Future Salon

Election Watch

On this day of the first debate between the two candidates two pointers to sites that keep a tab on the sentiment in the press as well as in the Blogosphere.

Ecoresearch is using the strength of computers let them count words in press articles. From the word count they analyze the attention and the attitude toward the candidates. Results are quite lopsided: 2/3 of attention goes to the President.

Technorati also has a political section where they dissect the Blogger's sentiment including some graphics.

Now That's Extreme Democracy: Be John Kerry In Vietnam

A couple of weeks ago the Future Salon hosted an event called Extreme Democracy that looked at some technologies that affect and facilitate participation in democracy.

On that tip, I see that Kuma Reality Games have a new release in the works that recreates then-25-year-old presidential candidate John Kerry's 1969 journey down the Mekong Delta in a Swift Boat on the day he earned his Silver Star. According to the Kuma site the download will include "[a] broadband video news show, real-world intel, satellite images and the background you need to understand a key issue in this year's presidential election."

MSNBC had an article on on this earlier in the month (John Kerry, action hero). Here's a slice quoting Kuma's CEO, Keith Halper:

"The level of rancor has been so high and what is lost is the details," said Halper referring to the attacks on Kerry's Vietnam service by the partisan group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.  "People want to know, what did Kerry do?  What did swift boats do in Vietnam?  What types of missions did swift boats go on?"

I'm also very happy to announce that Keith will be speaking about the future of Kuma's "interactive reporting" at Accelerating Change 2004.

David Brin Vs. Brad Templeton; Broadband Activist Dewayne Hendricks Wires the Developing World, & More in the Newest Tech Tidbits

The Institute for the Study of Accelerating Change puts out a weekly newsletter called Tech Tidbits. You can check out this week's edition here. It includes a description of an upcoming debate between physicist-author David Brin and EFF chairman Brad Templeton at Accelerating Change 2004: Physical Space, Virtual Space, and Interface. The topic of that debate is "The Costs and Benefits of Transparency: How Far, How Fast, How Fair?" and Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson technology venture capital firm, will moderate. This week's edition also spotlights broadband activist (yes indeed) Dewayne Hendricks, President of the Dandin Group, who's working to bring state-of-the-art networks to underdeveloped areas like the Country of Tonga and American Indian reservations. Exciting, hopeful stuff. Dewayne will also be speaking at Accelerating Change.

Sign up to receive Tech Tidbits (weekly) and/or Accelerating Times (ISAC's lengthier, quarterly newsletter)

View this week's Tech Tidbits

View recent archive

ISAC is also looking for story submissions. If you'd like to submit an article or write-up for Tech Tidbits or Accelerating Times please email me at jerrypaffendorf(at)accelerating(dot)org.

The Cryptic Prophecies of Jeff Goldblum Applied to Massively Multiplayer Video Games...In a Good Way, of Course

Massively multiplayer online games (MOGs) come in many shapes and sizes, from EverQuest to City of Heroes to Second Life to The Sims Online. But no matter how self-contained a MOG is designed to be (it's a sliding scale), these virtual worlds consistently end up coloring outside the lines of simple fun and games.

Like Jurassic Park with avatars instead of dinosaurs, players routinely pour over the designers' intended boundaries and take over the park, at least partially (hat tip to Jeff Goldblum). This really miffs some of the hardcore gamers whose immersion is disturbed by glimpses of the workaday world outside, not to mention those gaming companies that want to put a smackdown on secondary markets for virtual goods.

The whole thing is rather complicated, what with its who's who of legal, creative and ethical issues. What does seem clear is that as the degree of freedom and quality of simulation within digital environments rises, the pressures of real life suggest new capabilities in areas ranging from education to business to rapid prototyping to military training to dating.

The Virtual Space theme of this year's Accelerating Change conference explores the future of reality gaming and massively multiplayer environments by bringing together some of the most savvy and visionary thinkers on the topic of digital worlds which embrace the real world. Will Wright, creator of The Sims, and Cory Ondrejka, Second Life developer, will provide keynote presentations that should not be missed--"Games as Prosthetics for the Imagination" (Will), and "Living the Dream: Business, Community and Innovation at the Dawn of Digital Worlds" (Cory).

Following Will's talk there will be a debate entitled "Real Money in Virtual Economies: The Future of User-Created Content" between Jack Emmert (lead designer of City of Heroes) and Steve Salyer (new President of Internet Gaming Entertainment--the world's largest secondary market for virtual goods and currencies), and including Cory Ondrejka.

