Social Media Cop in Toronto Fights Graffiti by Embracing It & Its Creators

Toronto cop Scott Mills has made huge strides in not just cutting down violence but helping youth in the greater Toronto area. He wears several hats, one of which is Graffiti BMX Cop on Twitter where he has nearly 2,800 followers including some of the graffiti artists he has helped.

Below, the Webdoc team sits with him before his 140Conf presentation at the 92nd Y in New York City to mix and mash all of his stories into one using their platform.

Scott takes a positive approach to graffiti in Toronto and works with kids. He is also a social media advisor to IT Committee and over @CSIWorld. Here are some webdocs that were created to tell his story, which includes a series of photos, text and video. Listen to the video below of an interview we did with him on-site at The 140 Conference New York.

Here's the Webdoc on Scott's story, which includes links, audio, video, photos and more.

Below is a Webdoc one of the graffiti artists Kedre Browne aka Bubzart created.

Disclosure: I provide some consulting to Webdoc.

Jamiroquai Digital Download SMILE Now Distributed Via Webdoc & Soundcloud

 Jamiroquai's digital download SMILE is now being distributed via Webdoc and Soundcloud. Neil Cartwright, Head of Digital at Media Junction, says, "Webdoc makes it dead simple to distribute "Smile". Since we could embed Soundcloud it's very straightforward to create a player that can be posted on Jamiroquai.com and Facebook, and subsequently shared by fans with their friends".

The cover artwork, which accompanies the single, was user-generated by Jamiroquai fans, who were asked to submit their ideas to a Flickr Group. The winner was selected by Jay Kay and used as the key visual to promote the single.

Webdoc is a ground-breaking way to mix any kind of media directly in your browser to create interactive posts on the fly in a few button clicks. Without having any web design experience or knowledge of coding, Webdoc's free tool allows you to mix different kinds of web content through a simple intuitive interface.

Take a look at Jamiroquai's webdocs here and below is the Webdoc where you can download SMILE.

Disclosure: I provide some consulting to Webdoc.

New York's 140 Conference: Photos, Webdocs, Interviews & More - #140Conf

Jeff Pulver’s 140 Conferences are growing. He has held these conferences in all the popular American spots such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco but he’s also had them in the Midwest, is working on one in Canada and has gathered people in London, Israel and other interesting pockets of the world.

Where there’s passion, an interest in a conversation about social media and people doing remarkable things, Jeff will find them.

One of the things he is exceptionally good at, is curating an incredible mix of people who have a lot to say and operate from the heart, but may not necessarily have anything else in common.

Where else can you go to a technology or social media event or any event for that matter and hear an ex-convict, a Graffiti artist, Craig Newmark, a cop, a school teacher, a dating coach, a major Fortune 500 brand strategist, AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong, The Today Show’s Ann Curry and Sesame Street’s chief social media guru all on the same stage within the same day?

Tear Down Those Walls:

On the first day, betaworks CEO John Borthwick (@Borthwick) talked about fragmentation, which he says is not just happening across the web but also at the network level as well. “This is the area that is concerning me most,” he said. “Facebook feels like the old early days of AOL – they’re a citizen of the Internet and yet they own and control too much. They need to integrate more with the web.”

He thinks we need to see companies and creators embrace the Internet much more than what we’re seeing today.  “The network is important,” he says and ends his talk with a few words for Mr. Zuckerberg: “Tear down that wall.”

Curation:

Curation continues to be a strong topic of discussion and its relevance and need is only growing more critical as the amount of data coming our way continues to explode.

Curation is so important because we’re trying to combine and recombine things to make sense of things. We need to be able to move and transition data seamlessly across devices. Refer to Steve Rosenbaum's talk on the need for clarity above and beyond more information and data. Human curators are a big part of the upcoming revolution. Video clip here.

Do You Have a Revolution?

“What’s your revolution?” Ja-Nae Duane aka The Sun Queen (on Twitter), asked the audience and added, “why aren’t we highlighting the social good more than we do?”

