Episode Notes

From SxSW in Austin, Heather Gold and Kevin Marks talk with Howard Rheingold, who has been studying and writing inspiringly about virtual communities since the 1990s, and has been online continually since the mid-1980s. His The Art of Hosting Good Conversations Online is the original Tummler how-to guide.

Enjoy this conversation with the godfather of online tummlers!

Episode Notes

Writer Paul Ford (a.k.a., Ftrain.com) joins Kevin and Deb to talk about the Egyptian revolution, whether Arianna Huffington is a tummler, and the ultimate question of the entire Internet: Why Wasn’t I Consulted?

Paul on Twitter: @ftrain

Quote of the Week: “There is a new role for individuals in the web who serve as ‘antennas’ who collect and feed back to the crowd” – Paul Ford

More links and comments from this episode:

• Danah Boyd on Orkut and flag-waving
• Egyptian Google executive Wael Ghonim’s electrifying interview
• UK Open Rights Group pledge conversation
• Cory Doctorow responds to Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion – We need a serious critique of net activism
• Douglas Rushkoff says “we’d write for free for Arianna, but not AOL” – Huffington Post and AOL: the end of Web 2.0
• The leaked AOL “master plan” memo – The AOL Way
• Farhad Manjoo in Slate echoes Paul Ford’s doubts about the Huffington Post business model – HuffPo’s Achilles’ Heel
• Paul Ford’s instantly influential post that pegged “Why Wasn’t I Consulted” as the fundamental question of the web – The Web Is a Customer Service Medium
• Paul says The Awl looks like a blog, but it is actually an important magazine about culture on the web [not that blogs aren’t important]
• Readability, an incredibly useful tool with a new model for rewarding producers of great writing
• See also Longreads, Arts & Letters Daily, and the collective highlights of Instapaper
• Kevin Marks recommends Among Others by Jo Walton to “understand how books can love you back”
• Paul Ford’s entertaining and informative Ftrain FAQ

Episode Notes

Brady Forrest joins Deb and Kevin to talk about the tummlers of the Egyptian revolution, humanizing oceans of data, and the birth of the now-global phenomenon of Ignite.