Similarly focused speakers include Nova Barlow (online community consultant and forecaster), Robert Gehorsam (There and the Earth military simulation), Keith Halper (Kuma Reality Games), Robin Harper (University participation and learning in Second Life--Wired News article), and Clark Aldrich (Simulation and the Future of Learning).

For more conference information and a full list of speakers go to http://www.accelerating.org/ac2004. Early registration ends on September 30th.

Top Electronic Freedom Fighters at SD Forum

Should the Electronic Frontier Foundation rename themselves to Electronic Freedom Fighters? Well, one man's freedom fighter is an other man's terrorist. Two of the leading man in the fight for our online freedom are going to be at the SD Forum Distinguished Speaker Series.

Larry Lessig will present introduced by Dan Gillmor.

The title alone is worth the trip: The Comedy of the Commons [disclaimer it's just across the street from SAP, therefore a walking trip for me :-) ]

If you have never seen Larry speak you owe it yourself to go. He delivers like a warm breeze, but at the end the content really hits you. Way back in May of 2002 we covered his Future of Ideas book at one of our first Future Salons.

Thanks to the Internet, now you can get one of his important talks online as a flash presentation, as an mp3 and also the transcript.

Larry Lessig as well as Dan Gillmor who's book WE, THE MEDIA I am 1/3rd through and really should finish it, so I can give it to my boss :-) both of them are doing really important work for our online freedom.

So everyone come out to the rally. All together: Freedom Now! No Justice, No Peace. Freedom Now! No Justice, No Peace ...

Details: This Thursday 23rd 6:00 PM Location : PARC - George E. Pake Auditorium - Palo Alto

AC2004 Conference Discount

Just wanted to make sure that all Future Salon readers know about the discount that you can get when you register for the Accelerating Change Conference happening from the 5th to the 7th of November at Stanford. It is "AC2004-BLOGGER" all caps.

I mentioned already that Doug Engelbart is keynoting.

The other day Tony Perkins from Red Hearing fame who is now running the AlwaysOn network was visiting SAP and he at that time couldn't remember the name of the youngest member of the SAP board. Makes him only more sympathetic to me. Tony would refer to Shai Agassi as "that very articulate young man of yours".

With not even being 40 years old, he is a member of the SAP board. If I recall correctly he was the first non German to rise to the top at SAP. Tony is right, it is always a treat to hear him talk.

Now there are three chances in the next two months that I know of where Shai Agassi will keynote: He will talk at both SAP TechEd conferences the one in San Diego as well as the one in Munich and he will present his vision of the future at AC2004.

At each SAP TechEd around 5000 people are expected to participate everyone of them paying over $2000 to be part of it. Them being SAP technical conferences the keynotes will be geared towards that audience and contain lots of SAP mambo jambo, and rightly so.

Now compare that with the Accelerating Change Conference it will be in an intimate setting of 300 people, and Shai will have the opportunity to boldly paint his vision of the future of the world, the IT industry and enterprise software in particular.

I am always astonished about how few people realize the influence that SAP software has on shaping the world. "It's backend software", or even worse "SAP is just financials". Hello! Wake up call. SAP is running literally the whole company from end to end and with the growing interdependence of whole industries more and more of the whole process from raw materials via multi tear production to the enduser. All of that made possible through the ever more sophisticated SAP software. CEOs of the largest corporations are looking to SAP for guidance regarding what to do in the area of IT.

If you register for the AC2004 conference before the 29th of September, you will get the inside scoop directly from Shai Agassi for just $300. I am convinced that this will sell out especially if you check all the other excellent speakers. You better get your act together and sign up today, and don't come crying to me if you waited and didn't get a ticket :-)

I am really excited about this conference and hope to see you all there.

Make a Difference. Do Your Part. It's Fun.

Thanks to all of you who came out last Thursday and made it such an exceptional Future Salon. I am still totally happy, running around with a big smile on my face.

A couple of things fell into place starting with the sponsorship from SAP Labs, that provided us with the space, food and drinks and enabled us to have a relaxing hour to get together and network/socialize before the presentations.

You know that you have struck a nerve, when people change their flights to be part of it, when the room is totally packed and people happily sit on the floor or lean against the wall to listen, learn and participate.

