Reboot in 10mins

Add comment May 31st, 2006

Reboot 8.0

I’m almost off to Reboot, I leave tomorrow morning to copenhagen together with André. We’re staying with Laurent at the CabInn City, so if you’re staying there too, we might just start the conversation rather earlier than later.

Reboot, was, so far the best conference I’ve attended, what I liked most about it was the common playground in which we could talk openly with between speakers and participants like myself. I’ve met lots of interesting people, who not only helped me change my mind around some subjects in technology but to whom I still continue to have a conversation today. It will be very interesting to see them all again.

The list of people attending is enormous, which is something I don’t recall if last year edition was as crowded or not, but I think it’s a great sign of what Thomas and his team have in store for us.

My main objective is to help promote SHiFT, and personally talk with some of the persons we would love to have here in Lisbon, next september. I’ll want to do some live blogging and post photos as soon as I take them, but from the experience of last year, I don’t want to lose a bit of Reboot, so let’s see what I can compromise between both tasks.

For those of you attending, hope we have a chance of meeting and chatting a bit, for those who can’t make it this year, I’m sure there going to be a Reboot!

Add comment May 30th, 2006

Democracy and Citizen Content

I’ve always been a strong believer in user generated content, a believer about the opportunities it creates and the emergent revolution it’s already pushing forward the away we look at traditional media.

Following a conversation some months ago with Ze Nuno I decided to give a try to one of his suggestions and downloaded Democracy (the player component from the Participatory Culture Foundation for their Internet TV Platform) and give it a try:

Several months later, I confess I’m still pretty much surprise with the quantity and quality of the videos one can find there. It’s hours and hours of pure entertainment, very few, or less institutionalized content, which is good, but of course no all programs are good, one has to have some sense of taste for some of them!!

One the other hand, some (who can resist Amanda?) of the shows have already collected such a large audience that they’ve made their way into Wired (which by the way is running a very interesting article this month about The Online Video Explosion).

For those of you who haven’t tried democracy, I recommend you to try it, consider it your newsreader/rss reader for video.

Add comment May 26th, 2006

“One Laptop per Child”: part II

I’ve talked about it here in the past, but seems that the first pictures of a working model have just made it to flickr, check them out at this photoset.

Add comment May 24th, 2006

SHiFT

After attending to Reboot last year and LIFT earlier this year, I’ve come to the conclusion that we’re indeed experiencing and living important times regarding our relation with technology, in particular the so called emerging technologies. Never before we’ve had access to so much technology in our lifes, regardless of that, we know nothing or very little about it’s side effects in our lifes, our habits and the way we relate to each other, about the problems it solves and the problems it creates for the Future. Doubts like if all these new technologies won’t create an even bigger separation between those who have access to it, from those who don’t.

Thinking in all these questions and certainties I’ve decided, together with a group of friends to organize a conference in Lisbon, a space for an open conversation. Being an international conference, the conference will host people from all around the world, since one thing this new technologies bring to us, is a sense of proximity.

We named the result of this ideas and intentions, SHiFT meaning Social and Human Ideas For Technology, and we hope it might create a central point for discussion of technology and it’s role in society, whether the portuguese one or this new born global society we’re talking about. SHiFT means essentially change, the idea that we’re experiencing new developments every day as a society thru the use of technology. SHiFT for the principle that we don’t have clear yet, what will this changes be, but we’re assure that we’re changing. A special desire for a SHiFT in the Portuguese society, that we want more and more technological. SHiFT for a more human approach to technology…

SHiFT aims to be simultaneous a celebration of technology and a gathering for people from different backgrounds with different experiences, working and living with this new emerging technologies. The main subjects for this year edition will be: People and Technology, Knowledge , New Forms of Economics, Blogs and Citizen Participation and last but not least, Liberty and Privacy on this new digital environments.

If you like this idea and would like to be involved I welcome you to join our announcement list and receive our updates. SHiFT will be made by people and for people, meaning that every opinion will count, but I’ll save the details for later!

11 comments May 9th, 2006

One of my favorite Apple movies so far…

I’ve just returned today from some well deserved (short) vacations, some days spent offline with a lot of interesting stuff to be made. Today while going thru the tons of emails that were waiting for me in my inbox, one from a friend pointing a serie of videos from Apple, one of which is for now one of my favorite so far:

Check the remaining ones here.

Add comment May 2nd, 2006