Participative Web : oecd-pw-session1

Photos: First session

Kieren Mccarthy — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:25:00 GMT

Chair John Lettice, Editorial Director of The Register

Ginsu Yoon, Vice President, Business Affairs for Linden Lab

Michael Gill, Chief Executive Officer, Fairfax Business Media

Democracy as dictatorship

Kieren Mccarthy — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:37:00 GMT

A very interesting and wide-ranging discussion in the first session has now closed. But what stood out most was the issue of jurisdiction and the meta issue of forms of government.

Ginsu Yoon from Second Life was asked if Linden Labs weren’t in fact running a benevolent dictatorship. This sparked mention of terrorism in Second Life – apparently people have been using their pixelated virtual selves to blow up pixilated virtual buildings. Later on, Marc Rotenberg stood up at the mic to explain that the Electronic Privacy Information Center had inserted Second Life between San Marino and Singapore in its “Privacy and Human Rights” book (an extremely weighty tome) because it now considered it is own jurisdiction. Continuing the same theme, Cyrus Beagley, suggested there was an important role for governments in protecting people’s privacy.

Yoon explained that it wasn’t the first time Linden has been asked to impose rules on Second Life. But, he explained, as soon as you impose *any* rules, you are telling people how they need to behave online. This is, he explains, “democracy as dictatorship” and it was instead “up to people to form their own social rules”. Jonathan Taplin observed that far from democracy, there was a “certain level of anarchy in Second Life”.

So what is it – dictatorship, democracy or anarchy?

It’s probably telling that the CIA popped up at this point. Second Life is, it appears, the best method that the Central Intelligence Agency has ever found to teach its people Korean manners – how to teach people “not to do something culturally inappropriate”, according to Taplin, who said he spoke witha "mid-level" CIA employee about it. If that wasn’t enough, Yoon then posited that if terrorism became virtual people blowing up virtual buildings (rather than real people and real buildings), then it would be a “tremendous evolution” for humankind.

In one sense, he’s right, except try telling that to companies that in the future may spends millions on real estate and use it to run billions of dollars of trade through. If that was to get blown up, it would have immediate real-world consequences. In this utopia, we may be physically safer, but if the economy suffers (and money is increasingly a virtual series of 1s and 0s on bank servers) we may not be able to raise the money to pay our broadband bills and so be able to keep visiting the bombed-out virtual world.

As my fellow blogger Richard Akerman has pointed out the connection to the real world is where those servers are based. But even so, it sparks yet more issues of jurisdiction. If someone physically based in Korea breaks the laws of the United States in a virtual world contained on servers held in Brazil and a bank in Singapore fails as a result - a scenario that is not impossible to imagine - what do you do?

The transcript of the meeting is available here.

Trying to make Net money the Bob Dylan way

Kieren Mccarthy — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:24:00 GMT

The opening presentations from the panellists have finished and there was an interesting array of perspectives.

Jonathan Taplin, who comes from an entertainment business and worked with Bob Dylan back in the day, suggested – naturally enough – that people look to the music industry to find a solution to what he sees at the biggest challenge for the participative web.

Namely, how to actually make money from the content that is flying across broadband links 24 hours a day. His solution: a copyright fee leveled at the ISP level, in the same way that songwriters are paid from the licence-fee pool.

The solution sounds right. But then as anyone that has been to Internet conference over the years they will recognise a familiar pattern: what appears to be a perfectly logical solution to an important issue.

History unfortunately is against this solution ever working (although not without a number of companies trying to form a business model around it and giving up two years’ later). It’s best not to forget that Google originally planned to make all of its money from selling its search tool to businesses to help them find material – the consumer front-end of it was just to help test the technology and get some awareness in the market. That business search model is tiny and Google makes all its money for the ad word business on its consumer search.

The lesson to learn is: if you ever predict the best method or system for making money, you can assured only one thing – that it won’t happen. Ginsu Yoon from Second Life argued later that it's still best to wait and see what happens - and Second Life's parent company, Linden, is, he explained, carefully watching the virtual economy that happens over their network. An economy that links to the real world (and real dollars) and currently sees $1 million a day go around the system. Michael Gill from Fairfax appears to agree. He feels certain that there is money to be made from companies providing high-quality content online, but that the "models are not yet in place".

Taplin used as an example the nine million people that viewed a video on YouTube of a US student recently being subdued with a Tazer gun by campus police in a debating forum. This was more eyeballs that most US cable stations ever manage, he pointed out.

