Sunset Cantina WBUR

SunsetCantina2WBUR

Originally uploaded by jeffcutler

After the WBUR social media gathering.

Wahyd on the left via Nick, middle and Eric Guerin Owner, SmartMarket Movie.

From the WBUR tweet-up

Manifest Magazine at WBUR with Dan Kennedy on the right and Barbara Slavin among others.

Mobile post sent by manifest using Utterli.  Replies.

The WBUR Social Media Group (SMG); a potential must-attend rendez-vous in Boston.

The WBUR Social Media Group (SMG); a potential must-attend rendez-vous in Boston.

WBUR-SMG has the potential to become the rendez-vous of reference for all interested in social media in the Boston area. On Thursday 30Th of October, the second SMG in the series took place; currently the plan is to turn it into a monthly event

The event featured two discussion groups. One centered around the potential hype surrounding web 2.0 and whether there are ways to balance healthy skepticism while “mining” the web’s potential.

This discussion was facilitated by John Carroll, senior media analyst at WBUR and Adam Zand.

Click here to view a video of this particular discussion.

WBUR - John Carroll

As founder of “Manifest” a print-on-demand web magazine, I joined the discussion titled Journalism in a 2.0 World lead by Robin Lubbock of WBUR and Dan Kennedy professor of Journalism at Northeastern University.

Take away points:

– Squeezed from the top and the bottom.

Established media companies such as regional newspapers are being squeezed from the top and from the bottom. At the top, are heavy-weight news providers such as the BBC, CNN, the AP who have the resources to cover events worldwide. At the bottom, are local entrepreneurs who provide hyper-localized content. CCTV in Cambridge, MA for instance or MSG150.com which reviews restaurant in a 12 block area of Seattle. David Boeri of Radio Boston, noted that in Cambridge, MA, there are more subscribers of the New York Times than there are of the Boston Globe.

– Avoiding the fate of the music industry.

Owners and employees alike have vowed to avoid the fate of the music industry. In short, a combination of complacency and late, uncoordinated reactions have put that industry in a precarious financial and negotiating position. How different things would look today if the music industry had wholeheartedly embraced the web and launched its own user-friendly, digital distribution platforms.

Likewise, newspaper-owners are scrambling to find the model which will help them leverage the internet and social media in particular, into a long-term revenue model.

Barbara Slavin (left) and Dan Kennedy (Right)

– Getting out of the current paradigm.

Like the music industry however, it may be difficult for newspaper executives to move outside the current paradigm which is built upon such potentially obsolete notions as copyright, predictable revenue stream, few or no competitors and a general gatekeeper status.

– News snacking.

Furthermore, the way people and youngsters in particular consume their news is being characterized as news-snacking. In short, news is gathered from a variety of sources, in short amounts but throughout the day. Mobile access to news only exacerbates this balkanization effect.

This is only a short summary of what has been discussed. I look forward to SMG becoming a regular event at WBUR.

To be notified of future SMG events connect to WBUR via any of the following:

Upcoming

Facebook

Twitter

Youtube

Utterli

The Converstation

Print on Demand

This editorial was published on Manifest N5. In light of the Christian Science Monitor‘s decision to stop

It can be printed... if you want to.

publishing a paper edition, the editorial acquired increased pertinence.

Imagine the following situation: you are in Kathmandu, Nepal. You haven’t read the newspapers in a while.
Amid the tumult of rush-hour, you discern a shack. It is well supplied with spices, plastic-ware and talismans. It also advertises printing-on-demand services.

Although besieged by equally busy and boisterous customers, the owner hands you a list of publications organised by country, language and subject-matter. Each, are priced by the number of pages to be printed.
Among them you will hopefully order a copy of “Manifest”.

This is what “Manifest” believes the future of publishing will be like. You, the ultimate user, will chose how best to  engage with your favourite publications. These will only be printed, if you want to have them on paper, whether because your eyes are too tired or the screen is too small or because you just feel like it.

Right now, the publishing business wastes a lot of money and is less than environmentally friendly.

