Now that Barack Obama has appointed YouTube as his “Secretary of Video,” as CNET commented, it raises the question: What does Generation O’s new transparency mean for businesses?
At first glance, it can mean trouble. The airlines British Airways and Virgin Atlantic experienced this firsthand. The Economist reported recently that several flight crew members were fired after making derogatory comments on the airlines’ Facebook forums about safety standards and passengers. The staff gushed about cockroaches on board the planes and shared other juicy details that, if true, were less than flattering for their employers. Public relations experts, such as Aedhmar Hynes from Text 100, were quick to point out in the article that online transparency can only be as radical as its regulation is regimented, and that employee empowerment needs to go hand in hand with employee education.
Yet Hymes’ recommendation sounds like radical transparency that is not quite so radical. Moderated radical transparency sounds as oxymoronic as, say, risk-averse hedge funds. Does this episode mark the beginning of the end of radical transparency? It’s all a matter of managing expectations. For starters, it’s worth acknowledging that radical transparency can have radical implications. In fact, collateral damage should almost always be assumed; it is part of the game. If you’re not willing to take that risk, don’t take it! But note that in most cases — unless you’re a military defense contractor, the CIA, or another organization that needs to respect strict legal requirements — your customers may then assume you have something to hide.
Airlines and other travel industry companies are especially vulnerable when it comes to bad PR because the perception of their service is so critical. Customer expectations are high, and every little interaction — and there are hundreds of thousands of these little interactions every day — is closely scrutinized. See Untied, the customer forum for rants about United. Airlines are also impacted by variables that are often beyond their control, at least partly. Remember JetBlue’s winter storm fiasco in 2007? The brouhaha around BA’s and Virgin Atlantic’s Facebook woes does not make for a case against radical transparency; it instead highlights an inconvenient truth. Airlines, as well as the majority of service brands, are radically transparent by the very nature of their business.
I’m dazzled by the website We Feel Fine, but a bit flummoxed at how best to describe it. The site states that it’s “an exploration of human emotion on a global scale,” but that doesn’t quite describe the uniqueness of the content, and the addictive nature of the interface.
Created by Brooklyn-based artist Jonathan Harris — who spoke at Pop!Tech in 2007 — and Stanford computational math professor and former Google employee Sep Kamvar, it’s a bit like a more interactive version of PostSecret.
Here’s more from their site:
Every few minutes, the system searches the world’s newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases “I feel” and “I am feeling.” When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the “feeling” expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.)
Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day.
The site then takes this data, separates it into six “movements,” and launches an applet that allows you to sort, display and play with the information. “Madness,” for instance, lets you click on colored dots that burst open to reveal someone’s thoughts (and sometimes an image); “Murmurs” allow the stated feelings to float up the screen as if in a dream; “Montage” contains feelings that have correlating images, which visitors can then sort to curate and share their own galleries. I could easily spend hours on the site, and I’m sure fellow data/design junkies will agree.
“We cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy,” said Barack Obama in his speech in Denver to accept the Democratic nomination. Based on his campaign and his policies, Obama seems well in tune with new models with which to face our current challenges.
Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, is one of several commentators who have argued that Obama’s campaign represents a deep political paradigm shift. Beyond the nature of the campaign, Leyden views Obama’s election as a catalyzing force for “an explosive period of political and social innovation,” having the ability to mobilize new tools to take on 21st century challenges. Here’s Leyden giving a prescient analysis of the Obama campaign:
On the day after Election Day, I happened to finish reading a book called Leadership and the New Science, written in the early 1990s by Margaret Wheatley. In the book, she discusses how ideas from modern science — particularly quantum physics, molecular biology, and chaos theory — can offer us new models of how to organize and lead human endeavor.
The timing was such that I couldn’t help but apply her line of thinking to a recent shift in leadership, and the need for significant change in how our organizations operate.
What do Napster, a Josh Groban charity fansite, and online tech support forums have in common? A lot, according to Clay Shirky. At Pop!Tech this year, he spoke of how people get motivated to give large amounts of their time and expertise for free on the Web. Shirky is the author of the recent book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, part of a growing class of books — from Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks to James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds — that examine the power of groups.
In Shirky’s talk, he illustrated some examples of online generosity, such as cell phone users who donate their time to troubleshoot others’ phone problems on an obscure discussion board. He then offered some pointers for designing for generosity on the Web. There’s no exact recipe, Shirky says, but there are some basic guidelines that he has observed over the years.
