NLab Social Networks are no ‘Moore’

I really enjoyed the nlabs conference on Thursday and thanks to Sue and the team for convening such an interesting crowd.

I was finally able to get off my chest about how social networks are starting to fulfil some of the fuctions that traditionally made cities great, such as the random interactions on city streets that we use to continually learn and modify our behaviour. Start of a longer conversation there I hope.

I think that online social networks are particularly useful for building relationships, not with people you know well already, but rather with people you don’t know well yet, such as people you meet at conferences for example. And it’s the ‘strength of weak ties’ that social networks enable that stimulate more interaction and ultimately innovation.

It was good to talk about some of these themes with a new crowd too. I was amazed that when I did the ‘who knows Steve Moore test’ that there were only a handful of Moorites in the audience. I kind of take it for granted these days in social media circles that they’ll know Steve but there we go.

Anyway, all the videos and presentations will be available here pretty soon and worth skimming through, in particular Ken, who was on fine form I thought, but all contributions were really good.