Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Making Do With Less Stays With You

One finding of the quarterly MoneyTree Survey on venture capital that shows that startup dollars are lasting longer (it also shows thatSoftware is the leading sector):

The average amount of time between venture capital rounds increased from 11.9 months to 15.7 months for late-stage companies, according to the quarterly MoneyTree Survey. For expansion stage companies -- where the majority of venture capital dollars flowed in the first quarter -- the average time between rounds increased by more than three months to 15.5 months.

Techdirt comments:

Of course, recently, the VCs started opening up the vaults (which are still quite full), so it's likely that we may see some more crazy fundings - and this is likely to be followed up with crazy spending. For all the lessons learned about not squandering cash, many will disappear when cash is actually present.

Respectfully disagree (although Mike is usually right, he also clarifies in the below comments). If you have run a business during the last few years you have gained the Depression Era Mindset. Much like how my grandfather had to make toys out of cardboard during the depression, the experience of taught much about frugality for him and his children.

In times of scarcity, companies are pressed to invent, discover new niches and survive in darwinian fashion through a Cambrian Explosion.

The question of how so many immense changes occurred in such a short time is one that stirs scientists. Why did many fundamentally different body plans evolve so early and in such profusion? Some point to the increase in oxygen that began around 700 million years ago, providing fuel for movement and the evolution of more complex body structures. Others propose that an extinction of life just before the Cambrian opened up ecological roles, or "adaptive space," that the new forms exploited. External, ecological factors like these were undoubtedly important in creating the opportunity for the Cambrian explosion to occur.

I'm witth the latter camp. Extinction has opened up adaptive space.

But more to the point, the best companies arise out of downturn (think Apple, Microsoft, etc.). Frugality, understanding risk and smart investment decisions remain embedded in decision makers and the culture of the company. The hardest lessons stay with you.

Participatory Media Paper

Steve Rubel finds a whitepaper by IBM called Media and Entertainment 2010 (PDF). He rightly points out that the declining costs of production for user generated content and its effects is already happening with weblogs.

The paper defines a business model for an open media company of the future:

• Opens the media experience: Leverages advances in technology to provide customers and consumers a more involved experience with the media firm
• Opens content reserves: Develops accessible, flexible digital content systems that can enable distribution to virtually any media context
• Opens content creation and distribution: Establishes digitized processes that monitor and incorporate input from customers and consumers to garner their attention
• Opens content packaging, bundling and sales strategies: Utilizes variable pricing models that enable partners to advertise and share profits, and enables consumers to access content through more compelling release schedules.

It does mention the role of blogs for user generated content, mentions Creative Commons and recongizes that rights management can be a barrier for consumer adoption. But it also proposes complex systems for variable pricing and contracts which may create more costs (not just paying IBM to build it) than its worth.

Our Platform

WorldChanging contrasts the Bush-Cheney campaign's Multi-level-marketing model with something entirely new:

The Green Party of Canada, conversely, is clearly trying something entirely new. The party platform -- its collection of core beliefs, policy agendas, and issue positions -- is editable by all members in a Wiki, and the process is visible to all visitors. By using a Wiki format, all Green Party Canada members have a say in the evolution of the party's approach to Canadian concerns. This will inevitably be somewhat chaotic, as even in a small, activist group, there will be diverging beliefs and ideas; nonetheless, it's the perfect tool for a movement espousing individual empowerment coupled with community collaboration.

Will be fascinating to watch how emergent policy positions unfold with such a wide level of participation. See what Clay says.

Blogiversary for Many

Hey, its Many-to-Many's one year anniversary! Its been great building this group blog over the past year, a real joy.

Today we set up a Many-to-Many Space, check it out.

Advertising, Markets and Cycles

Internet Advertising spending experienced a sharp turnaround in 2003, as reported in an IAB report, improving 21% from the previous year to $7.2B. Advertising is a leading indicator for other sectors, so even if you aren't an ad man, pay attention.

Back in October of 2002 I pointed to signs of an ad recovery, how advertising correlates with GDP and described the "multimedia cycle." Here is a linear representation of the cycle, where advertising spending drives spending in other sectors:

Ads -> Content -> Applications -> Telecom Services -> Telecom Infrastructure

One part of the theory of this cycle is that the market flocks to abundant infrastructure (Says Law). In other words, demand for bandwidth is elastic, like a vacuum. Which creates new opportunities for development. Of course, during the bust companies couldn't take advantage of new arbitrage opportunities. Enter the individual, social production systems like open source and nimble bootstraps.

Over the past year this chain has changed. Ad formats, like all markets, trend towards diversification. Search engine keywords grew from 15 to 35% and are increasingly targeted (think Google Adwords). User generated content was well on the rise, not because of advertising dollars, but social incentives. Interesting times when individuals can create content and support it through ad revenue. But be wary of those who call content communication. Open source and the LAMP stack has decreased the cost of providing applications. Telecom is undoubtedly a commodity, retail markets hamstrung by regulation games while wholesale prices are stabilizing while demand and supply grow at 60%.

