Realizations

About Talk And Accomplishment...

Talk is usually the beginning, not the end.

And...

A group document is not a collaborative document. Do you know the difference?

About Work – Some new perspective.

Useful Thinking About Big Data

Ever wonder why “Big Data” is referred to in terms of somebody’s solution, tool, application, utility?

And why that doesn’t offer much value to you?

You know there must be some value...otherwise why all the noise?

The best way to define Big Data is in terms of how you are currently using it. You aren’t? Bugger!

In that case, “Big Data,” like the blind guy said, “is like a wall.”

Like the blind guys and the elephant, we are going to have to construct a model that is useful and entertaining for you. Here goes:

Web 1.0,   Web 2.0,   Web 3.0

Web 1.0 was that gray background on your computer screen with black type, “Hi, I’m computer programmer. Here is a picture of me and my dog!” That was 1995. I was artsy, so I had flaming letters, proving I had more research than taste.

Today, Web 1.0 continues on corporate websites with tabs like, “Our Team,” “Vision,” and “Shopping Cart.” A billboard in cyberspace, hiding the countryside above the big tubes

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Web 2,0 is adding two-way conversations, the back and forth, often with hilarious or cringey  results. From trolling right up to creating new ideas, organizations, and things.

The Cluetrain Manifesto alerted us to the coming of Web 2.0, with the first thesis, All markets are conversations. If you've staked your claim on Google Plus or LinkedIn, you are a Web 2 resident.

Web 3.0 is repurposing what has already been loaded into the web.

For Web 3.0, the words, pictures, and ideas have often already been loaded into the Internet. Not all, but the ease of using existing data makes gathering whatever else is needed much lower cost. Repurposing existing data creates another round of value.

Examples are pictures of winsome cats and a caption, “I can has cheezburger?” to all the privileged and then stolen boilerplate in the legal universe, to everything everyone knows about our health, wealth, and happiness. That whole pile is big data, and the people telling you about it have clever hacks to connect pieces of that data into useful piles.

Scary? Could be.

Miraculous? Sometimes.

Will people be swindled? Always.

Will people be helped? More.

But the work of making it work is not magic. It is figuring out what goes where.

Doc Searls, an author of the previously mentioned Cluetrain, has been working on Vendor Relationship Management (VRM).

Customer Relationship Management allows siding salesmen to know what time you sit down to dinner so they can call. VRM allows you to make the best choice when you want something, and not spend time with it when you don’t.

Thankfully, Big Data and VRM are largely an open source collaboration, so you can find it and see what others are doing.

And yes, it’s bad what fast buck artists, lawyers, and legislators are trying to do to you. But yes, it’s good how you’ll be able to improve your life with the resources that are available to you.

The internet is so big it creates an opportunity for advantage from scaling and availability that we have never seen before. Sturgeon’s Law (Ninety per cent of everything is crud) notwithstanding, there are tremendous opportunities.

What we learned from the App Economy is:

1. First in gets the biggest reward,
2. Nothing is ever so completely finished that it can't be radically improved, and
3. Collaboration outproduces closed systems.

Be on the lookout for a use of Big Data/Web 3.0 that will help you a lot.

Open Source Leadership – A useful way of seeing the world

Join us on Monday July 15^th for The Changing Social Paradigm - How It Affects the Job Market, for details about this free presentation: 40Plus Washington, DC.

A Breakthrough Approach

A common topic at business meetings is smartphones and cellular service, often with a new owner attempting to show the features of the latest phone.

Whether the phone is Android, iPhone, Windows, or Blackberry, the on-board features and upgrades - along with the extensive collection of apps - make this hand-held device the user's portal to the internet, email, text messaging, navigation, or finding deals and restaurants.

The carriers sell time on the cellular network and provide help for some of the basic phone features – such as setting up voicemail - but are not much help with complex questions or undocumented features. Republic Wireless is has created a powerful structure by setting up a community to discuss and solve the complex questions raised by users.

A beginning trend for smartphones is to use wifi when available for voice, data, & text, and use cellular at other times. The cellular signal has a much smaller bit rate and around home and work, the user spends 80% of the time on the faster wifi.

Republic Wireless is capitalizing on wifi/cellular service – they encourage and support a community for excellent user support (better then carrier 'customer service' reps), no lock-in contracts, and unlimited voice, data, and text for a flat rate of $19.95 per month.

Once you buy your phone (with the switching software installed), at activation you are invited to join the user community and contribute to forums on discoveries, problem & resolutions, and suggestions for new features, all raised and answered by users.

Republic is using game theory to encourage participation in the forums by users, awarding points for solutions to problems and discovery of undocumented features. Republic staff participate in the forums as well to validate user solutions, cheer on the discovery of undocumented applications of phone features.

The knowledgebase is an extensive and growing collection of tips, techniques, and answers asked by users and answered by users and staff. The response to user questions is very quick – often within hours.

With this intimate and continuing conversation with other users, the customer gets a flood of referral prospects. The company receives intensive feedback about service and hardware, as well as thoughtful suggestions for improvements. The company communicates with their customers through the forums and users can communicate with each other and develop a road map for future versions of the service, operating system and new business areas.

This innovative collaboration of Republic staff, users, and others creates a rich, functional environment and gives all stakeholders role in a highly responsive process for solving immediate problems and developing future improvements. Their active community setting is not only more effective than other approaches, the savings are evident in the cost of service.

Imagine inviting the users to participate in the discussion, solutions, and development of a communication system – a true breakthrough!

