Ireland Prime Minister Enda Kenny on Technology at #Founders

Ireland's Prime Minister Enda Kenny came to the Founders event in Dublin this past week to talk about the importance of technology and Ireland's commitment to its expansion and innovation as a major contribution to a growing economy both at home and abroad.

Bryan Doerries' Theatre of War

At PopTech this week, Bryan Doerries, a New York-based writer, translator, director, and educator read poetry to us, his eloquent use of language and intonation resonating with nearly everyone in the audience.

He is the founder of Theater of War, a project that presents readings of ancient Greek plays to service members, veterans, caregivers and families as a catalyst for town hall discussions about the challenges faced by combat veterans today.

Over the past year, Bryan has directed film and stage actors such as Paul Giamatti, Isiah Whitlock Jr., David Strathairn, Lili Taylor, Charles S. Dutton, Gloria Reuben, and Jeffrey Wright in readings of his translations of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes for military communities.  

When people are in pain or have undergone crisis, it's important to be able to speak the unspeakable. He says, "Imagine soildiers in Athens, seated in the order of tribe and according to rank. They have come together to hear plays that only those who have been to war or cared for those who have gone to war could understand. They were there to laugh, weep and bear witness to the truth of going to war."

He goes on: "Now imagine American soldiers in a drill hall or a field house where they are seeing a play about a depressed warrior who has slipped into depression because he has seen his best friend murdered. He then takes his own life."

"Being separated from my troop is like being stripped of my humanity," said a soldier to him. He is doing this project to restore humanity for these individuals who feel like they lost their humanity along the way. And, he wrote these plays to help people heal.

Sophocles wrote these plays to comfort the inflicted and to inflict the comfortable. "This is what happens everytime we perform Theatre of War," he says. "In an environment that combines live theatre and community dialogue, people are comforted by what brings them together across time. They are inflicted by the understanding that empathy is not enough. Theatre is an ancient military technology which we are licensing from Sophocles, to raise awareness, to raise stigmas, and to stir our fellow citizens to action."

His other recent theatrical projects include “Prometheus in Prison,” which presents Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound” to corrections professionals to engage them in conversations about custody and reentry, and “End of Life,” which presents Sophocles’ “Women of Trachis” to palliative care and hospice workers to engage them in dialogue with other medical professionals about medical ethics and pain management.

For more on his work, read Bryan Doerries' op-ed in the Washington Post about his experience taking Theater of War performances to military bases.

Anne-Marie Slaughter: A New Networked World Means Rethinking Professions

Anne-Marie Slaughter uses a Lego analogy to talk about foreign policy at PopTech this week.

Anne-Marie is a Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and also served as Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State from 2009-2011, the first woman to hold that position. 

She discussed where we started from and where we have moved to, aka from a world of states to a world of social actors. The world of states was the first (traditional) way of looking at foreign policy, something she refers to as the billiard ball world. Today, we live in an networked world.

In that world, foreign policy has started to shift, where we are seeing orchestrated coaltions. In a top down colation, the World Bank pulled together 14 of oil producing companies and 4 oil producers to reduce environmental effects.

Where we're going however is bottom up: build local and go global. Examples include:

• From USAID to Kiva
• From NDI Election Monitoring to Ushahidi
• From the Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement to Palestinian Political Risk Insurance Project

In a billiard ball world, countries go to war. In a networked world, the dynamic changes and the players have much more resilience than in a billiard ball world.

She has been spending a lot of time researching and learning about network theory and horizontal management Everything she is hearing now in and outside of Washington is a combination of public and private initiatives. "We're moving forwards citizen act social foreign policy," she says.

We're at the beginning of a new world. Advice that she gives:

1. Don't just stand there, do something.

2. Connect, but not too much. Do not connect all the time. Be focused about their networked communications and don't overdo it.

3. Small is beautiful. She refers to Clay Shirky's work. If you want to get the energy of collaboration, you want small communities to be more effective.

4. Portals and plug-ins everywhere. Government has always thought in silos. Open government is about breaking down those silos. 

