Montesquieu was an independently wealthy aristocrat, able to bring his thoughts to print and to propagate memes in the local coffee houses with the best of them. It is not known whether or not he wore a beret.

"BBSes, no BS… that’s where the social software thing took root.  just thinking back, there were a few that stood out in the world of phreaking…

Plovernet:  That BBS was crazy.  Constantly busy since it had hundreds of active users and Quasi Moto let everyone post whatever they wanted and never deleted messages unless there was no disk space left.  We helped start the "philes" trend there also.  It was easy to spot who knew what they were talking about so I invited them onto the LOD BBS.  Some of the people on the LOD BBS were then asked to join the now infamous LOD group.

Although I knew the guys in the group were good hacks/phreaks, I had no clue of where it was leading.  Since we did not tolerate destructive/malicious behavior nor things like credit card fraud I did not think there was much risk in the group as a whole getting any real attention.  Of course, all that changed with time.

Metal Shop Private:  The users were idealistic and good natured which was refreshing.  I liked it most because it was a good source of information/files and we were the first to see new Phrack issues.

Farmers Of Doom:  Mark Tabas did a fantastic job with this one.  It was quite busy, but did not remain up very long.

Phoenix Project:  Again, another fantastic job.  The Mentor had some rather unconventional ideas like letting security people on, which I thought was a good idea.

RACS III:  Tuc didn’t give me the time of day at first, but eventually I got on.  Then he took it down.

Pirates Cove:  The board in 516 (Long Island, NY).  One of the classics.  It’s where I met Emmanuel Goldstein and invited him onto Plovernet to help sell 2600 subscriptions.

Catch-22:  Absolutely positively the most secure BBS I ever encountered.  Besides passwording subboards along with requiring users to have a high enough security level to access them, it made use of many concepts from the "basic security model" introduced by Lampson and later augmented by Graham and Dorothy Denning.  Of course Silver Spy and I had no clue what an access matrix was and things of that nature.  A duress password was implemented so if someone got nailed they could enter the password, not compromise the system, yet appear as to be cooperating with the authorities who we presumably thought would ask the hacker to call.  It was never used but nice to have.

BlottoLand:  Good board for a while, but he let too many of his "loyal subjects"  on the system who were locals and they eventually overran it.

I intend to revisit and apply these criteria to the Corante Social Software Architecture conference later this week. I want to give it all some time to sink in because too often my blogging is shooting from the hip.

One matter of concern for me is getting my hands on the conference roster and contact information. There were several people with whom I purposely foreswore the self-conscious exchange of business cards because we expected to have that info in hand…  When we pay to attend a professional meeting, one of the things we are paying for is the hook-ups.

Another value of the conference scene is that it provides analysts like me with an ongoing environmental scan. It’s like walking the streets at the caravansary, seeing who arrived in the night, who folded their tent and slipped away, who has put on weight, and generally sharing the joys and sorrow of our market bound existence.

Thanks Hylton, Stowe, and Berkmanites. You all hosted a good event and I’m afraid I slipped out the door without thanking you properly.

Mary Hodder is so brilliant… Phil Wolff says, "Mary gets things out of it because she is one of the smartest people on the planet…"

Kevin recommends "Non-Zero" by Robert Reich.  Also, see Kevin’s "Tags and cognitive load post at http://epeus.blogspot.com/

Eric Bonabeau is quoted:  "managers would rather live a problem they can’t solve than with a solution they don’t fully understand or control."

Seth:  Data is available, and the extent to which businesses are opening up access to their data through APIs is driving the growth of the social software space.  … "del.icio.us is crystallized attention" says Seth, and then spoils it with some kind of skewed reference to crystal meth, so now I think del.icio.us is something that burns the nostrils or something.

Kaliya:  Let’s talk about customers…  companies in e-transactions get all the data on customers.  This thread reminds me of the medical records data ownership controversy.

Kaliya brings up "the Hollywood model" of business formation.  Many of us seem to be working on this kind of a project-production basis.

Mark Palermo from ASCAP is here and asks a question, or rather offers an observation…  my observation is that Mark is from ASCAP… a signifier itself.