Last week I had the privilege of attending Le Web ‘08 in Paris, which was artfully composed and hosted by Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur. It was an interesting event; I always like getting an international perspective on technology and business.

What was perhaps most interesting was the constructive tension between creativity and business on display there.

The theme of the conference was love — a primary human emotion. However, many of the guests and speakers were aggressive, technically-minded business people. But many of the speakers were artists, musicians, and researchers.

I’m fascinated by the complementary roles of “right brained” activity (art, creativity, design, visual thinking) and “left brained” activity (analysis, rule-based systems, quantitative modeling, finance) in business, particularly on the Internet.

Loïc rightly justified the use of the theme of love for the conference by saying that it is the primary emotion that drives an Internet entrepreneur to give birth to a new idea or technology. Surely this is true, but I’d argue that there are deeper justifications for using an emotion as the theme for an Internet business conference.

Developing innovative Internet business ideas requires a sense of play and real play only comes about when people tap into their creative, artistic brains. Not to get all philosophic, but Immanuel Kant stated in his Critique of Judgement that real advances in art can only be made when  art is undertaken for art’s sake alone, that is to say that it is done without any expectation of value, but rather is done merely to satisfy the curiosity of the artist (or designer, or researcher, or scientist).

So, all this means that Internet business people are in desperate need of right-brained influence.  It’s where the ideas come from.

My friend Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, is quoted as saying, “Good design is a renaissance attitude that combines technology, cognitive science, human need, and beauty to produce something that the world didn’t know it was missing.”  Love is surely a human need and is arguably a driver for all good design. And aren’t we all trying to design the things that the world didn’t know it was missing?

William McDonough, famed architect and designer, has stated, “Design indicates intent,” and shouldn’t our intent be to love one another and to love our planet?  Isn’t that what we should be trying to achieve in designing our Internet startups?

I was interested to see how many people literally got up and left the plenary session when the subject matter turned to art or music or emotion.  Some people were there strictly for left-brained content (how to raise money, how to survive the recession, etc) while others seemed to be more open to the right brained content.

Personally, I enjoyed the presentations by Itay Talgam (conductor), Chris Anderson (curator, TED), Helen Fisher (researcher on human relationships), and Robin Good (on education) the most. I’d say these were the most right brained. Things I enjoyed the least were the presentations by Messrs. Arrington and Gillmor, especially the unfortunate bickerfest that is the Gillmor Group that ended the conference. This is not to say that this kind of “left brained, rule-based” discussion doesn’t have a role, but it doesn’t generate anything really. All it does successfully is tear people apart; it’s not creative, and it doesn’t fuel anybody’s soul.

So, I applaud Loïc and Geraldine for a really creative and fun event, and one which truly gave me a sense of what is currently going on in the heads of European web entrepreneurs. I would simply encourage steering even further into the realm of emotion, creativity, design, and art – as it’s this kind of content which will pull us out of the recession, as it’s this kind of thinking that will help people create art and beauty for art’s sake alone, and these will be the innovations that the world didn’t know it was missing.

Rock on, Loïc, and let your right brain show; it’s your best side.

I just returned from Paris and the formidable Le Web ‘08 conference that Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur hosted there, and really had a great time!  I will write more about the conference shortly.

Meantime, you may have heard that Paris has installed a network of bicycle stations throughout the city and that they are available for folks to use for their commutes, errands, and to generally replace cars and other forms of transport where possible.

What the press has not reported so well is that these bikes are FREE for trips under 30 minutes (with a very reasonable 1 € /24H subscription), and that it is EASY for tourists to use the bikes. Often, European ticketing machines require credit cards which utilize a smart-card chip, but Paris’ Velib’ bikes have no such requirement.

