As the dust settled after Bonnier Hack Day, I got a moment with Chris Thorpe from the Guardian/jaggeree and Andreas Ehn, former CTO of Spotify. We had a talk on things that matters. Recorded in a noisy environment (start low on your volume control) but the stuff they say makes it worth it. Very inspirational guys. Enjoy! (Try this if you are on a mobile device and see no video below)
Some of the many smart things they say
- ”You make more money being open” (Chris)
- ”We aren’t really a newspaper anymore, we’re a technology platform” (Chris)
- ”There is a huge opportunity for someone like Spotify to do for music what Google did for maps” (Andreas)
- A great dialog on what would happen with a more open Spotify in regards of weaving music and text together with the equally open Guardian (Chris and Andreas)
- ”With the open platform our content goes into places where it’s never been before” (Chris)
- “The things that we find wonderful, that we don’t know exactly how it’s going to be used, it might be used in ways that we couldn’t predict. But that is scaring to a lot of people with an existing business model” (Andreas)
- ”The hardest part to fix is the rights, especially international rights” (Chris)
- Chris gives a lot of good insight on the path to open public data in the UK.
- ”We should have a pirate party in the UK” (Chris)
- Is software patent a good thing? ”NO!” (Andreas, who has a patent of his own;)
- ”In terms of investors wanting you to get patents, it’s seems like it’s a bit of the strategy of looking for the bigger fool” (Andreas)
- ”We’re entering an age in what you do publicly is much more important” (Chris, on open source as a part of recruitment)
- Chris remind us about mutualisation and the fact that releasing your data is not the same as loosing all control. The API key is the key.
- Andreas and Chris agrees that it’s simple mathematics that collaborative work is the best economical deal.
- ”There are more smart people outside the building than we can ever hope to have inside” (Chris)
- … and a lot more good stuff
Towards the end I asked them to make a wish for the future, in regards to the topic of the day.
Andreas started of with ”Full scale nano technology” and a great smile. But then moved on to asking for a change in copyright and patents. ”The terms should slowly but continuously be shortened because everything else in the world is accelerating – The time you need to recoup an investment gets shorter and shorter”.
Chris closes our twenty minutes asking for two wishes. ”I would love for more politicians to actually understand the world we are living in”. And finally ”Release all public data, the core data that almost feels like a human right”. It enables ”The sort of things that dramatically change peoples quality of life”.
As you can tell in last minute – the conversation continues. But this is all for now. Again; thanks to Chris and Andreas, not just for the talk, but also for the amazing work they do. And hat tip to Bonnier R&D for setting up the great Bonnier Hack Day. Last thanks goes to Paulina M Söderlund, (@pauspling, and an amazing portfolio) who made this event her final show at Bonner R&D. You rock!
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