Monkeynotions

Tonight I went to BayCHI, I’d have to say one of the best ones, mainly because the juxtaposition of the 2 speakers: Tara Hunt and Marc Canter. They were either two sides of the same coin or the opposite spectrum.

Tara gave the shortest presentation ever. Seriously. Done in about 10 min. and then she opened up to questions conversation. At first I was disappointed because I wanted her to continue with the wisdom she was departing, but I soon realized this was part of the emphasis of her main point:

“Markets are a conversation that needs to treat people like humans.”

Enter Marc Canter, different speaking style and subject — his site PeopleAggregator. The name is 50% right and 100% wrong. The first part is very humanizing: people. The second part makes me feel like I’m going to the slaughter house or some number to be processed. He continued to talk about tools an creating and building your own social networking site so you can be your own oligarchy. Okay what a way to make friends and be “social”. He continued to drive the point home by basically wanting a large identity management site so that when you graduate from say Facebook, you can take your friends with you. That’s a nice thought but do humans want that? Do we like to combine our identity into one place with access points to everything? Is that how we negotiate new experiences and friends?

By now I can tell I wouldn’t get a second date. I know that’s all configurable through PeopleAggregator, but do I want to configure my identity for each interaction/social network I belong to? Isn’t that what Yahoo and Google Groups affords me? In the end Marc got real excited about PeopleAggregator as a tool that he continuously used words such as oligarchy, ruling, and aggregate (my favorite: digital lifestyle aggregator). Maybe it’s because I’m female or want an egalitarian society where everyone is valued, that these types of words turn me off when speaking about community. To me, in doing that, he was undoing everything Tara had just spoke about: People are humans and you can’t treat them like a tool or en masse.

OR as I posited in the beginning, perhaps PeopleAggregator is the tool to allow these conversations, and they are 2 sides of the same coin. I know Marc wants it to be, but the words he uses to explain seem to be nefarious and poisonous to these conversations…

…my 2 cents. But to find your own 2 cents, definately listen to the podcast when it’s up and running (thanks Steve )

Update: Tara has posted up her notes from her talk.

Technorati Tags: baychi, tarahunt, marccanter,peopleaggregator

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 13th, 2006 at 8:08 am and is filed under social networks, siliconvalley, social media, geekevents, baychi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.