Well, I’m not the first one one to use that line, am I? No. That’s because people are conversing about the conversation all the time these days. It’s the meme of the moment. Memes are a great example of conversational marketing. It’s marketing outside of the marketing department. And everyone’s doing it.

- SAP uses external blogs as a way to understand what the buzz is about their products and services, good and bad, as a way to determine features they will build in and counteract negative press.

- Local, national and worldwide governments use surveillance tools to track phone discussions in order to weed out criminals.

- Club Penguin uses room moderators to protect young minds from information they aren’t ready for by monitoring conversations in their social network (y’all know I have a good Club Penguin story about my 11-year old.)

There are many other examples, and we’re going to talk - you and me on Lisacast - tomorrow morning at 10 am PT with John Battelle, founder and chairman of Federated Media.

At 41, Battelle is an entrepreneur, journalist, professor and author who has founded or co-founded several businesses, magazines and web sites. Formerly at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, he is also a founder and executive producer of the Web 2.0 conference and “band manager” with BoingBoing.net.

Listen to the show here.

Battelle has recently been named an “Innovator,” one of ten best marketers in the business, by Advertising Age and one of the “Most Important People on The Web” by PCWorld.

This morning I read on paidcontent.org that KickApps just received $11 million funding. These guys are a competitor to Ning, covered recently by the Baltimore Sun.

Social networks are all the rage, of course. They offer so many opportunities and information, detailed and immediate.

Example: I was alerted on Facebook that Michael Arrington changed his relationship status (he was single, above) recently and then noticed a picture of him on Flickr (looking very single) and this week if you are one of his many Twitter or Facebook followers you know, like I do, that he is “sick as a dog” this week.

Which airports people take, what they had for lunch, what party they are going to. What they like, who they like, etc. This Next Sunday, August 26th, on Lisacast I’m going to talk with someone who knows social networks from the inside out.

Gina Bianchini is the co-founder and CEO of Ning, a social networking service with a twist – it empowers people to create their own social websites and social networks. Prior to Ning, she was co-founder and president of Harmonic Communications which was acquired by Dentsu. She has also held positions at CKS Group and Goldman Sachs & Co. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.B.A from Stanford Business School.

Join me and listen live or call in. Listen to last week’s show >>.

Click to play the video

Lisacast showcases interviews on citizen journalism, sports and music covering half the globe in half an hour.

Let’s take a trip across the western hemisphere from NY to Pittsburg to San Francisco and LA and across the Pacific Ocean to South Korea to highlight some of the people I ran into last year. A local search advertising expert and also the biggest Steeler fan I have met, an up and coming rapper from LA and a string of citizen journalists from an annual forum held in South Korea.

Like me, they are all over the map.

King Wallace (shown here) is one of my guests.

Download the show here, skipping past 1 min 30 sec of dead air at the beginning — it’s worth it.

Evern Williams and Dr. Lynette Cruz, broadcasting with me live on Lisacast.com. Williams is the community media manager at Olelo television in Honolulu, HI and Dr. Cruz is a cultural anthropology professor and public access activist.

UPDATE: Show is being rescheduled.

I transcribed this interview which was a bit hard to hear at points with my guest from Israel, but it’s a very worthwhile discussion and fascinating I think to hear the respected guest talk about his experiences over the course of 30+ years in media and communications, blogging, war, social networks and the good and bad of data mining and social DNA.

LP: Good Sunday morning. A special thanks to John Sweet [of BlogTalkRadio] for helping me this morning with patching in our guest who is Dr. Noam Lemelshtrich Latar, did I pronounce that right?

NL: Yes, perfectly. Good morning to you.

LP: Good morning to you too or good evening as it were, is it Sunday evening there?

NL: It’s Sunday evening, yeah.

LP: And I will start out with that, which city are you in doctor?

NL: I am in the city named Caesarea in Israel. Caesarea is a very ancient city built by King Herod 2000 years ago and that’s where I live.

LP: Wonderful. So just a little bit of the background, I saw you give a wonderful presentation at the Innovation Journalism Conference in Palo Alto at Stanford University, which is also where you did your Masters work, is that right?

NL: That’s correct. It was about more than 30 years ago.

LP: More than 30 years ago. And then you went on to MIT, is that right?

NL: Right, that is right MIT or — also about in 1974, well you are talking to an old guy.

LP: Experienced, I would say.

NL: But I wrote about interactive television in 1974 from perhaps Stanford, I just don’t know the day.

