Socially Speaking

Cory Doctorow is a believer in giving it away. And of self determination. When it comes to his work as an author, he revels in its evolution — or how it is affected by people who touch it, create something from it, then share it. In other words, he sets it free:

José Rafael Zullo has translated my first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, into Brazilian Portuguese, using the Creative Commons license to make a free and freely reusable version of the text in his language. This is so cool.

Here are some other recent (very cool) examples:

* Downloadable free mini comic designed by former South Park illustrator Martin Cendreda. You can print it and assemble it yourself and voila, a little origami project.

* Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, sent chapter by chapter via email. (I’m reading it this way, and began the first three on my Treo).

* Transcripts of recent radio interviews

* Audio catch of a book launch at a San Francisco bookstore

* Cory’s own podcasts (which I have listened to, and really enjoyed) of Eastern Standard Tribe, his second novel “of political intrigue among high-tech, sleep-deprived management consultants.” Now tell me you’re not intrigued.

* Others‘ podcasts of his work, in this case Printcrime. Printcrime was originally published in Nature Magazine, and is now part of his latest short story collection, Overclocked.

This, in addition to the fact that you may download any of his books for free, anytime.

I’m the perfect example of what Cory hopes to accomplish by doing this. Seth Godin calls it sneezing, or spreading ideas to others. And, yes, I’ve been sneezing Cory’s work like mad recently. As a result at least six (somewhat unlikely) people within the last few days have bought his books. While six isn’t a big number, relatively speaking, imagine if everyone Cory touched via a speech, a blog post, a book signing, video or podcast had the same affect on six people they knew.

Side note: In just over two weeks, Overclocked has sold in its first print run. (More copies will be available on February 21st).

Reminder: Don’t forget to register for Waxxi’s interactive podcast with Cory on Monday, February 12th (we’ll need to send you a toll free dial in number and user code in order for you to talk to us via phone).

For many, Cory Doctorow needs little introduction. He’s co-editor of Boing Boing, one of the world’s most popular blogs (@ 2 million + unique visitors/month), an award winning sci-fi novelist, digital rights activist, and a wickedly brilliant (and nice) human.

Forbes and the World Economic Forum (WEF) tend to agree:

Top 25 Web Celebrities for 2007

WEF’s Young Global Leaders for 2007

I’ve had the chance to meet Cory at the Google Unbound event, and again at NYU’s Free Culture series. He’s been accurately described as a “walking, talking Wikipedia of digital rights” (as I witnessed at NYU), and he’s a self-described ‘nethead’ (meaning he’s been online for as long as he can remember, and has actually written his books online…for years).

To say he’s engaging is a massive understatement. You need only to hear/watch/witness him speak, and you’ll know how very true that is. But, look out. You’d better strap your brain in. Seth Godin on Cory:

I sat next to Cory at a conference today. It was like playing basketball next to Michael Jordan.

We’ll be elaborating on Cory and his work here, up through the event and beyond. For now, here are the details:

WHAT: Interactive Podcast with Cory Doctorow

WHEN: Monday, February 12, 2007 from 1:30-3:00pm PST

HOW: Register here. But hurry!

It’s free, as always, but spaces are limited and you’ll need to register in order to participate.

Cory’s latest short story collection, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present can be downloaded for free, listened to via podcast , and purchased one of many places (you can get an autographed copy delivered to your door, too).

Our next Waxxi interactive podcast will feature two world-renowned figures in technology and business: Michael Parekh and Michael Arrington.

A founder of Goldman Sachs’ Internet Research group, Michael Parekh was one the early pioneers who helped discover, nurture, and fund the foundations of the web as a lead analyst for the IPOs of such organizations as UUNET, Yahoo!, and eBay. Michael (Mukesh) is a native of India and came to the US in 1977. He is passionate about all things Internet and technology, as well as interesting trends he observes, globally.

In building TechCrunch over the last year, Michael (Mike) Arrington helped lay the foundation for the Web 2.0 world we’re living in today, becoming one of its most highly respected pundits, educators, and analysts. Mike is a former corporate attorney (of Wilson Sonsini fame) who has also helped bring public several companies, and is co-founder of edgeio. He grew up in California and Surrey, England, and lives and works in Atherton.

Together, Michaels Parekh and Arrington represent the core of the Internet, and technology: where it’s been, how it’s evolving, and where it’s going.

The date to join in on this global conversation is Thursday, June 29, 2006 and time is 10:30AM PDT. As always, all you need is a phone and/or Internet connectivity.