The first rule is to design for intrinsic motivation. “Design an environment where people can feel good at what they’re doing,” he says. If you design an environment where they can be appreciated, they will flock to your venture. He is quick to distinguish between the dual motivators of love and fame. “Being appreciated by a small number of people who know you well is a different kind of emotion than being appreciated by a large group of people who don’t know you well,” Shirky says. “Everyone who says ‘Come here and participate and you’ll get famous’ may think they’re appealing to intrinsic motivations, but they actually aren’t.”
The second guideline he offers is to make a system that encourages autonomy. The third is to build a system that encourages openness. “Everyone understands that closing down a system, locking it down…will kill this kind of generosity,” he says. But what’s less well-understood, he argues, is the importance of making a system that has some basic constraints, too. There need to be some guidelines in place to ensure that a website doesn’t get taken over by trolls, for example. “Designing systems that have the right mix of freedom and constraints — very often constraints enforced on the users by one another — is really the art.” Wikipedia is one sterling example of this; it’s an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, but still has basic guidelines to abide by.
Finally, Shirky says that we should not treat users as simply idle generators of content, arguing that it’s important to view an online audience “not just as an aggregated bag of individual motivations, but thinking of us as participants in social systems,” emphasizing that these systems have their own unique and important logic that’s greater than the sum of its users. “Once you switch to that view of the world,” he says, “I think really incredible things can start happening.”
His presentation shares key themes with his upcoming book Outliers: The Story of Success, which will be released early next week. Gladwell examines why some people succeed and seem to reach their full potential, while so many others are mired in mediocrity.
Are intellect, athletic ability, and math aptitude products of nature or nurture? Watch this Pop!Cast to find out what one forward-thinking theorist has to say.
Check out this terrific little machinima music video for “I’m a Dragon,” by friend-of-Pop!Tech and beloved 2006 performer Ethan Lipton. (You can hear several of Ethan’s songs on his Myspace page.) Ethan’s quirky, sardonic and often hilarious songs each inhabit their own little universe, with twists and turns all their own. “I’m a Dragon” is a perfect example; it turns out this alpha lizard just wants to have coffee with you.
Yet Obama’s victory is not only a victory through marketing; it is also a victory for marketing, and for the profession as a whole. It not only restored America’s political capital, but also America’s reputation as the spiritual home of marketing. It proved all those wrong who asserted the end of American brands and branding in general, and it has given more support to marketers who passionately believe that smart marketing can indeed change the world. And so it goes that I was not only a happy American last week, but also a happy marketer.
Every history of marketing must also be a history of America –- see the TV series Mad Men –- and one might even posit that America’s history is a history of marketing. Seth Godin describes it this way: “The lesson that society should take away about all marketing is a simple one. When you buy a product, you’re also buying the marketing. Buy something from a phone telemarketer, you get more phone telemarketers, guaranteed. Buy a gas guzzler and they’ll build more. Marketers are simple people… they make what sells. Our culture has purchased (and voted) itself into the place we are today.” Arthur Miller put this more optimistically when he said, “America’s biggest asset is its promise.” The same can be said about marketing.
“Change we can believe in” is the motto of each and every transaction between a brand and its consumers
The Obama campaign leveraged its promise with maximum effect: “Change we can believe in” is the motto of each and every transaction between a brand and its consumers. Buying or buying in always implies the expectation of a positive change — a change in someone’s well-being, household, and financial situation or at any other levels of Maslow’s pyramid. But with “change” as the ultimate promise and “hope” as the ultimate motivation, the Obama campaign didn’t just generate leads; it created believers. The seven million names on its lists (email addresses, mobile phone numbers, Facebook and MySpace pages) represent a staggering 11 percent of the approximately 64 million votes the President-elect received. The loyalty of these supporters is of long-term value. Tomi T. Ahonen writes: “The Obama presidency can continue to engage with this active part of his core supporters, return to them at the re-election bid, and even use this support base to help in the elections of his successor in 2016 (assuming Obama is re-elected in 2012).” And in fact, Obama and team are not wasting any time and launched a new site, change.gov, right after the election to keep in touch with existing and new supporters during the transition.
