1X57 – Page 196

Why I walked out on Waiting For Superman

You want know what the hardest part about being a teacher in the US is?

It’s living in a culture where everybody thinks they can teach. Which is like saying everybody can be a doctor. Yet that is exactly what happens in teaching.

Everybody knows how to teach and they all get involved. They espouse opinions and beliefs. It’s like teaching is some mystic art that no one knows how to solve.

In the documentary, Waiting For Superman, Davis Guggenheim explores teaching like it is a mystical mess. He focuses on the system and how hard parents are trying. Why tenure sometimes gets in the way, etc. Not really anything different than what’s been said for 50 years.

Here’s something different. It takes three years minimum to become just a good teacher. Five years, minimum, to become a master teacher. Including the one year of post-grad that is six years to master the skill of teaching. If you are good. If you don’t have the right mentoring or curriculum help it could be 7-8 years. How long does it take to be a doctor, or a lawyer or accountant?

What would change if we all thought about teachers as equal to doctors:

– We might give parents and the PTA’s less input into schools (they’re the reason why we have tenure and it’s issues).

– The role of an “active parent” would switch from blaming schools and “watching” teachers to reading, helping with math, and going beyond the classroom to teach new lessons.

– The “business” of teaching would be more like hospitals. With an MBA handling the money, HR executive handling the hiring/firing/development, and master teachers handling the education.

– Lastly, and most importantly, we would all understand that our 12 years of being a student in no way makes us experts. Instead it makes us biased, bitter, and unable to help (at all) until we become master teachers (or at the very least learn something about education).

I really hoped Davis would explore these problems but instead he gave an uneducated “parents view” of education. Thanks a lot bud, you used ur considerable skill and prominence to just make things worse.

—-

*I posted this in Facebook at 11:21pm on October 9th, just after leaving the theatre*

The Tao of Moonbeam and the Most Expensive Election Ever

I feel for Meg Whitman. The former candidate for Governor of California spent 141 million dollars of her own money and lost. A loss made even more bitter by how she lost. Old Moonbeam barely announced his candidacy, waiting till what seemed like the last possible moment. Then refusing to raise money or run TV ads until late in the game, even waiting till a month before the election for TV ads. Finally, Moonbeam just grumbled his way to the Governor’s mansion, proudly proclaiming his political-ness, grouchiness, and cheapness.

“In choosing the oldest man ever to run the young state of California, voters decided that a grumpy penny-pincher is just what they need at a time when the state is so broke it cannot fix park benches or investigate burglaries.”

Which I think is awesome! It’s so California. Just when you think it’s going one way the state diverts and heads down a completely new path. It does fit the name, The Tao of Moonbeam, as written by Timothy Egan in the New York Times. Which is a great opinion piece well worth reading.

I guess at this point you may be asking, who the hell is Moonbeam?

It’s Jerry Brown and the name comes from Linda Ronstadt when they were lovers. Apparently the name leaked to the press in 1976 and it has stuck ever since. Back then Jerry Brown was an Obama-like superstar. The young politician was good looking, twice the Governor of California, and often a president candidate.

The popular definition of the name was “young, idealistic, and non-traditional”. A reference that some thought would hurt ‘Governor Moonbeam’, and it probably did hurt his presidential ambitions, but in California it became a point of pride. Especially as the state rose to dominate the country with its economy and culture. The story gets better though as the feud between Jerry, Ronstadt, and the press heats up…for more on this check out, How Jerry Became ‘Governor Moonbeam’, by Jesse McKinley in the New York Times.

I love California!

Facebook’s Social Mail and Innovation

When Amy and I started this company, 1×57, one of the things we wanted to do was pursue innovation. To create an environment where discussions can be open and frank, and lead us all to a better understanding of our world.

In this post I want to discuss social mail, Facebook’s latest innovation. I think this idea is innovative and revolutionary, but like any idea it is all in the execution. As the email wars heat up with AOL and Yahoo releasing updates to their webmail, it is clear that Google is in the lead. They recently released their Priority Inbox and the idea and execution are near perfect, in my opinion. Now, Facebook is entering the fray and here is why I think Google is scared..

