• 12:02 Yay! The Guardian used my picture of Edwards! tinyurl.com/2ooqfg #
• 12:19 RefreshMiami 2nite! @cwsaylor on quickly globalizing ur webservice; Todobebe 7:30pm tinyurl.com/3blr67 RSVP tinyurl.com/2y75q2 #
• 12:26 @mjkeliher @scrapnancy @acarvin thanks! i love the Guardian and am honored they chose my pic, although i’m disappointed Edwards dropped out. #
• 12:32 @acarvin Twitter app posts tweets as status updates tinyurl.com/2z9ndy + I built own app using pipes/dapper tinyurl.com/3b9wc8 #
• 14:15 @zacbrown Hi and welcome to Twitter! Check out the Miami Twitter Pack twitter.com/alexdc/statuses/652151252 and also the other packs. #
• 14:54 John Edwards photos www.flickr.com/photos/adc/sets/72157603824796663/ … another photo used here tinyurl.com/yojw3s #
• 16:26 lots of good vibes today, yet so little time; currently completing interview on community management roles and experiences at Scrapblog #
• 17:19 believe it or not, we’d published our phone on website (no longer); some users now call us for customer service and we’re not setup for this #
• 19:13 Still at work, arriving at RefreshMiami 20 minutes late twitter.com/alexdc/statuses/660010362 #
• 20:14 @cwsaylor presenting now for RefreshMiami, talking about how Todobebe.com interntionalized their service; lots of good insights #
• 21:58 @montgomery describes: “Twitter is like that table at the school cafeteria, where the cool people hang out”; we’re at Soyka w/ RefreshMiami. #

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• 12:30 Should SMPRs be published as a blog or thru some other CMS? Calling @chrisheuer @briansolis or anyone, please reply or dm…much appreciated #
• 13:05 @amandachapel I’d LOL but I consider him a friend: considering his health issues, this comes off as particularly uncharitable. Good try, tho #
• 13:13 @brbreslin I see how it could be a template, but it could also be atemplate in another type of CMS that spits out RSS… Drupal, Joomla, etc #
• 13:16 @derekabdinor the SMPR would be integrated with a site’s press section as a complement to other company info #
• 13:18 @kristiewells that’s the direction i was leaning, thanks #
• 13:24 @tylerreed @derekabdinor yes, i think they should have RSS feeds, they are an ongoing thing; good point on not making it a standalone thing #
• 15:03 @cschick thanks, you’re right; I’m exploring options and see there isn’t a single right way to do this #
• 18:46 Cool, my pic of John Edwards picked up by iVoryTowerz tinyurl.com/2zhakg #

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• 23:28 @bentrem++ for finding this piechart of time spent on modern web design www.vilain.com/web-design.html #
• 00:10 @breakingnewson Why so much hype? Why not do an SMPR? Why no comments? Not reassuring, for citizen journalism. www.breakingtoday.com/ #
• 00:20 @robcallahan nine lives notwithstanding, cats require some benign supervision and a modicum of tolerance for their longevity and your sanity #
• 00:29 @jasonlbaptise Link for Citrix at Demo ‘08? Much appreciated … #
• 00:32 @abacab you may be flying like a falcon, the best most of us can do is spread our wings like swans; congratulations on your tweet140 prowess #
• 01:06 Twitter is a conundrum inside a maze: I have absolutely no idea or trace whether my last two DMs to @breakingnewson left and arrived safely. #
• 01:13 On CSPAN right now, the Mormon presidential candidate governing Massachusetts is sporting a Guayabera in Miami: I think I have seen it all:) #
• 01:16 Romney sez “They don’t call it America Warming, they call it Global Warming! America must not bear the costs…” Oy vey! Is this who we are? #
• 01:34 signing off,unsatisfied w/ @breakingnewson+saddenned by Romney, who aDemocrat friend espoused+I unfortunately paid 5min attention to kthxbai #
• 01:38 @breakingnewson by the way, I can’t send you a DM because you’re not following me, but I can read your DMs because I’m following you #
• 01:48 Basic Twitter-etiquette: when you DM someone, check that you follow them, so they can DM you back #
• 01:51 @breakingnewson twitter.com/alexdc/statuses/649639962 #
• 10:16 @shelisrael Congrats on your Global Neighbourhoods show at Fast Company! tinyurl.com/276odv #
• 10:23 @orlandosentinel Please tweet about local tech (startups, events, news) and local news #
• 15:00 @mkhall Happy birthday! #
• 15:33 Miami Twitter Pack –>tinyurl.com/269k95 #
• 15:56 Scrapblog Twitter Pack –> tinyurl.com/2aqapa #
• 16:28 retweet/plug: Send your sweetheart a valentine scrapblog w/ ABC Family –> tinyurl.com/2g8qr4 #
• 16:38 @jowyang Tweetmeme is a nice way to find other users tweeting the same URLs/topics, it’s like grouping on the fly #
• 18:32 Oh wow, this is hawt! Wordpress micro-blogging, via @bokardo tinyurl.com/2265w4 #
• 20:09 @liberatr thanks for the tip, i wasn’t familiar with pibb.com, i’m checking it out now … #
• 21:16 New Scrapblog embed for blogs and social networks: tinyurl.com/yshqwb #