The bust was a shock to the system that forced cost-cutting and optimization. Whatever ads drive, the remaining chain will be more productive.

If ad spending continues, it will drive the success of consumer internet plays. Take social networking, for example, where users spend twice as long, 2 hours a visit on Friendster, than traditional dating sites. Friendster and others are already swamped to a crawl in supplying demand.

Advertising could also flock to the abundance of supply of ad space on blogs, driving benefits to supporting applications, but we don't have our act together.

Foundership

Entrepreneurs thrive on change, but when its time for you to move on as a founder, the change is very personal. Not because it is about you, but because the passion, sweat and toil makes it so. The change is inevitable, companies need new leadership at different stages.

Matt Marshall from the Mercury News writes about Johnathan Abrams of Friendster and Sean Parker of Plaxo stepping down. He paints the picture as though a larger decision was made for both companies by mutual investors, which implies the personnel decision may be less personal. Both companies are at a point where they need to demonstrate new metrics. As Jason points out its time for strategic moves.

Not a day goes by where I don't brace myself for this change. As a CEO and Founder of an early stage company, I know new stages will come. I constantly question myself if I'm the best person for the job, because the company is more than just me. Its a source of livelihood, investor return and customer bliss -- all of which improve over time. I am really darn good at this stage of the company and have proven it in the past. I hope to test my capabilities at latter stages, but also recognize that the day may come where regardless of my ability to lead, manage and deliver -- environmental forces may call for the new.

It seems that Jonathan took this change gracefully and is settling into the classical founder role. Sean Parker, may not be, apparently leaving at conflicting terms. Its important to note that nobody knows the real story about Plaxo's transition, the interactions that matter were between a few people -- and if he departed in conflict its really Plaxo's loss. Sometimes founders have to go. A new CEO definitely has the right to form their own management team and management style is often a cause. The worst cases are the result of blind quest for control.

Founders can be the greatest asset a company can have. They set the culture, have an inherent expertise that builds over time and provide a history. They can play an ongoing role in cultural leadership, develop new businesses and technologies within the business and are the best conceivable evangelists (think Larry and Serge). I'll bet that if you compare the performance of companies that retained their founders in a healthy relationship for these advantages outperform those that don't.

I guess my views are in line with one of my investors, as Joi describes his perspective as a former entrepreneur and VC. And I completely agree that Pierre is the ideal founder prototype. Actually, I don't have to guess, I make a point to have the foundership discussion with potential investors up front. Some of the best VCs I have met actually start the conversation of working together with understanding the motives and expectations of the team they are buying into.

I have always handled founder transitions gracefully, knowing its not just in the company's interest, but my own. Like divorce with kids, very little good can come from conflict. Transition or departure affords new opportunities; possible exits, more enjoyable responsibilities and opportunities to create new things. Once I had to leave a company to make room for a new management team. Literally brought me to tears when I said goodbye at a staff meeting. But I respected the decision, understood it, retained relationships and moved on to begin a new stage.

Mac Envy

Leander Kahney has a story in today's Wired News about people turning their PCs into Macs that includes this point from Jason Shellen:

There are plenty of tools for PC-to-Mac makeovers. Jason Shellen, a Google producer who's responsible for Pryor's laptop's faux PowerBook transformation, lists a few of them on his blog. Shellen notes that some people go as far as sticking Apple logos on their Windows machines.

The link is to my photo album. Suddenly, Stewart Butterfield is the poster child for Mac envy.

Page 23

Picked up this Book Game meme from PeterMe who got it from Caterina, which was the inflection point for blogspace.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Such a world might be stable in the sense of avoiding war if one single state achieved hegemony over the others.

Yikes! Has Bush played this game?

The Rise of the Trading State, Richard Rosecrance, one of my old professors at UCLA.

Follow it on Feedster or Technorati.

Waterside Publishing Industry Event

Spoke on a panel today about The Power of Many - Technology & Politics with Christian Crumlish and Steve Rhodes at the Waterside Conference. Hadn't had a chance to meet Steve, great guy. Christian had pulled the thing together, talking about his book The Power of Many.

It was a technology publishing conference, so I talked a little about the Extreme Democracy book I'm contributing to, pointing out that the authors were neither extremists, perhaps democrats, nor was it the kind of Extreme you would spell with an X.

Argued that the publishing industry was in line for disruption by social software and pointed to the strong signals. Whereas basic communication enabled open source, blogs were disrupting political communications, group forming disrupting constituency dynamics -- wikis will most visibly disrupt the publishing industry.

IFTF: Technology and Space

Peter Banks and Paul Saffo talking technology and a Space Race, a war for the information space of Space.

China attempted three previous times to create a human space program. Has as much to do with China-Russian relations. Who would have thought that 2 months later the US president said we would go to Mars too. This is the president, so we are talking atmospherics

We will spend $60B today for star wars with one successful test flight out of eight. First time deploying without having a successful engineering test.

Gravity Pro B attempts to look at a guiding star to measure drag. Testing if Einstein was right.