LP: Interactive television?

NL: I am sorry.

LP: Is that what you said “interactive television”?

NL: Yes I did, you know that’s correct, on interactive television, and when we did that from the notions of the studies you know like what is happening today when people sit at home and interact with the content on television. And we have done that about 30 years ago, it’s probably how the feedback for audience was accepted, the dynamics of the discussion inside television studios.

LP: Fascinating. And well I brought you on the show today to talk a little bit about what you have been doing in most recent years, specifically this notion of Social DNA. And everybody is very interested in social networks and sharing information that way, this is not a new theory, but maybe you can talk a little bit about what specifically you mean by Social DNA?

NL: Well in recent years, I have been studying and doing research on what we called data mining, which really takes artificial intelligence and software algorithms and applyies it to huge databases, to look for hidden connections between different parameters, as they say, because what I feel is happening that a lot companies, when we browse over the Internet, they build up information about us, they collect information and then create a personal profile to each person on earth and this talks in like you know I am not going, I am not really opening a notary book and then they recommended books. And then Microsoft is now declaring that they can develop this within 10 minutes. When you stop browsing in the new sites, they can develop a profile for what kind of content suits your personality and also of companies that they had develop games that allow to analyze, documenting profile of individuals. And what I am concerned about is that all these different developments which happened are happening separately. Some say they had to develop a profile, which I call Social DNA for each person on earth, this profile allows to predict the social behavior as per the profile of the customer. So we are entering into an era, where at least data mining is indulged within Internet. In data mining, we would allow a particular behavior and that’s quite dangerous, because of other social implications and government implications and it sounds good, but a lot of uncertainty.

LP: Okay, so Social DNA meaning this overall pattern that you are tracking for every individual person, so let’s talk about maybe some of the positive implications of having that much information. So you are talking about predicting behavior, you can talk more about that?

NL: Well you see, for example there is a company question that you are not going to strengthen your community, where a big concession is made and you would assess a correct society and in assessment, you really justify this and this company can predict, I mean what kind of accidents there will be when driving for example. When you do a traditional shopping in the Internet, they collect information about you and then they can predict that from the product they should offer you at end of the month. You did not buy but based on the profile, they will able to offer you product, you would say you know wait a minute how do you know I like this product and you will buy it. Like I mentioned on Amazon, Amazon offer new notebooks that, they wanted to send over books, I buy from Amazon, books that they pushed towards me that I didn’t even know exist but they recommended those from my previous purchases. So what was happening if you talk about quality and this efficiency, it allows me to get product that I want, I didn’t even know exist. It allows the company to give better service to consumers and companies can for example run new kinds of data mining. In big companies having a lot of customer relations management, it’s all been yet in minutes of calls, text messages to date, a feedback from the consumer and data mining allowed to analyze all this text meaning of these messages by the logging of a lot of names, it gives the company a good feedback of what the customers want, so from an efficiency point of view, it works well.

LP: Right, and another point that I read in something that you had written was that because there are multiple touch points to media for more individuals, now that there is a greater opportunity to capture those consumer desires.

NL: Yes because, you can very quickly analyze feedback messages and create and decide what are the products? Product selection to the consumer profile, for example one of the biggest goals of this big digital age is all the latest information to go and bombard, there is so much information on Internet, so many products and services and information. And this we did on a great scale, helped us figure out automatically with what kind of services better suit our personality and reduce the risk of information wobbling. We developed that positive side of this social DNA, it can help automatically fill up the information of the product that I am interested in and filter out or delete all the information that is irrelevant to you. So this is with the information overload, this is one other advantage, a big advantage of data mining.

LP: That is a great advantage and information overload is something definitely to avoid. Another thing I would add to that doctor is that, another benefit would be having, well, you said DNA so it makes me think of science and health and the conversations that we are hearing these days about shared medical records and everything digitized and that type of thing, and I would think that that information combined with your own ancestry and genetic makeup might help us more intelligently make decisions about our health and our lifestyle.

NL: Well very widely, because, genetic analysis of data mining in diseases can definitely help these people that you have – and there are the illness indemnities and the non-medical, so it definitely makes medical research much more efficient. What I did mention in my papers, I referenced it here, is I believe that you should currently stage in few years from now, where genetic information will be related to what I call, social DNA and with complete people genetics, we maybe able to predict social behavior. And that’s what’s scary, but I believe this will happen because of this new toolset of artificial intelligence, it will allow us to get these huge databases and send this big information between people genetics, biometrics and social political behavior.

