I popped into the Future of Money conference organized by Brian Zisk and his team. It was a good turnout and some interesting speakers. I caught some of the afternoon panels.

Here are some notes from the event:

Chris Heuer, from Social Media Club spoke about the need to be able to convert social capital into real money. He doesn't like the "free" idea that as espoused by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired.

Micki Krimmel, from NeighborGoods.net, spoke about neighbors sharing their drills, tools, and other objects. She made the point that money stayed in the community, and that now she spends more money locally.

Tara Hunt said that neighborhoods where people help each other have higher housing prices because people want to live there. This also cuts down on police costs. She said it wasn't possible to put a cash value on social capital.

Dan Robles from The Ingenesist Project think tank, said that social value can be determined by a fifth order differential equation.

Phil Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab (Second Life) said that Linden dollars, the currency used in Second Life, are not backed by real money but they do have real value. He said the exchange rate has remained stable over the past few years and he believes that a virtual currency could become a safe haven in troubled times, just like gold. He also mentioned his new venture lovemachine.

Bill Tai, a partner at Charles River Ventures, spoke about virtual currencies being connected to something of value. You don't want to be a poker chip without a casino. He, too, thought that virtual currencies would someday be stable enough to act as a hedge in troubled times.

It was good to see Alex Gove, VP of corporate development at gWallet. Alex said he was enjoying working at a startup, it made a welcome change from working at Walden Capital, the San Francisco VC firm. I had met gWallet founder Gurbaksh Chahal when he was running BlueLithium, an advertising network sold to Yahoo for $300m. It's a startup worth watching.

Also, I met with Genyfer Spark, founder of ClueHut, which connects like-minded people.

I ran into Ted Shelton, who has split off from the Conversation Group, or rather the Conversation Group has split up with everyone going off on to other projects. And I met Eve Kupferman, a psychologist interested in how social media affects people.

Here is a PearlTree related to the above links: