W R Carlson: Professional Stuff

Strategy Guides vs Bosses - New gamer lingo bleeds into the workplace

Fri, 29 Apr 2005 20:35:46 GMT

Thanks Shifted for the Gaming Post - Wow Strategy Guides vs Bosses - I like the concepts

I’m late to the whole gaming and how it affects libraries thing, but I’m a total convert now and it’s something I’m going to actively track from now on. At first I thought it was just interesting, and while I did like the idea of bringing tweens and teens into the library using gaming as a social carrot, I’m gaining a totally different perspective for the way we can use the characteristics, expectations, and interplay of gaming and gamers in a “tipping point” kind of way.

The latest catalyst for this round of “gaming on my brain” is Moira Gunn’s interview with John Beck for IT Conversations. I’ve listened to the podcast of it twice in the last three days, and a couple of his points really resonate with me. In case you’re not familiar with him, Beck wrote Got Game: How the Gamer Generation Is Reshaping Business Forever, and this podcast is the first chance I’ve really had to hear him talk about all of this since Audible doesn’t carry the audiobook and I’ve never seen Beck speak in person. While listening to it, all I could think of was Brent and how much Beck totally nails him and his friends. I even made Sheree listen to the interview and she agrees with me, although we both disagree with Beck about gender differences because most of the girls we know don’t play video games much at all.

At one point in the interview, Gunn asks Beck how gamers will change the workplace, and Beck provides an example observation that in video games, there are “level bosses” that you have to beat in order to advance further in the game. So one of the things you don’t want to be in real life if you’re a gamer or the supervisor of a gamer is a “boss.” I hadn’t thought about that before, although I always hear Brent talking about bosses in a negative way. In fact, when he started playing video games years ago and he first told me he was having trouble beating the “boss,” I thought that was the name of the character he was fighting. It took me awhile to realize it was his generic term for “the big bad guy at the end of the level.” Then came the realization that it wasn’t just him using the term, it was all of his friends. Imagine his surprise when he first heard me talking about my boss in a positive way!

Beck goes on to say that in the workplace, you don’t want to be a “boss,” but rather a “strategy guide,” because that’s what gamers rely on, especially to beat the boss. And as I was listening to this, it struck me that this is an excellent description of librarians! I’ve always liked that comic drawing of a librarian sitting behind a reference desk with a sign on it that says “search engine,” but now I’ve decided that I’d rather be a “strategy guide” instead. In fact, if I could, I’d change my job title to “strategy guide.” That’s exactly how we need to market ourselves to gamers, boomers, bosses, everyone. The big question, of course, is how to do that and more and more, I think gaming offers clues for how to do that.

If you don’t really understand why this gaming stuff is important, why it will be important in the future (the not-so-distant-future), why it will affect everyone (including you) or why gamers truly are different than you or me, then this interview is a great place to start. I highly recommend you listen to it. And don’t let anybody tell you that these kids aren’t any different than we were at their age, because they’re not like us at all. I was struck by how Beck’s descriptions of gamers mirror so closely the way I talk about NetGens (aka Millennials) in my own presentations. I’m going to have to rework my stuff a bit to highlight the gamer aspect of this generation.

Oh, and if you listen to the Beck interview and get as excited and intrigued about all of this as I did, be sure to register for our upcoming Tech Summit on Gaming @ Your Library! Thanks to our Executive Director, Alice Calabrese, I get to attend the ADL Games, Learning, & Society Conference in June, after which I’m debating trying to put together a day-long symposium/discussion/whatever specifically about gaming and libraries.

[The Shifted Librarian]

Thanks Sooz for the LimoLiner review - always wondered... may be taking it in the near future.

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 01:44:06 GMT

Live review of the LimoLiner from Boston to New York City.

I'm on my way (as I type this) to New York City for this month's in-person conspiring with Josh Darden. He's a long-time friend and newish client. I usually take the cheap Fung Wah Bus to and from NYC but this time I decided to try out the LimoLiner for the trip to NYC and then take the Fung Wah bus ($15) back home. The biggest perk with LimoLiner is that they have internet access (ethernet and WiFi) included with the $69 (each way) ticket price. It's $10 less than Amtrak, too. I was going to take a photo of the setup at my seat and upload it but I put the USB cable for Michael's camera in the bag that's under the bus. Oops!

They just served lunch which was actually edible: ham and cheese sandwich (other choices were turkey and veggie), pasta salad and a chocolate chip coookie. The sticker on the outside of the bag said Boston Cafe and Catering. The beverage choices were the typical juice, sodas, iced tea and coffee served in a plastic medium-sized cup.

We stopped at the Hilton in Framingham where they picked up additional passengers. A small television in front of me is playing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I can't remember what the second movie is going to be.

There's a small meeting room in the back where a handful of people are seated at a table and the comfy chairs we've got in the rest of the bus.

It's pretty damn amazing to be able to do work while online enroute to New York. I'm surprised that no one around me has a computer in front of them. The age range of most people on the bus seems to be 40-60. There might be one or two people closer to my age (31). I'll upload a few photos tonight.

