Saturday
Friday
Rumble in the Jungle (OK, in the Kruger, not the Jungle)
WoW. A herd of buffalo vs a pride of lions and a couple of croc's. Who do you think won this one? Watch this phenomenal video ...
We traveled to the the Kruger (National Park) a few times when I lived in Johannesburg. A house mate's father once had a medical practice in the Skukuza Camp, so we spent a few weekends there while we lived together. Once, while leaving the park we had to drive off the road to pass a male lion who wasn't going to move for us. That was unforgetable. His face was literally a few feet away from mine as I drove by. It must have been mind-bending to watch this go down. Thanks to YouTube and the nice folks who uploaded the video!
We traveled to the the Kruger (National Park) a few times when I lived in Johannesburg. A house mate's father once had a medical practice in the Skukuza Camp, so we spent a few weekends there while we lived together. Once, while leaving the park we had to drive off the road to pass a male lion who wasn't going to move for us. That was unforgetable. His face was literally a few feet away from mine as I drove by. It must have been mind-bending to watch this go down. Thanks to YouTube and the nice folks who uploaded the video!
Wednesday
Scoble's 9 things about Social Media
This is a bullet point summary of Robert Scoble's 9 things about social media (first mentioned in this post).
- Can be changed (updated) in real time.
- Allows audience interaction.
- Popularity is transparent.
- Permanently available archives.
- Can be a mix of media.
- Author = Publisher.
- No limits on the quantity of content.
- Freely Syndicated.
- Can be mashed up.
Watch the show, get the shirt, write the wiki
If you haven't yet, click above & watch the show -- Ze Frank's the bomb -- the show is my favorite entertainment online. Ze's changed my opinion on small-screen video -- I'm going to have to get a new iPod. GRRR.
I bought 3 t-shirts from Ze. they arrived yesterday. Sweet. Is this new media? It isn't old media.
Ze's a talented writer, fearless performer and entertaining editor -- but most impressive is the audience participation he's built into the show experience. Most shows have been transcribed to the show's wiki by the fabulosos -- who have twice authored the show on fabuloso friday (using he wiki) -- and who also use the wiki to strategize their next chess move in the game they're playing against Ze. Fabulosos are the most active Sports Racers. Who are the Sports Racers? Check out the definition in the show's wiki.
Ze's making the web a better place and something tells me his impact will be way bigger than (even) the show -- Ze, if you read this, thanks for the shirts, the laughs and the knowledge!
Friday
States I've Visited
Way to go yet ... exploring WA has just been too good the past few years - that and the odd trip back to SA etc.
create your own visited states map
create your own visited states map
You know that your web service rocks when ...
... it is natively supported by device manufacturers.
Check out this laptop from Packard Bell -- its the Skype edition -- natively supports Skype video-conferencing with custom skype call control buttons at the top of the screen. Can you think of another web service with that kind of adoption? I can not.
This is yet another sign (IMO) that skype is the world's favorite web service -- and that the eBay investment in skype was smart -- and that eBay could be a great web2 investment at this point (more on that later -- FYI: I dont own any EBAY -- yet).
HT to the skype blog.
Check out this laptop from Packard Bell -- its the Skype edition -- natively supports Skype video-conferencing with custom skype call control buttons at the top of the screen. Can you think of another web service with that kind of adoption? I can not.This is yet another sign (IMO) that skype is the world's favorite web service -- and that the eBay investment in skype was smart -- and that eBay could be a great web2 investment at this point (more on that later -- FYI: I dont own any EBAY -- yet).
HT to the skype blog.
Thursday
CONGRATULATIONS iStockPhoto !!!
.... on being acquired by Getty Images (down the street here in Fremont, Seattle). See the announcement to the iStockPhoto community here.
This is a brilliant deal for iStockPhoto, a necessary and extremely genius move for Getty and possibly the 1st Web 2.0 acquisition that actually makes sense for users.
I'm going to review this in MUCH more detail, but just uickly wanted to say BOOOOOOOYAAAAAAA - great work and very well deserved. Thanks iStockPhoto for being the first team to really put your community's interests first while growing your company.
I still think iStockPhoto is of the best Peer Production examples we have today and the Getty relationship will only improve on that as Getty legitimizes the "microstock" model for the last of the industry's old guard.
The message for other succesful community-built startups is clear; when looking for funding / liquidity, the portals and VC's are far from your only option, and are probably your suboptimal choices.
Full disclosure - I'm a proud contributing photog (and customer) at iStockPhoto ;-)
This is a brilliant deal for iStockPhoto, a necessary and extremely genius move for Getty and possibly the 1st Web 2.0 acquisition that actually makes sense for users.
I'm going to review this in MUCH more detail, but just uickly wanted to say BOOOOOOOYAAAAAAA - great work and very well deserved. Thanks iStockPhoto for being the first team to really put your community's interests first while growing your company.
I still think iStockPhoto is of the best Peer Production examples we have today and the Getty relationship will only improve on that as Getty legitimizes the "microstock" model for the last of the industry's old guard.
The message for other succesful community-built startups is clear; when looking for funding / liquidity, the portals and VC's are far from your only option, and are probably your suboptimal choices.
Full disclosure - I'm a proud contributing photog (and customer) at iStockPhoto ;-)
Wednesday
58 Days
Without cigarettes.If you laid all the smokes I haven't smoked (so far) end-to-end, they would span 30% of the Space Needle. [observe graphic] Props for this creative approach to quitting go to Seattle Times graphic artist Kriss Chaumont. Cool.
Yep, No Ciggies. Nada, Zip, Zilch, not one freekin' drag. [an '05 resolution that just squeezed in right before Christmas]. I quit cold turkey in N.Carolina. There's a song [probably country] in there somewhere.
So far so good - side effects (besides weight gain) are subsiding - my attention span's finally returned to normal (yep, I'll be bloggin' again) and our marriage is thankfully in tact (thanks for your patience w/my ranting babe ;-) [p.s. how could you ever kiss a smoker ? yuck!]
I could honestly smoke a pack tomorrow.
If you read this post, keep me honest & ask for an update on my progress; besides finally growing up, I think that peer pressure may be as effective in quitting as it is in starting smoking.
Friday
It's going to be hard
to concentrate today ...Our Mountain opened with the deepest base in the world this week ... sorry to rub it in, but you know where I'm going to be first thing tomorrow - and the boards and wax are coming out tonight. I can't wait. It looks like we're going to be blessed this season, which is in order considering what a snow-less winter the N/W had last year (even Whistler shut). Baker also holds the record for the most snowfall in history - and in a normal season, you can predictably ski in 6 months of the year.
Mt. Baker was also just rated 18 / 780 ski destinations by skiing mag. ... and number 1 in Washington. Not good news for the lift-lines (typically better than elsewhere in WA). But definitely good news for our investment - Laura and I picked up a qtr acre plot in Glacier, next to Mt.Baker late last year - we've already been offered 6X what we paid and it looks like demand will continue to increase. We're not selling and we'll build in '06 - nice to see though. Now, more importantly, where did I leave my boots again ... ?
Sunday
just imagine ...
... imagine you read a GREAT Dilbert comic. Not hard to imagine. Now imagine this ...
.. the time comes when you stop rolling with laughter and you're thinking about what Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams was thinking when he drew this. You're thinking about your worst boss, or his most stupid ideas. You're wondering what Scott's editors thought when they saw the first draft.
Imagine you could find THAT stuff out at a click of a button.
That would be cool.
Actually, it IS cool. Scott has a BLOG, "The Dilbert Blog" (what else) and his typings are as fascinating, punchy, laughable and cynically insightful as what his sketches are. Go check it out ... Scott's got a cunning conversation going on on his blog.
3 quick observations;
.. the time comes when you stop rolling with laughter and you're thinking about what Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams was thinking when he drew this. You're thinking about your worst boss, or his most stupid ideas. You're wondering what Scott's editors thought when they saw the first draft.
Imagine you could find THAT stuff out at a click of a button.
That would be cool.
Actually, it IS cool. Scott has a BLOG, "The Dilbert Blog" (what else) and his typings are as fascinating, punchy, laughable and cynically insightful as what his sketches are. Go check it out ... Scott's got a cunning conversation going on on his blog.
3 quick observations;
- Blogs don't discriminate in who they are valuable to; blogging benefits professional & amateur alike, and for much the same reasons. It's a rediculous notion that professional writers don't need to Blog.
- The MSM and BSM compliment each other. Scott's blog's audience benefits from his MSM popularity, and vice versa. The result is cumulative.
- The argument that "citizen content" is not valuable to consumers (predictably touted by MSM moguls and other fools) must END. As Scott has has demonstrated, having a Blog will become a mark of quality professional media. Not having one may actually define poor quality, and would definitely call the author's credibility into question.
Friday
Getting BIG Things DONE Voluntarily
Finally, an update on The Business Experiment. The short story is; "to get peer production, you have to live it".
I think The Business Experiment is trying to solve the most complex peer production problem of them all; it's a cradle-to-grave commons-based approach that I'm yet unsure will succeed. I AM LEARNING THOUGH, and I can imagine few better communites to highlight the major challenges, strategies and tactics that will define successfully peer produced stuff, of any kind.
The latest highlights & lessons are:
The result is we now have 2 projects, 3 if you count TBE separately. MICROCHUNX (un-named) will become a highly automated platform for getting BIG projects voluntarily executed by distributed participants. From a user's perspective, the community will be a place to develop a reputation for your expertise and trade your productive passions for various rewards. For Entrepreneurs, it's a massive distributed workforce that GET BIG THINGS DONE VOLUNTARILY.
There are a LOT of details to work out, the most important of which is how ASKSPACE will use the MICROCHUNX platform and how to sequence the to-market strategy for both products given this interdependency. But, we now have two killer peer-production products in the funnel!
I'll close out with thoughts on a tough issue we continue to deal with at TBE and have to solve for MICROCHUNX. The question is, in a world where participants are voluntarily peer-producing and contributing varied skills, how do we systemize the rewards they receive for their efforts? Here are some suggestions I sent the core group for how Projects could be VALUED on our platform. Its important to assign whatever reward it is that the recipient receives for executing the project. Let Me Know what you think and whether you'd participate in a project run under any of these compensation frameworks ...
4 models for assigning TOTAL VALUE OF OPEN PROJECTS
Our "theme"" should be that participants INVEST their time, spread RISK across multiple projects and share REWARD if they succeed. Merely selling people's time is a crowded marketplace. So, what are models for "buying" the execution of projects?
1] SOCIAL Projects.
Project sponsor has to justify the total SOCIAL value created by their initiative ... either in $ value created for society or in the cost it would take to execute the project commercially. "Raise $100,000 for Katrina victims" could be an example of such a project.These projects can frankly be launched with $0 value and still succeed because participant passion for the initiative is high.
2] OPEN Initiatives.
Just like Open Source Software, the incentive to participate in some Open Plan Communities will be in using the result of the project to generate private income streams. Here, the project sponsor would need to calculate the potential earnings per participant in the community. The total value of any project hour is the value that participant "could" earn over X months once the initiative launches.
3] BARTER Projects.
This is where participants earn points to then use to get their own things done. This is a complex system. A few thoughts:
a) where do we start? We have to let participants who dont own points award them - that's tricky.
b) we should cap the number of hours you can assign to a max. based on your historical participation
c) and possibly also pro-rate the value of your points awarded by your productivity
This is HARD. We should consider selling these points to people wanting to sponsor projects to get started. Maybe that's how we fund our business.
4] COMMERCIAL Projects.
The only solution I have for this is that $$$'s are attached to warrants executed with and administered by us. Warrants are like stock options but against future revenues, not equity. Repayment against warrants carries similar risks to stock options - and the company would probably have to agree to be audited to prove eligibility to collect. Typically, the deferred payment bears interest with time penalties but is perpetuated until the company succeeds or is folded. Due to the complexity in tis, we add this LAST.
UPDATE: BARTER is a tool that could apply across all of the other 3. Thanks Sean.
I think The Business Experiment is trying to solve the most complex peer production problem of them all; it's a cradle-to-grave commons-based approach that I'm yet unsure will succeed. I AM LEARNING THOUGH, and I can imagine few better communites to highlight the major challenges, strategies and tactics that will define successfully peer produced stuff, of any kind.
The latest highlights & lessons are:
- We've voted on a decent brand-name for the first company we're creating, (was "WOU2"), now ASKSPACE.
- ASKSPACE will quickly evolve into a one-of-a-kind online community for rapidly providing optimal solutions to every-day and complex business problems. The platform is unique in its converged use of a) expert domain knowledge, b) the wisdom of crowds and c) peer production. I'm pumped about the potential for this & investing some time in seeing it happen.
- About 200 of TBE's 800-plus members seem to "get" ASKSPACE and want it to happen. Deciding on the most effective incentive for their participation is still an ongoing challenge, and therefore, so is participation itself for many members. Yet ...
- about 30 folk joined 4 leadership teams and then a CEO stepped up to the plate to lead ASKSPACE (yes, Rob May, ever the diplomat, is taking a back seat ... every-time he does, things accelerate; the participation of non-participation, perfected by Rob). Organizing these groups functionally has been a challenge; mostly to the democracy that made TBE so appealing in the first place. Email threads proved an unproductive communication mechanism for the distributed teams, and probably only the tech. team made real progress, although directionless due to lack of agreement on the strategy team (of which I'm a member). A dot-project implementation hasn't been well adopted by users.
- We quickly regrouped and made 5 individuals publicly responsible for the project's initial direction. It seems to be working. My inbox is overflowing with email from the others (yes, I put my hand up again - I tell you, I believe in this, the lessons alone are priceless). The other 4 are very smart folk; Sean Clauson,Asheesh Dewan, Carolyn Burke (interestingly, the world's first weblogger), Bill Moran, and of course I managed to drag Rob into the conversation.
- The group met via Skype for the 1st time this week. (Apologies to Asheesh for not figuring out how to con-call > 5 folk). A 2HR call!!! Folks on the East coast ended at midnight. Rob recorded the session & we hope to start podcasting these & other TBE meetings. It's also a great way to simplify content on what is a already a far too busy website at TBE (we're looking for a designer - a volunteer of course).
- Because of all the friction we've had in moving from the "idea" phase to the "execute" phase, there have been some mistakes made and many lessons learnt lately. Surprisingly, this friction has driven some innovation at TBE;
- The most notable of which actually came from my frustration with Rob calling for a CEO. I saw this as the end of the democracy; wanted a better solution and came back to Haque's microchunking idea (which is the key to all this). If you could "microchunk" traditional business and project roles, you could probably get business and projects done by volunteer peer producers. I pitched Rob, he liked it & pitched TBE, and they
- Put Microchunking the projects we do at TBE to a vote (like everything else). Results from the past 6 votes are shown below. As you can see, at 91,3% FOR, proceeding with building a Microchunking platform is about the closest we've had to a unanimous decision at TBE lately. Interestingly, it's closely followed by Bootstrapping, suggesting Peer Production's the Zeitgeist driving at least the pasrticipants who are voting (25% to 60% - avg is 41.2%)
| A New Name for WoU2 | AskSpace (askspace.com) | 33.5% | |
| Markup on fundraising merchandise | Wouldn't buy at any price | 35.0% | |
| Should WOU2 Find Funding or Boostrap? | Boostrapping. TBE techies can earn points for doing the design and programming | 69.5% | |
| Should WOU2 Find Funding or Boostrap? | Marketing | 36.5% | |
| Microchunking | yes | 91.3% | |
| Microchunking | Sean (WOU2 leader) assigns them | 38.0% |
The result is we now have 2 projects, 3 if you count TBE separately. MICROCHUNX (un-named) will become a highly automated platform for getting BIG projects voluntarily executed by distributed participants. From a user's perspective, the community will be a place to develop a reputation for your expertise and trade your productive passions for various rewards. For Entrepreneurs, it's a massive distributed workforce that GET BIG THINGS DONE VOLUNTARILY.
