Matt Mason is the bestselling author of The Pirate’s Dilemma and told us about his background as a Pirate Radio Station Dj in London. Pirate radio stations were very popular but every day the Police would try to catch them and the irony was that the Police department also advertised at their radio station since it had so many listeners. His message to companies -" if you want to beat the pirates copy them"

Here is the video of Matt Masons presentation from http://poptech.org/popcasts/popcasts.aspx?lang=&viewcastid=208

He gave an example of a viral video by Guyz Nite who had written a song about movies and  had used "Die Hard" clips in their video and posted the video in YouTuebe to get some attention for their song. The song spread virally and got thousands of views and the Fox legal department rightly asked YouTube to remove the video for Copyright violation.  After about 6 months the marketing department of FOX who were looking for ideas for spreading the message about Die Hard 4 contacted Gyz Nite to negotiate a fee to put the video back on YouTube this time approved .

Other panelists who spoke at the same panel were Clay Shirky and Chris Anderson

Matt wrote the book The Pirate’s Dilemma

Clay Shirky spoke at Poptech in the session called Digital Freedom. Clay Shirky  is adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate interactive telecommunications program. In February 2008, he published Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  Other speakers on this panel :

• Matt Mason author of The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism .
• Chris Anderson Author of “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More” and author of the forthcoming book ‘Free’. His day job is Editor in Chief if Wired magazine

Clay was absolutely confident and when his presentation did not seem to load on his computer, he took it in his stride and gave an amazing speech on Intrinsic motivation . The message was that things are changing so much that people want to give and people want to get help. Connecting them both is a challenge and users will give only if they are motivated.

He talked about  Josh Groban musician and Grammy nominated singer song writer who had  a great fan following especially women. These fans wanted to give him something for his birthday. Since Josh has everything they decided to collect money for his birthday and donate it to a charity. This idea got a lot of traction at a grass roots level among fans and thy collected several thousand dollars of donat6ions for charitable purposes. Now while Josh Groban started a 503 company to manage the donations under the Josh Groban Foundation the volunteers continued to work under a all volunteer organization called http://www.grobanitesforcharity.org/about/. This is an example of how people will work for success based on “Intrinsic motivation” . The web site that collects money is created by amateurs and does a phenomenal job collecting money. All the money collected goes to charity as there is very little administrative cost.

Making a point on the match making between people who want to give and those who will take the generosity Clay Shirky talked about Napster. Napster was created by Shawn Fanning in 1999 and had a phenomenal growth of 70M users in 18 months. The design here was to make it easy for anyone with a computer to find and get files/information wherever they were. Since Napster made this easy for both people who wanted to share their music and those who wanted to listen  it became very popular. Now Itunes has made it easy for people on the same lines.

Clay Shirky mentioned Howardforums.com ( I am a member there) which was started by Howard Chui who first wanted to share his own experiences with his pone and now has a billion views a year. People spend a lot time answering questions and helping others. The forum polices itself and even thought it is about phones they have a thread on “cats’. This is an example of how an unstructured user built property can be successful vs a process driven company built forum.

Develop a environment where people feel like they are doing the right thing , being appreciated by a small group of people you know is different from being liked by a large group of people who do not know you. Developing intrinsic motivation among your users is key to success. Giving your users autonomy is important.

I will review Clay Shirky’s book ‘Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations “ for a future post.
 

Other great posts on this panel:

http://tetherinc.com/blog/?p=236

Oso

http://whiteafrican.com/2008/10/24/frontlinesms-clay-shirky-and-project-masiluleke/

http://www.poptech.org/blog/index.php/2008/10/24/clay-shirky-on-designing-for-generosity/

http://blogs.driversofchange.com/future/2008/10/poptech_2008_clay_shirky.html

• Chris Anderson Author of "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" and author of the forthcoming book ‘Free’. His day job is Editor in Chief if Wired magazine
• .
• Clay Shirky adjunct professor in New York University’s graduate interactive telecommunications program. In February 2008, he published Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.
• Matt Mason author of The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture is Reinventing Capitalism .
• Chris Anderson’s theme was to describe a Non_monetary economy that is combined with reputation to create a new currency that is controlled by Google . Chris Anderson called it the ‘Google Economy". He said that Google does a lot of research into Page Rank and can deflate the Google Economy the way the "no follow" links are implemented. He quoted Herbert Simon who in 1971 said" What does an abundance of information create ? Scarcity of attention" . His list of scarcities are :
  • Time
  • Money
  • Happiness
  • Attention
  • Reputation
• 
• He said that links are currency that someone can give you and bet their reputation on it almost like saying stop and now go to this website and read. The slide with Larry Page and Ben Bernanke was quite funny . Google through their data centers control their non-monetary currency that is "http://" links.
•  
• There are also closed economies ;ike the Video Games and Second Life where the currency is based on things like property that is bought or sold. Chris talked about a Korean online game called Maple Story where the currency is attention.
• The main takeaway from Chris Anderson was that the future is in making a choice of what our time is worth and what do we want to do with it. A non monetary economy will be controlled by people and companies that create their own currency.
• http://rafefurst.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/poptech-notes-part-2/
• http://rockblogsterbdn.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-session-at-poptech-102408.html
• http://www.poptech.org/blog/index.php/2008/10/24/chris-anderson-talks-economics/
• http://el-oso.net/blog/archives/2008/10/24/poptech-08-chris-anderson-formalizing-non-monetary-economics/en/

Pop!Tech 2008:
Scarcity and Abundance

October 22-25

For the twelfth year, the Pop!Tech Conference will again convene a network of 600 remarkable thinkers, doers, leaders and global change agents in science, technology, social innovation, business, environmentalism, globalization, media, education, and many other fields for a four-day exploration of ideas shaping the future.

This year, we will pay particular attention to the 21st century dynamics between systems based on scarcity and those based on abundance, in areas ranging from digital social networks to environmentalism, from biology to business, from peacemaking to politics. We’ll chart the core scarcities that humanity will face in this century, and how a wealth of new innovations, new bottom-up approaches to collaboration, and new insights into collective wisdom might hold the key to addressing them.

As always, there will be incredible performances, jaw-dropping technology demonstrations, spirited discussions, formal debates and surprises throughout. We will leave Camden with an inspired sense of our challenges, our potential, and the dynamics of positive change.

The conference begins with our special Wednesday sessions.

I am attending this conference this year and I am looking forward to meeting the 600 plus smart people who will talk about technology and how it makes a difference. I am also looking forward to running into Chris Anderson , Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Riggins of BatchBlue.