By dialing in, you’ll not only hear the entire conversation, but have the chance to be a part of it. We’ll give you instructions when you register, but the process is rather simple: hit two buttons on your phone in order to ‘raise your hand’ to ask a question or make a comment.

Many of our members and participants outside the US will choose to use this feature only. This was tremendously effective and important for our first interactive podcast.

We’ll have more details posted shortly. Stay tuned.

Last week, at a gathering at San Francisco’s Hotel Utah, a powerful group of social media types, podcasters and bloggers corralled. Shel Israel hosted the event in honor of Jackie Danicki and Adriana Cronin-Lukas.

Jeremiah Owyang helped spread the word, as he does so masterfully, as well as putting people who should be talking together, together. One of them being, on my behalf, Mario Sundar. Mario is a passionate, inquisitive, and incredibly knowledgeable person with whom I’m interested in becoming more acquainted. Thanks for sharing some time to speak (and for the very kind words), Mario. We must continue the conversation.

Gratefully, Adriana was quick to introduce me to Mike Hudack of Blip.tv. And Jeremy Pepper was quick to point out how much he sounded like Vince Vaughn (it’s true. Jeremy was spot on). If you haven’t seen what they’re doing, take a look at Blip. We are.

It was great shaking hands and chatting with BrainJams‘ Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells. [mental note: keep in touch with them. we like what they're doing.] And just down the bar, not there for the event, was Buzz Andersen who does some interesting work with Apple’s Soundtrack Pro.

A nice surprise was seeing Mike Arrington again (the last time was at a much larger party at the TechCrunch House) who agreed on the spot to join our next interactive podcast with guest Michael Parekh. More to come on that…which will prove to be one heckuva global conversation.

What I’m finding so interesting is the concentration of immensely driven, passionate innovators, thinkers, creators and knowledge workers here in the Bay area. We’re thrilled to be a part of it all.

(closing tip: if you’re in London on June 21, be sure not to miss What My Space Means, held by the Engagement Alliance).

On Saturday I attended Techdirt Greenhouse for the second time. It was, again, a great gathering of intellect, talent, opinion and creativity. The format and methodology is what attracted me in the first place: brain jamming, if you will. Interesting companies were pre-selected and given the opportunity to present to us, the participants. We then, armed with our color coded shapes (which defined our discussion leader/rooms), were off to separate breakout groups to ponder, debate, challenge and summize the questions asked of us by each of the presenting companies.

Two that stood out to me in making an impact, socially speaking, were Jumpcut and SalesBuilder. Jumpcut is making some waves by bringing way-cool movie making capabilities – a la iMovie SANS the Mac – alas, even to the novice. CEO Byron Dumbrill was impressive, and has already caught the attention of Warner Independent Films. Even better, he’s combined social networking (community) with digital media. We likee.

SalesBuilder is doing something really different, and close to our hearts: telling companies to stop focusing on themselves in their online presence, and really focus on their customers. If I might steal from Techdirt’s blog post subtitle theme, this stems from the It’s-not-about-you department. Really.

This is one of the reasons I take a back seat role as the host of Waxxi’s podcasts. If I didn’t, we wouldn’t be interactive, or nearly as interactive. Nor would we be any different from any other podcast (one-on-one, or one-on-few, interviews). “The floor is yours” is one of our mottos, and seemingly SalesBuilder CEO’s Olivier Chase’s mentality. Good stuff, and a powerful tool to any organization that wants to be truly closer to their customers, and outstep their competition by doing so.

It was nice to see some familiar faces, like Jackie Danicki, Hillary Johnson, Chris Sims, Anne Donker and more. It was equally nice to see new faces, one of them being my lunch mate Mike Sigal of Guidewire Group. And Sprint’s Russ McGuire, who gave a speech centralized around the theme of his excellent blog, the Law of Mobility.

Someone who left a very strong impression upon me, even before we got to know one another more, was Adriana Cronin-Lukas. There are few people in life with whom you connect on very intense levels, and know that your meeting was not a coincidence. Adriana is one of those people, to me (and others, of that I am sure). In addition to speaking at industry events – as she did the next day at Vloggercon on Net Neutrality – Adriana is making marks in the world as a Sherpa of social media, and then some.

Thanks to the Techdirt Mikes and the entire team for another great idea workshop. Keep ‘em coming.

Our first interactive podcast with Robert Scoble and Shel Israel was not only fun and insightful, but historical. People were able to communicate, comment, share and ask questions to Robert and Shel directly, whether via chat/IM or via phone. The content is smart, interesting and the energy level is high.