There are a LOT of details to work out, the most important of which is how ASKSPACE will use the MICROCHUNX platform and how to sequence the to-market strategy for both products given this interdependency. But, we now have two killer peer-production products in the funnel!
I'll close out with thoughts on a tough issue we continue to deal with at TBE and have to solve for MICROCHUNX. The question is, in a world where participants are voluntarily peer-producing and contributing varied skills, how do we systemize the rewards they receive for their efforts? Here are some suggestions I sent the core group for how Projects could be VALUED on our platform. Its important to assign whatever reward it is that the recipient receives for executing the project. Let Me Know what you think and whether you'd participate in a project run under any of these compensation frameworks ...
4 models for assigning TOTAL VALUE OF OPEN PROJECTS
Our "theme"" should be that participants INVEST their time, spread RISK across multiple projects and share REWARD if they succeed. Merely selling people's time is a crowded marketplace. So, what are models for "buying" the execution of projects?
1] SOCIAL Projects.
Project sponsor has to justify the total SOCIAL value created by their initiative ... either in $ value created for society or in the cost it would take to execute the project commercially. "Raise $100,000 for Katrina victims" could be an example of such a project.These projects can frankly be launched with $0 value and still succeed because participant passion for the initiative is high.
2] OPEN Initiatives.
Just like Open Source Software, the incentive to participate in some Open Plan Communities will be in using the result of the project to generate private income streams. Here, the project sponsor would need to calculate the potential earnings per participant in the community. The total value of any project hour is the value that participant "could" earn over X months once the initiative launches.
3] BARTER Projects.
This is where participants earn points to then use to get their own things done. This is a complex system. A few thoughts:
a) where do we start? We have to let participants who dont own points award them - that's tricky.
b) we should cap the number of hours you can assign to a max. based on your historical participation
c) and possibly also pro-rate the value of your points awarded by your productivity
This is HARD. We should consider selling these points to people wanting to sponsor projects to get started. Maybe that's how we fund our business.
4] COMMERCIAL Projects.
The only solution I have for this is that $$$'s are attached to warrants executed with and administered by us. Warrants are like stock options but against future revenues, not equity. Repayment against warrants carries similar risks to stock options - and the company would probably have to agree to be audited to prove eligibility to collect. Typically, the deferred payment bears interest with time penalties but is perpetuated until the company succeeds or is folded. Due to the complexity in tis, we add this LAST.
UPDATE: BARTER is a tool that could apply across all of the other 3. Thanks Sean.
Tuesday
... that was FAST
Now all that's left to do is list my service on Craigslist and eBay. Skype Voice Services has launched. This is a game-changer.
Yes, I Love to be Right!
Monday
the FINAL CHANNEL frontier?
ALL Business is done via "Channels". And we're about to get another one.
A "Channel" is a nice description of a company's various "conduits to revenues". "Channels" help us control, manage, record and process our interactions and transactions. We LOVE Channels! Retail Channels, Advertising Channels, Media Channels, Communication Channels ... Channels are how we get things done ... Channels are how we make our million$.Without Channels, where would we be?
So, basically, channels rock. New Channels disrupt our economy. And that's about to happen again. All Channels are ultimately commoditized, yet the most prevalent Channel today is neither organized nor commoditized. It offers a massive OPPORTUNITY which some bright folks are currently working on.
So, give me some examples of "Channels". Well, there's all the old-school channels of;
Now, the old channels compete with the new flavors. We recently, added a whole bunch of super-efficient highly-automated new channels;
There's a single MASSIVE Channel (in use today) where this has not yet happened. What is it?
We're learning that asynchronous channels are highly productive. They let each user both collaborate with distributed peers (all the rage) and simultaneously get on with their own stuff, prioritize tasks as suits their personal schedule. asynchronous channels have become essential to Getting things Done.
SYNCHRONOUS Voice was there before any of the other channels. Ever since there were masters and servants, we've been getting things done by telling people what to do - and then having them run off and ASYNCHRONOUSLY do them. We've learnt, that to control our lives, most of what we do needs to be accomplished ASYNCHRONOUSLY, sometimes by us, and sometimes by others. While SYNCHRONOUS voice has been good channel for this collaboration, but if the activities related to a task are ASYNC then why should the collaboration that triggeers it be SYNC? Surely using ASYNC methods for both the collaboration and the task itself, you add more visibility and control = which is good.
Voice is the most effective channel we have. Not accessible, just effective. Let's face it, we weren't born to type (he types).
So, all the activities that take place via SYNCHRONOUS triggers today, and those that take place ASYNCHRONOUSLY via text, could actually, probably, most likely, be MORE efficiently triggered via an ASYNCHRONOUS Voice Channel.
To say that the problem space of new and viable solutions here is HUGE is an understatement. Smart People working on this are Nivi who commented as much on my last post and the Edgar project referred to in it. Who else?
I think that new products and services in this space will be massively prolific - possibly for the next decade. Is this the FINAL CHANNEL? I doubt it, but it could be HUGE. Its amazing it's so late-coming (other than voice-mail that is - yes, I discounted voicemail, OK?). I don't think the money's in how you get it though, it may be in how you use it. What do you think?
A "Channel" is a nice description of a company's various "conduits to revenues". "Channels" help us control, manage, record and process our interactions and transactions. We LOVE Channels! Retail Channels, Advertising Channels, Media Channels, Communication Channels ... Channels are how we get things done ... Channels are how we make our million$.Without Channels, where would we be?
So, basically, channels rock. New Channels disrupt our economy. And that's about to happen again. All Channels are ultimately commoditized, yet the most prevalent Channel today is neither organized nor commoditized. It offers a massive OPPORTUNITY which some bright folks are currently working on.
So, give me some examples of "Channels". Well, there's all the old-school channels of;
- (physical) Retail stores,
- TV & Cinema
- Radio
- Print Media
- (Snail) Mail & Parcel Delivery
- Door-2-Door (Avon Calling)
- Utilities
- WAN & LAN (Client / Server Network Computing)
- Mobile 2 Mobile Text Messaging
- (SYNCHRONOUS) Voice including Mobile & IVR (yes, the telephone)
Now, the old channels compete with the new flavors. We recently, added a whole bunch of super-efficient highly-automated new channels;
- eCommerce & P2P Sales (including auctions)
- Electronic Directories (Search)
- P2P File Sharing
- VOIP (synchronous Voice Again)
- Blogging
- PODcasting
- The Metadata Channel (Tagging etc.)
- (& the rest of) Web2.0 (yet to be defined :-)
There's a single MASSIVE Channel (in use today) where this has not yet happened. What is it?
- ASYNCHRONOUS Voice
- simplify our lives and give us back some control
- increase our "life-archival" functionality
- improve our productivity
- integrate our collaborative activities to our productivity tools
Let me participate, but on my time, and the chances that I will are greatly improved.
We're learning that asynchronous channels are highly productive. They let each user both collaborate with distributed peers (all the rage) and simultaneously get on with their own stuff, prioritize tasks as suits their personal schedule. asynchronous channels have become essential to Getting things Done.
SYNCHRONOUS Voice was there before any of the other channels. Ever since there were masters and servants, we've been getting things done by telling people what to do - and then having them run off and ASYNCHRONOUSLY do them. We've learnt, that to control our lives, most of what we do needs to be accomplished ASYNCHRONOUSLY, sometimes by us, and sometimes by others. While SYNCHRONOUS voice has been good channel for this collaboration, but if the activities related to a task are ASYNC then why should the collaboration that triggeers it be SYNC? Surely using ASYNC methods for both the collaboration and the task itself, you add more visibility and control = which is good.
Voice is the most effective channel we have. Not accessible, just effective. Let's face it, we weren't born to type (he types).
So, all the activities that take place via SYNCHRONOUS triggers today, and those that take place ASYNCHRONOUSLY via text, could actually, probably, most likely, be MORE efficiently triggered via an ASYNCHRONOUS Voice Channel.
To say that the problem space of new and viable solutions here is HUGE is an understatement. Smart People working on this are Nivi who commented as much on my last post and the Edgar project referred to in it. Who else?
I think that new products and services in this space will be massively prolific - possibly for the next decade. Is this the FINAL CHANNEL? I doubt it, but it could be HUGE. Its amazing it's so late-coming (other than voice-mail that is - yes, I discounted voicemail, OK?). I don't think the money's in how you get it though, it may be in how you use it. What do you think?
Sunday
Sessions Impressions > Peer Production
Union Square Ventures hosted the first "Union Square Sessions" last week. The Session topic was "Peer Production and related opportunities including Open Source Software" ... Naturally, I'm reading through the Session Transcript word for word. I think the Session is a Brilliant idea ... (even though I wasn't invited :-). If you need to learn a new space that's ill-defined, what better way to hash it out than to get all of the experts into one room and make them thrash it out. Yochai Benkler and Umair Haque were both there. Thanks for publishing the transcript, Union Square.
The discussions are fascinating. Much of what was said reinforces & extends my own thoughts on the fascinating topic of Peer Production. Predictably, not all of the experts agree, and I think that some interesting insights can be drawn from the variance in their opinions. As I read through the transcript, I'm going to take notes that are of interest (to me):
1] Yochai Benkler (way ahead of the rest):
I'm going to try and translate Benkler's definition into layman's English ...
It's a peer's responsibility to embed themselves in each of the communities that they are passionate about, not the communities' responsibility to become "vanilla" to all participants. The big web portals don' get this. Personally, I'm all for many purpose-built "passion hubs". Duplication should not bother investors given the low cost of software development now.
Marc's wrong that "one service" would be in the interest of users ... he's blurring web2.0 and peer production objectives a bit here. Praying for a "controllable monopoly" couldn't be further from the spirit of Peer Production. "Redundant" & "abundant' resources are why Peer Production works (it's why P2P software works).
My advice: don't sit around waiting for (or worse yet, working on) the UBER-service!
3] Interestingly, Tim O'Reilly lists as the originally published piece on the topic;
4] A lot of talk about the value of "the commons". "The commons" is the shared space created by participating in a community. Good discussion about how Creating the Commons, can either the "direct" goal of the community, or it can be an "indirect" byproduct of the community's activity.
It's obvious that the venture folks are looking to own the commons, seen as the "free" valuable byproduct of the community. Longterm, I personally think that "consumers as producers" are too smart to just line others' pockets ... I think the direct model will yield far more valuable production that the indirect model, yet that's clearly an unpopular opinion today.
For me, the "indirect" model simply tries to sell my own productivity back to me; I won't stand for it ... your service may be useful but it could easily be replicated ... don't abuse my participation because it's your only asset!
5] Jeff Jarvis gets it ...
a) how do you make these systems more efficient?
b) how do you get more people to participate?
(b) is the right question to be asking, I think that asking (a) is a waste of time in a Peer Production community. Because production is outsourced (to the peers), so is the "pain" of poor efficiency ... Inefficient peer producers will atrit ... and that's OK.
7] "Reputation" will clearly be much more important online than "Privacy Concerns" have been. To web1.0, still obsessed with anonymity ... "Get over it".
8] A LOT of talk about what we called "Personalization" in Web1.0 - reading this transcript it's like these guys are inventing "customers who bought this, also bought that". There is a major problem with focusing too much on "indirect production" and it's a trap that the VC's are falling hard for.
9] ASYNCHRONOUS VOICE. This is the first time I've seen someone else talking about this MASSIVE opportunity - Scott Heifferman ...
Web2.0 and Peer Production clearly have some different priorities ... "open" companies do not necessarily = "open content", and likewise, I think that very few "open content" models will create value close to that of peer produced "open companies".
Web2 is looking to share content. Peer Production is looking to share revenues. I'll take door number two please.
11] REPUTATION = f (CONTEXT)
The group is again grasping for one "uber-service" that would store & forward our online REPUTATION on demand. Then, Mary Hodder recounts how a) you actually can get reputation data out of eBay ... but ... it's not very useful ... she describes how reputation on eBay is largely binary ... with a 3rd "middle" state, the "B+" state dominating most reputations.
My read of what Mary's saying is that the eBay reputation is not useful in communities that aren't p2p auctions. Each community is defined by its core passions. Likewise, good performance and good standing in those communities are defined by the context within the community. The parameters that define reputation are a function of context - the context of the community - and is specific to that community. It may be true that "poor standing" could be generalized to global standards and shared amongst all peer production communities. That's definitely NOT true for good standing however. A "good" reputation at eBay does not translate to good standing at iStockPhoto. About the general "uselessness" of the eBay reputation data, Hodder says,
b) Your online reputation is still important ... but no-ones going to build it for you.
c) Frankly, in my opinion, the productive "reputation engine" online is the blogstream ...
12] Benkler is Brilliant ...
When he simply summarizes all the "indirect" talk by saying he thinks it's important to draw a distinction ... and he actually calls this stuff "Social Production" ... and it's not "Peer Production" ... mmmmm'kay ... no wonder this space is so hard to groc.
I actually think the "Social Production" space is a massive red herring. Benkler contrasts it to and says that Peer Production on the other hand is ...
Benkler goes on to criticize the group's focus on Reputation, saying that "ranking" members better than each other is seldom productive sociology in productive communities. Good Point.
13] ... Debating whether Craigslist destroyed value in the newspaper industry. I fully agree with these quick quotes by Brad and Fred; they obviously think about this one a lot ...
a) FRICTION - is a good thing - "make people pay" and they value your commodity more - despite free content everyone wants to have a hard-cover copy of the latest blockbuster.
b) FOCUS - we need the "TV Guide" more today than we ever did ... some-one needs to tell us where to focus with all of the potential media choices we have.
c) FAIR share - peer producers will only share if they get their "fair share". Godin says that where he sees this conversation the most right now is in agreeing a "fair share" of internet traffic in exchange for contributing to the community.
It would seems like Seth believes that the microcontent aggregators would do better as a "point of departure" than as a "point of destination" ... and thinking about it, that definitely applies to GOOG's success with search.
***************************
OK _ enough for today - I'm about half way through the transcript and will pick up where I left off again tomorrow ...
The discussions are fascinating. Much of what was said reinforces & extends my own thoughts on the fascinating topic of Peer Production. Predictably, not all of the experts agree, and I think that some interesting insights can be drawn from the variance in their opinions. As I read through the transcript, I'm going to take notes that are of interest (to me):
1] Yochai Benkler (way ahead of the rest):
I'm going to try and translate Benkler's definition into layman's English ...
- The "non-economic" activities we all undertake in our every-day lives; our chores and hobbies ... have recently been discovered to be valuable to economic production,
- ... and are increasingly favored as a preferable operating strategy in new business plans and economic models.
- This is a NEW way of getting things done, it is creating new OPPORTUNITIES and will also result in new PROBLEMS to be solved, the most important of which is how to,
- ... use this new output for GOOD, while not exploiting and corrupting the social values and systems that gave rise to it in the first place.
"I think what peer production is intended to capture is the fact that a whole set of other behaviors that have grown up in the household, in friendships, in communities, the motivations that they capture, the signals that get people to explain what it is that they desire, how they desire, what they want to do, what they're trying to do, all of these things are suddenly becoming integrated into the core economic activities of the most advanced economists, and all of the players inside of these economies need to begin to think. It's a new set of social competition. It's a new set of opportunities. It's a new solution space for ways to solve production problems. And we need to start learning how to live with, use, provide platforms for, use the outputs of without undermining this new set of social cultural practices."2] Marc Pincus is talking about "one service" and eradicating duplication of effort, aggregating all the services into one central service for each internet user. Marc's got it totally wrong and it's important to remember Benkler's words that "our sociology is moving into the economy". Social structures will be replicated in economic communities ... and just like we don't each have only one social support system we subscribe to, and there isn't one system that resides over the rest, we wont all have one point of peer participation.