China says it will go to the moon and stay there for a while. Says for cultural reasons and other cold war attributes, military dictium of owning the high ground. A launching platform or for communications. US Air Force now being organized around space. Will create a new race. Very sobering.

What we have achieved with our major investment in space thusfar:

• Introduction of geosynchronous satellite communications
• Deterrance of warfare during the cold war, they could look at us, we could look at them
• Photos of earth, to prove it was round, but other salient effects
• Remote sensing

Geo-information. Keyhole. What happens when you start loading it all into databases? All the two-story buildings in the world have been counted. This information can be overlaid with others, could impact taxation, etc.

Note the 4 impacts have applications without us leaving the ground. Less necesary for us to go there ourselves.

Weightlessness and solar cosmic rays -- a perfect place for Congress? Nah, point is we are not well adapted. Genomic impacts without lead casing.

Hubble vs. People to the Moon & Mars is a real vote coming up.

Becoming apparent that humans may not be able to live in space anyway, so the point may be moot. Very few things worth the infrastructure for life science experiments, except keeping astronauts alive in space.

Maybe we are in the early stages of shifting the evolution of consciousness to autonomous machines? Where unmanned exploration leads? You need a motivation or payback, discovery of intelligent life outside the solar system for example.

China as a motivation for going into space. Commercializing technologies not as readily available in the US. Using Russian technology and developing it may also develop capabilities for doing it better?

Russian approach was ICBM technology and keep it simple. Our approach was the shuttle, link to skylab and then the complex space station -- all delayed and leads to abandonment. Large and attractive and above all expensive. The Chinese looked at both, decided it couldn't replicate or afford the US approach and went with the Russian approach with new manufacturing and materials technologies. Simple, fast and cheap. Now this is the plan in the US, but as a re-develop from scratch and will take us longer than the Chinese.

X-prize for $1M for the first group to put together a low-earth orbit. Rutan Space Program. A couple will succeed. Not out of the science budget of the US, but private. Political implications. How can a future president of the US let the Chinese get to the moon first? Can we be second?

What's the big suprise we can count on? We could find five meters of water under the surface of Mars. Would provide scientific and useful value for establishing a base. Hubble indicates our universe is different in dimensionality and composition, parallel universes, now may be there to impact our mental outlook and overall. We may discover its a very small place and we are stuck in it. What is the universe we live in, what is it really like?

Brian Arthur: IFTF

Wonderful chat with Paul Saffo and Brian Arthur, the keynote of the Institute for the Future Conference. Here's an impressionistic transcript.

Father of the notion of inceasing returns, worked in complexity theory, recently and economic historian, now in the Valley working on a book. Skipped breakfast with the Dalai Lama to be here.

On the bubble: Puzzled with an interview with Drucker saying technology crashed because IT was going nowhere, was a small business and will remain so. Looked back at the railroad revolution, 1845 mania, 1847 crash. Week of terror when the bank of england nearly went bankrupt in 1847. Characters like george hudson were like ken lay, had to flee the country. But it was the beginning, not the end of railways. No investment for a while, a lull and then built by 800% and began to transform the economy. We are at the beginning of the digitalization of everything.

On IT Doesn't Matter -- Nick Carr doesn't matter. Just because everybody has something doesn't mean it doesn't have strategic value. Its how you put it together and what you do with it.

When a major technology is created, its not the adoption, but becoming deep infrastructure. Adding machines to the Internet. What's important in business is everything is becoming connected: networks, people, processes, machines. Transfoming into a series of digital conversations among things that execute things. Financial derivatives, genomics, proteomics, CGI, are all new industries impossible without digitization. Charles DeLy (sp?), dean of engineering at boston university is and expert in genomics: 0% of genomics is possible without computation. Decode in Iceland is a mostly a server farm. Banking plus computation enables derivatives, a $1 trillion dollar a day industry. Creates new industries.

Creative Destruction -- was on a train with his biographer. Schumpter's nephew went to India and learned about mythology, Cali, goddess of creation and destruction. Autos displace not just horses and carriages but blackmiths. Most powerful lobbying firm in 1904 was against autos. Early red flag regulation of autos. Disney executives looking at the new VCR and someone says what if somebody just walked into the room they could watch this thing for free, no box office! Same thing happening in with digital content.
Incumbents are a constant. Some are so consistent you can use it as an indicator that something is inevitable. Music industry opposed Radio, creation of EMI over Aspect. Some people are so wrong invariably -- everything Jack Valenti opposed was a success. Track people who are really good at being wrong.

Becoming very connected, not just distance doesn't count -- expertise and skills are becoming important, even localized. When Im connected I can get it from different locations cheaply. Volvo isn't just Sweden. Ultility computing is just part of the larger trend of outsourcing.