And that’s just it: if there are nine million people looking at something in the spate of just a few days, somewhere, somehow there is money to be made from it. The frustration of businessmen is that they know this, but don’t have an agreed method for getting at it.

I don’t think we can’t expect that frustration to cease any time soon, not while the Internet continues to chop and change at such relentless speed.

The transcript of this meeting is now available online here

Session 1 -- The Future of the Participative Web: Convergence and Diversity?

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 21:07:00 GMT

9.20-10.50

TK: 10.20pm
PA: 3.20pm
NY: 9.20am
LA: 6.20am

John Lettice (Chair), Co-founder and Editorial Director, The Register
Jonathan Taplin, Professor, University of California
Cyrus Beagley, Associate Principal, Media Practice, McKinsey
Ginsu Yoon, Vice President, Business Affairs, SecondLife
Michael Gill, Chief Executive Officer, Fairfax Business Media

Click here for a rundown of all blog posts covering this session.

The terms "web 2.0" or the "participative web" mark a key difference with the first wave of Internet activities in the late 1990s. This new phase repeats elements of the first wave (growing venture capital investment, high prices for Internet start-ups), and includes new trends (social networking, collaboration and interactions among individuals and firms) which are creating high expectations for innovation, growth and employment.

Participative web applications are increasingly being used in non-ICT sectors such as media, travel, and finance and wider activities such as research, healthcare, education and government. However, private and public strategies and viable business models are still in a state of flux and impacts are unclear. This session will explore the development of the participative web in four areas:

Building the participative web: New web platforms and fixed and mobile infrastructure
Investing in the future: New business creation and business models
Applications software and services: Search engines, web services, computing capabilities
Content creators: Media giants, businesses and individual users

Cyrus Beagley

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 20:41:00 GMT

Cyrus Beagley is an Associate Principal in McKinsey & Company’s media and entertainment practice in New York. He serves a range of media and entertainment clients, focusing primarily on advertising sales, marketing, and online business building. He is one of the leaders of McKinsey’s knowledge initiative in participatory media which aims to develop a better understanding of the implications of user generated content and social networking on media companies and marketers.

Cyrus holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and received his Master’s degree in Economics and Finance, summa *** laude, from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, France.

Michael Gill

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 20:08:00 GMT

Michael Gill was appointed Chief Executive Officer, Fairfax Business Media in January 2007 and held the position of Publisher and Editor-in-chief of Fairfax Business Media from July 1998. He is responsible for the business management and editorial direction of The Australian Financial Review, AFR Access, AFR Magazine, BOSS, afr.com, BRW, The Australian Financial Review Smart Investor, CFO, MIS (Australia, NZ, Asia and UK) and Fairfax Business Research.

Prior to his current appointment, Michael was employed in business development for John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. From 1996 to 1998 his role was to examine business opportunities related to business information.

From 1993 to 1996 he was deputy editor of The Australian Financial Review, having joined the AFR as a senior writer in 1990. He was a presenter on Business Sunday (TV) from 1988 to 1990.

John Lettice

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:25:00 GMT

John Lettice: Journalist specialising in technology for the past 25 years. Former Editor in Chief of Dennis Publishing's IT titles. Co-founded The Register in 1994 as a newsletter, making the transition to web publication in 1998. Currently Editorial Director of The Register.

Jonathan Taplin

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 18:01:00 GMT

Jonathan Taplin's areas of specialization are in International Communication Management and the field of digital media entertainment. Taplin began his entertainment career in 1969 as Tour Manager for Bob Dylan and The Band. In 1973 he produced Martin Scorsese's first feature film, Mean Streets which was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. Between 1974 and 1996, Taplin produced 26 hours of television documentaries (including The Prize and Cadillac Desert for PBS) and 12 feature films including The Last Waltz, Until The End of the World, Under Fire and To Die For. His films were nominated for Oscar and Golden Globe awards and chosen for The Cannes Film Festival seven times.

In 1984 Taplin acted as the investment advisor to the Bass Brothers in their successful attempt to save Walt Disney Studios from a corporate raid. This experience brought him to Merrill Lynch, where he served as vice president of media mergers and acquisitions. In this role, he helped re-engineer the media landscape on transactions such as the leveraged buyout of Viacom. Taplin was a founder of Intertainer and has served as its Chairman and CEO since June 1996. Intertainer was the pioneer video-on-demand company for both cable and broadband Internet markets. Taplin holds two patents for video on demand technologies.

