Community Think-Tank Amsterdam East

I liked hearing about this intiative.(Dutch). It's in my local area of the city. People can email or call in with their ideas to a think tank that leads support and development programs for the commmunity. This follows the death of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker, assissinated in Amsterdam East, earlier this year.

Barry Flaherty, Leon Goldwater and Jonathan Marks are attending an innovation conference at the EU in Brussels. It is clear that many businesses are going through radical change and that people are the innovation driver, with support from relevant technology. Companies where IT is in the driving seat are often solving problems that people didn't even know they had! 

Barry Poses Question...

Barry is starring in a European conference on Innovation. He asked the question of the morning! That is him there on the screen. Don't believe anyone else in this room has ever heard of blogging! 

Eating our own workshop

Today The Dutch Connection held a workshop on using social software tools. Ton who has been building up experience over the past 2 years was our the leader today, and did a great job. The venue the ABC Treehouse in Amsterdam worked well. Within the first 30 mins we were all up & running using Wifi. Hopefully you can see that a good time was had by all.

DC & Ecademy Part Company

Both Colby and I have decided it is not worth renewing our subscriptions to Ecademy. The forum discussion died with the change of policy by the owners of Ecademy, which means that non-members cannot post on the forum any more. Predictably, the conversation died. Ecademy seems to be taking a different road with its focus on building giant networks and wealth management. We prefer a different path.

The alternative forum at Open-BC is not (yet) as good - (can't post pictures), but we're told a lot of work is in progress behind the scenes. We're also doing a lot of collaborative work using the WIKI technology.

In the meantime, the core members of Ecademy are busy registering the business in the Netherlands as a foundation. The conversation lives on.

Coffee, pastries and open ears to help fix democracy

Grant proposal for the World We Want

"Democracy was a good idea at one time, still is. But it requires an informed electorate who can think as well as receive and emit branded soundbites. To think, to feel, to come together even with those who oppose us to learn from them, to open one another's minds, to satirize one another, to laugh together, to form new friendships, to share heated argument plus coffee and danish, and to grow as human beings, and as responsible citizens - that can be done nationwide, in 100 towns and cities, for what? $150,000 net? Hope that Peter Karoff takes his project in some such direction, or that others step in."

What is YOUR site about?

A very neat way to find out whether Google "understands" your site, is by adding AdSense to it.

AdSense is disguised, wrong, "not done". Yet I know a guy that makes about $15k a month with AdSense. I have some sites on which I try to monetize my traffic as well, but I'm happy when I make $100 a month!

But then again - I'm not optimizing my sites for AdSense.

On the contrary.

I am making a considerable amount of money using Adwords. Google Adwords allows me to drive traffic to where I need it. Very cool! Except that it's paid traffic. While there are vast amounts of free traffic out there as well.

Free website traffic originates from people that start their browser, go to Google, and type what they're looking for. If Google thinks your site is all about whatever that person is looking for, you'll be on Google's page one. For that search term.

That's great, because that is *free* traffic. You want as much from that as you possibly can get!

...

But how do you know if Google recognizes your theme? How can you tell whether Google will indeed send specific "searchers" your way?

Easy.

Add some AdSense code to your pages, and watch which ads Google is displaying on your site. If they're appropiate to your site's content... congratulations! You were able to build a theme that Google can recognize.

But if your site is about widgets and all Google ads are about tennis rackets... then something went wrong somewhere.

But again - solving your problem is easy. Just alter your text, add your AdSense code again, and watch which ads are shown!

This is the fastest, easiest, cheapest and most accurate way you'll ever find to identify the theme of your site according to Google.

Innovation Revisited - Podcast

Maybe I have heard this too many times. I probably have, but that does not discount the importance of pushing different colors of the same song across to yo'all. Listen to this interesting ITConversation by Irving Wladawsky-Berger who is VP Technology and Strategy of IBM Server Group. You can hear the podcast here . He discusses the convergance of media, society and business .

The ability to innovate is at the core of every successful and enduring business. Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, head of IBM's e-business on demand initiative, delivers an engaging keynote address at OSBC 2005, on Innovation in an On Demand World. Irving sees innovation happening on many fronts but of particular interest is the innovation that is occurring at the technological, business and societal levels, which is causing a major shift in the way that businesses compete. No longer is everything proprietary or core to the business. To remain competitive the business must embrace innovation at the technological, business and societal levels.

At the technology level innovation in Web Services, Grid Computing and Autonomic Computing is having a significant impact on models for developing and delivering software and hardware solutions. Similarly, at the business level, innovations in Business Process Management, Business Process Outsourcing and Service Oriented Architectures are addressing the Business-IT disconnect and helping deliver complex business systems. In addition, at the societal level, business are innovating by adopting a collaboration model, pioneered by the open source community, to work with peers and solve complex, non-core problems. "

Open Source for everyone

Many Dutch Connection members made it to the Creative Capital Conference in Amsterdam in March, 2005. We also had the fortune of meeting and talking with a fascinating Brit, Geoff Mulgan. He worked for Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street and has just released a new document together with a partner writer who is the head of mySociety which you can find here at Demos to read or download. Here is an interview with him in Prospect which covers his lessons on power having served within the government, and this review of his new document at government forum 365

What is cool is that members of the Dutch Connection are also working on a open source toolkit to help innovation locally here in the Netherlands, and further afield.

placing culture in context

Here are a few news items that popped up on the rader. There has been such a buzz in the business and bloggosphere regarding social media and its unlocking potential. Below are two news items on environmental change and human extinction, that really bring home some painful truths. We can argue about mankind evolving and changing for the better, but we have a very short window in which to apply our ingenuity to cool down this dust bowl and prevent a mass extinction event. Sounding alarm bells is the intention of this post. Sure the links here are not towing the official party line. The truth is that the evidence keeps mounting on an ecological and oil depletion front. The bottom post is an extreme perspective from an american outsider group.

1. Cities may be abandoned as salt water invades

Dozens of major cities around the world are at risk from a previously ignored aspect of global warming - the salt-pollution of underground water

"THE water supplies of dozens of major cities around the world are at risk from a previously ignored aspect of global warming. Within the next few decades rising sea levels will pollute underground water reserves with salt.

Long before the rising tides flood coastal cities, salt water will invade the porous rocks that hold fresh water. "Even if we can fix the coastline, this saline incursion will increase," says Vincent Post, a hydrogeologist at the Free University, Amsterdam. The problem will be compounded by sinking water tables due to low rainfall, also caused by climate change, and rising water usage by the world's growing and increasingly urbanised population.

Underground water is the largest reserve of fresh water on the planet. Most cities use groundwater where possible because it is less prone to pollution than river water. Many people have no alternative: more than 2 billion depend on it, including most. "
...new scientist...2005

1. Back to the Ancient Future

"One of the hologram’s great illusions is that Industrial Civilization is evolutionary -- that it advances forever. Industrial civilization does not evolve. In the overall history of man it is extremely short and completely unsustainable. It is a one-time biological drama that rapidly consumes the necessary physical prerequisites for its own existence, the ecology and resources of the planetary gravity well in which it is trapped."
the dissident voice and their post