YakShaving

Information Panel:

Jimmy Wales, wikipedia
Amy Czerwinski, Microsoft

*   Amy referenced attention economy (buzzword alert
*   Microsoft is doing research about user interruption– When is the best time to interrupt someone to alert them about something?  (an email, an impending task, etc)
*   Don Norman:  recognized that interruption during a task is worse than an interruption later.
*   Countertrend->  sophisticated users reverting to simple technologies  (PDA->moleskine/notebook)
*   The discussion continued about issues I was pretty familiar with so I stopped taking notes… Identity 2.0, trust in social networks and on wikipedia, etc.
*   I thought this was notable:  It cost Wikipedia only $750K to run last year.   This year, total costs appear to be $1.5M.   The total economic benefit to the world of having an open source encyclopedia, while not easily measurable, easily clears this cost.
*   Jimmy believes that participation in information is a universal human right.    I would take this a step further, arguing that access to and participation in information is the MOST basic and important human right.
*   A fundamental rule of Wikipedia is “no original sources”– this model has worked out pretty good for them thus far.
*   Apparently there is a Creativity and Cognition conference taking place in D.C in 2007 that should be stunning.  I wish I could get to it :Oo