US Individualistic opportunisitc form of capitalism, Europe as Community based form of capitalism and China is confusionist family based (which is retarded). Beginning to see globally, lots of things can be made everywhere so what's important is your local economy but where things are going to be made. Puzzle of engineering cultures in germany and sweden and england, but why aren't they leading high tech. Core of europe is badly happened by regulations that came into being with industrial economies, and they are socialist oriented it protects groups which is good but is terribly difficult to make agile. Why is hightech on the periphery of Europe? Ireland shifted to become the leader in outsourcing (recently superceded by India), Scotland, Finland -- goeing down into Eastern Europe: Poland, (Estonia!), etc. These places had nothing, no manufacturing to speak of, greenfield. Government can be nimble. In Ireland, government official said they brought Intel in, catholic church kept birth rate down till recently now a boom of young people, and said tour isn't ready but please stay in a castle and play golf. Deal was done. People in Sweden asking how to go high tech when he thought it already was high tech, but their PM was proud of having 2.4 people depending upon every worker.

If its pure manufacturing for commodity basis, watch China, not India. China is the next Japan. India for outsourcing, periphery of Europe for lower high tech. China and India are already outsourcing to south east asia to ensure they can continue their leading growth. Infosys outsourcing to Iranians, Iran 50k CS degrees per year
(funny, its almost as though we could say that the winner in the end of the industrial revolution is China)

Effect on organizations? Models of expertise do not respect boundaries of companies. Fuction of the company diffusing outwards?
** The large conglomerates of the 1960s will either dwarf or is a dinasour. Will see very agile small configurations and reconfigurations of functions. Changing business every year. Agility, configuration and re-configuration. Fast intermediated by digitalization
**Rising tide automate some things and takes them over. In services and manufacturing, some of them going abroad. Taking over human functions bit-by-bit. Places where you need human touch and empathy. But he is always suprised when something like doctors and lawyers and the like are doing work without human touch (e.g. telemedicine). If you have things done outside its outsourcing, if in a foreign country except canada its offshoring. Those offshore companies will import, have sympathy for displaced plant workers. Usually its tetonic and looks like nothing is happening. Digitalization change is deeper than industrialization or printing, largest changes to date.

Lingering question: Big myth of our age is the impact of the empowering nature of our technology.

Favorite piece of technology is a Harley Davidson or Movies. Movies have a dominant theme these days, that technology is coming, its a threat, its taking us over, we may be cogs in the machine, a huge underground fear running through society, manifested in movies. Dominant myth of making us cogs, fear isn't of death, its of loss of will, that something is taking over our will. The good guys in these myths have technology. Like Chewi, they are wierd. Enemies with primative technology, good guys have good technology and they blend with it. To contemplate the budda without the presence of motorcycles is not to complement the budda. The answer is technologies that bring out humanity.

IFTF Introduction

Notes from the introductory talk for the Institute for the Future Conference. Won't be blogging the whole event.

Geopolitics
* Airbus's superjet as an example of foreign geopolitical competition. Boeing unable to raise funds for a superject, but able to create large scale weapons.
* Unsustainable middle class growth in industrialized nations. Shift in economic and power status of nation, China moving from 6th in GDP today to 2nd in 2020. If China is able to maintain its 10% growth it has to:
** Banking system distributing loans by politics, not businesses. $500B bad debt today, 1/3 of the economy.
** Investing efficiency $4 inv. to create $1 output
** Energy efficiency (and environmental backlash if shift from Marxist Capitalism?)
** Social unrest, urban east and rural west -- bread riots

Cafeteria Citizenship
* More immigrants, less becoming citizens
* Foreign-born population growth of 191% from 1970-2000.
* Emergence of new non-state players providing benefits similar to citizenship (MNCs, NGOs, terrorist groups, online worlds and biological citizenship)
* Bio citizenship -- Adiana Petrina did research in post-Cheyrnobl Ukraine, negotiating their status with the state in terms of their status as radiation sufferers. Advocating for political rights as a groups. Parkinsons. Finland understanding themselves as unique genetic resources.

Terrorisme
* Term means the taste of wine that results from its environment
* Cultures developing from Vegitation -> Physiography -> Rivers -> Cities where developed cultures work downward in this chain.
* Water scarcity differs by water shed, consumption
* Local organizing using social software
* Growing politics, culture and others around the geography of watersheds

Tom Malone on Decentralization

David Kirkpatrick interviews Tom Malone from MIT's Sloan School of Management who runs the Center for Coordination Science, which studies how technology changes the way people work. His new book, The Future of Work, is on the effect of falling communication and coordination costs -- "This change may be as important for business as the change to democracy has been for government."

Malone sees a parallel between the evolution of human society and the evolution of business. "For millenia," he says, "all human societies were organized as small, autonomous, egalitarian groups called bands. Then we saw the rise of bigger and bigger, more centralized societies called kingdoms. Only in the last 200 years have we seen the rise on a large scale of the third way of organizing human society-democracy." Each of those stages, Malone says, can be explained by a change in a single factor--the cost of communication. In his view, writing is what enabled hierarchically organized kingdoms to arise. Printing led to democracy.

Likewise, he says, "until a couple hundred years ago businesses were still organized like bands. It was only when new communications technologies like telegraph and telephone and even the Xerox machine made communication cheap enough to coordinate larger groups of people that we saw the rise of the centralized corporation--the kingdoms of the business world." I like the way this guy thinks.

Me too, just ordered his book.