5. Self-organization is better? The power of what we see in the Middle East is self-organization. Government needs to facilitate not do.

The whole idea of what foreign policy is going to change profoundly. She says, "iIf we're going to do this, we're going to have to change the way we think about our professions."

In a New World, we have to think about existing professions differently and gives the following 'spot-on' answers.

• Editor (old world) to Finder, Mapper (new world)
• Publisher (old world) to Aggregator (new world)
• Reporter (old world) to Verifier, Curator (new world) 
• Public Relations (old world--image) to Convener (the person who brings together lots and lots of actors)
• Diplomat (old world) to Connector (new world)
• Leader (old world) to Catalyst (new world)

In these new roles, she concludes, we can build a networked world, one that is open, working from the bottom up. And, as a result of this, foreign policy will dramatically change. Enter, the new actors on the global open platform political stage.

 

Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson Talks About Lessons Learned

Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson took the PopTech stage in Camden Maine on October 20, 2011, where he discussed economic crises and how to handle them in a way that will ensure long term sustainability of a country. He used his own as an obvious example, which has not only faced economic issues but natural disasters over the past year.

President Grimsson spoke about how he made a choice for his country that would either make farmers, local businesses and individuals take responsibility for their own decisions which would impact the financial health of the country OR turn to/blame the force of the market.

He chose to choose the democratic will of the people, which he says, hasn’t brought on the dark results that everyone predicted it would.

In his day, he reminded the audience, demonstrations and protests were the only way to get noticed and bring about change. “Now,” he says, “we are now seeing people power in its purest form, enhanced by social media. The fundamental essence remains to challenge political institutions as never before.”

"The power of the people through social media has dramatically accelerated change, making the traditional political decision making process has almost become a side show," he says.

Below are some lessons he has learned from Iceland: 

• Significance of China. "The arrival of China is here now, not ten or twenty years from now," he says. "The leadership of China was the one of the most successful discussions following the collapse of the banking system than any other country we talked to, including Germany, Italy, U.S., France and others."

• The banks have become high tech companies, threatening the growth of the creative sectors of our economies. He says, "What we learned in Iceland, when the banks collapsed, is that the pool of talent from the banks were suddenly all available. "Even if the banks are successful, it’s bad news for a country that wants to be a player in the creative economy," he adds.
• The importance of clean energy. The lesson learned is that if you have built up a clean energy economy, it  will help you fight against financial crisis in the future. It provides people with a lot of energy at a low cost.

 

Aneesh Chopra: Blue Buttoning Our Own Data Will Fuel Innovation & Empower Americans

If you haven't heard of the name before, Aneesh Chopra is the United States Chief Technology Officer, where he serves as an Assistant to the President and Associate Director for Technology within the Office of Science & Technology Policy. Whooah Nelly, that's a mouthful of a title.

In other words, he works to advance the President’s technology agenda by fostering new ideas and encouraging government-wide coordination to help the country meet its goals from job creation, to reducing health care costs, to protecting the homeland.   

I had a chance to listen to him speak at the Idea Festival recently, where his talk focused on the President's mission and goals, with a central core theme to make it happen: working from the bottom up, not the top down and opening up data so others can create and innovate with it, and we, as a nation, can thrive.

Here's what they're currently focused on within the above framework:

• Putting more people back to work
• Boosting access to capital for high growth companies
• Turning job seekers to job creators
• Unleashing the mobile broadband revolution
• Modernizing 35,000 schools  
• Making government services transparent to job creators
• Open Government aka the Start Up America initiative
• Patent reform
• Catalyze breakthroughs

Technology was a big part of his message as he echoes Obama's pitch, "for our families and our businesses, high speed wireless service and mobile is the next train station, it’s the next off-ramp..it’s how we’ll spark innovation, new investment, new jobs." He also referenced Silicon Valley start-ups on more than one occasion, including Instagram and Crowdflower.

He sees cloud computing and mobility unlocking major potential and accelerating productivity in key sectors.

