Loosely Assembled

Can a hand written note find its own way to a specific person by crowd surfing through 400 geeks at the Emerging Communications conference?

I didn’t know where @caseorganic was sitting, I just scrawled this note and handed it off to the person on my right, nudging them to do the same. Watching down the aisle I noticed the passing included more verbal interaction than I had suspected (it would be nice if it caused a little less disruption (friction)). The horizontal passage was an artifact of the physical setup, much easier to pass to the person beside you, unless there was a significant gap (in which case i’d suspect people would hand it to someone behind them).

Five minutes later, voila, the note found her.

I actually was a little shocked, turns out she was sitting in the front right, while i was in the far left. The act of passing a note forward seems pretty disruptive, and i’m surprised that enough people reached forward, tapped a stranger’s shoulder, and handed them a note, that this little experiment actually worked.

A few questions linger:
How many people peeked inside the note as it passed by?
Why didn’t anyone augment the note? Add their own postmark?
Was the first test a success because it was headed to someone with 6,000 followers? (two subsequent tests fail whaled).
What percentage of handlers used knowledge of the recipient’s position to inform their actions?
What kinds of incentives might lead to a higher success rate? or structural changes? or test mechanisms?
Is there any connection to self organizing principles here?
Is this a subtle form of emergence?

A friend of mine just posted this story about the death of analog television, and her encounter with a neighbor in the laundry room. It is such a great little story, I felt compelled to repost it here (her version i saw on facebook and couldn’t link to).

enjoy:

I just met an amazing crazy man in the laundry room of my building, he faced towards the window talking to a radio as I entered wearing my I Am Videotaping You Right Now T-shirt. He turns and asks “Where do I know you from?’ I say, maybe the elevator? He says no, maybe the comic book store, I think not. He talks about some lady in apt 609, I think this has nothing to do with me, and he says “that really has nothing to do with you”. No, I guess not. He then states my thought of the day, “You know, the analogue signal is going to die today,.. I mean tomorrow.” It is funny how the timing is so important, yet we can’t get it straight, it is omnipresent in its nonlinear effect! I reply emphatically “I know! midnight tomorrow, are you going to watch it?” Notice also, that no-one says, the digital is coming! Rather, the analog is dying..

He says it is in the afternoon, or that’s what someone told him, Well, he’s going to watch it, but he’ll be away and then some more unrecognizable sentences.
Not that he would care, but I was enjoying the conversation so I say I don’t have a TV, but am going to fer sure watch it. He replies that he has a TV.. and he has cable, and he uses channel 3. He has lots of cable. He then brings up an important decision he must make, he hasn’t yet decided whether to use a converter box or get an HDTV. He has asked a bunch of people and the polls are not in yet and he needs to ask more people. I want to tell him, the clock is ticking!! and also wonder if I, the comic book girl in the laundry room, have a say? He really has to let everyone else make the decision, he isn’t worried, because he is going to let the majority decide, he has to choose. He’s not sure what to do, but he will Let the Majority Decide, I’ve just got to let the majority decide. Let the majority decide, Just Let the majority decide, he repeats many more times shaking his head. “I hope they’ll make the right decision!” I say leaving the laundry room on my way to look up what time it really is going to happen at!