So where are we now? It's the revolution, he says. "Near the end of the 20th century, it became possible for the first time to exchange the detailed kind of information necessary to coordinate a business on a very large scale even as lots of individuals made decisions for themselves. When communications costs fall it becomes possible for vastly more people to be well-enough informed to make decisions instead of just following orders from their uniquely well-informed superiors.

Malone says the trend of decentralization can be adapted to on four ways, as also highlighted by Dave Pollard's post:

• Loose Hierarchies -- with flat organization structure and substantial autonomy granted to individual business units, subject to overarching principles, review and budget control (e.g. consultancies, universities, technology developers)
  
• Democracies -- where all employees, or all managers, get an equal vote on some or all key corporate decisions
  
• External Markets -- where most of the non-executive jobs are outsourced to independent businesses and contractors, so all 'employees' essentially become 'suppliers', with the commensurate rights and autonomy
  
• Internal Markets -- where each business unit, and even individuals within business units, contract with each other as if they were dealing at arms' length, so, every business unit and every employee acts much like an autonomous business

Robert Buderi on Innovation Journalism

Impressionistic transcript of a talk by Robert Buderi, Editor in Chief of the MIT Technology Review on the Challenges for Innovation Journalism. Did get to ask him about their weblog.

I'm a Mac guy but I travel with a Dell.

Relaunched 6 years ago from an academic mag to a mainstream magazine with 310k subscribers. The process of innvovation journalism to bring technologies to the larger world. Non-profit, planning on breaking even. Don't like labels, business writer, science writer now an innovation journalists. Im just a journalists, what happens, why they care, how its happening and will effect them.

I'm a Cal guy, first time speaking at Stanford, but a rooter for the Pac 10 (w00t!). Dedicated to promoting the understanding of emerging technologies an their impact for leaders. What's going to hit the market during the next three years and their impact.

Best definition of innovation from John Seely Brown: Invention Implemented. Taking a new creation and bringing it to market, making it matter.

Nathan Myhrvold: Household names will falter in the face of newcomers with better ideas. Look for the new "Top 20" companies, as only a few of them will make it through the long haul.

Balance a sense of wonder about technology and how it works and why you care. Impact on business, society, and personal lives. The best way we have found is a narrative story.

Beware the expert. We threw out all the experts. Not all, like Ted Postal.

* Get out. Conferences, contacts, lab visits, brainstorm. Took 8 editors to IBM Research, the one company that engages all areas they cover, 2 days of learning without writing anything directly, planting seeds for bigger trends.
* What's been missed? Where's the critical mass -- different advances coming together in an important area? Momentum for change. Not going to catch breaking news, compete with weeklys, instead they cover trends.
* What's the story? Where is the narrative

10 Emerging Technologies is the most popular issue. On Search Beyond Google, can't cover the industry it creates, instead show the upstarts and big movers that may unseat it. Google only gets 1% of what is in digital form right now. On the Invention Issue, long been dismissed as part of the innovation pipeline, but initial inventions are having a renessance, startups trying to better the invention process.

Myhrvold: "You can't out develop Microsoft, but you can out invent them"

Used to have a meeting, "Why does Tracy care?" pitching the editor, then refining the pitch together. New layouts: multiple points of entry for a page, boxes, charts, breakouts, active photography. Worldwide, looked to increase their reach, airfare to China or Japan is cheaper than Atlanta or something, so its easy to do.

Pace of Change: RNAi Therepy, Tiny molecules of RNA can target a certain gene and specifically block that genes effect, sprung up in the last couple of years. Need an understanding of the science to be able to move upon it. Xerox revenues fastest company to $1B in revenue but couldn't adapt beyond initial invention vs. HP which continued to innovate and completely eclipsed it.

Used to do reader surveys. Watches renewal rates. Miss the feedback.

Don Kennedy: RNAi is a perfect example fo the jump ahead effect. Collateral effect of all the companies that had been in another business have exploded again, changed their business again and have become more successful.

I asked about how their launch of weblogs has changed their coverage of innovation and business: Started weblogs last fall, took it as a separate venture for the web. Journalists and experts blogging, particular area where the expert take might fit. Very successful, 10% of traffic (ed: must not count their RSS subscriptions), much of the repeat visitors. Experts were too busy to post enough. Hired people at basic rates to post a certain amount per week, freelancers in their areas. Opened it up to the staff editors as an "if you feel like it kind of thing," 1/3 took it up on a regular basis. Trying to cautiously expand it and go back to the expert idea. Don't want it taking over the site -- has a bigger role than it has now.

Used to worry about the old Red Herring. Even if they did something it didn't kill the story for them. Fortune would. Sometimes Wired. Like what Business 2.0 has done, doesn't kill the story. Most of my reading is from the daily newspapers to see the indicators for change.

90k subscribers are MIT alumni. Buy the fast company, b2.0, economist lists when we go after subscribers. Increasing amount of their readers are in business or looking for a business edge. Talking to business groups helps and also in contacts

On electronic ink, still too clunky, was geared to foreign customers who wanted to get it instantly at the same cost (instead of double). Toyed with the idea of producing for this channel. Have 30k electronic subscribers, but tailing off. Medium is in question because of audit questions. Next generation of devices may make it possible.