To understand Facebook you have understand Mark Zuckerberg. The company does have countless managers, senior executives, VC’s, and nearly 2,000 employees but Mark is still king. The interesting part is that he doesn’t seem to be a good of a CEO but he is the boss for one reason and it is what drives Facebook. He wants to digitize our lives.

A process that I would argue is painful and frustrating for the average person. I think the frustrations over privacy and global domination are a thin veil for the truth. Of the 500 million users only a small fraction worry about that. The rest of us are more concerned about having our parents linked to us, or our ex-girlfriends, lame high school friends, etc.

When criticizing Mark Zuckerberg, as Debbie Weil does in her piece, I think its important to keep this in mind. Mark is not an evil genius, nor is he a polished executive. He is just a geek who regularly publicly humiliates himself. It sounds like such a familiar stereotype that I shouldn’t be surprised when the popular kids then make fun of and deride the geek. It is possible that we are blaming Mark for our own anguish over this digitization of our personal lives, even though any number of sites are pursuing this and it would have occurred anyways without him.

If you do pierce that veil you can start to see things a little more clearly. An objective business analysis shows that Google is deeply afraid of Facebook because their business model is built on turning weblinks into Page Rank. They maintain their edge over their competitors in the search market by jealously guarding that algorithm and relentlessly improving it. Facebook is built upon personal links between friends and colleagues and classmates. They maintain their edge in the same way by jealously guarding it and relentlessly innovating. The scary thing for Google is that their innovations are step based, meaning that they are only incremental improvements. In this area Google faces stiff competition from Bing and can only win by engaging in an arms race. A process that takes all the creativity and fun out of the job. It becomes a factory floor where stamping out regular new improvements is the job.

Contrast that with Facebook where innovation is exponential. This means big ideas, lots of creativity, and a real push to make it work today and you have an engineer’s dream job. It is easy to see why employees are leaving Google and joining Facebook en masse. Even though Techcrunch and most others would have you believe that it’s because of salary or a potential IPO. The real truth is that top talent cares more about the work they do than the money. Especially considering the environment they exist in where 100k salaries are paltry and talent is always paid well.

An example of this is Facebook Photos. In a silent but deadly way Facebook has come to dominate the entire online photo market, putting Flickr, Picasa, MySpace, and all the other niche sites in a distant second. It seems ridiculous how Facebook can ingest all of our photos, provide no vision for getting them out or even still having ownership of them, and still become the dominant player. Then you remember that all the other sites offered amazing features but no friends. It’s like if a (photo of) a tree falling in a forest and no one is around to see it, does it really fall?

This shows the power of personal relationships. Once you have that network built you can add countless pieces to it and people will love it. Video, links, threaded comments, events, groups. Each step adding millions more users and billions more dollars.

That is as long as each addition mimics real life as much as possible. You have to digitize our lives not filter them, because any filter will have a bias. Mark has learned this lesson many times over and now seems poised to move past it. He has a clarity of vision and is becoming very convincing to many of Silicon Valley’s brightest players.

Imagine if Mark came to you and said, ‘I want you to take your passion and create it online. I don’t want you to create one small part of it or even put your own mark on it, I want you to create a lasting perfect recreation of human culture online.” Then he shows you how he has done it before and how incredibly successful it has been. I don’t know about you but I would go googly-eyed and maybe even drop my company to do so.

This brings us back to Social Mail as Facebook’s entry into the email market. If you watch the announcement video and see it through the lens I just laid out for you, it becomes very clear. They are creating a message service that mimics our social lives as closely as possible. You want to talk to friends then talk to your friends and we will remove all the extra stuff like CC and Subject Lines. We will even add in caller blocking and other features that will make it easier to communicate. Each chapter of the video is designed to show you how much like real life Social Mail will be.