What advice do you have for the incoming U.S. president? Pop!Tech recently teamed up with Reuters as part of its effort to compile thoughts from people worldwide. Readers from Sydney to Baghdad have chimed in with their video “postcards,” delivered via Youtube. The broadcasts thus far have been intriguing, to say the least; pictured above is the thought-provoking postcard from Nairobi. A reader from Beijing recommends that Obama should work to increase understanding about Chinese culture and issues among the American public. A denizen of Moscow hopes for more friendly relations between the U.S. and Russia. A British citizen offers his support, with the words, “Good luck, Mr. Obama. It’s a tough job ahead but the British people are behind you.” All in all, the messages reflect hopes for a more peaceful future. Click here to see the postcards. You can also submit your own.
You’ve probably seen the picture of Oprah Winfrey, overcome with emotion at Barack Obama’s acceptance speech, leaning on a person unknown to her whom she referred to later only as “Mr. Man.”
It turns out that Oprah’s pillar of support was none other than Sam Perry, the Obama campaign’s communications director in Silicon Valley and frequent Pop!Techer. Perry couldn’t join us in Camden this year because he was busy fundraising and helping out with the campaign.
From the Chicago Sun-Times, who originally identified Mr. Man:
Perry is apparently an Obama volunteer, listed as the communications director for Silicon Valley for Obama. Giselle Schmitz, regional field director for the Obama campaign, described Perry as “a great guy” and “tremendous asset to the organization. He’s a great, great supporter,” she said. “He did a ton of work on the campaign.”
Oprah will be interviewing Perry on her show today. I’m interested in hearing how he managed to look so serene while OPRAH WINFREY sobbed on his shoulder. I guess collective joy trumps celebrity.
You can watch a short video of Perry being interviewed at last year’s Pop!Tech, talking about transcendentalism, Thoreau, and taking action in the world. Looks like Oprah unknowingly chose someone with very broad shoulders indeed.
A robotic plant developed by Chonnam National University /Yonhap, photo from: Chosun Ilbo
I have a new addition to my ever-growing list of favorite robots, including those that play the violin, teach science and comfort the elderly — a robotic plant. Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper recently reported that the robot research laboratory at Chonnam National University developed a robotic plant that has humidifying, oxygen-producing, aroma-emitting, and kinetic functions. As someone who has been directly responsible for the slow (albeit involuntary) death of scores of houseplants over the years, this is music to my ears.
In fact, that’s part of the point. In addition to several real-plant characteristics (such as emitting oxygen, moisture and aroma), the four-foot-tall robotic plant also responds to external stimuli including people, music and light. Users could build a “robot garden” of several robots embedded with a ubiquitous networking system or use them for indoor interior decoration.
Finally, no more composting, weeding or watering. Come springtime, stop by my robot garden and smell the circuitry.
John Legend, musician, humanitarian and member of the Pop!Tech board of directors, recently released a new album, Evolver. The album, his third studio release, features guest vocals from Kanye West, Brandy and Andre 3000, and was produced by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas.
Legend’s producer will.i.am is of also the brains behind the “Yes We Can” video project, which set a Barack Obama speech from the 2008 primaries to music. This moving video quickly made its way around the Internet and has now been viewed over 12 million times. Legend is one of the many musicians who sang on this clip, spreading Obama’s message of hope and optimism for the future of the United States.
I recently saw Legend on the Bill Maher show, where he was on a panel talking politics. He closed the show with a performance of a song from Evolver called “If You Are Out There,” a song with lyrics that seem especially apt in light of yesterday’s election results:
If you hear this message, wherever you stand
I’m calling every woman, calling every man
We’re the generation
We can’t afford to wait
The future started yesterday and we’re already late
Legend’s tour to support his new album begins November 19th in Minneapolis, MN. You can catch Barack Obama worldwide for the next four to eight years. ☺
Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, you’d have a hard time arguing the counterpoint to this assertion: America has never been more politically and culturally divided. Bill Bishop, author of “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-minded America is Tearing Us Apart,” presented this argument at Pop!Tech last week — illustrating how the divide is growing and what it means for the US.
As part of his talk, Bishop presents photos of neighborhoods from around the country that he says reveal the political leanings of the area: peace signs made of branches and funky yard art mean you’re probably in a Democratic neighborhood; well-manicured lawns and big flags indicate that your likely among Republicans. He also talks about differing education levels, economic situations and tech savvy reflecting and impacting one’s political affiliation.
