Tag Archives: society

On understanding

May 11th, 2010

Humans do not engage in activities that are meaningless. If you think you see people doing things you find meaningless, look again and try to understand what the activities mean for them. Henry Jenkins

Tags: ,
Comments Off

Hearts and minds, not eyeballs

April 21st, 2010

Following doesn’t mean paying attention. You don’t want numbers on Twitter, not really. What you want is to follow and be followed by human beings who care about issues you care about. This thing we make together. This thing is about hearts and minds, not eyeballs. Especially not eyeballs that aren’t even watching. Stop chasing followers […]

Tags: , ,
Comments Off

The Shirky Principle

April 19th, 2010

Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. The Shirky Principle

Tags: ,
Comments Off

Real people

April 1st, 2010

It’s too overwhelming to remember that at the end of every computer is a real person, a lot like you, whose birthday was last week, who has three best friends but nobody to spoon at night, and is personally affected by what you say. Even if we remember it right now, is it even possible to remember it […]

Tags: ,
Comments Off

Herding cats at Oxford Geek Night

February 18th, 2010

Last night I gave an updated version of my talk on successful community management, “How to Herd Cats” (slideshare link), at the sixteenth Oxford Geek Night. (Update: Al has posted his video of the talk on Vimeo, thanks Al) It was a particular honour to be asked to give a keynote as it was almost three years to […]

Tags: , , , , ,
3 Comments