I think the idea is brilliant. The execution is the tough part. However, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg is putting all the right pieces into play, top talent, clarity of vision, and a relentless drive to make it happen.

Maybe he isn’t such a bad CEO after all…

Facebook's Social Mail and Innovation

Maybe he isn’t such a bad CEO after all…

And The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth: The New World Order

It was a quintessential David and Goliath scene: not one but two classically handsome twin brothers, resplendent with definitive Aryan features, 6‘5’’ athletic statures and a fittingly WASPy-sounding last name towering above the scrawny nerdy-looking Jewish kid wearing a Gap hoodie. Except the two Goliaths were asking David for programming help.

The phenomenon known as “The Facebook Movie” is just one of the symbolic dominoes falling in a series of events that all point in the direction of a seismic shift in power dynamics of our culture. Move over jocks, brawn is now measured by keystrokes.

Justin Timberlake playing Sean Parker in a major Hollywood film is as a big of a deal as Google engaging in diplomacy talks with China, controversy arising over group of Silicon Valley VC’s having a “secret” meeting in a private room of San Francisco wine bar, and a Kansas-based mutual fund company using a computer algorithm that ends up bringing down the entire stock market. We’re not talking about Wall Street or Washington, DC or even LA. Silicon Valley, a metonym for American high-tech, represents the new paradigm of living, where our online activities are just as real as our “IRL” activities. And they’re just as powerful, if not more.

All of it rings with a tenor of ironic charm. Like the kid in high school, the one scrawnier than the rest, wearing glasses, eating alone at the lunch table, and getting picked on mercilessly by a student body that values everything xe is not – that kid can bring down your server, hack into your accounts, and basically wreak havoc on your life. That kid is the next Mark Zuckerberg and belongs to an imposing consortium of humans – the technology geekhood.

The pioneers and architects of our online world are the gatekeepers and keyholders of our real life world. One can imagine a future in which the most prestigious clubs in the world are not predicated on family pedigree, social charm, athletic prowess or even basic good looks or wealth, but the ability to “get root access to a Python webserver, expose its SSL encryption and intercept all traffic over its secure port” – all while doing shots.

So the question is not whether the geeks will inherit the earth but rather now that the day has come, what does our future look like? Once we’re all connected, networked and dialed-in, does humanity fare for the better or for the worse? Will the geeks blow their inheritance or build a better world?

The DNI: Not an untenable situation

Soon, the United States will have a new Director of National Intelligence and while I wouldn’t want the position myself, it’s a situation that begs the question, “How can we win here – how can we succeed?” I say we as American citizens and taxpayers, but more specifically we as a former member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) who spent over a year promoting information sharing at Liberty Crossing.

At first glance, the position of DNI (and the office) is a losing battle. A fait accompli. Bottom line: it suffers from a lack of organizational authority over the Intelligence Community, which remains split by the DOD, where the Military Intelligence Program (MIP) (which includes NSA, NRO, NGA – the eyes and ears of the IC) is directed and controlled by the Secretary of Defense. As long intelligence programs continue to be authorized and funded by defense authorization legislation, the authority of the DNI is in theory, not practice. That’s one aspect.

There’s also a little a agency proceeded by The. Technically, the CIA on the IC org chart reports to the DNI. But this hasn’t been the case, mainly because neither the previous POTUS nor the current POTUS has asked it to. While it might be tricky to gauge the success of a “covert” agency, I think the CIA is doing something right. If it wasn’t, the Executive Office would be be favoring the DNI. But it’s not, as seen in the Chief of Station turf battle and the PDB squabble. Perhaps the DNI hasn’t proven it’s value to the Executive Office. Or perhaps it’s simply human nature to favor the team in which you have more confidence when your own ass is on the line.