Mr. Taplin graduated from Princeton University. He is a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and sits on the advisory board of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland and of Public Knowledge in Washington, DC. He is a founding member of the Annenberg Research Network for International Communications. He serves as an advisor to Business Edge Solutions. Taplin was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in December 2006 to the California Broadband Taskforce.

Ginsu Yoon

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:52:00 GMT

Ginsu Yoon - Vice President, Business Affairs. Gene Yoon handles a variety of business matters for Linden Lab, including international market development, corporate and business development, and external developer programs. He was also previously the company's general counsel and provided interim leadership for finance. Prior to Linden Lab, he was general counsel and corporate secretary at Airespace, a wireless LAN equipment company, where he negotiated key strategic relationships, including the sale of the company to Cisco Systems.

Before joining Airespace, Gene was a principal at KTB Ventures, leading the firm's investments in wireless communications, networking equipment and semiconductors. He worked with the Airespace founders prior to joining KTB, while consulting with portfolio companies of Storm Ventures. He practiced law at Venture Law Group, advising many technology startups and venture capital firms, and at Kirkland & Ellis in New York, where his practice focused on leveraged buyouts and other complex corporate transactions. Gene received an A.B. degree from Princeton University and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Snapshot: What is the conference rundown?

Kieren Mccarthy — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 17:03:00 GMT

This is cut-down version of the full agenda. You can download the full agenda as a pdf here, or use the links below to learn more about each sessions and those taking part in it.

The conference runs from 9am to 6pm. It is based in Ottawa, Canada, so in terms of time that is Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) which is currently GMT -4 hours. See here for a time rundown according to different cities of the world.

The conference comprises five main sessions - three split into two different stream - running for 80 minutes each and with a five-minute conclusion at the end:

Participative Web conference agenda
Time	Event	People
9.00-9.20 TK: 10pm PA: 3pm NY: 9am LA: 6am	OPENING	Michael Binder Suzanne Huttner John Oxley (Facilitator)
9.20-10.50	The Future of the Participative Web	John Lettice (Chair) Jonathan Taplin Cyrus Beagley Ginsu Yoon Michael Gill
10.50-11.10	Coffee break
11.10-12.30	Creativity and the Internet Economy	Stream A	Stream B
TK: 12.10am PA: 4.10pm NY: 11.10am LA: 8.10am	Stream A: Business 2.0 and innovation Stream B: Research 2.0 - eScience and new ways of interaction	David Crane (chair) Bob Young Anthony Williams Paul Misener Daniel Bretonès Shenja van der Graaf	Walter Stewart (chair) Andrew Herbert Bill St. Arnaud Mario Campolargo Diana Rhoten
12.30-13.45	Lunch	Robert Sutor
13.45-15.05	Creativity and the Internet Economy	Stream A	Stream B
TK: 2.45am PA: 7.45pm NY: 1.45pm LA: 10.45am	Stream A: User-created content: What are the impacts? Stream B: Government 2.0 - Engaging citizens	Michael Leblanc (Chair) Jungwook Lim Andres Monroy-Hernandez Jennifer Corriero Manon Ress	Ellen Miller (Chair) Don Lenihan Alejandro Hernandez Pulido Wolfgang Blau Quitterie Delmas
15.05-16.25	Confidence and Competition in the Internet Economy	Stream A	Stream B
TK: 4.05am PA: 9.05pm NY: 3.05pm LA: 12.05pm	Stream A: Creation, access and competition Stream B: Confidence, privacy and security	William New (Chair) Kiyoshi Mori Urs Gasser Anne Bucher Martin Senftleben	Hugh Stevenson (Chair) Gary Davis Chris Kelly Jennifer Mardosz John Lawford
16.25-16.45	Coffee break
16.45-17.55 TK: 5.45am PA: 10.45pm NY: 4.45pm LA: 1.45pm	Policy Roundtable: Opportunities and Challenges for Policy	Michael Geist (Chair) Sangwon Ko Marc Rotenberg Daniela Battisti Joseph Alhadeff Keith Besgrove Neil Anderson
17.55-18.00	CONCLUSIONS and Priority-Setting for the OECD	Richard Simpson

TK	PA	NY	LA
Tokyo	Paris	New York	Los Angeles

Other snapshots: