San Diego stuffs
Feb. 28th, 2006 04:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yendiI'm currently sitting in the massive ballroom of the San Diego Convention Center, waiting for Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point (one of my favorite non-fiction books from recent years), to give his keynote at BBWorld '06. As anyone who was reading me at this time last year might remember, the keynote speech last year was Cal Ripken, Jr, an insult to me both as an instructional technologist (since a guy who never went to college or made a living from either technology or education isn't, imho, qualified to speak about instructional technology), and as a baseball fan (since Ripken was a selfish git who took down a fine organization in his egocentric quest to set a record that no shortstop with range or grit could possibly have had a chance at). Two years ago, they had Robert Reich. I think they only get good keynotes when they're west of the Rockies.
But I digress.
Gladwell, however, wrote a book that directly applies to online technology, and the tipping point concepts are directly relevant to the field in which everyone here works. I'll be semi-liveblogging this, although it's more for my own notes than anything else.
Gladwell comes on in a few minutes, and I'll take advantage of what unofficial wireless I have access to (the official SDCC wireless costs $24.95 a day, a rate that is so high that the official logo on their page should be a hand flipping the user the bird) in order to ramble.
We just got the "program begins in one minute" announcement. Woot!
Music played while waiting has included Elvis's "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding" and the Indigo Girls's "Galileo." I'm happy.
The program has started, but the guy speaking is the guy whose job it is to introduce Gladwell. He seems to think we're expecting to hear him say stuff other than "here's Malcolm." God. Now he's telling us about the history of San Diego. Because god knows none of us could possible use Teh Intrawebs to find out anything about this place.
Anyway, things that have happened so far.
Flight was fine -- the movie was Walk the Line, which really blew me away. Yeah, I'm rooting for Reese to win the Oscar now. The hotel is nice. The Gaslamp district is damned nice. I've gorged on seafood.
TV-wise, I watched the premiere of Conviction (thanks to the free download at iTunes), which was decent, with some potential. It's nice to see Six Feet Under's Eric Balfour not playing the same character he's been playing for years, and to see Angel J. August Richards (playing an ego-driven hotshot) on TV again. It's also got a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by that former DA whose name I forget from Law and Order: SVU (making this yet another show taking place in Tommy Westphal's head).
I also caught a few episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, which doesn't blow me away, although Vincent D'Onofrio is a blast to watch. Still, why take one quirky detective and a cast of otherwise bland folks when CSI gives me a whole team of quirks.
At the conference yesterday, attended a good session on blogging and wikis, and their potential (and lack thereof) to be implemented in a BB environment.
The second pre-Malcolm speaker is on. Grrr. No one in this room wants to hear the self-congratulatory stuff. That's for later in the day.
Okay, Gladwell's finally speaking. And, oh dear god, does he have the biggest Jewfro ever.
His opening anecdote is about the Dempsey/Carpentier match, and the pains a single RCA engineer named David Sarnoff took to broadcast the first live sporting event in American history, thus creating the tipping point for the success of radios as household item. It involved his bosses telling him he was a fool, then giving in but giving him no money, then stealing a transmitter from the army, inventing the concept of play-by-play announcing, and using bars and public locations to show people the power of radio.
(The point of the anecdote was the fact that change happens quickly and more cheaply than those at the top often predict -- he's using the Berlin Wall as another example -- in 1988, most folks would have said it would take 20-40 more years for the wall to fall).
Other examples he's used: Seat-belt usage (hit a tipping point when kid-safety laws were passed, thus turning the kids themselves into seat-belt advocates, and parental usage spiked) and iPods (MP3 players hit a tipping point when Apple re-framed the concept as a fashion accessory, not a technology choice).
So far, much of his speech has been his clearly-canned speech, with a few comments about education. Which is fine, as it's the first of his speech that I've seen. He's talking about the importance of connectors, etc. All directly relevant to online education, of course. He's talking about the social circle test from the book now, and how much social power some people can have. That said, so far, no more than sixty seconds of the speech so far (which has been going on for twenty minutes) was in any way crafted for this group specifically. He's getting an easy paycheck here. Still, a good speech so far.
Okay, now we're talking about e-learning. Talking about the three groups -- students, teachers, administrators, talking about how their goals are often antagonistic. He's talking about the need for connectors amongst those groups (although he left IT out as a group, which is a mistake, imho). He's talking about mavens now, which is my favorite part (I've definitely got maven tendencies, and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shadesong is a connector -- we're a good pair).
Hee. He's ripping on CompUSA salespeople now. "WIthin twenty minutes, I'm spotted by an eagle-eyed sales clerk."
(He's a surprisingly good speaker. Not all writers I've watched speak have been worthwhile, but I'd recommend attending a speech Gladwell gives if you get the chance.)
Some good points on how complicating choices, even when it's done with good intentions (giving more fund options for 401Ks, for example) causes people to shut down (to not register for the 401K at all). Thus, the need for mavens.
Ha! He just declared us to be the "tenth fleet" for e-learning. I need to go sink some uboats.
Overall, I can't say I got anything new, per se (other than some good examples), but it was a good speech, and one that hopefully should inspire others to think about these things (which, of course, is necessary to move toward the tipping point). That said, it's a little disappointing to realize just how little prep he puts into his speeches. One canned speech, and three sentences crafted for the specific audience. Nice work if you can get it.
Speech is over. Was fun. Now the BB guy is dismissing us. Off to the conference itself.
Written hours later: Wireless actually died while I was up there (guess the convention center didn't want competition). Fortunately, the conference is offering wireless in a 50-foot radius of the cybercafe. Posting this now while I still can, before the laptop runs out of juice. Apologies for any typos (this was written with a hot laptop in my lap in a crowded room) -- I'll fix 'em later.
