Socially Speaking

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).

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.