[The Life & Times of Sooz]

One thing leads to another in reverse chrono order - Here's Elegant's reference to Victor Lobardi's quote from Niti Bhan's article on the changing playing field of design

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 23:14:28 GMT

While you were out: changes in the global design industry
by Niti Bhan

Brad Nemer saw the future of the design industry when he arrived at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago in January 2002. Next week during his commencement exercises, Brad will not only receive a Master of Design degree but also a Master of Business Administration degree. After completing this grueling and unique dual degree in only three years, he will work in portfolio planning at Motorola.

"I chose the dual-degree path for two reasons. After working in several high-tech startups, where the product essentially is the company, it became clear that no matter how grand the vision, design is managed in the context of business." He said as he explained his choice of degrees, "So it is critical to understand the basic forces of accounting, marketing, and organizational management, because otherwise even the best designs in the world will go nowhere. The much-celebrated divide between "designers" and "suits" is not only counter-productive to success all around, it's inaccurate. Once you demystify business fundamentals, they become just like any other design constraint, and are no more insurmountable."

And he isn't the only one recognizing the changes occurring rapidly in the design industry. Victor Lombardi, a consultant in New York, resigned his fulltime design management job to co-found The Management Innovation Group, a new breed of management consulting firm. "My partners and I view design as a way of thinking which is applicable far beyond the design of products" he explained. "Our clients want to explore innovative business strategies, ways of collaborating, and ultimately to develop their own innovation capabilities." So while Lombardi's firm thinks like designers, they work with executives to help them explore the options a more creative approach can offer. "It's not easy for people to stretch their thinking to encompass both business- and customer-centric points of view, but ultimately this is what we need to do to create innovative, human-centered organizations." His blog has an area earmarked for the intersection of business and design.

Increased competition in the industry, improvements in the global technology infrastructure, relentless pressure to lower costs in every industry are just a few of the forces leading a major shift in the field of design. Where earlier, design was the department brought in after marketing or sales or the advertising agency decided that a "new and improved" product or brand extension was required to penetrate a target market or increase profits for a brand. This usually resulted in incremental improvements in product and profits. Notes Sharon Reier in her article When looks count the most, companies are now increasingly seeking to integrate design as a strategic tool for creating shareholder value. These companies understand that the real value in design is using it to improve the entire user experience, where advertising specialists and marketing managers focus more on the buying decision alone.

In Redesigning American Business, BusinessWeek's Bruce Nussbaum underscores this shift, he says, "Design in America isn't about form but innovation, in the guise of new products and services." With the design industry's shift in core competencies from drawing to thinking, from styling to innovating, from shaping things to visualizing new paradigms, what are the opportunities for designers today?

Traditionally, the majority of the design profession considered itself above and apart from "big business", perceiving it as obsessed with numbers, dollars and the bottom line. To successfully pitch themselves as an innovation resource, as consultants for change, this thinking is the biggest hurdle to overcome. The language of design itself is evolving to incorporate terms usually bandied in the halls of business schools, such as ROI (return on investment), NPV (net present value), Porter's five forces and Kotler's 4 P's. Few design schools teach the basic elements of business, less so in undergraduate programs. In the meantime, business schools are quickly catching on to the importance of design thinking, and integrating parts of it into their curricula.

Where does it leave the traditional product designer or studio? Michael Winnick, Head of Business Development at GravityTank, a strategic product development adds "..with the increasing commoditization of the back end, low intellectual investment portion, a service that most OEMs in China can now offer as part of their service, industrial design firms need to restructure to focus more on the product definition end, the early research, the strategic design planning and platform innovation end of the development cycle in order to generate revenue and stay profitable." Nussbaum implies an evolve-or-go-under scenario for smaller design firms. Evolution implies a strong willingness to adapt to changing scenarios, "prototyping" so to speak. As designers, change, flexibility and adaptability should be easier than most to achieve. While there are no quick fixes, there are short term and longer-term solutions worth considering.

In the short term, design firms can partner with business strategy consultants to offer new and expanded service offerings above and beyond the norm. Expanding their services, hiring marketing and product management professionals with business degrees and incorporating them into their design teams will allow them to present complete solutions to their existing clients as business cases for new products.

Along with retooling their service offerings, smaller firms can look at developing new markets for their areas of expertise. Most major research universities have technology transfer offices that specialize in the commercial applications of nascent technology emerging from their laboratories. Partnering with such local offices to offer product development services to shorten the path to market and commercial viability of inventions benefits both partners. Good design increases the likelihood of the patents being licensed by large corporations and leads to new avenues for revenue generation.

In the longer term, American and European firms can seek new clients and partners abroad. Increasingly, Asian OEM suppliers are moving towards building their own brands and leveraging their cost advantage to enter developed markets. A major opportunity exists in designing products for Asian manufacturers for the North American and European markets. Attending consumer electronic and consumer product trade shows in the Far East is one way to reach new clients. While local design talent may be cost effective, Asian manufacturers are limited by their lack of exposure to the American consumer and the American market. This experience is a significant advantage for American design firms.

Many options for continuing education exist for mid career design professionals seeking to enhance their professional skills for the changing market situation. There are short courses on business fundamentals available in local community colleges, focused workshops and classes at business schools, part time programs in business or for those really looking enhance their marketability, fulltime graduate programs such as an MBA or the Master of Design Methods.