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BarCampMiami will be held on February 28th from 4pm to 8pm, in conjunction with the Future of Web Apps (FOWA) Miami conference at the glorious Carnival Center of the performing arts. Since opening the registration last week, about 90 people have signed up. BarCampMiami attendees are entitled to 50% off the price of FOWA Miami and the first 100 get a free tshirt. The FOWA coupon code is available upon signing up for BarCamp.

What topics or services would you like to see presented? A few days after registration was opened, we added a question to the signup form on what types of topics people would like to see presented. Here are the answers:

1. Amazon Web Services  2. Free and Open Source for Geospatial

All kind of topics concerning web applications, mobile servcies, and maybe a little bit of semantic web…

Anything cool about web

Blogging

Community building and publishing related. Monetization on community sites,  are subscriptions models dead?

development of mobile platforms

Entrepreneurship, Web Design and/or starting and promoting a startup.

ERP SOLUTIONS.

Flash Techniques and Animation.  XML integration and a bit of Animation/Cartooning

I will be volunteering with project management.

interface design

landing page optimization  profit models

Microformats

Microformats, APIs, state of the languages (Django, Rails, etc.), subscription/payment options

monetization of web apps and metrics.

New media. New technology. Art. Music. Software.

new technologies…

optimization

Photoshop Design to CSS

rapid app development, .NET libraries, AJAX, dynamically generating .swf files

Ruby on Rails development

Ruby, productivity tools, promoting a healthy technology community in South Florida, office ergonomics, does anyone still use Java anymore?

ruby, rails

Ruby, Ruby on Rails, electronics, robotics, graphic design.

SEM, Social network marketing

Server side and client side frameworks. Internationalization.

social networking, mobile, ventures

usability, information architecture

BarCampMiami presenters. The following people indicate they would like to present:

Alex Hillman Founder/Fearless Leader IndyHall
website: http://www.indyhall.org
blog: http://www.dangerouslyawesome.com
I’d love to present about coworking, if you’ll have me!

Blake Macleod Business Development PeopleBubble
website: http://www.peoplebubble.net
I would like to give a demonstration of PeopleBubble, a web app we are developing.

Brian Breslin CEO infinimedia
website: http://www.infinimedia.com
blog: http://webpl.us
Yes. Leveraging the social graph for fun and profit.

Brian Oberkirch Founder Small Good Thing
website: http://brianoberkirch.com
Designing for Portable Social Networks

Chris Saylor Senior Web Developer TodobebÈ
website: http://todobebe.com
blog: http://justhack.com
Possibly on Globalizing Your Web Applications

Christopher Haupt CTO Collective Knowledge Works Inc
website: http://buildingwebapps.com
blog: http://blog.buildingwebapps.com
We just launched BuildingWebApps.com as a service to the Ruby on Rails focused development and design community. Behind the scenes, we are building tech to organize information for communities in niche knowledge domains. Would love to show it to folks and find out what new learners most wish they had (or could point new practitioners to to get them up to speed).

Edward Toro Developer Scrapblog
website: http://www.scrapblog.com
Maybe.  Intro to Adobe Flex? Agile development processes (Scrum)?  IdeaFestival Do-Tank meeting style?

Elliot Murphy hacker Canonical
website: http://canonical.com
blog: http://elliotmurphy.com
Distributed revision control for web developers.

Greg Pederson Director of Technology Nsightdevelpoment.com
website: http://www.nsightdevelopment.com
I can talk about using CSS positioning along with one graphic file that contains all the sites reused images to save space, download times, etc.