She shared a handful of amazing stories which have come out of Detroit and Dallas among other places. As the founder of Wild Women Entrepreneurs, she is passionate about accelerating women’s growth and personal revolutions.

Listen to this video on why she started her “movement.” And check out a webdoc created on her raison d'etre during the 140 Conference here.

Jeff Jarvis' talk: Tweeties have attacked the sanctity of the article. See webdoc here.

Below is a smattering of photos I shot during the speaker talks, the networking breaks and the after parties:

Dan Gillmor on life and ethics in "new media..." Refer to a webdoc that includes links, tweets and information about his book.

Foursquare's Dennis Crowley

The Webdoc team rocks it in the demo room. Check out their webdocs of the conference here.

AOL's Tim Armstrong talks about community and the importance of connection, social media input and regional/local content (Hatch.com).

Jeffrey Hayzlett in his normal charismatic self.

Sesame Street's Dan Lewis on how and why Sesame Street "tweets":

NPR's Andy Carvin

Craig Newmark talked about leaving your mark online by contributing and giving.

The Today Show's Ann Curry gets "very inspirational" during her 10 minute turned 20 minute talk. Love htat sixties style flower-child dress: she just makes it work.

Mashable's Adam Ostrow interviews Foursquare's Dennis Crowley

There's a singalong in honor of Jeff Pulver at the end of day two at the funky venue 92nd Y on the upper East Side.

New York Times Jennifer Preston interviews NPR's Carvin

Webdoc's Vincent Borel and Stelio Tzonis with Magnify's Steve Rosenbaum and his new book: Curation Nation

Paintings created on-site, proceeds of which go to breast cancer -- announced by Jeffrey Hayzlett on-site. For more information, check out Gaby (aka @Gaby407) and be sure not to miss Toronto cop Scott Mill's story (aka @GraffitiBMXCop). See webdoc for more information which includes links, videos, photos and more. His story includes work with graffiti artists Kedre Browne (@BubzArt) and Jessey Pacho (@ArtOfPhade). Their message will inspire the lives of many young people around the world and provide proof that graffiti can paint a positive message, not a negative one. Nicholas Maharaj aka @Twittnick is also a “student” of Mills.

Ann Curry in a moment of blissful expression as she gets authentic with the audience.

Bombshell coach Gigi Belmonico on the Bombshell factor and not letting Twitter become a "popularity contest." See webdoc on her work here.

Disclosure: I have provided some consulting to Webdoc who was one of the 140Conf sponsors.

Jeff Jarvis on the #140Conf Stage: You Tweeties Have Attacked the Sanctity of the Article

Here's a fun Webdoc on Jeff Jarvis following his talk at the 140 Conference last week in New York. It's a great example of how easily and quickly you can mix media, such as photos, text and a live Twitter stream all in one place.

I got there late, so was sorry to have missed him on-stage. Jeff, I heard you were inspiring as always.

Disclosure: I've been providing some consulting to the Webdoc team.

TechCrunch Disrupt 2011 Slide Show

Take a look at a slideshow I quickly and easily created in Webdoc of TechCrunch Disrupt in New York this past week:

FutureMed: Healthcare & Medicine Migrate From Linear Growth to Exponential Growth

I just finished attending a mind blowing event called FutureMed, the medical arm if you like, of Singularity University, which was founded by Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil. Director, curator and chair of the program is Daniel Kraft, who together with a dedicated team, brought in some of the smartest creators and thinkers in medicine and healthcare for the 5 day long program.

Ask yourself: what is the impact that exponential technologies will have on medicine and healthcare? What was your initial response? Whether you're a scientist, physician, venture capitalist or biomed executive, the answers are profound because of the fast rate technology is developing, improving and having a direct impact on the "well-being" of our lives.

What's unique about the event is not just the content, which is deep and thought provoking and brings in insights from the top in their fields, but the structure of the event itself. Imagine a combination of panels, lectures and field trips with demos, workshops and breakout sessions all under one roof with only 70 or so attendees.

