Friday, July 27, 2007

Fun Place to Work

This looks like a fun place to work. Is this Business 2.0?



Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger

They even have some job job openings. I'm sure they get a lot done, but the atmosphere reminds me of my fraternity in college, a bunch of smart fun-loving people. These folks do sound a bit more sassy and irreverent, but I think it's a generational issue.
At ZBT we had a big, almost-empty room in the basement with a long wooden bar and a free jukebox loaded with the latest music (I Want to Hold Your Hand, House of the Rising Sun, etc.), with a big party every Saturday night, open to the whole campus. We worked hard, and played hard (now I just work hard).

Our highlight was hiring the Kingsmen of Louie Louie fame, the song that would have been number one on the charts at the time, if not for the Singing Nun. Needless to say the party became a legend over the years. It was open to all, in the good old days before cover charges.

I'm glad to see the Kingsmen are still on tour. Most of my fraternity brothers have made out well, and are doctors, engineers, and corporate heads. And Eric Burdon and the Animals are playing at Misquamicut Beach, for free!

Saturday, July 07, 2007

First web viral video flocking?

Surfing the web yesterday, July 6, I stumbled into this intruiguing video....



Chasing down the threads, I discovered a bunch of YouTubers are meeting in Washington Park this morning (070707!), at 11 am! Wish I could be there...

Jill claims to have organized it. There are now over 60 videos on YouTube on this gathering, such as this one...



I imagine there will be many more. The Drupal site set up for the gathering, undoubtably by a well intentioned volunteer, is down. Maybe they should have used PBwiki, a very popular tool for the "self-organizing" BarCamps

(2 pm update-Drupal site is somewhat working, with some errors. Good going on trying to fix it while everyone else is having fun!)

There have been previous planned gatherings of vbloggers, or videobloggers, but I think this is first "self-organizing" viral video event, where while one person has the original idea, it is defined and shaped by flock behavior.

I have to find the recent National Geographic article on this, which I saw a few days ago. An earlier November 2000 issue of Scientific American article on self-organizing communities refers to the "fascinating theory of emergent behavior, which describes how complex social interactions can arise when individuals obey a few rudimentary but very special rules." I know human interactions can be more complex than that, and I have to chase down that latest NG article on the newest thinking regarding these self-organizing communities and behavior patterns. I did find the NG web article.

Totally OT: there are 30,000 weddings today, due to the "lucky" date. This is 3 times the normal stats!