Donald Kennedy on Innovation Journalism

I am only able to attend bits and pieces of the Innovation Journalism conference. After all, I'm not a journalist, I'm a blogger and have a business to run.

An impressionistic transcript of a talk by Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief Science Magazine, Stanford President emeritus.

Science publishes news and publishing academic papers. Members of the open access movement says its a way to generate money for their association, which is partially true. Competes with Nature head to head for the same global audience. Science is a competitive activity and the eagerness for scientists to publish is important to them -- for both the dollar economy and influence economy.

10k submissions each year, publish 9%. Rejection hard especially in a collegial network. The worst thing for us to do is to inform the unsuccessful author who may be successful in the lab an their next paper may go to Nature.

Typical subscriber looks for a paper by themselves or a friend or college and then turns back to the news section at the beginning. Scientists form a community that lives and subsists on gossip, so its no surprise they like following news. News covers rival journals. Often have to report difficult political confrontation (interaction with government apparatus such as when the union of concerned scientists sent a critique of repression by the Administration, neither side will like how we cover it).

New problems. Commercial activity involving people in basic research activities requires disclosure of conflict if interest, full disclosure. Commercial ventures has changed the normal flow of scientific communication. This will assure further scientific progress by funding development. There is a knowledge commons, but some believe that it will be constrainted by intellectual property and may turn it into a knowledge anti-commons (ref)

Reporters are part of the community, requires sensitivity in coverage, but also understanding and forgiveness by the scientists.

Music Metadata

Yesterday Creative Commons hosted a short event on Music Metadata. The Music Metadata Eventspace is suddenly a great and evolving resource for the topic.

Bushed

During Bush's rare press conference, I was trying to see if Jay Rosen's thesis would prove out. My interpetation of it is that they only reason in their right minds they would hold this event would be to position the press as an enemy of the sitting President we all must follow.

Usually they pre-select the beginning and ending question -- and that was the clearest indicator I could see of Jay being right. The transcript of the first and last questions:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half of Americans now support it.

What does that say to you? And how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?

QUESTION: But I guess I just wonder if you feel that you have failed in any way. You don't have many of these press conferences where you engage in this kind of exchange. Have you failed in any way to really make the case to the American public?

The press didn't ask smart questions, and it did come across as hammering him on the obvious ones. Its hard to see this event as a positive for Bush given his off message insecurity. But making such a prediction is folly because the masses are such asses. But if he did succeed in positioning himself vs. the press he shores up support when they attack him for his next blunder, something Dean could have used.

Me and My Wifi

My access point is in the house and the home office is a seperate building. Because my PowerBook casing and two solid walls interfere with my signal, I'm developing a weird relationship with my technology. I've tried the Pringles can, antenna positioning -- everything except putting the AP outside, buying a new antenna, hotspot or sledgehammer.

Some days it works great and I'm happily buzzing away. Some days it doesn't, kind of like when NPR has a call drive. Some days you will find me standing in the backyard deperately trying to send out an urgent email and my wife looking at me through the window with grave concern. Some days I am convinced I need to hug my computer to extend the signal. Its bringing us close, but hard to do when typing. Some days it seems my laptop needs distance, so I post with extended arms, sunk as low into the chair as possible. But I miss the warmth on my lap in the winter. Some days its best to keep moving as though antsy-ness is the cure for interference.

Sure, there are easy solutions to this and better things to do with my time than chasing shadows, but have grown to appreciate the quirks in the relationship.

Better go outside to post it.

Social Network Dynamics and Participatory Politics

I wikified my draft Social Network Dynamics and Participatory Politics chapter, part of the forthcoming O'Reilly book on Extreme Democracy. I hope this simple contribution evolves openly.

Editors Jon Lebkowsky and Mitch Ratcliffe already posted their draft Introduction by blog,Jay Rosen posted his chapter by blog and Joi Ito's contribution originated in wiki.

There is a great tradition emerging of books in wiki. The work is posted under the Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial license.

Here are some simple Extreme Editing Guidelines that encourage you to hack away. If you want to post general feedback or engage in conversation, so do in the Emergent Blog.

So there is a big chunk of what I think and I look forward to hearing what you think, and write.

Disconnects and Defections

In moments of percieved crisis, fear prevents us from acting for the future. It's also easy to forget in troubled times the plight of others, especially when they are out of view.

Eradicating global poverty has been an ideal of the Left since Humphery. The means of employing globalization has only recently been at our disposal. Outsourcing as a home front issue has led to senseless abandon of a larger war according to Charles Krauthammer.

Public opinion has trouble seeing past both tomorrow and our shores. Hard decisions with postitive outcomes have negative short-term effects. Outsourcing is no exception. As the leading force in globalization, the US is permanently embedded in an interdependent world (despite the Administration's attempts to the contrary). The press plays a significant role in furthering the disconnect between Americans and their future neighborhood, through episodic framing and the economics of broadcast to depict idealized shared identity. Markets feed off news in a shortening outlook. Polling, initatives and individualized pluralism prevent politics from acting as an institution.