In other words, the intimacy of the event creates an environment where not only do you have an opportunity to have your answers questioned (and challenged) directly, but you have quality time with the speakers and technology creators, so you can more effectively understand what lies ahead -- and then act upon it. It also means that attendees are vetted, so not only is the speaker line-up phenomenal, but the attendees themselves have a host of honors, accolades and accomplishments, all of which result in an environment where the brightest minds can come together to learn, create and grow. A community is formed in which like-minds in medicine and healthcare can accomplish more together than they can alone in their respective fields. (Below is Peter Diamandis and Daniel Kraft in the first session of Day One).

While clearly not everyone in healthcare thinks our system is broken and not everyone is looking for alternative means (and more effective means) for care and the way we diagnose and treat patients, those who do, have the hurdles of structure, regulations, linear thinking and legal implications to climb dare they try anything new outside defined parameters.

Challenging the status quo is never easy but if through a combination of persistence, trial and error and really smart, caring and passionate thinkers who want to make a difference, things can change, particularly as you begin to see validation after validation for your thinking (and actions) along the way. In other words, linear thinking "be gone."

As CNET described the environment for participants, "For attendees, who range from executives in the medical field to practicing doctors to entrepreneurs looking for the next area to invest in, and who come from countries all over the world, FutureMed gives access to talks on topics as diverse as personalized medicine; the future of pharma; patient engagement; regenerative medicine; neuromedicine; synthetic biology; the future of medical education; global health and the hospital of the future; and more."

Ray Kurzweil and XPrize founder Peter Diamandis kicked things off with the notion that advances in healthcare and medicine have migrated from linear growth to exponential growth. As recapped so well in the MedGadget summary which you'll find me referencing a number of times because their coverage of the event was so extensive: "One fascinating insight from Ray’s talk was that these exponentially growing advances are often the combination of many different paradigms that grow and develop in a sigmoidal fashion. The exponential growth of computational power per dollar, for instance, is driven by say, vaccum tubes, which start slow, progress extremely rapidly, and then level off, only to be replaced by transistors, which did the same thing until integrated circuits came into the picture. Collectively, even though each of these technological paradigms hit a wall at some point, they were replaced by another advance that allowed the final outcome of computational power to continue to scale exponentially. In proof of this, Ray showed us what seemed to be an exponentially increasing number of charts that demonstrated exponential technological growth."

Three-time astronaut Dan Barry and Gabor Forgacs addressed the future of 3D printing technologies and how they’ll have a significant impact on both consumer and medical products. 

Another message we heard from many of the speakers, is how low the costs are going, from sensors that we wear and can self diagnose to the world of 3D printing, which using both plastics and metals, doesn't cost more to use.  

In addition to 3D printing, Dan Barry talked about one of his favorite topics: robots.

There's no question; robots are getting smarter and smarter. Through sensors, robots are learning how to put objects in the right location and in the right spots within that location, i.e., product placement into a particular location on a particular shelf. "We want to move up the ladder even further," says Barry. "We want robots to not just organize but to sense, throw and manipulate."

Robot's dexterity is improving and their movement is getting more and more fluid. A robot’s hands can correspond to a human’s movements.

Dan gave a useful example of the impact on a human body when they do a space walk. He says, "it takes 4 hours just to get the nitrogen out of our system, but you can do a space walk with a robot through virtual reality and get the job done a lot faster."  

He also brought up the social and ethical implications of people who may choose robots as their companions rather than human beings. In the future, robots will become true companions for people who are lonely, have lost their loved ones or generally just want companionship. Hmmm. Not sure about companionship (for me that is), but I definitely get the value of robots in eldercare and have already seen amazing advancements coming out of Willow Garage, where their PR2s are being trained to put dishes away, set the table and clean among other things.

On the Data Driven Healthcare panel, Stanford University's Dan Riskin talked about the convergence of devices. Says Riskin, "We’re able to take these platforms, such as an iPhone or a computer system, pull together valuable information and make it really useful. We’re seeing an innovation shift to mature platforms."

As for devices and technology, medical intervention will become an app. In fact, it's already starting to happen. Apps will be prescribed just like medication, i.e, welldoc shows a decrease in diabetics problems (a 4 fold benefit from an app than using medications alone).