Regardless of whose ass is on the line, the main question is: how can the DNI succeed? The easy answer is it can when the President wants it to. Until the President says that the DNI is not just the authoritative agency for the intelligence community but his go-to, the DNI destined to fail. At a recent Palantir Night Live with Michael Chertoff (*disclaimer: Palantir is a client), the former Secretary of Homeland Security commented on the DNI’s current state: “You don’t grow a tree by pulling it up by the roots every year.” Or not giving it the environment and elements it needs to succeed.

Yes, I think the odds are stacked against the DNI. But it’s not an untenable situation. There is a way for the DNI to win (aside from legislative reform and a shift in Executive Office backing) and that’s technology: information, data, networks, platforms, tools, search, discovery, integration, visualization, analysis. The Google play.

I don’t know what James Clapper is aiming to do as DNI, but if he can build off the success of Intelink and leverage analytic tools across it, he’ll be far ahead of his predecessors. Forget who is delivering the PDB. Focus on delivering information and tools to the base, the people actually working intelligence issues. Get rid of the “consultants” and by consultants I mean $150-$300/hr professional-services-white-paper-writing managers with no IT/computer background whose firms front-load their contracts with grandiose promises and hefty price tags. Hire engineers. Hire folks like Jeff Jonas and enlist forward-leaning minds like Michele Weslander Quaid. And let the engineers sell whatever great innovations they come up with on the government’s dime back to the government. Offer a progressive working environment that looks less like a depressing status quo industrial-style grey cube farm and more like Starbucks so 20-somethings who grew up with laptops and coffee shops don’t feel like they’ve entered a sick time-warp joke.

No solution is ever simple. There’s always politics and posturing, like battles over where networks and applications reside and who should be paying for what. And the IC network terrain isn’t that same as the open internet. And offering IT solutions isn’t specifically DNI’s charter. But the network is power. Information is power. Access to information is power. If the DNI can continue to dig in the direction of presenting IT solutions to the issue of knowledge sharing in a siloed world where key knowledge holders are resistant to share beyond their agency walls, it can wield a swift undercurrent of power in the IC. Some agencies and players might buck against this but open source information coupled with a composite of inter-IC sources can threaten any individual agency’s no-play strategy.

If Clapper’s relationship is as strong as Gates makes it out to be, he can take advantage of two key opportunities for the IC: geo-location and the mobile web (which are big plays for NRO, NGA and NSA). In an increasingly geo-located world, location is where it’s at. And in an ever-growing mobile web environment, the trend of using text over voice communications could become a big opportunity for the IC for leveraging effective written language translation services.

I’m not naive or ignorant to the challenges of offering IT solutions in a highly bureaucratic world. Even if the “If you build it, they will come” mantra holds true, it certainly doesn’t mean people will play and stay. However, until the IC operates like the internet (opening agency doors and channels to data and information), I think the DNI is necessary to make sure one agency’s mission or agenda doesn’t undermine the success of the entire community and offering community IT solutions is the best play.

The Difference between Success and Failure is Will

Sometimes in life you don’t realize the impact of a person or event until you have the experience and perspective to understand it’s uniqueness. Few people stand out in my mind as having a positively illuminating impact on my life – I mean truly shine, like a lighthouse in the middle of a vast, dark ocean – and Sue Behringer is one those people.

Sue recently retired after 20 years of serving as Assistant Coach for the Severna Park Varsity Women’s Field Hockey team. Severna Park Field Hockey holds the state record for most State Championships, is the toughest team at the school to make, and it’s head coach, Lillian Shelton, is responsible for bringing the sport of field hockey to Anne Arundel county in 1975 when she created Severna Park’s team, then subsequently led the expansion of the sport throughout county.

Before my first year of high school, I had no substantive knowledge of or experience playing field hockey, even though I grew up a jock. Once I arrived, I quickly learned that field hockey was the most prestigious sport to play. It wasn’t football, it wasn’t basketball, it wasn’t baseball. The field hockey team’s level of success and excellence was unparalleled.

For my freshman spring semester gym class, I had the good fortune of having Coach Shelton as my gym teacher. During the indoor field hockey portion of class, Coach Shelton pulled me aside and asked if I had ever played. When I told her no, she convinced me to come out for the junior varsity team in the Fall. Which I did. And I made.