Gregg Pollack Code Monkey RailsEnvy
website: http://www.RailsEnvy.com
blog: http://www.RailsEnvy.com
I’d like to do a presentation on Intro to Ruby on Rails.  If there are too many people there already familiar I might switch to a more advanced topic like BDD/RSpec or ActiveRecord.
James Hoskins Software Engineer Avatar International. Inc.Undecided topic

Jason Perry Prime Mover Paint.itRed
website: http://paint.itred.org
blog: http://ambethia.com
Unsure, perhaps in the lightning round if there is one.

Joey Primiani Web Designer Freelance
website: http://www.joeyprimiani.com
blog: http://www.joeyprimiani.com
Yes, I plan to present new ways to visualize live analytics (other than Google Analytics) to get a better idea of what users like on the page. Or the latest (past two months) ajax libraries that include amazing ways for increased user interaction and experience.

John Rife CEO Interactive Expeditions
website: http://www.FindingAmerica.tv
blog: http://www.ALocalFolkus.com
Transmedia Story Creation:  Telling stories with today’s tools – but as Ryan Price said above "It’s not about the tools"

Joshua Hoskins IT Director OrlandoJobs.com
website: http://www.orlandojobs.com
I would like to, at BarCamp Orlando I presented on GoogleBase. I may do that again or something with Ruby on Rails and Integration.

Kevin Murphy Managing Director Statiksoft, LLC
website: http://statiksoft.com
blog: http://kevinnmurphy.com
Doing a talk on either django templates, or decoupling django apps.

michael galpert C20 A.viary.com
website: http://A.viary.com
blog: http://A.viary.com/blog
deskop software vs online software or something along those lines

Michael Montgomery President Montgomery Studios, Inc.
website: http://montgomerystudios.com
blog: http://michaelmontgomery.net
Yes. Possible topics include web standards or accessibility.

Michael Nunez Founder Suluta Corp
website: http://www.suluta.com
Monetizing your work online.

Nathan Rambeck Founder Rambeck Group
website: http://rambeck.com
blog: http://rambeck.com/blog
Building social networks with Drupal.

Ptah Dunbar Web Designer / Developer 
website: http://ptahdunbar.net
blog: http://ptahdunbar.com
no sure.. I could present a service if possible.

Ron Akanowicz Information Architect Softerware Consulting, PA
website: http://www.softerwareconsulting.com
I Haven’t been asked, but could…

Ryan Price Drupal Developer Petentials.com
website: http://petentials.com
blog: http://ryanpricemedia.com
Podcasting is not about Tools

Sean Murphy Web Application Architect Statiksoft, LLC
website: http://statiksoft.com
blog: http://IamSeanMurphy.com
I’d be happy to present on either Comet, or improving user experience with JS form validation.

Tantek «elik   
website: http://tantek.com/
blog: http://tantek.com/
microformats lab – a hands-on lab for folks wanting either an introduction or help with adding microformats to their sites.

Tate Stickles Attorney Grossman Law Group
website: http://www.ecomputerlaw.com
I’d be interested on presenting on a legal topic relating to the interests of other attendees.  Such as protecting intellectual property, privacy, etc.

Tyler Hunt   
website: http://tylerhunt.com/
blog: http://blog.tylerhunt.com/
Possibly something on Amazon FPS.

William Couch Multimedia Artist Orlando Sentinel
website: http://orlandosentinel.com
blog: http://williamcouch.com
Possibly, about prototyping/generating Flash projects quickly for breaking news.

And myself, Alex de Carvalho Community and Marketing Dir. Scrapblog.com
website: http://www.scrapblog.com
blog: http://www.tapio.com
Object-centered sociality

More BarCampMiami participants. Here is the remainder of the participant list. Everyone is welcome to present:

Adam Teece Lead Designer Aberrant Designs, Inc
website: http://adamteece.com
blog: http://aberrantabsurdity.com

Alex Harris Creative Director Alex Designs LLC
website: http://www.alexdesigns.com
blog: http://www.alexdesigns.com/blog/

Alison Wadsworth Research Director Micstura
website: http://www.micstura.com

Allan Branch design/ui less everything, inc
website: http://www.lesseverthing.com
blog: b.lesseverything.com

Bruno Miranda Developer Ninja Todobebe
website: http://www.bopia.com
blog: http://www.brunomiranda.com