Fresh graduates, already concerned with the increasing competition for product design jobs and shrinking design market for traditional services, can begin to apply the same skills they honed as designers to reposition themselves as innovators, creative thinkers with the ability to think out of the box, a trait in short supply in business at the best of times. Areas such as marketing, advertising, promotions, event management, while not traditional design jobs, are all avenues to gain valuable work experience if the right design job is not available. Meanwhile, these industries offer opportunities for creative work without the job title of "Designer", to build your portfolio, and to explore other areas of business, all of which can add value to the designer's resume. For example, Motorola's Consumer Experience Division has advertised a position titled "Marketing Manager" but the job description and requirements point towards a communication design professional with the ability to visually communicate brand and marketing concepts with clarity. Continuing on to graduate school is, of course, an option, and here is a quick look at what you need to consider if you take this path.

The playing field in the design industry is very different today than it was even ten years ago. If you are a current student you should take care to ensure that your education is not preparing you for a game of baseball, because upon graduation you'll be playing futbol. For young designers five to ten years into their careers, you should familiarize yourself with your employer's plan to remain competitive over the next five years, and make sure that the plan includes a position for you. And owners of design firms should understand the forces at play and take care to develop plan to remain viable, before your employees start asking about it.

Niti Bhan is a global nomad, neither fully immersed in the West nor entirely at home in the East. With background spanning engineering, business and design, Niti is most adept doing what no one does best. Her present incarnation is as Director of Admissions at the Institute of Design, IIT.

Elegant Hack "The MFA is the new MBA" - maybe a bit of a reach, but onto something here.

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 22:47:52 GMT

The User Experience Community is Thinking too Small
Posted in :: User Centered Design ::

Reading OK/Cancel: The User Experience Community is Thinking Too Big all I could think was dudes, can we collectively move on now? How small and petty is the community if we even ask questions like "who owns user experience?" (though admittedly it packs the seats) At the multi-organization panel on the previous question, I joked that fairly often IA has owned it, mostly because they tend to do what nobody else is doing (like neatly organzing pages), and often no one has bothered to think about the overarching experience. Odd, that.

But does the discipline of IA own UX? Nah, it's not possible. In fact, UX doesn't own UX. The best work ever for the "user's experience" is done by multidisciplinary teams and by multidisciplinary team I don't mean a designer and IA and a researcher, I mean the real kind in which programmers and product managers and marketing gets their hands dirty in the brainstorming and visioning and making and playing.

Still worried about the ROI of design? It's done, people-- read businessweek as well as alistapart for a change, and you'll see everyone is already on board! Hass and Standford are adding design to their curriculum, the MFA is the new MBA, and so on and so on.... They are sold on what you do: now you have to actually live up to their expectations. Scared yet?

It's time for all the usual suspects to stop sniping at their neighbor in the next cube, and start making-- making new products, making new relationships, making new learnings, making new markets, making new ways of business.

Don't worry about the professional organizations that are blooming like mushrooms in the rain-- enjoy them, and grab some of the juicy templates and articles that show up on AIGA and AIFIA and so on. Don't bag on the usability people, ask them to find out some new stuff for you to work with, and hey, ask them what they think of blue, anyhow. Design's not so precious a power that you can't ask for someone's two cents.

YOU AREN'T YOUR TITLE, and if IA becomes the standard title, or ID, or IxD or whatever, who cares... let's go design some cool new stuff.

The presentation I gave in Scandinavia reminded me of how exciting things are right now.... not since '99 have we seen so many new interesting applications of data, technology and knowledge. Do you really want to be wasting your time fighting over who gets to choose if it's a drop-down or a radio button when you could be jamming on the next flickr or newsmap?

Please.

[IA? EH.]

I Like the NewsMap - derivative of the investment maps

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 22:43:58 GMT

visualize this
Posted in :: Information Design ::

10x10 / 100 Words and Pictures that Define the Time / by Jonathan J. Harris is an interesting visualization of the news, but not nessarily a visualizationtool-- the imagergy iscompelling, but not meaningful. Compare to newsmap
where size + attention, and you can slice and dice based on country. Which is a understanding interface, and which is merely colorful?

[IA? EH.]

Ditto - Congrats on the New Position Werner!

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 23:31:52 GMT

Werner and I met at BloggerCon 2003 - where we stood outside and had a cigarette with Adam Curry. Since then, I've been following him via my aggregator and those of people around him who know him better than I do.

Hope to reconnect at some point - but this position sounds like it could be really cool and fun!

====================

Go Werner!.

Go Werner!

Werner Vogel's heading to Seattle to work for Amazon as Director of Research -- I'm thrilled for him. [Halley's Comment]

Thanks again David Gurteen - for a series of interesting Social Network Links

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:45:19 GMT

Unlocking Human Potential Through Social Networking. By David Gurteen

I was just looking to learn a little more on Social Networking for my upcoming Exploiting Social Networking in Organizations conference in September and stumbled across a post by Robin Good on his weblog where he raves about a paper from Lee Bryant on the topic. Now it just so happens I have seen Lee speak, the last time at the Social Tools Symposium conference in London last week and was so impressed with his deep understanding of the subject and the people issues that I 'signed him up' to speak at my conference.

