Tag: Architects

The People’s House: Beth Noveck & Susan Crawford

Posted on by Nicky Yates

We’re just three weeks away from SMW NYC! And as we get closer, we want to introduce you to the major topics we’ll be tackling throughout SMW — starting with our Global HQ.

As you may know, we’ll be examining Architects, Inventors and Collaborators, as they relate to emerging technology and new media. On Tuesday, February 19, Beth Noveck and Susan Crawford will set the stage by exploring how open government is changing civic engagement, and how access is a core component of this.

For those that don’t know, Susan Crawford is a communications policy expert and the former Special Assistant to President Barack Obama for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy. Beth Noveck also served under President Obama as the first United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer and founder and director of the White House Open Government Initiative.

Why should you care? Well, as Susan points out in this video interview with Bloomberg News, US Internet infrastructure is more than 25 years old, and if our country is going to take advantage of the entrepreneurial spirit, we need to connect bureaucracies to citizens and share data for a truly participatory democracy. Beth also discuss this in her TED talk, below:

Having these two ladies on stage together will make for a powerful start to the week. If you are interested in civic engagement, systemic change or politics in any fashion, you’ll want to be at the Global HQ on Tuesday. See more about the event here.

Technology & Collective Intelligence: A Recipe For Impact And Success

Posted on by Lindsey Taylor Wood

(Part 3 of 3 in the Architects, Inventors and Collaborators Blog series.)

It’s no secret that our world has become increasingly social. I wonder, however, if those outside the technology industry have paid mind to the way in which technology has become intrinsically linked with collaboration.

Whether crowdstorming, crowdsourcing or crowdfunding, hackathons or strategic alliances, technology has become a vehicle for our world’s brain trust, and a way to tackle the most pressing issues of our time. Organizations and individuals can utilize these frameworks to problem solve, create usable software, discover new ideas and prototypes, pool money to fund initiatives, outsource tasks and even to save lives.

Technology paired with our collective intelligence is the ultimate recipe for impact and success.

Speaker Tonya Surman embodies this collaborative ethos. The founding executive director and current CEO of the Centre for Social Innovation, Tonya’s work revolves around building shared spaces and fostering cooperation among networks of social innovators. Her latest book, The Community Bond: An Innovation in Social Finance, is a testament to the efficacy of this approach, as CSI renovated its Annex location by raising $2 million dollars through community bonds.

Not just allowing, but pushing for open innovation and alliance building is critical to our future. As is incentivizing the Architects, Inventors and Collaborators that are rethinking traditional structures and developing new frameworks, manifesting their ingenuity and facilitating partnerships for impact, respectively.

One person who does this brilliantly is speaker and Quirky Founder & CEO, Ben Kaufman. To date, Quirky has developed 288 products with the help of 188 retail partners and 328,000 investors. By removing barriers for inventors, he has been able to bring two new consumer products to market each week, and share revenue with the people who helped to inform and produce them.

Essentially, Ben architected a new way of producing by connecting inventors with a larger community of collaborators: everything this year’s theme stands for.

Join Tonya, Ben and a number of other speakers at our Global HQ on Thursday, February 21st, when we continue the discussion on how to create and embody a more open, connected and collaborative world. We look forward to seeing you there.

Architecting the Future of Social Media

Posted on by Lindsey Taylor Wood

(Part 1 of 3 in the Architects, Inventors, and Collaborators blog series.)

The theme of Social Media Week this year, Open & Connected: Principles for a Collaborative World, has been the catalyst for a number of hot debates in the Social Media Week offices. Identifying what, exactly, openness, connectedness and collaboration mean in an increasingly social world can be, well… tricky.

As conversations around the idea continued to percolate, so did a noticeable shift in their direction. The focus was no longer how to define the social media landscape, but a question of who was defining it. Who are the influencers, producers, and shapers driving social media?

While sifting through the heaps of notable tastemakers, we discovered most belonged to one of three distinct archetypes: Architects, Inventors, or Collaborators. So, we decided to dedicate three days of the conference (and this three part blog series), to exploring what that means.

Architects: devisers, makers, creators. At a time when “openness” is zeitgeist and transparency and collaboration are the very nature of social and digital media, architects must rethink traditional structures and develop new frameworks that reflect those ideals. It’s quite the paradox: design boundary-less boundaries.

This seemingly daunting task has done little to deter trailblazers like Susan Crawford. A visiting professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former Special Assistant for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy to President Barack Obama (for more on her laundry list of accomplishments, click here) her Fall class, Solving Problems Using Technology, embodies this type of progressive design process.

Her students, from both Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, partnered with three community groups and The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics in an effort to address Boston’s urban and civic challenges through technology. This month, The Mayor’s Office will select and fund the best of the student’s designs.

It’s this type of innovative approach to 21st century architecture that will inform the future of social media, and it’s imperative that we embrace and learn from these new models. To learn more about Susan’s work, and the work of other “architects”, join us at our new Global Headquarters on February 18th.

We look forward to seeing you there!