Bart Decrem

Flock

Participation Revolution
26 minutes, 12.3mb, recorded 2005-10-21
Bart Decrem

Flock is a new browser designed with the modern web in mind. In this talk, Bart Decrem demonstrates a variety of cool features which the Flock team hopes will transform web browsing from the static consumption of documents to more active participation in a shared stream of integrated services, bookmarks, tags and blogs. This new paradigm of social web browsing is likely to appeal to early adopters looking to immerse themselves in the new, social life of the web.

Over the past ten years, the internet has resembled a library in some ways and a shopping mall in others. These days, however, the web is becoming more of an events-based place of interaction and participation. By and large, Decrem suggests, the design of web browsers has not kept up with this dynamism. For example, the button layout of Firefox is nearly identical to the first version of Netscape. Flock hopes to evolve the tools of the browser to match the excitement of creating and sharing content and social connections on the network.

Bookmarking, RSS and blogging are the core set of new activities integrated into Flock. The user interface easily lets you flag, tag or scrapbook (shelf) items, with options to organize and annotate information more deeply if desired. Bookmarking can be social, a la del.icio.us. A built-in search engine keeps track of web pages in your history, allowing for easy retrieval of information from sites you've already visited. RSS is built-in to let you consolidate news and subscriptions on an easy-to-manage page. Finally, blogging and Flickr are tightly integrated for easy posting of text and tagging of photos on the fly. The dream is to engage the web in a two way conversation, taking us closer to the original vision of Tim Berners-Lee.

This talk was from the Participation Revolution session at Pop!Tech. The other speakers in this session were Yochai Benkler and Nicholas Negroponte. The question and answer period for these talks is included in this program.


Born and raised in Belgium, Bart Decrem got kicked out of catholic school in 10th grade for being a troublemaker. He finished high school at an international school in Brussels, which is where he developed his flight-risk tendencies. He moved to the US for graduate school. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he stayed in East Palo Alto, a low-income community just miles from the heart of Silicon Valley, and started Plugged In, one of the nationÕs first digital divide programs. During a visit in 2000, President Clinton honored Plugged In as a model for programs around the world.

He left Plugged In in March of '99 to co-found Eazel, an open source start-up that helped make the Linux computer operating system easier to use by creating a desktop environment called Nautilus that continues to be used by millions of people. Among other projects, he coordinated the creation of the GNOME Foundation.

In March 2001, Eazel was unable to secure additional financing and shut down. Decrem moved to Korea, working as Vice President of Business Development at Linux One, Inc, a Korean provider of Linux-based hardware solutions and as Vice President of Business Development for Hancom Linux, a maker of Linux-based productivity solutions for desktop PCs and handheld devices.

From the creation of the Mozilla Foundation in July of 2003 until the launch of Firefox 1.0 in November, 2004, he was employed by the Open Source Applications Foundation and headed marketing and business affairs for the Mozilla Foundation. He coordinated Firefox marketing activities, including branding, the Firefox 1.0 launch and the creation of Spread Firefox the community marketing effort surrounding Firefox. he also set up a successful business model for the Mozilla Foundation.

Decrem currently works at Flock, where he is a founder and CEO. Flock is building the social web browser.

Resources:

This free podcast is from our Pop!Tech series.

For The Conversations Network:

  • Post-production audio engineer: Minh Truong
  • Website editor: Liz Evans