Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Where the Wild Things Are

The one geek conference I wish I had gone for fun is Where.

The media writes stories with the Who, What, When, Where, Why and sometimes How formula. Great framing for any story. O'Reilly first did How which was the first question of the net, driven by some Whos. Most of the alpha geeks already went through WWWWH to figure out the net.

We spent 1995-2000 trying to figure out the What of the net. What are we building and how do we make the mooh-la.

We spent 2000-2005 figuring out the Who. The Who really tripped us out -- all that data, about me, connected to others, privacy invasions and a lot of yadda yadda.

From 2005 to 2010 we will be trying to comprehend the Where. Every new mobile device will transmit coordinates, every location device will be sensor aware. If you thought the public would freak out about the public knowing who they are -- imagine the social awkwardness of where you are. Yeah, much of it is mundane. Home. Cubicle. Home. But you won't be able to get off the grid. Anywhere.

From 2010 to 2015, Where will compound When. But about then Neuroceuticals kick in and we are so productive and have augmented memory to the point where real timeshifting occurs.

After 2015 Why is the big question. John Battelle joked that that's the show he wants to run (no better guy). After that it's all dolphins, lazer beams and transcendental singularities.

Open Estonia

  Feeling Estonian 
  Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

Had a fascinating lunch with Juhan Parts, Prime Minister of Estonia 2003-2005, his delegation and some local Estonian leaders hosted by Steve Jurvetson at DFJ.  I believe the conversation was off the record, was generally on the future of Estonia, so let me just say some things on my mind independent from the meeting:

Our little country as at interesting turning point.  After EU and NATO succession and the development of a stable and growing economy, the question is, what's next?  The cost of living is rising rapidly in harmony with the EU and the sources of growth over the past 10 years will decline.

I have some strong views given my experience as an expat entrepreneur and former public sector contributor.  And given that I am thousands of miles away, I can voice them strongly.

Estonians are bright, honest (although they also have many who game systems, which keeps it healthy), well educated and hard working.  However, the long road to independence and establishing an identity while overcoming 50 years of occupation has led to complacency.  Estonians have a superiority complex and are intolerant of real diversity and don't trust strangers.  In a flat world, this is a competitive disadvantage.  Immigration and language policies once designed to keep Russian colonists at bay now hamper growth.  Education is mired with cruft institutionalism.  Regulations are unfairly applied, sometimes you are guilty until proven innocent.  Entrepreneurship was discovered by some through hardship, but the culture punishes failure.

The solution to this is to Open Estonia.  Invest in developing clusters of capability by supporting entrepreneurs and investors in new areas of competency.  In line with EU intent, open immigration so the best people who want to work with Skype and others can more freely (in Silicon Valley 70% of CEOs are first generation immigrants).   Open the education system to leverage open courseware and distance learning. Invest in more exchange programs.  Open source software becomes a strategic investment in developing capabilities.  Continue e-government initiatives towards transparency, feedback and internet voting -- recognizing e-government is not just about efficient provision of services, but civic engagement.  Invest in language technologies to remove barriers with other culture.

I would live in Estonia if it wasn't for:
* Un-cosmopolitan intolerance of diversity
* Business risks (not costs) that stem from the government instead of the market
* Cold winters

This is all very strong language to head off a nationalist streak that is so tempting when either backed in a corner or experiencing short term success.  The reality is living in Estonia is great for expats who can understand the larger context and Estonia has a bright future, except for the approaching dark winter.

Podcasting is the New Napster

I love the smell of disintermediation in the morning.  The new iTunes software update enables a little Podcasts folder.  Suddenly you get a clean aggregation of a selected fat heat of the long tail in an integrated experience.  iNow wonder if a word other than Pod should have arisen in the nomenclature.

Honestly, it's a boon for consumers.  Podcasting is the new Napster.  But I want something more.  Two things, actually, that could be summarized by the statement Podcasting is the New Voicemail:

• Non-proprietary extensions to syndication standards.  How great that a convicted monopolist has co-opted RSS?  How crappy is it that RSS is a standard of one.  Atom attracts users in the know and if Apple had a an inclusionary and fair process to deal with, the extension could be well formatted.  Anywho, I'm not in politics anymore.
• This is personalization, not socialization.  Give me Odeo in a heartbeat over this augmented MSM DJ.  Even if it is legal and free (given recent events, maybe the title of this post should be Podcasting is the New Grokkster), there is no social network here.  I am not a consumer and want to share...
  

Oh, and another very big thing.  Isn't anybody else concerned that Apple has introduced DRM into Podcasting?  Adam Curry's headline PodFinder show is in AAC format! (and I can't link to it).

I guess we should congratulate the company that we really want to love for engaging in social software.  This will be a boon for them.  And it will serve the best amateur producers.  But I don't want my MyTV (haven't talked to Adam Curry yet, sure he is a nice guy) that is TheirTV, I want OurTV.

UPDATE: Please see comments and BoingBoing for how wrong I was.  AAC is not DRM.  The AAC extension .M4P is DRM.  I apologize for any FUD or confusion.  I apologize to Adam Curry and Cory.  Further proof that you can be an idiot blogger, even if you frame things as a question.  But, funny things, those proprietary extensions, which is the first point of this post.

Yahoo Social Search Act II

My Platonic (or was it Aristotelean?) relationship with Yahoo tells me there will be a third act, but here is act II.

New Yahoo! Mail Gets Odd

I got a sneak peek of the new Yahoo! Mail client released tomorrow under limited beta.  It's the first version driven by the Oddpost team acquired a year ago.  You may recall those guys doing Ajax before it was cool. 

On the upside, this is the first webmail client that doesn't feel like it's on the web.  It has the look of Outlook (with Yahoo branding and an ad box), slick drag & drop across 3 panes, real keyboard shortcuts and right click menu, and wicked fast autocomplete and caching that lets you scan through folders with thousand of message even faster than Mail.app and other desktop clients.  Some of it will be familiar to Oddpost users, but now it works across platforms (including Firefox for the Mac!) and with Yahoo hosting, storage, search and spam protection it's simply of a different grade.  This will be one of the best examples of Ajax pixy dust others will seek to emulate.

On the downside, they haven't incorporated some of the features that could make webmail rule the earth.  RSS in and out.  Tags are the new folders.  Social networks as filters.  Synch to support mobility and our occasionally connected reality.  It's also simply a different design philosophy from Gmail -- automation for the mass over augmentation for the next -- and only markets will decide.

Oddpost did have RSS aggregation as folders. I do believe that openness has sunk into the Yahoo! being.  This does give them a leading interface platform they can integrate across the Yahoo! portfolio, build upon and let others build upon.

