Brainstorms Meetup

It is already a week ago, but I'll mention it here nevertheless. Since BlogWalk 5 in Umea, way up north in Sweden, where we met Howard Rheingold, I've been active in the Brainstorms community. Brainstorms is a group of a few hundred people from all kinds of different walks of life, loosely held together by Howard. Every now and then a number of them find themselves in the same place and meet up. That's how we ended up with a fun group in Haarlem. Howard and his wife Judy from the US, Ein and her partner Andy from the UK, Gerrit Visser, Adosh, Garsett from Belgium, and Sander and Sandra who were our hosts in their home town. A boat ride, a dinner and above all good conversations.

ltr: Sander, Sandra, Gerrit, Howard (more photos)

During one of those conversations Adosh pointed me to Demo, a "grammar" for understanding organisations as sets of commitments, agreements and transaction between people, by a group at Delft University. It builds on the speech-act theory of Jurgen Habermas (in turn building on Wittgenstein and Searle). As Elmine did her M Sc. on Habermas in relation to the type of communication possible in weblogs, this of course triggered my interest. I'll try and dig a bit deeper into it in the coming weeks.