In a country that prides itself on diversity, it seems we as Americans — collectively — are increasingly uncomfortable living near people who don’t think like we do. Let’s hope the next President can help us better understand each other, no matter where and how we live.
Best of luck to the candidates today, and everyone, please make time to vote! The world may well be a better place for it.
Also, The New York Times‘ website has a great interactive info-graphic reflecting voters’ state of mind on this historic election day.
Matt Mason, journalist and author, is also one of the modern world’s most infamous pirates. In his recent presentation (video above) from this year’s Pop!Tech, he talks about seven things we can learn from pirates.
Although Mason began his life in piracy as a radio DJ, he now sees piracy and its related opportunities as having a broader reach — extending into television, film, even the pharmaceutical industry. Calling pirates innovators, he touches on topics from the impetus for iTunes to the art of storytelling in video games.
Mason is encouraged by the amount of content being generated by users of media, and how it has allowed everyday people to turn business and narrative models upside down as they create what he calls “networked storytelling.” So download this video, remix it, upload it to YouTube or Vimeo and send the link on to your friends. Matt will be proud.
In the midst of the election madness (and yes, it is madness!), here’s a different way to make your vote count. Ushahidi, the website introduced by Pop!Tech Social Innovation FellowsErik Hersman (pictured on the left) and Ory Okolloh, is a finalist for the We Media Awards, which recognize people, projects, ideas and organizations leading change and inspiring a better world through media.
Following the post-election violence that engulfed Kenya earlier this year, Erik, Ory and fellow Kenyan bloggers launched Ushahidi (the name means “testimony” in Swahili), a website that allows users to report incidents of violence via text-messaging or email. Reports were posted to a map, creating a near-real time record of events throughout the country. Ushahidi quickly morphed from a simple website into a grassroots mobile news network, a platform for citizen journalism that gave voice to the myriad stories that were otherwise being missed or ignored by the mainstream press.
But Kenya was just the beginning. The ultimate aim is to crowdsource crisis information by building Ushahidi into a free and open-source mapping tool that acts as not only as an archive, but as an early warning system — detecting crises before they happen.
Ushahidi is one of 35 finalists for the We Media Award. In keeping with the spirit of crowdsourcing, the winner will be decided in part by the number of votes it receives from the public. To help give this inspiring project recognition, you can vote here.
As we wrote last week, Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, treated the Pop!Tech audience (and Nikolai, his lucky student) to a transformative music lesson. Now you can view the Pop!Cast and watch as Ben coaxes the magic out of his student, who before our eyes infuses his playing with more passion and joyous emotion then you would think possible from a fifteen-year old.
Zander, a long-time advocate for embracing life’s possibilities rather than living in the “downward spiral” of negativity, also inspired an impromptu meme at the Pop!Tech closing dinner. His advice during his presentation was, when you make a mistake, throw your arms up in the air and say “How fascinating!” Pop!Tech attendee Tierney O’Dea (with a little help from me) managed to catch almost five hundred people doing just that. View the slides.
It seemed a fitting end to a week where, in spite of all the recent fiscal, environmental and humanitarian mistakes we’ve made, the possibility of what we can accomplish still feels boundless.
This is the first installment in a new interview series we’re running with Pop!Tech speakers past and present. To kick things off, we talked with the artist and Pop!Tech 2008 speaker Kelly Dobson. Dobson, who holds a PhD from the MIT Media Lab, is known for her fascinating work at the crossroads of art, culture, and technology — including Blendie, a voice-activated blender with a mind of its own, and Screambody, a wearable device that offers a portable space for screaming.
What motivated you in the first place to be an artist?
Before I was an artist, I was studying pre-med, so that I could figure out other ways besides pharmaceuticals to treat some kinds of things. From observation and practice and study, I understood that the emotional system of a person is directly linked to the physical body and nervous system body and deep memory body. I set out to contribute to Western medical practice by highlighting ways to treat some ailments in one the body through the others, without medicines and hospitalization. This would be akin to movement therapy, yoga, music therapy.
But when I realized there was already a growing area called alternative medicine that was gaining respect, and integrating schools of practice, I was happy about that and also I was freed to switch gears a bit. I had always been a kind of part-time artist, and I began concentrating on art as a way to do socially active work, culturally critical kinds of work.
Tell us about the concept you call “machine therapy.”