It's a peer's responsibility to embed themselves in each of the communities that they are passionate about, not the communities' responsibility to become "vanilla" to all participants. The big web portals don' get this. Personally, I'm all for many purpose-built "passion hubs". Duplication should not bother investors given the low cost of software development now.
Marc's wrong that "one service" would be in the interest of users ... he's blurring web2.0 and peer production objectives a bit here. Praying for a "controllable monopoly" couldn't be further from the spirit of Peer Production. "Redundant" & "abundant' resources are why Peer Production works (it's why P2P software works).
My advice: don't sit around waiting for (or worse yet, working on) the UBER-service!
3] Interestingly, Tim O'Reilly lists as the originally published piece on the topic;
... the formative essay for me on the subject was one written by Dan Bricklin called the Cornucopia of the Commons, which he published in 2001.In this essay about Cornucopia, I thought the interesting note was that what Briklin & team found was that;
"Use brings overflowing abundance."There it is again, in Peer Production, ABUNDANCE is good ... it was waste in the last economy ... it was the last economy's greatest LIABILITY ... Abundance is Peer Production's primary ASSET and as we saw in [2] above, technologists are battling to "get it". Peer Production, unlike the "old economy" doesn't demand return on abundance the way in which the old economy demanded returns on waste ... this is the secret to the HUGE upside in the profitability of peer produced products.
4] A lot of talk about the value of "the commons". "The commons" is the shared space created by participating in a community. Good discussion about how Creating the Commons, can either the "direct" goal of the community, or it can be an "indirect" byproduct of the community's activity.
It's obvious that the venture folks are looking to own the commons, seen as the "free" valuable byproduct of the community. Longterm, I personally think that "consumers as producers" are too smart to just line others' pockets ... I think the direct model will yield far more valuable production that the indirect model, yet that's clearly an unpopular opinion today.
For me, the "indirect" model simply tries to sell my own productivity back to me; I won't stand for it ... your service may be useful but it could easily be replicated ... don't abuse my participation because it's your only asset!
5] Jeff Jarvis gets it ...
"If you give people control, they'll use it, and if you don't, you'll lose it."6] Michael Parekh is also thinking about;
a) how do you make these systems more efficient?
b) how do you get more people to participate?
(b) is the right question to be asking, I think that asking (a) is a waste of time in a Peer Production community. Because production is outsourced (to the peers), so is the "pain" of poor efficiency ... Inefficient peer producers will atrit ... and that's OK.
7] "Reputation" will clearly be much more important online than "Privacy Concerns" have been. To web1.0, still obsessed with anonymity ... "Get over it".
8] A LOT of talk about what we called "Personalization" in Web1.0 - reading this transcript it's like these guys are inventing "customers who bought this, also bought that". There is a major problem with focusing too much on "indirect production" and it's a trap that the VC's are falling hard for.
9] ASYNCHRONOUS VOICE. This is the first time I've seen someone else talking about this MASSIVE opportunity - Scott Heifferman ...
"there's a company being incubated at Klein & Perkins called Project Edgar, which is about asynchronous voice, and the way it was pitched in a deck is "Now you can talk without talking."and this interesting sound-byte recalling Napster-euphoria:
"... You walk down the street and ... You know, this mass of strangers, some of them gave me music last night,""10] Mark Pincus thinks EBay's a "closed" company because they don't give him RSS "feeds" from his sellers' profile. How ridiculous, this guy really doesn't get it! EBay has created financial independence for 750K Americans ... probably more than any single company in history ... the only "feeds" that those peer producers are interested in is the feed they put on the table for their families daily ... yeah Mark, that feels like a "walled garden" to me.
Web2.0 and Peer Production clearly have some different priorities ... "open" companies do not necessarily = "open content", and likewise, I think that very few "open content" models will create value close to that of peer produced "open companies".
Web2 is looking to share content. Peer Production is looking to share revenues. I'll take door number two please.
11] REPUTATION = f (CONTEXT)
The group is again grasping for one "uber-service" that would store & forward our online REPUTATION on demand. Then, Mary Hodder recounts how a) you actually can get reputation data out of eBay ... but ... it's not very useful ... she describes how reputation on eBay is largely binary ... with a 3rd "middle" state, the "B+" state dominating most reputations.
My read of what Mary's saying is that the eBay reputation is not useful in communities that aren't p2p auctions. Each community is defined by its core passions. Likewise, good performance and good standing in those communities are defined by the context within the community. The parameters that define reputation are a function of context - the context of the community - and is specific to that community. It may be true that "poor standing" could be generalized to global standards and shared amongst all peer production communities. That's definitely NOT true for good standing however. A "good" reputation at eBay does not translate to good standing at iStockPhoto. About the general "uselessness" of the eBay reputation data, Hodder says,
"But because they've made these really weird social parameters, we're making it a very strange way."a) All the current work on centralizing and standardizing "Reputation" is a HUGE waste of time ... stop it!
b) Your online reputation is still important ... but no-ones going to build it for you.
c) Frankly, in my opinion, the productive "reputation engine" online is the blogstream ...
12] Benkler is Brilliant ...
When he simply summarizes all the "indirect" talk by saying he thinks it's important to draw a distinction ... and he actually calls this stuff "Social Production" ... and it's not "Peer Production" ... mmmmm'kay ... no wonder this space is so hard to groc.
I actually think the "Social Production" space is a massive red herring. Benkler contrasts it to and says that Peer Production on the other hand is ...
"the more self-conscious cooperative platforms."It is clear that focus and investment is going to be split between the two ... and that the HYPE is in the "social" space, not the "peer space".
Benkler goes on to criticize the group's focus on Reputation, saying that "ranking" members better than each other is seldom productive sociology in productive communities. Good Point.
13] ... Debating whether Craigslist destroyed value in the newspaper industry. I fully agree with these quick quotes by Brad and Fred; they obviously think about this one a lot ...
MR. BURNHAM: Well, if you think about value as being the most efficient delivery of a service, delivering the service more efficiently doesn't destroy value, it destroys pricing.14] Jarvis spot-on that this is a VERY competitive space ...
MR. WILSON: It's wealth transfer, not wealth destruction.
Somebody else can come along and be more open, and if the user, the job seekers and sellers benefit more, that will win out. That will win, if it can.15] Seth Godin says that the 3 "F"s are driving consumer behavior ...
a) FRICTION - is a good thing - "make people pay" and they value your commodity more - despite free content everyone wants to have a hard-cover copy of the latest blockbuster.
b) FOCUS - we need the "TV Guide" more today than we ever did ... some-one needs to tell us where to focus with all of the potential media choices we have.
c) FAIR share - peer producers will only share if they get their "fair share". Godin says that where he sees this conversation the most right now is in agreeing a "fair share" of internet traffic in exchange for contributing to the community.
It would seems like Seth believes that the microcontent aggregators would do better as a "point of departure" than as a "point of destination" ... and thinking about it, that definitely applies to GOOG's success with search.
***************************
OK _ enough for today - I'm about half way through the transcript and will pick up where I left off again tomorrow ...
Thursday
If you could change One Law ...
What would it be?
If I was asked 1000 times on 1000 different days, my answer would always be the same ... in the US, I would outlaw at-will employment.
My tirade about "at-will" employment contracts was what you missed ...... in my last post that Blogger managed to loose for me!
It was a duzi, so I'm going back to the salient pont; that the US Leadership deficit in our corporations is one scary deficit no-one seems to be doing anything about. It's also a deficit that's reached a phenomenal global imbalance, all due to the simpe error in judgement in how incentives were removed for US companies to develop their human resources. "AT-WILL" employment contracts are the evil'ist invention I've come across yet in this fascinating system we call Corporate America.
In most US corporations, "hiring & firing" is run like that of a major-league base-ball team ... the newest-ringer gets the highest income, your spot is only as secure as your last inning, and the bench is deep & constantly vying for the coach's attention, which if won will cost you your job in a heartbeat. Pro ball players get compensated for this lack of security ... 95%+ of US employees don't ... they live from paycheck to paycheck, under contracts with no more guarantees.
There is no cost to poor leadership in the US, so GOOD leadership is not valued ... In the US, due to "at-will" contracts, managers can and do ...
1) hire irresponsably, on a whim
2) ignore developing people into roles they can rather recruit for
3) replace entire teams with new employees who have "flavor of the month" skillsets
4) never have to bother with implimenting & develoing a real career development plan for their employees
From my experience here, I'd say all 4 of the above are more common management tactics than for example, sending a talented employee for a week's training in new & useful skills twice a year.
Bob May in some brilliant analysis, juxtaposes US to EU views on leadership as a desirable trait amongst executives when he points out that;
a) In 2004, 1400 US CFO's agreed that "people-skills" are 1% of what they consider to be a good leader
b) yet when Rob heard Richard Branson answer what he looks for in management talent, here's what Virgin's CEO said ...
If that's not a deficit, what is? There's a major global imbalance in how leadership is valued in corporate circles. We clearly do not value leadership in the US - and it's because we're the only country that perpetuates this crazy "at-will" system. I'd even stretch this to suggest that leadership and ethic are corellated ... now, there's something to really think about ... we all know what Enron cost ... could the deep-rooted cause actually be this rediculous "at-will" system and its resulting incentive to NOT appoint leaders to positions of responsibility. Great people-skills, by definition puts others first; I more than suggest that if US corporations did prioritize people-skills in position of authority, a natural by-product would be good ethics. It's not proposterous to call "at-will" employment "a" cause of the poor ethics prevalent in today's boardrooms.
In my original post I explained the origins of this crazy contract at lenght but dont have tim to repeat myself. For a good explanation, read this by Ronald Standler. I also came up with a lot of suggestions for changing it. Sometime, I may type them up again, but for now, I'd rather just get your thoughts ... and sign off with this promise that when my startup launches, no-one employed by us will sign an "at-will" contract.
If I was asked 1000 times on 1000 different days, my answer would always be the same ... in the US, I would outlaw at-will employment.
My tirade about "at-will" employment contracts was what you missed ...... in my last post that Blogger managed to loose for me!
It was a duzi, so I'm going back to the salient pont; that the US Leadership deficit in our corporations is one scary deficit no-one seems to be doing anything about. It's also a deficit that's reached a phenomenal global imbalance, all due to the simpe error in judgement in how incentives were removed for US companies to develop their human resources. "AT-WILL" employment contracts are the evil'ist invention I've come across yet in this fascinating system we call Corporate America.
In most US corporations, "hiring & firing" is run like that of a major-league base-ball team ... the newest-ringer gets the highest income, your spot is only as secure as your last inning, and the bench is deep & constantly vying for the coach's attention, which if won will cost you your job in a heartbeat. Pro ball players get compensated for this lack of security ... 95%+ of US employees don't ... they live from paycheck to paycheck, under contracts with no more guarantees.
There is no cost to poor leadership in the US, so GOOD leadership is not valued ... In the US, due to "at-will" contracts, managers can and do ...
1) hire irresponsably, on a whim
2) ignore developing people into roles they can rather recruit for
3) replace entire teams with new employees who have "flavor of the month" skillsets
4) never have to bother with implimenting & develoing a real career development plan for their employees
From my experience here, I'd say all 4 of the above are more common management tactics than for example, sending a talented employee for a week's training in new & useful skills twice a year.
Bob May in some brilliant analysis, juxtaposes US to EU views on leadership as a desirable trait amongst executives when he points out that;
a) In 2004, 1400 US CFO's agreed that "people-skills" are 1% of what they consider to be a good leader
b) yet when Rob heard Richard Branson answer what he looks for in management talent, here's what Virgin's CEO said ...
"The number one thing that matters, especially if you’re going to be manager at Virgin, is how good you are with people. If you’re — if you’re good with people and you’ve got — you know, and you really care, genuinely care about people then I’m sure we could find a job for you at Virgin. I think, you know, that, you know, that the companies that look after their people are the companies that do really well. I’m sure we’d like a few other attributes, but that would be the most important one."
If that's not a deficit, what is? There's a major global imbalance in how leadership is valued in corporate circles. We clearly do not value leadership in the US - and it's because we're the only country that perpetuates this crazy "at-will" system. I'd even stretch this to suggest that leadership and ethic are corellated ... now, there's something to really think about ... we all know what Enron cost ... could the deep-rooted cause actually be this rediculous "at-will" system and its resulting incentive to NOT appoint leaders to positions of responsibility. Great people-skills, by definition puts others first; I more than suggest that if US corporations did prioritize people-skills in position of authority, a natural by-product would be good ethics. It's not proposterous to call "at-will" employment "a" cause of the poor ethics prevalent in today's boardrooms.
In my original post I explained the origins of this crazy contract at lenght but dont have tim to repeat myself. For a good explanation, read this by Ronald Standler. I also came up with a lot of suggestions for changing it. Sometime, I may type them up again, but for now, I'd rather just get your thoughts ... and sign off with this promise that when my startup launches, no-one employed by us will sign an "at-will" contract.
Wednesday
web2.0 gets physical
Something that fascinates me about this new internet is how it seems to embrace both the physical & the virtual worlds. That just wasn't the case with web1.0, where you were either "click" or "brick" ...
Check out "thebubbleproject" to see what I mean ... The people on the streets of NYC didn't even know that they were creating a website, and writing a book when they "annotated" or better yet, graffiti'd the bubbles that Mark Batty stuck on advertisements all over the city.
The project involves more real-world production than virtual-world production. Initially, Mark stuck up all the bubbles and took all the pictures. Now he's also employing Web2.0 to distribute bubble templates and takes uploads from the site's fans. The internet, and Mark's "grafiti aggregator" is mainly a tool though for showcasing the bubble-writers' work, which is produced off-line. It's like the listeners at KWJZ who program their favorite radio channel using email & their online community. Even Radio is becoming a product of web2.0. It would seem that web2.0 has far more of a chance of leaving our LCD's and following us into "the real world". It's a good thing!
Question: is this Web2.0 or Peer Production? Mark's first artists probably don't even know about the website. Now, a community of the site's fans can submit their own ad-maush-ups, so surely the project has become Web2.0? This project does a good job of illustrating the difference though ... and it maybe indicates that it's Peer Production, and not Web2.0 that's the prerequisite community-produced products. This one thing is true - Mark's proved that a community doesn't always need to collaborate to "peer produce", that's interesting.
The Bubble Project is also a great study in effective web design, sans the (normally obligitory) white space. It works for me. Mark's obviously a principled guy; me, I'd merchandise the &%^$ out of the Bubble Project's traffic ... Mark's entire premise for the project is that we're being over-run by public advertising; so advertising revenues are _out_ but, Mark's got a book in the works. Smart guy - Mark Batty publishing is a business worth watching.
I HEART The bubbleproject, it's cheeky, irreverent, but mostly DANG FUNNY. Here's just one of many of the pieces that made me smile ... [yes, for more reasons than one, Im trying to appeal to a wide audience OK - sheeeessshhh]
Check out "thebubbleproject" to see what I mean ... The people on the streets of NYC didn't even know that they were creating a website, and writing a book when they "annotated" or better yet, graffiti'd the bubbles that Mark Batty stuck on advertisements all over the city.
The project involves more real-world production than virtual-world production. Initially, Mark stuck up all the bubbles and took all the pictures. Now he's also employing Web2.0 to distribute bubble templates and takes uploads from the site's fans. The internet, and Mark's "grafiti aggregator" is mainly a tool though for showcasing the bubble-writers' work, which is produced off-line. It's like the listeners at KWJZ who program their favorite radio channel using email & their online community. Even Radio is becoming a product of web2.0. It would seem that web2.0 has far more of a chance of leaving our LCD's and following us into "the real world". It's a good thing!
Question: is this Web2.0 or Peer Production? Mark's first artists probably don't even know about the website. Now, a community of the site's fans can submit their own ad-maush-ups, so surely the project has become Web2.0? This project does a good job of illustrating the difference though ... and it maybe indicates that it's Peer Production, and not Web2.0 that's the prerequisite community-produced products. This one thing is true - Mark's proved that a community doesn't always need to collaborate to "peer produce", that's interesting.
