Clay Shirky gave a TED Talk in June 2012 about the power of distributed and coordinated open source programming efforts and how these principles could be applied to allow citizens access to legislative and budgetary processes. He used examples like 9-year-old Martha Payne's blog rating school lunches that prompted her local council to reverse a decision, and the collaborative development of Linux, to show how the internet can empower citizens to create change. Shirky's in-depth knowledge and passionate delivery held the audience rapt as he drew parallels between new forms of collaboration and more traditional power structures.

1. TED Talks – Clay Shirky

2. Clay Shirky is an American
writer, consultant and teacher on
the social and economic effects of
Internet technologies. In his words,
his job is to “watch people argue”

3. Shirky’s June 2012 speech focused on
the power of distributed yet
coordinated open source
programming efforts, and how these
principles could be applied to allow
citizens access to the legislative and
budgetary aspects of governing.

4. Shirky contends that “More media
always means more arguing” – but
tools available today allow people to
make changes collectively and freely to
bills or budgets

5. Shirky showed the power of Internet to persuade governments by detailing 9-year old
Martha Payne’s blog about her school lunches, which included ratings on nutritional value
and numbers of hairs found

6. The local council took offense to this, and her head teacher told her to stop
taking pictures. The outcry was so massive and immediate that the
council reversed its stance the same day.

7. The speech continued to draw parallels to how
Linus Torvalds, The Invisible College, and
others used and experimented with new
media to further their goals, rather than
continuing with what had been done before
and by others.

8. He even drew lines to the governmental
aspects early on in the speech, calling the
commercial ways of programming feudalism,
with many workers supporting one owner.

9. Shirky used TED Commandment Two to great effect;
his speech even referenced how OTHER people
wondered why this had not been tried before, with the
answer detailing just how new and unknown an idea
this was.

10. I would rate Shirky as a 4.5/5. His
intensity overrode any dynamic and
energetic presence he had on stage,
but the quiet as he spoke was
tangible with how deeply the
audience was immersed.

11. Shirky’s slides were topical, drew on previous examples and expounded
upon them to do an excellent job of pressing his point, with generally very
little text as recommended by Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte.

12. The slides on organization and org-charts in particular exemplified
extraordinarily well how everything was interconnected, raising the
chaos and difficulty in management.

13. Shirky’s knowledge base is
astonishing. There was barely
a creaking chair to be heard
as the audience drank in his
words. Humor was sparing,
but he didn’t need it to keep
their attention. The depth of
his understanding and passion
for the content of his speech
was more than enough.

14. I preferred listening to Shirky’s
speeches over Sir Robinson’s,
the numerous laughter breaks in
Sir Robinson’s speeches made it
difficult to follow from an
academic standpoint, when
trying to listen for information.

15. Sir Robinson’s speeches better displayed his
humanity and Commandment 6, and he told his
points through stories rather than through discrete
facts. Shirky’s speech was more of a report rather
than a collection of stories leading to a point.

16. In person, I believe I’d have more difficulty deciding, but both speakers
bring strong passion to topics that are immediately relevant and vital to
our growing society, and that intensity is what keeps the audience riveted.

17. Shirky’s speeches have inspired me to speak with such
presence, and to know a subject so well and so passionately
that I can string it all together so clearly.