The JV team was headed up by an All-American Division I Field Hockey and Lacrosse player. While she and Coach Shelton had their differences, I flourished under Coach Petersen’s coaching and ended the year as the team’s leading scorer.

If I wasn’t a favorite of Coach Petersen’s, I certainly felt and played like I was. Getting the ball in the net seemed like the easiest thing for me to do. Until the next year when I moved up to varsity the next year. On varsity, I was not a favorite of Coach Shelton’s. As a junior I didn’t start and spent more time on the bench than on the field. I learned to accept this but my senior year, when I wasn’t selected as part of the starting line-up, it got to me. It affected my entire game-time playing ability. There were circumstances outside of just me that impacted my game performances, but I think the biggest factor was inside my head. Things I did in practice I could rarely repeat in games and it got progressively worse. The entire regular season passed by and I only scored a handful of goals. I remember one game against a relatively easy team where the ball was right in front of my stick, in front of the goal, and I didn’t move. It was like my natural instinct to score had all but vanished.

So there I was sitting on the sideline of a scoreless game at the quarterfinals when a time-out was called with only a few minutes on the clock. Coach Behringer pulled me aside and before sending me in, said:

“You’re going to score.”

“I want to,” I replied.

“Not want to. You will.”

Thirty seconds later, I knocked the ball in the goal, and it made a loud, thunderous clang that rang up into the bleachers. The goal sent our team in the semi-finals. The newspaper write-up of the game didn’t do Coach Behringer justice. She knew I could score. I had stopped believing it much earlier on in the season.

I went on to do it again in the semi-finals, only in that game we were down 1-0. I scored with less than 10 minutes on the clock to tie it up and my teammate scored to send us to the State Championships.

In the state championship game, with 3 minutes left, we were down 1-0 but a teammate scored a goal to tie it up which sent us into overtime. But neither team could score. As the time on the clock was winding down to less than 2 minutes, our team was awarded a penalty stroke. Without even looking at the sideline for a cue from the coaches, I walked up to take it. I had no doubts, no nervousness, no awareness of all the people anxiously watching me. It was just me, the ball, and the goal.

I sent the ball sailing into the net. It won the game and won us the championship. But that goal started with the words ‘you will.’ There’s a big difference between saying you want to achieve something and saying you will achieve it.

I don’t know what would have happened if Sue hadn’t had that talk with me on the sideline before sending me in. Maybe I would have scored. Maybe not. I do know this: the people who don’t believe, who don’t give and show support, who don’t have faith, who don’t say ‘you will’ – they’re a dime a dozen in this world. The Sue Behringers of the world, however, are the reason championships are won, dynasties are built, and masterpieces are created.

They say in sports, it’s all in your head. It’s true in sports and it’s true in life. The outcome of every endeavor is determined before any action is ever taken. Thanks, Sue, for teaching me one of the most valuable lessons of success and life.

In Opposition to The Pill

I don’t normally write about sex per se at 1×57 but the recent 50th anniversary of the U.S. FDA’s approval of “The Pill” stirred up so many thoughts about sexuality, gender, childbearing, relationships, access to information, and the government’s role in all of this that I couldn’t miss the opportunity to ask questions.

I wouldn’t be speaking about this if it hadn’t been for an email Erin Kotecki-Vest shared that was sent to her in response to the ideas she expressed in a CNN piece – What ‘The Pill’ did:

Dear Erin Kotecki-Vest,

I read your piece on CNN.com and I think I know why you are not in God’s favor. HE will take your woman parts because you do NOT obey HIM. You deserve to have much pain in your surgery and to know HIS will.

I pray for you

When I saw this, I couldn’t help but think (besides how sad the author is plagued with such ignorance and hatred) we as a society have a long way to go. For someone to show such vitriol over a woman’s ability to control reproduction means there is still a prevailing sentiment in our culture that fears women having control. Period.