LP: Right, so that sounds like evolution to me, I mean it sounds like a much more efficient or just generally speaking I know there are some downfalls too, but that sounds in the general direction as evolution to me that we have more instantaneous access to what the real answer is, right?

NL: Yes.

LP: So maybe let’s touch on some of the negative aspects of that because a lot of people are paranoid about anybody having that much information, right?

NL: Yeah but the biggest worry is of course what we used to call big brother, the main issue is that it could lead to a major inequality in access to certain services. For example if my bank had profiled me and I go to the bank to take loan and fellow looks at the screen and immediately sized me out according to my profile they will not offer the services that my profile would suggest not to give me. Now the adventure is of course we all believe it’s credibility and if we define a person wrongly like of a profile with social behavior, which maybe helps – in this instance and digitally – never disappears. And this could lead to erroneous profiles which adjust with the people that will prevent them from access to the local services, it’s a big danger. And you see this profiling would lead to the inequality in access to the permission to services, to enter that and especially there are going to be mistakes and mistakes always happen in this. When talking about artificial intelligence and creating profiles of people with data they always have these probabilities you know if they try to sort out and create these profiles. Now for building these, it’s never been 100% correct, but all of the information that the people are going to be created within a profile, they are going to be identified with this profile and these profiles would grant access to power information or money, and this will be one of the biggest dangers.

LP: Right, so just on my topic because you mentioned that and I pulled out those lines from paper that you will end, it’s right on topic. ..so this was a paper that you wrote in 2004 and it was called Personal Psychosocial Web-Derived DNA and Socio-cybernetic Decision-Making. What you wrote was “It may be that turning decision-making over to machines will threaten the vitality of human development by robbing progress of its dynamic element.” And you said “After all, ‘new information systems’ cannot be programmed to recognize singular genius or even bright innovation and separate them from hair-brained schemes. So I see your point there that there is some room for error, handing that decision making over to computing, but probably, let me know if you agree that overall this is probably still positive evolution and not a step back kind of, right?

NL: I hesitate at the quality of evolution, because in realistic evolution, you might overlook, I also added a lot dimension, that larger organizations like governments and big industries because of the information overload, it has to be in automatic decision making, which we call sort of metrics. And every government office today hands over to machines to make a local decision based on information being collected and big decisions are being made automatically. And in this kind of — automatic decision making processes work according to the objectives that their organization has decided. Major social implications, because of these kinds of handling of decision making from people to computers, because the basic assumption of course is the people make correct decision making and they behave rationally which is not correct. So handling this decision making in bigger organization through the computer decision making, I find very rare some but it is happening and it will happen that way because of digital efficiency that all systems will collapse due to the information overload. So I discuss it if evolution be happening, it will happen but I try to focus on the problems and I even mentioned some ideas how to try incorporate it, it’s very – it is very dangerous.

LP: It is dangerous. Although I would add that even in the human world, we argue over who gets to make the decisions anyways. So not everybody is rational and not everybody is rational at all times and we are at war — something you should be very familiar with there in Israel. I am very curious about the students at your school and what’s emerging from their learning in particular during a volatile environment and time.

NL: Well, actually I am the dean of a new school of communication Herzliya in Israel, it’s the first private university in Israel. It just was the first year but all students were very much involved in what’s happening in Israel even the secondary — 60-80 children. So the students are ever ready to know something, though caution, they have never got students who go to the battlefield. But also there, we are moving in decision making and in the last war, we have been in Lebanon. There was a big, big argument with the big commanders in Israel, it used to be in Israeli tradition that the commander goes before the soldiers. In the last war, the commander fought before schools and watched the battle over the school and the soldiers were in the field and that created a lot of problems. So even though in the army, constructing, decision making and decision making to computer screens creates problems. I don’t know if that answers your question but well definitely it’s interesting some of that that’s happened and the next time they would battle, the commanders would be in the field and not in front of deploying the schools.

LP: From the articles that I read today they are going to be on vacation right. Let’s talk about support in that area for those who are affected by the war specifically what are you teaching in terms of best practices or positive ways to communicating and help the community get through the war, the conflict?

