At the beginning it didn’t even cross my mind that this was classical digital gestalt, funny but as I was considering using them for another project I’m doing (yes, a conference 😉 ) I didn’t even see this new way of thinking as something that is worth a write up. I can go even a step further and say i was a bit hesitant to let go of control (I’ll soon explain this).

so what’s Evolaro all about? they basically say this:”the conference is about the speakers and the attendees, let’s  let them update the conference site then.” they created a stream on the homepage of your conference’s site which reflects all of what the speakers are doing on social media. so if you have “Bob” and he’s a strong twitter the front page  will be full of his latest tweets, now if you have a few good speaker and they are all active on twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and the rest you can bet you’ll have a real live conference home page, people will understand how these people are they are paying (and taking time off work) to hear.  of course there’s all the rest of what you need to run a conference, agenda building, ticketing and the works… but those are just technicalities.

So what do we have here:

A database that holds all the list of speakers.

An API that can read all they “say” in their social media and display it in a dedicated stream.

Cool and simple.

and if you where woundering about the control issue I raised earlier. hey it is scary to let a bunch of people you have no control over to “post” on your conference’s homepage…. well if I’m counting on them to be smart on stage I’ll probably have to let them start before the curtness are lifted.

I first learned about it in this podcast of  Freakonomics titled: How Is a Bad Radio Station Like the Public School System? but I’m quite sure that’s not the only place which mentioned this innovative system of education.

The Idea is simple: each kid gets to learn in one of the available modalities (computer, small group, full class, pairs etc.) and in his level. The System keeps track of the student at all times, seeing which modalities work in which subjects, when he is ready to move to the next level and so on. But the system also knows what was good for the rest of the kids in the class, so if someone isn’t making progress, it can “guess” what would be the best way to help them advance.

So what do we have here?

Networked workstations – for both the students to use for learning and others for teachers to fill in each class report.

Data Mining Program – for the system to be able to give each kid the best optimized learning schedule for that day.

This is brilliant idea and while it’s quite straight forward it’s probably far from easy to implement. As mining the data created in real time, using it to both advance the student and any other student connected to the system in that instance or in the future, requires the ability to process and think in algorithms, heavy math as we’d call it.

let’s leave it at that for now, and go listen to the podcast ,if  your like me you’ll be asking “where was that when I grew up?”

FriendFactor defines itself as a social network for friends of gays, but it was started by Brian Elliott as much more than just that. Brian sent out to leverage the power (and numbers of ) his straight friends to help in the struggle for gay equality. the goal was to get  people to lobby their state senators to past legislation for full gay rights. Most people don’t know who their state senators is, not to mention his or her phone number, and even if they had it, which is a big even, they surely wouldn’t feel comfortable calling them.

So here’s what FriendFactor did. Gay people would invite their friends to the site there they could learn about the discriminating laws against gays in their state. it would then show them a picture of their senator and ask them to put in their phone number if they would like to be connected for a short call. of course it also had a script with the key points that where to be conveyed to the senator. as easy as that but nothing short then Brilliant.

So let’s try examining what we have here:

1. Network – Using a simple network, to get x times the number of people which are in the gay community.

2. Database – The system pulls the right senator for each of the friends and along side with all the details + picture.

3. Cross platform functionality – to close the deal, without leaving the site, it offers to connect your phone with the senator’s.

This is all topped with a layer of Content that helps give the whole thing meaning, be it the text in the invitation, the picture and info that turn the senator from a distant abstract to a person you can call and the list of points you are given to convey it all.

I think I’ll leave it at there for now, hope after I do a few of these patterns will start to emerge.

You can read more about the project in this NYT bolg post by Tina Rosenberg and this is Brain’s LinkedIn.