Supernova Backchannel

I participated in the closing panel at Supernova with Mary Hodder and Suw Charman: a chat about the backchannel that was as chaotic as a backchannel.  Technical difficulties provided a disarming tension at first and kept us from showing a video Mary made.  Here's the posted version, unfortunately the funniest part was edited out for mature audiences.  Suw posted her notes here.  At one point, I ran through the silliest powerpoint I could come up with. 

Despite my best attempts, Rohit said it was the best panel of the conference, which had little to do with the panelists and much to do with participation.

Open Letter on Wikitorials

Below is a version of an open letter to the editors of the LA Times that provides a multiple-point of view.  UPDATE: Revision 49, copied here, was sent on June 26th 2005.

Dear Michael Kinsley,

Wikitorials were supposed to provide an opportunity for the readers to engage with LA Times Editorial Content.  And they did. Over 400 people engaged in the wiki (a group-editable website), held conversations and began to create a community around LA Times content. Participants even took a bad idea, opening a finished viewpoint to editing after the fact, and turned it into a good idea -- making room for participants to offer counterpoints.

But instead of wikitorials, you got shreditorials and the site was taken down. Vandalism happens and the wiki form is especially susceptible to these problems. Shutting the wiki down immediately took away the greatest weapon that wikis have to fight vandalism: its users.

Devoted users take care of their wikis. If you had left the Wikitorial up, users could have grown to love and appreciate the community you were creating. Given guidance and time, vandalism disappears, as if by magic, but actually by the work of a handful of devoted users who care about what happens to the common resource they help create.

Some relatively simple technical measures would have reduced both the chance and the impact of vandalism. Editorials don't need to have pictures in them; that feature can come out of the system. The built-in "Recent Changes" and "Watchlist" features allows users to track changes that are inappropriate and simply revert back to a previous version of the page, leaving the collectively built opinion intact. Additional measures such as requiring registration with clear policies for participation could be employed to enable the LA Times to open the community with reasonable measures of control.

We sought membership in a community you opened. We co-invested ourselves in creating a new resource and would have defended it over time. We would still like to engage with you to foster this community. Trust, engage and foster our community and you may find that participatory media can revive your business model and role in the community.

Just as the one wikified editorial called for a plan of action, we ask the Editorial Board to respond with a plan for a social contract. This social contract should embody:

• A timeline for opening the community
• A clear policy for when, if ever, the community will be shut down again
• Clarification of appropriate participation and guidelines to be enforced by the LA Times and the community
• An approach for content licensing that fosters collective contribution, such as the Creative Commons Non-commercial Attribution license.
• A restated vision for the community to follow.

Wiki-based communities are not made of software, they are made of people. Let us discover our own power to participate together.

Signed,
Your community

UPDATE: Michael Kinsley is a guest of Open Source Radio this Wednesday night

Podcasting is the New Voicemail

Hi there!  I can only get to the phone right now, but wanted to leave you a message after this beep.  Podcasting is the new voicemail.  Soon it will be one of the simplest ways to communicate with groups.  This is Ross Mayfield, and that's all I've got to say.

This week Odeo lassoed it's beta users with podcasting usable enough for many of the masses. The gang is putting the band back together and iTunes is about to bake in podcasting.  It's a good time point to where podcasting may be going.  At least so I can claim I invented it later.

First, let's admit that podcasting generally sucks.  It sucks time to produce and consume.  The attention economy demands we trend towards four casting models:
• Validated Hits that exhibit preferential attachment
• Social discovery where validation is recommendation
• Deep linking and discovery to overcome time-based media
• Group voicemail

At Supernova, Linda Stone went beyond explaining her concept of continuous partial attention to suggest that in such an overloaded world, value will shift to shared experiences with dedicated attention.  This would be mostly true if it weren't for our newly discovered power to participate in the Power Tail and rise to the Fat Head.  One powerful social incentive is stardom, which the Odeo disco taps into nicely.

The podcasting genre is certainly too early to define.  But when blogging, stereotyping is akin to metaphor, so what the heck.  Podcasting does enable amateurs to produce and distribute at low cost (except time, ack!).  Generally this means that lots of content will suck.  Remixing takes time and a bit of talent,  and the masses are not that talented.  But most everyone can talk, desires to and can use a phone.

Podcasting is the new voicemail.  Today you cast to your friends by leaving them silly, stupid or great messages -- one at a time.  Just like blogging, not everyone will podcast for the public.  It's too fucking weird!  But, when given the comfort zone of one or two degrees of separation -- they just might.  LJ for VM.  The phone and it's VoIP incantations will be the interface of choice.  Uploaders will evolve into clients as caches with the dynamism of web clients.  iTunes and iPod will have to join the two-way web.  You will cast audio messages to your groups, they will listen when convenient, and social signals will help you find your deeper voice.  A version of audio comments will provide deeper feedback, you will want to limit access to it for sake of time, and suddenly phone tag may become fun.  The best messages will be remembered, tossed around and perhaps, with permission, bubble up to cultural consciousness.

Since most of us with cast by phone, another direction the genre may go is the way of ringtones, a $500M market.  Intelligent ringtones are coming fast (rude ones too) and look at the social models unfolding in the Philippines.  The wire-tapped voice of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo discussing vote-rigging has become an overnight ringtone sensation.  Someone told me that in the Philippines you can download horntones, which are popular with taxi drivers, so you can imagine the cacophony. Who wants Carl Castel or other celebrity voice mail recordings when you can have your friends?  When the phone rings, why not hear the last 1 minute rant from the person who is calling before answering?  Think of the sound design for all kinds of spaces when it could reflect the tastes, context and networks of their occupants.

Maybe this is just an excuse to cast pebbles in the pond, or claim my Odeo channel, but for the scale of the podosphere to grow to it's full potential it will have to facilitate sharing the way most people do.  With people.

UPDATE: Looks like an iTunes Phone, sold by Cingular, may be a reality.  Get my point?

Social Physics Takeaways

John Clippinger of SocialPhysics.org provided some Provocative Take Aways at the end of his Supernova speech:

• Trust is biologically encoded and supported by emotions
• Can have principled strategies for acheiving high levels of trusted exchange
• Identity is multiple. distributed. contextual, role based and reputational
• Markets are a kind of social networks and depend upon the social emiotions - trust - empathy - reciprocity - to function
• Long tailed markets are aggregates of social contexts
• Trust feeds on transparency

Linda Stone on Continuous Partial Attention

Was too distracted to take complete notes for her intro to a Supernova panel on Attention...

To cope with complexity we have stretched attention to it's limit. it is motivated by a desire not to miss opportunities. We want to ensure our place as a live node on the network. We feel alive when we are connected. To be busy and connected is important. We are increasingly over-stimulated, overwhelmed and unfulfilled.

Email free fridays as a mechanism. Sending emails around is a terrible way to make decisions. Some ban Blackberries at meetings. Three kinds of meetings at Microsoft: free for all, one where the front of the room has to pay attention (in the back it's okay to slack) and ones where total attention is demanded.