There is one fortunate indicator of when the gap between short and long-term thinking broadens. Defections. Disconnects create contradictions that lead to defections, such as Krauthammer's opinion, Robin Cook and John Brady Kiesling's resignations, Paul O'Neill's whistleblowing or Richard Clarke's testimony. Defections are given greater weight because they not only reveal disconnects, but are disconnects themselves. Ripe fodder for the media to play the tipping game.

If it wasn't for links, blogging would be the most episodic and short-term focused media of all in form. In practice, blogging's diversity includes great long-term opinions that are not constrained by editorial filters. We thrive off controversy, sustaining disconnects and are as snarky as New Yorkers. Blogging may effect short-term thinking by increasing participation in media simply by getting more people to think, together.

But a greater promise may lie in extending understanding beyond our shores. Social capital without borders is more than the death of distance. It provides a social context for events in our future neighborhood. We just need more social events that form the basis for future context.

And if blogging doesn't help broaden time and space, I'm sure we will hear from defecting voices. Celebrate them.

Event Week

Attending three overlapping events this week:

• The First Conference on Innovation Journalism [new link] -- Wed-Fri: on the practice of covering innovation. The founder David Nordfors says “The news media is definitely a main source for lifelong learning, and I'd even say the source for the sharing of knowledge across a larger community. We are creating a community of innovation journalists whose work is to define and extend the discipline.” Can't wait to introduce them to weblogs.
  
• Institute For the Future -- Wed-Thurs: Ten-Year Forecast Program Annual Conference.
  
• Waterside -- Thurs-Fri: publishing industry conference, speaking about the Extreme Democracy book.

So, a little conference blogging to come.

IFTF on Social Networks

Next week I'm attending an Institute for the Future event on their technology forecast.

Came across a sample report on Social Networks in the World of Abundant Connectivity (.pdf) that had this great comment on technology product design:

Social networks thrive on connectivity and the resulting opportunity for spontaneous interaction, on the ability to establish trust and selforganize around issues, and on the capacity to maintain latent relationships that may only be activated in response to a specific and unpredictable need. Most technology companies, however, continue to focus on building industrial strength infrastructures to support more formal organizations: e-mail, calendaring, enterprise portals, video and audio conferencing, multimedia communications, and so on. We believe that the real opportunities are in lighterweight tools that support ad hoc teams and spontaneous collaboration within social networks that often cross formal boundaries: instant messaging, phone-, pager-, or PDA-based short messaging, personal Web cameras, peer-to-peer file and screen sharing, and so on. These technologies typically require little infrastructure, completely blur the line between personal and business use, and ignore organizational boundaries. These are the technologies much of the younger generation is embracing. Rather than designing for formal organizations and with the goal of increasing office productivity, then, companies should design their products with social networks in mind.

Of course, this is before Socialtext, they have been talking abou this for a while. Their Future Now Blog is a must follow.

Shai Agassi on RSS

One of the most classic interviews of blogmind meets enterprisemind:

Steve Gillmor: It's striking that you're not aware of RSS.

Shai Agassi: Believe me, I'm going to Google it the minute we're done.

Hey! You put RSS in my Enterprise! You put Enterprise in my RSS!

If you know Steve, you are laughing out loud right now. Wonder if he interviewed him with an iSight. I had breakfast with Shai at PC Forum, amazing guy, now he knows about blogs, wikis and RSS. Go read the whole thing.

Wiki Interview

Robin Good interviewed me for the MasterNewMedia site in How Working Groups Can Further Connect Without Adding Further Technology.

What was different was doing the interview in a Workspace. As you can see from the piece, Robin found it really efficient. For me it was an easy way to manage the back-and-forth, connect resources and mix media.

Industry Analyst Weblogs

Every time I hear of a new Industry Analyst blog I get all excited. Wicked smart people with great information flow that should have lots to say. Unfortunately, most Industry Analysts don't get blogging and the result is crap.

A bizzare standard has emerged where major firms simply repurpose abstracts in RSS format and call it a blog. The result is posts like this for Burton. Forrester takes the same approach and since nobody links to propoganda you can't even find it with Google. These don't even qualify as abstracts, they certainly aren't conversations and could be a form of spam.

What really works is letting analysts have their own voices, like Mike Gotta at Meta Group or the Jupiter blogs. Gartner is getting closer and started out with the bizzare.

Three suggestions for Industry Analyst firms:

• Let analysts blog in their own voice with their own identity
  
• Encourage them to blog the process of their research. All those interviews that never make it to print, readings and testable theories that result in good analysis.
  
• If you are providing incentives for being quoted in the press, provide incentives for being linked
  

Of course, aside from firms, you will find the very best from independents like Amy Wohl and Stowe Boyd. Nothing holds them back, they engage as writers and readers and their practice benefits.

Josh and danah at M2M

Over at Many-to-Many, danah boyd, Social Software Extraordinaire, has joined us on a full time blogger. Whoo hoo!