When afterwards people come to you and say: "Until now I stayed far away from politics because I thought it is only a game for the big boys with money, but the session tonight really made me hopeful." or you get kicked out of the Pizza place at closing time after midnight and you look around and all the dozen people or so now debating on the sidewalk are from the Future Salon, you know it was a winner.

One of my personal believes is that you are on this world to do you part to make it a better place for all. "Do My Little Part" is the tag line of my personal Weblog and last Thursday I felt we really made a difference for many people.

Really interesting things happen at the edges where two disciplines meet, or when they realize how much they already have in common. When Tom Atlee arrived last Thursday he looked a bit pale and I asked him if he is all right, or whether I can bring him something to eat or drink. He said: "No I am O.K., I just haven't slept a lot lately, I was reading up on the Extreme Democracy site and it got me really excited and I then go on 4 hours of sleep a night, figuring out where these things fit into my world of dialog and deliberation, so this is why I may appear not very alert." Check out the Electronic Democracy Wiki page that he created around his Future Salon session, it is really rich. Here a little excerpt:

The phrase "social technologies" expands to include technologies of dialogue as well as technologies of networking and information. It may include other technologies as well, such as space design and citizen control of media. We often forget that "technology" is not made of just wires, silicon and electrons - it is primarily made of applied knowledge, of useful, workable design and technique. When we gain and apply the knowledge that allows us to create wise public policy from the collective minds and hearts of ordinary people, we are talking technology - SOCIAL technology.

And with that concept we can bridge and marry the previously isolated strands of know-how that we need to weave the new fabric of democracy we dream of.

He is calling everyone to join in to make this dream a reality. In his talk he said, that he is willing and in the middle of going through all the 23 or so elements of citizen councils/dialog and deliberation to find out what is the essence, where is face to face gatherings needed and where are the social software tools of advantage, where do they compliment each other. On the Wiki again:

So what I want to do with you here is to start this weaving. I've told you one type of technology from my world, the world of dialogue and deliberation -- these citizen deliberative councils. How do they and their role change when we begin weaving them together with the existing dream of extreme democracy? And how does that the extreme democracy dream morph?

Similar the CivicSpace that Zack Rosen introduced is used very successful already, and I will take a closer look to may be get rid of the dreaded yahoo group and it may even bring up the participation level of the Future Salon members.

Ross Mayfield not only was creating a special Tao of Extreme Democracy page on our Socialtext Future Salon Workspace [why didn't we do that all the time for the links that people throw in during a Salon?], in a side sentence he also pointed to the new Omidyar Network group forming space. It looks very promising especially the addition of reputation to the system should make a real positive impact on the quality of the whole site. In addition Ross posted a thoughtful summary on Corante's Many-2-Many blog also calling for the support of Tom's effort, which will hopefully introduce more people of the Extreme Democracy camp to the thoughts behind Citizen Deliberative Councils.

With that post we just witnessed a 360 degree cross pollination between Extreme Democracy and Co-Intelligence Democracy. Let us all work on keeping that dialog alive.

Realizing all that is what makes me really happy, last Thursday we really made a difference.

Am I the one who makes it all happen? No, I am just the main person carrying the effort. Do I have special skills that are needed to do this? The opposite is true, I am a foreigner, English is not the language of my mother, I am a terrible speller as everyone knows who reads this blog regularly and I am bad with names [ever wondered why I insist on name tags? :-)]. These are obstacles, sometimes really annoying, but I am happy that they are not holding my back [anymore]. Yes I put some effort into this adventure and one of the consequences is that I am not up to date regarding the latest blockbuster movie, but then a Future Salon like the one last Thursday is so gratifying and makes it totally worth it.

I am writing this, to encourage people to realize their own potential to make a difference. No specific skills needed, just a passion for your cause and a little bit of effort. Try it out.

Baobab: Turning democracy roots side up

Mitch Kapor reflects on why he is funding Baobab a site that is supporting student initiatives for more democratic participation using CivicSpace the set of online tools that Zack Rosen and others have built. Zack will introduce it tomorrow at our Tao of Extreme Democracy Future Salon.

Here is an excerpt of Mitch's reasoning:

In recent years, I have become more excited about the opportunities presented by new technologies and the possibility to create healthier and more vibrant democratic processes. Most recently we have seen the success of Internet based organizations in politics like Moveon, or the major impact, though not ultimate success, of the Dean campaign.

I think we are at a important time in our country's history. We face many challenges including creating a healthy and just global community, learning to live with our environment instead of trying to conquer it, and creating an economy that is not simply controlled by leviathan corporate interests for the benefit of a small minority, but works for the benefit of all six billion people on this planet.

