Aula 2006 ─ Movement: Clay, Alastair, Martin, and Joi speak

NOTE: All posts at 3QD related to the Aula 2006 ─ Movement event, including this one, will be collected on this page. Bookmark it to stay on top of the Aula meeting at all times for the next week.

Morgan and I just returned from the Aula public event. We were going to blog from the venue, but couldn't get proper wifi access (go Martin, go!), so here we are, back at our hotel.

Marko and Jyri introduced the speakers and Clay Shirky went first, and was entitled "Failure for Free." His main point was that while there has been a lot of discussion about the relative success of various open source social software technologies, web-communities, etc., what is perhaps even more important is the ability of the web to sustain and absorb an incredible number of failures. Traditional commercial enterprise could not sustain such a level of failure. What makes it possible is that on the web, failures are paid for by "individual users at the periphery, while successes percolate through the whole system." This essentially makes it possible to explore a very large number of possible models for social software.

Alastair Curtis spoke about his design philosophy and his talk is probably best summarized by the content of his slides:

• Design is more than just style.
• Design should bring technology alive and capture the imagination.
• Nokia believes the future of all media is social.
• People connect through their passions and obsessions.
• Nokia believes in a very human approach to design.
• Nokia needs to design and create solutions which are relevant to individuals.
• Nokia must create beautiful products, experiences, and services that people can fall in love with.

Martin basically just explained what FON is, which I had done as part of his profile a couple of days ago.

Joi Ito gave a fairly detailed explanation of how games like World of Warcraft create communities that do not just exist online, but also bleed into the real world. In fact, for him, the distinction between the "real" and "cyber" worlds is blurred. He also spoke of how much of the elaborate User Interface of WoW consists of add-ons developed by the players themselves.

More tomorrow, as my jet-lag is kicking in and I need to be up at 6 am!