within our networks. How should we begin aiming to make this part of Amplified 10 a success? (@sizemore)
3. #03 Virtual worlds #03: With some help from @eyebeams we hope to have some cross over into Second Life on the 27th. This is still very new to me. I'd love to sit in on a discussion of what works, what doesn't and what's next in virtual communities (@sizemore) -- i could probably chip in a bit here, as i've spent a fair bit of time in SL & my hubby is doing business in SL on a small scale (@mikosoft)
4. #04 Cross-Platform Narratives #04:  [Let's build www.threesixtydb.com] - a pooling of current and upcoming cross platform narratives (Think 'Britannia High', 'Heroes', Bebo and MySpace efforts) A little bit Radio Times a little bit like the CrunchBase - creating a compendium of what's happening online and what, if any, are good. Maybe this is something as a group we build on this wiki for critique on the day. (@londonfilmgeek, seconded by  @welltold) The domain is bought and i'll get us some server space - any ideas beyond MediaWiki for a CMS? The purpose of this endeavour would be to create a stack of material that's transferable to imdb, Wikipedia and beyond.   

      -- http://wiki.amplified08.com/index.php5?title=Main_Page  is a Media Wiki we created as another white space in case we had a problem here.

      -- Alternatively I can set up Mediawiki and a Domain in 5 mins and am happy to make it available ( loudmouthman ) 

5. #05 Open-source regulation #05 - how might we use new technology/social media to move to a more transparent, open and inclusive system of business and government regulation that is both technically and politically viable? (@jimjar)
6. #06 Bretton Woods 2.0 #06 - how social media and open source collaboration can assist the governance and regulation of financial markets and society (@PaulMassey).   COmment: interesting topic but I wonder the extent to which government (at least in the UK) is ready to listen to the conversations unless they originate from sources they might recognize. Example: http://www.ion.icaew.com/itcounts/16126
7. #07 The Future of the Book #07:  I already belong to a small but strong Think Tank about this and when we discussed this a couple of Tuttles ago there seemed to be some interest in developing ideas.  Like to discuss how e-readers & books can coincide, how & if reading will change as more kids spend time online, can reading/ writing be improved with online technologies? etc etc (@anniemole)  Maybe @stml & @cowfish might also be interested in helping? (seconded by @cowfish) - Chris Meade from The Future of the Book think tank has also agreed to help :-)  Future of the Book slides now up.
8. #08 Crowd sourcing and public interest initiatives #08: @joannejacobs is hoping to use this space to explore opportunities to use collective social media initiatives to encourage action in socially interesting objectives, lifelong learning and essentially 'PR for good'.  Suggestions welcome. 
9. #09 Cockroach Economics #09 - Credit-crunch strategy, open chat suggestion from James Cherkoff.  Paul Graham, super-hacker and founder of the Silicon Valley VC Y-Combinator recently wrote about recession: "Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible.  For years I've been telling founders that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches of the corporate world.  The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill."  So who think the cockroach-approach is the right way ahead? 
   1. Comment: the problem with this is that it only addresses the single dimension of cost and even then only in superficial terms. The correct strategy is to ensure you are in  a market that is likely to be high growth regardless of market conditions. Such do exist, especially in the lead generation area. That means you have a better shot at achieving early revenue - an absolute.