In Robin Good's words: "the paper entitled Smarter, Simpler, Social - An introduction to online social software methodology is an absolutely brilliant and well referenced resource to understand and appreciate the forces at work in our communication efforts."

Robin is spot on. The paper is brilliant. [Gurteen Knowledge Log]

The Zuboff Clamshell - reigns again. Shoshana was one of my Profs at HBS - Let me plug her book sight unseen til now.

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:43:18 GMT

The Support Economy. By David Gurteen

A week or so ago John Maloney e-mailed me a weblog entry of Bill Ives on the book The Support Economy by Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin. I loved the opening premise:

"The Support Economy starts with a compelling premise: People have changed more than the corporations upon which their well-being depends. In the chasm that now separates the new individuals from the old organizations is the opportunity to forge a capitalism suited to our times and so unleash a vast new potential for wealth creation."

And then at the week-end, although the book was published in 2002, it was the fist book I come across in my local bookshop. So of course I just had to buy it. Its not light reading and I have only got through the first 30 pages or so but the concepts are awesome. Here is another quote:

"The last fifty years have seen the rise of a new society of individuals, but corporations continue to operate according to the logic of managerial capitalism, invented a century ago for different people, different markets, and different needs. Today's individuals seek psychological self-determination. They are the origins of their own meanings, not a passive mass audience."

I like that phrase "psychological self-determination". To me its another way of saying that people are becoming more responsible for their own lives and learning to be themselves. [Gurteen Knowledge Log]

Link to excerpts of a leaders guide to storytelling by Steve Denning

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:41:09 GMT

And know thanks to david gurteen - here it is...

New Weblog from Steve Denning. By David Gurteen

I have learnt that Steve Denning has got a weblog - thanks to Lilia Efimova and Carla Verwijs.

This weblog contains advance excerpts of his next book "A Leaders Guide to Storytelling" to be published in 2005. [Gurteen Knowledge Log]

Reminds me of the HBR article on storytelling a month or two ago...

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:37:39 GMT

Storytelling and KM.

Bill Ives takes a look at storytelling and knowledge management in six parts.

[elearningpost]

Corporate Social Networking is Datamining in disclosed, High-Trust Networks - It is not moving beyond the Horizon.

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:27:45 GMT

Good example of business networking through social knowledge management. This is a case from Interface Software's files from a Boston-based accounting firm.

Concept: Query Partners for personal relationships with CEOs -> Prepare direct mail piece -> Insert personal note from Partner with the relationship.

"The marketing team queried the system and determined that partners had existing relationships with fifty percent of the 200 CEOs on the new prospect list. A high-end mailing piece was sent to each of those 200 CEOs, along with a personal note by the internal relationship holder. “The results were phenomenal,“ said Jill Hulsen, Vitale Caturano’s director of marketing. “Twenty-three of those two hundred companies we mailed to have since become clients, with resulting revenues in excess of 5 million,“ she added. “We could never have expected results like this from a mailer without the advantage of knowing about those personal relationships in advance.” [thanks to Scotsman.com]"

Now, is it necessary to have internal corporate social networking software to do this? I suppose the abilty to do the query is greatly enhanced by scanning the social networks (rolodexes) of the Partners without the effort of having to ask each of them to do it... In fact this is probably the key advantage of the system.

So why not ryze or LinkedIn? I suppose it comes down the the issue of people not putting their whole rolodex into the system - or, maybe more accurately their TRUSTED social network. I'm guessing that this example worked because the 200 or so CEO's known the the partners of the accounting firm were truly known, not just acquantances (at least a good portion of them). And as a result, you could offer a reasonable, quality service from people who were known quantities.

So, where am I going with this... There are at least two types of searches in social networks - the first is a specific search for specific information where there is usually a small number or even a single target that is unknown to the search initiator. The first type of search usually follows a path longer than 2 links - that is beyond the network horizon. The second type of search is to "mine" the data within the network horizon for contacts that have some need, want, desire or capabilty in common. Then you use the resulting subset of contacts for a targeted communications campaign.

Bottom Line - Mining Data within the Horizon, or Searching Beyond the Horizon. I suspect both are facilitated by an environment (corporate or otherwise) in which trust is high enough that people will disclose their high-trust social network information.

Hard Currency is still important in the knowledge Economy

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 12:41:28 GMT

Yes, I agree Time is a currency and is important. But the push for faster access to knowledge and people and communication and resources - in general greater efficiency is primarily in service of greater profits. Of course greater profits serves the mission of the organization - often to serve or provide some benefit to customers or constituents. Now the bottom line is Hard Currency remains an important, if not critical element in the knowledge economy!

Time is the currency in the knowledge economy, not money. I love Larry Prusak ever since In saw him speak at a KM conference a few years back. He tears into our conventional and stupid ways of thinking about things and the crazy things we do in our business life. Take a look at this article on Time and Space. [Gurteen Knowledge-Log]

Halley-Brilliants - 9 AM Monday Dance Break!

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 23:38:07 GMT

Must Do in Schedule, Pattern interrupt! You are a font of Museful Ideas!

Monday Thing.

