Metaviews settled into its new home at the Academy of the Impossible on January 1. Since then, the space has been the setting for regular events in the Hacking Reality series, along with headquarters for our regular Wednesday teleseminars and other professional activities.

“The Future of Health” has been at the top of the agenda in 2012, as we have moved into detailed discussion about existing and future devices designed for medical professionals to diagnose patients, along with apps being produced with the hopes of letting each individual take preventative and therapeutic measures into their own hands.

Some of the other topics we have touched on so far this year include:

Metaviews.ca is currently setting up a new project: The Academy of the Impossible, located at 231 Wallace Ave. in the Junction Triangle neighbourhood of Toronto’s downtown west end. It will partly serve as a location for our salons and seminars along with all facets of our daily operations.

The setup for the Academy is a relatively novel one. As an open source social enterprise, it will integrate both for-profit and non-profit enterprises, along with providing a physical touchpoint for our clients and broader community. This will include bringing to life many online ideas that often end up remaining hypothetical — we want to make them feel possible.

Since consumers are also taking on the role of producers, the Metaviews programming at the Academy will reflect that inevitability, with events designed to empower the human relationship with technology. During this era of disruption for business, media and politics, our infinite series of “Hacking Reality” events will explore all forms of self-expression, from mobile apps and videogames to improv comedy and public speaking.

The events for AOTI members and guests will be concurrent with our continued subscriber efforts throughout the week. Now, with a permanent space, we expect to exponentially expand the insights we can share with clients. But we covered a fair bit of ground on the way there:

• How gadgets are marketed during the holiday season even if they’re about to become replaced by new models

• Shopping apps designed to follow people around the mall, measure window shopping and offer a better deal via Amazon

• YouTube’s evolution from a cat video free-for-all to a more Hollywood-friendly platform based on subscription feeds

• Changes to Facebook, Twitter and Google in the race to build social media market share — possibly at the expense of user trust

• Compliments and criticism for Open Government initiatives in Ottawa including reaction to the official social media guidelines

• The hopes and hypes of 2011 including the evolution of Anonymous, theories of Gamification and digital currency alternatives

Also, on deck for 2012, our second year-long major research project will focus on “The Future of Health” — which will include recurring discussions in our seminars and salons.

Please see the Metaviews.ca website for more information on the subscription package. And follow The Academy of the Impossible for news about all its programming.

Fall 2011 has been a fun time developing of Metaviews. While keeping tabs on the disruption of fields from advertising to academia, we have continued to develop our own projects, which has included extending our presence beyond Toronto.

A pair of salon events in Ottawa have focused on the challenges involved in the transformation to Open Government, which drew interest from all areas of the bureaucracy, as developing a more citizen-friendly approach has been pledged by the federal government.

Similar challenges are being faced by the non-profit sector as it attempts to retool its messaging for the social media age. The conversational research style of Metaviews.ca will increasingly be applied in this direction, too.

With the technological stakes increasingly being raised, though, we have continued to focus our attention on the business of the Internet. Recently, our subscriber newsletters, teleseminars and social media conversation has focused in areas that include:

• The state of the relationship between producers and consumers — and whether they can ever really be one and the same

• Whether or not self-styled internet intellectuals can be taken seriously in the age where everyone has their own online experience

• The increasingly blurred relationship between online communities and the way that we interact in physical spaces

• Marketing efforts that reach beyond online coupons or viral videos to target customers based on where they are standing

• New currency alternatives that stand to subvert the banking system and interest rates of credit card companies

• How hardware producers are constantly challenged by the marketplace to emphasize similarities more than differences

• What needs to be done in Canada to keep pace with the global evolution of online access and the distribution of content

As the year draws to a close, Metaviews.ca will conclude its year of specific research into “The Future of Authority,” and launch a similar project on how the internet stands to transform health care.

During the past year, I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with a great team of researchers, writers and practitioners to develop Metaviews.ca into an original think tank dedicated to the relationship between media, technology and society.

Some of our efforts have been open to the public: regular posts to the Metaviews.ca website and other social media outlets, a growing library of original videos, and live events like the Monday Night Seminar series in honour of Marshall McLuhan’s 100th birthday.

Subscribers have also been able to access our insights on a deeper level, through the Metaviews Weekly newsletter, the Metaviews Telseminar and private presentations related to our research project, “The Future of Authority.”