We count on experts to filter for us. It used to be that productivity made us feel alive, now its feeling connected. Social networking where quantity of connections makes us feel connected, but the lack of meaningfulness is disconcerting. Dan Gould; I quit every social network to be able to have time to have dinner with real people. The aphrodisiac in the coming era is committed attention. Experiencing engaged attention is to feel alive, through trusted environments that enable meaningful connections. Our opportunity is to create tools and technologies that really do enhance our quality of life.

Distributed Business Panel

Supernova Panel following JSB's talk: Philip Evans (Boston Consulting Group); Julius Genachowski (IAC/InterActiveCorp); Dick Hardt (Sxip Identity); Greg Lloyd (Traction Software); JP Rangaswami (DrKW)

This panel circled around one core issue to me: adapting identity to how social networks really work.  They addressed opportunities in the consumer space that are held back by competitive forces.  The enterprise issue could have been put more clearly: enterprise directory management is incompatible with easy group forming.

Philip Evans (Boston Consulting Group)

I found John's comments persuasive not least because they were going to say.  Im intrigued by the Toyota story when a a factory burnt down that make a brake part and was the only source in the network  Faced the prospect of shutdown in 36 hours.  10k workers and 62 companies swarmed the problem, organized themselves into teams, devised their own strategies for emergency productions.  the owner of the factor sent out blueprints, gave away machinery that survived.  A small company delivered a win.  In 8 days they were back up to full production.  Single sourcing and zero inventory was supposed to be a weakness.  Exemplifies the extreme emergency what they have embedded in day to day relationships.

We see the same principles being followed in Linux and elsewhere:

• Technology needs to be simple and pervasive (more important than complexity), linux is written
• Common IP, as IP creates incentives as well as transaction costs.  From GPL to sharing of process knowledge
• Scientific discipline, focus on trial and error, Test and report. 
• Granular diffusion of knowledge.  Do and tell everybody about experiments.  This is how blogging works. 
• Develops a rich semantic, chatter develops into a richer language and shorthand concepts that are signals of a rich and productive community. 
• Develops trust.  Trusting the other player is a a rational strategy when it is iterative.  As in the case of the world of wiki and blog: visibility and iteration.

The point is not that transaction costs cease to exists.  Lower transaction costs by focusing on trusted relationships enhances the pace of innovation.  Wiki communities exemplify the scaling of the network that drives down transaction costs and in turn drives up the scaling of the network.  A virtuous cycle that is removed from what conventional business people understand.

Julius Genachowski (IAC/InterActiveCorp)

Talks about how big IAC is.  When they started: can we identify categories on the net that lend themselves to commerce, can we build a product that will add value, and if we have identified both should we build or buy?  That got us into travel and ticketing?  Looking at a new phase because of increased competition. Trying to figure out the next phase of the company.  One element is increasingly important: community.  Used to think of people as users (as consumers), and didn't set out to create communities.  With Match.com and other properties, community was an unintended byproduct.  Now the quesiton is how to turn users into participants.  We are experimenting at some of our sites and the results are exciting.  At Ticketmaster, put up a forum, 10k users 106k threads and 2.5M posts practically overnight.  Trip Advisor didn't do transactions, but focused on user generated content and attracted tremendous traffic -- saw the power of empowering the community by leveraging the next generation tools.  Now Expedia is transitioning to enable participation.  Thinking about how to use wikis and blogs across businesses.

Dick Hardt (Sxip Identity)

Dick's identity is multi-faceted.  Identity is really reputation -- what others say about you.  It isn't filling in forms.  Authentication proves you are a directory entry.  Identity is what a site says about you, but sites are closed silos.  You want users at the center for Identity 2.0. 

Greg Lloyd (Traction Software)

Use of social software tools and their expectations set on the public internet will drive the architecture and structure within enterprises.  People's expectations about how to keep informed are changing.  Tools need to adapt to address specific audiences, groups.  Private conversations foster trust.  To broadly deploy conversations you need identity that works across all stakeholders, but also local permissions without having an IT organization hardwire everything.  If I am an engineer at GM and someone in Germany opens up a blog and puts it on the network.  If the content of the group weblog talks about a design.  Would like to find out about the blog by searching, finding someone's elses blog that links to it and be able to subscribe to the blog without having IT be involved. 

JP Rangaswami (DrKW)

To repeat Cluetrain, markets are conversations.  Even the work bankrupt relates to a breakdown in trust.  Business of a bank is relationships.  When four guys from the bank show up here?  They are here to learn.  How do you differentiate from employees, partners, customers?  They are all part of a group.  JSB said you have SoA and Virtualization working together with Social Software.  If I try to figure out what we are trying to solve, look at Hugh's cartoon saying our job is to make a membrane between customer and firm more porous.  Learning how to use tools to share and collaborate.  I want to focus on the role of the individual as the modern firm is redefined.  Used to be the firm defining the individual, now the firm needs to have a value set in line with theirs and provide a toolset that allows for their creativity to flower.  My customer (user) expects to be able to choose from devices  connections.  What is being transfered, the connection and the device is up to him.  It needs to be recordable, searchable and content independent.  These things are possible provided that identity and IP are resolved.  Collaboration always existed, now an individual has knowledge, content and skill to be able to produce something with others that no one individual can do alone.  We use these tools to attract the right people and let them choose to stay.

Julius: As we have more social software on our sites, we need to address identity.  But not likely we will make it easy to let users access competitor's sites.  But there are models where competitive quotes are encouraged. 

Philip: the way these connections become open is a coalition of the weak and strong.  Companies that cannot create a proprietary reptuational marketplace to compete with eBay will attempt to be open. 

Dick: Open and simple always wins long term.

Greg: the business or enterprise group might lead the way as there are business reasons for open identity.

JP:  KM and info security merged a while ago.  Need to keep policies lightweight.  Screams about security are less valid than the issues of security.  Can only have trust with transparency.  I'm a regulated institution. Tech enters the bank from the bottom up.  If I make it top down, it's likely my staff won't adopt it in the right way.  Adopting the technology by the alpha consumer as an individual, then you get what you might need for it to work in a corporate environment.  Employees of tomorrow will demand a set of capabilities for the firm, not through a central statement of what they will and can do.

Dick: Salesforce sells to a business unit first, then the IT department.

Julius: We have people hungry for sharing of best practices, easier ways to communicate across silos.  A big change in our organization.  If you can get companies to understand that it will be empowering, security is manageable and won't effect control, these tools have a big future.  Don't need fancy communication tools, the CEO communicates with email and people respond and he gets dialogue.  Horizontally it is trying to think about incentive structures.  What are the obstacles to rational behavior and how do we eliminate them.

Greg: align with business purpose of goals, something that intrinsically involves a larger group of stakeholders.