Aneesh says that there's an aministration commitment to unleash market opportunities by framing current or proposed policies to inspired entrepreneurs and gaining valuable policy feedback for iteration with an emphasis on healthcare, education and energy.

Where is the puck heading?

"We need breakthroughs," he says. "The only way is to tap into new hubs outside Silicon Valley." Hear hear Aneesh.

He also talked about education dominance, pushing software that adapts to how students learn, inspiration for the proposed ARPA-ED. They want to open up the data to teachers and make it accessible to them and their students, regardless of where they are in the country.

Another challenge they face he throws the audience's way is the clean energy revolution. They're hoping that ARPA-E investments and NIST standards activities will spur creativity.

He cites the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as an example, America's center for weather data. The weather industry is worth about $2 billion he reminds and "they're fueled because of open government data." 

Aneesh adds, "we can also encourage market transparency." Healthcare.gov is a comprehensive catalog of insurance options, an effort to create more transparency than ever before. You’ll be able to find pricing data, how often an insurance company charges a premium, and how often were people rejected (denied coverage for whatever reason).

He also mentioned “Blue Button”, a public/private initiative that scales, where veterans can download their personal health information from their My HealtheVet account. My HealtheVet users who receive VA health care services can also refill their prescriptions and view their appointments, allergies, and laboratory results online.

Why not transfer that kind of tool to other areas and industries he says, such as education. "Imagine if every student could get a downloadable document of his/her assessment, a personalized platform that translates from student performance to market reality. We need personalized platforms for each of our children that can translate into something meaningful. This is the kind of thing that can fuel products and services. Find where the data sits and find out a way to liberate that data.”

He adds, "We're liberating government data & if people can become billionaires because of it, God Bless." The audience laughs. 

He continued to push the open government throughout his talk including in the Q&A at the end, which was incredibly well received. (note: while the audience had visitors from the west coast, DC, the north, NYC and other places, there was a large number of locals - aka the midwest meets the south...in other words, family values and education are high priorities).

Certainly blue buttoning our own data is going to fuel innovation and empower individuals. Isn't it where we have to go? If we don't, we become victims rather than creators of our own lives and destinies in more ways than one.

 

Parag Khanna on How to Run the World by Turning it on its Head (From the Bottom Up)

In his Idea Festival talk, Parag Khanna addressed the shifts we're seeing around the world. He thinks what is happening in the Arab world is the beginning of what we're going to see elsewhere.

Almost all Arab countries are post colonial countries. He says, "most of the 200 countries in the world look a lot like the Arab countries falling apart in the last six months."

And, asserts Khanna, “we’re in for a decade of this at least and watch this unfold for a very long time. At least 80 or 90 countries are experiencing the same kind of decay that a lot of the Arab countries are today. Expect to see a lot more falling regimes.”

We have to not just focus on economic and political issues in a silo. Things are complex so rather than look at how the UN is defining global progress, look at how private enterprise can assist as well. For example, what happens at the Clinton Global Initiative is very different than what happens in the UN, since it is much more representative and accurate of who has the real power.

It includes CEOs, entrepreneurs as well as politicians. This translates into offers from companies who can help facilitate change at a global level. For example, a mining company pledged to support a workforce in a South American country. We should be looking at ways to improve the ways we can measure real change in people’s lives.

The power has shifted when you have cities and mayors who are key in climate change decisions, the fact that that the Gates Foundation commits as much money as most governments do and that Walmart has more gas emissions coming out of their buildings than the country of Ireland.

Diplomacy is the glue at which we urn the world – it’s the relationships, the alliances, the solutions. It's the most important thing that we do and don't even realize it. Khanna notes that we live in a world today where there’s more diplomacy than ever before and yet it’s less organized. 

