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Adrianna tells me that I can't understand the plight of the
underprivilaged and that its not so easy to just pick oneself up from
one's bootstraps and create success in your life.

That may be true.  Its not as if I have a lot of avenues of understanding in that area. 

I don't have any friends without some kind of support structure.  I mean...   even poor actors that I know still have families to go home to and even college degrees that would allow them access to other careers.

I couldn't believe Andrew Rasiej came in FOURTH in the NYC Public Advocate's race with 5.17% of the vote.  I didn't necessarily support him, but I felt like he was EVERYWHERE and EVERYONE was talking about him.

Turns out, only the bloggers and tech people were talking about him, and the numbers seem to prove out that those were the only people he was talking to as well...   now I'm surprised we number as high as we do...  5%...    woooooo.   A victory for geeks.  A failure for diverse communication.

We're talking to ourselves... highlighting ourselves... making ourselves smarter.  The problem is, "ourselves" is a really small community... smaller than we think.

Everyday, I take more and more advantage of the little platform I've created here.  I've sourced a few deals, connected to smart people, but more importantly, I use blogging in general to gather information and feedback.  I look at all of the people who aren't publicizing themselves by blogging, and who aren't listening to blogs and I see the information gap growing and growing.  I connected to people via LinkedIn.  I lookup information on Wikipedia.  I see the most popular things going on up to the minute on the del.icio.us popular list.  But that's only the beginning.  I see who links to me... I connect with them.  Others write lists of the technologies I should be looking at.  I know several standard dev's more than the avg Joe about my world  and what's going on around me.

But its not just about my job.  Its deeper than that.  When you have this much information and personal connection to people in your own industry, you "see the path."  You see clearly that, if you make the right, and sometimes tough, choices, you can be very successful on your own terms.  I can clearly see that when I don't drink, I can wake up early the next day, work out, logon, connect, etc. all by 9:30 and be fresh, thoughtful, and hopefully impressive to anyone I might meet.

So, where does that leave the average inner city high school kid?  It used to be about just getting him to finish high school.  Then, the bar for the same level of achievement probably became a college degree.  Now, the underrepresented, underreached and undereducated seem to be getting left further and further behind as our neat little peer production community bootstraps itself to the next level.  Everytime I learn some new way to leverage technology to move ahead, recently I can't help but think who I'm moving ahead or just further away from.

How do we fix this?

Ok, so I've been thinking about conferences.  We have conferences for everything... for RSS, for blogs, for Web 2.0, for blogs about business, for blogs about blogs, for women bloggers, for women bloggers who go to conferences about RSS and then podcast about them...   you get the point.  And, to some extent, its a lot of the same people that sits on a lot of these panels. 

What if we did a conference for (and perhaps by) the segment of the population that's getting left the furthest behind and we featured all of us talking heads that usually talks to ourselves?

Here's the idea:

In conjunction with public schools, non-profits, etc. we get a bunch of inner city kids to attend a conference loosely about the future... their future.... and additionally, our future, because they are a big part of the youth of America.  Think Larry and Sergey in a discussion group with some kids from Mott Haven in the Bronx.  Let's get them understanding what Google is as a business, but also have them understand who built it, why, how and what it took as people to get it off the ground.  At the same time, Larry and Sergey should learn about what the lives of these kids are like... hear the stories of friends lost to drugs or violence.  Let's get these kids blogging the conference... and boost some of them up the Feedster 500.  We'll put the smartest people we know together with the students who know the most about that world... because they live it everyday.  How about some collaborative panels?   Maybe Bill Gates could create a presentation together with a 15 year old single mom about...  I don't know...  maybe just parenting.  We could have workshops aimed at answers, roadmaps, how to's, etc.  Let's talk about how to get the underprivilaged youth of America back on track, but not just back on track, but winning the race.  What will it take for some kid to grow up coding in the projects and creating something that not only lifts him up, but lifts his peers as well.

And everyone donates their time and effort.  The venue donates the space.  The speakers donate their knowledge and time, etc.  Perhaps we do it with multiple industries over time.  We could do 6 conferences...  one on tech, one on media, one on education.....  who knows.

Here are some of my questions:

Does the idea hold water?   Is it too extreme and will their be too much culture clash to get anything done or any understanding?  Who best to speak?  Does it make sense to narrow it by industry?