Philip: we have observed large corporations have different stages in a lifecycle in which issues are difficult.  Have been using a multi-layers social network analytical techniques:

• transaction network: of productive activity
• trust network: relationships
• communication networks
• network of power: formal organizations

People are connected through all four, helps you understand where and why there is organizational disfunction. 

JP: because we have to prevent silos, the issues are connected to identity but go into permissioning and authentication.  Not trivial in a regulated environment. 

Distributed Business

Notes from the opening session on the second day of Supernova 2005. First, a perspective from John Seely Brown on Innovation Ecologies: long tails, swarms and path dependencies. Curious that the last two days that the ideas discussed will play out in real ecosystems at work. John Hagel, his co-author of The Only Sustainable Edge, was stuck in London.

Four kinds of disruptive process innovations in india: what we drive, buy and wear.

Toyota taps the creativity of thousands of suppliers and their employees through productive friction. Lowest cost is not necessarily the lowest price. Bring us new ideas/innovation. Respect. An ongoing network of conversations and productive friction.

Exception conditions are the action points: when a defect is found the person who finds it stops the entire production line -- freezing the context -- until the source of the problem can be discovered. Context propagates all the way to the supplier lets them do instant problem solving. Contrast the following:

Toyota Way -- Productive friction

• lowest cost,
• deep dialog and collaboration
• bring us new ideas
• respect

The Detroit Way (little innovation) -- Destructive friction

• Lowest price,
• diode, not dialogue
• do it exactly as we say,
• shop around new ideas from one supplier to others

Motorcycles in China. The Chongquing Mototcycle Ecosystem. One entrepreneur broke out of a top down design system run by the state to make innovation modular. Locally modular architecture (based on a focal model). No detailed drawings from the assembler but rather a bottom up swarm ecosystems with path dependent practices, emergent process networks and tea houses. Now 50% of all global production of motorcycles. Evidence of disruption: Honda 90% in 1997 to 30% in 2002 market share in Vietnam. No one can compete with the cost structure. This is a lot like open source development where focal model is like a reference implementation.

Tiawan ODM Process Networks -- Digital Still cameras. Customers provide general requirements (some features, price) and a network adapts to produce the good. Customers do not determine what they want, not how.

Li& Fung's process networks. $5B revenue in 2002, $1 million per employee. 30-50% ROE, 7500 suppliers, 37 countries. A major orchestrator that picks up deep specialization in hundreds of ecologies to put together a unique garment at an almost un-matchable price point. Once they know what the customer wants, they take their expertise of ecosystems to find out what alternative inputs and processes generate a better output. The ecosystem is a learning architecture. Beyond performance metrics, benchmarking across them, let's the information be shared across the network. Orchestrating learning, not just the supply chain.

On capability building: Offshoring is not just wage arbitration, it is accessing distinctive skills. Learning is critical. A call center called eTelecare has a a management philosophy that started with low cost operations to higher skilled services within 18 months. In the US you have a 50:1 ratio of call center employees to managers, eTelecare has a 8:1 ratio with he purpose of middle management is to accelerate learning and advancement of employees. Infosys in Bangalore focused on learning, executive management spends 25% of their time on it.

An enabling confluence of IT architectures

• Interaction tools (productive friction): Collaboration on demand with social software, wireless access and eLearning
• Service Oriented Architectures
• Virtualization

We don't talk much about how you take social software tools and wrap them around SoA architectures. Because as the only thing to expect is the unexpected. We spend our time handling exceptions. But we don't build tools to support exception handling. May try to build rules for exceptions, but how do you freeze the context, use an action point, call the stakeholders together and resolve the breakdown. The fabric underlying an accelerating capability.

A new strategic triad:
* accelerate capability building
* dynamic specialization
* access complementary capabilities

The only sustainable edge is figuring out how to accelerate capabilities better than anyone else. Do this through partnerships that have mutual learning as an objective. Real purpose of the firm is not lowering transaction costs ( ac commodity), but how to accelerate through productive friction, the ability to learn and innovate.

Q&A out-takes: Doesn't think that Detroit will adapt in time. Dell and HP have. An executive visiting Bangalore was asked what they learned, and he said "no, we where here to show them how to do it." Many are doing it without thinking about what and how they can learn.

Amy Whol asks, does this work better if we wrap the social software tools around the processes formally or less formally? Fundamental intuition is that processes basically work for machines, it is work practices that we humans do. Handling exceptions is the basis of our practices.

Look at Cisco and how they work with their platinum dealers. They apply sophisticated eLearning tools to help them get better. Using those learnings get you to talk and see the world in a different way. How do you use assets that you don't control? Think about how you can work from an influence point of view and it will reveal a change of mindset that requires trust and respect. Need a transition from transaction thinking.

Open Media 100

I'm on the Open Media 100 List alongside some pretty cool folks.

Yahoo Social Search, Act I

At Supernova 2005, Jeff Weiner, SVP Yahoo! Search crunches the numbers on social search.  When regular people can share their knowledge, on subjects like how to buy real estate, and enough of them do...10 pages per subject -> 5k subjects per person - > 50 pages per person -> 7b people = 350 trillion pages ... you get orders of magnitude increase in searchable knowledge.  Today's search is a representative democracy without a fair election process.  The problem is not everyone blogs, but if they had a way to participate, make it easy for people to public and "vote" -- with personal, social and economic incentives --  Yahoo Music has 5 billion ratings, so just imagine feedback at that scale augmenting search (James notes in ITVC that HOTorNOT has 18B ratings, hardy har har).

They view the web as a play with three acts.

• Act I: Public (e.g. Web Search)
• Act II: Personal (e.g. Desktop Search)
• Act II Social (e.g. search communities)

Talks about their FUSE concept.  Highlights the role of Trust.  Demos My Web: saving a web page to My Web, then returning to Yahoo Search, where there is a second button to search what you have saved.  Demos search combined with Yahoo 360 reviews.  In other words, Our Web, with shared annotations between 2 degrees of separation.  Talks about Flickr and social discovery.  Marrying search and community.

I'm under embargo on something related to Jeff's talk.  Not sure if I am even allowed to say it is related, but there is an Act II and III to this play.

CTC Keynote: Thomas Malone

Notes from the Collaborative Technologies Conference in NYC, mirrored in the wiki, from a talk I've heard before by Thomas Malone, the author of The Future of Work -- but also with a quick video conference with Jimmy Wales while talking about Wikipedia.

