Sideshows

It's true. I was at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference, being brought to heights I can only hope our own Circus achieves. And, alongside the well-known luminaries such as Al Gore, Goldie Hawn, Meg Ryan, Cameron Diaz and Robin Williams, were some lesser-known but equally radiant (and in some cases, more radiant) beings. My favorite speakers:

Chris Jordan
artist

Jill Bolte Taylor
neuroanatomist

John Hodgman
expert, author, etc.

for comic relief...

That's me on the right and Conde Nast Portfolio's Megan Barnett on the left.

Kaki King
guitarist

Craig Venter
genetics pioneer

Paul Rothemund
DNA origamist

oh, there are too many to list!

Laurel

Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch and Mediabistro Circus speaker, is one hell of a theorist when it comes to the culture of online communities like Ebay, Digg, Wikipedia that run on a "power to the people" type of infrastructure, where self-governing is viewed upon as the way to online harmony, apes talk like humans, and nothing is what it seems. Well, maybe just the first thing.

Anyway, a self-regulating online wonderland sounds great, but Carr thinks they won't last unless some good old-fashioned non-civilian policing is introduced. Perhaps he was convinced of this theory after visiting our Thunderdome-like TV News Forum, where a "make your own Keith Olbermann or Bill O'Reilly voodoo doll" party is in the works.

Carr, who serves on the Editorial Board of Advisors for Encyclopedia Britannica, and contributes frequently to their blog, recently posted a great piece on the fault of self-governing online communities, and writes in detail about Ebay and their long-deteriorating, soon-to-be-overhauled feedback system.

One of the crown jewels of Jim Louderback's Revision 3 is Diggnation, the show where hosts Alex Albrecht and Kevin Rose (Rose if the founder and chief architect of Digg) sit on a couch with laptop in hand, drink vigorously, and rummage through the top stories from Digg.com. Earlier this week, Diggnation hit the road, taping in front of a live audience in St. Louis.

Groundswell, one of the Forrester Research blogs, reported on the taping, and like others who may have preconceived notions about the popularity of an "Internet television show," the folks at Groundswell were blown away by Diggnation's following and obsessive fan devotion.

Personally, we're devoted to anyone who has a job that involves the magical trifecta of living room furniture, technology, and heavy drinking.

A day doesn't go by where the web doesn't have something interesting created by or featuring Robert Scoble. We've got two Scoble-centric items right here.

Last week, our awesome conference producer, Kirsten, made the rounds in sunny California. She visited Edutopia editor-in-chief and Circus speaker Jim Daly at Skywalker Ranch, where Kirsten apparently asked what those "silver handled things" in the glass case were. They're called lightsabers, Kirsten. Unfortunately, there weren't any measures in place to test her geek quotient before entering a George Lucas-owned facility.

But we digress. Kirsten followed Scoble to Revision 3 last Friday, where they joined CEO Jim Louderback for a tour of the Internet broadcast network's amazing new studio.

We've also come across this video interview with Scoble on thomascrampton.com that included his five tips for better video blogging. Among the tips: be interesting and focus on a niche topic. Not among the tips: Clothing is optional.