Here’s how it works:

• Arrive at a bike station and select English as your desired language
• Select “Short term subscription” and choose a 24-hour (1 €) subscription or 7 day subscription (5 €)
• You will guarantee the bike with your credit card for up to 150 €, but you will only be charged if the bike is not returned
• You’ll be given a ticket with a subscription number good for the duration of your subscription
• Follow the directions for taking a bike, and grab one (warning, pick one with good tires and check the seat to be sure it stays up)
• Take a bike
• Return it within 30 minutes and your rental is free!
• Enter your subscription number when you return the bike to confirm the return; the bikes have active electronics that detect the station, so this may not be strictly necessary, but it’s a good idea

Now, at first the requirement to return in 30 minutes may seem like a problem, but it’s not: there are stations every 300 m throughout all of Paris, and you will see these stations everywhere.  So, these bikes are great for touring! Bike for a bit, return the bike when you are near your destination or see something interesting, and then walk, train, or meander wherever you like.  You can pick up your next bike wherever it’s convenient, and you never have to worry about locking up your bike, leaving a rental bike in a sketchy neighborhood, or having to go back to where you parked your bike.  It’s by far the most carefree and fun travel bicycling experience I’ve ever had.

Occasionally, the station where you would like to return a bike is full. If this happens, you can enter your subscription number at the kiosk and it will give you a map of nearby stations (there should be 3-4, as they are placed every 300m). The system also issues you an extra 15 minutes of free time to get to the other station, though in practice 5 minutes is usually all that is required.

We literally did not think that we were going to use these bikes because so many of the articles we read said things like, “These bikes are not great for tourists because they require a European credit card and cost a lot of money if you keep them all day.”  And yes, if you keep the same bike all day, they charge something like 4 €/hour after 2 hours. However, the cure for this is simple: don’t keep the same bike all day.  Up to 2 hours the rate is something like 1 € per hour and not nearly as expensive as a traditional bike rental.  And who wants to bike for more than a half hour anyway? Paris is all about stopping, checking out unique neighborhoods, grabbing some cheese and wine, and exploring.  For this, Paris’ Velib’ (short for Velo Libre — free bikes) is perfect!

Other cities (and counties) should follow Paris’ lead on this.  It’s a great system, run by advertising giant JC Decaux in exchange for outdoor advertising rights in Paris.  No small trade, but the the benefit to the people of Paris (and to its visitors) of having a well run system for replacing cars is huge. If you have not been to Paris before, this should encourage you to go; if you visit often, please try the Velib’ bikes!

And yes, biking in Paris is somewhat entertaining.  While they don’t have as developed a system of bike lane markings as in, say, Berlin, it is functional and you quickly get a feel for where it’s a bad idea to be biking. Shooting across the Seine to the Rue de Rivoli at 9:30 at night proves to be a bit harrowing, but you have the right of way and people are genuinely interested in not killing you; it would be a bureaucratic nightmare for everyone involved.

So, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Go to Paris, grab a bike, and have a great time!

In September, I had the opportunity to hang out with Alex Hillman in Vienna, Austria at the wedding of our mutual friends Amy Hoy and Thomas Fuchs, and while Alex and I had peripherally known of each other, we hadn’t had a chance to actually meet and talk.  It turned out we were both staying at the same hostel, and as a result we had a chance to talk about a bunch of stuff from projects to Alex’s pioneering work in developing coworking at IndyHall in Philadelphia.

I’d known about coworking and its evolution since 2007; in fact I talked with Noel Hidalgo on video about the concept in Berlin in July 2007, along with Travis Todd, but while I liked the idea of coworking I didn’t really have a way to put it in practice yet.

Well, after seeing events like SocialDevCamp, Ignite Baltimore, and TwinTech take root here in the Baltimore area, it became clear to me that the time was also ripe for coworking in Baltimore. As I shared the idea with friends and colleagues, it was clear that we could build momentum around the concept quickly.

So, on Saturday and with Alex’s help, we held a session on coworking at SocialDevCampEast2, and we went over the key concepts behind coworking, answered some questions, and by the end of the session had created a mailing list.  Yesterday we held the first “official” Baltimore coworking session at Bluehouse, and we expect to keep that up every Tuesday and Thursday until we establish a more permanent home.