We also heard about a perspective on the fundamental flaws of the RCT, which included things like the long term nature of it (often a decade to change care), the high expense (not affordable without support), the fact that it can be biased (selected based on drug and device firms) and lastly, that they're poorly generalizable. It’s just not working and ineffective.

Other apps are able to extract words/language that a patient uses and put them into a matrix to show how these words relate to each other, i.e., fever, nausea, chest tightness. The power of analytics is helping the doctor make a diagnosis by structuring a record so that he/she has more data and beyond that, some actual “meaning” within that data.

An example that was given was a test they did with a small group of patients who got re-admitted into the hospital. They did an analysis and discovered what contributed to people being re-admitted to the hospital and more importantly, why. The results helped with quality improvement and flow of data.

A force behind eLegs is Iceland-born Eythor Bender from Berkeley Bionics. They augment humans with wearable, artifi­cially intelligent bionic devices called exoskeletons. Below is a young man demonstrating it to the FutureMed audience, showing how flexible and dynamic his world has become using their technology. Since visuals (and patient feedback) is most powerful, check out their YouTube channel for stories and use cases and their eLegs FAQ for the hows and whys. All I can say is: inspiring. There are no words for the rest.

Below Tamara Mena talks about her dream of being able to accept her college diploma standing rather than in wheelchair.

Healthtap founder Ron Gutman pushed the need to unite consumers and physicians in personal health – both the data and the conversation. In other words, get physicians into the game and allow them to particate in the conversation so they can access this data in real time and better help their patients. The two step approach involves creating an infrastructure, then getting the physicians to engage with the data so its always up to-date and therefore relevant. It’s essentially a database that combines data, conversations, and personalization around the patient so the physician can be more effective in their care and decisions.  

Sutha Kamal talked about feedback loops, which was a constant theme throughout the program. If I (a patient), can access data in real time through a wearable sensor and make sense of that data, then I can help my doctor better understand what is happening with my health over time. Feedback loops provoke action. (also refer to the beginning of my TEDxSV post where Wired's Chris Anderson talks about the same thing citing examples).

If you have no "meaning" from the data, then essentially you have a "broken" feedback loop. Data without meaning doesn't move a patient to take the right action OR have the right conversations with their doctors and other experts. "When you get this data, that data should belong to you," says Kamal. "We want to understand the things that you would adhere to but don’t today. Feedback is personal but meaning needs to be in that personal data so you, the patient, end up doing something with the data."

Ultimately, if you think your body is a “black box,” aka poor health, you’re going to end up getting depressed because you don’t know where to start. In the future, a lot of this gathered data will end up on our phones because they're with us all the time.   

Google's Roni Zeiger says, "our cell phones will become our data lens for information about our bodies. You will also be able to access information in real time about the workflow of a hospital and the wait of the line in the emergency room. The patient is at the center of information flow and decision making."

The patient has ALL of the data because they know how they feel better than anyone else does. The data transmitted from a patient's body in the not too distant future, will be used to allow physicians to look at your veins and arteries remotely on a device. Ones and zeros will be flowing back (aka the patient’s data), with analysis so the physicians can make real-time diagnostics and decisions.

It’s happening now with sleep devices and soon it will be happening from a lot of different sources. He also gave examples of smart health realted search queries like “poison control,” which immediately returns the number for the US poison control center, and “suicide,” which displays the number for the US suicide prevention hotline.  

Additionally, people are putting their data online, on Twitter, Patients Like Me and in other places and asking people to mine that data in a way that will be useful for their care givers and doctors. The distinction between data and conversations are becoming blurred, and eventually they’ll go away.

Lawrence Sherman added wit and humor to a talk on medical education - video clips of his talk can be found here and he tweets over at @meducate.

Esther Dyson and health economist Carol McCall discussed behavior change and no surprise, feedback loops were raised again.

Gamification is a natural example, where incentives are given for a a particular behavior. Esther asked: "Where are the HR execs in this conversation?"

There’s an increasing trend in employer benefits where companies can start to engage with employees in innovative ways that has a positive impact on their health.