The Bubble Project is also a great study in effective web design, sans the (normally obligitory) white space. It works for me. Mark's obviously a principled guy; me, I'd merchandise the &%^$ out of the Bubble Project's traffic ... Mark's entire premise for the project is that we're being over-run by public advertising; so advertising revenues are _out_ but, Mark's got a book in the works. Smart guy - Mark Batty publishing is a business worth watching.
I HEART The bubbleproject, it's cheeky, irreverent, but mostly DANG FUNNY. Here's just one of many of the pieces that made me smile ... [yes, for more reasons than one, Im trying to appeal to a wide audience OK - sheeeessshhh]
Tuesday
IT IS GETTING A BIT bauhaus
around here WOT ?
What do you think ... what else would you change on Poductivity (besides the author) ... you get to see me work live - just make a (decent) proposal below in the comments for changes to Poductivity. We're still under reconstruction ...
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
eh - Blogging is just too much fun
What do you think ... what else would you change on Poductivity (besides the author) ... you get to see me work live - just make a (decent) proposal below in the comments for changes to Poductivity. We're still under reconstruction ...
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
eh - Blogging is just too much fun
Under Reconstruction ...
DO NOT ADJUST YOUR MONITOR
Poductivity's going to look a bit odd for the next few days while I work out a template that actually does my content some credit. Let's face it ... it's going to be easy to improve on!!! I'm going to test out a few new layouts ... blogspot's my dev / backup & production environment all in one, so you're going to have to bear with me ... sorry 'bout that but we're ...
UNDER RECONSTRUCTION around here!
Poductivity's going to look a bit odd for the next few days while I work out a template that actually does my content some credit. Let's face it ... it's going to be easy to improve on!!! I'm going to test out a few new layouts ... blogspot's my dev / backup & production environment all in one, so you're going to have to bear with me ... sorry 'bout that but we're ...
UNDER RECONSTRUCTION around here!
Laszlo for Dummies
Sometimes, I need a good "visual" to explain why new technologies are super-cool.
It's been a long time since I've seen a demo that communicates as well as this Laszlo development demonstration.
This thing kicks ass!
It's been a long time since I've seen a demo that communicates as well as this Laszlo development demonstration.
This thing kicks ass!
Perfect Business Blogging
OK, all you corporate Blog consultants can go and find another line of work.
Seriously, I think that American Express has officially perfected the corporate blogging business model. AmEx are promoting an event in their Open for (Small) Business product line. They're holding a conference, OPEN Adventures in Entrepreneurship in Miami this week which leads with a discussion with Virgin's founder, Richard Branson. What an excellent initiative for the corporation to Blog about!
And here's where it gets really interesting. Instead of suddenly turning a few PR-shy staffers into hack-bloggers against their better wishes, AmEx took a different route. I think that this model could trump most other corporate blogging strategies. Note: for small corporations, I don't advise this model and suggest that finding your own voice in a blog online is essential to building a (big) small company. For corporations, however, AmEx may have perfected the recipe ...
1) They hired an internet genius, Clay Shirkey, to put together a panel of 3 contract bloggers.
2) Clay's a detail-oriented technologist, so I imagine his next steps were to thoroughly understand the "message" AmEx were trying to communicate - and the audience that they were targetting.
3) Clay then matched AmEx's expectations to the content & writing style of 3 GREAT bloggers. The awesome thing about "recruiting" bloggers is that we're already at the point where a blog is way more effect than a CV/resume in communicating a person's strengths' and bias'.
4) AmEx is flying the bloggers to the event, covering expenses & paying for their time.
5) I've spoken with one of the bloggers, Rob May who blogs the excellent Business Pundit and who also founded The Business Experiment. To paraphrase Rob;
Rob writes on his blog about the disclaimer he will have to publish (literally, AmEx's only stipulation regarding content);
I think that this model is awesome!
In terms of value, this strategy is HUGE --> It brings third party credibility and an instant audience to the corporation recruiting the contract-blogger. If you choose a good blogger, this is like getting a PR-service and Marketting distribution in one neat cheap package.
In terms of the Author's Integrity, this model is the first I've seen that doesn't compromise the ethic of the blogger in the content they produce and that simultaneously ensures that they can be rewarded for their efforts while still maintaining ownership of their work.
I think that business and blogging finaly made a match that is a "win" for both parties - and you know how I'm all about "win-win". This sponsored blogathon is important - read Rob's insights and those of the other bloggers:
Anita Campbell
Dane Carlson
Clay Shirky
Seriously, I think that American Express has officially perfected the corporate blogging business model. AmEx are promoting an event in their Open for (Small) Business product line. They're holding a conference, OPEN Adventures in Entrepreneurship in Miami this week which leads with a discussion with Virgin's founder, Richard Branson. What an excellent initiative for the corporation to Blog about!
And here's where it gets really interesting. Instead of suddenly turning a few PR-shy staffers into hack-bloggers against their better wishes, AmEx took a different route. I think that this model could trump most other corporate blogging strategies. Note: for small corporations, I don't advise this model and suggest that finding your own voice in a blog online is essential to building a (big) small company. For corporations, however, AmEx may have perfected the recipe ...
1) They hired an internet genius, Clay Shirkey, to put together a panel of 3 contract bloggers.
2) Clay's a detail-oriented technologist, so I imagine his next steps were to thoroughly understand the "message" AmEx were trying to communicate - and the audience that they were targetting.
3) Clay then matched AmEx's expectations to the content & writing style of 3 GREAT bloggers. The awesome thing about "recruiting" bloggers is that we're already at the point where a blog is way more effect than a CV/resume in communicating a person's strengths' and bias'.
4) AmEx is flying the bloggers to the event, covering expenses & paying for their time.
5) I've spoken with one of the bloggers, Rob May who blogs the excellent Business Pundit and who also founded The Business Experiment. To paraphrase Rob;
"they've asked me to blog my own thoughts on my own blog - about business & entrepreneurship - that's what I do every day!"
Rob writes on his blog about the disclaimer he will have to publish (literally, AmEx's only stipulation regarding content);
"So keep in mind that despite being paid, American Express wants me to say what I really think. They just want you to realize it is me saying it, not them."
I think that this model is awesome!
In terms of value, this strategy is HUGE --> It brings third party credibility and an instant audience to the corporation recruiting the contract-blogger. If you choose a good blogger, this is like getting a PR-service and Marketting distribution in one neat cheap package.
In terms of the Author's Integrity, this model is the first I've seen that doesn't compromise the ethic of the blogger in the content they produce and that simultaneously ensures that they can be rewarded for their efforts while still maintaining ownership of their work.
I think that business and blogging finaly made a match that is a "win" for both parties - and you know how I'm all about "win-win". This sponsored blogathon is important - read Rob's insights and those of the other bloggers:
Anita Campbell
Dane Carlson
Clay Shirky
The challenge in doing a startup ...
Is there's so much to do ... where do you start - I could spend all day just itemizing all the things I have to do. Somedays I do.
The reward in doing a startup ...
Is there's so much to do ... you notice progress with everything you touch
Things that make you go MMMMMM
Internet Browser Usage Statistics.
Flash Player Version Ubiquity.
Observations:
1. IE (6, the latest version of) is at its highest usage (68.9%) since 2003.
2. Microsoft is doing a great job of converting IE5 users to IE6 but there are still some die-hards, a non-trivial number still > 5%. C'mon Dad, upgrade already!
3. To match Flash 7 ubiquity, you have to develop for the top 3 browsers - today, that includes IE5.
3. It is improbable to match Flash 6 ubiquity even by developing for the top 7 browsers and definitely impossible to maintain browser code that match's Flash 5 ubiquity.
4. Laszlo compiles to Flash 5,6,7 - is this the world's most ubiquitous open source web development framework? It certainly is if you only want to maintain one code base.
5. For Flash Players, "the only way is up". Flash Player Version Ubiquity can only increase w/time, unlike browser usage which competes for popularity. Simplistically, unless the Flash community now stops upgrading (unlikely), its safe to assume that the growth in adoption of any new Player Version will mimic that of previous players. By Version 7, it's safe to say that this rule holds. Which means, that one can safely predict that any new Flash Player Version will reach similar (98%) ubiquity to that of Version 5.
Frankly, it doesn't matter which Flash version you start developing with because even if it's "8", for which Macromedia aren't publishing data yet, the Player will still have more browser penetration than your website does. Users online _t_a_k_e_ _f_o_r_e_v_e_r_ to adopt even the greatest websites ... what Flash ubiquity has shown is that their plug-in is NOT a factor to users when they do! Maybe the best advice is ... You will never have as much browser penetration as your chosen Flash Version, whatever that is - just pick one.
Flash Player Version Ubiquity.
Observations:
1. IE (6, the latest version of) is at its highest usage (68.9%) since 2003.
2. Microsoft is doing a great job of converting IE5 users to IE6 but there are still some die-hards, a non-trivial number still > 5%. C'mon Dad, upgrade already!
3. To match Flash 7 ubiquity, you have to develop for the top 3 browsers - today, that includes IE5.
3. It is improbable to match Flash 6 ubiquity even by developing for the top 7 browsers and definitely impossible to maintain browser code that match's Flash 5 ubiquity.
4. Laszlo compiles to Flash 5,6,7 - is this the world's most ubiquitous open source web development framework? It certainly is if you only want to maintain one code base.
5. For Flash Players, "the only way is up". Flash Player Version Ubiquity can only increase w/time, unlike browser usage which competes for popularity. Simplistically, unless the Flash community now stops upgrading (unlikely), its safe to assume that the growth in adoption of any new Player Version will mimic that of previous players. By Version 7, it's safe to say that this rule holds. Which means, that one can safely predict that any new Flash Player Version will reach similar (98%) ubiquity to that of Version 5.
Frankly, it doesn't matter which Flash version you start developing with because even if it's "8", for which Macromedia aren't publishing data yet, the Player will still have more browser penetration than your website does. Users online _t_a_k_e_ _f_o_r_e_v_e_r_ to adopt even the greatest websites ... what Flash ubiquity has shown is that their plug-in is NOT a factor to users when they do! Maybe the best advice is ... You will never have as much browser penetration as your chosen Flash Version, whatever that is - just pick one.
Monday
Laszlo vs Flex
Laszlo vs Flex.
I ask myself about 100 times a day. About 50% of those times, AJAX also pops into the argument.
Pete Freitag asked the same question on his blog and is getting some interesting comments.
I didn't know for example that Laszlo doesn't support Unicode. Interesting. If you have an opinion, go join the discussion on Pete's blog!
I made a Bla Bla list to keep score - check it out; I've shared my list, Laszlo vs Flex vs AJAX - Bla Bla list is a lot like ta-da lists from 37Signals, except it's built in Laszlo, not RoR. The 37Signals application is way better - but they are the kings of usability & getting things done. Bla Bla is still well worth the visit, if nothing else to check out what Laszlo can do.
I ask myself about 100 times a day. About 50% of those times, AJAX also pops into the argument.
Pete Freitag asked the same question on his blog and is getting some interesting comments.
I didn't know for example that Laszlo doesn't support Unicode. Interesting. If you have an opinion, go join the discussion on Pete's blog!
I made a Bla Bla list to keep score - check it out; I've shared my list, Laszlo vs Flex vs AJAX - Bla Bla list is a lot like ta-da lists from 37Signals, except it's built in Laszlo, not RoR. The 37Signals application is way better - but they are the kings of usability & getting things done. Bla Bla is still well worth the visit, if nothing else to check out what Laszlo can do.
Adsense - it's Brilliant but it doesn't Add-up
When something new works well, it's amazing how the prevailing herd mentatlity is to totally discard or dismiss the previous "method". Even if there was significant merit to the way "we used to do it", a new smart approach seems to eclipse the tried and true.
In US corporate circles, this tendancy is often called "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". After taking another look at Google's fantastic adsense program, I'm convinced that it's what the internet and advertising industries have done with Branding and Marketing online.
This diagram is a partial screen-capture from a business plan we're working from. This data is public, sourced by Universal McCann & presented by Double-Click.
Note three things:
1) Internet advertising is growing at a phenomenal rate in the US - 65% between 2000 and 2004 (no surprise there).
2) Internet Advertising also has room to grow; in 2004, internet advertising only constituted 4-to-5% of all US advertising spend. Contrast that with an online population in the US of just over 200 Million. 70% of the population are online. That 70% probably represents 85%+ of total US consumer spend. Yet, these eyeballs only get 4-5% of total ad-spend. There's room to grow. Obvoiusly the time users spend online will cap this potential, but Web2.0 is also raising that ceiling - the subject of my next post!
2) Ad-sense-like advertising, which I'll call click-through ads constitute $2.8Bn Dollars, or 40% of the online advertising spend (listed as "search ads" above).
The more I think about it, that 40% number just doesn't add-up!
Before I even joined Amazon in 2001, Jeff Bezos had figured out that only a small % of even those products that could be fulfilled online, would actually be consumed online. Jeff took this dicovery and made lemonaide - he realized that all retailers would face the challenge of building out an expensive technology channel to only see what Jeff guessed would be a maximum of 10% to 15% of demand fulfilled via that channel. Jeff learned that the online channel would only actively "convert" 10% to 15% of consumers ... and so he decided to offer his platform as a low-cost outsourced technology option for any retailer who came to the similar conclusion that the "internet" would never be their core fulfillment channel. That's how the Amazon marketplace was born.
So, it's with this filter that I review the massive spend in click-through advertising, and it doesn't add up. When we are "clicking-through" ad-links online, we are "converting". But even Amazon learnt that we only convert 10% to 15% of POTENTIAL CONSUMERS online. This data is more of a comment on how users view the internet than on the efficiency, reliabiltiy and trust we espect from internet service providers. By now, we've put those issues largely to rest. What this data does indicate, is the mindset of users when they're online: consuming is not their most prevalent activity ... they have other outlets for that!
The internet is less a "fulfillment channel" than it is an "media center". Web users are far more often "comsuming media" than "consuming products" online. And, as many internet writers have pointed out, that media that is popular online is mostly expected to be free. So, what we're doing when we're online, is, _on_average_, most definitely NOT buying, we're on average most definitely NOT "consuming stuff". The internet works (very well) as a channel for those activities, but most of the time, "we users" are actually in the "mode" of consuming "free" media.
The other media channels (TV / radio / newspapers) have learnt the difference between conversion & marketing. Why hasn't the internet? Just because we can convert users online, does that mean that we MUST? Is this the proverbial dog licking his privates? We'd be foolish to assume that the reason was that the other media weren't capable of "conversion" ... just look at The Shopping Channel & QVC! It can be done but its not popular. Even very few television ads call for you to immediately pick up the phone & order!!! Not because they can't, but because advertisers have come to understand that while we're consuming "free" media, we aren't consuming products ... but we are consuming; we're consuming their message, nicely wrapped up in the "free" media. The advertising industry has learnt over decades that they can reach a consumer while she is consuming media ... but it's not through conversion ... because media consumers don't convert until they "change mode" to product consumers.
Why isn't this wisdom more common on the internet? Why does click-through, conversion-based advertising account for 40% of internet advertising when only 15% of consumption is converted online?
There are many probable answers to these questions, of which, the "herd mentality" is likely to be a main culprit. Placing blame isn't appropriate because of the obvious potential for growth in online advertising. The bigger story here than "the herd buys conversion" is that branding & marketting is very cheap online right now. I'll conclude with some suggestions for learning from what is obviosly an imbalance in online ad-spend;
Lessons from this Adsense non-cents:
1) If you spend any of your ad-dollars online, then take a closer look at branding & marketing opportunities before you increase your search-ad budget! Right now, branding and marketing online has very little (peer) competition relative to the other media and is DIRT cheap compared to all other popular forms of advertising. By far the best value for your ad-dollar.
