Programme

Proximity wormholes: how the social web enables intimacy at scale

Format: Oral presentation 45min | Language: English | Tags: social
Speaker: Lee Bryant |  Headshift | @leebryant

Abstract
The social web enables both intimacy and scale, making our cognitive world smaller and bigger at the same time. This extends the notion of proximity to include network relations, second order connections, topic- and interest-based closeness and other forms. This has fascinating implications for social relations, creating new forms of ‘knowing’ based on ambient information sharing and following. But it also creates design challenges for products and services we use in the networked world.

This talk will consider how proximity changes in the social web, and how we can help people adapt and cope with these changes, given that their own cognitive powers evolve more slowly than the tools we use to connect and communicate.

About Lee
Lee Bryant is an online community and social networking specialist, and co-founder of the leading social computing consultancy Headshift (part of the Dachis Group), which helps companies use lightweight social tools to create meaningful applications and purposeful social networks. Headshift’s social business design team operates internationally, with clients across Europe, the UK, Australia and North America, which gives us an insight into the diversity that makes for healthy networks. We help put IT at the service of business, not the other way around, and apply the lessons of what works on the public internet to the real needs of businesses, both internally and externally. Our clients include several top 10 global law firms, consultancies, FTSE-100 companies, media and governmental and public sector bodies.