Discussion topics for fall 2011 have ranged from the analysis of mass media coverage on topics ranging from the future of gadgets in the post-Steve Jobs era, to the influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement, to how retail stores will be impacted by mobile marketing.

Developments in social media, the political scene and the economics of the internet have also been at the forefront of the Metaviews.ca agenda.

Other topics that will be high on our collective minds this fall and beyond include:

• Challenges faced by all levels of government to keep pace with a new communications era

• The ongoing transition of mass media to personalized forms of distribution and consumption

• Why some online communities are trusted more than geographical ones — and some are not

• Video games as a new cultural force and the hope and hype that surrounds “gamification”

• Social enterprise as a gateway for corporations to make a personal connection with customers

• How wider online access to health care information will result in a two-tier system for Canada

While some elements of our Metaviews.ca agenda will remain free to all on the web, subscribers receive access to the full scope of our collective efforts.

The email newsletter, distributed each Friday morning, is packed with ideas that will help sharpen reader perspectives for the week ahead.

Teleseminars also include participation from both industry experts and opinionated observers, in the effort to approach topics in a friendly, articulate, conversational format.

Subscribers also get priority access to the entire Metaviews.ca team, who provide research and opinion from backgrounds including academia, education, journalism, politics, business, and technology, along with expertise in executing special projects and in dynamic presentations.

Please see the Metaviews.ca website for more information on the subscription package.

When the calendar year comes to a close people get into the habit of reflection and forward thinking regarding where they've come from and where they want to go. New Year Resolutions are one way to articulate this kind of thinking, and while I tend to avoid such arbitrary expressions, I decided to put upon myself a worthy challenge that could fuse a bunch of my interests while also making me exercise in an intellectual and creative way that I've not done for some time.

I've always wanted to produce my own internet show, but I'm never able to make the time or find the right configuration or playing partner. Lately however I'm spending a fair bit of time researching YouTube and video on the net in general. That gave me a rather ludicrous and intimidating idea.

I'm going to try and produce a YouTube video for every day of 2011. They will be available via my Openflows YouTube channel.

The only thing that will unite all of these videos, will be my exploration of what I call Cyberpunk Surrealism. I've always been fond of surrealism and it's ability to offer unique insights by taking things out of context and mashing them up in new found ways. Similarly cyberpunk culture is something I've also quite enjoyed and identified with. I'm hesitant to give much more of an explanation, instead I'd rather offer the videos to speak for themselves.

I should point out that it is all experimental. I want to play with technology, concepts, and YouTube itself. You should not necessarily take what I say in this videos literally. They are for entertainment purposes only. While an exercise in art, they are also a reminder to myself that it is far more fun to make television than it is to watch it. So instead of watching, in 2011 I plan to spend more time making:

This past year has been full of rewarding work and interesting events that have fueled my intellectual curiosity and professional capacity. Amidst this hyperactivity, my primary focus has been building Metaviews Media Management Ltd., a new company that offers subscription research and professional services. I started developing Metaviews a few years ago but only got to incorporating in early 2010 and am only now, on the eve of 2011, reaching my goal of being able to offer a valuable and regular subscription product.

Initially I created Metaviews as a response to all the research I was conducting, both formally, and informally, recognizing that I was surrounded by rapidly expanding pools of intelligence, and really smart people available to analyze it all.

The problem has always been one of distribution. How to share all of these insights and ongoing dossiers with both the public and clients willing to pay. The obstacle has always been a scarcity of time and an overwhelming volume of items to share.

In the case of the latter, I've developed an intellectual production process over the past decade and a half in which I'm constantly researching a myriad of subjects relating to how our society understands and employs media and technology. The volume of research I produce and the range of subjects I cover create an ongoing surplus that I've not been able to effectively share as I just don't have the time to both conduct the research and package it for public or private consumption.

That's where Metaviews comes in. While on the one hand it has been a vehicle for my consulting and professional services work, I've also been slowly but surely building up a subscription product that allows me to create the infrastructure to share the research and insights for both paying clients as well as the public.

The idea is to reach a balance. In the past I've almost exclusively focused on sharing my work with the public, however the problem was that it did not provide enough institutional support for me to share more than a fraction of what I'm actually producing. My clients already pay me for the research I produce, however the services model does not allow me to step back and direct the research with a longer term view, nor are my clients able to benefit from my larger body of work.