2) If you sell advertising online: a) get into the rich media & display-ad space (there's very little competition) and b) increase the price of your display advertising; you are currently undercutting a massive market!
3) If you use search-advertising, like google's ad-sense: then pay more attention to the way you "brand" your links. Use consistent, smart taglines - differentiate your offering in how you describe it! Have a copywriter review your links! Try and always appear in the same prominent spot on the page - buy the premium spot on popular searches!
4) The Best advice for Last ... If you monetize internet traffic, like on your blog, then adsense might not be the best way to earn dollars for your efforts. Theoretically, your internet eye-balls are 8 times more valuable to marketting advertising spend than they are to click-through advertising spend. Obviously your content will also dictate how valuable your eyeballs are - but my advice is if you're going to sell advertising on your blog, you may make much more money if you find a way to sell Branding and Marketting.
Something(s) to think about; there's alot of missed opportunity here. Please understand that despite having also blogged about the pending irrelevance of internet search, I have nothing against GOOG - I think that they rock (except for not supporting the mac with a few of their cunningest tools). The point is that GOOG (as we know them) "are totally that, but ain't ALL that" and as Web2.0 shakes out, there are going to be a lot of new opportunities; this is just one of them, but it looks like a MASSIVE, ripe, low-hanging fruit of some kind.
In US corporate circles, this tendancy is often called "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". After taking another look at Google's fantastic adsense program, I'm convinced that it's what the internet and advertising industries have done with Branding and Marketing online.
This diagram is a partial screen-capture from a business plan we're working from. This data is public, sourced by Universal McCann & presented by Double-Click.
Note three things:
1) Internet advertising is growing at a phenomenal rate in the US - 65% between 2000 and 2004 (no surprise there).
2) Internet Advertising also has room to grow; in 2004, internet advertising only constituted 4-to-5% of all US advertising spend. Contrast that with an online population in the US of just over 200 Million. 70% of the population are online. That 70% probably represents 85%+ of total US consumer spend. Yet, these eyeballs only get 4-5% of total ad-spend. There's room to grow. Obvoiusly the time users spend online will cap this potential, but Web2.0 is also raising that ceiling - the subject of my next post!
2) Ad-sense-like advertising, which I'll call click-through ads constitute $2.8Bn Dollars, or 40% of the online advertising spend (listed as "search ads" above).
The more I think about it, that 40% number just doesn't add-up!
Before I even joined Amazon in 2001, Jeff Bezos had figured out that only a small % of even those products that could be fulfilled online, would actually be consumed online. Jeff took this dicovery and made lemonaide - he realized that all retailers would face the challenge of building out an expensive technology channel to only see what Jeff guessed would be a maximum of 10% to 15% of demand fulfilled via that channel. Jeff learned that the online channel would only actively "convert" 10% to 15% of consumers ... and so he decided to offer his platform as a low-cost outsourced technology option for any retailer who came to the similar conclusion that the "internet" would never be their core fulfillment channel. That's how the Amazon marketplace was born.
So, it's with this filter that I review the massive spend in click-through advertising, and it doesn't add up. When we are "clicking-through" ad-links online, we are "converting". But even Amazon learnt that we only convert 10% to 15% of POTENTIAL CONSUMERS online. This data is more of a comment on how users view the internet than on the efficiency, reliabiltiy and trust we espect from internet service providers. By now, we've put those issues largely to rest. What this data does indicate, is the mindset of users when they're online: consuming is not their most prevalent activity ... they have other outlets for that!
The internet is less a "fulfillment channel" than it is an "media center". Web users are far more often "comsuming media" than "consuming products" online. And, as many internet writers have pointed out, that media that is popular online is mostly expected to be free. So, what we're doing when we're online, is, _on_average_, most definitely NOT buying, we're on average most definitely NOT "consuming stuff". The internet works (very well) as a channel for those activities, but most of the time, "we users" are actually in the "mode" of consuming "free" media.
The other media channels (TV / radio / newspapers) have learnt the difference between conversion & marketing. Why hasn't the internet? Just because we can convert users online, does that mean that we MUST? Is this the proverbial dog licking his privates? We'd be foolish to assume that the reason was that the other media weren't capable of "conversion" ... just look at The Shopping Channel & QVC! It can be done but its not popular. Even very few television ads call for you to immediately pick up the phone & order!!! Not because they can't, but because advertisers have come to understand that while we're consuming "free" media, we aren't consuming products ... but we are consuming; we're consuming their message, nicely wrapped up in the "free" media. The advertising industry has learnt over decades that they can reach a consumer while she is consuming media ... but it's not through conversion ... because media consumers don't convert until they "change mode" to product consumers.
Why isn't this wisdom more common on the internet? Why does click-through, conversion-based advertising account for 40% of internet advertising when only 15% of consumption is converted online?
There are many probable answers to these questions, of which, the "herd mentality" is likely to be a main culprit. Placing blame isn't appropriate because of the obvious potential for growth in online advertising. The bigger story here than "the herd buys conversion" is that branding & marketting is very cheap online right now. I'll conclude with some suggestions for learning from what is obviosly an imbalance in online ad-spend;
Lessons from this Adsense non-cents:
1) If you spend any of your ad-dollars online, then take a closer look at branding & marketing opportunities before you increase your search-ad budget! Right now, branding and marketing online has very little (peer) competition relative to the other media and is DIRT cheap compared to all other popular forms of advertising. By far the best value for your ad-dollar.
2) If you sell advertising online: a) get into the rich media & display-ad space (there's very little competition) and b) increase the price of your display advertising; you are currently undercutting a massive market!
3) If you use search-advertising, like google's ad-sense: then pay more attention to the way you "brand" your links. Use consistent, smart taglines - differentiate your offering in how you describe it! Have a copywriter review your links! Try and always appear in the same prominent spot on the page - buy the premium spot on popular searches!
4) The Best advice for Last ... If you monetize internet traffic, like on your blog, then adsense might not be the best way to earn dollars for your efforts. Theoretically, your internet eye-balls are 8 times more valuable to marketting advertising spend than they are to click-through advertising spend. Obviously your content will also dictate how valuable your eyeballs are - but my advice is if you're going to sell advertising on your blog, you may make much more money if you find a way to sell Branding and Marketting.
Something(s) to think about; there's alot of missed opportunity here. Please understand that despite having also blogged about the pending irrelevance of internet search, I have nothing against GOOG - I think that they rock (except for not supporting the mac with a few of their cunningest tools). The point is that GOOG (as we know them) "are totally that, but ain't ALL that" and as Web2.0 shakes out, there are going to be a lot of new opportunities; this is just one of them, but it looks like a MASSIVE, ripe, low-hanging fruit of some kind.
Thursday
fantastic ftp service
Sometimes all you need is secure ftp. Solid, reliable, secure ... ftp & nothing else, just ftp, archival capacity & bandwidth. That's exactly what I was looking for to enable file uploads in Backpack, which I blogged about at length here.
The perfect solution exists ... strongspace
I signed up for strongspace access & integrated it to Backpack in less than 10 minutes. Its a popular choice amongst Backpack users
Cost of StrongSpace ... $8 and up. per month
Cost of Backpack ... $49 or $99 per month for the two 'business' versions ... also available free ... I went for the $49 version which is capped at 35 simultaneous projects but otherwise includes unlimited functionality & community growth. When we're managing an infinite ammount of projects, then we'll upgrade to the $99 version.
So, for around $60/month ... voila ... a gorgeous ready-made, fully supported, frequently upgraded, securely hosted company intranet and partner extranet in one. It is tools like these that are fueling the "small business is big business" revolution.
The perfect solution exists ... strongspace
I signed up for strongspace access & integrated it to Backpack in less than 10 minutes. Its a popular choice amongst Backpack users
Cost of StrongSpace ... $8 and up. per month
Cost of Backpack ... $49 or $99 per month for the two 'business' versions ... also available free ... I went for the $49 version which is capped at 35 simultaneous projects but otherwise includes unlimited functionality & community growth. When we're managing an infinite ammount of projects, then we'll upgrade to the $99 version.
So, for around $60/month ... voila ... a gorgeous ready-made, fully supported, frequently upgraded, securely hosted company intranet and partner extranet in one. It is tools like these that are fueling the "small business is big business" revolution.
Backpacking It ...
I'm knee-deep in the online project management tool, Backpack from 37Signals. Over the past few days, I got started with Backpack to keep track of our outsourced software development projects.
I'm very impressed so far. Backpack has its quirks (mostly in content formatting), but they're quickly learnt & once you get beyond the challenge of starting with a "blank canvas", Backpack starts to shine!
Backpack's feature list should be reason alone for any organization to re-evaluate their internal collaboration tool-set. But for any company that manages distributed efforts, evaluating Backpack should be an imperitive! Yes, that's you ... if you outsource any of your business or integrate with your clients business processes in any way that requires sharing project progress and information, then Backpack, or a similar platform (if there is one), must be a part of your planning, knowledge management & collaboration strategy.
Backpack, an entirely browser-based tool (that works perfectly in Firefox on Mac) is a fascinating study in User Interface design. Despite its grounbreaking interactivity, performance and architecture, its UI reflects less on the technical talents of its creators as it does on their philosophy about how people should "Get Things Done". Here-in lies Backpack's greatest strength.
Philisohically, Backpack DOES NOT map too well to the MS-Project school of project planning. If you're part of the 0.1% of Project users (my gues, flame me!) made more productive by that tool, then give Backpack a skip! With the recent introduction of "Writeboards", BackPack started to look as much wiki as a planner, and a "wiki" is a good analog for the approach that the tool takes to Getting Things Done. Its project plan is not a mammoth higherarchy of dependanies and probabilities. This ain't yo momma's PM environment.
In Backpack, a project is a group of people, who agree on milestones ... and shared task-lists which they check off as they populate the shared project with all the random things we love to create. In my experience, this is how projects work in the real word; I think that Backpack's got a real chance of sticking with users. Some features are designed more for long-term use than 1st-timer introduction; new users must spend some time clicking around to fully understand what they're capable of. That said, the UI is so simple, intuitive & "minimalistic", that once you've put in that time and started creating useful content, it's very loveable.
The Getting Things Done philosophy enforced by Backpack is one I subscribe to. If you can succicntly articulat a projects deliveribles, namely its milestones, in "chunks" of no more than 1 week's effort (and no less than 1 day's), then there's a good chance that you'll succeeed. In The Seven Habits, Stephen Covey explains in-depth how a goal-based approach to planning your work is better than a calendered approach. Covey encourages you to set a simple list of goals each week and rather than schedule them, he has you categorize them by their importance to your life's goals.
This is how Backpack works; I start by setting Deliveribles, or Milestones - and loosely putting them into weeks in the project. Then, as I work, I make lists of things to do to accomplish each Deliverible - checking them off as I go. Backpack lets you do that for your work, but more powerfully, for that of the people you work with. It's a simple tool that focus' on the task at hand.
Backpack is all about "the work that matters" as Tom Peters puts it. Peters said the white-collar reveloution is upon us - we must specialize and brand ourselves because in the future, work will get done by loosely coupled groups of individuals. Teams, who get together to accomplish a task, complete a project and then disband - to work on other projects. If Peters is right, and I think he is, then Backpack's the perfect platform to fascilitate his predictions.
What's missing? Well, Backpack's broad applicability to any desktop task, begs for it to be extended, specialized and mostly, integrated to business process workflows. In all but the smallest projects, the stuff we do is not only interesting to the people we work with but also to the systems that automate production in our business. We interact with them all day long, and without integration to them, a tool like Backpack is just another digital time-suck if applied to repetitive tasks. There's little automation in Backpack.
Yet most projects & tasks are the result of some or other event in some other system; content expires on a website, a software project gets budget in a financial system, a new-hire is on-boarded in an HR system. Wouldn't it be great if the projects associated with the work we do interfacing to all these other systems were easily accesible, in one place? It would be great if you could integrate events in these systems to events in Backpack. What if external events could create events in BackPack? A new-hire HR event could trigger assigning a "write up your biography on a writeboard" task to the new employee when they log in to Backpack. Imagine if finishing one project could automatically kick off a new one? Imagine if repeted To-Do Lists didn't only have a content template but could also be assigned to users automatically using business rules?
It can be done!
I think the ultimate productivity gain in using Backpack may be realized by integrating it to a Workflow management or BPM engine. [BPM = Business Process Management]. Like most great Web2.0 tools, the guys at 37Signals, who produce Backpack, have opened up a web service API to expose your project events to other systems. The API not only publishes the events as they happen in your Basecamp project - but can also allow your systeme to automagically create events and content in Basecamp for your teams to act upon! This is the perfect application for a smart BPM rules management engine; to sit between a slick and productive UI like Backpack and the various Services that make up your production environment. BPM software is coming of age and finding its niche as the glue between people and systems ... there are open source options, like JBPM - and there are now even entirely turnkey BPM devices; this one from Bridgewerx looks awesome. David Linthicum, CEO at Bridgewerx is one of the world's leading technologists in the relm of EAI; he ran Tech. for Mercator when they were my primary vendor at Amazon. The Bridgewerx device has got to ROCK with David's expertise behind it! I'd love to get one of those suckers in a rack next to my Backpack ftp server!
Obviously there's going to be more to come in my travels with Backpack! For now, I've got some tasks to do & software to design ... later!
I'm very impressed so far. Backpack has its quirks (mostly in content formatting), but they're quickly learnt & once you get beyond the challenge of starting with a "blank canvas", Backpack starts to shine!
Backpack's feature list should be reason alone for any organization to re-evaluate their internal collaboration tool-set. But for any company that manages distributed efforts, evaluating Backpack should be an imperitive! Yes, that's you ... if you outsource any of your business or integrate with your clients business processes in any way that requires sharing project progress and information, then Backpack, or a similar platform (if there is one), must be a part of your planning, knowledge management & collaboration strategy.
Backpack, an entirely browser-based tool (that works perfectly in Firefox on Mac) is a fascinating study in User Interface design. Despite its grounbreaking interactivity, performance and architecture, its UI reflects less on the technical talents of its creators as it does on their philosophy about how people should "Get Things Done". Here-in lies Backpack's greatest strength.
Philisohically, Backpack DOES NOT map too well to the MS-Project school of project planning. If you're part of the 0.1% of Project users (my gues, flame me!) made more productive by that tool, then give Backpack a skip! With the recent introduction of "Writeboards", BackPack started to look as much wiki as a planner, and a "wiki" is a good analog for the approach that the tool takes to Getting Things Done. Its project plan is not a mammoth higherarchy of dependanies and probabilities. This ain't yo momma's PM environment.
In Backpack, a project is a group of people, who agree on milestones ... and shared task-lists which they check off as they populate the shared project with all the random things we love to create. In my experience, this is how projects work in the real word; I think that Backpack's got a real chance of sticking with users. Some features are designed more for long-term use than 1st-timer introduction; new users must spend some time clicking around to fully understand what they're capable of. That said, the UI is so simple, intuitive & "minimalistic", that once you've put in that time and started creating useful content, it's very loveable.
The Getting Things Done philosophy enforced by Backpack is one I subscribe to. If you can succicntly articulat a projects deliveribles, namely its milestones, in "chunks" of no more than 1 week's effort (and no less than 1 day's), then there's a good chance that you'll succeeed. In The Seven Habits, Stephen Covey explains in-depth how a goal-based approach to planning your work is better than a calendered approach. Covey encourages you to set a simple list of goals each week and rather than schedule them, he has you categorize them by their importance to your life's goals.
This is how Backpack works; I start by setting Deliveribles, or Milestones - and loosely putting them into weeks in the project. Then, as I work, I make lists of things to do to accomplish each Deliverible - checking them off as I go. Backpack lets you do that for your work, but more powerfully, for that of the people you work with. It's a simple tool that focus' on the task at hand.