   2. Comment: Good point but easier said than done maybe? You can always control costs but high-growth markets are unpredictable. In unpredictable times cashflow is king, no?  Anyone else - (@cherkoff)
   3. Comment: Where does cash flow come from? In tech companies costs are relatively fixed so the primary focus needs to be on addressable markets where there is revenue. I disagree re: high growth markets. Those markets provide a much greater level of margin around which you can model differernt scenarios than those where you can only get relatively low velocity. Check http://www.kennet.com as investing advisors on this. (@dahowlett)
   4. Comment: Sounds like we are talking about two sides of the same coin. Costs + Revenues = Cashflow. I like Graham's Cockroach mentality as a good mindset for hard times. 'The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill.'  As oppose to the Areon mentality?  And in the next two years survival will be the only game in town. (@cherkoff)
   5. Comment: @cherkoff - as someone who specialized in recovery in downturn economies I can assure you that revenue-costs=cashflow. They are absolutely not two sides of the same coin. The general premise of 'cockroach' financing is OK but it doesn't emphasize spending the right money in the right places at the right time. Even in a down economy that is the correct approach. Remember that Y-Combinator started with the premise of half starving its investees - hardly a humane way to run a business. ;) @dahowlett
   6. Comment: Thanks Dennis, indeed, I meant both are equally important when working out how well you are doing.  In fact, I think semi-starvation is quite good prep for a start-up... ;-) @cherkoff
   7.    -- If there was enough interest, I (encosion) would recommend screening Steal This Film II (45min) to kick start the discussions
10. #10 Building a new infrastructure #10: Working and holding meetings and networking events in cafes and bars is great, but sometimes you need to know the wireless is going to work, that the music isn't too loud, and it would be nice to have likeminded people around to network with. In just a few weeks @joshr and myself @stevepurkiss will be opening up a networking cafe on Brighton beach providing a home to those in the aforementioned situation. With the changing face of working, and not wanting to have to pay for a deskspace and go back to old office ways, we believe there is a need for these sorts of spaces and hope to prove this need in order to expand and find a space of our own with quiet work areas and meeting rooms along with the cafe/bar area which we currently have. So far the reaction from the community has been awesome! @stevepurkiss is also keen to use these spaces as a catalyst for raising awareness of free software as they provide the perfect environment for software as a service as opposed to software as a product. It would be great to discuss with the networks and further develop the idea - we do not currently have the infrastructure to properly support the new way of working, so we have to build it ourselves!
11. #11 Work-based learning and social media #11: Anyone else interested in talking about possibly putting together a 'roadshow' to demonstrate how social media can be deployed in the enterprise, to the benefit of both the business and people working there? The roadshow was Benjamin of Redcatco's idea when I spoke to him a while back. Recent research report from the US identifies 4 modes of work in the knowledge economy: focus, socialise, collaborate and learn. I have a lot of experience in face-to-face action learning, and am currently taking some of my action learning stuff online onto a Moodle platform. I would really like to find others who might share my interest in work-based learning (WBL) and the role of social learning in powering  WBL. (@drmcewan)
    1. i am up for sharing my learnings on the socialise and collaborate side of things, though i'm not as experienced in WBL specifically. maybe we could expand the title of this topic a bit if peeps want a broader look - something like 'social web at work' ? (@mikosoft)
    2. the difficulty here is that the UK culture is VERY different from that in the US so unless you have specific experience here then you've little to say that will be of genuine value.
    3. collaboration should be where the big win sits internally but I suspect we are some distance away from that and even then it would be necessary to ensure a solid business case can be developed that draws on little by way of internal IT resource but which can capitalize on advance human capital management. That is likely to limit the market considerably. However, the key once again comes from identifying thhose market segments or industry verticals where collaboration is likely to be well received or is part of the existing operating fabric.
12. #12 Creating a multi-authored book #12: Just recently pitched in an idea to a major consulting firm which aims to use a Wiki style platform with a view to ultimately producing a multi-authored book on best practice in the further education system. To me, it's all theoretical at the moment. What would be the realistic processes and editorial requirements needed to make it a reality? The process is centred around a conference coming up in May 2009. I see there's an attempt being made with 'Unconference - The Book', which have been following. However, the process i've initially pitched aims itself at people who aren't tech literate or probably never heard of Wisdom of Crowds etc. Maybe others have done this and achieved it successfully?