Most importantly, I think American politics is at a critical juncture. We must begin to revitalize our democracy and restore our republic. We must re-create a healthy politics using the technology we now have available, and we need to start now.

I couldn't have wrote it better. If you want to start now come and get the background to the upcoming changes from Zack Rosen, Ross Mayfield and Tom Atlee tomorrow at our Future Salon. [More info about the event and speakers]

As always the Future Salon is free and open to the public, spread the word. SAP Labs in sponsoring, so there will be some refreshments during the first hour of networking and socializing. Please RSVP by sending an email to markfinnern at yahoo dot com, so that planning is easier regarding food.

Thursday 16th of September 6-9+pm SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map]

Doug Engelbart will Keynote AC2004

Update: When in doubt shout. The AC2004 dicount code only works with all caps: "AC2004-BLOGGER". Register now.

People following the Future Salon for a while know that I am a big fan of Doug Engelbart best known for inventing the computer mouse as well as being a pioneer of human-computer interaction, including GUIs, hypertext, and networked computers.[More: Wikipedia] Doug and his team were so far ahead of everyone in 1968. [Check out the videos of their demo.]

At the Planetwork Conference this year I met Eugene who is cofounder of the Blue Oxen Associates think tank. It turns out that Doug Engelbart is on the advisory board of Blue Oxen. That peaked my interest and Eugen told me the following story about how he got to know him. He went to interview Doug for a magazine and he asked him whether it doesn't fill him with pride, to see his invention on every desk of the offices he is working in. I am paraphrasing here, but Doug's reply was: "No, I am frustrated if I think of where we could be."

I think it is high time to get an update from him on where we could be and what we can do to make his vision come true ASAP. This is why I am so happy that Doug will keynote at the Accelerating Change 2004 conference at Stanford 5-7th of November. More details soon.

Attention: As a Future Salon reader you can get a blogger discount when registering use the "AC2004-BLOGGER" code and $50 will be reduced from your fees. If you sign up before September the 30th you also get the early bird special and will only pay $300.

If I were you I would sign up soon, where else can you get this line up of diverse speakers in an intimate setting of 300 people for such a prize?

Not-So-Abrupt Climate Change?

I once wrote about the Climate Flip Flop but according to latest research in New Scientist posted at WorldChanging: Not-So-Abrupt Climate Change? does not support that scenario.

Neal Stephenson Bay Area Appearances

The System of the World, Volume Three of The Baroque Cycle, will be released this month, and Neal Stephenson will be lavishing three of his promotional tour stops on the Bay Area:

Tuesday, September 28, 07:30 PM
CODY'S BOOKS
2454 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley

Wednesday, September 29, 07:30 PM
KEPLER'S
1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park

Thursday, September 30, 07:00 PM
THE BOOKSMITH
Park Branch Library 1833 Page Street, San Francisco

In interviews to date Stephenson has brushed off questions about his shift from science fiction to contemporary fiction (Zodiac) to historical fiction (starting with Cryptonomicon), but he's not alone. When I went to hear Bruce Sterling promote Tomorrow Now at Cody's over a year ago, he explained that hard science fiction is becoming too hard to write as the technology continues to accelerate so quickly and get simultaneously so powerful and so complex. (Sterling's latest, The Zenith Angle, which I found very entertaining, is set in an alternate "present" post-dot-bomb, post-9/11 U.S.A.) But I think that's only part of the explanation.

I also think many of these authors, whether self-consciously or not, are feeling increasingly compelled to reach out to a more mainstream audience, in order to educate as much of the public as possible about the profound importance of the political ramifications of technological progress and technology application. And I think a parallel influence is an increasing preoccupation with the incredibly complex social, political, and cultural processes by which we all have and will continue to co-create our collective future, and that contemporary and historical fiction is just much richer in its exploration of this dynamic because of all the extant ideas and referents which can be drawn upon without having to first invent and convey all of them. I'm still not sure when I'll find the time to tackle the Baroque Cycle, or even Cryptonomicon, but I do look forward to the opportunity to prompt such an author to reflect on these observations and offer what, if anything, he thinks he's learned from these explorations.

The Tao of Extreme Democracy Future Salon

sponsored by SAP Labs.

