Following up on yesterday's piece about fragmentation in the micro-blogging world; on my walk yesterday I took a Steve Gillmor podcast with me, an interview with Dustin Sailings, the developer of TwitterSpy. All three of us, like Rafe Needlman at Webware, and many others, are trying to sort out the "micro-blogging" world we live in now, how we got here, and where we'll be. Is this like the first Iraq War, or the second? Is it like Instant Messaging, where interop has always been a problem, or like blogging and RSS, where it wasn't (much of) a problem. I'd say we're at an inflection point -- a lot of it depends on what people do, actually the technology doesn't seem to be the issue, it's what people and money do that will make the difference.

That's why I suggested to Steve, on identi.ca, that maybe a micro-blogging camp-style meetup in Sept would be a good idea. I also sent an email to Rafe with the same suggestion.

We could do it in Berkeley at the Hillside Club, lots of great restaurants nearby, easy to get to from BART. Or we could do it in San Francisco, or down in the valley, or in NYC, or Montreal. I think it should be in North America since almost all the development is happening in the US and Canada.

What's cool about where we're at is that users understand what's needed this time, before the technology has arrived.

I'm anxious to hear what everyone thinks and I don't think there's any substitute for a face to face meeting.

It would be great to keep it small, but it must also be open to anyone who wants to participate. No way can this be an invite-only "Friends Of Someone" type gathering. No one must be able to say they weren't allowed to come.

Anyway that's the idea. What do you think??

Update: After saying most of the development is happening in North America word of a Japanese Twitter-like service just popped on TechMeme.

Over the years we’ve received hundreds (thousands?) of emails asking us our opinion on this, how we’d do that, what we think of this idea or that idea. People ask about Getting Real, entrepreneurship, business models, hiring, collaboration, design decisions, tech-related stuff, questions about our products, etc.

We also really enjoy the Q&A sessions at the end of our talks whenever we present at a conference or workshop. We always try to leave ample time to answer as many questions as we can. We’ve always believed live Q&A is the best part of any talk (and unfortunately there never seems to be enough time left over at the end to get to everyone’s questions).

So we’ve been thinking: How can we make Q&A more a part of our business? We enjoy it, people seem to get a lot of value from it, so we should do it more often.

We could certainly write more “Ask 37signals” blog entries, but it’s hard to find the time to write ‘em all up. We also seem to give better answers when we talk them through rather than when we write them down.

So we’ve decided to take a page out of Gary Vaynerchuck’s book and do a 37signals Live Q&A session on the web. We don’t know how well it’s going to work, but we’re going to give it a shot.

The first session will be tomorrow (August 5th) at 3pm CDT (what’s that in my time zone?). We’ll plan for an hour but we’ll see how it goes. We’ll have a live video feed and people can ask us questions via a live text chat that’ll run alongside the video.

We’re excited to see what happens. If it works out we’d love to do them on a regular basis. If not, we’ll chalk it up to experience.

So, ask us anything tomorrow at 3! We’ll see you there!

Getting caught up on things that happened over the last month or so, Clearleft has launched Silverback, their "spontaneous, unobtrusive usability testing software for designers and developers". A desktop application that captures screen and participant activity right from your Mac, then exports all of this to a Quicktime movie. Looks fantastic, and I'm looking forward to using it on some real work in the future. #

I just took the survey. If you haven't, you must. #

Even the Giants Can Learn to Think Small [NY Times] talks about how smaller teams are more agile and creative. The message: Keep teams small, give employees freedom and a sense of ownership, don’t focus too much on the competition, create a culture of experimentation, and use technology to enable remote teams.

By breaking huge business units into smaller, nimbler teams, companies stand a chance of rekindling the creative spark that got them rolling in the first place. After all, “small is the new big,” as Seth Godin, a prolific blogger and author, puts it in his 2006 book of that name.

It is a point of view shared by a diverse group of business leaders, management consultants and information technology experts. According to Philip Rosedale, founder and chairman of Linden Lab, the company that created and operates the virtual world of Second Life, companies seeking to foster creativity must find ways to break apart the bureaucratic hierarchies now smothering it. Optimizing a company for creativity involves helping individual employees of every rank develop an entrepreneurial spirit. In Mr. Rosedale’s view, the most creative work environment is one where every employee, regardless of job title, has enough freedom to develop that sense of personal initiative.

“Most companies erroneously focus on competition and on differentiation from their competitors,” he contends. “The business opportunity lies in turning creativity into productivity.”

Decentralizing the hierarchy opens the door to creativity, giving workers the leeway they need to make significant decisions without first jumping through executive management hoops. “The idea,” he says, “is to enable a creative environment where there’s a good degree of experimentation.”