13. #13 Social media as a medium for storytelling #13: I'd like to investigate how the various social networks/platforms/online tools etc could be used for storytelling.  I'm particularly thinking of fiction.  Perhaps something a bit like SixToStart's We Tell Stories or some of the Twitter novels that have been springing up but a bit more distributed and ARG-y.  Spread across document sharing tools, to do lists, profile pages, conversations, locations, video, audio, text, image etc.  Oh, and it should have a dog in it.  Partly inspired by this sort of thing but not with Zombies.  More examples here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2s748h_1chh64dsb (@mydogminton)
14. #14 Social media for audio and visual artists #14: Discussions on essentially cost-free replication / piracy and how best to handle them - p2p, torrents, mp3 blogs, etc. are all forms of social media too... Investigating the rapidly changing landscape of the industry and the many nascent business models that are emerging (iTunes, 'Radiohead', Subscription, Free, etc). How to effect a much needed paradigm shift for many entrenched in the current systems. We'll be attempting to move the discussion beyond redundant terms like 'free' and 'given away' into a more useful discussion of 'transactional value' (or at least, I will - SBS :)  ) (encosion, @solobasssteve)
    1. Qu: what is the purpose of the challenge? My sense is that as we move forward, the individual tools will become integrated into a coherent whole. We're already seeing some of that with services like cyn.in and modified versions of Jive Clearspace and Wordframe. (@dahowlett)
15. #15 Dynamic Practice Library for Local Government #15: I'm aware of various initiatives (all with funding ) to create 'Practice Libraries' for various local government service themes. There are plans to develop a Practice Library around the 'Efficiency' theme, and a 'Leadership Practice Libary', and there is already an established 'Partnerships and Places' Library. All of these schemes are being developed independently. There is real potential here for delivering a more strategic solution that would (a) enable cross-theme integration and (b) significant cost savings over the current silo'd approach. I'm thinking of something like a single generic wiki (along the lines of Wikipedia) for Local Government Practice. As I mentioned, there is a funding available for this - and potentially more from CLG if a compelling business case is put forward. (@stephendale). Brief update on this (10/12/08) - this project now has funding to the tune of approx. £1.5m and a business plan is being developed. The topic didn't attract very much interest at the Amplified08 event, but maybe people associate anything to do with 'Gov' as being pretty tedious and boring. This couldn't be further from the truth - at least not in local government, where there are quite a few innovative projects happening around social media. This particular project is definitely ground-breaking, and will require a small team of social innovators to work with local councils and building up the content for the wiki. If anyone is interested in getting involved, please contact me asap. (@stephendale)
16. #16 Integration and Aggregation of Social Media (aka the Social Graph Problem) #16: With increasingly more and more places where you can find information, connect with people, raise awareness of the topics, and generally interact with others online, there's going to be the added challenge of navigating from one environment to another.  From Facebook to Twitter.. From Gmail to LinkedIn.  Unfortunately, it's not possible to just find everything in one place, just yet, that allows you to interact with everyone from one space.  For some, this is the "Social Graph" problem.. of having different people, in different networks, and places, with no unifying view across them all.. I'd like to propose a discussion around this challenge, to help identify what us as users might "need" to be able to maintain our sanity as increasingly interesting and engaging platforms emerge, that dissect our attention space even further.(@magitam)
17. #17 Creating spikes in music digital distribution through digital comms and social media #17
    1. Google, MySpace and other platforms have helped to 'flatten' the landscape for musicians to directly reach their audiences - thus the music industry is in rapid freefall, record deals are becoming an increasingly scarce and meaningless resource for music talent. These patterns for en masse independent distribution are starting to become mirrored in other media industries like TV and film.  Yet how can the independent music producer navigate the minefield  of reaching an audience in the wild west of online distribution with increasingly few gatekeepers and conduits?  How can social media and digital comms help or hinder the difficult path to being both a creative artist, salesman and business entrepreneur in one? (@susioneill)
18. #18 Linking developers with entrepreneurs #18 - @afternoon recently organised an event with this objective, and it would be great to further establish his concept to help get web entrepreneurial ideas off the ground, especially creative, low-budget web initiatives that could be bootstrapped by linking individual like-minded entrepreneurs and developers (@emilicon).  This idea has a lot of crossover with Saul Klein's OpenCoffee club initiative that started back in March 2007, and now runs in a lot of cities around the world.  The London club meets every Thursday morning in the foyer of UCL's engineering building with the intention to "encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to organise real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow".  It's attended by a lot of the startup community, as well as VCs and angel investors.  Hopefully an OpenCoffee regular can contribute to this sessionn (@DT). 