Monday Thing

I have this theory that people try to get 85% of what they need to do for the entire week done on Monday. This makes them half nuts and very unpleasant to be around. (Once I started working on my own, I realized this was a good reason to crank up rock and roll very loud around about 9:00am on Monday and spend the first hour of the week dancing. This, correlated with the fact that the highest rate of heart attacks take place allegedly at 9:00am on Monday, seemed a much more healthy response.)

When I worked in real offices, Monday mornings were often spent in sales or marketing meetings where the boss was yelling at the staff like an angry dad and the staff was stuffing themselves with pastry and coffee to feel better like unhappy children eating sticky treats.

Then on Tuesday, people do the last 15% of their week's work and fix mistakes they made from rushing around like crazy people on Monday. Then Wednesday, they see what really matters that week and what they would have been better off focusing on right from the beginning to be really effective. Thursday they rest because they start thinking about the weekend. Friday they don't do anything because it is Friday after all, Thank God! [Halley's Comment]

Quick Weber eDesogn votes on Usability and Layout.

Sun, 08 Aug 2004 23:28:30 GMT

Usability News.

The current edition of Usability News newsletter has some interesting articles. There was a study on the affect of different layouts on online reading. It was found that "the use of margins affected both reading speed and comprehension in that participants read the Margin text slower, but comprehended more than the No Margin text. Participants were also generally more satisfied with the text with margins. Leading was not shown to impact reading performance but did influence overall user preference. "

There is also a study done on the role of interactivity in online learning materials. The study found, as would be expected, that "students in the most interactive group (proactive) made significantly larger learning gains than those in the least interactive group (reactive)."

[elearningpost]

Case Study Method - Capturing, Distilling, and Distributing Knowledge about Situations

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 17:44:04 GMT

elearningpost has posted a nice link here connecting case studies to knowledge management. Seems obvious, but I had not really thought of it that way before. And I am working with lots of case studies...!!!

===================================

Cases as a knowledge management tool.

Gilbert Probst has been pushing cases as effective KM tools since long now. He even has an entire chapter devoted to it in the widely popular KM reference -- Knowledge Management Case Book. I think he's got a point here. Cases are in line with After Action Reviews as means of not only distilling what happened but also for creating and more importantly reusing knowledge (in the appropriate form). I feel that such forms of knowledge objects, where the authenticity of the contexts is preserved have a much better chance of being used and reused. Guess what I mean is that knowledge objects should be narratives. This is also Probst's argument -- cases are narrative tools: "If we read the case report as a narrative, and consider the images, metaphors and character descriptions, we find a layer of meaning containing knowledge that would otherwise remain hidden or implicit."

Probst's paper on cases is here (PDF file). You can also access other gems from where this came from -- Geneva Knowledge Form.

[elearningpost]

Just Do it - the real guide to making things happen - Nice post Venture Blog

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 22:20:49 GMT

Practical Networking: Make Your Own Luck [VentureBlog]

I used to be very wealthy - VentureBlog's reminder of the resilience required to play the game

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 22:14:36 GMT

I Used To Be Very Wealthy.

I was reminded today of why the Valley is such a fun place in which to live and work. I was meeting with an early stage team and as part of the normal flow of conversation, the CEO of the company remarked "I used to be very wealthy." It wasn't boastful nor was it remorseful. It was just a simple comment, in the same vein as you might say your hair used to be longer or stomach flatter.

Much has been written (including by us) about the persistence of the Valley through the booms and busts. And the strength of the Valley's culture of forgiving failure (well described by Michael Lewis and updated post-bubble by Ross Mayfield) is legendary.

But to me, the most important reason for the Valley's success (and future prospects) is the resilience of the individual entrepreneur, embodied in that flippant comment. The last round was good for some, not so good for others. On to the next one.

[VentureBlog]

Yet Another Social Networking Software YASNS - site list

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 22:11:51 GMT

The list has been moved to here: Social Networking Sites and Software sorted by name
Please note that YOU can edit this list yourself to make it more accurate and up-to-date! I am not personally maintaining this list anymore, I am counting on all of you to continually keep it updated. Thanks very much.

Websites
Ryze: business
ecademy: business
LinkedIn: business
itsnotwhatyouknow: business
Friendly Favors: business
ZeroDegrees: business (corporate)
Accolo: jobs
RealContacts: jobs
Eliyon: business, jobs
Friendster: friendship, dating
Sona Matchmaker: friendship, dating (India)
Huminity: friendship
everyonesconnected.com: friendship
Ringo: friendship
PalJunction: friendship, business, dating, roommates
Tribe: friendship, business, dating, roommates, classifieds
Club Nexus at Stanford - need URL: alumni, article
MeetUp: in-person
Buddy Zoo: IM social networking analysis
*PayDemocracy: political groups
*classmates.com: alumni
*.reunion.com: alumni
*InfoSpace: yellow pages (references)
*SwitchBoard: yellow pages (references)
*Match.com: dating
*People on Page: friendship, dating
*all of the other dating sites
People Aggregator: ???

