A Case Study in Global Online Conversations
Monday, April 13th, 2009On March 26th of this year, I gave a presentation at a luncheon entitled “The Future of the Internet.” (Not to be confused with the great book by Jonathan Zittrain of the same name.) The event, which was hosted by the Center for Policy on Emerging Technology in DC, was fascinating and I was glad to have the opportunity to participate. The title of my talk was “Hometown Baghdad and Beyond: A Case Study in Global Conversations.” I used my time to review some of the lessons we learned about fostering meaningful online conversations while distributing Hometown Baghdad on the web. It then moved on to touch on how we used those lessons to create the Qwidget. Check out my slides below:
As you can see, the line from creating and distributing Hometown Baghdad to the creation of the Qwidget is a direct one. Our mission has always been to create meaningful conversations. The Qwidget is simply the most recent, and most effective, incarnation of this drive.
[Update: Slideshare seems to have some formatting problems with the slides. I'll try to get that fixed.]







Stories, Updates and Thoughts From the Qwidget Makers
The Qwidget is a tool that publishers and bloggers install on their sites to make it easier for readers to engage in dialogue around their content.
With the Qwidget, we are building a cross-web dialogue platform. We aim to make the web a better place for meeting new people and starting conversations about the issues and content that interest people.