This morning the unconference PodCamp Europe kicked off. I am overwhelmed by the concept, what is happening here and elsewhere, as well as the ideas presented so far. For one thing, someone created the Jaiku channel #pod and immediately it was used. Soon enough one of the first issues was how to get a good WiFi access. As you can see in the channel, Primelabs where the first to find a good solution (hack :-). They too were the first second third ones to live blog from here (or there). First was Citizen Media Watch, then My Black Book! Looking forward to the next 44 hours.

[Updated: who was liveblogging first & second, and image added]

When I shot my video from my room at the Grand in Divonne I could/did not go as far as Garr Reynold did at the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo. Both the room and my mind was less equipped than Garr’s. Before you continue to read my post, check out his video at the PresentationZen (bottom part of his post).

First of all, Garr spreads the important point that the Ritz-Carlton Tokyo not only provide services and experiences, but also a lot of high tech. In this particular case a VGA-connection from the rooms writing desk to the flat panel TV-screen. In Divonne I tried for almost an hour to connect my laptop to one of the two flat screens in the room. Never made it.

Second, Garr did not only show his room – he also shared his passion, knowledge and skills. I never thought of that, until now!  Instead of just telling us about what one could do (i.e. test run presentations in the room), he performed and distributed a fast digitized show about presentation design. From which I also learned.

Third, because I currently do a lot of work for stakeholders in the meeting industry, there are some messages to you hidden here. Watch how we share our thoughts about your services in a social and multimodal way. See what other hotels do – and do not do. Do you get any ideas? If so, realize them before the other ones do.

Thank you Garr!

Today I finally found the time to set up a session about Public Service at PodCamp Europe, the unconference taking place June 12 to 13 in Stockholm. Please help us converse about it by joining in at the conference, it is for freeee. Who knows, we might stir up some ideas for the newly assigned investigator of Public Service in Sweden, the Swedish Minister of Culture, the journalist blogger Martin Jönsson, and other bloggers via knuff (links to Swedish sites).

Here is a brief summary of my idea as I described it on the session page:

The purpose with this session is to provide an opportunity for an open conversation around the notion of Public Service (compare Public Broadcasting). The term has its origins in the 1920:s when broadcasted aerial radio became an important issue and expanded to encompass television beginning in the 1940:s. Today the media situation differs substantially – and what kind of ”public services” we might need is an open question.

My gig for MAPP group ended with this 31 minute conversation. As promised, here is a link to MAG Cultures (in French) that Stefan mentioned, as well as another link to The Long Tail. Ian brought up the importance of referals/recommendations and therefore I cannot resist linking to The Ultimate Question (Swedes might also enjoy listening to QritiQ 004: The One Number, a conversation based on Reichheld’s earlier work).

We all went to school to learn. We all live and learn while doing it. And doing things, whenever you can, is a great and fun way to learn. And it is hard to gain true understanding if you cannot practice what you have learned. This includes the use of media, technology, and (new) social behavior. Hence, if someone stops you from doing things, such as using a particular blog tool, then you cannot learn about that.

In the excellent podcast For Immediate Release, episode 238, hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz discusses to what extent, how, and why organizations IT deparments decide to limit the use of Information Technology. Today I e-mailed them an audio comment with my personal experiences and thoughts around that issue. In the comment I provide examples from Ericsson, Volvo Group, AstraZeneca, and many more organizations. (I will publish it here later on, but FiR should have the opportunity to use it first. I owe them more than that because of all the things I have learned from them. Also, links to my blog and wiki assignments at the Krakow University mentioned in the comment).

Here is my main point: Various measures to control access to IT is an alarming issue for the organizations who have not yet understood the consequences of their current security measures. These might stop outsiders getting access to internal systems, and keep insiders away from what might look as non-work-related stuff. But in the long run the result is an organization full of members who neither know what is going on, nor get the chance to develop knowledge and skills concerning media development and new social patterns. On the small side, the security walls is also a problem for me as a professional presenter and teacher. Same thing goes for Neville and Shel.

What do you think? Do you have any experiences around this issue?

[Update 2007-05-28] Whow! FiR included my comment immediately in its 243:rd episode (1h:03m:30s in). Hosts Neville Hobson and Sallie Goetsch added some superb remarks. Neville also suggested that instead of only discuss bad cases (as I did) we should converse about the good ones. As a result I am publishing a weconverse pod episode here with an excerpt from the FiR show with my comment. I did also add the example of Best Western Sweden, where visitors and guests at their hotels have free WiFi access to the Internet as of April this year (more info in Swedish).

[Update 2007-09-26] See also Shel Holz’ Stop Blocking initiative.