Intro by the event organizer: Interop is the genesis of this conference, even the first shows had a collaboration thread.  But most of Interop focuses on IT.  Business side of collaboration is the harder problem to solve, the focus of this event and one of the goals is to credentialize the concept of collaboration.  Launched a new site, Collaboration Loop.  Folks collaborating in the wiki (when the wifi is up)

Thomas Malone starts by asking the question, how many of you are happy this morning?  This is one of the happiest audiences he has spoken to, apparently.  We are in the early stages of an increase in human freedom in business, an important a change in business as the change of democracy for governments.  The reason is it is now possible to have the economic benefits for very large organizations and at the same time have the human benefits of very small organizations: freedom flexibility and creativity.  Lower communication costs mean many people have enough information to make decisions for themselves.  But, just because it is possible, doesn't mean it will happen -- what drives these changes is what people want. People use their freedom to get more of what they want. 

Example: Wikipedia.  A little like open source software, but it is an open content encyclopedia.  Available for free for anyone to look at, but even more amazing -- available for anyone to change.  How could this possibly work?  The system automatically maintains a list of Recent Changes and frequent contributors are always watching that list, the repair or put it on a list of things needing repair.  Over time it gets better and better.  It is already really good, started in 2001, now has over 580,000 articles (English).  Not equal in quality to the Brittanica, but in some places better, because it can go in more detail.

Jimmy Wales, via video conference.  Asks him what really goes on under the surface.  Recent Changes is complemented by other tools to let the community monitor and participate: personal watchlists, communication within the website, it is about social community.  People meet each other, form groups and participate with the content.  Many people, international, in constant communication through IRC, the site, email.  Everyone is a volunteer except a recently hired lead software developer.  The big picture vision is a world where everyone in the world is given access to the world's knowledge.  This motivates people.  The second reason is it is a lot of fun.  Nupedia was too much work and not much fun.

This story illustrates human freedom (anyone can be an editor and make any change) coupled with global scale (drawing upon a global pool of experts with results made globally available).  What does this have to do with business?  Wikipedia isn't a business, is it? 

Second example: eBay.  One of the most successful companies, revenue growth is faster than any in history.  $3.3B revenue in 2004.  430,000 of their sellers make their primary living through eBay -- effectively the second largest employer in the country (behind Walmart, ahead of McDonalds).  They get to decide what to sell, when to sell it, how to describe it -- freedoms that are coupled with a scale previously unavailable for small businesses.  Again, the combination of freedom and scale.  They have invented a new an interesting way to do retailing, essentially outsourcing to independent sellers all the functions of retail.  Sellers are not paid by eBay, they pay eBay.  Creating the right infrastructure and community has let them generate significant value for themselves and the community.

What makes me believe this will become more common?  This is the next logical step in the common pattern in the evolution of human organizations.  Societies organized first as Bands (Decentralized, Unconnected), then Kingdoms (Centralized), then Democracies (Decentralized, Connected).   What explains this change?  A lot of factors involved, but communication costs is the most explanatory factor.  Writing let us have larger groups across larger areas.  But not everyone can make decisions, so they centralized.  For Democracy to make sense, citizens need enough information to vote sensibly (*we are still working on this part, IMHO*).  The printing press and widespread literacy let democracy flourish.

Even more interesting, this same pattern is repeating itself now, on a faster time scale, in business.  From Small, local businesses to Large, centralized corporations to Empowerment, Outsourcing and Networked organizations.  All from 1900 to now.  Now it is possible for large numbers of people to participate sensibly in making business decisions.

But just because it is possible, doesn't make it good.  Turns out that when people make decisions for themselves, they are highly motivated, creative, use ingenuity, are more flexible and adaptive to their situations (what is the look in the customer's eye) and simply like it better.  Those benefits aren't important everywhere -- such as when economies of scale are the focus.  But in our increasingly knowledge based an innovation driven economy, the critical factors for business success are the same benefits of decentralized decision making.  (*decentralization enables economies of span and scope which provides a sustainable innovative edge*) This is why I think this will happen in more parts of our economy over the next few decades.

Talks through the structure of Loose Hierarchies and the case of AES, the largest electric power producer.  Founded under principles of fairness, integrity, social responsibility and fun.  They didn't set out to build for big, only the most fun -- by having real responsibility for the things that matter.  Most important decision of the company, to buy someone in 2001, was made by someone relatively junior who never met the CEO.  If you make a decision, you don't have to get approval -- but you have to ask for advice.  Managers: spend a lot of time answering requests for advice by email, setting up structures and pick who to make decisions and play a role in compensation.

Talks through the structure of Democracy.  Shareholders vote to elect the Board of Directors who elects the CEO.  Many informal democracies in companies.  As technology makes information sharing available, we will see more use of this organizational design.  Gives the example of the Mondragon Cooperative in Spain, a very democratic example even though it doesn't leverage technology.  Workers are owners, one person, one vote, complex multi-level democratic structure.  Workers are motivated as owners and decision-makers.

Talks through the structure of Markets and eLance.  1-10 people per firm, temporary combinations for various projects.  Similar to how movies are made and housing constructed. At eLance, 200k businesses from over 140 countries registered, 40% of transactions cross national boundaries.  

Intel Scenario: internal market for manufacturing capacity.  Plan managers sell futures for producs they could produce at specific times in the future, Sales people trade it to be able to sell to external customers, prices fluctuate as knowledge of supply and demand changes, prices determine which products actually get produced in the factories and who gets to sell them.  Could this let them produce faster, cheaper and better matched to demand? Enable greater profitability and innovation?

How much of the intelligence of people throughout an organization can we use in a decentralized organization?  What percentage is effectively used today.  One hand was raised at 90% (it was EEK :-).  Survey is similar to the general response to the question, that most organizations don't even begin to take advantage of their human potential.  

Shows a video of an experiment of collective piloting of an airplane.  Amazingly, the participants successfully navigate a virtual course and has a blast doing it.  Uses it as an example for how we may be able to take advantage of our collective intelligence.

What does this mean for your management style?  From "command and control" to "coordinate and cultivate."  *Paradox of standards: sometimes rigid standards in one part of the organization can enable much more flexibility and decentralization in other parts of the system.*  For example, the internet and IP protocol.  In a business, if you can figure out the right area to apply standards (quality, financial controls, etc.) and give people lots more freedom in other areas, you can be more confident about the effects.  *Paradox of power: the best way to gain power is to give it away.*  Linus' empowerment of the Linux community.  AES and it's employees.  Pierre Omidyar and eBay.

What does this mean for IT?  Some of the most important innovations in the coming decades will not be new technologies.  They'll be be new ways of organiating work that are made possible by these new technologies.   What matters in business is what you do with IT.  Another level in the technology stack that is an organizational layer.  One of the most imporant messages of the talk is there will be innovations in the technology layers, some of the most important will be at the organizational layer.  An important challenge and opportunity as we go forward.

What does this mean for us as individuals?  You probably have more choices than you realize.  To make choices wisely, you need to thing about what really matters to you.  The answers can't be found from logic or politics --  they can only be found by listening to our own inner voices.  Concludes by reading this passage:

What can I catually do?  The answer is as simple as it is disconcerting: we can, each of us, work to put our own inner house in order.  The guidance we need for this work cannot be found in science or technology... but it can still be found in the tradtional wisdom of mankind.  
-- E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973.