19. #19 Streams, rivers, torrents and clouds: nature and cyberspace: co-creation workshop #19 - The web is already greener than you think. My research is showing that users view cyberspace as an organic, holistic, evolving eco-system of connectedness. To quote Bruce Sterling, 'if the internet were a landscape it would be 'a bubbling primal soup full of worms and viruses.' This somewhat light-hearted diversion from the serious business of surviving the credit crunch requests your help in exploring the surprising story of nature metaphors and the internet. Are you swimming in the lifestream? And can this knowledge help you understand the needs of your clients? Come and co-create a wild surmise for #amp08. More about this project @ The Wild Surmise (@suethomas)
20. #20 Social media tools for finding customers and doing New Business Development #20 - lowering the costs of running your business in a recession must include doing sales and marketing.  How have social media tools been used successfully to gain new audiences, build relationships and create opportunities to sell?  Anecdotes from those who have done it and new ideas for those who are yet to start.  (@rebeccacaroe)
21. #21 MSM and Social Media #21 - As mainstream media becomes more porous and enters social media networks in different ways - what are the expectations? How strong is citizen journalism? How should it be valued and how can it work alongside/within/without traditional media outlets? (@jemimah_knight (jamillah) )
22. #22 From conscripts to followers - new forms of leadership and organization #22 - On the amplified blog @euan wrote about Piss ups and breweries.  I responded with Of managers, conscripts, leaders and followers.   The default structure for organizations, even start ups, is the "natural hierarchy" that evolves in to the organization chart and eventually corporate command and control, but it doesn't have to be that way.  There are a precious few examples of different organization structures and management approaches that work, but they do exist.    Even in the world of the military strict commands are being adapted to a commander providing a minimally constraining intent statement, that empowers their subordinates, so they can adapt to any situation they confront.  The power of the Web, and the use of social media tools creates an opportunity for a different way of working as never before, with Seth Godin's Tribes highlighting how this can empower the individual, wherever they may fit in the scheme of things.   This discussion will explore the move from managers and conscripts to leaders and followers, whether we need leaders in the traditional sense, and the new ways of working and management that social media tools and better communication can help facilitate.  @DT and @drmcewan
    1. Reflecting on moving from conscripts to leaders and followers, I wonder what leadership means in a peer-to-peer to context? I struggle with language that embodies old cultural attitudes. "the new ways of working and management that social media tools and better communication can help facilitate" - such a great topic. Thinking about new ways of working that social media tools can mediate, I would ask how Digital Natives (aka Gen Y) use these technologies, what they expect from work and how these expectations will change existing ways of working. @drmcewan
23. #23 Becoming SM Savvy #23 - giving young people a grounding in the ways Social Media can be used  to enhance their education (Drew Buddie - @digitalmaverick). I'm starting to explore how we can take an open-source/creative commons/collaborative approach to developing training materials for youth professionals and young people exploring social media. Would love to weave in exploration of this is appropriate. (@timdavies)
24. #24 Making Dave Eggers's TED Prize Talk 'dream' come true #24 - where we can ALL make a difference to the education of disadvantaged youngsters through the use of Social Media (Drew Buddie - @digitalmaverick).
25. #25 The road to Amplified2010 #25 - I think it is important to discuss how we go forward so that each quarterly event builds on the previous one. We need to decide how we expand the conversation, network by network and region by region. The world is going to be a very different place by the summer of 2010 and we have an opportunity to be agents of change. As amplified individuals a relatively small number of us across the country are in a position to be significantly involved in the rapidly changing creative landscape (Toby Moores - @sleepydog) (+1 @dahowlett)
26. #26 Microservices and the Primary Purpose Approach #26 - For developers, agencies and people interested in how the infrastructure works... Twitter is, in many ways, a branded c2c microservice that does one thing (its primary purpose) well, and supports using (and being used by) other application, like hashtags and countless others. Monstrous apps like Facebook (and all the rest) also have the concept of a status, but only as a minor part of a much bigger c2c service offering. This means we are looking at a landscape where the same thing has been built (with varying consistency of approach and attention to detail) hundreds of times. Is there a business case for developers / agencies to build other microservices (realtime@location and geo-fencing spring to mind) offering a consistent best approach that can be licensed across all/many of these larger, core business focussed services? @Allix
    1. Comment: I am involved with the ESME project that takes the messaging notions around Twitter but builds them in the context of what happens in business. It builds on the notion that content without context or meaning (ie the 'river') is meaningless. Check: http://blog.esme.us for details, information and access to the open source code location. As an aside I've personally learned a greqat deal about the way in thiwch the 'suit' and 'geek' cokmmunities can come together in a fruitful manner. (@dahowlett)
27. #27 Social Applications nextpointnothing - Wur doin it rong! #27 - For developers, agencies and people interested in how the infrastructure works... 1) people who generally have the ability to build stuff don't tend to think like the people they build them for. Are developers of social applications gathering their requirements properly, or accidentally forcing their geekish worldview framework on an uncomfortable public? 2) over 15 years, what the web does has become far removed from what it was constructed to do. Is it time to do a Bertrand Russell and deconstruct to prove mechanisms worth? @Allix
28. #28 Use of Virtual Spaces - Second Life et al in Education #28 - anyone interested in how this works in practice and exemplars - has to be an early session as I am video streaming anther conference after 5 pm. @eyebeams