How do we sort out the moss pit of what exists with political leaders today? He recommends the following principles:

• Diplomacy needs to be inclusive. Anyone who wants to be part of a resolution to a problem should be involved.
• Decentralization – solving problems at the source. People in developing countries with real problems don’t need policy papers or money that is stored in centralized funds somewhere in Paris. It’s much better to give money to people directly if you can through micro-finance through organizations like Kiva.
• Become our own diplomats: each of us needs to think of ourselves as diplomats. Within ten years, everyone on the planet will have a mobile phone or a phone within their immediate family. Everyone will be able to reach everyone else. A lot of these phones will be smart phones and will have telebanking and mobile banking baked in….the latter is growing incredibly fast in Africa.

He ends his talk by saying “the best global governance is local governance," and working from the bottom up, not the top down.

 

While Urbahn May Have Broke Bin Laden Death on Twitter, it was Void of Depth & Texture

Last night, I was due to have dinner with a client in Phoenix and she texted me letting me know it would have to wait until Obama's speech to the nation - Osama bin Laden had been killed. A quick Google search brought up the news and a few minute walk brought me to a random hotel lobby where CNN was on, a handful of people muddled around waiting for him to start his 9+ minute speech.

When Obama finally came on in his polished blue jacket, white shirt and red tie with the composed and stately White House behind him, he said half way through his talk: "Justice has been done". He also gave thanks to those who successfully carried out the action that brought Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader held largely responsible for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks nearly a decade ago, to his final death.

It was said that Bin Laden was killed in "deep" Pakistan and although the details we learned through the in-depth coverage on CNN, the news first emerged on Twitter.

A media alert went out shortly before 9:45 PM EST that the President would “address the nation” at 10:30, but a few minutes (five) before the speech began, Keith Urbahn, the chief of staff for the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, tweeted out this: “So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.”

President Obama confirmed the news only after a handful of tweets had already erupted in the tweetosphere, retweeting and responding to Urbahn’s message at a rapid pace.

When I checked status of Foursquare and Twitter when I arrived at the hotel, the news of Bin Laden's death was already trending and remained trending well into the night.

Sure, Twitter is useful for breaking news, rapid fire reports (you see a fire on a city street, you can take a photo and tweet it out in real time before major news reporters from a so called "respectable" station or paper arrives), but a lot of people are still not on Twitter.

The same weekend of news of his death, we exhibited at the Ultimate Women's Expo in Phoenix, where we had nearly 3,000 women (and some men) stop by the booth each day. Every time I asked whether someone was on Twitter, 98% of them said no whereas a significantly larger percentage were on Facebook. And, remember that we were in Phoenix, a major American city, not a small town in the midwest.

That said, news of Osama’s death originating on Twitter from the chief of staff for the former defense secretary brings some credibility to the table is compelling (in other words, it wasn't from a 15 year old teenager).

Despite Urbahn's tweet and several other successful cases of Twitter reporting the first "news" (also note the trend and success in the world of entertainment: Charlie Sheen, Britney Spears, Jackie Chan), people still refer to more authoritative sources for things of significance. Also truth be told, Twitter can't go into depth about a story, and people want depth - the where, how, what, when and the intimate details of the WHY.

News of Osama’s death is so significant, not just because of who it is, but because there's so much emotion connected to it around 9/11 and those who have lost loved ones or been impacted directly and indirectly by those tragic attacks.

It's the in-depth emotional captures, the discussions on and offline and the impact of what his death means now and for the foreseeable future that people will want to dig their teeth into. Twitter can't provide that. 

Remember while I was not a fan of Twitter in the early days, these days I am and have several accounts which I'm active on daily. Yes, daily. Even when I went deep into the desert, I had tweets queued up and tweeted in real time with photos when I had coverage. I did however leave my mobile device behind when I went into the South American Amazon......tweeting from such raw nature seemed a bit too much and I knew it would take away from the experience of being present with the beauty around me, rather than add or compliment it, which it can do in other situations.

