Accept no substitutes

Month: September 2004 (Page 3 of 3)

Enterpreneurs, economists, networks

At noon today I went to a talk by historian Peter Coclanis about the history of entrepreneurship as part of a program on Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative . Odd to be there since I have been a kind of ward of the state for the past 25 years, but the topic turned to social networks and social capital. The trend in entrepreneural discussion seems to be about the importance of networks drawing on an argument between Granovetter and Ronald Burt. Burt would be useful for our class especially with his work on “Structural Holes” which sound a lot like some of what we heard in Doc’s talk. Burt and Nan Lin have collaborated in the past (nota bene seminar members).
Peter also made the case for commuities of creators (not his word) who were more “loyal to the craft than to the companies” and how this made an area endure and grow — citing silicon valley and RTP as examples.
One point made over and over was that creative enterpreneurs don’t really do anything new but they recombine and/or reuse existing ideas — Ford taking interchangable parts from Whitney via Colt and adding the assembly line taken from the slaughter houses.
I, who hold that all art is recombination — and so copyright should be weak to allow more art to be created –, have to pause when the entire of the myth of orginality goes out the window.

Later in the afternoon, I ran into Koleman Strumpf and his co-author F. Oberholzer who wrote “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis”, the paper that showed that P2P music trading has no economic effect.

Book recommended by Coclanis: How Breakthroughs Happen The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate by Andrew Hargadon

Doc’s talk

We had a very nice crowd for Doc’s talk today despite the rain which is approaching monsoon level as the remains of Francis approach the area. We should have video on the web and Doc should be posting his slides in the next day or so.
The talk was more marketing than blogging, an update on ClueTrain with some nods to Howard Dean (very much in passing) and to Linux and Linux culture (more than passing. this included a narrative by Doc’s youngest son told with plastic penguins — I hope he has these slides online soon).

Doc’s visit to my class

The nice thing about guest to a class like ours is that the guest can range around quite a bit and we’re small enough to absorb and even revel in that ranging. I sent Doc down memory lane by bringing up the fact that when he lived here in the early 70s that he was part of an intentional community, Oxbow. Doc is still interested in community and not completely accidential ones that build around physical proximity. So off we go.

Unlike the talk for this afternoon, Doc was allowed to tell his story with digressions and questions along the way. We were helped out by questions from some of the folks who work with me at ibiblio.org as well as Cori Dauber and Richard Vernon. (Richard was once Doc’s editor at Linux Journal).

I am still not sure if blogging and bloggers even when aggregated by Technorati constitute something called a “community.” I am becoming more convinced than before that blogging can become a part of ‘everyday life’ (thanks Barry Wellman) and can facilitate the creation, growth, and maintenance of communities. Perhaps blogs are one of the better examples of the ‘strength of weak ties.’

What it was was Football

Thanks to my position as consort to the Council Member, I was invited up to the Chancellor’s Box for the UNC vs William and Mary game on Saturday. My having gone to NCSU means that I can enjoy the game when UNC is really looking dumb. My having worked at UNC for over 25 years allows me to enjoy the game when UNC is really doing well. Luckily I had opportunity for both on Saturday. Although my technical knowledge of football all comes from Andy Grifiths’s “What it was was football” and my spiritual knowledge of the game comes from James Wright’s poem “Autumn begins in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio”, I had a grand time. With UNC behind by 3 in the fourth quarter, we had to leave. By the time we got to our car UNC had scored again (up by 4). By the time, we got out of the car at the store, UNC had scored yet again winning a pretty sloppy game 49 -38.

John Hood suggested links

http://www.johnlocke.org/lockerroom/ of which John says:

As you can see, it ranges widely; politics, history, economics,
pop culture, whatever. It is written by staff, affiliated fellows and
scholars, and a number of other folks we have “invited in”
and armed with appropriate passwords. It does not accept comments at this
time, as I’ll be happy to discuss.

Our “Raising the Issue” feature is a regularly scheduled debate between JLF
and the NC Justice Center on issues of mutual interest. It happens in
real time within our blog (another is scheduled for Thursday, that is
tomorrow — yikes) and will soon happen on theirs, too, when they
get one up.

Here’s the link:

http://www.johnlocke.org/raisingtheissue/

And here’s the announcement about it:

http://www.johnlocke.org/press_releases/2004052464.html

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