On reimbursement, McCall suggested that rather than see this as a barrier, think about creative ways to compensate. She noted that “there are ways for these things to pay for themselves.”

Google's Astro Teller gave a fascinating talk about body monitoring. He asserts that body monitoring isn't really about healthcare. "It misses the point," he says. "That way of thinking derails us from understanding what body monitoring can actually become in the future. Fitness people tend to be quantitative nuts. If you drive at the group that makes the most sense, you miss all the other amazing opportunities."

He talked about major obvious opportunities in this space, such as the “patch” which is very small and very cheap. Other trends around body monitoring in the future?

Upselling new pieces of value to the same wearer by showing value and cost effectiveness. Passive monitoring will also be big, he says, because at the end of the day, people don't like to "do" a lot for their health but they do want to be healthy. Passive monitoring allows us to have sensors on our bodies, but we don’t have to think about them. He's spot on about that one.

Monitors can tell us how much time people spend on their computers, their heart beats, the "way" they use something, such as a mouse. By monitoring a "behavior" such as mouse movement, you can get an idea of visual motor quality which is often a result of sleep deprivation or early warnings of Parkinsons and Alzheimers disease.

With sensors, people often ask “what does it measure?” Teller says, "this is not the point. We want the guess/surrogate to be better than it makes the statement about and we want accuracy to be good enough that we can make a better analysis overall about your body."

He also reminded us that while we’ve spent a lot of time sequencing the human genome, we haven’t spent much time sequencing the human lifestyle. Wearable body monitoring isn’t about being quantified, reinforcing his point by saying that "Mary Jo Jane" (aka the average person) doesn’t want to be quantified.

"Wearable body monitoring is about having the right parts of the world know who you are and in what you want and need in a million little ways, in real time, and all the time."

At the end of the day, you want people/things/data to respond to what you need without you having to think about it. AND, there will literally be a million apps for that. (his prediction is 1 million+ apps by 2015).

Check out the CBS Interactive Smart Planet clip for a "short" on Dan Barry's talk. And for incredibly in-depth coverage of the entire event, check out the summaries by MedGadget by the day.

Day One Summary: Ray Kurzweil, Gabor Forgacs, Eythor Bender and more. 

Day Two Summary: Eric Schadt, Esther Dyson, Kaiser's Innovation Center.

Day Three Summary: Robert Hariri, Mike West, Autodesk and more. 

Day Four Summary: Andrew Hessel, Philip Low, Intuitive Surgical and more.

Day Five Summary: Erik Rasmussen, Andy Kogelnik, Brad Peterson and Goodbyes. 

And let's not forget David Bolinsky and team's incredible animation.

For a mind numbing experience, check out their site for a video that will take you through the human body in the most exciting way you could ever have imagined. (it's a bit like being on a Back to Future ride). Below, a glimpse of the magic they have created for companies, healthcare institutions and hospitals.

Below is a shot from the FutureMed graduation at NASA AMES in Silicon Valley on the last night, a group shot taken during the week and one taken at an after party. And, here are some images I shot from the kick off party, which includes an overview of the program and the first day.

Disclosure: I provided some consulting to FutureMed.

Submit Your Prediction for the Future of Health & Medicine to Win Scholarship to FutureMed, Singularity University’s Future of Medicine Program

FutureMed today launched a contest to attend its newly launched executive program dedicated to where exponential technologies, medicine, healthcare and biomedicine collide and are headed.

FutureMed is held at Singularity University on the NASA-Ames Research Park in Mountain View, CA May 10-15, 2011. 

Imagine experiencing an interactive and highly personalized Renaissance-like week, full of some of the best intellectual and innovative brains in medicine and technology under one roof, in an intimate setting.

Through a series of faculty speakers, panels, hands on experiences, site visits, in-depth workshops, and late night discussions, participants will complete this intensive 5-day program with new relationships and insights into unmet needs and opportunities that will transform the world of healthcare, from wellness and prevention to diagnosis and therapy.