Of all the insights that Alex has gained in running IndyHall, I’d say this is the most important: “If IndyHall, as a place, ceased to exist tomorrow, IndyHall would still exist as a community.”  And this is truly key. Too often, people get distracted with the particulars of a piece of real estate or a locale or amenities; none of that is central to the mission.  The most important thing is the community and the ideas they share. There will always be a place where that community can take root.

That being said, we are looking at various ways to give coworking in Baltimore a more permanent home, and we have a bunch of ideas about how to do that.  If you would like to be in on that conversation, I invite you to join the Coworking Baltimore Google Group.  And of course, stop by Bluehouse next week on Tuesday or Thursday, between 10am and 4pm!

Feel free to contact me with ideas or questions about coworking and how we can establish a sustainable, vibrant creative community here in Baltimore! I’m really looking forward to working with all of you.

I’m finally recovered after a really exhausting week that included SocialDevCamp and the wild ride of Twitter Vote Report.

SocialDevCampEast2 went off without a hitch on Saturday at University of Baltimore.  Once again, some of the best and brightest developers, entrepreneurs and social media gurus gathered to trade ideas and talk about the future of the web.

One thing we try to do at SocialDevCamp is vote on the sessions, to make sure they are things that people really want to hear about, or at least size the discussions to the right rooms.  We ran 5 rooms all day in 5 sessions plus lunch, for a total of 25 sessions! Check out the wiki to see the sessions that were held.

Personally, I enjoyed the conversation on location technology, and why location-based social networks have yet to reach critical mass.  Most folks felt that there was a technological barrier — it’s just too hard to continuously update your location with current device and battery constraints — and others questioned what incentives people have to update their locations.  We decided that those incentives probably needed to be tuned in order to see a successful location-based service emerge, and that there may also be benefit for people sharing location-related information anonymously.  Great talk, and I’m still thinking about what incentives might make LBS actually work.

We did a session on Twitter Vote Report, which was awesome because we were actually able to recruit some members of the crowd to do some work on the project!  Bryan Liles and John Trupiano contributed some great work to the codebase, some while sitting in the session!  We talked about the overall architecture of the project, and the fact that it was put together in just two short weeks of coding!

There was a good conversation about iPhone development, introducing people to the platform and answering questions about the platform.  Many seemed to be glad to get a feel for Cocoa and I wouldn’t be surprised if several of the folks there end up working on the platform!

Alex Hillman of Philadelphia’s Indy Hall helped to lead a discussion on co-working in Baltimore, and by the end of the session, we had actually launched co-working in Baltimore, with a mailing list and a set of great ideas for taking things forward.  Yesterday, we held our first “official” co-working meetup at Bluehouse in Baltimore; I’ll write more about the co-working initiative separately.

Because I wasn’t in the other sessions, I can’t say what all was said in them, but I heard good things about the conversations on data portability, source code management with Git, and crowdsourcing. If you were in one of the sessions, feel free to leave some comments here or links to your own blog!

Ann Bernard helped put together an awesome party for SocialDevCamp at Metro Gallery with great food from Tapas Teatro and an open bar.  And live music from Natasha El-Sergany, KADMAN, and Ra-Ra-Rasputin… A great way to end the day, and I can say that by the time it was all over, I had talked to a few hundred people and was completely exhausted!

This morning, Mike Subelsky, a friend and one of the organizers of the recent and fabulous Ignite Baltimore said via email, “It is not an exaggeration to say that SDCE has totally changed my life,” referring to the first SocialDevCamp held in May. Not to sound self-congratulatory, but the same is true for me.

SocialDevCamp is one of a few things sparking a renaissance here in the Baltimore/Washington area, giving rise to events like Ignite and to movements like co-working.  With the social media tools available now, this sort of thing is finally possible to do, and it’s hugely gratifying to see it happening!

See you next spring for SocialDevCampEast3!