Clay Shirky on crowds, the web and success through failure at NTEN | Social Signal

Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky manages to jam in more ideas, pithy quotes and gripping stories in one half-hour keynote than some speakers could manage in a week... but still ties it all together in a compelling narrative.

His presentation this morning at the NTEN Non-profit Technology Conference looked at how the web has broken the monopoly that organizations used to have on organized activity... and how profound the resulting change can be.

One particularly memorable bit came when he explained how moving to New York City from the midwest changed his perspective, because of the idea of a population large enough that you could sell pizza by the slice... which meant pizzas were being made before knowing who they were for.

I can't do it justice in a single blog post. But maybe my notes can give you just a bit of the flavour of his presentation. (That one doodle doesn't look a thing like him, by the way.)