Designed for entrepreneurs, innovators, executives, and physicians (CME credit offered), the FutureMed program is bringing together some of the smartest and most talented leaders and visionaries in technology, science and healthcare to examine the intersection of convergent exponential technologies and their game-changing potential to transform all aspects of health and medicine over the next 20 years.

FutureMed covers diverse areas such as genomics, the digitization of health data, regenerative medicine, neuromedicine, brain computer interfaces, gene therapy, robotic interventions, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, synthetic biology and more.

The faculty includes some of the world’s most distinguished leaders in their respective fields, including Stanford, Berkeley & Harvard trained oncologists, stem cell researchers, preventative medicine pioneers, surgeons, entrepreneurs and scientists. Speakers include Peter Diamandis, Ray Kurzweil, Dean Ornish, Esther Dyson, Daniel Kraft, Thomas Goetz, David Ewing Duncan, Tim O’Reilly and a host of others. 

Singularity University (SU) was co-founded by Ray Kurzweil, futurist, inventor and author of "The Singularity Is Near," and Dr. Peter Diamandis, chairman and founder of the X-PRIZE. SU's mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders to facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies with the goal of addressing humanity's grand challenges. A Graduate Studies Program is held each summer and week long Executive Programs are also held quarterly. You can also check out and follow FutureMed on Twitter and Facebook.

TEDx Berkeley Video Talks Are Now LIVE

This past February, I was co-curator of the TEDxBerkeley event, an independently organized TED event, where speakers, thought leaders, inventors, academics, creators, geeks and students gathered under the large roof of Berkeley's Zellerbach hall to have an open conversation and exchange.

The line-up was incredible and included some globally recognized and inspiring voices including: Chip Conely, Shore Slocum, Walter Hood, Robert Fuller, David Rose and many more.

Here's a link to all the talks of the day including speakers and performers. A great thanks and kudos to the team, speakers and supporters that made TEDxBerkeley happen (2011 marks its second event). Here's link to their Facebook page and Twitter to follow along, as it won't be its last. :-)

A Photo Diary of DEMO Spring 2011: #democon

Below are some visual highlights from last week's DEMO Spring Conference in Palm Springs, CA.

The VentureBeat team at DEMO Spring: Matthew Lynley, Owen Thomas, Anthony Ha and Matt Marshall (did you know that they can all sing?)

Matt Marshall with Jon Ferrara, CEO of Nimble who won DEMO God Award (also a client)

Renee Blodgett, Peter Sisson, Steve Wildstrom, Tim Reha, Ed Baig, Michael Miller (in the main hall)

The DEMO team in action on stage on the last day

JetStreamHD demo on stage: Nuvyyo CEO Grant Hall (client)

CVAC Systems - 20 minutes later at simulated higher altitudes, could you be healthier?

Facecake Swivel Demo on stage

The Nimble Team (the new owners of Social CRM)

Okay, so here's the singing part: Matthew, Owen and Matt do karaoke

Below, Jake Mintz, Co-Founder of BUMP with Anthony Ha of VentureBeat

Mashable's Jenn Van Grove, IDG's Pat Kenealy, The Next Web's Hermione Way and Mike Melanson from ReadWriteWeb can sing up a storm as well.

BUMP's Jake Mintz, Renee Blodgett, Angel Djambazov

Client JetStreamHD at the Booth (stream your digital media to your iPad)

Start-up America Scott Case with Matt Marshall

ABC News Camera Crew showed up

An interview with Salesforce's Executive VP of Platform & Marketing George Hu

VentureBeat's Owen Thomas was a stylin'

Rob Glaser tweeted out that he was playing Demo Monkey for a new gig he's involved in Socialeyes

Bob McCallum in demo mode

Trendspottr presents on stage

The Karaoke Favorite

JetStreamHD Brings All Digital Content to Your iPad: Taking Orders Starting Today

Nuvyyo's CEO Grant Hall and VP of Marketing Bob McCallum on the DEMO Spring stage showing off JetStreamHD, announced yesterday. Today, they're starting to take orders for their new product which streams all of your digital media stored anywhere on a home computer network to the iPad....other mobile devices to be supported soon.

Note: I consult to the company.