As a refresher, Trapit spun out from SRI International (which was also where Siri started), and it used artificial intelligence to build what was, in many ways, a Flipboard competitor, gathering topic-based content from around the web.
Thus at one recent gathering the topics discussed included how The New York Herald Tribune helped expose the racism on the 1947 St. Louis Cardinals, how much Babe Ruth's bat weighed, and how, while everyone remembers Bill Mazeroski's famous home run that day, few realize that no one struck out in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series.
In truth, but for the scenery, you could have replicated this gathering, with its topic, Managing Nonprofit Organizations in Lean Times, anywhere in the country.
Others in the event space include Yahoo's Upcoming.org, Zvents, $7.5m funded Eventful, $3m funded Renkoo, Skobee, Involver, Israel-based ILCU, Boston-based HeyLetsGo, Weekendr, MySpace Events, and not so much MeetUp, which typically holds regularly scheduled gatherings on specific topics.
Harvard alumni, students, staff, faculty, and friends came from across the country for a day-long gathering exploring the topic, with hopes of perhaps charting a future course in the unfinished struggle for LGBTQ rights and equality.
There are major scientific groups and gatherings about these topics, so there really are "establishment views" (http://www.google.com is excellent and see the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life and http://www.panspermia.org).org
Many groups impacted by ports and goods movement came together in late 2007 at Moving Forward, the first North American community-oriented gathering on this topic, which was organized by THE Impact Project and cosponsored by private groups along with NIEHS- and EPA-funded centers.
By gathering resources on specific topics – e-books, videos, blog posts, podcasts etc – and making them available as "Learnboards" to the community.
Topics include gathering cost information, looking at the total process, including energy assessments, life cycle assessments, and sensitivity analyses.
Influential actors detection in social media such as Twitter or Facebook can play a major role in gathering opinions on particular topics, improving the marketing efficiency, predicting the trends, etc.