Update: I reread this post, and realized, that I didn't link to Extreme Democracy. Just to set the record straight: Tom Atlee will talk about his work and book The Tao of Democracy. Ross Mayfield will introduce us to the concepts behind Extreme Democracy and Zack Rosen will show us the latest version of CivicSpace.

If you check Amazon for The Tao of Democracy You will find rave reviews of the book. The one from the top 100 reviewer Robert D. Steele is especially interesting: This book focuses on what comes next, after everyone gets tired of just "meeting up" or "just blogging." This book is about collective intelligence for the common good, and it is a very fine book. He is missing the following: Still lacking--and I plan to encourage special organizations such as the Center for American Progress to implement something like this--is a central hub where a citizen can go, type in their zip code, and immediately be in touch with the following (as illustrated on page 133 of New Craft):

1. a weekly report on the state of any issue (disease, water, security, whatever);
2. distance learning on that issue;
3. an expert forum on that issue;
4. a virtual library on that issue including links to the deep web substance on that issue, not just to home pages of sponsoring organizations;
5. a global calendar of all events scheduled on that issue, including legislation and conferences or hearings;
6. a rolodex or who's who at every level for that issue;
7. a virtual budget showing what is being spent on that issue at every level; and
8. an active map showing the status of that issue in time and space terms, with links to people, documents, etcetera.

This is so interesting, because at the Futures Salon next Thursday the 16th of September we will not only have the author of Tao of Democracy Tom Atlee present his latest findings, but we will also have tool makers Ross Mayfield from Socialtext and Zack Rosen from CivicSpace who probably can tell us how far we are in developing such a solution.

I am really excited about bringing these people together. [More info about the event and speakers]

As always the Future Salon is free and open to the public, spread the word. SAP Labs in sponsoring, so there will be some refreshments during the first hour of networking and socializing. Please RSVP by sending an email to markfinnern at yahoo dot com, so that planning is easier regarding food.

Thursday 16th of September 6-9+pm SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map]

Bonus link: Devided we stand I once presented the graph that analyzed the "Customers who bought this book also bought" feature from Amazon regarding political books. Validis Krebs has updated the graph, added a lot of political books, unfortunately the picture doesn't change:

The division between left and right remains strong -- the political food fight continues. Network metrics, as well as the visuals, show two dense clusters with high preference for homogeneous choices. Echo chambers, on the right and left, remain amongst book readers in America.

Robot Action this Sunday

Last time when Carnegie Mellon Red Racing Team was visiting SAP Labs, it was way to much talk and ra-ra we are the greatest, we are in it to win for may tast. They are bursting at the seems with money, and I hope some underdog kicks their buts in 2005.

May be it is going to be Team Overbot from Silicon Valley. Although I think they are in need of some serious help, just judging from their Web presence.

Via Squidlist they are announcing their Open House for this Sunday, and don't have their act together to announce it on their o-verboten page too?

But they promise to take their Robot out for a spin. So if you want some Robot Action this Sunday visit them and sign up to help, they need it.

Team Overbot, 2682 Middlefield Road, Unit N, Redwood City, 650-367-0503, http://www.overbot.com
Additional Info: 650-367-0503 http://www.overbot.com

Good Surveillance :: AO

Rafe Needleman writes about Good Surveillance :: AO and a company that can spot a shot with great precision:

ShotSpotter works by triangulating the sound of gunshots using a network of fixed microphones. This audio information is fed to a computer system that is able to differentiate between gunshots, firecrackers, car backfires, and other sounds with excellent accuracy, CEO James Beldock told me. For a single-gunshot incident, ShotSpotter's location accuracy is about twenty feet. But when more than one gunshot is fired, the system is able to cancel out the effects of wind and weather (which can't be determined in a single-shot scenario). In these instances, the system can determine the location of the gunshots to a precision measured in inches.

Law enforcement not always convinced:

I read that some police districts are wary of the technology because it is both accurate and prolific; it sends the cops out to investigate more gunshots than the current citizen-based reporting system does. And, of course, by the time police arrive on scene, the shooters are almost always gone.

Don't they couple these with camera systems that zoom in on the gunner to take a nice little mug shot? The arriving police would then already know whom to look for and what kind of gun they used.

Sensor Networks is also part of the Physical Space Theme of AC2004. SAP is the leader in the area of RFID. And Sensor Networks is a natural evolution from the dump tags that get deployed today. Senior SAP Researcher Thomas Odenwald will introduce his Sensor Networks results and lookout on the Pervasive Computing panel on Saturday of the conference. See you there.

