Jerry Michalski
Sociate

Biography:

Jerry Michalski (ma-call-ski) is a consultant, writer, public speaker and occasional consigliere.  His interests lie mainly in the many ways that technology and people interact -- in private and business settings, and at all scales: as individuals, businesses, economies and societies.  As the COE (chief and only employee) of Sociate ("so-see-8"), Jerry has taken a more hands-on role in developing the products and services he wrote about for a dozen years as a technology industry analyst.  Among his major roles, Jerry is:  

• A consultant to UBS, Target, The Institute for the Future (IFTF) and other companies
• The founder of the Yi-Tan Collective and host of the weekly Yi-Tan Tech Community Call
• An advisor to startups, conferences and non-profits, including TheBrain, Socialtext, Seedwiki, The Wharton School, the Deliberative
• Democracy Consortium, PUSH and the Consortium for Service Innovation
• Earlier, he advised eGroups (now YahooGroups) and Pyra (makers of Blogger, now part of Google)

Concerned by the effects of consumer capitalism -- a variant of capitalism whose practitioners corral and try to manipulate consumers instead of serving customers – Jerry has been working on ways to help people not have to choose between doing well or doing good.

For the five years before founding Sociate, Jerry was the Managing Editor of Release 1.0, Esther Dyson's monthly news-letter.  With Esther, he also co-hosted the annual PC Forum, the technology industry's premier executive conference.  Jerry was quoted regularly in major news media and trade publications.

Prior to joining Release 1.0, Jerry was a vice president with New Science Associates, a re-tainer market-research company – later bought by Gartner Group – that helped large corporate clients make effective use of emerging technologies.  At New Science, Jerry launched and directed two research services: Intelligent Document Management (1989) and Continuous Information Environments (1991).  Jerry is also an alumn of Price Waterhouse's Strategic Management Consulting group and Mobil Oil's domestic supply and transportation department (back in the days before run-on companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers and ExxonMobil).

Jerry earned an M.B.A. in International Busi-ness from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (1985) and a B.A. degree in Economics (principally econometrics) from UC Irvine (1980).  He was raised in Peru and Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish, German and French.  

What's a recent movie you've seen and enjoyed and why?

I saw two movies that I'd seen before and realized how much I love them: Shakespeare in Love and Topsy Turvy. Both are made with great love. The former folds the movie's plot so marvelously into the play's plot that it raises your writing standards just by watching. The latter is not merely excellent, it's also sentimental: my Dad played The Mikado for me often as a kid.

What is "community" and why is it important to you?

I like Todd Davies' statement that it's a group of people with a shared stake, and would add to it that they really bond as a community when they've been through something difficult together -- an attitude inspired by M. Scott Peck's The Different Drum and one of his community-building workshops ages ago.

Pick a favorite technology and explain how it makes the world a better place?

I'm a geek, so there are many technologies that I love (with a skeptical eye, I promise), but the telephone seems like it was way advanced for its time, and our ability to carry these little wonders to the ends of the earth is transforming everything. Now if someone would just perfect the do-not-disturb function...

2-3 questions or issues that you hope we'll address at the "Deepening Online Deliberation" meeting?

1. What's really working? How can it be adapted to new places? What makes it work?
2. How can we have thoughful deliberation even though one party is faking it?
3. Does prosperity breed laziness and disengagement, or are there other reasons for our lack of civic involvement?