Optimizing a company for creativity also optimizes it for small-group collaboration. And that opens the door to new information technology that lets team members work cooperatively from anywhere on the planet. “That’s the revolution that’s making all of this possible,” Mr. Rosedale says.

It’s great to see these ideas picking up steam and getting out there in the mainstream press.

Not that anyone is paying attention, but I seem to disagree with almost everyone about what blogging is. To me it's the empowerment of the individual to speak for him or herself, not through filters of the press.

I learned first-hand about those filters when I briefly took a professional job in the mid-90s. Some editors are great and some really interfere. Add enough editors, and what the author thinks gets lost. So does the man or woman in the street or the experts who were interviewed for a story.

It got really bad toward the end of the 20th century, but as the cost of publishing tools went down, and their ease of use went up, and as people got more familiar with the technology, the rules started to change. The gatekeepers lost a lot of their power. And now when the media starts to go along with a corrupt campaigner wanting somehow to make Britney Spears and Paris Hilton figures in this election, like WIllie Horton was in 1988, well -- guess who speaks up and calls bullshit on it.

Paris Hilton's mother!

Now that's what I'm talking about.

If you see bullshit, call it. If you're the mother of one of the celebs who happens also to be a donor to McCain's campaign, it has extra ooomph when you say the ad is a waste of (your) money, money that should be spent improving America, because that's what we want from our President.

No I'm not going to vote for McCain, but Kathy Hilton is. McCain should pay attention. He can manipulate the press, for sure -- they love to be whipped into frenzy (it's what they do, they live for it) but the rest of us are truly sick of being on edge during these campaigns, wondering if some crazed scream is going to end up flushing our chances down the toilet. But there's a new safety valve now, and it's my kind of blogging, not the professional's that's going to save the day. I hope.

BTW, what hypocrisy for McCain to boast that he's always put America first. To say Obama would rather lose a war to win an election. If McCain were putting America first, he wouldn't make a mockery of the process. Take the Presidency seriously. We do, so does the rest of the world. He snickers -- "we're just having fun." Take up a hobby, play golf, get a dog, a puppet, do your mischief in private. (Funny how he sounds just like the dirty tricks pranksters that worked in the Nixon White House).

The Motion Picture Association of America is doing their best to follow in the footsteps of their brethren at the RIAA and make business harder for its members. They, Im guessing at the direction of some lawyers of their member companies, want to try to make cable and satellite companies shut off the "analog hole" when showing movies that are being released to TV prior to their DVD release. In the MPAA's own words "Distribution over insecure outputs would facilitate the illegal copying and redistribution of this high value content, causing untold damage to the DVD and other 'downstream' markets."

The MPAA is staring right in the face of a paradox and they must make a choice. They can continue to invest in the war on Digital Piracy (as opposed to physical DVD piracy, which can be monitored and slowed by confiscating actual DVDs and duplication equipment), or they can invest in promoting the fun of going to the movies.

Invest in a positive message that can get people more excited about their member products and the unique experience offered in theaters, or send a message that your customers are crooks and pirates. Invest in a message that could generate more revenues for your members, or invest in the cost of trying to close the "analog hole" which costs taxpayers money as you waste legislative time, consumers money, as you waste the time and money of cable, satellites and telcos who will fight this effort or spend millions having to adopt it, and of course drive up the cost of the movie going experience because of all the above.

I have more than 1 billion dollars invested in the entertainment industry. I get to see our content distributed illegally online. I get a daily report of all the torrents and other files available online. You know what I think about that ? So what. Thats what i think. Its collateral damage. Unlike music, it takes time to upload and download movies. People with more time than money will steal content. THey werent going to pay for it otherwise. People with a conscious will pay for the content. Fortunately that is most people.

For all the money the RIAA wasted on trying to stop digital piracy, about all they acccomplished was explaining to everyone exactly where and how to steal music. Please do not make the same mistake. Right now its a hassle to unitlize the analog hole to copy movies. Most people have no idea how to do it, particularly for HD delivered movies. Please do not go through a big process of teaching people exactly what the analog hole is in hopes of getting companies to prevent its use. All you are going to do is turn on the lightbulb for many who would otherwise not have a clue.

The theatrical exhibition industry just experienced a phenomenal several weeks with The Dark Knight setting record after record. People by the 10s of millions went to the theater, many multiple time to enjoy the unique experience of going to a movie. Could you please, please, please use the money you are going to spend fighting the unfightable and instead spend it on promoting the fun of going to the movies ? More people going to the movies is more people getting excited about movies. More people getting excited about movies means more people watching movies on TV, which is good for revenues, and more people buying DVDs or legal downloads of the movies. Again, good for revenues.

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