Since the event ran over an hour and a half, we’ve split it into two parts. There are a few ways to listen:

1) Click on either Interactive Podcast or Naked Conversations on Waxxi’s home page. You may download parts one and two, or play it within the page. There, you may also subscribe to the podcast’s RSS feed.

2) Listen live here to Part One and here for Part Two

A few things to note:

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a Cordless Phone. What you’ll notice in the beginning of Part One is a bit of fuzziness, especially on Robert’s line. That’s something we learned not to do in the future: have guests call in on cordless phones. Landlines with a quality headset a must, everything else (cordless, VoIP, cell phones) a no-no.

Radio Quality, Digital Sound. My voice will sound different, in terms of recording quality, than the others. That’s because I did my part from a studio. And I worked with folks with more than four decades of broadcasting experience. The goal, as Shel mentioned, was to help move podcasting forward.

To Edit or Not to Edit? Should the interactive podcasts be completely, well, Naked? In the aforementioned ‘forward’ thinking process, we felt it would only improve the listening experience to edit out some of the “uhs” “ums”, seconds of dead air here or there, and to record an intro and a close.

Chat is as Important as Voice. We implemented a chat client very close to the launch, and were not able to alert everyone to that fact until the day of the event (next time, plenty of notice so that international callers don’t have to worry about staying on a direct phone line to the US just to have their questions answered). The chat/IM was equally as important to the interactive experience as having people call in. It also allowed for commenting, and facilitated the flow of the conversation quite nicely.

We’ll detail each part in future posts, but in the meantime nobody does it better than Jeremiah Owyang. Thanks again to everyone who signed up, participated, and interacted, and to our incredible guests.

Enjoy the listen.

update: We gave Jeremiah a sneak peek (he’s good at pulling those eStrings). His announcement of Waxxi going live is here.

After many hours of post-cast work in the studio, and answering many emails, IMs, blog posts and calls, I can finally blog about Waxxi’s inaugural, historic interactive podcast.

Before writing about the details of the event, which Jeremiah Owyang did with lightning fast timing and hurting fingers (indeed, a Web Prophet), and which Mish, Peter Dawson and Robert Scoble live-blogged, we need to send thanks to many.

To our guest speakers:

Shel Israel, renowned consultant, accomplished and in-demand speaker, writer, genuinely nice guy, and soon to be globe-trotter. It all started at a really fun party over a glass or two of great wine. Thanks for being open to something new. Thanks also for the kind words, and continuous support. We hope you’ll come back for a future Waxxi cast to talk about the findings of your next book.

Robert Scoble, who I feel like I know yet I’ve barely met (only briefly when he signed my copy of Naked Conversations at said party). Why? Because he’s real. He’s a real guy talking about real things, Microsoft-related and not. Thank you for being bold, brave, honest and forthright. Thank you for opening up our tech/business/shareholder value-driven world to something more important: life itself. And thank you for taking time to spend with us today, so close to the time that you left your Mom. I hope you and I get the chance to sit down together someday soon.

To each and every one of the participants today who took the time on a Saturday morning/afternoon/evening (depending on where you were in the world). It was an energetic, insightful first session, albeit not without a bump or two in the road. Mr. Raftery, we owe you at least a pint of Guiness after you welcome your newborn to the world.

To TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington. Thanks for liking the concept, and because of that alone, helping introduce the world to Waxxi.

And last – but certainly not least – heartfelt, very special thanks to our hard-working, always on, and very patient team of developers, designers and consultants:

Bob Joyal, formerly with Fast Company; Frank Gruber, of Somewhat Frank (Frank, you rock!); Frederick Giasson of Talk Digger fame; Val Landi, Silicon Valley IT veteran and author of A Woman from Cairo; and our partner-in-design, Chicago’s Inflatble3.

Thanks, to all. We wouldn’t be Waxxi without you.

Frank Gruber, who authors an excellent blog focusing on Web 2.0, posted about waxxi and our event today.

So, who will be taking part in our interactive podcast on May 20th, other than Robert and Shel? Well, bloggers like Tom Raftery, Zoli Erdos, Alex King, Pete Dawson, Jeremiah Owyang (and many more) for starters.

There will also be neo and even not-yet-bloggers in the crowd –or people who want to explore the idea for themselves or their company.

It should be a lot of fun. We imagine some interesting conversations will result, both during and after the kickoff event (download the PDF here).

(disclaimer: Frank Gruber is currently acting as a strategic consultant to waxxi)