NL: Well first of all you know when we teach, we teach communication and the faculties of communication in the most professional ethical way. Having said that, we are trying to create these through Internet and social networks in order to try and communicate with the Arabs across the border for example in the last Lebanese war where the Lebanese bloggers who communicated with our teachers with blogging and we tried to bridge, to create bridges through the Internet to create communication between Israelis and Arabs even when the war is on, even in Iran. That said, blogging in social, ethical ways, are known between Iran and Lebanon and Israel among people who feel that they should communicate so we definitely put in our school quite an emphasis on trying and using media and Internet which cut across borders in order to try and let people talk, let people communicate. That’s the way it works and that’s the benefit of the Internet as a very good medium to grow different uses together so we are quite involved in that. We teach people to use the media to try and get Israelis, Palestinians, Iranians a little bit closer.

LP: Right a little bit closer exactly. There was just recently a big blogging conference nearby. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you saw there and what happened?

NL: Well it was a terrific conference. We had a 2 day conference in Israel on blogging and brought some immediate bloggers from the United States who brought the Ninja and welcomed them and we brought those who came to take part in a conference because the conference was academic, research and the second day was 24 workshops teaching people how to use video blogs, test blogs and it was really a terrific get-together in blogging, good blogging and it’s one of the most beautiful parts of what we call digital media because it allows people to have their own part in the media developing with Internet resources and communicating with other people and creating social networks. And if you go to Google and you typed Blogference, our conference was called Blogference, if you typed Blogference in Google and you get today around 40,000 posts with pictures and video blogs and that’s what happens. And I think that it is basic software because you push blogging, because you teach people how you can create content with a very limited amount of resources like creating a blog. And you got inquires most through media, where DVD is an issue. But how with very little resources you can reach large public and that’s exactly what you are doing. I think your radio blog is very, very successful.

LP: Interesting. And you are identifying lots of ways that computers and computing as a means to aide us and getting closer and understanding what’s going on as close to when it’s going on is interesting. So let me ask you also what do you think are some ways that those outside of journalism and outside of traditional communications studies, that the general public can either participate in or support in positive new media participation?

NL: I think new media participation allows every person to join in on the biggest sites and open up a blog and express their opinions, to get opinions and interact. And you see today not just in media using blogs but you see in big corporations, small corporations, advertising agencies using blogs in order to allow the people to express themselves, they have blogging and allow every person to bring in research, to express themselves without censorship of an editor. And I do this blogging because I love the conference. It allows you and a very large number of people to interact. We are contributing with one of the journalists, a Israeli journalist who was a critic in our blogging conference and he said if blogging existed when my father and his friend were sitting and shouting on the porch in the evening, probably blogging would have prevented their sitting there and shouting in the veranda. And I wrote the guy listen, if your father and his friend had blogging, they couldn’t have hot words whatever happened in their society and then you would have had better education because if your father was shouting in the porch but if your father could use a blog to express his opinion and then reach in the porch, in the veranda but meet other people who thought like him, they could have affected lots of change and this is what’s actually beautiful about blogging.

LP: Yeah that is beautiful. So also there is another side to you that I just wanted to talk about for a minute. You are also an experienced investor, right and you are on the board of a company called SercoNet, is that right?

NL: Yeah.

LP: Do you want to talk a little bit about SercoNet because I think that’s a very interesting company?

NL: Well SercoNet has developed a very unique technology for home networking. Today when you get a broadband at your home, usually you can attach your computer only to the point of entry and those who want to go to listen wireless to other rooms in the house, there is a instruction. And SercoNet has developed a beautiful technology that allows in every house in the world that has a phone system to have wireless indication in their home in every room with 100% accuracy and as big as 100 megabits per second. So SercoNet really has developed what we call the industry the best backbone for a wireless system in home networking. And then you can watch a video, text, audio in every room in the house wirelessly with perfect reception. That’s what SercoNet is really all about, it’s a home networking, wireless home networking and employing the old wireless systems in the phones as a backbone for wireless communication.

LP: Is it international? You could have one in Japan, one in the US, you could have one in Europe, is that right?

NL: Oh yes of course it’s international. This technology suits every phone system in America, Europe and lot of American companies like Motorola and Cisco, they show interest in SercoNet. So it’s a very, very good technology. It solved the problem of poor reception in the home with wireless communication. So you can get it good — at home — the second it allows you to have wireless communication in the home anywhere in the house on the laptop or in the PC without having to rewire the house.

