Matter/Anti-Matter

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October 19, 2008 11:40 PM PDT

Pop!Tech 2008: "Scarcity and Abundance"

by Tim Leberecht
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(Credit: Pop!Tech)

I will be attending the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine this week. For the twelfth year, Pop!Tech will convene a network of 600 remarkable thinkers, doers, leaders, and global change agents in science, technology, social innovation, business, environmentalism, globalization, media, education, and many other fields for a four-day exploration of ideas shaping the future.

This year, the organizers will pay particular attention to the 21st century dynamics between systems based on scarcity and those based on abundance, in areas ranging from digital social networks to biology to peacemaking. Among the speakers are Chris Anderson (Wired, "The Long Tail"), Malcom Gladwell ("The Tipping Point"), Paul Polak (IDE), Clay Shirky ("Here Comes Everybody"), and Frank Warren ("Post Secret"). I especially look forward to meeting in person linguist George Lakoff (communication graduates like me may recall him as the godfather of "framing") and "songstress" Imogen Heap (I'm a big fan).

My employer, frog design, supports Pop!Tech's Accelerator program, which has the mission to incubate social innovation ventures. Together with a coalition of partners including iTeach, the Praekelt Foundation, Nokia Siemens Networks, Aricent, and the National Geographic Society, we have been working on Project Masiluleke over the past year, a path-breaking effort that harnesses the power of mobile technology to address one of the world's gravest public health crises. This ambitious initiative will leverage the ubiquity of mobile devices in South Africa to help fight the country's crippling HIV/AIDS and TB epidemics. Robert Fabricant, executive creative director at frog, and our partners will present Project Masiluleke to the public at the conference on Friday.

I will be blogging from Pop!Tech so stay tuned for more.

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About Matter/Anti-Matter

Tim Leberecht and Adam Richardson both work for Frog Design, a consulting firm specialized in designing innovative products and services for Fortune 500 clients. On the Matter / Anti-Matter blog, they engage in a debate around questions they face day-to-day in their work, using convergence/divergence as a lens through which to look at the pressing issues in business, culture, and technology. What makes a successful convergent product or a successful divergent innovation? Is convergence a myth that users don't really care about, or is the current state of convergence just not satisfying enough for them to embrace? How much divergence of innovation is good, and when does it just become confusing? How do you stay on top of people's ever changing needs and wants?

They are members of the CNET Blog Network and are not employees of CNET.

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