*= could easily cross over into social networking

Software:
Spoke SW: business (corporate)
Visible Path, business (corporate)
**wwPlaxo.: contacts
**GoodContacts: contacts
**Accucard: contacts

** contact software could easily add social networking features as they have all of the necessary data

Blogs with some features of Social Networking
livejournal: blog
Expressions: visual blogging
Fotolog: visual blogging

Question Marks
WisomeBuilder
NetDiva

Preliminary Analysis
It seems pretty clear that not all of these social networking sites or software will survive. Clay Shirky states "The *only* thing these services have to base a business on is lack of interoperability". I believe there is another part to the value proposition that they offer users -- the ability to go beyond 1 degree of separation. However, it's really difficult to think of situations where going more than 2 degrees of separation is worthwhile, unless you are a contagious disease - see my whitepaper Links and Nodes in Social Networks. Unless >2 degrees of separation and node secrecy are valued by users (maybe not everyone but an interestingly large set of users), an "open" networking service will make these proprietary services and software obsolete. before they've made a penny.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to the many people who helped me compile this list including:

Clay Shirky
Danah Boyd
Doug Rush
Sean Murphy
Debi Jones
Patti Anklam

If I left your name off let me know and I will add it.

- posted by Cynthia @ 9/14/2003 09:49:58 AM

Nice listing of sources for key blogging concepts - may be relevant to finding a business direction...

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 21:57:49 GMT

blogging bibliography.

Two people have recently asked me for a blogging bibliography. There are a handful of articles that i regularly suggest to people, but i have a feeling that people might have far more comprehensive bibliographies out there, or other materials that they think should be shared in a classroom/research setting. Thus, i thought i'd ask you.

What are the key academic papers, blog entries and media writings on blogging, particularly on the social analysis of the phenomena? [Also, any links to blog bibliographies out there.]

My current list is here.

[apophenia]

Context driven SNS... Need to spend more time thinking about who likes which service and How services differ...

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:52:55 GMT

They are not better or best (although some might be), but rather different for different purposes - I find I use the services very differently - and sporadically. In the end, I think Ryze is still doing the best job. But I do like several features of some of the others - linkedIn Orkut, friendster, no so much flickr or the rest. No experience with Tribe which is apparently popular.

Let me point to my January post to the SNS thesis - the key is how these services and other software enable you to manage and extend your social network. Does it stay online? Does it translate into shared activities? Lot's of questions and some interesting early answers - but it still feels in flux.

=============================================================

Which YASNS is best?.

Over and over again, people tell me that one of the YASNS is *far* better than any of the other ones. Usually, they want me to agree with them. Sometimes, people just ask me which one i think is best.

Given that this is me, i have a problem with this question. My problem is not personal or political... it's contextual. In this case, "best" is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, i often ask people what *they* want in a YASNS. Almost always, there's one overwhelming factor that makes one YASNS better than another for the individual: "people like me."

In a post-finals hallucinatory state, i decided to attend a gathering with some of my peers last December. A group gathered into a "panel" to talk about social software. One very smart, very respected VC spoke about how she believed that LinkedIn was hands down the best YASNS. I found myself speaking... or more accurately exploding because of her conception. It's not that i don't believe that LinkedIn was the best for her - i truly do. It's that i don't believe that there is a universal best.

When i was interviewing early Friendster adopters about the site, over and over again, they told me that they loved it because it was a site fool of cool hipsters like them. They identified with the people on the site and they loved feeling like everywhere they turned, they saw other people that they thought were cool. They were not looking forward to it being mainstream because then there will be duds on the system. Each sub-hipster group was likely to run across more people like them depending on their linking structure. (Homophily again.) Because most people joined under one context, they never saw the other "non-hipsters" that they dealt with in everyday life. When that started happening, they were disappointed.

When Orkut exploded, all of the social software fiends jumped on the train like it was going to Disney World. It was the end-all be-all of the YASNS. Of course it was... to them... It was filled with people like them - their colleagues, those that they respect, etc. It felt like home.

Guess what? At Tribe.net, there are lots of people who feel at home and spend exorbitant hours on the service. Same with MySpace. Same with Everyone's Connected. Same with Live Journal.

The battle is not simply about the best tools. In fact, that's a truly secondary issue. It's about motivating a coherent group to join, participate and make it home. What makes the best pub? Is it really the beer or the price? Hell, the only reason that the music usually matters is because it draws people that you like to the pub. It's the combination of environment and people.. but the environment brings the people so the environment DOES matter.

There's an architectural lesson there... Environment matters because it draws the right people. This is why niche shit works. The biggest joke about the Internet is that the most profitable services are barely public. They address a niche market completely. One of the most unfortunate things about social software is that everyone is trying to court everyone to their service. Frankly, a far more appropriate response would be to try to figure out which users are most suited for your tool given its current state and then try to meet their needs completely. Figure out your audience. And don't simply focus on your desired audience because the tool you created may not have met their needs... be able to shift if you find that you've built something far more appropriate for another group. Cause frankly? If you have, the users know it and are using it more completely there.

[Note: Friendster's popularity in Asia isn't because it's a good tool; it's because the way the site was structured met that population's needs/desires without much translation. It was inadvertently and accidentally best for them, not well designed for them.]

[apophenia]

Thanks Valdis - You're the visualizing Network Man!

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:33:51 GMT

Way to go on the Social Network thing - I love interdisciplinary collaboration! It is a funny picture!

Any of These Look Like Traditional Org Charts to You ?.