Side thoughts: 
* The meta transitions from decentralized to centralized to connected decentralization is really an explanation of Modernism to Post-Modernism to the Network Age.
* Would be interesting to map the three structures for decision making to three models of production by Yochai Benkler.  I'd suggest that a greater role for social signals in Loose Heirarchies than the examples discovered so far.

Backtrack

I had to turn off Trackback because hundreds of nightly trackback spam are drowning out conversation and killing my time.

Flying today to the Collaborative Technologies Conference in NYC.  Back Tuesday morning for Supernova in SF.  See you somewhere.

Stealth is Old Skool

Mark Fletcher has a great post on why stealth mode is a stupid way to start a company with today's web. It's a point I've made before (The greatest market risk in social software is not engaging the network early), but let me add some parallel thoughts:

• Part of the rationale for stealth is competition. But there are more leaks than plumbers, and getting ahead of your competitors matters less than getting in bed with your users.
• Part of the rationale for stealth is stardom. When media was broadcast, you countered lack of access with exclusivity. Now you need to be inclusive from the get go.
• Part of the rationale for stealth is building barriers to entry. But to Mark's point, this stuff isn't about millions of lines of code and complexity anymore.

Entrepreneurship is experimenting at the margin, so get out there and start pushing boundaries.

What Does the New Internet Mean for Business?

Perhaps the most fascinating conversation I've had in recent weeks was with Kevin Werbach, Janice Fraser (CEO, Adaptive Path, recently authored A Whole New Internet) and Philip Evans (SVP at Boston Consulting Group, author of Blown to Bits).  In advance of Supernova 2005, a good part of it is posted on Knowledge@Wharton:

Wikis, Weblogs and RSS: What Does the New Internet Mean for Business?
The Internet is entering a new phase that will decentralize control within companies, enable employees to collaborate more easily, and drive efficiency. But corporations that want to use the web strategically to build corporate value will not just need to make radical cultural changes, they may also need to master a new vocabulary with terms such as Wikis, Weblogs, and RSS. What will this new Internet mean for business?

Skyped Podcast of the Conversation. The text goes up behind a registration wall, like the JSB and Hagel interview, so read it now.  And see you at Supernova next week.

Dow Jones Enterprise Ventures Panel on Collaboration

David Coleman, Managing Director, Collaborative Strategies

Market has matured quickly, 150 vendors and 50 resellers in the real-time collaboration space. Other areas are underserved. No dominant player in any single segment.

Charles Digate, President & CEO, Convoq

Goal was always to pick a space and go deep into it. First year was generic collaboration and conferencing (Integrated presence and collaboration system using Macromedia Flash messaging substrate), now doing a deep dive into SFA platforms (see my last post).

Bill Maimone, VP, Collaboration Suite Development, Oracle

Both tech and app vendor that happened to get slightly larger over the last few months. What's interesting is applying this technology to an application. Make it disappear into a business process and solve a problem. Learning how to walk through all the line of business applications.

Brian Goffman, General Manager, Strategy and Business Development, Real-Time Collaboration, Microsoft

Don't look at this as all one market. Lots of businesses beginning to converge. 3 big bets:

• Presence is a fundamental capability being extended into applications
• Mobility based on status of their phone
• Capabilities being built into applications. First in Office and Sharepoint, later going into SAP and other big vendors.

David Hornik, Partner and World-fameous-wiseass, August Capital

Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah. Blah. Blah blah blah.

(what he really said: the interesting stuff is what is broadly applicable. There are established technologies, but if someone came to me with something that lived on top of outlook it may be interesting because it lives symbiotically with something that is a platform. Early IM or SMS. Six Apart was interesting because MT is broadly applicable and people are using it as something differently many ways by enterprises. Easily adaptable product that enterprises do with it .

Coleman: I would disagree with you

Hornik: You are not allowed to do that!

Coleman: If you are a small startup, you add value by integrating with a specific industry or process or both. Go after the vertical process things. Fine point of view, I just don;t agree with it. Opportunity to innovate in ways the big guys can't cope with. 20M downloads and innovation on top of Skype as a platform. We couldn't have predicted Skype or the wonderful world of wikis.

Goffman: Lots of models at work in Conferencing. Only now is it going vertical. Don't have to start that way.

Wiki and blog capability?

Maimone: IM when it first came out was considered for teenagers. But you get to understand technologies. Isee these wikis sprouting at my company, and we are asking the question where this is applicable and how it is distinguished . Maybe some other company will show us the way (hello!).

Coleman: Blog is a single threaded asynchronous discussion, whereas Chuck is doing something different.

Digate: RSS integration with IM.

Maimone: When someone has to think what technology am I going to use for this, you have lost them.

Goffman: Presence icon as a doorway to application, as an example of how these things converge.

Hornik: It's contextual, but my sense is there is a movement towards simplicity. Look at Basecamp, where it's simple to understand, limited and cheap on a per instance basis. There will be places for broader and more integrated apps. Simple, limited but powerful applications that help people just get going. I invest in small companies, so the answer is clear: these big brands mean nothing.

Digate: Either identify some turf or real-estate like MT for blogs or Skype for telephony, the other model, like ours, is to affiliate with big brand names and draft in their wake. Both are pretty sound. The latter is less dependent upon market timing.

Goffman: 300 ISPs building on top of their real-time platforms. Persistent chat in hedge funds and similar companies that build around our products. Have a build vs. buy ROI approach. Groove is outside his product group, but there is a long history between the firms -- main driver was to build P2P into Longhorn and Office, it's still being kept as a standalone company, in it's own office.

Maimone: Have done some quiet technology acquisitions, getting some IP in Web Conferencing and Calendaring. Was looking for tech and deep vertical industry knowledge. Third to that is acquiring market share.

Coleman: Financial sevices, government, education, manufacturing (slowly getting it), health, pharma have all been good verticals for collaboration.

Hornik: At some conferences MS describes what they are not going to do. Do what you can do better on your own. With RSS there was newness and thinking that created opportunity. Using RSS and delivering it to IM seems logical. RSS is push instead of pull, IM is a delivery device. Makes sense. Startups look at these things in the context of the technologies as they evolve, without being constrained by what we have built (Outlook, email paradigm).

Coleman: But what problem does it solve?

Hornik: You don't use IM, do you?

Coleman: IM moved from early adopters to those who are risk adverse. Got to solve a problem.

Goffman: All of these things solve a problem. Wikis, blogs and other things are not being bought by IT and are entering the enteprise from the bottom up, there isn't a budget for them now -- but some day there will be.

Maimone: Need line of business adoption to prompt IT

Coleman: Selling to the line of business is solving a problem. Sell a sales management tool instead of broad application and you will get more traction.