Also, guestblogging is Josh Schachter, creator of such socialwonderhunkies as GeoURL, Memepool, del.icio.us, and LOAF.

Green Zone

So on a day where the shit hit the fan in Iraq [via Tim and Jeff], I find out that a good friend his heading over here. He is staying in the Green Zone which is supposedly as secure as it can get over there, but the today's shit is just across the river.

Personally, I would assess the risks differently than him, but I have to appreciate his sense of reward: Whether we like it or not, now we need to succeed. Maybe I can add a small part to the success.

Success just became more personal for me.

Product Behind Your Back and Focus on Your Core

Philip Lay's April Under the Buzz newsletter has a great essay on enterprise sales:

If your sales teams (including executives) walk into customer meetings with the product squarely in front of them (as in: “We’ve come to see how to help you buy our product”), what else can the prospect or customer do except poke at the product, and remember, most prospective customers hate having to focus on the product, especially as the first order of business? In contrast, if sales teams walk in with the product (and tools, and services) behind their back, they can keep the customer’s problem in front of them, and the business problem then becomes the focus of everyone’s attention.

If you are selling, and especially if you are not, go read the whole thing. Solid advice on building relationships between organizations.

The issue also contains a great article by Geoff Moore, who has focused his practice within the enterprise:

He is now focusing on the problem of how large organizations can focus their efforts and overcome the inertia that so frequently retards progress. As it turns out, the analytical tools Moore has been developing in his work, including the concepts of ‘Core versus Context’ are directly applicable to enabling the Real-Time Enterprise, a concept evangelized by many experts.

Geoff suggests that the traditional notion of new technology for competitive advantage has changed to mean implementation of existing technology:

...But as companies become more successful, as their earlier generations of products become standard infrastructure, the challenge shifts to one of orchestration and integration. The key question now becomes: How can we achieve the competitive advantages of getting closer to the real-time enterprise by taking advantage of current technology rather than inventing new technology?...This concept is new for Silicon Valley. Unlike past generations of technology, today’s IT in and of itself is no longer a differentiator – what differentiates a business is its application of IT...

Recently and related, I have been playing with how the technology adoption lifecycle may have changed from a bell curve to a power law. Still flushing this out and seeking feedback.

Death By Blog Greatly Exaggerated

Shel Israel considers if blogs are the death of 'Zines. Like David Weinberger, he offered one when it was cutting edge media. Now he asks will blogging kill Confrenza, his paid subscription conference coverage 'Zine.

...Two weeks ago, while attending PC Forum, I found myself surrounded by bloggers, many also respected as authors, journalists and influencers. I was surrounded by the likes of David Weinberger, Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls , Ross Mayfield, John Patrick. These guys have 10s of thousands of blog visitors daily. Theybroadcast from the conferences nearly in real-time and worst of all—theygive--GIVE their stuff away. It can be a daunting, humbling and potentially embarrassing task to follow their collective act.

...I came to that conclusion based on an oft-used but relevant comparison—radio did not die when TV came in, but TV changed radio's content. Blogs will not kill most ‘zines, but they will change their content. Just like the morning newspaper could not outscoop the 11 o'clock news, 'zines lose currency of their content to blogs. To survive the 'zine needs to make it up in breadth, depth or both. Blogs are now the first word in conferences as well as a wide variety of fast-breaking daily events...

Shel is right that the blogs will make other media evolve, but not just in content. Not sure that 'Zines can survive simply by building upon their existing strengths in breadth and depth. Media must reflect new media in content, but also adapt in form. Since the form of a 'Zine is so close to that of a blog, mostly broadcast electronic text, the best ones will borrow the strengths of the new. The real strength of Confrenza is Shel and Gary, they are great at conference coverage -- and I am sure they will find new ways to bring out not only their strengths, but the strengths of others.

Elagu Eesti!

Something remarkable happened today that I have been hoping for a long time. The Baltic States joined NATO. When I worked for the President of Estonia, the little country that could, this was our primary foreign policy goal. They had already extended an unwritten security guarantee, but being covered by Article 5 of the NATO charter, mutual defense in case of attack, was essential to preventing what happened last time Estonia had independence -- losing it. NATO itself has taken perhaps the greatest move to fulfilling its mission of creating "foundations for a stable security environment in Europe … in which no country would be able to intimidate or coerce any European nation or to impose hegemony through the threat or use of force."

Integrated security is more than defense, it is infrastructure for cultural identity, sovereignty and a place in the world.

Back in 1996 it was but a dream we longed to live. At the time, the President said:

We often speak of NATO's enlarging or expanding, as though the Alliance were some sort of exotic, and, to the Russia leadership, a somewhat contagious ameba. I would point out one does not join NATO, one is asked to become a member. Unlike Groucho Marx, I believe that this is a club I would like to join, even though it has doubts about having my state as a member.

Welcome to the club. Tonight my family will talk of times where we helped fight to secure independence and will raise a glass in praise to the little country that did. Elagu Eesti, Long Live Estonia.