Blogging has suffered these last few weeks, between a family vacation in Cape Cod and having to put some serious time into several top secret projects, one of which I’m hoping to unveil at this year’s Pop!Tech. Pop!Tech is one of the coolest and most highly regarded innovation summits in the world, this year’s line up is looking great, with guest speakers including Malcolm Gladwell (his new book looks awesome) and Clay Shirky (his recent book is awesome). This year Pop!Tech is centered around the idea of scarcity and abundance, so it’s perfect for pirates, but I’ve also been working on a new book idea with a friend of mine which fits this theme, that I’m going to be talking about publicly for the first time. Deets from the PR blurb below…

Taking place October 22 – 25 in the seaside village of Camden, Maine, this year’s event will chart the core scarcities humans and organizations will encounter this century – and how a wealth of new innovations, bottom-up approaches to collaboration and insights into collective wisdom might hold the keys to addressing the challenges that lie ahead. Now in its 12th year, the Pop!Tech conference is a remarkable gathering of more than 600 thought leaders, influencers and social change agents – from the worlds of science, technology, business, social innovation, the arts, philanthropy and more – which each fall explores the new ideas, technologies and forces of change shaping our future.

Pop!Tech ’08 will focus on the rapidly-changing 21st century dynamics of systems based on scarcity and abundance. Many different domains will be explored, from the social web to population growth and energy consumption, from truly sustainable business models to politics and peacemaking. Every topic will be examined through an array of lenses – including the new ethics, economic realities, risks and possibilities in a world defined by dramatic scarcities and abundances.

For those who can’t make it to Camden to experience Pop!Tech in person, Yahoo! will once again live stream the event in its entirety, free of charge, from October 23 – 25. At home viewers will also have the opportunity to submit questions to presenters and participants in real-time via questions@poptech.org.

Official “Pop!Tech 2008: Scarcity and Abundance” sponsors include Yahoo!, Lexus, American Express, the National Geographic Society, Steelcase, Nokia Siemens Networks, Canaan Partners and frog design. Additional Pop!Tech ‘08 speakers, performers, sponsors and program details will be unveiled in the weeks ahead. Registration details are available here: https://www.poptech.org/registration/