Hornik: New tech is not immediately broadly adopted because they are new, so you get bottom up adoption. Not something you go to an enterprise and say here is a big thing that will change your process to get x ROI. The reaction is, are you insane? But, if IM is the thing that is delivering mission critical info to a trading desk all of the sudden, then they start to support it and have new requirements.

(rested my fingers while they talked about compliance)

Coleman: Audio, then data, then video conferencing is the sequence of demand in conferencing.

Hornik: ultimately platforms will have to deal with different modalities and keep them unique

Coleman: Status tells you if someone is on or off. Presence itself is useful, but it isn't enough. I want to be able to be interrupted only by my boss or family. Attention management is a major issue.

Digate: We call that intrusion management. We have a simple interface for limiting access to a VIP list.

Maimone: Got a request from Larry's office for a "Find that Guy" application, where he can get someone in 1/2 hour. Got a call at Home Depot on the weekend to his wife's cell phone once. You can't solve these problems with rules.

Goffman: People don't change defaults, don't customize.

Coleman: Would love to see calendar coordination between internal and external people.

Attensa at Dow Jones Enterprise Ventures

Today I spoke at the Dow Jones Enterprise Ventures conference about Socialtext, but found a couple other Social Software companies. Five Across listed us as a competitor, so I rejigged my slide to list them, and joked about it with Glenn Reid.

Came across Attensa, which was speaking about their RSS Aggregator company in public for about the first time. Here's my quick notes:

Attensa says we are having the same email overload problems we were having with email, using Scoble's consumption of 1400 feeds a day as an example. Offering an RSS Reader Client (for users), RSS Servers (for IT) and RSS Network Infrastructure (for publishers and marketers).

On the client, Outlook versions that range from $20 to $60 per year, free web-based version. Says it's best of class, it's in beta. Has browser toolbars that accelerate subscription. Workgroup server is $600-$5,000k proxy server that lets you manage users, groups, policies, configuration.

Secret sauce is attention metadata (channeling Steve Gillmor). Aggregates, processes and analyzes attention meta data in near real time. Uses attention streams (1M so far) across outlook, offline, mobile, embedded, toolbar clients through their servers and network. Intelligent synch is also a feature of Newsgator. They will support attention.xml (don't yet), today have their goal is having fewer and more relevant articles by leveraging attention streams, triangulation and collaborative filtering of real-time metrics.

Have revenues from something they were doing before, Usoftware, which did digital marketing, happened upon the core and applicable technology for attention aggregation, it's a kind of restart. Total of 3 customers in their beta program at decent scales (in other words, they are doing the traditional enterprise software model of stealth mode development to a handful of customer requirements, rather than releasing early, often and openly).

This is Craig Barnes' fourth company, previously did Now Software, and Extensis. Has worked with his key engineers for a total of 15 years so far. $3.2 M raised to date from Smart Forest, Second Ave, CGI and Capybara. Now looking towards a Series B.

I asked him about the differentiation from the market leader, Newsgator, which isn't particularly clear. Apparently the difference is a network, rather than client-server approach -- tracking what is read, not just what is fetched. Sounds good, but it's both early in the game and they are late to the party in a crowded space.

Also saw Chuck Digate of Convoq at the Dow Jones Enterprise Ventures conference emphasizing how great of a solution they are for sales -- publishing presence and leveraging trusted communications to accelerate the sales cycle. They are embedding their technology within Salesforce and Siebel (I'd assume SugarCRM is next), to enable escalation within workflow. Demos a click in a client email to live presentation to captured record within Salesforce. Click to pitch. But also looking to aggregate all the main IM platforms into unified presence. You will recall that Socialtext integrated to present Convoq presence within wiki pages. Emphasizes openness and media richness as differentiators against other web conferencing plays.

And speaking of sales, my quote of the day via John Roberts of SugarCRM: "Our products are bought, not sold." Who says enterprise software is dead?

Innovate!Europe

The other conference in Europe I should have attended is Innovate!Europe. Chris Shipley has brought together a great group to talk about the challenges for innovation in Europe, and rightly framed the issue as a commercialization gap, not technology.  Europe has a risk averse culture reflected by it's institutions.  Entrepreneurs lack supportive networks and have to rail against structures meant to protect old wealth. 

The marketing function we call Silicon Valley has never been replicated, despite attempts to slap Silicon on every conceivable geographic feature or incubate beyond the hatchery.  Europe needs it's own evolutionary approach for reform to support revolutionaries.

The event comes at an interesting time where global competitiveness and institutions are being questioned.  Follow along with blog posts and the wiki.

Technorati Tags: innovateeurope05

Look, Mom!

News.com's Experience Edge has three short videos on Evolving Collaboration, including yours truly.

Wiki while you work James Hilliard looks at the corporate wiki, an editable Web site designed for quick and easy group project management.

Getting 'wiki' with the team Wiki users and experts offer insight on implementing a wiki at work, as well as on preparation for the learning and acceptance curve for both staff and management.

Is business waking up to wiki? John Seely Brown co-author of the recently released The Only Sustainable Edge and Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield discuss the emerging role of the wiki in the evolution of corporate collaboration.

The interviews provide explain wikis, their challenges and potential in a simple way.

Wikitorials

Blogging LA reports that the LA Times is launching "Wikitorials."  From the editorial page:

"Watch next week for the introduction of "wikitorials" — an online feature that will empower you to rewrite Los Angeles Times editorials."

This is one media experiment to watch.  However, from Socialtext's experience with public wikis, offering up otherwise finished text for rewrite has limited effect.  Generally, wikis can work best when something is slightly unfinished, when room for contribution is left clear.  Finished text leads people to drop in links or short comments.    Quite different from wikitechture that involves people in the process of production and encourages development of shared practices.

Also, this is a marked departure from the reference model most public wiki users know, the neutral point of view of Wikipedia.  Almost begs for edit wars.  But starting with the least newsy section of the news could be a good place to start.

UPDATE: I should also disclose that it is a life-long dream to debate Michael Kinsley.

Skype and Yahoo!: Rumors with No Source

There is ridiculous buzz that Yahoo! is in talks to acquire Skype. Let's follow the quotes and links...

Engadget: It’s sort of early in the game on this, but word on the street is that Skype and Yahoo are in “close contact,” as in, snuggly enough to talk about a possible buyout. (post doesn't link to any source)

Om Malik: It is too early to tell, what is going on, but there seems to be rumors floating that Skype and Yahoo are in close contact, and perhaps cooking up a commercial partnership. The reports are based on a post on Jean-Michel’s blog. ...Stay tuned - I am on the trail right now!

Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz: Jean-Michel reports on his blog that very serious discussions are being held between the 2 companies.

