Making Sense

First day of networking and learning at PICNIC08 done. Got home at 22.00 after a spontaneous dinner with corporate trend analysts. Great stuff and discussions on how to create governments able to recognise the issues that matter to people. Basically the question was: why is a marketeer able to develop a working model that benefits product development, brand recognition and also profits the individuals taking part? Or more importantly, why governments are not able to do this? More surely to follow on that. As Charlie Leadbeater put it: why does it feel like governments are doing things to us when they claim they are doing things with or for us?

So what else did I grab from today?
- Google is not very good - some even said crap - in suggestings things to us that we were not aware that we are interested in (like for instance newspapers are)
- nearly all creativity requires collaboration but not all collaboration is creative
- "free form internet is a pure myth"
- Aaron Koblin's work on visualising data is amazing (see video above on visualising SMS sending in Amsterdam)
- internet platforms have corrupted the way we use the word friend and the meanings we give to it.

By the way: PICNIC is doing a huge mapping on trends. If you can think of one, let me know by giving a short explanation and an example and I will add it to the mapping exercise they are doing. One I saw added today was sharing rare music via YouTube.