In the past century, we’ve experienced tremendous change, both technologically and socially, with regards to reproduction and birth control. At the time of my grandmother’s childbearing years, even after giving birth to five children and begging for a tubal ligation, it was still her male physician’s decision to determine when she had conceived enough children to warrant the procedure. She would go on to give birth to two more children, almost dying in labor with her last stillborn child.

During the time of my mother’s childbearing years, there was an entire generation of girls who “went away.” It wasn’t talked about then and it’s not talked about today but post-World War II and pre-Roe v Wade and the prescribing of birth control pills to unmarried women, approximately 1 out of 4 sexually active American women who got pregnant were shipped off to religion-based “homes,” where they were hidden away until they gave birth, then coerced or even forced into giving up their babies for adoption. I can’t imagine how painful or difficult this must have been. Nor can I fully appreciate how relatively recent this practice is – just one generation removed from someone my age.

Which brings me to The Pill and contemporary views on birth control. For all intents and purposes, I support anything that gives women reign over their bodies and prevents the situations my mother’s and grandmother’s generations were put in. What I take issue with is how pregnancy prevention is still considered, by a large segment of our society, a woman’s responsibility, although not necessarily a right. And I wonder what a pro-Pill society means for women.

Many women, young and old, view The Pill as a symbol of personal empowerment and yet I hear too many women say the reason they’re on it is because the men/boys they’re with don’t like wearing condoms. Are women being empowered by doing what’s right for their own bodies or are they simply trying to avoid “inconveniencing” men? Add on the fact that The Pill does nothing to prevent the spread and contraction of STDs, to which women are much more vulnerable than men, as well as the plethora of unfavorable side effects it can have, and The Pill doesn’t seem like such a blessing, which is unfortunate since the trend in the United States seems to be making The Pill the norm. According to the most recent government data, from 2002, more than eight in ten American women ages 15 to 44 had taken oral contraceptives at some point in their lives. And stories of teenage girls going on The Pill as soon they hit puberty are widespread. I can only imagine this thrills pharmaceutical companies, for which oral contraceptives is a multi-billion dollar business. This makes me a little skeptical. Anytime there’s lots of money to be made, I always wonder about the costs. And who bears them.

For all the women who love The Pill, I’m glad. I’m glad it’s had a positive impact. For me it’s had the opposite. Over the course of my adult life, I’ve been on ten different birth control pills – from Depo to Ortho to Yasmin. And every time it’s had some type of adverse effect on me – from horrible mood swings to extreme lethargy to a libido without a pulse. I know I’m not the only one who has experienced or experiences this, and this is what I find disconcerting. What if an entire generation of women grow up only knowing nothing else? I also wonder if one of the reasons The Pill is effective in preventing pregnancy is because it’s makes women not want to have sex. I know too many couples (too too many) where lack of sex is a primary issue in the relationship. I’m not blaming The Pill here, but I can’t imagine it helps the situation. Women’s lib shouldn’t come at the cost of a woman’s libido.

I don’t have a universal alternative solution for The Pill. For me, it’s meant the guy I’m with has had to take an active role in making sure our actions don’t create any unwanted consequences. It’s meant either using condoms or using the pullout method (an option more viable now that Plan B can be obtained over the counter). It’s been 100% effective in my relationships but it requires my partner have a sense of his own body and what he’s doing and it also requires trust, which, in my opinion, are essential components of a healthy sexual relationship.

I don’t know what the future holds for birth control and reproduction. Maybe it will be an ultrasound procedure for males (like the one being developed at the University of North Carolina) or maybe it will be an artificial uterus. I do know that no matter what technological advances we make, it’s very much a social issue that’s at the center of debate in government, politics, and business. And it will probably continue to be. But it’s a topic that needs to be talked about openly and explored, by both men and women. Relegating it as a women-only responsibility, considering it a topic inappropriate to talk about in public forums, and allowing any one body of thought to dictate the terms, doesn’t do anybody any good.

