Prof. Lawrence Lessig has been on Charlie Roses TV-show giving a very interesting interview (see video embedded below). They spoke about Lessigs new book REMIX, his Change Congress Campaign, political issues and most interesting to me was their talk about Mr President Barack Obama, who was a former colleague of Lessig at University of Chicago a couple of years ago. Lessig speaks about his jealousy of Obama when they first met and he speaks about Obamas extraordinary abilities. Here is a part out of the interview transcript.

LAWRENCE LESSIG: I mean, there`s this image that he`s extraordinary, but they don`t understand really how extraordinary he is.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK, that`s exactly what I want to get at. Tell me what you mean by that, they do not understand how extraordinary he is.

LAWRENCE LESSIG: Yes, you know, I think that all of us who have had experience around politicians, you know, can respect them and admire the extraordinary hard work they do. There`s no doubt about that. But most of the time, you know, you dig and dig, and very quickly, you hit bottom. Like, there`s nothing more there. And what struck me — you know, maybe this is just the reality of getting to know somebody before you know them as a politician, but what struck me was when I first got to know him, he was an extraordinarily careful, deep thinker, and reflective and balanced, and, you know, he wasn`t on the left or wasn`t on the right about whatever issue.

It was — you know, he was thinking through every issue. And there wasn`t the pretense. There wasn`t any of that. And so knowing him like that, and then seeing him stay like that as he has become the most successful politician of our age, I think that what is distinctive about him is that he has a vision about how government can be changed to actually do something helpful, transformed.

I mean, you know one of the most important moments in the campaign he got in a lot of trouble for, I think, was in Nevada, in the primaries, where he talked about transformational presidencies. And it was an idea of identifying how to change the way Washington is working, and that`s what a transformational presidency does, as opposed to a presidency that just comes in and just keeps the trains running on time.

Lessig is/was an unofficial consultant and supporter to the Barack campaign and actively supporting Obama in the last couple of years. So Mr President had professional support while setting up the White House blog. It is awesome how Obama is participating on the new internet economy due to having a twitter account (which has been hacked) and that he fought to keep his Blackberry which was questioned at some point because of security reason.

Obama is using creative commons licenses for the White House blog as well as for his photo stream on flickr.com under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA-License.

Obama also has a myspace account, a LinkedIn account and there might be more web based services he is using I even don’t know about.

Further they spoke about the economic crisis in the USA and about a new campaing named CHANGE CONGRESS Lessig is the co-founder of.

“Watch a video from co-founder Lawrence Lessig to learn more about the relationship between money and politics—and why it is such a fundamental problem for our democracy. Right now, special interests have more influence over our political system than regular folks because of our broken campaign finance laws. These special interests pump millions of dollars into congressional campaigns each cycle, and as a result, they block real change on issue after issue. Here at Change Congress, we believe that politicians should work for the people, not special interests. But it’s not enough to push politicians to stay out of the system of corruption—we have to reform the system itself. That’s why we support a hybrid of small-dollar donations and public financing, to keep big money out of politics ”

Lessing believes that what changes dramatically is TRUST in congress & government! And that transparency might enable the people to rebuild trust.

Charlie Roses last words are quite interesting: „A lot of people want Prof. Lessig to run for congress. He declined, maybe he’ll reform congress before he runs for it.“ Maybe it is the same with Lessig as with Obama who never thought that he would be President of the United States. For more talks or keynotes of Lessig just click here.

Here is the interview, go take some time and watch it yourself. Enjoy!

„On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.“

Here are some details to the Chicago Twestival click here to register.

DATE: 2/12/09

TIME: 6:30-8:30 pm

WHERE: Catalyst Ranch, 656 W Randolph, Chicago, IL

(West Loop near Randolph & Halsted)

COST: $10 donation at the door which includes beer, wine and networking!

DRESS: Casual to Business Casual

„This event is designed both for people in Social Media AND people interested in learning about social media. If you’re on Twitter you’ll get to meet your “friends” in a fun, social open networking session. If you’re wondering about Twitter you’ll have plenty of people to talk to about it!“

What is the Story of Stuff?

Open your eyes to the life cycle of the stuff we buy. Where does STUFF come from and what happens with STUFF when we throw it away.  This is what the Story of Stuff or SoS in short is about. Amazing work – go and see it yourself!

„From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.“

Spread the message about Story of Stuff it’s important to draw peoples attention to this topic make them aware of their everyday stuff consumption. There is a group on facebook you can join or post the video on your  blog, it is under a creative commons license.  I explained it in an earlier post on my blog.

The work above is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

They just launched Story of Stuff international page with 10 initial translations, more to come.