Jean Michel Billaut: C'est ce que l'on dit dans les milieux trés autorisés... Yahoo rachétera-t-il Skype ? Ou alors Yahoo proposerait-il à Skype un model de partage de revenus ?
En tout cas, c'est "on the road"...

Which roughly translates: It is what one says in official trés circles... Will Yahoo rachétera Skype? Or then would Yahoo propose in Skype a model of division of incomes? In any case, it is "on the road"...

So, the original report is a guy in France who seems to be speculating himself.

Doug Englebart, Rebooted

Yesterday I helped Doug Englebart video conference to Reboot7 in Copenhagen.  Since I had to bow out of speaking there, was the least I could do.  And seeing how all the valley is doing is reinventing something Doug implemented a long time ago, it was, as always, an amazing experience.

Doug provided an intro to The Mother of All Demos and engaged in Q&A (transcript by Mei Lin). 

From talking with Doug, while most of his great ideas have been implemented (we were in his office at Logitech) -- he views his work as an unfinished revolution.  Over the years he has seen the industry become infatuated with feature after feature, but never fulfilling our full potential.  The oNLine System [aka the NLS] is still operation on his desk (recall the demo occurred before even the Internet was born, and when Arpanet came around NLS was the second node, and he invented the thin client) and he continues his mission with vigorous optimism for open source.

I demoed Socialtext, Flickr, del.icio.us and other social software we love for Doug.  Played with hyperlinks, talked Purple Numbers.  Dug deep into tagging -- which is remarkably close to the use of keywords in NLS. Discussed differences of personal productivity to group productivity.  Demonstrated some of the interface innovation with Ajax in the web.  Of course he groked it:

In 1965, Engelbart told me, "we had developed a way of sending email, and making any word of a document into a permalink, which could be linked to any other document or word and easily published to others. Essentially we had blogs and wikis."

Some say that Doug's ideas didn't diffuse because they were pinned down by research institutions, or that like PARC they were commercialized by others because the institute was too open.  Horsepucky.

At the core of Doug's design philosophy is augmentation (change behavior) instead of automation (ease of use).  Listen to his thoughts on how WYSIWYG is actually clumsy, for example, and consider how the computer is a tool in the context of users.

Think for a moment about how commercialization really occurs in the Valley.  We develop products for mainstream adoption and pay particular attention to market risk.  One of the greater perceived risks is requiring a change of behavior on the part of users.  This product risk is one of the most common reasons for a VC to say no, and in many cases for good reason -- if a product actually requires people to learn how to use it, who knows if they will?  Doug points out that if diffusion really worked that way we would ride tricycles instead of bicycles.

It's not just that Doug was disruptively ahead of his time, it's that the Valley is really engineered to produce sustaining innovations. 

We herald the PC revolution, but we should remember that it made us forget to share.  Timesharing enabled groups to share a common pool resource, sharing that, which impacted social dynamics.  With PCs, we were left on our own, however empowered.  When isolated, Microsoft imposed constraints that led to the formation of computer clubs.  If you want to understand open source, and in fact, the entire social wave of innovation we are in the midst of -- have a little homebrew.

Open source presents an opportunity for the unfinished revolution where social signals can drive production.  Doug is optimistic that the community can build new augmentation capabilities and that there is a role in commercialization for making things easier to learn.  The pace of social innovation has certainly accelerated in recent years and even business strategy is shifting from automation for competitive advantage.  There is a renewed interest in Doug's concepts for developing new capabilities. 

Perhaps just in time, as the pace of societal change is growing beyond our capabilities to fathom.  In Doug's own words: But we are not getting collectively smarter – spells disaster – maybe I can contribute to that – to contribute to our collective ability to understand and cope with complex problems.

UPDATE: Silicon Valley Watcher has an interview with Doug on how the rise of the PC killed funding for his work.

Fear the Noise

Steve Rubel points to the noise on blogging from a UPS marketing executive:

...What concerns me about blogs is the signal to noise ratio -- do we really need all these niche, special-interest blogs, or will it become increasingly difficult to find relevance amidst the seas of personal web journals (or diatribes) without much to offer the broader constituency?"

Steve turns fear into greed, as this is an opportunity for FedEx. But the noise about noise is overhyped. Signal and noise gets distributed evenly in blogspace. Noisy blogs go unlinked.

The counter-signal is smart keyword searches that go unmediated through link-based authority mechanisms. These create false signals for brand monitors. They don't impact PageRank and networks of commerce.

(oye, I'm blogging about blogging, must be making up for a low signal and noise week)

Random Rants

Nuclear Option: Maybe we could just blog a blanket disclosure that you are completely untrustable, read at your own risk, so we don't have to hold back for bias or disclose something in every other post?

Lingweenie: Cognitive displaysia got you phonecrastinating and confuzzled? Ginormous slickery snirt increases gription risk. Chillax, summer is here -- w00t!

Weather Maps: All I want is doppler radar with callouts on Google Maps.

Meritage: The boom market for e-commerce is wine, now that regulators have enabled cross-state commerce.

Roof: One more picture of these geeks pretending to play volleyball and I shall throw the gauntlet down to show them the roof over their heads.

UnusableRL: Get this machine generated garbage out of my way: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=vote+links+&btnG=Search

Return of the Indians: This time of year I hear the call of their drums from my backyard, thanks to the Stanford Powwow.

Everybody Journalism: Is Craigslist getting into news just founder pity on the creative destruction they have wrath or a reflection of how every vibrant web community has the potential to turn us into reporters?

Collective Sigh: Wouldn't it be great if bloggers agreed to take a collective week off? Gaining agreement isn't the problem, it's the temptation to defect with the lure of aimless traffic.

Where?: I can't wait for all this tech, using Plazes tagged Mac addresses instead.

Where scares people: It's easy to write off national security issues of where. But mark my words that the first time the public will grok the panopticon and truly vest themselves in privacy issues is when mobile GPS goes mainstream.

You call this progress?: Two of my systems were broken lately. Del.icio.us V.2 went Ajaxy on me, took over my auto-complete tagging approach and made it slower to load. Tiger killed the ability to quickly jump to flagged messages in Mail.app (if I haven't returned your important message, that's my excuse).

Occupational Trackback: It's bad enough I'm dealing with Trackback spam, but when a real person trackbacks me to read their post that builds on something I have written, but doesn't attribute with a link, I'm not sure I'll go there again.

/end rant

Enterprise Wiki un-DRMs

In a great argument against DRM inside the enterprise (e.g. asserting control over email), a truly salient point:

When I talk to working IT professionals, the trend is to open up information "behind the firewall" at a company-not lock it down. People aren't worried about how to DRM-ize everything. Instead, I'm seeing enterprise Wikis. "Enterprise Wiki" still sounds funny, but companies with lots of trade secrets are rolling them out. "Edit this Page" adds value, and DRM has the opposite effect.