Consider for instance, the stacks of newspapers sitting outside a news-agent waiting to be returned to their warehouse. What  waste it is to have to print (using ink) millions of newspapers and magazines each day, transport them to tens of millions of purchase points (energy waste), transport them back (more waste), and eventually dispose of them.

This is why “Manifest” is formated the way it is: so that you may be able to chose how you wish to interact with it.
The technology is now available to rid ourselves from the existing inefficient distribution channels

“Manifest” uses a MacBook computer and a software called “Pages” for creation and layout. The internet permits distribution and printers can turn pixels into paper.

Furthermore, the technology already exists to customise commercial messages in this or any other publication depending on where you download them.

In the previous example, the reader may well be interested in knowing where closest trekking boots can be bought in Kathmandu.

Download “Manifest” in Heathrow airport, and you might get a 15% discount at the Suchi bar or a better currency exchange rates.

This model is closer to being branded as “sustainable” than the current one. Not only do you get more flexibility and more pertinence at close to “zero” cost but the inefficiencies of heavy-industry and irrational distribution are removed.

Wahyd Vannoni

TV on the web… Supplement to Manifest N7

This is a short list of websites which broadcast TV shows. However, with just these, you might realise that you do not need cable television after all.

—

News

Al Jazeera on Livestation

Recommended player:

Livestation: a free stand-alone player which will allow you to hundreds of news channels and radio channels. Among others are: CBC, RAI NEWS, FRANCE 24, CSPAN, ITV, RUSSIA TODAY.

—

Series and Films

www.hulu.com: For a comprehensive serving of current television shows.

The Simpsons, Lost, Family Guy, Saturday Night Live etc…

and Films

Planet of the Apes, Fever Pitch, The Madness of King George.

Click here for the alphabetical list.

—

Live Sports

www.justin.tv: this website points to live sports events.

—

In general, visit the website of the channel which broadcasts your show.

Daily Motion and Youtube also carry series and quality videos.

The office at Pandora

Here is what working at Pandora looks like.

I guess the person on the left is “employee of the month” given that he has the only portable personal A/C system.

Pandora

St Jerome in his Study

St Jerome in his Study

Originally uploaded by tadeusz deregowski

Zambia born artist, now living in Brazil, Tadeusz deregowski will be featured on Manifest N7.

His work can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/28509471@N05/

Be an Iconoclast!

(This editorial appeared on Manifest n6)

The surprise in the past few weeks is that people (professionals included) are surprised by the current financial crisis.

In a book titled “the (Mis)behavior of Markets” Benoit Mandelbrot argued that crisis of this magnitude took place more often than even financial models assumed and that therefore, interest rates did not fully account for the effectively much higher level of risk.

The MisBehavior of Markets - Buy on Amazon.

Obviously, few people have read this book, but many more people read the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In the period 2002 to 2005, you will find countless articles warning about the impending crisis.

Two main arguments were described in those articles: house prices were growing far faster than wages and the economy in general and secondly, the United States’ relationship with its creditors was unsustainable (to simplify, how long can China lend money to the US so that in turn, this money will be used to buy Chinese goods?).

Yet, house-buyers, house-sellers, brokers, financiers, fund managers and politicians world-wide were mostly oblivious. Everybody was making money easily and nobody wanted to be left in the sidelines.

A new book by Gregory Berns titled “Iconoclast” makes the argument anew, that, people however intelligent and individualistic they think they are, behave like a school of fish.

"Iconoclast" - Buy at Amazon

If everybody is doing something, I should be doing it too. It simply costs one’s brain too much energy to think otherwise or to try to see things in a different way. At any rate, there seems to be safety in numbers. This works until it works; but like in the game “Lemmings” all the individuals of the tribe eventually fall off the cliff.

So if you really want to make the most of this situation: now is the time to get a degree in real-estate, now is the time to set-up a private equity fund and take advantage of falling asset prices, now is the time to invest in financials and insurance companies; not in 2004 nor 2005 nor 2006, nor again, when the clouds will have dissipated.