Backpack is all about "the work that matters" as Tom Peters puts it. Peters said the white-collar reveloution is upon us - we must specialize and brand ourselves because in the future, work will get done by loosely coupled groups of individuals. Teams, who get together to accomplish a task, complete a project and then disband - to work on other projects. If Peters is right, and I think he is, then Backpack's the perfect platform to fascilitate his predictions.
What's missing? Well, Backpack's broad applicability to any desktop task, begs for it to be extended, specialized and mostly, integrated to business process workflows. In all but the smallest projects, the stuff we do is not only interesting to the people we work with but also to the systems that automate production in our business. We interact with them all day long, and without integration to them, a tool like Backpack is just another digital time-suck if applied to repetitive tasks. There's little automation in Backpack.
Yet most projects & tasks are the result of some or other event in some other system; content expires on a website, a software project gets budget in a financial system, a new-hire is on-boarded in an HR system. Wouldn't it be great if the projects associated with the work we do interfacing to all these other systems were easily accesible, in one place? It would be great if you could integrate events in these systems to events in Backpack. What if external events could create events in BackPack? A new-hire HR event could trigger assigning a "write up your biography on a writeboard" task to the new employee when they log in to Backpack. Imagine if finishing one project could automatically kick off a new one? Imagine if repeted To-Do Lists didn't only have a content template but could also be assigned to users automatically using business rules?
It can be done!
I think the ultimate productivity gain in using Backpack may be realized by integrating it to a Workflow management or BPM engine. [BPM = Business Process Management]. Like most great Web2.0 tools, the guys at 37Signals, who produce Backpack, have opened up a web service API to expose your project events to other systems. The API not only publishes the events as they happen in your Basecamp project - but can also allow your systeme to automagically create events and content in Basecamp for your teams to act upon! This is the perfect application for a smart BPM rules management engine; to sit between a slick and productive UI like Backpack and the various Services that make up your production environment. BPM software is coming of age and finding its niche as the glue between people and systems ... there are open source options, like JBPM - and there are now even entirely turnkey BPM devices; this one from Bridgewerx looks awesome. David Linthicum, CEO at Bridgewerx is one of the world's leading technologists in the relm of EAI; he ran Tech. for Mercator when they were my primary vendor at Amazon. The Bridgewerx device has got to ROCK with David's expertise behind it! I'd love to get one of those suckers in a rack next to my Backpack ftp server!
Obviously there's going to be more to come in my travels with Backpack! For now, I've got some tasks to do & software to design ... later!
Saturday
What a difference ...
... a year makes. Congratulaions to the RED TEAMS ... you both kicked ass.
It's hard to believe no-one got started in last year's DARPA challenge; it seems like this year, the BOTs made the course look like a "roll" in the park.
It's hard to believe no-one got started in last year's DARPA challenge; it seems like this year, the BOTs made the course look like a "roll" in the park.
Web2 ... Hype or Gold ???
It's a very popular question this week.
It's a rediculous question.
Here's my take ... first posted as a comment to this equally cynical post by Rick Segal.
web1 honeymoon :: USERS will CONSUME anything online
web1 business model :: ecommerce
web1 reality :: ecommerce doesn't work for all product consumption
web2 honeymoon :: USERS will CREATE anything online
web2 business model :: p2p-commerce (CBPP)
web2 reality :: not all p2p relationships belong online & not all products can be created by communities ... especially not for free
web2 has been with us since eBay ... it is nothing new ... but we're at a point where it can be sexy beyond garage sales ...
"web2" is a UI "attribute" ... either your website is interactive, or its not ... it's not a product, or a business model ... and IT IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT "AN ATTITUDE" (as it's described in a certain overhyped and less-than-useful mind-map doing the rounds right now)
That said, the viable products & models who impliment web2 as their interface to their users will make the web1 success stories seem comparatively LAME ...
The primary (new) business model enabled by web2, namely Commons Based Peer Production, IS "the ecommerce" of web2 ... and there's a mass of gold in dem' der hills
It's a rediculous question.
Here's my take ... first posted as a comment to this equally cynical post by Rick Segal.
web1 honeymoon :: USERS will CONSUME anything online
web1 business model :: ecommerce
web1 reality :: ecommerce doesn't work for all product consumption
web2 honeymoon :: USERS will CREATE anything online
web2 business model :: p2p-commerce (CBPP)
web2 reality :: not all p2p relationships belong online & not all products can be created by communities ... especially not for free
web2 has been with us since eBay ... it is nothing new ... but we're at a point where it can be sexy beyond garage sales ...
"web2" is a UI "attribute" ... either your website is interactive, or its not ... it's not a product, or a business model ... and IT IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT "AN ATTITUDE" (as it's described in a certain overhyped and less-than-useful mind-map doing the rounds right now)
That said, the viable products & models who impliment web2 as their interface to their users will make the web1 success stories seem comparatively LAME ...
The primary (new) business model enabled by web2, namely Commons Based Peer Production, IS "the ecommerce" of web2 ... and there's a mass of gold in dem' der hills
Dont Do ... Level3 Communications ...
"The Network You Can Rely On" ... what CRAP !!!
I'm sick of corporations renagging on the empty promises they used to attract their customers in the first place.
For the past 2 years, we've had to listen to Sean Connery's sweet sweet Scottish lilt promise us that Level3 is ... "The Network You Can Rely On" ... well, Sean ... YOU LIED ... and Level 3 Lied ... and it makes me sick.
It turns out that you can only rely on Level 3 when they are on speaking terms with their enterprise partners. As (always) happens in business though, Level3 has fallen out with another ISP, Cogent ... and both companies have dug in their heels, turned off interconnection between each others networks ... and left their users with a fragmented internet
Savvy consumers should punish both Level3 and Cogent ... but to do so, you'd need to understand how you rely on them ... Vonage comes to mind for example ... Level3 IS their backbone although I doubt any Vonage users know that ... don't be surprised if your phone stops working next time the Level3 CEO has a bad day.
You are now warned ... next time you buy from an ISP or a VOIP provider, I recommend that you first check whether they are supplied by Level3 / Cogent ... neither company seems capable of behaving like adults and it is obvious that neither is ...
"a network that you can rely on ..."
I hope that SKYPE picks up on this. This story is excellent validation for the P2P model in ANY architecture that ...
a) must be always-on
b) is dependant on the "public" internet
... come to think of it, there should be a P2P solution, which, if installed on all the internets routers, would do away with the need for ISP's altogether ... who's working on that ????
This is the Internet for Pete's sake ... can we get all the eggs out of the few big baskets now PLEASE !!!!!!!
I'm sick of corporations renagging on the empty promises they used to attract their customers in the first place.
For the past 2 years, we've had to listen to Sean Connery's sweet sweet Scottish lilt promise us that Level3 is ... "The Network You Can Rely On" ... well, Sean ... YOU LIED ... and Level 3 Lied ... and it makes me sick.
It turns out that you can only rely on Level 3 when they are on speaking terms with their enterprise partners. As (always) happens in business though, Level3 has fallen out with another ISP, Cogent ... and both companies have dug in their heels, turned off interconnection between each others networks ... and left their users with a fragmented internet
Savvy consumers should punish both Level3 and Cogent ... but to do so, you'd need to understand how you rely on them ... Vonage comes to mind for example ... Level3 IS their backbone although I doubt any Vonage users know that ... don't be surprised if your phone stops working next time the Level3 CEO has a bad day.
You are now warned ... next time you buy from an ISP or a VOIP provider, I recommend that you first check whether they are supplied by Level3 / Cogent ... neither company seems capable of behaving like adults and it is obvious that neither is ...
"a network that you can rely on ..."
I hope that SKYPE picks up on this. This story is excellent validation for the P2P model in ANY architecture that ...
a) must be always-on
b) is dependant on the "public" internet
... come to think of it, there should be a P2P solution, which, if installed on all the internets routers, would do away with the need for ISP's altogether ... who's working on that ????
This is the Internet for Pete's sake ... can we get all the eggs out of the few big baskets now PLEASE !!!!!!!
Friday
so what's so great about a google newsreader ???
... it's the business strategy.
I can't really elaborate on Umair Haque's awesome description of the value of owning the tool people use to aggregate their news feeds. This paragraph sums up what we used to jokingly refer to as "the power in the model" everytime some-one came up with one of these wickedly self-propelling strategies. Nice one goog.
I can't really elaborate on Umair Haque's awesome description of the value of owning the tool people use to aggregate their news feeds. This paragraph sums up what we used to jokingly refer to as "the power in the model" everytime some-one came up with one of these wickedly self-propelling strategies. Nice one goog.
Now, here's a textbook example of how to arb micromedia, thanks to Google. Give away a reader; pick up nice marginal ad revenues from microads, but much more importantly, begin to build a profile-based ads competence, and hugely increase switching costs by creating demand side scope economies.
more GEMS from WEB2CON
... it doesn't rain but it pours ...
1 Million thanks and a whole stacka' respek / good karma / props etc. goes to Doug Solomon, VP at Omidyar Network for writing up very useful and comprehensive notes from the conference.
Among Doug's many excellent notes ...
1 Million thanks and a whole stacka' respek / good karma / props etc. goes to Doug Solomon, VP at Omidyar Network for writing up very useful and comprehensive notes from the conference.
Among Doug's many excellent notes ...
alpha version of new flash tools posted on nov. 17th at: http://www.macromedia.com/go/web2
Dave Sifrey, CEO, Technorati: about 30% of bloggers use tagging. This allows people to find blogs of interest to them.
Stewart Butterfield, Founder, Flickr: "One thing about my being acquired by a big company is that my powerpoint skills have improved."
Micky Hart, drummer, Grateful Dead: "The tapers wanted it real bad. We had the option of letting them in to do taping, or becoming the police. So, we said, let them come, and they came and they taped. And they created the Grateful Dead free tape exchange." "We gave it away willingly. Everyone who came to the concert had an equity, they had a part in the creation. If we ever made a good album, they'd buy it." "I know there is more than a billion tapes out there." "We used to think music should be free and it should be subsidized by the government." "And we always played better when it was free." "It is a good idea to give away some for free and then to charge for something." "It is a complex issue. Loosen up a bit and give it away a bit. " "Music is a necessity of life and people who make it bring incredible thoughts up to the surface...transforming an energy, a feeling into a sound...it borders on the sacred." "These musical adventures are like your children. You wouldn't want them taken from you." We had one page contracts with Warner Records.
Alan Eustace, VP Engineering, and Jason _____, from Google Research: A simple rule at Google: As we scale the number of people, we have to scale the number of things we are doing. Emphasis on innovation: every idea is heard, 20% of time to do whatever engineers want to do, promote small teams for creativity and speed and spontaneity.
... at last ... some Web2Con VALUE
stop the presses: some actual value (no, not "valuation") from the Web 2.0 Conference ...
I've been scouring the posts of attendees all week but have been largely disapointed by the lack of innovation announced at the conference despite the mass of free publicity its attracted.
Then I found this ... open-source structured blogging ... and it's going to be HUGE! Definitely read Joshua Porter's excellent review of the Structured Blogging initiative at Bokardo. I'm going to obviously give Poductivity's spin on this monumentous initiative ...
Finally ... some out of the RRS-box thinking. I've blogged about how RSS is about the worst possible architecture for adding usable value to Weblogs - it's hillarious to the geek in me that the next generation improvement comes from a group called "pub-sub".
Structured Blogging is Symantics all over again ... this time the S-web is made usable for us 19 Million mere mortals who've hacked at a blog. Structured Blogging will take the Blogstream places no-one imagined - as long as we find a good way to explain it to Bloggers.
Pubsub Concepts Inc. has sponsored an Open-Source initiative to bring Structured Blogging to all of the major Blogging Platforms.
From the Pub-Sub Press Release ...
What does this mean to the Web2.0 business shake-up?
It means that even more content will be moved to Blogs, more content types, more high-quality content, more niche content.
It means blog content will be more relavantly syndicated.
It means that simple ol' "so-2004" blogs, will be able to "give" relevance to ANY media OR product that can be produced by a blogger, not just text posts.
... read that again ...
It means that simple ol' "so-2004" blogs, will be able to "give" relevance to ANY media OR product that can be produced by a blogger, not just text posts.
It means music, art, videos, cartoons and photography produced by citizens will get the same level of respect as journalism produced by citizens.
... and that they WILL woo away the advertising & syndication revenues from Main Stream Meadia as Citizen Journalism is doing with Main Stream Journalism.
It means that once this same logic is abstracted to the "discussion" i.e. comments on today's text blogs, that the next generation LOGICAL platform after this one will enable P2P transactions on your blog with the look and feel of selling out of your trunk ... putting anyone, anywhere, who can start a blog, in business pursuing their passions at 0 cost, in probably 10 minutes or less.
oooohhhhh boy ... when this blow's there's gonna be be a helluva shake-up !!!
the portals are dead !!! long live the blog aggregators !!!
... only one problem ... all of today's b'aggregators are, sorry to say, crap ...
so ... in the meantime, the race is on between ...
1] the Blog Stream claiming its rightful dominance over ALL media through useful agregation, which will be its only route to legitimacy and
2] the Main Stream buying the fledgling Citizen Stream operations & putting their energies to Corporate uses ... before they crack the code on [1]
... seems like an endless loop to me ... until some-one ignores [2] long enough to make [1] happen.
I am smiling about the fact that the innovation train is rolling again ... those Web2Con posts were starting to really depress me.
I've been scouring the posts of attendees all week but have been largely disapointed by the lack of innovation announced at the conference despite the mass of free publicity its attracted.
Then I found this ... open-source structured blogging ... and it's going to be HUGE! Definitely read Joshua Porter's excellent review of the Structured Blogging initiative at Bokardo. I'm going to obviously give Poductivity's spin on this monumentous initiative ...
Finally ... some out of the RRS-box thinking. I've blogged about how RSS is about the worst possible architecture for adding usable value to Weblogs - it's hillarious to the geek in me that the next generation improvement comes from a group called "pub-sub".
Structured Blogging is Symantics all over again ... this time the S-web is made usable for us 19 Million mere mortals who've hacked at a blog. Structured Blogging will take the Blogstream places no-one imagined - as long as we find a good way to explain it to Bloggers.
Pubsub Concepts Inc. has sponsored an Open-Source initiative to bring Structured Blogging to all of the major Blogging Platforms.
From the Pub-Sub Press Release ...
The universal Structured Blogging format is designed to make it easier to publish and find information on the Web. Structured Blogging lets users add different styles and tags to each type of blog entry that they post. These styles and tags ensure that movie and book reviews don't look like calendar or journal entries, and that each content type can be quickly recognized and processed by automated search services and other applications.
What does this mean to the Web2.0 business shake-up?
It means that even more content will be moved to Blogs, more content types, more high-quality content, more niche content.
It means blog content will be more relavantly syndicated.
It means that simple ol' "so-2004" blogs, will be able to "give" relevance to ANY media OR product that can be produced by a blogger, not just text posts.
... read that again ...
It means that simple ol' "so-2004" blogs, will be able to "give" relevance to ANY media OR product that can be produced by a blogger, not just text posts.
It means music, art, videos, cartoons and photography produced by citizens will get the same level of respect as journalism produced by citizens.
... and that they WILL woo away the advertising & syndication revenues from Main Stream Meadia as Citizen Journalism is doing with Main Stream Journalism.
It means that once this same logic is abstracted to the "discussion" i.e. comments on today's text blogs, that the next generation LOGICAL platform after this one will enable P2P transactions on your blog with the look and feel of selling out of your trunk ... putting anyone, anywhere, who can start a blog, in business pursuing their passions at 0 cost, in probably 10 minutes or less.
oooohhhhh boy ... when this blow's there's gonna be be a helluva shake-up !!!
the portals are dead !!! long live the blog aggregators !!!
... only one problem ... all of today's b'aggregators are, sorry to say, crap ...
so ... in the meantime, the race is on between ...
