I’ve been using Twitter a lot as a way of bookmarking thoughts before I lose them, and ever since I Twittered Mesh in April 2007, I’ve found it an incredibly useful way of retaining those “aHA!” moments I always come away with when I hear incredibly brilliant people talk about what makes them passionate. So here, forthwith, a summary of Tweets from today from the SXSW Keynote conversation between Henry Jenkins (Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program) and Steven Johnson

Henry Jenkins was one of the most popular speakers at last year’s SXSW Interactive Festival, so we are very excited to have him return to the event in 2008. His foil in this conversation is best-selling author Steven Johnson, who served as the Keynote Speaker at the 1998 event. This presentation will be simulcast in both Ballroom B and the Day Stage Cafe.

In talking about crowdsourcing, Do we need to release fully formed products/results/models any more? Can we start with a “stub, and flesh it out together”?

60% of kids are producing media, what about the “participation gap” the other 40% who don’t? A resource/cultural/skills issue = new literacy


A challenge of crowdsourcing is not reinforcing the status quo – encouraging diversity to get maximum benefits of all perspectives.


How do we balance the fact that many of the environments utilized for co-creation are governed by commercial interests? Very good Q’s.

Jenkins: it’s the terms of participation that are up for grabs – that’s the whitespace that commercial interests could really f**k up.

But how do you pay the bills if you do stuff outside of the commercial economy? Focus on value of your attention rather than your content.


Commoditization is inevitable, but can we adjust what we think of as a commodity to create the model we need not to mess this up?

More tomorrow… we’re just getting started!