In-person gatherings, not online tools, anchor geographically embedded tech scenes.
Evidence
The importance of conferences and social interactions to technologically mediated cultures has been well documented. From MIT’s Model Railroad club and Stewart Brand’s original hacker conference to today’s free and open-source software “cons,” these events not only allow for face-to-face interactions between people who share common interests, but also create “scenes” of people who become friends, work together, and support each other. Despite near-constant discussion and chit-chat through the online communication tool du jour, it is often in-person socialization and collaboration that bring to bear the geographical importance of a scene. While O’Reilly’s conferences, including Emerging Technology (eTech), Where 2.0, and the Web 2.0 Expo popular ized the concepts identified with Web 2.0, it was a number of more grassroots, in-person events that facilitated this collaboration, openness, and participation and helped to solidify the vibrant scene around social media in the midto late 2000s. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 154
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to theories of scenes from urban studies and to broader work on how communities form around shared cultural production. — connects to: In-person gatherings create the scenes that sustain online subcultures — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 154; Annual tech conferences like SXSW function as gatekeeping rituals for scene membership — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 199; Reintroducing context does not necessarily align a network with physical place. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 582 (+1 more)
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 154
Broader Connections
- In-person gatherings create the scenes that sustain online subcultures
#corroborates(0.92) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 154 - Annual tech conferences like SXSW function as gatekeeping rituals for scene membership
#expands(0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 199 - Conference travel functions as visible status signaling within tech culture
#expands(0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 194 - Reintroducing context does not necessarily align a network with physical place.
#complicates(0.78) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 582