1] the Blog Stream claiming its rightful dominance over ALL media through useful agregation, which will be its only route to legitimacy and
2] the Main Stream buying the fledgling Citizen Stream operations & putting their energies to Corporate uses ... before they crack the code on [1]
... seems like an endless loop to me ... until some-one ignores [2] long enough to make [1] happen.
I am smiling about the fact that the innovation train is rolling again ... those Web2Con posts were starting to really depress me.
Thursday
"Producers"
After being inspired by the BBC to take a look at how Public Broadcasting may be ahead of the game in aggregating quality Citizen Journalism, I wasn't surprised when I noticed the "producers" link at the bottom of PBS's website.
PBS' program shows many years of working out the kinks of Citizen Producers ... and the importance of giving quality citizen journalism a main-stream voice.
Funding works on a proposal basis & funds to compensate the producers seem mostly donations. Not sure I like the "icon" for funding ... a man teasing a dog with a scrap of food isn't the mental imagery that should be mapped to this otherwise awesome initiative.
PBS' program shows many years of working out the kinks of Citizen Producers ... and the importance of giving quality citizen journalism a main-stream voice.
Funding works on a proposal basis & funds to compensate the producers seem mostly donations. Not sure I like the "icon" for funding ... a man teasing a dog with a scrap of food isn't the mental imagery that should be mapped to this otherwise awesome initiative.
Wednesday
Citizen Media
Great interview on Citizen Journalism - JD Lasica interviews BBC technology reporter Jo Twist.
JD talks about the "personal media revolution".
Jo links the old concept of "community" to citizen journalism ... & talks about the value of relationships, interconnections & difference ...
Watching the BBC has always felt more like (public service) reality TV than a heavily bias'd publicity channel. Surely they'll integrate citizen media well. Good idea from this ... "maybe include podcast recordings in our news" ...
Also, this discussion from Blogher wrestles with some important issues RE: online citizen journalism ... at the end of the discussion, some-one mentions that
also ...
JD talks about the "personal media revolution".
Jo links the old concept of "community" to citizen journalism ... & talks about the value of relationships, interconnections & difference ...
"it's a really exciting time at the moment."
Watching the BBC has always felt more like (public service) reality TV than a heavily bias'd publicity channel. Surely they'll integrate citizen media well. Good idea from this ... "maybe include podcast recordings in our news" ...
Also, this discussion from Blogher wrestles with some important issues RE: online citizen journalism ... at the end of the discussion, some-one mentions that
"unsoliscited op-ed pieces only get paid $150 by print papers ..."
also ...
"every newspaper in the country knows that they need to be into blogging ... they just don't know how ..."
Sunday
P2P Radio ...
I've started to see Peer Production everywhere ... (I'm also not the first to write this.)
I try to check myself, but when I see my local radio station moving their programming to Commons-Based Peer-Production, I start to realize just how important this is going to be. I think that online communities as a "productivity supply channel" will be far more pervasive than the "online demand fulfillment" channel has been. We've figured out that demand and fulfillment only works online for some products. And we've learnt that even for those that do benefit from online demand and productivity, that a minority of demand-side transactions will take place online.
Why has such a productive fulfillment strategy not had more penetration? Because on the demand-side of the commercial equation there's very little competition ... little reason to "consume productively" ... and many options other than the web that are engrained in our sociology, that we prefer to pursue.
Not so for the supply-side! Competition demands that if there's a better way to aggregate supply for, and produce our products, it HAS to be adopted ... or market share will be lost. This dynamic will apply to Peer Production ... as industries move to sourcing productivity from Peer Producers, CEO's won't have the luxury of choosing whether or not to move their supply chain online ... as they did with ecommerce. Confuse Peer-Production with "the internet" at your peril ... this time the internet users aren't fickle, impressionable consumers, they're savvy, shrewd & competitive producers ... they will realize that they are much more productive online, and will gravitate to the communities that best combine their collective productivity.
I was driving South on the 5 yesterdy, listening to a kickin' Herbie Hancock track on KWJZ, 98.9 fm, here in Seattle ... I was paying attention for the track name so I heard the DJ say ...
Brilliant ... KWJZ is outsourcing their programming to their more passionate listeners. How much more likely are you to listen to a channel that listens to your requests? How far away are we from 100% listener-programmed radio shows?
Naturally, I checked it out ...
There's actually a massive music rating and distribution platform underlying the little Jazz afficionado's community in the Pac N West.
The KWJZ listeners panel is part of the larger "rate-the-music" community. I read the disclaimer ... always a good way to get a feel for what a site is really about ... rate the music is owned by Clearchannel ... the massive communications & advertising company. These guys are smart. The fineprint reads like the business plan for an onlin music store ... with massive customization ...
On average, the KWJZ listeners who do want their tunes played on the radio will be more passionate about the music, more regular listeners, and more likely to buy the music they hear ... that's where Clearchannel comes in. You don''t need to open a fancy online music store when you can send the most lucrative segment exactly what they like to hear.
Nice One !!
I try to check myself, but when I see my local radio station moving their programming to Commons-Based Peer-Production, I start to realize just how important this is going to be. I think that online communities as a "productivity supply channel" will be far more pervasive than the "online demand fulfillment" channel has been. We've figured out that demand and fulfillment only works online for some products. And we've learnt that even for those that do benefit from online demand and productivity, that a minority of demand-side transactions will take place online.
Why has such a productive fulfillment strategy not had more penetration? Because on the demand-side of the commercial equation there's very little competition ... little reason to "consume productively" ... and many options other than the web that are engrained in our sociology, that we prefer to pursue.
Not so for the supply-side! Competition demands that if there's a better way to aggregate supply for, and produce our products, it HAS to be adopted ... or market share will be lost. This dynamic will apply to Peer Production ... as industries move to sourcing productivity from Peer Producers, CEO's won't have the luxury of choosing whether or not to move their supply chain online ... as they did with ecommerce. Confuse Peer-Production with "the internet" at your peril ... this time the internet users aren't fickle, impressionable consumers, they're savvy, shrewd & competitive producers ... they will realize that they are much more productive online, and will gravitate to the communities that best combine their collective productivity.
I was driving South on the 5 yesterdy, listening to a kickin' Herbie Hancock track on KWJZ, 98.9 fm, here in Seattle ... I was paying attention for the track name so I heard the DJ say ...
"go to our website, join the KWJZ Listener Advisory Panel ... we'll email you song snippets ... you rate them ... we play the songs you like."
Brilliant ... KWJZ is outsourcing their programming to their more passionate listeners. How much more likely are you to listen to a channel that listens to your requests? How far away are we from 100% listener-programmed radio shows?
Naturally, I checked it out ...
There's actually a massive music rating and distribution platform underlying the little Jazz afficionado's community in the Pac N West.
The KWJZ listeners panel is part of the larger "rate-the-music" community. I read the disclaimer ... always a good way to get a feel for what a site is really about ... rate the music is owned by Clearchannel ... the massive communications & advertising company. These guys are smart. The fineprint reads like the business plan for an onlin music store ... with massive customization ...
On average, the KWJZ listeners who do want their tunes played on the radio will be more passionate about the music, more regular listeners, and more likely to buy the music they hear ... that's where Clearchannel comes in. You don''t need to open a fancy online music store when you can send the most lucrative segment exactly what they like to hear.
Nice One !!
Thursday
pink sunshine
we had pink sunshine in Seattle for the past week - what a treat - thanks you guys - you're always welcome.
Wednesday
You Are What U-I
In all of Web2.0's noise about (user) Interactivity, it seems like Web1.0's obsesion with the (user) Interface is all but lost.
In another time, not so very long ago, before Kottke was king, it was the gospel according to Jakob Nielsen that we looked to for our roadmap through the maze of internet opportunities. Nielsen was to the (user) Interface what Kottke is to (user) Interactivity.
Today, relatively speaking, Nielsen's voice seems lost - his focus on the UI relatively irrelevant. Now that I think about it, in my past year of internet analysis, I've not seen Nielsen quoted in a single blog that I read - but I may have missed a few posts. The point is though that if we had been blogging in 1998, Nielsen would've been bigger'n Kottke; because the perfect UI was considered the mysterious entry point to a succesful Web1.0 company.
I think it still is in Web2.0 and that it's probably not smart to emphasize interactivity over interface. As a web business, your U-I is WHAT YOU DO - it is your company's strategies, plans and resulting actions, laid out, in plain sight for your audience. You can say what you like in the press or to the analysts, but your audience; your consumers, will measure your progress by your UI and adopt your product according to it. You can add bells and whistles to your "back end", but success will be determined by how you present them to your users.
An ecommerce company's UI is a window to its strategy; study the direction that the UI is taking and you will understand what the business' leaders are thinking.
Yahoo has made an incredible comeback to the fore-front of internet hype this past 2 years - their stock price over the same period also reflects this. Yahoo's adoring analysts focus mostly on the acquisition numbers, attributing the resurgence to "synergies" created by integrating a bunch of interactive stuff. But looking at www.yahoo.com, it is clear to me, that if there's reason for the hype, then the action that Yahoo took to reignite it was to overhaul their UI - on the home page - in yahoo mail - and in groups - it's all new, all subtly changed - highly graphically effective - much more focused content - more intuitive usability - daily becoming the OSX of the www from a usability perspective. I'm one user who has returned to using a Yahoo tool a few times a week - I had abandoned the portal a few years back for all but spam-mail - but lately, I'm sucked back in again - signed up at a few new groups - bought a handful of URL's - and am trying to get my inbox back into a usable state.
I think that it is still critically important to study Nielsen. You should start with Nielsen and not move to Kottke's thoughts about what users are "doing" until you understand what the user should be "seeing" when they hit your site! As Web2.0 becomes more competitive, Nielsen's gospel will become critical again. Usability will be the primary friction to the winner-take-all predictions of analysts like Bubblegeneration's Umair Haque (if this stuff interests you, fact is you should be reading Haque + Nielsen + Kottke right now!) But Nielsen is vital because usable Interactivity will trump Interactivity for Interactivity's sake - no matter how large the potential community that may need your bells & whistles. The "message" you send in the stuff you throw at your URL should be the first filter in deciding on the viability of any new interactivity feature - no matter how sexy / synergistic (whatever that is).
But Yahoo isn't the only internet giant to overhaul their UI in '05. Skype has evolved through 10+ major upgrades - inremently improving performance while keeping its UI consistently simple. Skype gets the importance of the UI - in their app., on the site, in supporting more OS's than any other similar utility, in account management and intuitive FAQ's and Forums - all within a click or 2 of each other - their UI and incredible knack for usability is yet another reason (additive to this one and this one) that the eBay deal is probably risk-free. And hell knows, eBay could use some free usability consulting - I sometimes think they took the garage sale metaphor too far.
In mid '04 when I was packing up my desk at Amazon and trading the last of my options at $51, (now $43), water-cooler hype was frenetic with talks of "UI-2.0" ... a better Amazon, to be released in '05 ... and of which you are by now, probably a user - maybe preparing a wishlist for Christmas '05.
I went back this week and read Nielsen again. I was surprised to find useit.com as current as it always was and pleased to be greeted by a familiar UI - an old friend. I waw most fascinated that Jakob had updated his recurring series, first started in the 90's, about what we all can learn from the Amazon.com interface. While I worked at Amazon, every new Nielsen update of this type was an ego-trip bar-none; his public compliments alone were reward enough my miniscule part in his reviews and for the sleep-deprivation that went with the territory.
I'm now wondering if today's Amazon-ian's have read Nielson's '05 update ... if so, they'd be shocked ... to find that as the next internet bubble rolls madly at us, that Nielson holds up the new Amazon user interface as a perfect example ... of how NOT to build a historic internet business.
Nielsen offers advice to online businesses when he says ...
As I read Nielson's lists of Plus's and Minus's for Amazon's UI, it's uncanny how the Minus's, which are mainly features of the new UI, can be mapped directly to deeply-held strategic opinions of the company's executives about how the web should be won. Amazon's UI refelcts Jeff Bezos's brainstorms, handed down to his Executives and absorbed by the workforce through the culture we loved to call the "cool aid".
Nielsen's list of Minus's seem obvious but are clearly mistakes anyone can make. I recommend studying his analysis ad reviewing your Web2.0 offering ... and then find roll models that avoid the temptations of Nielsen' List of Minus' ...
- a simple, intuitive login,
- personalized recommendations,
- a wide product selection,
- garuanteed fulfillment,
- and a simple email to let us know that our package has shipped.
But there's nothing new in the Good list - and the Bad list seems to have it outweighed.
Nielsen is possbly being kind when he suggests that maintaining this strategy may work for Amazon. No Amazonian would agree that resting on your laurels will beat out your competitors.
To close then what became a longer than intended post - with a hopefully useful summary -
In another time, not so very long ago, before Kottke was king, it was the gospel according to Jakob Nielsen that we looked to for our roadmap through the maze of internet opportunities. Nielsen was to the (user) Interface what Kottke is to (user) Interactivity.
Today, relatively speaking, Nielsen's voice seems lost - his focus on the UI relatively irrelevant. Now that I think about it, in my past year of internet analysis, I've not seen Nielsen quoted in a single blog that I read - but I may have missed a few posts. The point is though that if we had been blogging in 1998, Nielsen would've been bigger'n Kottke; because the perfect UI was considered the mysterious entry point to a succesful Web1.0 company.
I think it still is in Web2.0 and that it's probably not smart to emphasize interactivity over interface. As a web business, your U-I is WHAT YOU DO - it is your company's strategies, plans and resulting actions, laid out, in plain sight for your audience. You can say what you like in the press or to the analysts, but your audience; your consumers, will measure your progress by your UI and adopt your product according to it. You can add bells and whistles to your "back end", but success will be determined by how you present them to your users.
An ecommerce company's UI is a window to its strategy; study the direction that the UI is taking and you will understand what the business' leaders are thinking.
Yahoo has made an incredible comeback to the fore-front of internet hype this past 2 years - their stock price over the same period also reflects this. Yahoo's adoring analysts focus mostly on the acquisition numbers, attributing the resurgence to "synergies" created by integrating a bunch of interactive stuff. But looking at www.yahoo.com, it is clear to me, that if there's reason for the hype, then the action that Yahoo took to reignite it was to overhaul their UI - on the home page - in yahoo mail - and in groups - it's all new, all subtly changed - highly graphically effective - much more focused content - more intuitive usability - daily becoming the OSX of the www from a usability perspective. I'm one user who has returned to using a Yahoo tool a few times a week - I had abandoned the portal a few years back for all but spam-mail - but lately, I'm sucked back in again - signed up at a few new groups - bought a handful of URL's - and am trying to get my inbox back into a usable state.
I think that it is still critically important to study Nielsen. You should start with Nielsen and not move to Kottke's thoughts about what users are "doing" until you understand what the user should be "seeing" when they hit your site! As Web2.0 becomes more competitive, Nielsen's gospel will become critical again. Usability will be the primary friction to the winner-take-all predictions of analysts like Bubblegeneration's Umair Haque (if this stuff interests you, fact is you should be reading Haque + Nielsen + Kottke right now!) But Nielsen is vital because usable Interactivity will trump Interactivity for Interactivity's sake - no matter how large the potential community that may need your bells & whistles. The "message" you send in the stuff you throw at your URL should be the first filter in deciding on the viability of any new interactivity feature - no matter how sexy / synergistic (whatever that is).
But Yahoo isn't the only internet giant to overhaul their UI in '05. Skype has evolved through 10+ major upgrades - inremently improving performance while keeping its UI consistently simple. Skype gets the importance of the UI - in their app., on the site, in supporting more OS's than any other similar utility, in account management and intuitive FAQ's and Forums - all within a click or 2 of each other - their UI and incredible knack for usability is yet another reason (additive to this one and this one) that the eBay deal is probably risk-free. And hell knows, eBay could use some free usability consulting - I sometimes think they took the garage sale metaphor too far.
