Who was the greater economist? - A conversation with Robert H. Frank at Nesta

I am off tonight to Nesta to see Who was the greater economist? - A conversation with Robert H. Frank
. The event will look at:-

Economist and New York Times columnist Robert H. Frank will discuss his new book The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition and the Common Good, at NESTA on Wednesday 9th November.

The Darwin Economy contends that Charles Darwin’s understanding of competition describes economic reality far more accurately than Adam Smith. For Smith, market failures were almost always rooted in attempts to suppress competition. In contrast, Darwin’s framework suggests that market failures are rooted in the logic of competition itself.

Hopefully, will write it up sometime this week.

CPD Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events

Thing 15: Attending, presenting at and organising seminars, conferences and other events . Oh dear. My favourite. The article looks at attending events. Why you should attend. What you get out of it. What you get out of it.
This then looked at Jo Alcock's article on this idea here.
Next, was speaking at events. Again, why? How? What you get out of it? Also presentation tips are included. There's also a link to Ned Potter's article on this.
Organising an event? Librarycamp and unconference etc.
I would point out that something might be added how do you find out about events? I check Nesta and the RSA are two area's I look. I also keep an eye on cilip website.

Nesta Event......another I can't go to.......

Nesta has an event next Tuesday, February 01, 2011 from 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM entitled The Livingstone-Hope Skills Review of Video Games and Visual Effects, with free registration.

Nesta says of the event:-

You are invited to the launch of a major new report into the UK's video games and visual effect industries.

Based on original evidence across schools, universities and industry, the Livingstone-Hope Review explores how the UK can best encourage and develop UK talent and sets out a compelling plan for how the UK can transform into a world leader in games production and visual effects.

Speakers will include Ed Vaizey MP, Minister for Culture, Communication and the Creative Industries; Ian Livingstone, Life President of Eidos and Alex Hope, Managing Director of Double Negative.

Be interesting to go just because Ed Vaisey is there.

Nesta event on Collaborative consumption review part.3 (Q & A)

The next part of the event was a Q & A session to the panel. It was quite a lively debate. One person asked whether it was a question of altruism or self interest in this new community? Someone else asked do people want to be part of a community? Rachel said that you can be anonymous if you wish. All the panel seemed to thing community was a good thing. Um, well its actually not always. Some communities are intrusive and negative.

Someone asked about the power of the brands in collaborative comsumption. The panel felt that perhaps the brand could be improved.

Anyhow, again this is a rough approximation of the Q & A.

Nesta event on Collaborative consumption review part.2 (a.n.other)

Following on from the previous blog post, I'll discuss the other speakers talks all together. These speakers are:-

*Ben Dineen, Spice time bank founder
*Giles Andrews, founder of social lending site Zopa
*Vinay Gupta, founder of WhipCar

This is not to belittle there role, but Rachel's talk was longer than the others, therefore more could be written. By the way there a great interview here with Rachel after the talk here.

Giles Andrews opened proceedings and discussed Zopa and the importance of trust as a commodity within his company. He also discussed how Ebay was an obvious role model for there company.

Vinay then gave a very brief and very good slide show of his company an how it worked. He described how most cars only get an hour a day use and the average yearly cost is £5000 per year for a car. Therefore, he wants it so cars are being fully utilised by the community.

Ben Dineen from spice then spoke of his company. He described how his site worked by rewarding people for there time invested. Therefore dig a garden over somewhere for two hours and u get two hours ironing (this is my own example, but you get the idea). Its mainly a welsh company, but he described one town in Wales in which all the people have invested there time. He discuused the positive feedback loop in that this can cut down anti-social behaviour and creates a sense of community. In Ben's world, kinship is enhanced.

As I said previously, Rachel spoke mostly, therefore the coverage of the other's was reduced. Obviously this is just a brief overview.

Nesta Event......Collaborative Consumption: Re-imagining public services

Nesta has another event entitled Collaborative Consumption: Re-imagining public services on 21.10.2010 08:30 - 10:00.

The event is described thus:-

Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities. The movement has the potential to revolutionise how we meet social needs through public services, whether through the bike-sharing schemes that are the fastest growing form of transport in the world or the online time banks that are powering a rise in mutualism in local communities.

You can book register here for the event. I got my ticket already.

Nesta event screened

After the What's App? - The App Economy Event I went to last night, they've put a video up of it here.

Nesta event tonight

As mentioned previously, I am off to a Nesta event entitled What's App? - The App Economy Event. Hopefully I'll be twittering it tonight.

Nesta event What’s App? A look at the emerging app economy‏

Nesta is holding a free event What's App? - The App Economy Event on the 22.03.10. I've got my ticket as I heard apps are the new platform.

Nesta Event on twitter

Next week Nesta is holding an event on twitter entitled Social Media - a force for good? The description of the event is thus:-

Date: 19.11.2009 12:00 - 13:00
Location: London
Stephen Fry, actor, journalist and celebrity 'Tweeter' and self-confessed technophile; Biz Stone, Founder and Chief Executive of Twitter; and Reid Hoffman, Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn will discuss the phenomenon of social media and its future impact.
Due to limited space, this event is by invitation only. But we'll be live streaming the discussion from this web page, so don't forget to tune in from 11:45am on 19 November.
You can also join the conversation by posting a question for any of the speakers - all you need to do is add #svuk to your question on Twitter.

I am off the day reporting then......