— Links and information–

Benoit Mandelbrot – at Yale University

The Hidden Dimensions of Nature – Nova, a scientific program on PBS.

Fractal Geometry – New York Times article

Fractal Generators

Free Capuccino till Halloween at BN

Good till 31 / Oct / 2008

The effect of age on Nobel Prize attribution

By Athanasios Vamvakidis, Senior Economist, IMF.

(This article was published on Manifest n6)
The Nobel Prize was established in 1895 by the will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of

Alfred Nobel

dynamite. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died, and signed at the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris on 27 November 1895. Wishing to atone for the evil done with dynamite, Nobel bequeathed 94% of his total assets, 31 million Swedish Kronors, to establish and endow the five Nobel Prizes. (As of 2008 that equates to 186 million US dollars.)

It was first awarded in Peace, Literature, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, and Physics in 1901. Although the committee has been seen by some to be politically motivated by handing prizes to dissident such as Lech Walesa, an aura of objectivity surrounds the committee when it comes to age.

But what if the contributions of a 30-year old and an 85-year old are recognized as Nobel-worthy at the same time, will the older candidate receive the award earlier in view of his/her lower life expectancy? The answer should be negative according to Alfred Nobel’s will, which calls for awarding the Prize to those who have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind, regardless of the candidate’s characteristics.

To answer this question, we looked at all Nobel Prizes based on data that span the entire history of the Nobel Prize (1901 to 2007). This 781 Prizes include: 189 in Medicine, 181 in Physics, 151 in Chemistry, 104 in Literature, 95 in Peace (excluding institutions), and 61 in Economics.

Furthermore, and despite public perceptions, not all Nobel winners were old. Physicists are, on average, the youngest recipients (54 years of age), followed by chemists (56), physicians (57), peace advocates (63), writers and poets (64), and economists (67). Almost 60 percent of Nobel recipients were between the ages of 45 and 65; 20 recipients were younger than 35; while 24 recipients were older than 80.

The youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize was William Lawrence Bragg, who, at the age of 25, shared the 1915 Nobel in Physics with his 53-year old father, Sir William Henry Bragg. The oldest person was Leonid Hurwicz, who was awarded the 2007 Prize in Economics at the age of 90.

In contrast to Alfred Nobel’s will, we find an age premium associated with older candidates for the Nobel Prize. Specifically, the results show that making the Nobel-worthy contribution a year later delays the Prize by about six months, while sharing the Nobel Prize reduces the age at which the candidate is awarded the Nobel by almost 2 years.

The results also suggest that the Nobel committee “rushed” the Prize to older candidates during the first decade of the Nobel. Similarly, a positive and highly significant time trend may reflect the expanding pool of candidates (and hence older candidates) as the population and the number of educated people rises, and life expectancy increases.

Networking seems to matter, with the Prize being “accelerated” by 7 months for each alive Laureate in the same institution (and field). Other factors such as gender and the country of the Nobel-worthy research do not have a noticeable impact.

The bottom line is that to increase your chance of receiving the Nobel Prize early: work in the science fields, make your Nobel-worthy contribution early in life, collaborate with older colleagues, work in an institution with many Laureates, and, more importantly, live as long as you can.

Athanasios Vamvakidis is a senior economist in the Regional Studies division of the European Department of the International Monetary Fund. He was the IMF Resident Representative in Croatia during 2004-2007. Other past IMF assignments in Europe included Italy, Greece, Slovenia and Cyprus. He joint the IMF in 1997, and after spending a year at the Research Department he moved to the Asian Department, where he worked for the Philippines and Indonesia during the East Asian financial crisis. His professional experience also includes internships in the World Bank and in the Harvard Institute of International Development, and teaching assignments in international economics and finance at Harvard University. He holds a BA in Economics from the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, Greece and a Master and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. His research interests include international spillovers and economic growth. He has published extensively in all major journals in his field.

The entire paper can be found here.