Carlos Granier-Phelps Social Media Strategist RED66.com
website: http://red66.com/
blog: http://technosailor.com/category/espanol/

cathy colmenares Sr Director, Integrated Marketing Todobebe Inc.
website: http://todobebe.com
blog: http://mitodobebe.com

Chris Campbell Co-Founder Wufoo
website: http://wufoo.com
blog: http://particletree.com

Cristopher Carillo Owner Tequesta Enterprises
website: http://www.linkspro.com

Daniel Dye 
Daniel Kirsch 
Danny Sanchez Senior Producer Orlando Sentinel
website: http://www.orlandosentinel.com
blog: http://www.journalistopia.com

David Moore Music Teacher Broward Schools
David Parmet Owner Marketing Begins at Home, LLC
website: http://www.parmet.net/pr
blog: http://www.parmet.net/pr

David Rhugnanan Web Desinger Trinity Effects Inc.
website: http://trinityeffects.com

Diego Sanz Web Consultant Sanz Consulting
website: http://brickellmiamicondos.com/real_estate/home/

Eduardo Henriques Managing Partner Micstura
website: http://www.micstura.com

Frank Deoleo 
Giannina Amato Team Leader Nobox
website: http://copywwwriter.wordpress.com/
blog: http://copywwwriter.wordpress.com/

Giovanny Gutierrez Dir. of Interactive Media Tinsley Advertising
website: http://www.tinsley.com
blog: http://www.giogutierrez.com

Guilherme Ambros Digital Solutions Director Wunderman, Young & Rubicam
website: http://www.wunderman.com

Gus Goodall Senior Designer British Army
website: http://www.armynet.mod.uk
blog: http://www.armynet.mod.uk

Gus Goodall Senior Designer British Army
website: http://www.armynet.mod.uk
blog: http://www.armynet.mod.uk

Jason Baptiste CEO Publictivity
website: http://publictivity.com

Jason Hawkins Video guy Make Film Work
website: http://www.makefilmwork.com
blog: http://www.solmi.net

Jennifer Cardew Graduate Student North Texas
website: http://www.twitter.com/jencardew
blog: http://www.anthroblogs.org/jcardew

Jordan Fulghum  Scrapblog
website: http://www.scrapblog.com
blog: http://blog.scrapblog.com

Jorge Perez Director of Marketing Alienware.com
website: http://www.alienware.com

Josue Rodriguez Web Developer
Judson Collier  Macteens Magazine
website: http://macteens.com
blog: http://judsoncollier.com

Justin Tarrants Biz Dev Government
Katie Novak 
ken scott UNIX network security admin prolexic
website: http://www.prolexic.com

Kevin Hale Co-Founder Wufoo
website: http://wufoo.com
blog: http://particletree.com

Kevin Wiesner 
Marco Castro CEO MTEK
website: http://mtek.tv

Marco Castro CEO MTEK
website: http://mtek.tv

Marco Castro 
Maria Bouza Project Manager dotCMS
website: http://www.dotcms.org

Maria de los Angeles Lemus Wily Wordsmith & Rogue Cartoonist Freelance
website: http://wilywordsmith.blogspot.com
blog: http://sexandthebeach.blogspot.com

Matias Blazevic Sr. Copywriter Y&R Brands
website: http://printpreview.wordpress.com/
blog: http://printpreview.wordpress.com/

Meagan Fisher User Interface Designer Helium Report
website: http://www.heliumreport.com
blog: http://www.iheartthe.com/blog

Michael Rose IT Manager
Naomi Butterfield Web Applications Developer ADS
website: http://www.techcfl.com
blog: http://rorblog.techcfl.com/

Nate Roise Founder Magnetic Properties
website: http://www.urbanhoming.com

Nathaniel McNamara Associate HIG Ventures
website: http://www.higventures.com

Nick Dominguez   
website: http://www.nickdominguez.com
blog: http://nickdominguez.com

Nicolas Scafuro Latam Search Manager Yahoo Inc.
website: http://www.yahoo.com

Pablo Godel 
Paul Kruger PHP Consultant Speeduneed Inc
website: http://miamiphp.org

Rick Bartl Managing Director, Marketing FedEx
website: http://www.fedex.com

Robert Meireles 
Roberto Bouza 
Ryan Campbell Co-Founder Wufoo
website: http://wufoo.com
blog: http://particletree.com

Stani Henriques Art Director Micstura
website: http://www.micstura.com

Steven Bristol programmer Less Everything, inc.
website: http://www.lesseverything.com
blog: b.lesseverything.com