LP: That’s great. Well on an upcoming show, I would like to like to talk more about WiFi and in particular accessing it in the remote areas and places where it might make more difference than in every corner of metropolitan city. But I want to thank you for being on the show. Dr. Lemelshtrich Latar, I can’t tell you what honor and a pleasure it was for me, I really did enjoy your discussion at Stanford and it got my mind thinking about things that I hadn’t been previously able to articulate. And so I appreciate that and support everything that you are doing there at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications.

NL: Thank you, very, very much for this opportunity. It was a pleasure to talk to you and it means so much to be part of discussion and I wish you every success in what you are doing the radio blog, it’s a great idea and I give you my best wishes. And I also enjoyed your conversation very much.

LP: Thank you very much and take care. I hope we can talk again soon.

NL: Thank you very much Lisa.

LP: So that’s our show for today. I hope you enjoyed that discussion. I think the doctor was a little bit difficult to hear today and if that was your experience, please check back in not too long as I am going to transcribe the show and I think you will find more value in maybe reading through our discussion today. So we will see you next week. I am Lisacast every 10 A.M. Sunday Pacific time.

Thank you again, sir, for one of the best conversations to date on Lisacast. I look forward to talking with you again soon. — Lisa Padilla, Lisacast.com

July 29th, 2007: Evern Williams, Media Center Manager for ‘Óleolo Community Television in Honolulu, HI about the application of new media in the local community

August 5th, 2007: Roberto Spietzio, Italian citizen journalist and OhMyNews contributor on the spread of wireless technologies and media control

August 12th, 2007: Jack Androvich, Sr. Director of Marketing Intelligence and Operations for Worldwide Marketing at Autodesk

August 8th, 2007: Ian Browde, Nokia on the device company’s future and user-generated media

August 19th, 2007: Ning CEO, Gina Bianchini on user controlled networks and what to do with an extra C-series funding of $44 m

August 26th, 2007: Bill Turpin, ex-Netscaper and current CEO of Metaverse.net, multi-player gaming and developer networks

Know someone in new media who might be a good guest on Lisacast? Please email me with your suggestions.

It seems to me that many of our problems rest in a lack of common understanding — from all of human life each of us individually.

There is angst and frustration before we learn to walk. When we learn to walk, ah, it’s a cake walk. But when we feel frustrated or intimidated, our logical integrities are lowered. Therefore, no common understanding can easily come about.

A reader comment on the CNN.com makes this point on all levels, including by way of his own words:

> They are actually shilling for the enemy and the democRat party, which, by the way, are one and the same.

Well there’s an intelligent comment. I’m not sure how we’re to expect constructive political debate in this country when we have people who will call AMERICANS they disagree with “the enemy.”

Posted By Brad, Columbia, SC : July 14, 2007 5:51 pm

The political debate is what will yield common understanding. The article Brad posted to in the first place was a story out of Washington DC about how those involved in the war in Iraq (lawmakers, soldiers) were hot and tired and wanted to take the month of August off. We’re all yelling at each other about whether or not that’s ok. I wonder if my ancestors, village peasants of the 14th century, huddled on Sunday mornings with their caramel lattes and fought each other while the enemy, be it neighbor, religious group or plague destroyed them, unprepared.

I’m excited to tell you that my guest on Lisacast this week is Dr. Noam Lemelschtrich-Latar. He is a former professor of communications at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University and the current dean at the Sammy Ofer School of Communications.

Dr. Lemelshtrich-Latar presented a paper at the International Media Congress in 2002 on “Creating Social D.N.A.” which looked at long-term political and social implications of collecting data and using the new media to build a individual personal profiles.

You can listen to the stream live from your browser at blogtalkradio.com/lisapadilla, call-in to listen or ask a question at (646) 478-4956 during the show, which airs at 10 am PST, each Sunday. If you’ve got a headset attached to your computer, you can also call in using a Click-to-Talk button, visible on the show page while it airs.

“A Gadfly Becomes Persona Non Grata in City Hall
By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: June 16, 2007
It took Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to actually bar Rafael Martínez Alequin, the publisher of a small independent newspaper, from City Hall news conferences.”

Mr. Martinez, who was interviewed on the premiere airing of Lisacast, was written up in the NYTimes yesterday. You can read the article here.

In essence, it talks about the struggle of a long-time journalist to sustain press credentials. Martinez has hired Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer to address what he says is unconstitutional in the way it approves media credentials. Both Mr. Siegel and police reporter Leonard Levit (nypdconfidential.com) are considering federal lawsuits to set things straight. Administration officials (at the police department) say that they denied Mr. Alequin and Mr. Levitt press credentials because “they did not show a need to cover breaking news for a legitimate news organization.“

Wow, “a need“. Do I even need to finish this thought? Evidently. Whose need? Who says what is legitimate?

