Pop!Tech 2007 – notes and thoughts

My purely biased view of the most memorable presenters, quotes and associated links:

• Kiva.org uses their web site to allow you and me to make micro loans to entrepreneurs around the world. Jessica Flannery gave a terrific and enthusiastic talk and got me to go right to the site and sign up.Here's Ethan Zuckerman's exhaustive live blog of the Kiva presentation.

• Chris Jordan creates amazing photographs illustrating and driving home some amazing information and statistics. And here's Ethan Z.'s exhaustive coverage of Chris Jordan's stuff.

• Quote heard in the corridors: " The size of the font on the name badges is directly proportional to the price of attending the conference."

• According to Dan Pink, author of "A Whole New Mind": these are the keys to giving a memorable speech: "Brevity, Levity, and Repetition " (and repetition). Here's Ethan's blogging about Dan's presentation.

• According to Dan Gilbert (see also Ethan Z's coverage), we humans are best at recognizing and responding to threats when it has all these characteristics. The fewer of them, the less likely it is that we will take a threat seriously. (Global Climate Change as an example.)

  • The threat has a human face

  • We see the threat as imminent

  • The threat develops rapidly enough so we notice it

  • Imagining the outcome threatened triggers revulsion and disgust

• A good panel called Dialog with/in Islam, where I learned that According to Mustafa Ceric, it is important to always understand and distinguish between:

  • Religion : which is a community, a social structure, an organization

  • Morality : which is the knowledge of what is right and what is wrong

  • Faith : Which is a personal thing: everyone has faith in something or someone

• Check out Ethan Zuckerman's amazingly detailed blogging about each and every Pop!Tech speaker -- the rest of his blog is pretty cool too.

• In retrospect, and everyone asks this, my personal favorite and most memorable speakers: Jessica Flannery, Chris Jordan, Steven Pinker, Van Jones, Bill Shannon, Elizabeth Streb, Cary Fowler, Carl Honoré, Jonathan Harris.

• Here's a collection from the BlogBridge Library of all the blogs and sites related to Pop!Tech 2007.