What do David Weinberger, Dan Gillmor, Wendy Seltzer, David Isenberg, Rebecca MacKinnon, Joi Ito, and Ethan Zuckerman have in common (besides the fact that they have each had the distinct pleasure of meeting Frank Paynter face to face at one time or another)? They’re on the Spanish wireless provider FON’s advisory boards and they had nice, congratulatory things to say about FON in the last few days because FON has nailed down some investment capital from Google, Skype and a couple of venture capital companies.
Wait. That wasn’t Ethan Zuckerman I met. That was Zephyr Teachout.
Jerry Michalski and Esther Dyson are on the US Board too, but they didn’t get caught up in the cheap bloglic relations FON buzz of 2/5 - 2/6. The US Board certainly is weighted with Berkmanites, though. The Berkman Center at Harvard provides a critical mass of intellection for some important work on the Internet. Naturally, entrepreneurs are honored and assisted by the presence of Berkmanites on their boards.
This Wall Street Journal article is much ado about little. The disclosures are all out front about these people’s board memberships. They may make some money someday if FON irons out some of the difficulties that the board has pointed out in their blog posts. Most of them seem to have hooked up with the FONtrepreneur in Madrid at a conference on democracy and terrorism.
Rebecca Buckman, the Wall Street Journal reporter who spotted the bloglic relations blitz deserves some credit for an intuitive rush. There is a somewhat-inbred, highly influential community of writers and thinkers and doers who are found at the nexus of webbie goodness, many of whom (I imagine) hope to profit from their work… work that includes advising people who bring products and services forward in the open network marketplace. All these people posting at once about a common interest, why… it was as if FON had scored a few points on a public relations campaign. Only it was bloglic relations so it didn’t cost FON much!
* * *
In other Berkman news, Isen.com’s Freedom to Connect 2024 conference (produced in association with others, including the Berkman Center) is happening April 3 - 4. Show up and maybe someone will tap you for a place on their board.
When I heard that David Isenberg was considering work at Berkman I rose up and said "Don’t do it." My gut reaction came perhaps from the same distrustful place that inspired Buckman’s article. David is a star and I was afraid his light would be pulled inward. Berkman is the singularity in this metaphor, a potential black hole from which nothing escapes. On the other hand, observation tells me that the black hole metaphor is wrong, that Berkman is an atomic pile, gathering all those neutrons shed by the critical mass of intellect assembled there and heating things up.
I missed last year’s Freedom to Connect, and when I heard Isenberg was to be subsumed in the vortex of Berkmanism, I was afraid that there would not be another. I am such a pessimist. I think it is this same kind of intuitively dark vision that inspired Buckman’s article.
* * *
David Weinberger has a post that administers the camphor and pins this particular butterfly to the board once and for all.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
People mix me and Zephyr up all the time. I’m the one who looks like Ben Franklin - she’s skinnier and prettier.
Many of the folks involved with Martin’s new venture know him through the Global Leaders for Tomorrow program of the World Economic Forum. Berkman’s only one of several spots of high gravity in the complicated space of the internet, academe, politics and entrepreneurship…