Tim Spence Senior .NET Developer Scrapblog
website: http://scrapblog.com
blog: http://blog.scrapblog.com

Timothy Kersey   
website: http://www.twitter.com/entangledstate
blog: http://friendfeed.com/entangledstate

Zac Brown Programmer N/A
website: http://zacbrown.org
blog: http://blog.zacbrown.org

BarCampMiami is made possible through the generous contribution of our sponsors:

Ourscene: http://www.ourscene.com
FunAdvice: http://www.funadvice.com
Global Roaming: http://www.celtrek.com
Less Everything: http://www.lesseverything.com
RailsEnvy: http://www.railsenvy.com
The Boaters: http://www.theboaters.com
Myxer: http://www.myxertones.com
ServerGrove Networks: http://www.servergrove.com
DC Media Graphics: http://www.dcmediagraphics.com
infinimedia: http://www.infinimedia.com
Hyku: http://www.hyku.com
Victoria & Associates: http://www.victoriaassociates.com
Todobebe: http://www.todobebe.com
Scrapblog: http://www.scrapblog.com

And our partners!:

FOWA: http://www.futureofwebapps.com
RefreshMiami: http://www.refreshmiami.org

Powered by ScribeFire.

• 10:01 Had a most excellent flight to Atlanta and connection to Miami; finally got to see The Bourne Ultimatum, en route: loved it #
• 10:31 For some reason my ears are buzzing, @dearyvette @mkhall … glad to be back! #
• 16:14 @avorio was great to meet up with you in Sao Paulo, thanks for the #barcamp Brasil t-shirt! #
• 16:27 @csessums++ LOL eduspaces.net/csessums/weblog/241832.html (link via @joanvinallcox ) #
• 17:35 Watching Steven Pinker’s talk about language at TED www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/164 #
• 17:46 Human intelligence consists of concepts (objects, space, time, causation, intention) useful in social knowledge-intensive species -S. Pinker #
• 17:51 “Language is a way of negotiating human relationships” – S. Pinker #
• 17:55 We count on the listener to perform the reading b/w the lines + to interpret the context, which may lead to a changed relationship -S.Pinker #
• 18:02 Indirect speech acts provide deniable plausibility, clear asset in social interactions: vagueness isn’t imperfection but feature of language #
• 18:05 Language is a collective human creation reflecting human nature, how we conceptualize reality, how we relate to one another -S. Pinker #
• 18:08 From my experience, it is much easier to be vague in Portuguese and French than in Finnish; English is somewhere in between #
• 18:54 @zeroinfluencer If objects possess methods, then by definition people can only play roles, right? tinyurl.com/yvvao2 ( @herdmeister ) #
• 18:56 @zeroinfluencer so this would mean that socialization thru web services is a poor proxy of richness and subtlety of RL/offline relationships #
• 19:01 @zeroinfluencer interesting discussion on behavior and ethics in web services (search for “avatar rights”) here tinyurl.com/3xhpb5 #
• 19:59 @zeroinfluencer great post; btw, on flight last night I was thinking about importance of space-time in sociality, relationships and objects #

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• 03:28 Chipped in to @ashPEAmama fund, family was not prepared for loss tinyurl.com/29h52x #
• 08:46 @annohio @jeffpulver if in Miami in February, please consider @barcampmiami and FOWA #
• 08:51 @jeffpulver ah, ok … in that case, I look forward to your Feb So.Fla. SMB #
• 09:34 @devbear happy happy b-day! #
• 11:55 New blog post: “Social objects and the observer’s paradox” tinyurl.com/ynrg4s … but will you tell me if I’m way off base with this? #
• 15:16 @zeroinfluencer thanks, i’ve been enjoying your series of posts on social object as well, great food for thought #
• 15:19 last few hours in sao paulo, heading to the airport soon, hope to catch the flight back tonight #

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My previous post about "social objects", described how your profile, what you publish and what share online determines the impression you make and provides topics or hooks for others to get in touch with you. The term social object is a convenient shorthand for describing such hooks, which represent many of the reasons people socialize with each other online; this theory is referred to by sociologists as "object-centered sociality".

Other ways to socialize include phatic communication, although arguably even small talk may be carried out for ulterior motives.

"No Man’s Blog" has an excellent analysis of identity management and phatic communication through the use of Facebook applications.