Netz-gegen-Nazis is a new online Project by Zeit online which is a well know weekly german paper. The translation is Net against Nasiz. The project includes three major parts. The first is a good and comprehensive knowledge database including article on a huge variety on Nazis topics i.e. symbols, person, music, history, politics and parties, clothing style. The second part of the website is Action. There are 12 main questions how to handle certain situations in everyday life if you stumble up on a Nazi somewhere. These 12 question are asked to the users and want them to answer with there ideas and experiences. There third part is a open discussion forum for the users to contribute there own questions regarding this topic.

Unfortunately the entire project is only in german. Here you see a part of the press release:

“Die Aktion NETZ-GEGEN-NAZIS.de will darüber aufklären, wie sich rechtsextremistische
Tendenzen in unseren Alltag einschleichen. Zielgruppe der Aktion sind besonders jene
Menschen, die in ihrem alltäglichen Umfeld mit Rechtsextremismus in Berührung kommen:
Sportler ebenso wie Feuerwehrleute, Lehrer und Schüler, Fans und Trainer, Eltern und
Kinder. Kurz: Wir alle!

Mitinitiatoren von NETZ-GEGEN-NAZIS.DE sind der Deutsche Fußball-Bund, die DFL
Deutsche Fußball Liga und der Deutsche Feuerwehrverband mit der Deutschen
Jugendfeuerwehr. TV-Partner ist das ZDF, Online-Partner sind die großen Communities
studiVZ, schülerVZ und meinVZ. Neben dem Internetportal NETZ-GEGEN-NAZIS.de, das
Kern der Aktion ist, finden eine Vielzahl von Aktionen und Veranstaltungen der Partner statt.
Als erste Partneraktionen stellen DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga und der Deutsche Fußball-
Bund ganze Spieltage unter das Motto NETZ GEGEN NAZIS. Außerdem engagieren sich
mehrere deutsche Nationalspieler in kurzen Videoclips, die auf der Website zum Start
veröffentlicht werden, für die Aktion. Alle anderen Partner werden während des Projekts
vielfältige Aktionen realisieren, die zum Start von NETZ-GEGEN-NAZIS.de bekannt gemacht
werden.”

The translation:

„The action-NETWORK AGAINST NAZIS.de will educate about how right-extremist-trends creep into our everyday life. Target group of action are particularly those people who come in contact with right-wing extremism in their everyday environment: such as athletes as well as firefighters, teachers and students, fans and coaches, parents and children. In short: We all!

Partly initiators of NETWORK AGAINST-NAZIS.DE are the German Football Association, the DFL
German Football League and the German Fire Service Association with the Germans Youth fire brigade. TV partner is the ZDF, on-line partners are the major communities studiVZ, schülerVZ and meinVZ. In addition to the Internet portal NETWORK AGAINST-NAZIS.de, the core of the action, will find a variety of activities and events of the partners. As the first partner actions DFL German Football League and the German Football confederation will match days under the motto NETWORK AGAINST NAZIS. Moreover several German national player are involved via short video clips on the site to start to be published for the action. All other partners will conduct a variety of actions during the project after the start of NETWORK AGAINST-known NAZIS.de.“

Ein Artikel auf tagesschau.de berichtet über den Wettbewerb zur Krönung des „schönsten Einwanderungswortes des Jahres“. Der Wettbewerb wurde initiiert vom Goethe-Instituts in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Deutschen Sprachrat.

Fisimatenten und Tohuwabohu waren wohl die am häufigsten vorgeschlagenen Worte jedoch hat letztendlich der Tollpatsch, ein Wort mit ungarischen Wurzeln, den Run zur Listenspitze gemacht. Ein wenig schade, denn eine bessere Publicity hätte sich mein weblog mit dem Titel webTohuwabohu.de gar nicht vorstellen können ; – ) . Hier geht es zum original Artikel.

Im übrigen hat das Wort tohuwabohu einen biblischen Ursprung. Es kommt aus dem Hebräischen und laut Wikipedia stammt es aus dem 1. Buch Mose und bedeutet „wüst und leer“. Es beschreibt das Bild der Erde bevor Gott sie ordnete und in ihrer heutigen Form erschuf, wenn er sie schuf. Zerlegt man das Wort in seine einzelnen Silben bedeutet tohu die Wüstheit, wa bedeutet „und“ und bohu ist die Leere.

Heute findet der Begriff tohuwabohu umgangssprachlich meist im Zusammenhang mit WirrWarr, Chaos, Aufruhr, Durcheinander Anwendung.

