Snippets from AC2005

Accelerating Change 2005 was all about high quality conversations and frictionless connections, essentially mirroring the changes taking place on the social web. Some of the hallway conversations that I most enjoyed;

Asking Esther Dyson, with reference to the Yahoo/China controversy, whether companies were bound by the laws of their geographical location of incorporation online, or whether the user of a product sited halfway across the world was bound by the geographical laws of where he was. Of course, the question in person was probably a lot less coherent than this one :)

Getting Vernor Vinge's autograph in a copy of his book. Followed by an excellent conversation on futures, science fiction, arranged marriages and his next book which has India as the second most powerful country in 2014. Later I found out that the other gentleman in the group was Kevin Kelly. {Vernor Vinge at AC2005}

The most amazing conversation at lunch with two guys on Pi, genius and insanity, schizophrenia, polymaths and why beer helped the thinking process by slowing down  your thoughts. We should try that again sometime.

Meeting two other people with highly mobile childhoods and comparing notes. They understood the concept of limnos and my noting that the qualities considered valuable for professional futurists, we possessed by virtue of our nurture. Flexibility, comfortable with ambiguitiy, able to see the big picture, able to have a multiplistic perspective and a global viewpoint.

My unexpectedly fervent rant after seeing a question chalked on a board for the Q&A with Ray Kurzweil, "Why are 90% of the attendees white men?". As though they were keeping people out, since I was undoubtedly there and thoroughly enjoying myself. Then the question becomes, where are all the women? Sitting around dreaming of their futures but not quite what was being discussed at the conference. Whose fault is that?

Hearing George Gilder speak about content and conduit, and how the laws of information science proved the business fact that when content was seperate from conduit, conduit was far more profitable. And noting that when firms applied inappropriate business models such as vertically integrating content on conduit like Cisco and Verizon, they weren't as successful. Therefore the fundamental laws underpinning certain business models that apply in the world with gravity, may not apply in a world without gravity. The power of vertical integration as a viable corporate strategy did not translate well. What then would best explain the seperation that worked based on information science in terms of frameworks for planning?

Comments

[Michael Wagner]

Thanks for this post; your background stories are super! Mike