“An individual’s declaration that they are a news-gathering organization does not make it so,” said Paul J. Browne, a Police Department spokesman.

Then what makes it so and what makes it legit? Does anyone else find it interesting that the police dictate this? Um, aren’t the police a little tight with the politicians?

This could all be solved by a simple definition of what a news-gathering organization is. And I think once the power-holders are willing or overthrown to have that discussion, we’ll be a step closer to righteousness. On the list of getting to this new definition, we should be sure to ask about each of the pieces of this term:

 1. NEWS Things that happen that anyone cares about, well that’s everything. How do we decide what people want? We don’t, becuase they do (or will pretty soon). Yesterday I spoke with Dave Winer, inarguably a thought-leader and contributor to this cause, who has been talking for some time about a user-specified news service. That means you get to choose what news you want, you don’t have to page through the paper or a web site for the things you care about and you don’t have to watch weeks and weeks of live coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death (if you don’t want to).

2. GATHERING The collection of news and supporting documentation, evidence or support and the practices applied therein are what makes it legitimate. This really brings us back to the neccessity to place guidelines in place for due diligence, admittedly a subjective term (but that is true today also). These are really questions of ethics. Maybe we could incorporate a confidence rating for news where stories which have been checked by multiple sources, for instance, have a higher rating. Things are only more true as time goes by because they get exposure, are challenged, are added to by different perspectives. By this way, we will get more of the true story.

3. ORGANIZATION Even in my scattered behavior and loose-knit daily routine, I am an organization. I have an office, but that shouldn’t even be a point. I have organized thoughts and opinions, organized an audience around me and organized a path for distributing information. We should not place more value on a traditional organization just because, and maybe especially because, it’s been unwritten by someone with money or power and a staff of 10,000.

Let everyone speak (isn’t that written down somewhere important?) and let the readers and viewers decide what news is. As it happens, Mayor Bloomberg will be in San Francisco tomorrow morning at the Common Wealth Club. I wonder if any bloggers will be there.

Our Father’s Day show, named “Who’s Your Daddy?” featured a discussion with Steve Gershik and Emily Morse of sexwithemily.com. We talked about the use of podcasting for business and pleasure, radio industry challenges, the tradeoffs to accepting sponsorship dollars for your show.

 Emily also mentions her interest in women’s politics, working for Barbara Boxer, and recent escapades at the Playboy mansion and swinger parties. That’s a mouthful. Get and earful by listening to the show here.

BlogTalkRadio’s Hilary Leewong interviews Lisacast on her BlogTalkRadio show “15-Minutes of Fame“. Miss Leewong featured Lisacast this week after a great show yesterday with Rafe Needleman, who runs CNET’s Webware.com. Mr. Needleman provided some wonderful perspectives about the convergence of consumer-adopted tools in the workplace. Checkout Webware.com for the Webware 100 Awards. I have been reading Rafe’s columns for years and it was a great pleasure to be able to speak with him on my show.

This week’s guest Dr. Thomas Buckholtz makes an early appearance this week on Lisacast, Saturday at 2 pm PST live .

Date: Saturday, June 2rd, 2007
Time: 2:00 – 2:30 am PST
Dial-in #: +1 (646) 478-4956

Download the show after it airs.

Q. From Jan Sandred via Twitter during the show:

“Jan Sandred how important is governance vs “the market” to create growth?”

