kevin kelly

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What should I do about Australia 2020?

30 March 2008 in Personal, Politics by Stilgherrian | 14 comments

OK, so I didn’t make the 1000 “best and brightest” going to the Australia 2020 Summit. Nevertheless I’m still very interested in Topic 9, “the future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.” What should I do?

There’s still the possibility of getting media accreditation, or perhaps connecting to the themes of the event in some other way. Here’s a brain-dump of my thoughts on this sunny Sunday morning… comments appreciated!

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All you need is 1000 True Fans

06 March 2008 in Arts, Blogging, Business, Internet by Stilgherrian | 7 comments

Diagram of The Long Tail, showing that you only need the top 1000 true fans to reach your financial target

“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author — in other words, anyone producing works of art — needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.”

So says Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, in his latest essay 1000 True Fans.

It’s worth reading the full essay to completely grok what he’s on about. But in brief, a “true fan” is someone who’ll purchase anything and everything you produce.

They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans…

Kelly’s point is that the Internet allows you to find and stay in touch with True Fans cheaply and easily — globally. He gives some useful numbers to help think it through, and opoints to some examples which are already working.

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The Four Stages of the Internet of Things

09 February 2008 in Internet by Stilgherrian | No comments

Further to comments in my piece about that Web 2.0 session, I’ve stumbled across Kevin Kelly’s explanation of The Four Stages in the Internet of Things, riffing of an essay by Tim Berners-Lee (i.e. the bloke what invented the web).

I can summarise the four stages like this:

  1. Connect all the computers together (i.e. the Internet)
  2. Connect and share pages of data (i.e. the World Wide Web)
  3. Connect and share individual data elements (Web 2.0 through Web 3.0?)
  4. Connect and share things themselves, not just the data about things

So where are we now?

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