Thanks to Nova Spivack and Valdis Krebs

Web Sites/Blogs

Physicist Collaborations

IRC Channel

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

The Internet

Actual decision-making in an organization

[wirearchy News]

Hierarchy to Wirearchy - final chapter synopsis - Yes of course try to get it published (as a book)

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:28:38 GMT

There's No Going Back To "Normal".

About two years ago, I wrote a book proposal titled "From Hierarchy to Wirearchy". It got reviewed by a few publishers, and almost made it ...I then got discouraged because of the (perceived) ridicule or quizzical feedback I got from various sources when explaining what I intended it to be about.

Since then, I have watched the continued evolution of the two-way, read-write web, and the emerging use of blogs and social software in various domains. I am wondering about whether or not to try again.

Here is an abbreviated synopsis of the final chapter. I will welcome any feedback as to whether or not it may be worth another try.

Creating the Future - There's No Going Back To "Normal"

We will almost certainly never go back to a stable, orderly world in which human and business activities proceed in an incremental, linear and logical manner. Peter Vaill, a management professor at American University, has described in a book titled "Learning As A Way Of Being" our environment today as “permanent whitewater” – constantly streaming forward, moving quickly, generating turbulence as the daily events and continuous flow of new products, technologies, and services keep us paddling along. We’re trying to navigate through the rapids and avoid smashing, in spectacular fashion, into the many obstacles in our path.

In the world of information technology, one constant that has not yet suffered wrenching revision is Moore’s Law, which states that the available computing power on one chip doubles every 18 months. Indeed, we have seen many of the effects and benefits of Moore’s Law as computers have steadily grown more powerful, more rapid and less expensive. This continues today.

And, as computers have grown more powerful, they have also become interconnected - worldwide throughout organizations, countries and societies. While that has been going on, software and hardware have been converging immutably, so that what took hours three years ago takes minutes today, and what takes minutes today will take seconds next year. Convergence crops up in many forms, including unified messaging systems (UMS), PDA’s that will soon have VOIP capability and so serve as phones, messaging systems and mini-computers, and social networking software that will combine blogging, semantic search and online presence.

This convergence in software is occurring rapidly, as clever systems engineers and coders find ways to integrate various capabilities, yielding version 1.n of the latest and greatest spreadsheet or better yet, corporate integrated systems that encompass all the work that needs to be done internally and externally.

This convergence will soon slam into the working lives of the technically literate, those already ICQ’ing throughout the day with friends and family, and playing video games at home or on-line anywhere around the world.

As software gets smarter, today’s young people – tomorrow’s knowledge workers - will continue to take this infrastructure for granted. They will be demanding workers, and they won’t easily tolerate conditions that don’t allow or enable them to do what they know is possible.

As information and knowledge continue, endlessly, to flow in, through, from and around organizations, performance support systems help us manage the cacophony of information noise engulfing us. But in order to use these effectively, we need to learn and adapt continuously.

Why? The history of humankind is the story of ongoing adaptation and evolution. People have always fiddled with stuff to make it work better, faster, easier. Get rid of a few parts here, add this functionality, combine these two things, eliminate that one because no one uses it any more --and so it goes. There’s no reason to think that this evolution will stop. If anything, it will speed up, and we may find ourselves “standing in the headlights”, unsure which way to turn.

We may find ourselves turning more and more to alternative “wisdoms”, based less on the mechanistic Newtonian metaphors that have informed our structures and processes during the Industrial Age, and more on the principles of natural cycles and rhythms found in biology and ancient Eastern spiritual traditions.

We can hold onto what we “know” works for only so long (usually longer than the actual period of time it has continued to work). As Watts Wacker, an eminent futurist, has noted, “The greatest power operating in the world today is denial.” In Western society, we have not been taught how to “let go.”

We must learn a new dance that involves:

Holding on to our values, to what is timeless, and to what we know works for us
Letting go of what no longer works, no longer serves us or the common good
Taking on that which we need to move forward, a new way
Moving on rather than needlessly resisting change and movement able to shape and our activities

This new dance is closely related to the fundamental characteristics of Wirearchy – speed, flexibility, innovation and integration. Those characteristics cannot flourish, and be used in service to the needs of our human systems, without us, as individuals and organizations, adopting and learning to use new mental models and mindsets that enable us to learn faster and more fluidly.

For better or for worse, we live in a society of organizations. Peter Drucker, the pre-eminent business and social philosopher, suggested in a seminal article titled “The Age of Social Transformation,” that we are more than ever living our lives in a world of organizations.

Again, paradox is everywhere. Just as organizations and institutions must play an essential role in holding societies together through providing essential services, shaping large degrees of consensus, and providing workplaces for large numbers of people – they are more than ever experiencing extremely large, unstable and fluid factors that have forced them to alter in fundamental ways the social contract that has held the workplace “mental model” in place for the last fifty years.

Do people generally believe (or did they believe, until the bear markets and September 11th event) that the massive job-cutting of the early ‘90’s was an isolated phenomenon? Is there hope still lurking around the corner that the recession of late 2001 will be V-shaped and that we’ll soon all get back to the promised long-term abundance of the Internet-based Knowledge Age, with low unemployment, high salaries and a “war for talent”? Or will Jeremy Rifkin’s “The End of Work” become eerily prescient?