A. From Lisa at Lisacast:

“Thanks for the question, Jan. This is a very interesting question, in particular, because of its origin. Jan Sandred is from Sweden. He was a panelist at the Innovation Journalism Conference last week at Stanford University. He and I spoke about the differences in our cultures from a business standpoint. In Sweden, the government holds a more commonly present position in the funding and growth of a business. But deeper I think is the fact that in the Swedish culture, descisions are made by consensus, whereas in America we all seem to lead, whether or not anyone follows. There are benefits to both of course. While the American aggressive, independent nature may yield quick successes, it will produce at least as many failures, and sometimes because without the support of the business ecosystem, investors, employees and partners, etc. it cannot grow. In a recent post I wrote called The Return of Reliance, I touched on the fact that that we seem to be refamiliarizing ourselves in this country (me specifically even) with the idea of relying on our networks, other members of our society, and other supporters for back up. I guess this is not as much a matter of ‘governance’ or policy or regulation as it is consensus support. The idea posed, of governence as a supporting force for growth rather than market demand, well let’s look at that for a moment as it relates to new media. All kinds of policy issues are popping up each day on net neutrality, bloggers as press, information availability, government access, military blogging/videoblogging — the point I’m making is that it’s a moving target because we don’t all agree as much as group about what’s what. That’s part of the nature of the United States. That’s why we came here in the first place. To be able to express our differences. And as more information is available and tools the same to produce and distribute it, it’s meant only to get more complicated. And as it does, society will shift to accomodate. To me, there are a couple of issues. One, are racing to the market and growing fast good things? Some businesses grow too fast without becoming sophisticated enough to manage their own growth and crumble. Slow is not always bad. The second issue is how will governance change. Watch the US campaigns for the 2008 presidency. Watch the effect of user generated media, grassroot campaigns and voting system reformation. I think we’re going to see governence change and as a result, market entry and organization growth with it.”

Dr. Tom Buckholtz is a business advisor and executive coach, consultant, speaker and author of several books. He has been an integral evangelist in the creation of practices such as enterprise software licensing and grassroots communication of the Republican National Committee. He has also worked for large institutions such as the US government and PG&E, and traveled the world speaking and teaching workshops about his information management philosophies. As a Commissioner in the United States General Services Administration, Dr. Buckholtz led a $1 billion telecommunications and systems-integration business unit, served as co-chief information officer for the federal government’s Executive Branch and also as GSA’s CIO, and oversaw $20 billion per year of computing and telecommunications procurement. He also serves on advisory boards for the University of California, Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy and the University of San Francisco School of Business and Management’s Telecommunications Management and Policy Program. Over the course of his career, Buckholtz has had more than 100 publications and published interviews.

So what does one do after all of that? Appear on Lisacast of course. Join us this Saturday at 2 pm PST live when we talk about information management, and the culture of large organizations.

Date: Saturday, June 2rd, 2007 (early air time this week)
Time: 2:00 – 2:30 am PST
Dial-in #: +1 (646) 478-4956

Call the dial-in number above at that time to join the conversation and visit me here at lisacast.com after the show for a chat. Email me directly with show requests, guest suggestions or any comments.

“There is too much spite. Spite of traditional journalist for citizen reporters, spite of citizens at large for journalists, spite of politicians for journalists, spite of journalists for sponsors, etc. The things at stake are huge, information is basically one way to fight the Tyran, just like in Greek democracy, because the Tyrans, whether they are political or economical, are still there, and busy. As someone who sits across the border between citizen and traditional media, I get double spite or diffidence…”

So says Claire Ulrich, reporter and writer. Listen in for a three-way discussion with OhMyNews contributor Claire Ulrich and international videoblogger, Thierry Bezier

This show was broadcast live at the following time. You can now download it directly from .

A discussion about politics and journalism:

Date: Sunday, May 27th, 2007
Time: 10:00 – 10:30 am PST
Dial-in #: +1 (646) 478-4956

Call the dial-in number above at that time to join the conversation and visit me here at lisacast.com after the show for a chat. Email me directly with show requests, guest suggestions or any comments.

There are roughly 9 million people in Sweden, which holds control over the highly profitable trade routes of the Baltic Sea. After overhauling the country’s welfare program (a costly venture), it still exceeds the UN target development in aid donations of 0.7% of GNP, one of the few countries who can claim that in the world.

My guest this week is Thomas Frostberg, Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Rapidus, an electronic news service covering business and technology from research to innovation in Scandinavia (the Öresund Region in Sweden and Denmark). Rapidus covers university research and the commercialization of this research, with focus on innovative start-ups, as well as innovation policy strategies.

Sweden is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliment under the leadership of a prime minister. I recently discovered that it changed government in October from social democrat to liberal. The new Prime Minister after Goran Persson is now Fredrik Reinfeldt (thanks for the correction, Thomas), who visited Arnold “the governator” this week to talk green policy and clean tech. See the article here.

Join Thomas Frostberg live on to hear us discuss innovation journalism and innovative journalism.

Date: Sunday, May 20th, 2007
Time: 10:00 – 10:30 am PST
Call in #: +1 (646) 478-4956

Call the dial in number above at that time to join the conversation and visit me here at lisacast.com after the show for a chat. Email me directly with show requests, guest suggestions or any comments.