OCTOBER 2008: AROUND THE STATE
Don’t ask; read my Twitter
PORTLAND In early
September, Inverge — an “interdisciplinary
thought-leader event” as organizers call it — took
place in the Gerding Theater in Portland’s Pearl
District. It was, essentially, two days of very smart people
standing on a stage and talking. Or rather, some of them talked
and others wove fantastic pictures of the near future, tales of
convergence between technology, advertising, social communities
and the “real” world.
CEOs, VPs, GMs and innovation gurus from Disney, the University
of Southern California, Edelman, Vidoop, DigitalKitchen and MIT
passed across the stage every few hours. It was, except for a
few exceptions (Disney toys that interact with online
communities; iPhone application demonstrations) not a how-to
conference as much as a how-to-think conference: How to think
about consumers and creativity and interaction and the future
of just about every type of media.
As the days wore on, a silent stream of communication flowed
through the theater as attendees sent messages via Twitter, the
online service that lets users broadcast — via phone or
web — 140-character bulletins to people who’ve
elected to receive their messages. It’s passing notes in
a web 2.0 world. And it was a convergence between the real-time
presentations and the audience’s thoughts.
At the end of the last day of the conference, Amber Case, a
Portland consultant and entrepreneur, gave a brief history of
communication from the telephone to Twitter. Her slides
consisted of 140-character messages. As she spoke to the
audience, video of her presentation was streaming live online
and the text of her words was sent out to the 650-plus people
who listened to her on Twitter.
Case talked about everything from how humans and technology
shape each other to the possibility that the world may someday
laugh at the Internet. She finished with an idea that
encapsulated what that two-days-long discussion of intersecting
platforms and technologies was really all about: the power of
people needing to communicate with other people.
“Techno-social interaction,” she
said/wrote/broadcast out to unknown hundreds or thousands of
people, “is about transcending the silos of mental
isolation.”
Walking out of Inverge into a drab world where traffic and
bikes cluttered the streets of the Pearl District was almost
disappointing. Until you look down and see the potential
blueprint for all those dreams of convergence nestled in the
smart phone in the palm of your hand.
ABRAHAM HYATT
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