While Twitter may continue to prove to be a useful source of breaking news moving forward, I still want depth. And, my Twitter stream is crowded despite my attempts to keep lists and streams, which work fairly well most of the time. The problem is that even well known "tweeters" with traffic and influence and some people I WANT to follow send their Foursquare check-ins to their Twitter streams or talk about their child losing their first tooth. Really? Time for quality control or perhaps a  little of that Klout score needs to be taken away from that almighty Influence Number Ladder.

Below is the original speech that Obama gave the nation from the White House posted on YouTube, which give you something you could never get in 140 characters: the richness of the colors, the texture of his voice and the emotion surrounding the video, and the visuals of people parading outside the White House singing the National Anthem and carrying flags singing, waving and yes, celebrating.

 

Google's Marissa Mayer Talks Google & What It Was Like to Host Obama at Home

John Battelle interviewed Google's Marissa Mayer at the one day SIGNAL event in Austin last week. Her answers were thoughtful and as always, her informal and breezy way of addressing a crowd was well received. Her most memorable 'share' had nothing to do with Google.

Having hosted the Obama dinner this past month when he was in the San Francisco Bay Area talking to technology visionaries and CEOs, she talked about what it was like to have the President in her home and things she learned about security (aka, oh yeah, there will be TONS of men in black suits standing outside my home which is across from an elementary school), and meal planning. Here's the Business Insider overview on the dinner recap. It's a great interview: have a listen.

Fixing Broken Government

The next LongNow talk entitled Fixing Broken Government with Philip K. Howard is being held at Cowell Theater in Fort Mason Center, San Francisco on January 18, 2011.

Philip K. Howard is a conservative who inspires standing ovations from liberal audiences (short example here.) He says that governance in America---from the capitol to the classroom---has achieved near-total dysfunctionality by accumulating so many layers of piecemeal legalisms that the requirements of navigating them has replaced any hope of getting actual justice or effectiveness. Most attempts to fix the problems have made them worse. Howard thinks they can be fixed in a way that restores core functionality.

Howard is the author of Life Without Lawyers (2009) and Death of Common Sense (1994) and is the founder and chair of Common Good, a reform advocacy nonprofit.

Long Now members can tune into the live audio stream at 7:30 PST or you can become a member for just $8 a month.

Upcoming talks include:

Feb 9 (Wed.) - Mary Catherine Bateson, "Live Longer, Think Longer"
March 22 (Tue.) - Matt Ridley, "Deep Optimism"
April 13 (Wed.) - Ian Morris, "Why the West Rules - For Now"
May 4 (Wed.) - Tim Flannery, "Here on Earth"

June 7 (Tue.) - Carl Zimmer, "Viral Time"

This is one of a monthly series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking (SALT) organized by The Long Now Foundation. Free audios and my summaries of all previous talks are available for download here (or stay up to date with the Podcast here). 

Great Political Hashtags For Twitter

Wanting to getting involved in the political process this midterm election but confused as to how, I decided to take to Twitter to launch a political campaign of sorts.

Not for myself, of course; more as a means to show support for the political hopefuls (and incumbents) I want to see in office and to spread what I consider important (OK, and hilarious!) information about key races.

My Twitter has hitherto been largely inactive, mostly because I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to do with it. Most of my friends aren’t on the network, and, at the time I created my account, I wasn’t interested in amassing a large following (like all those trannies who follow me on flickr for some reason).

In fact, prior to starting this project, I only knew of Twitter as a conduit for everyday folks to learn of the inane activities of their favorite celebrities. Sure, I was the same way at first, but I could no longer stomach the constant updating of @lindsaylohan -- hmm, guess she won’t be any updating for a bit -- or @sn00ki; although I do enjoy the occasional tweet from @chelseahandler and @michaelianblack.

Now, however, I feel like I have a reason to actually use my Twitter account. If only in this fleeting, politically crazy moment. I had been upset about how many incumbent and establishment candidates were knocked out of their respective races by the fringe Tea Party-endorsed hacks in the primaries but now take some solace in the fact that I can vent that frustration using social media. And that people will see it. That’s right, my social media prowess has been awakened by my political fervor. And so can yours!