Reality is likely to intervene for the foreseeable future. However, what appears to be irrevocable is the shift to using software and the Internet to codify, streamline and connect everything.

Organizations will need to use the principles of Wirearchy to inform what they do, why they do it, and how they do it. They will have to take into consideration, much more than ever before, a multitude of interconnected stakeholders. They will have to take into account what and how they say, and what mechanisms they use to maintain these all-important connections in an every-which-way connected world. The Cluetrain Manifesto spelled this out for us, and for organizations, in no uncertain terms.

As for individuals faced with this electronic circus .... whew!

We’ve all heard (and may believe) that there are more opportunities now than ever before, that the Internet, new niches, branding, new business models, global reach, and so on, are all harbingers of an era of boundless possibilities. And for a while, this truly seemed to be the case. Lots of dot-coms offered very different business models, or targeted a narrow sliver of a market, or combined existing capabilities in new ways and forms. Lots of people headed off to try their luck in the Information Age’s gold rush.

As of the summer of 2001, this new economy of possibilities seemed headed for the dustbin of history. And yet today, the Internet is still here, and there are still many (if not most) organizations building more capability for performing more work activities using smart applications, purpose-built portals and the Internet.

In most instances, workers will not have much choice if they choose to work in an organization. Organizations today seek efficiency first and foremost, and will have to continue the path of ramping up their information management and business-process streamlining capabilities, or their competitors will undercut or overrun them. Workers will be forced to use integrated, efficiency-based information-work technologies, more and more.

As a generalization, for middle-aged and older generations still in the organizational workplace this will become more and more troublesome. Changes that require increased speed, flexibility and integration are likely to continue coming, thick and fast. The ability to adapt while still leading a balanced life has already become a prized attribute. Going back to the way things used to be done is an option rapidly fading in the rear-view mirror.

For younger generations, this will not be as much of an issue, for they are informed, adept with information technology, and understand that no employment is secure. They have "big thumbs", AND they subscribe, wholeheartedly, to the advice “Do what you love, because all you can rely on is yourself.

However, as the realities of the adult life cycle take hold, and as change continues to swirl across the landscape of the workplace, even the younger generations will bump into limitations. The skills required keep changing, and the need to create and manage new and old connections to achieve work objectives, place tremendous demands on the worker of tomorrow. As the demands of competition and growth continue, they will find that the need to adapt and remain flexible becomes more difficult to access continuously.

More than ever, the ancient nostrums of “know yourself” and “to thine own self be true”, will occupy a central place in the work place of every individual worker.

Being connected to oneself will become the all-important competency in a completely interconnected and fluid workplace and world.

While this has always been the wisest of counsel, there was a widely accepted and conventional structure and clear roles available to us for managing our path through life in our society. Generally, we knew where we stood, and what was expected of us.

Today this seems to be less and less the case. Normal ? What's that ?

It's up to us, at first one by one, and then, eventually together in groups, to create the interconnected meaning in which we will live - our new and ever-evolving "normal".

[wirearchy News]

In search of Business Models that are related to Blogging...?

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:12:26 GMT

OK OK so I'm nominally a venture capitalist - and that means I am looking for interesting new ventures. I just registered for BloggerCon and have a sinking feeling it's going to be a sad group of engineers who cannot think of business models, and Howard Dean supporters who still want Howard as President.

Now I have not looked at the BlogggerCon pages on what the topics might be - but here's a quick thought - How bout ways that Blogging can be used to enhance the effectiveness of businesses (Klogging comes to mind, but it doesn't quite feel right - Knowledge management just doesn't seem to be the right space for Blogs). Give me a business model or two and I'll connect you to some capital (maybe).

Left the last BloggerCon inspired by the revolution - but with no idea where it's going! Kind of like Social Networking Software - how to make this work...

You know the feeling?

Did it - just registered #157 - Now to plan to be there!

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:03:34 GMT

Borrowed from the email I just received!

Good morning! I'm pleased to announce that we will hold our second BloggerCon on April 17, 2004 at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. We would be very happy if you could join us.

The timing of this BloggerCon is at a turning point in the US political process. The first conference was held in October 2003, when the new excitement about the use of the Internet in the Presidential campaign was front and center. Now it's time, between the primaries and the conventions, to take stock, in time to apply what we've learned in the subsequent stages of the election. There will also, of course, be sessions on blogging in journalism, education, science and tutorials for people who are new to blogging. It's a user's conference about technology, it's not a meeting where technology amazes, rather it's a forum for the use of technology.

The cost to attend is $0.

The format of the conference is four concurrent tracks of 1.5 hour sessions, moderated by a discussion leader. There are no panels. Each room will have experts and leaders, most of whom would be excellent panelists. The job of the moderator is to assemble a story by calling on the people at his or her disposal. They're like reporters putting together a story, but you get to hear, first hand what the experts are saying, in their own voices. Think of Dan Gillmor's adage that the people who read his weblog are much smarter than he is -- that's also the philosophy of BloggerCon.

SNA 101 - Social Networks a valuable analytical tool...

Wed, 03 Mar 2004 19:37:38 GMT

Rob Cross: Introduction to Social Network Analysis.

Rob Cross: Introduction to Social Network Analysis

SNA 101

[elearningpost]