Objections raised

My post garnered excellent, lengthy comments. Referring to Hugh MacLeod posts here and here, one of the commenters, Bernard Tremblay voices a valid, if strongly worded, objection on his blog to the use of the term "Social Object". Bernard laments that the term seems prone to profiteering by marketing "snake oil salesmen":

The moment draws nigh when we take one more step: “you came over just to chew the fat with Pam” … right. But what happens when we use “social objects” as our lens? We see that entirely social impulse in terms of transaction … the title of the piece is “marketing” and properly so: what we’ve done here is reduced the whole to an exchange between providers and consummers [sic].

Yet the trend is clear …

There’s plenty evidence that brands are investing heavily in online word-of-mouth marketing. According to PQ Media,

Spending on word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing jumped 35.9% in 2006 to $981.0 million and is expected to top $1 billion in 2007, making it one of the fastest growing alternative media segments. Driving the growth is the continued consumer shift to alternative media and the marketers’ need for increased brand engagement and ROI. These are some of the findings of the first in-depth analysis of the emerging word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing industry released today by PQ Media, the leading provider of alternative media econometrics (www.pqmedia.com).

Helping to fuel this growth are a projected 3.5 billion brand-related conversations per day in the U.S., according to Keller Fay Group, with nearly 80% of consumers trusting recommendations from family, friends and "influential" persons over all other forms of advertising and marketing.

Need more evidence? According to Nielsen, vehicle discussions are up 40% since January 2007. Interestingly, the same article displays Nielsen’s "Brand Association Map, which is a "a visualization tool to map how consumers naturally think and talk about brands online." This is how the social object plays out in conversations. Here’s an example of a map of conversations about Nike.

Pitfalls abound!

So let’s all hop on the word-of-mouth bandwagon, and let’s do it by creating social objects for people to engage in object-oriented sociality, but under own terms, right? Not surprisingly, this type of thinking is fraught with pitfalls. Some examples come to mind:

• Should brands join or build social networks? Consider the $2 to $3 Million "Connecting with Cookies" site, whose shortcomings are described here by Kami: "Connecting with Cookies is pure advertising and the site is a brochure. There is nothing wrong with that, but if Pepperidge Farms was sold a social media site, this isn’t it."
• McDonald’s strained effort to create a Starbuck’s-like experience in its stores, which according to this FastCompany article, is certain to bomb: "Remember McPizza? Me neither. I’ve read it was neither better nor worse than Pizza Hut or Domino’s Pizza, but it was a miserable failure. Why? Because when you go into a McDonald’s, you’re going to be bullied out of your pizza-eating mood (assuming you entered with one in the first place) by the sweet stink of the flagship fare. The place reeks of fries and beef. McDonald’s has spent millions of dollars developing chemical aromas for its fries, burgers and chicken, and they are every bit as intoxicating as they were meant to be. You know that frustration you experience when you try to hum one song while another is playing on the radio? That very dissonance was the demise of the McPizza, and will claim McCoffee next."
• And more generally, some companies and brands are paying bloggers and social networkers to advocate their product, for instance by using Pay-Per-Posts’ rebranded SocialSpark service (good introductory video, though and props for the greater transparency with the disclosure badge). From the video: "… the perfect way for brands who want to engage bloggers in a more controlled atmosphere" … lol. As if you could craft real conversations between people to mirror the laundry detergent ads on TV.

Censoring or attempting to control the word-of-mouth is equally misguided, as in the case of Microsoft doing away with the Blue Monster; according to Robert Scoble: "@gapingvoid: yeah, someone inside Microsoft killed the Blue Monster. Sigh. Microsoft’s committees kill everything cool." The alternative would have been to let the Blue Monster live its own life and retire itself when Microsoft does start changing the world again.

The Observer’s Paradox:

Zero Influence points out that "Brand as a Narrative prevents the Brand existing as Embodiment. Brands need to live within the architecture of life, not on the perception plane. Trying to get a purchasing audience to care about a Brand is costly compared to using your Brands affordances to improve the infrastructure of life. In this case giving is cheaper than advertising."

In "The Gift", Lewis Hyde makes this point by describing an English fairy tale of a …

"… Devonshire man to whom the fairies had given an inexhaustible barrel of ale. Year after year the liquor ran freely. Then one day the man’s maid, curious to know the cause of this extraordinary power, removed the cork from the bung hole and looked into the cask; it was full of cobwebs. When the spigot next was turned, the ale ceased to flow.

