The first half of this is a discussion about Obama’s school speech, which is why I watched it.

The second half caught my eye because there’s some good stuff there about online identity, which is the topic of my presentation Wednesday night at Pecha Kucha. Thomas Friedman is scared:

MR. FRIEDMAN: Tell your kids, OK, tell your kids, OK, be careful.  Every move they make is now a digital footprint.  You are on “Candid Camera.” And unfortunately, the real message to young people, from all of these incidents, OK, and I’m not here defending anything anyone said, but from all of these incidents, is you know, really keep yourself tight, don’t say anything controversial, don’t think anything–don’t put anything in print.  You know, whatever you do, just kind of smooth out all the edges, and maybe you too–you know, when you get nominated to be ambassador to Burkina Faso, you’ll be able to get through the hearing.

I don’t think there is reason to be this scared. But he brings up one of my first points of my presentation–“You are not in control of your online identity.”

Come to the Robert Daniel Gallery Wednesday night. 5:30 start. For those who don’t know, Pecha Kucha gives each presenter 20 slides, at 20 seconds per slide. So we’ll each be presenting for 6 minutes and 40 seconds.

I’m going to try to record my presentation and post it here, but I won’t get all the other presenters, so you should still come to see them, too! Topics include: architectural identity, online identity, gender identity, branding identity, identity theft, cultural identity, “place, name, & identity,” jewelry & identity, and graffiti identity.