June’s Twilight Camp: Great discussion, great people
A word of gracious appreciation goes out to Arts Memphis for hosting at their wonderful offices next to Folk’s Folly.
Being a gathering without an agenda, June’s Twilight Camp provided a great opportunity to learn of more regularly-scheduled agenda-free gatherings. A couple that were mentioned include the weekly Mercury Tech Coffee meeting, which happens Mondays at 7:30 am at Republic Coffee on Walnut Grove; and the First Thursdays meeting of the Sierra Club, which takes place each month at Otherlands Coffee Bar on Cooper Street in Midtown, from 5-7:30 pm.
We also talked about how consumers are gaining more and more social equity with service providers. Though businesses like Google and Facebook keep adding features to their social networks, they aren’t forcing anyone to use the new features.
It’s increasingly all about choice now. With growing frequency, when new features are added to a service, it’s up to the user whether or not they get used. The user’s power is so great that networks would rather wait for the right customer to begin using a new tool than risk turning anyone off.
This is one of the reasons why our discussion also found itself mentioning the idea of an Early Adopter tax credit – the people who jump into new services, tools, and devices frequently pay a premium for the opportunity to figure out how best to use things (like the new iPhone, the Palm Pre, or even netbooks).
One interesting point we drug up while talking about that is whether early adopters are being productive, or whether they’re really being progressive.
Both “productive” and “progressive” seem like – and are – positive adjectives, but there are subtleties there that have really nothing to do with anyone’s political views. “Progressive,” in this case, can be equated with “experimental.” If early adopters are being progressive, they’re experimenting with a new device or new software, trying to figure out how to be productive with them.
Those who wish to be “productive” will eye these technological progressives for new ideas, techniques, and uses. Without the progressives, we would likely not know how to be productive. It seems that the proper term for those of us who wait for those instructions would be “pragmatic.”
There was also interesting discussion of Google Latitude and social currency. There’s more room in those topics than it would be fruitful to discuss here, so keep your eyes peeled for a couple posts here later this week.
Again, a hearty thanks to Arts Memphis for their magnificent hospitality.
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