The Studs of SXSW Interactive 2010

In a delayed response to The Frisky’s “The Studs of SXSW” post which unceremoniously omits the fellas of Southby’s Interactive to solely highlight the Music-makers, I decided to pay tribute to the nerds of Southby with my own personal list of men who are not only worth watching, but who are worth looking at:

Mark Hendrickson, founder of Plancast, the much talked-about and utlized service at Southby this year which can be most easily described as “Foursquare for the future.” Mark talks to TECHcocktail’s Frank Gruber here where you can easily see why I put him at the top of the list.

Andy McAfee, HBS professor turned MIT scientist turned best-selling author turned stand-up comedian. Andy somehow packed the house for an early Monday morning session (that means the nerds had been socializing for at least three days straight!) with a talk on Corporate America. Andy is not technically a stand-up comedian but he managed to keep the audience not only awake, but engaged and wanting more.

Jesse Thomas, also known as the guy who spells his name with a number, Jess3’s work was plastered everywhere at Southby. The creative force behind this State of the Internet masterpiece, you can expect big things to come from Jesse in the future.

Aaron Vest, the man behind the force known as Queen of Spain, or simply Erin Kotecki-Vest’s husband. Mr. Vest entertained followers by tweeting the experience of “getting his sxsw cherry popped.” In no way does he appear emasculated by having a strong, successful woman as a wife. Rather the opposite.

Steven, the Robotchampion, Mandzik, aka the man who makes me compost stuff and wash out and reuse my yogurt containers. A true nerd’s nerd, the Robot led what I consider one of the best talks at Southby, a very interactive discussion on Zero Waste.

So while Gary Vee still “brought the thunder”, while Robert Scoble continued his thought-provoking tech musings, and while Pete Cashmore is still just as good-looking in person as he is in his Mashable avatar, I think it’s important to recognize new talent and give credit where credit is due. Thanks guys.

A TweetStory Of My SXSW Talk on Zero Waste

It’s a shame to let the twitter stream go to waste. So when looking for ways to recap my experience delivering a talk on Zero Waste at SXSW, the twittstream seemed like the perfect way to tell the story.

It all starts with my last two tweets before getting started:

robotchampion Prepped and ready for 1230 #zerowaste talk, props, surprise guests, and even activism!

robotchampion Talk is just moments away, use the #zerowaste hashtag

As we get started eight folks chime in with GoWalla and Foursquare check-ins and general announcements about it beginning:

steveblackmon #zerowaste — at Zero Waste: The Future of Green http://gowal.la/s/4rK2

JessiO At the #zerowaste session in 8A. (@ Austin Convention Center w/ @ramon_deleon @benedictwong @leahjones) http://4sq.com/8RQqOx

YannR next #zerowaste … the future of green @ sxsw

sustaining Settling in at the #zerowaste session; looks like a diverse crowd and a lot of Austinites!

Then, I launch into my intro attempting to explain #zerowaste, but here is what they crowd hears/tweets:

GREENITED On average Americans create 6 pounds of trash per day per person. #zerowaste #sxsw

createthegood At #zerowaste, @robotchampion is talking about companies like @WholeFoods that are reducing the amt of trash they send to landfill. Saves $.

accooper1 Change the size of the compost (largest) recycle & landfill (smallest) bins to help change behavior #zerowaste #sxsw

createthegood #zerowaste is diverting from landfills… composting, recycling… – @robotchampion #SXSW

Ok, so either I was extremely captivating and no one cared to tweet, or I talked way too fast and folks only had time to tweet major snippets?

createthegood Next speaker is Beth Ferguson from Austin… Her design thesis was on solar charging stations for electric vehicles & bikes. #zerowaste

agreenerlifeorg At the #zerowaste panel being impressed with people’s ingenuity.

Blocks8 Look for the solar recharge stations that look like 1950’s gas pumps around Austin #sxsw #zerowaste

createthegood One audience member said they saw it last night and there was a line. People are digging it. #zerowaste // Now I wanna go snap a pic!