In mid '04 when I was packing up my desk at Amazon and trading the last of my options at $51, (now $43), water-cooler hype was frenetic with talks of "UI-2.0" ... a better Amazon, to be released in '05 ... and of which you are by now, probably a user - maybe preparing a wishlist for Christmas '05.
I went back this week and read Nielsen again. I was surprised to find useit.com as current as it always was and pleased to be greeted by a familiar UI - an old friend. I waw most fascinated that Jakob had updated his recurring series, first started in the 90's, about what we all can learn from the Amazon.com interface. While I worked at Amazon, every new Nielsen update of this type was an ego-trip bar-none; his public compliments alone were reward enough my miniscule part in his reviews and for the sleep-deprivation that went with the territory.
I'm now wondering if today's Amazon-ian's have read Nielson's '05 update ... if so, they'd be shocked ... to find that as the next internet bubble rolls madly at us, that Nielson holds up the new Amazon user interface as a perfect example ... of how NOT to build a historic internet business.
Nielsen offers advice to online businesses when he says ...
But people often prefer to be told just one thing. For many years, that one thing in e-commerce design was "Do like Amazon." No more.Amazon has recently changed so much that the average e-commerce site will reduce its usability by emulating its design too closely.
and,
Summary:In Web2.0's hype around YAHOO, Google, eBay etc., Amazon's relative obscurity in the press rivals that of Nielsen in the Blogstream. A comparison of the momentum in all of these company's valuations reflects a similar fall from favorcompared with Amazon's peers benefiting from the new web-boom.
Many design elements work for Amazon.com mainly because of its status as the world's largest and most established e-commerce site. Normal sites should not copy Amazon's design.
As I read Nielson's lists of Plus's and Minus's for Amazon's UI, it's uncanny how the Minus's, which are mainly features of the new UI, can be mapped directly to deeply-held strategic opinions of the company's executives about how the web should be won. Amazon's UI refelcts Jeff Bezos's brainstorms, handed down to his Executives and absorbed by the workforce through the culture we loved to call the "cool aid".
Nielsen's list of Minus's seem obvious but are clearly mistakes anyone can make. I recommend studying his analysis ad reviewing your Web2.0 offering ... and then find roll models that avoid the temptations of Nielsen' List of Minus' ...
Cluttered pages.Conversely Nielsen Plus's listed for Amazon's UI are mostly the simple smart things we all liked about the site when it first nailed e-commerce in the late 90's;
Internet-wide search feature.
Advertising on product pages.
Lousy UI for specialized product categories.
Lack of integration with its international sites.
Co-branding.
- a simple, intuitive login,
- personalized recommendations,
- a wide product selection,
- garuanteed fulfillment,
- and a simple email to let us know that our package has shipped.
But there's nothing new in the Good list - and the Bad list seems to have it outweighed.
Nielsen is possbly being kind when he suggests that maintaining this strategy may work for Amazon. No Amazonian would agree that resting on your laurels will beat out your competitors.
To close then what became a longer than intended post - with a hopefully useful summary -
You Are What U-I ... give your U-I more thought before you get all Interactive with your users ... it will show in your company's valuation.
Saturday
patently ranting
Patents on software workflow and business processes that assign ownership of nothing more than the product of "logic" and "knowledge" are starting to really irritate me.
In all the time I did at Amazon, I always felt that "our" 1-click patent was a crock-of-sheet.
Logic should never be constrained or owned; it was freely given to us and we should be allowed to freely apply it. Full Stop. Amazon discovered nothing when it implemented 1-click; it was merely applying simple logic & public knowledge. Amazon never created or invented anything in this logical implementation; other than, perhaps, giving it the name, "1-click". I concede that they could claim copyright of that name and am all for protecting creative works, but the patent for the process is proposterus.
The two most rediculous patents I've read about lately;
1) The Feds at the National Security Agency have patented a method for working out your exact location from your online presence. It's already nauseating that we're paying taxes to have our privacy violated in the name of "patriotism" but this takes the cake - from the description, it would appear that they intend to protect this patent from commercial competition even relating to non-defense-related funtions. Maybe Dubya plans an internat advertising startup. Is this how we plan to pay for Katrina?
2) The other absurd recent patent is more widely reported Microsoft patenting of technology that first appeared in Apple's iPod.
The thing with logical processes is that they are never unique ideas. The same sequence of cause and effect reasoning will produce the same conclusion in all individuals equally exposed to the same knowledge. Knowledge is free, Logic is free, why is Knowledge X Logic not free?
What's up here? No wonder we have an innovation gap in the US; the market for "logic" is sewn up! Scrap patents, let's start innovating !!!
In all the time I did at Amazon, I always felt that "our" 1-click patent was a crock-of-sheet.
Logic should never be constrained or owned; it was freely given to us and we should be allowed to freely apply it. Full Stop. Amazon discovered nothing when it implemented 1-click; it was merely applying simple logic & public knowledge. Amazon never created or invented anything in this logical implementation; other than, perhaps, giving it the name, "1-click". I concede that they could claim copyright of that name and am all for protecting creative works, but the patent for the process is proposterus.
The two most rediculous patents I've read about lately;
1) The Feds at the National Security Agency have patented a method for working out your exact location from your online presence. It's already nauseating that we're paying taxes to have our privacy violated in the name of "patriotism" but this takes the cake - from the description, it would appear that they intend to protect this patent from commercial competition even relating to non-defense-related funtions. Maybe Dubya plans an internat advertising startup. Is this how we plan to pay for Katrina?
2) The other absurd recent patent is more widely reported Microsoft patenting of technology that first appeared in Apple's iPod.
The thing with logical processes is that they are never unique ideas. The same sequence of cause and effect reasoning will produce the same conclusion in all individuals equally exposed to the same knowledge. Knowledge is free, Logic is free, why is Knowledge X Logic not free?
What's up here? No wonder we have an innovation gap in the US; the market for "logic" is sewn up! Scrap patents, let's start innovating !!!
Tuesday
The embarrassment of immigration
Yesterday I crossed the US/CA border with two good friends from the UK. The 2-hour long treatment we received from the immigration officials was the most disrespectful "service" I have ever had to endure - in my entire life.
I drove away from the border after this ordeal embarrassed to live in the country that supports treating people like dirt - that perpetuates prejudice - and that seems to have abused the power created by a national fear of terrorism to excuse obliteration of civil liberties on immigration into the country. The "policy" of victimizing innocents as though they were presumed guilty seems to govern this piece of our government. As a taxpayer, I'm furious - and would appreciate your feedback as to possible recourses.
I could rant on about how we were mistreated, left totally uninformed throughout the 2-hr ordeal, and clearly victimized in comparison to the treatment received by others waiting in line. I could also rant on about watching 20+ "shiny uniforms" standing around doing nothing for a 1/2 hour while their shifts changed. I realize however that it's within these officials rights to be complete jerks and totally inefficient while at it - and so, I'll rather just ask for your opinion on the legality of what happened next ...
1) First, it's important to understand their process. They flag either vehicles for inspection or immigrants for passport control as you cross the border. One of my friends' Portuguese passport is of the "non-biometric" variety and so, he was flagged for I-94 processing. We were specifically told not to drive to vehicle inspection but rather to park, and go in and have my friends passport processed.
2) About an hour into the ordeal, a bitter, rude, red-faced official says to me .... "Let me see your keys". I handed him my car key and with no further explanation he disappeared with it and our passports to continue what he was doing behind his computer.
3) 10 min's later, my friend told me that he was out there, going through my car and our stuff! I was furious. This official hadn't asked or demanded to search my vehicle and hadn't informed me that he was going to do so & I was given no opportunity to accompany him on his search.
4) To me, this looked totally wrong, I felt violated - and I asked another officer if this was legal. He laughed and dismissed me saying "read the signs". When asked to explain the rude treatment we received all he'd offer is "sometimes some of the guys work that way."
5) I did go and "read the signs". They say that an officer can search any vehicle "upon demand". Is this "upon demand" piece important - I think it is - no-one demanded to search my vehicle - is this within their rights?
6) After the treatment we'd received my biggest fear when I saw him going through my car alone was that the jerk was going to plant something in it. Luckily that never happened but it could have at any time in the hour that he retained my keys. They lost track of our passports twice during the process - it's fair to assume they could have misplaced my keys. Surely if anything had been found in my car, it would have been inadmissible in court as a result of the lack of procedure followed by this officer.
Please let me know what you think. I'm embarrassed and furious - and will take this matter further if I'm legally correct.
I drove away from the border after this ordeal embarrassed to live in the country that supports treating people like dirt - that perpetuates prejudice - and that seems to have abused the power created by a national fear of terrorism to excuse obliteration of civil liberties on immigration into the country. The "policy" of victimizing innocents as though they were presumed guilty seems to govern this piece of our government. As a taxpayer, I'm furious - and would appreciate your feedback as to possible recourses.
I could rant on about how we were mistreated, left totally uninformed throughout the 2-hr ordeal, and clearly victimized in comparison to the treatment received by others waiting in line. I could also rant on about watching 20+ "shiny uniforms" standing around doing nothing for a 1/2 hour while their shifts changed. I realize however that it's within these officials rights to be complete jerks and totally inefficient while at it - and so, I'll rather just ask for your opinion on the legality of what happened next ...
1) First, it's important to understand their process. They flag either vehicles for inspection or immigrants for passport control as you cross the border. One of my friends' Portuguese passport is of the "non-biometric" variety and so, he was flagged for I-94 processing. We were specifically told not to drive to vehicle inspection but rather to park, and go in and have my friends passport processed.
2) About an hour into the ordeal, a bitter, rude, red-faced official says to me .... "Let me see your keys". I handed him my car key and with no further explanation he disappeared with it and our passports to continue what he was doing behind his computer.
3) 10 min's later, my friend told me that he was out there, going through my car and our stuff! I was furious. This official hadn't asked or demanded to search my vehicle and hadn't informed me that he was going to do so & I was given no opportunity to accompany him on his search.
4) To me, this looked totally wrong, I felt violated - and I asked another officer if this was legal. He laughed and dismissed me saying "read the signs". When asked to explain the rude treatment we received all he'd offer is "sometimes some of the guys work that way."
5) I did go and "read the signs". They say that an officer can search any vehicle "upon demand". Is this "upon demand" piece important - I think it is - no-one demanded to search my vehicle - is this within their rights?
6) After the treatment we'd received my biggest fear when I saw him going through my car alone was that the jerk was going to plant something in it. Luckily that never happened but it could have at any time in the hour that he retained my keys. They lost track of our passports twice during the process - it's fair to assume they could have misplaced my keys. Surely if anything had been found in my car, it would have been inadmissible in court as a result of the lack of procedure followed by this officer.
Please let me know what you think. I'm embarrassed and furious - and will take this matter further if I'm legally correct.
Friday
prodigii - taking OSS from passions to profits
This morning I had a great discussion with David Dundas at Prodigii. Prodigii caught my eye because Rob May (the Business Experiment) and I have been discussing the protentil for a new venture incubator for bootstrapping commons-based ventures. Prodigii is an Incubator for Open Source Software and so, I was fascinated to find out how it worked. David's a real smart guy & I'm reminded again of the strength of loose ties (I have no idea if we're connected on LinkedIn!)
Like all good Peer-Production businesses, Prodigii doesn't force the issue and wildly spawn their own Open Source Projects - I think this will be a key to their success. Why is Prodigii CBPP? Because the OSS team and Prodigii continue to share risk and make contributions until the business is funded - all startup participants share in the rewards when it is. David is a master-boostrapper & recognizes the abundance of good OSS initiatives and his role in bringing them to a commercial market. Prodigii mines this abundance for the teams and software that have he most commercial potential, and then helps them productize their offering to the point that it could attract Venture Capital.
I think it's a great model - and that Open Source teams should get on Prodigii's list (now 50 prospective projects long). David is a techie at heart - I'm convinced he'll attract the brighter development teams. I had thought that OSS's primary revenue model was professional services but in speaking with David, it's clear that Prodigii's got more up their sleeves in terms of smart ways to generate and share profits in exchange for open source development passions.
If you're looking for a sustainable and highly rewarding way to support the efforts of the participants in your Open Source Software project, I highly recommend contacting Prodigii.
David and I took the conversation on to discuss how software developers may be recruited for startup CBPP ventures that weren't open source software but would result in a productive, commercial, online community. Could a community like iStockPhoto have started as an open-source initiative, the company shared amongst its founders? A question that's infered daily in The Business Experiment forums. The answer may lie in the concept David jumped to as we discussed this further - what about a "Fundable.org for startup HR?" - the concepts Rob and I have been kicking around finally have a good metaphore - for me anyway. We agreed to discuss this further - and went our separate ways.
I would love to get your thoughts on voluntary participation in commercial startups - pitfalls & promises.
Like all good Peer-Production businesses, Prodigii doesn't force the issue and wildly spawn their own Open Source Projects - I think this will be a key to their success. Why is Prodigii CBPP? Because the OSS team and Prodigii continue to share risk and make contributions until the business is funded - all startup participants share in the rewards when it is. David is a master-boostrapper & recognizes the abundance of good OSS initiatives and his role in bringing them to a commercial market. Prodigii mines this abundance for the teams and software that have he most commercial potential, and then helps them productize their offering to the point that it could attract Venture Capital.
I think it's a great model - and that Open Source teams should get on Prodigii's list (now 50 prospective projects long). David is a techie at heart - I'm convinced he'll attract the brighter development teams. I had thought that OSS's primary revenue model was professional services but in speaking with David, it's clear that Prodigii's got more up their sleeves in terms of smart ways to generate and share profits in exchange for open source development passions.
If you're looking for a sustainable and highly rewarding way to support the efforts of the participants in your Open Source Software project, I highly recommend contacting Prodigii.
David and I took the conversation on to discuss how software developers may be recruited for startup CBPP ventures that weren't open source software but would result in a productive, commercial, online community. Could a community like iStockPhoto have started as an open-source initiative, the company shared amongst its founders? A question that's infered daily in The Business Experiment forums. The answer may lie in the concept David jumped to as we discussed this further - what about a "Fundable.org for startup HR?" - the concepts Rob and I have been kicking around finally have a good metaphore - for me anyway. We agreed to discuss this further - and went our separate ways.
I would love to get your thoughts on voluntary participation in commercial startups - pitfalls & promises.
Thursday
pollution is a MYTH ...
... for me, the environmental movement just DIED and frankly, my message to environmentalists is ... stop wasting your time and our money - what a strange opinion for some-one who wants to make the world a better place .. read on ...
Simply, if the rings around Saturn can "dramatically change" (CNN), in less than my lifetime, before we've even figured out how to put a single HUMMER on that planet's surface, then chances very good that the depletion of the ozone layer has equally little to do with successfully populating the US with SUV's.
Th environmental movement should clearly focus all its attentions on deailing with change and quit whining about what they speculate is causing it.
For a hillarious (fictional) account of how our fearless leaders responded to this news, I highly recommend reading Tom Evslin's entertaining post.
Simply, if the rings around Saturn can "dramatically change" (CNN), in less than my lifetime, before we've even figured out how to put a single HUMMER on that planet's surface, then chances very good that the depletion of the ozone layer has equally little to do with successfully populating the US with SUV's.
Th environmental movement should clearly focus all its attentions on deailing with change and quit whining about what they speculate is causing it.
For a hillarious (fictional) account of how our fearless leaders responded to this news, I highly recommend reading Tom Evslin's entertaining post.
Wednesday
just 1 quick thing ...
an undisputable "truth of the universe" ...
FATBOY SLIM KICKS ASS !!!
Listening to "Praise You" - rockin' at my desk - this was Laura & my 2nd dance at our wedding - groovy memories.
Norman Cook, you made my day - I have to Praise You, innit?
FATBOY SLIM KICKS ASS !!!
Listening to "Praise You" - rockin' at my desk - this was Laura & my 2nd dance at our wedding - groovy memories.
Norman Cook, you made my day - I have to Praise You, innit?
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