My interest in alternative ways to access experiences came around again in the form of using machines prevalent in our daily lives in non-standard ways. The practice is both a new and social studies kind of investigation of the side aspects and side relationships of machines with people, and at the same time suggests some therapeutic applications.
Machines we use often come with instructions for proper use, or we are trained how to use them correctly with the sole focus on their prescribed function. They are indeed prescribed—use this machine to dig a hole, use this machine to clean your floor, use this machine to provide power to your community, use this machine to firm your glutes… But with every prescription there are side effects and other aspects of the machine in use that we are taught explicitly or implicitly to overlook. In part, my work brings these aspects to the foreground.
When I was working on Screambody, a wearable device that provides a portable space for screaming, I was thinking about the basics of free space to vocalize. I had that in my head when I was walking down the street one day. There was construction on the road and someone was jackhammering. I recognized that as also a place to freely vocalize.
The noted debt crisis expert Juan Enriquez delivered one of the conference’s most buzzed-about talks — on the causes and some proposed remedies for our current financial meltdown — and sparked a passionate debate that was still going strong at the close of the event. At the core of the debate are ten draft “commandments” he argues the next President must implement within 60 days of taking office, to help avert a decades-long economic slide.
We’re going to use Juan’s talk as the jumping off point for a running dialogue between the Pop!Tech community and a wide array of financial experts -– from varied backgrounds and with vastly different perspectives. For more context on how we’re kicking things off, here’s an excerpt from an e-mail Andrew Zolli, Pop!Tech curator, sent yesterday:
In the coming weeks, we will have a great deal more to share about the many projects and relationships that were formed at Pop!Tech this year — and later this week, we’ll be distributing Pop!Casts of several of the most popular talks. But right away, I want to fill you in what we’re doing around Juan Enriquez’ sobering talk, combining insights from many sources and thinkers, about our national response to the financial crisis.
When Juan gave this talk, he called it a “first draft” and invited criticism and conversation– both of which have resulted in quantity. We at Pop!Tech will take no official stance on the substantive points of the talk, but we do believe that, whether you agree or disagree with either his diagnosis or his prescription, this is an urgent and critical conversation for Americans to be having right now.
The slides from Enriquez’s presentation, a video of his talk, and information about a specially created wiki can be found here: http://www.poptech.org/juanenriquez/. There’s also a group forming over on the Pop!Tech Hub to discuss some of the tangential issues his talk raises. Anyone interested in this subject is encouraged to join in this non-partisan debate.
A lot of folks have been asking what they can do to keep the momentum up from the conference as we settle back into our regular lives. Exploring ways to keep connected, and conversing with each other, will help to ensure the energy from the once-a-year event turns into year-long action.
In the months before we saw the daily clips of shocked Wall Street traders and failing banks across the world, we were hearing about the global food crisis. We were also experiencing the rising cost of food firsthand, as products like flour increased in price by as much as 300%.
Limited access to credit, paired with stagnant wages, means our ability as a society to spend is no longer a sustainable renewable resource. As citizens and as more reluctant consumers, we should consider our role not merely as individuals, but as part of a larger and more fragile economy. This is particularly true when it comes to food.
Why did global food prices start to rise? And what is the impact of this shift? The instability caused by climate change has an effect, as does the demand for ethanol, but just as pertinent is the growing purchasing power of growing populations. The rising demand for higher-quality foods (read: more meat, dairy and processed food) from the growing middle classes of India and China, in addition to the existing demand from the West, drives prices up. People with money buy a lot more food. That changes the dynamics of the market to negatively affect those who were already food insecure.
How are we to respond to both the pressures on the developing world to cope with dramatic changes in food prices, and the need to stabilize our own local economies, while dealing with the fact that we have less money personally? Three ideas: Buy direct from the source (or grow your own), buy less (particularly of high-impact, high-cost foods like meat and dairy and certainly less of highly processed foods), and eat everything that you buy or grow. The fact that we balk at the cost of food is a bit astounding, considering that American households waste 14% of their food purchases –equaling almost two months’ worth of food. Additionally, our spending on food is historically low. Less than 10% of our household incomes goes to food; in the 1950s, it was over 20%. We also see half of our food spending going to eating out, the most expensive way to eat.
While we wisely cut spending in many areas of our life — transportation, clothing, technology — food is one area where we should decide to pay more. I would argue that we can, with changes in the type of food we buy and what we learn to do with it, keep overall spending the same or even spend less.
The products we choose to buy with what money we have counts for a lot. Where the money goes should be a significant factor in our comparison-shopping. Sometimes the cheaper option is a good one — dried bulk organic beans are cheaper than conventional canned. But often the right choice for the local economy doesn’t feel like the right one for your personal budget.
If I spend two dollars on conventional butter from a large corporate dairy, I know that my money will be leaving the state, and that many of the workers may be uninsured. I know that the cows are likely kept inside, creating outrageous amounts of manure that is not being used as fertilizer but is possibly going into a rural water system — and that the cows are being fed grain grown with pesticides. The health costs created by these problems will be paid by me — if not at the checkout line, then in the allocation of my tax dollars and the costs of my healthcare premiums.
For four dollars more, I can buy butter made regionally, by cows eating grass or at least eating feed free of pesticides, by workers who may be insured or earning a living wage. The rural communities that ultimately provide my food are healthier and more stable. That said, I couldn’t simply take the same grocery list I had when I prioritized buying cheaper food and plug in more expensive food. Changes have to be made to the type of food, the source, and the amount I eat.
Take literally the figure of speech we’ve been hearing so much to describe how we must respond to difficult times: We need to tighten our belts. There is a reason that our over-consumption affects those who are hungry — not because we compete for supply, but because our increased demand drives up the price for those who cannot choose to afford it. Additionally, the health and economic benefits to us personally of eating less are too numerous to list. By simply limiting the amount and kind of food I buy I can maintain a more rational global economic food system, keep down national health care costs, and save money on a gym membership.
Here’s an illustration of where I paid more for the food I bought, grew my own where possible, and spent a nominal amount in total on a simple meal that sustains my working household and still supports the workers who produced the goods. Click on any of the items on the table to learn more.
Thanks, of course, go to the team at Pop!Tech who have helped things go so smoothly: Andrew Zolli, Beth Cohen, Jason Rzepka, Louis Juska, Elizabeth Levy, Cordelia Lindgren plus the countless other staff and volunteers.
We can’t finish up without thanking the bloggers who have helped keep track of what’s been going on each day. Alongside me we had Michelle, Geeta and Colleen — and we couldn’t have kept up without their efforts.
But the biggest thanks should go to the people who help make Pop!Tech what it is: the audience in Camden, the TV viewers in Maine, the zillions of people viewing the live stream, the people reading the blog or blogging about us and those of you who have twittered at us.
Someone warned me that Frank Warren is the last person you want to tell a secret to. Why? Because Warren runs a web site called PostSecret, where every day he posts hundreds of other peoples’ secrets.
But it’s actually not Warren who is telling the secrets; it’s the secret-holders themselves. Readers of the site, of which there are many, are invited to send in postcards confessing their crushes, deviances, bad behaviors and sins. The results run the gamut from funny and sweet to deeply disturbing.
A sample from the site today:
“I told my parents I was bullied so I wouldn’t have to go to school.”
“After 29 years of marriage, my wife finally loves me.”
“My algebra teacher taught me to divide more than numbers.”
Warren got his start four years ago by handing out self-addressed stamped postcards to complete strangers. “Hi,” he’d say cheerfully as he passed them out, “I’m Frank and I collect secrets.” He was surprised that even when the postcards ran out, the secrets kept pouring in from all around the country.
The postcards themselves are often works of art in miniature. Many people sending in their secrets take great pains to draw, paint, cut and collage pictures that help illustrate their words.
What drives people to tell complete strangers their deepest and darkest? It seems to be equal parts confession and community. If you share your inner secrets, you release them into the world. Warren says that that connection with strangers is at once freeing and transformative.
Frank Warren recently ventured into a private room here at Pop!Tech to video his personal postcard to the next President of the United States. But guess what? He’s not the only one who shares secrets.
In the midst of the election madness (and yes, it is madness!), here’s a different way to make your vote count. 
This is the first installment in a new interview series we’re running with Pop!Tech speakers past and present. To kick things off, we talked with the artist and Pop!Tech 2008 speaker Kelly Dobson. Dobson, who holds a PhD from the MIT Media Lab, is known for her fascinating work at the crossroads of art, culture, and technology — including Blendie, a voice-activated blender with a mind of its own, and Screambody, a wearable device that offers a portable space for screaming.
