[vox] [fwd] SVLUG Feb. 3rd meeting: "Infrastructure Memes: How Spreadable?Concepts Can Create and Empower Communities" [Mtn View]

[Bill Kendrick]

And SVLUG meets in Mtn View _today_:

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen -----

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 01:38:14 -0800
From: Rick Moen
Subject: [svlug-announce] SVLUG Feb. 3rd meeting: "Infrastructure Memes: How Spreadable Concepts Can Create and Empower Communities"

WHEN:

  Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 (today!)
  7pm-9pm


MAIN PRESENTATION

  TOPIC:
    Infrastructure Memes: How Spreadable Concepts Can Create and Empower
    Communities 

  PRESENTED BY:
    David Weekly

  TOPIC SUMMARY:
      The Internet enables ideas about how communities can self-organize
      to spread rapidly and globally, along with the infrastructure
      required to power a group, enabling "freely franchiseable" models
      like LUGs, BarCamps, DevHouses, hackerspaces, etc.  In this sense, 
      the infrastructure for the community is communicated as an idea 
      virus, or meme - a sort of cultural "grey goo".  

      Maintaining a sufficient consistency of the idea such that global 
      community "identity" is coherent is a challenge, leading to 
      discussions of Community Marks and other novel forms of trademark.  
      Models vary wildly in this level of control, from the Catholic 
      Church through TEDx and all the way through those who self-label 
      as "anarchists".  These models often lead to friction with 
      existing, slower-moving establishments such as governments, to 
      whom these forms of organization are alien and subversive.  
      Examples and mild historical perspective will be provided; the 
      talk hopes to at least stir discussion about effective ways to 
      spread positive community concepts.


  ABOUT THE PRESENTER:
      David Weekly[1] is founder and chairman of PBworks 
      (http://pbworks.com/), an innovative host for business 
      collaboration.  He was graduated as a President Scholar from
      Stanford U. in 2000 with a BS in Computer Science, and has 
      worked for such institutions as Harvard Physics, MIT Lincoln 
      Labs, Stanford Graphics, atWeb, Legato, and There.com.  David 
      wrote the first layman-level description of MP3 in early 1997, 
      reverse-engineered the Napster protocol in an evening, and was 
      a finalist in the ACM International Programming Competition. 
      David lives in a Hillsborough mansion with five others, and 
      throws periodic all-night hackathons called SuperHappyDevHouse
      (http://superhappydevhouse.org/), there.  He is also Founding 
      Director of Hacker Dojo (http://hackerdojo.pbworks.com/), a 
      Mountain View-based non-profit community center for coders and
      thinkers.

      [1]  Please see:  http://david.weekly.org/,  http://davidweekly.org/

LOCATION:

  Symantec
  VCAFE Facility
  350 Ellis Street (near E. Middlefield Road)
  Mountain View, CA 94043

  Directions on how to get there are listed at:

    http://www.svlug.org/directions/veritas.php

  We've tried our very best for these directions to be accurate.
  If you have any improvements to make, please let SVLUG's volunteers know!
  webmaster at svlug.org

POST-MEETING GATHERING:

  If you just can't get enough, a smaller group usually goes to a local
  restaurant/diner after the meeting.  We'll announce the restaurant
  selection at the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you there!

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
-bill!
Sent from my computer