LisaRedShoesPR did not know about the retro-fitted 50s style gas pumps as solar charging stations for bikes, laptops around… #sxsw #zerowaste

sustaining Beth Ferguson’s design for a solar electric charging station incorporates 1950s gas pumps to make energy consumption visible. #zerowaste

craftyb RT @createthegood: Henry Ford’s wife drove the first electric vehicle. #zerowaste #whoknew

I chime in with an important fact that a few tweet about:

changeorder The greatest new energy source is energy reduction. #zerowaste #sxsw

Then our next speaker, Jason Aramburu, starts off with a zinger:

brianfit Clean coal? Oxymoron! #zerowaste

brookebf Rechar doing project in Houston ship channel w waste wood fr hurricane ike gen pwr & fertilizer reduce landfill #zerowaste #sxswi #housxsw

After Jason’s talk I go off on compost, which seemed to set off a flurry of tweets:

createthegood A lot of people in the room raise their hand saying they compost. Me, I’m learning. #zerowaste #SXSW

ericavandenberg “Farmers call compost black gold” #zerowaste #sxswi

KuraFire Compost is the new black gold. #zerowaste

Amy begins her part:

createthegood Next up, @sengseng (aka “Steve’s woman”) She’s talking about the girlfriend’s perspective living with someone who lives #zerowaste lifestyle

kirbstr #zerowaste victim or guinea pig 🙂

createthegood . @sengseng‘s first reaction was that #zerowaste is impossible in today’s society #SXSW

accooper1 Waste is just a bad habit not a lifestyle #zerowaste #sxsw

createthegood Even just bringing a water bottle or your own cup helps reduce the paper generated. – @sengseng #zerowaste #SXSW

createthegood Changing food habits was one of the biggest challenges. @robotchampion & @sengseng shop at farmers markets mainly #zerowaste #SXSW

LisaRedShoesPR Re-think what constitutes a meal … #sxsw #zerowaste eat things from farmer’s markets.

Amy hits the tweet bingo with the most folks re-tweeting her lines/quoting her. Then a questioneer brings up the crucial question with perfect timing and saving me from the awkward transition to it. What are the online resources for zero waste, food, etc.?

LisaRedShoesPR take note of the #slowfood movement. #sxsw #zerowaste

createthegood To find your local farmers markets or locally sourced food, one resource is http://www.localharvest.org/ #zerowaste #SXSW

LisaRedShoesPR check out eatwellguide.org for farmer’s guide market #sxsw #zerowaste

Finally, the session winds down with announcements and lots of folks with new ideas:

kirbstr #zerowaste comment on the waste of the swag bags, but they are a revenue source for smaller biz but #sxsw is cutting down on paper wastes

MelissaSavcic Great talk about #zerowaste at #sxsw There needs to be more ‘green’ lifestyle conferences!

KuraFire IFixit.com is aiming to be a Wikipedia for fixing your own hardware (like broken iPhone screens). #zerowaste

KuraFire “Reduce first, Reuse second, Recycle third. Now a fourth one: Rethink.” #Zerowaste

floridagirlindc My fave from #zerowaste panel at #SXSW: @sengseng‘s “Look at the faces of people in supermakret vs people at farmers market. Who’s happier?”

the007way #zerowaste www.soldesignlab.com Been considering an elec scooter but I have nowhere to charge it at present. Just got rid of car.

The Stats

6 rave reviews and 2 critiques (here, here, I followed up personally with each critique)
During the 60 minute session:
— there were 51 ReTweets
— 204 Tweets using the hashtag #zerowaste
— which is 3.4 tweets/minute or about a tweet every 18 seconds
1 Live Streamer
3 Live Note Takers (by YannR, cwcinc, and benrigby)

The Ending, My Favorite Tweet

AeroSuch Lots of sandals & composters at #Zerowaste. Great insights into solar recharge, bio charcoal, and savingmoney/calories/trash #habits #sxsw