Nun die Überleitung zum Namen dieses Blogs, webtohuwabohu. Am Anfang war das Internet, Netz, Web leer und heute ist es ein tohuwabou der Informationen. Diese Überleitung ist allerdings erst zwei Jahre nach der Ernennung des Blogs herausgearbeitet worden. …

Just heard about AltSearchEngines new feature The Search Race. They just announced on their website the search engine of the month April 2008. Now they involve you, the user, and created an opportunity to easily pick your personal favorite. Your opinion counts give your opinion publicity. Yet another web service who includes a participation and customer interaction feature – web2.0 like – to keep users in relation with what they offer – some might call it Customer Relationship Management.

Here are the steps on how it works:

1) You need to sign up for a free Search Race account before you can vote.
2) You can vote for as many search engines as you like that you have tried.
3) Did I leave one out? Now you can submit any other search engine you want!
4) The Search Race will continue until we get to the Search Engine of the Year.
5) You cannot vote for your favorite search engines more than once, sorry.

Go and pick it out! You can easily vote – or “pick” – YOUR favorite alternative search engines. Spread the message on that important race….

Just shortly before the next European championship Handball-Match in Norway starts, I would like to remind you on the next date for Webmontag in Duesseldorf coming up on 28. Januar 08.

Four presentations are already listed:

1. What is a „steam-engine“? A try to explain the term “Enterprise Portal”.
2. Web-Trend-Research in China
3. Knowledge-Management how it work with fun – Knowledge Garden
4. Styleranking – the new virtual home for fashion victims.

Additionally there is a “Special Program: peak web“ Which will be a discussion if we already reached the end of a carefree evolution of the networking?! Between iPhone and 23andme, between Flickr and ‚Vorratsdatenspeicherung‘, between Cyborg and Platons Höhle; Information technology enters all life areas and the question comes up whehter we still could live without the web,  without networking, without virtual reality and the virtual ME (…) ?

Chances & Risks of the global networking, Aggregation of every smallest Information-node. The Discussion between the participants of the Webmonday an Prof. Dipl.-Dram. Linda Breitlauch, Prof. Dipl.-Des. Oliver Wrede, Prof. Lorenz Lorenz-Meyer as well as Siggi Becker will give an status report on that issue.

Looking forward to it. See you there!

What is Ignite? Once again a new format for a social networking event in 1st life has been established. And once again it was done by the oreilly crew. They called it Ignite so lets see what it is all about. If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. With these speeker conditions 20/15=5 it ensures that talks won’t be boring at all.

More informations can be consumed on the ignite community site which gives you an overview on upcoming ignite sessions. The first one was held one year ago in Seattle here you’ll find some videos of these events. A good one is „hacking chocolate“. ;–)

Go ahead and register on upcomig for the ignite session in Chicago! I am looking forward to event will be good fun.

Last Wednesday we visited TECH cocktail 6 in Chicago. I would like to tell you a short and funny story ahead. I am new to the US of A that’s why I am not used to carry my ID (passport) always by my side. Well, I figured out quite quickly that, that isn’t a good idea because you always get in trouble while entering pubs, clubs or events where beer and any other alcoholic drinks are served.

To get permission to enter this event I got a special wrist band which indicated that I was not allowed to drink any beer. Just to let you know not only the entry was for free the beer is as well-Thanks to the Sponsors at this point. Well I had a great time anyway I felt already drunk because of my jetlag. Now let’s go on with the important and interesting information.

One of my favorite services presented that evening was Songza. What is Songza? It is a music provider / platform / search engine. Like they exits in thousands on the web e. g. Last.fm, Bit Torrent, KaZaa, Rhapsody? No, Songza differs from all the others in a few ways. First of all Songza isn’t a platform rather than a music search engine. A special algorithm enables the user to find songs and artists available somewhere on the internet. Songza puts a user interface layer on top of the search results which provides the user the opportunity to create play lists very easily.

The usability and the design of this user interface layer is clear and very convenient. That’s why their inventors call it a “human interface” they want to indicate how user really use and navigate on websites or applications.

To listen to a certain artist just type the name into the search field press the search button and you will be offered a list of songs where you can choose from. They offer a few more opportunities what to do with the song. You can add it to a play list which isn’t storable right now. Or you can share the song with a friend while sending an email, further you can just link or embed the song into your blog and decide if it should start playing while opening the site or only on demand. You can also directly go and see the music video on youtube as far as it is available. Brilliant usability – just one click on the song title and hover the cursor over one of the four provided options and easily do what you want to do with the song.

A huge advantage is that Songza can be used without subscribing and doesn’t cost a penny. This way the very often criticized issue oft subsciption is avoided. I like it very much – you should go check it out!

Some more information on the company it self are available here. On altsearchengine blog you find different translations, the German one is my masterpiece. ;–)