Planetworking together

I have been to the excellent Planetwork conference in the Presidio, but somehow my schedule or was it the Planets never aligned with the monthly Planetworking gatherings until last week. They were even kind enough to give me a spot on their agenda to present the Future Salon as well as the upcoming Accelerating Change Conference.

I talked about my motivation: To do my little part to make the world a better place, about the lever that technology is offering us to extend our reach, about the shortening of the event horizon because change is accelerating, about the importance of foresight to steer development in the right direction ...

One thing I totally forgot to mention was, that it is just plain old fun. It is fascinating to wrap your brain around possible futures and hear experts of their respective fields talk about what they are cooking at the moment, bringing people together that work from different angles on the same problem. That is just super interesting.

Talking about interesting, there were additional projects presented at the Planetworking event:

Equal Access is giving satellite radios to rural villages in Nepal and Afghanistan and produce native language educational programs for them. They joked, that their program is smack in the middle between CNN and Fox News on the radio dial. Sounds like a great program with some unfortunate side effects, like the introduction of television to Bhutan a couple of years back:

One third of girls now want to look more American (whiter skin, blond hair). A similar proportion have new approaches to relationships (boyfriends not husbands, sex not marriage). More than 35% of parents prefer to watch TV than talk to their children. Almost 50% of the children watch for up to 12 hours a day.

PBS did a program about these changes. Unfortunately I didn't get around to ask them about there take on these side effects of their worthy project.

Filmmaker Karil Daniels showed an excerpt from here documentary: Voices of Dissent- Activism and American Democracy. Which of course that evening was a bit preaching to the choir. I wish her lots of luck.

Joshua Grossmann introduced Voter Punch where you can check the voting record of your representatives from a progressive viewpoint. Interesting are the algorithms they use to find out, what a progressive vote constitutes.

The bigger question for me is how we can get citizen more involved in the decision process, more engaged in finding solutions to our current problems, beyond just going to the voting booth every couple of years. Some answers will be given at the Extreme Democracy Plus Future Salon Thursday in a week the 16th of September 6pm at SAP Labs in Palo Alto.

Extreme Democracy Plus Future Salon

It's election time, but of course the Future Salon looks beyond Swift Boats :-) One of the inspirations is the upcoming Extreme Democracy book: "Extreme democracy" is a political philosophy of the information era that puts people in charge of the entire political process. It suggests a deliberative process that places total confidence in the people, opening the policy-making process to many centers of power through deeply networked coalitions that can be organized around local, national and international issues."

Another inspiration is The Tao of Democracy by Tom Atlee who has thought about, written and spoken for twenty years on innovations in democracy. Paul H. Ray, Ph.D co-author of The Cultural Creatives sais about his book: What Tom Atlee is writing about is just about the most important thing that's happening at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Over a year ago John Abbe pointed the Future Salon in his direction by posting links to chapers of his book. There for the first time I got introduced to the excellent concept of citizen deliberative councils.

Third inspiration are the tool makers, like the volunteers that created the DeanSpace and now are knitting CivicSpace, an open-source grassroots organizing web-application toolkit .

The beauty is, that on Thursday the 16th of September we bring these three rays of hope together and let them shine at the Future Salon.

Ross Mayfield CEO of Socialtext is well known to Future Saloners and has writting chapter ten of Extreme Democracy. He will present its overall concept.

Tom Atlee who is not only the author of Tao of Democracy but also the founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute will fly in from Eugene Oregon to talk about his lifelong quest for a better democracy.

Last but for sure not least Zack Rosen the driving force behind DeanSpace will talk about his experiances and show the current status of the reincarnation of the DeanSpace: The CivicSpace. Dan Gillmor wrote a nice article about him too.

SAP Labs has been supportive of the Future Salon for a long time, I am happy to announce that we, after all I am working for SAP Labs, have stepped up the sponsorship and there will be refreshments and some food.

To make the best out of this gracious offer, we will start at 6pm for an hour of socializing and networking. 7-9pm sharp we will do the presentations and discussion. Afterwards I assume there will still be some drinks left for all the ones that like to hang out and discuss some more which may go on until late in the night. I think that will be a huge improvement to the pizza place and I like that my employer is such good corporate citizen.

As always free and open to the public, spread the word. Please RSVP by sending an email to markfinnern at yahoo dot com, so that planning is easier regarding food.

Thursday 16th of September 6-9+pm SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map]