Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Below you will find notes from a session attended. This will be an interesting read for anyone interested in trends, the Internet or collective knowledge. Both speakers were engaging. I bought books for the office!!

About: Henry Jenkins was one of the most popular speakers at last year's SXSW Interactive Festival, so we are very excited to have him return to the event in 2008. His foil in this conversation is best-selling author Steven Johnson, who served as the Keynote Speaker at the 1998 event.

• Henry Jenkins Co-Dir of CMS, MIT
• Steven Johnson CEO, outside.in

The description provided above is not very good, but the presentation was great. I picked up a copy of Convergence Culture, Everything Bad is Good For You and Emergence: The Connected lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software .

Young people are adapters of every new technology - outside of the context of parents. This is really scary for parents. In a moment of crisis one falls back on what you already know, which is why parents always say what their parents said.

School based learning and IQ - powerful tools that parents don't understand. Collective intelligence is very different than the way we process information at school. At school, we expect everyone to understand everything, with a complex body of knowledge, subjects get more complex. Encyclopedia Britanica vs Wikipedia.

The intelligence is much greater in the 30 people in front of the teacher than in the teacher because of collective knowledge, the students just have to figure out how to discuss it. This collective knowledge will require new types of standardized testing.

When presented with new technology, do you ever think - "that is just stupid." There is at least a momentary flash with everything. In the end, people don't do stuff that is meaningless. Even watching TV serves a purpose. Finding out how meaningful it is to other people is interesting.

People are idiots - be skeptical of people that say that.

Think about programs like LOST and the Wire - renissance of American TV - which is better the Wire or LOST? Depends on the criteria we would use to evaluate. The Wire represents the real world. LOST represents unreality- layered complexity.

A lot of work goes into trying to figure out what is going on with LOST. The Wire is like a last gasp of an ultimate show, whereas LOST is the type of TV we are going to start seeing, though it will be really hard to duplicate it. The fan base does a lot. Great example of collective intelligence in pop culture.

There are pink collar jobs out there These jobs require a lot of education, but their job only uses a small part of the knowledge. (teachers, librarians, etc). Why are these skills under-utilized in the work.

Convergence culture. Fan culture. Harry Potter phenom. Young people learning to read by Harry Potter. 700-800 page books. Does this lead to other reading? They are also learning to write after reading it. Feedback on creative work built on Harry Potter. Wizard Rock - 200 bands that base their music on Harry Potter themes. Songs like 'My dad's rich, your dad's dead.' Not always very good, but can be very, very interesting. The Harry Potter fan culture is open source. You have 15 year-old's debating fair use on TV after writing Harry Potter short stories. Young people are inspirired to be transformational based on the fact that Harry Potter is transformed and stands up for what he believes in.

Google generation. Digital natives. People call them the dumbest generation - but if you look closely at the 18-24 year olds they are very good, non-violent, entrepreneurs, political. Do we have a crisis or an opportunity?

Young politicans say 'we' - older politicians say 'I.' Young people say what are we going to do together?

Many I/you formations in Hillary's speeches. Obama is like a stub on Wikipedia, we are going to flesh this out together. He is building a movement, not a campaign. Waiting in line for an Obama speech the night before the Massachussetts primary, the campaign was handing out phone numbers of undecided voters for people in line to start calling those individuals.

Internet is a location enhancing device. People writing about neighborhoods and communities. People care passionatly about what is happening.

On My Radar - Facebook news feature. I am standing on this corner, show me all the conversations that are happening within 500 feet of this area. You can track information on various areas. Need to have major filters so that we can filter out the stuff that is totally uninteresting.

School Newspapers are shutting down because of lack of money and interest - but young people are writing elsewhere. Percentage of kids producing media is astronomical. Think Soulja Boy.

We also have to make sure they are safe as they interact with each other as social community and not just in the prefator world. Why do people finish their homework early and stay up all night playing games? how can we make learning that interesting and addictive. Sometimes depression is what is leading to the addition - the depression is manifesting that way.