The moral is this: the gift is lost in self-consciousness. To count, measure, reckon value, or seek the cause of a thing, is to step outside the circle, to cease being ‘all of a piece’ with the flow of gifts and become, instead, one part of the whole reflecting on another part."

Because life is grainy and each bit, the good and the bad, make up your experience. The things we love most may have lots of defects. When things are too easy, we take them for granted. And when things sound too rosy, we distrust them. And if you look into the source of your gift, you’ll lose the shine in your own self-consciousness.

The same thing applies when designing spaces for consumer interaction with your social objects.

Talking about Relational Aesthetics and art, where the audience is envisaged as a community, French theorist Nicholas Bourriaud, curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, says,

"There are two ways of building an institution. One way is to build a jewelry box to present objects and the other one is to conceive of it as an open market where everything is removable and you can change things all the time. ….

I think that maybe the idea of being relevant, of being useful, of being pertinent is more important to artists than just doing something new ….

Ten years ago, it would have been completely impossible to consider a DJ as an artist for example. Now, it’s normal. Nobody would even think of saying ‘you’re already playing pre-existing records, so you’re not an artist.’ That’s vanished. The idea of the artist as a kind of demi-god creating the world from a blank sheet of paper is something that has just vanished from our every day culture. The fact that the DJ or programmer or artist uses already existing forms in order to say what they want to say is something that is certainly the most important thing at the moment because it totally goes beyond the art world."

If you’re a brand, consider becoming a DJ with your products and services. There are plenty of examples, including Radiohead’s latest album, Amazon’s customer service (“Jeff used to say that if you did something good for one customer, they would tell 100 customers”), and Dell’s Ideastorm.

So Design for Hackability (pdf file, via PLSJ). Design for play and join your audience. Just don’t make it slick and stop your bean-counting, if you want to build engaging experiences with your community around your social objects.

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• 07:05 @gapingvoid I’d add: creativity also comes from facing uncertain job markets, no job for life, etc. #
• 10:31 55 registered for @barcampmiami yesterday: scroll down to see who’s coming and their topics barcampmiami.evenbrite.com/ #
• 11:04 oops, typo in previous URL: barcampmiami.eventbrite.com/ #

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• 07:15 Travelling to Sao Paulo tonight; an interesting tidbit: the founder of JetBlue, David Needleman, was born in Sao Paulo #
• 08:31 Yay! Scrapblog featured on Read/Write Web! tinyurl.com/yra2yq thank you @sarahintampa #
• 08:52 @derekabdinor that would be great. I am in Sao Paulo all day tomorrow and Friday … mornings are best, I have meetings in the afternoons #
• 09:14 More than un-conferences, BarCamps are fun-conferences … including the upcoming @barcampmiami #
• 09:55 BarCampMiami registration: 50% discount on FOWA Miami, first 100 get free tshirt, please RSVP here barcampmiami.eventbrite.com/ #
• 14:48 Mad rush to the airport, flying to Sao Paulo tonight #

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• 06:23 Started invoicing for BarCampMiami and will soon start twittering from @barcampmiami #
• 08:09 BarCampMiami sponsorship is $250, I’ve sent out 6 of 12 invoices so far; this event will occur together with FOWA Miami end of February #
• 08:57 @derekabdinor your Brazil microblog project sounds interesting, would love to know more. I’m in Rio right now, as you know #
• 09:25 Email + two.sentenc.es/ = Twitter; I’ve got 700 DMs, which means Twitter has replaced some of my email … and it’s more convenient #
• 09:51 @acarvin voce fala portugues tambem? que legal, nao sabia! valeu #
• 10:11 Wow! Such great energy behind BarCampMiami: theboaters.com, infinimedia.com, railsenvy.com, hyku.com, scrapblog.com sponsored w/in the hour! #
• 10:27 Welcome to Scrapblog, Rebecca! twitter.com/rjsaylor/statuses/572108802 #
• 11:12 Blinksale’s the Shizz Nit, ain’t it? Such good integration with Basecamp and PayPal makes it so easy to invoice and track #
• 11:15 BarCampMiami: Invoiced 10/12 sponsors, 1 will offer in kind, need one more for $250. Five paid already! BarCamp + FOWA Miami end Feb’08 #
• 11:31 @BarCampMiami now has 12 sponsors at $250 each and a Twitter account, please follow, we’ll follow back #

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