But I digress.
Gladwell, however, wrote a book that directly applies to online technology, and the tipping point concepts are directly relevant to the field in which everyone here works. I'll be semi-liveblogging this, although it's more for my own notes than anything else.
Gladwell comes on in a few minutes, and I'll take advantage of what unofficial wireless I have access to (the official SDCC wireless costs $24.95 a day, a rate that is so high that the official logo on their page should be a hand flipping the user the bird) in order to ramble.
We just got the "program begins in one minute" announcement. Woot!
Music played while waiting has included Elvis's "(What's So Funny About) Peace, Love, and Understanding" and the Indigo Girls's "Galileo." I'm happy.
The program has started, but the guy speaking is the guy whose job it is to introduce Gladwell. He seems to think we're expecting to hear him say stuff other than "here's Malcolm." God. Now he's telling us about the history of San Diego. Because god knows none of us could possible use Teh Intrawebs to find out anything about this place.
Anyway, things that have happened so far.
Flight was fine -- the movie was Walk the Line, which really blew me away. Yeah, I'm rooting for Reese to win the Oscar now. The hotel is nice. The Gaslamp district is damned nice. I've gorged on seafood.
TV-wise, I watched the premiere of Conviction (thanks to the free download at iTunes), which was decent, with some potential. It's nice to see Six Feet Under's Eric Balfour not playing the same character he's been playing for years, and to see Angel J. August Richards (playing an ego-driven hotshot) on TV again. It's also got a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance by that former DA whose name I forget from Law and Order: SVU (making this yet another show taking place in Tommy Westphal's head).
I also caught a few episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, which doesn't blow me away, although Vincent D'Onofrio is a blast to watch. Still, why take one quirky detective and a cast of otherwise bland folks when CSI gives me a whole team of quirks.
At the conference yesterday, attended a good session on blogging and wikis, and their potential (and lack thereof) to be implemented in a BB environment.
The second pre-Malcolm speaker is on. Grrr. No one in this room wants to hear the self-congratulatory stuff. That's for later in the day.
Okay, Gladwell's finally speaking. And, oh dear god, does he have the biggest Jewfro ever.
His opening anecdote is about the Dempsey/Carpentier match, and the pains a single RCA engineer named David Sarnoff took to broadcast the first live sporting event in American history, thus creating the tipping point for the success of radios as household item. It involved his bosses telling him he was a fool, then giving in but giving him no money, then stealing a transmitter from the army, inventing the concept of play-by-play announcing, and using bars and public locations to show people the power of radio.
(The point of the anecdote was the fact that change happens quickly and more cheaply than those at the top often predict -- he's using the Berlin Wall as another example -- in 1988, most folks would have said it would take 20-40 more years for the wall to fall).
Other examples he's used: Seat-belt usage (hit a tipping point when kid-safety laws were passed, thus turning the kids themselves into seat-belt advocates, and parental usage spiked) and iPods (MP3 players hit a tipping point when Apple re-framed the concept as a fashion accessory, not a technology choice).
So far, much of his speech has been his clearly-canned speech, with a few comments about education. Which is fine, as it's the first of his speech that I've seen. He's talking about the importance of connectors, etc. All directly relevant to online education, of course. He's talking about the social circle test from the book now, and how much social power some people can have. That said, so far, no more than sixty seconds of the speech so far (which has been going on for twenty minutes) was in any way crafted for this group specifically. He's getting an easy paycheck here. Still, a good speech so far.
Okay, now we're talking about e-learning. Talking about the three groups -- students, teachers, administrators, talking about how their goals are often antagonistic. He's talking about the need for connectors amongst those groups (although he left IT out as a group, which is a mistake, imho). He's talking about mavens now, which is my favorite part (I've definitely got maven tendencies, and
shadesong is a connector -- we're a good pair). Hee. He's ripping on CompUSA salespeople now. "WIthin twenty minutes, I'm spotted by an eagle-eyed sales clerk."
(He's a surprisingly good speaker. Not all writers I've watched speak have been worthwhile, but I'd recommend attending a speech Gladwell gives if you get the chance.)
Some good points on how complicating choices, even when it's done with good intentions (giving more fund options for 401Ks, for example) causes people to shut down (to not register for the 401K at all). Thus, the need for mavens.
Ha! He just declared us to be the "tenth fleet" for e-learning. I need to go sink some uboats.
Overall, I can't say I got anything new, per se (other than some good examples), but it was a good speech, and one that hopefully should inspire others to think about these things (which, of course, is necessary to move toward the tipping point). That said, it's a little disappointing to realize just how little prep he puts into his speeches. One canned speech, and three sentences crafted for the specific audience. Nice work if you can get it.
Speech is over. Was fun. Now the BB guy is dismissing us. Off to the conference itself.
Written hours later: Wireless actually died while I was up there (guess the convention center didn't want competition). Fortunately, the conference is offering wireless in a 50-foot radius of the cybercafe. Posting this now while I still can, before the laptop runs out of juice. Apologies for any typos (this was written with a hot laptop in my lap in a crowded room) -- I'll fix 'em later.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 10:21 pm (UTC)For some reason, they decided this season to alternate between Vincent D'Onofrio and Chris Noth every other week, and it's really made it painfully clear to me how so-so the show actually is, since I find myself only really interested in watching the episodes that Vincent D'Onofrio is in.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 11:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-02 03:35 pm (UTC)Still, he really is the only reason I actually watch the show.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-28 11:32 pm (UTC)Though my favorite thing about O's fans is that they screamed bloody murder when Ripken was converted to shortstop early in his career, and those same fans were screaming the same bloody murder when he was shifted back to third late in his career....
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 01:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 06:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 04:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-04 10:26 pm (UTC):-)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-06 02:25 pm (UTC)