Articulating and packaging a subscription research product allows me to create a stronger framework for continuing the kind of unique research that I've been doing. It also creates a platform for my clients to benefit from each other and understand the broader depth of my work and theirs. This also enables Metaviews to increase its public profile by sharing more with the web at large.

I've started a frequently asked questions that addresses some of the issues surrounding this new subscription, although as I'm just starting to roll this out, I'm really eager to get feedback, and see if this is the sort of thing you or your organization would be interested in.

I will continue to run Openflows Networks Ltd., which provides me with a platform to explore and further understand the business applications of free and open source software, however Metaviews Media Management Ltd. is where my passion and primary focus will be.

I think it's time to move beyond working with the tools and code to fully understand and articulate where we are headed as a society. The first long term research project that we're engaging in at Metaviews is The Future of Authority. For more info visit the metaviews.ca website.

On Thursday I considered calling up Bell and ordering their new "Fibe" fiber-optic internet and TV service. Then on Friday I heard that Bell and CTV were merging. My initial reaction was to dismiss the idea of signing up for Fibe as there was no way I wanted Internet access from CTV.

This of course flies in the face of how the merger is presented and how the media report it. They all say that BCE is the company that is buying CTV. That the telephone company is buying the television network. Obviously it's more complicated than that, only most look at the wrong side of the complication.

"Those not busy being born are busy dying" Bobby Dylan

On the weekend of June 26th, Toronto underwent a transformation. A new generation of activists were politicized, and in many cases radicalized. Also, a new generation of journalists were born, products of a long-awaited fusion of traditional and new media. For me, it was a return to days of old, going back a decade to when I was young and radical.

So I was there, on the streets, providing coverage and witnessing history. I'm still processing the insights and emotions triggered by the events, and I finally have time to put down some thoughts. Rather than focus purely on what happened, I'd rather share my story in the form of advice for how to move forward.

When I was younger I genuinely loved the game of baseball, especially Toronto Blue Jays baseball. All winter I would pine for the start of spring training and opening day was often one of the best days of my year. The Jesse Barfield, Lloyd Moseby, George Bell outfield will always have a special place in my heart. Almost every Saturday for $2 as a Junior Jay I'd be in the outfield grandstand at Exhibition Stadium cheering on my team.

However as I aged, my interest in baseball began to fade. It's not that the team let me down, in fact they won two World Series as I was drifting away. Rather I was the one changing, seduced by the internet into an accelerated lifestyle that had little patience for a pastime like baseball that felt more dragged out and boring every time I tried to re-engage.

Since those two championships the Jays in general have lost the love and passion that this city once gave them, which is not to say they don't have a loyal fan base, but rather it cannot offer the size and momentum that inter-division rivals in New York and Boston can produce. While it's easy to focus on money and payroll as the secret to a team's success, the true source are the fans.

Recently a newspaper columnist from Chicago wrote that baseball in Toronto is dead, a remark made partly out of spite, but also after covering the White Sox play a series against the Jays, a series played to a handful of fans in a largely empty Rogers Centre. While some rushed to Toronto's defense, there's clearly something wrong when the stadium is as empty as it has been for the past few years.

Blue Jays (and Rogers) management counter with the argument that the team has to play well to earn the support of fans, however the players also require the support of fans in order to be motivated to play well. It strikes me that perhaps the solution is not just spending money but also spending social capital? For example let's look to the internet for a business model the team could learn from.

What if the Blue Jays were to adopt a freemium model? For the rest of the season, make all seats on the 500 level free, for all games. First come, first serve. Then allow all other seats to be sold on an auction basis, allowing seat holders to resell their seats if they become more valuable than when they were first bought.

If you can't fill the stadium for each game using that system, then yes, Baseball is dead in Toronto.

However I think that by making the games fun again, by making them a place people want to go, that they can go, it would give the players motivation to perform and excel.

The problem with baseball, is a similar problem that businesses face across industries. Whether they want to admit it or not they are competing with the internet, someway, somehow.

For me it was an issue of attention, that in this case can only be solved culturally, with economics coming second. By adding a freemium model to baseball, you could culturally change the vibe in the stadium, and therefore increase the appeal and value of the overall experience. You adopt and appropriate a little bit of the internet to upgrade an old pastime to something that preseves the game while expanding the potential audience/market.