Sure, I realize I won’t have a major impact on or be the deciding factor in any race in particular. But, unlike Facebook, Twitter is, from what I can tell, mostly wide open and a much more effective way of spreading awareness and information, or, at the very least, passing, witty thoughts. I’ve also gained a number of new followers (people I didn’t have to beg to follow me!), so, it might seem, my plan is working…

I also learned you have to use hashtags! And here is the reason for this post: I’ve been compiling a list of political hashtags for you to use in your politics-oriented tweets, so they have a better chance of being seen in the Twitter-verse. And so you can find more like-minded people like yourselves.

Hashtags are just that: tags. A way for Twitter to categorize the constant stream of crap being published to the site. Click on a hashtag and you’ll be taken to a search page where everyone who’s posted using that particular hashtag appears. Some are frequently used and so your post will quickly be pushed to the bottom of the page. Others are very frequently used so there’s little chance your post will be seen in the midst of all the rest of the tweets on the page. But don’t despair.

Try to use hashtags strategically, though not necessarily sparingly. Meaning don’t tag every post with the same five or six keywords. Be creative. Try to mix up which hashtags you use. Embed them into your posts; don’t just lump ‘em all at the end. Otherwise Twitter will stop publishing you in its live feed for a while (I know this firsthand).

Don’t know which keywords will count as hashtags? Do a simple search before posting (be sure to include the # symbol!) and see if it gets any hits. If it looks like a fairly popular trend, go for it! If there are zero or few hits, try something different.

There are also tools that can help you learn which hashtags trend better (in other words, are more popular) than others, such as hashtags.org, and others that tell you the meaning behind certain hashtags, like #tagdef. Just play around with Twitter for a bit and you’ll eventually get the hang of it!

And so, for your enjoyment, here is my list of political hashtags:

Note: hashtags are not case sensitive so feel free to capitalize letters if you see fit; however, DO NOT include spaces in your hashtags.

Politics in General:

• #gov – Refers to the government in general.
• #politics – Use when referring to politics in general.
• #president – Refers to the President of the United States.
• #whyivote – Why you’re passionate about voting this election season.

Political Parties:

• #dems/#dem – Democratic Party. Use to advocate for or show disapproval of the party.
• #gop – Republican Party. Use when either showing support for or criticizing the GOP.
• #votedem – Include in posts in which you want to encourage others to ‘vote Democrat.’ Don’t know of the GOP equivalent (try ‘#vote #gop’).

Political Ideologies:

• #p2 – Progressives/Progressives on Twitter. Use when either supporting or disparaging this group (same follows for those below).
• #socialism/#socialist – For referring to socialism and/or socialists.
• #tcot – Stands for ‘Top Conservatives on Twitter.’ This one is particularly popular, with updates coming every few seconds.
• #teaparty – You got it, the Tea Party movement.
• #tlot – ‘Top Libertarians on Twitter.’
• #topprog – ‘Top Progressives on Twitter.’

Races by State:

• #(state)gov – Use in posts referring to a state’s governor’s race. For example, #cagov (California governor’s race).
• #(state)sen – Similarly, use when referring to a particular state’s senate race: i.e., #casen, #aksen, #desen (California, Alaska, and Delaware senate races, respectively).

Issues:

• #dadt – The ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy (prevents homosexuals from serving openly in the U.S. military).
• #economy/#finance/#taxcuts – In reference to the economy and/or tax cuts (i.e., the ‘Bush Tax Cuts’ issue currently taking precedence in the media and on the political front).
• #hcr – Refers to health care reform (i.e., The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, etc.).

And Just for Fun:

• #teapartymovietitles – This was trending like wildfire last week!! Take a well-known movie title and alter it to make fun of the Tea Party movement. Some of my favorites included ‘Baracknaphobia,’ ‘Love Actually Only Exists Between a Man & Woman,’ and ‘The 41 Year Old Virgin’ (re: Christine O’Donnell)!! Started by @michaelianblack, I believe. And you can follow me over at @MatthewBachmann.