Know of another innovative breakthrough? Please share.

Making The Point

I was trying to get through M Street at New Hampshire and a bicyclist ran through a red light, running over several pedestrians.

He was a young yup going home from his policy job, and he started yelling at the pedestrians, the drivers, the air.

He was also stopping two roads with nothing but a bicycle and an attitude...at rush hour.

People started walking around him, shaking their heads. He figured if he yelled louder more would understand him, like his mommy. He was enjoying his moment.

There was a minute of silence as he inhaled and the man next to him said gently, “I ride a lot, and you’re giving us all a bad name.”

The traffic jam resolved in seconds. We’re all in this together despite what you’re told.

New Normal – Asynchronous Collaboration

When we were all physically located in the same building collaboration was a collection of meetings to reach the stated goal. First to flesh out the details of the project – go from concept to specific, consensus from contributors, logistics & interim deadlines from participants, and collective review of it all. Meet and work together – or go away and work, come back & share.

The outcome was labor intensive and time consuming – all these people meeting together for all those meetings – to satisfy the original purpose or charter of the project. The initial development and interim refinement of the project was a function of the participants' ability to articulate ideas and persuade others to adopt them – the result was often consensus conservatism or the leader's fiat.

Innovation is difficult in such an environment – it's hard for an innovative thinker to convey a new idea or approach verbally and achieve the needed consensus – even with visual or written aids. Collaboration was often just the same old work with a rotating resource pool. Breakthroughs and radical new approaches or products were rare.

In the environment of the New Normal the model is changing (or has) with a number of independents or small firms coming together from different locations to collaborate on a project. Once the initial discussion of the project vision, the goals, the time line, and the assignment of responsibilities has been completed – usually not with all participants physically together in the same room – the work begins. Under the New Normal there is a shift in the method of approaching the work, however.

It is common for one of the contributors to work up a high-level but detailed view of some or all of the project outputs and send it to the other collaborators for review and comment. During this process, the contributor has fleshed out specifics, relationships of components, design strengths & weaknesses, and alternative or innovative approaches to achieving the project goals. With focus comes learning, with application comes understanding.

The other collaborators review what's provided and offer feedback and alternative ideas. Adjustments are incorporated as necessary and the next contributor takes this work to build on for the next level of forward progress in the project.

I am part of an asynchronous collaboration project to develop a software tool – one contributor wrote descriptions of what the tool is intended to do, how he would use it, and an outline of the output to the user. From these documents, I developed the design architecture for the tool and noted additions needed, and interrelation ships in operation. The third collaborator coded the software from the design diagram and added several additional items while streamlining access to the different elements. Between each stage was a brief conversation and agreement on changes & additions.

Each of us learned more about the tool and discovered element to add or modify for greater effectiveness, while gaining a deeper understanding of how best to support the end user. We have also noted that this approach does not add to each person's 'hands-on' time, but it significantly eliminates the non-productive meeting time of the past collaboration process.

With collaborators today in many different locations and organizations, balancing multiple projects, and being compensated on results rather than time spent, the New Normal asynchronous collaboration is a more practical approach to working together. In addition, innovation is built in to each stage – it is implemented and can be reviewed in practice, not just talked about in concept.

Share your experience with asynchronous collaboration by commenting on this post.

SalesLab’s Rainmaker series returns to the Capital Technology Management Hub, Tuesday, September 13^th with 300 seconds of Mark Your Territory. The featured CTMH speaker will be Professor Steve Gladis, author of The Agile Leader. Come join us!

Facilitation and Collaboration

I watched a “professional facilitator” absolutely waste 16 person-hours. The opportunity made me so mad, it took a while to figure out what I think.

Here’s what I think:

Unless you are working by yourself, you need enthusiastic buy-in from your team to get superior performance.

Taking time to get everyone on board is usually well worth the effort, and has often lifted my results beyond anything I understood when we started.

Facilitation is a set of tools and processes, which have little value unless the facilitator has a strong commitment to a result. Someone showing off their process is entertainment.

A facilitator who has a strong commitment to the results is an important part of the team. A facilitator who has an overriding commitment to facilitation is lost.

She who writes the agenda controls the meeting.

What do you think?

Learn about  Blah, Blah Blog at the Web Managers Roundtable, on August 9, and BlogLab, coming August 16. 

Masada Game Theory

I was explaining game theory to a persistent optimist. “If you're not going to do business with someone again, take him for all he is worth.”

The optimist replied, “Why would you do that?” A very successful person, couldn't see the point of game theory.

I am seeing a lot of this “game theory” being practiced on employees and customers. After all, it's a bad economy and we're probably not going to work with them again, and yadda yadda yadda...

We create much of our own reality, and if we don't want to continue working with employees and customers, that can be arranged. There's power and control for ya!

But someone else will. And in this internet leveraged reputation aquarium, the new guys will know what you have done before you ever meet them.

The Sicarii were a sect in Israel that didn't much like the Romans or the mainstream Jews. They holed up in the Masada Fortress and when the Romans came, the Sicarii killed themselves before the Romans ever got there. Showed them!

I wonder what happens when I act like I am going to win?

Organizing Collaboration

Today was the first meeting of the Social Media Engagement Forum of the Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce. It was a conversation about the application of Social Media in marketing and advertising, a conversation that will continue in the months ahead.

The group was small and diverse; we had participants from business, military, and education sectors. Not everyone was an active user of Social Media, but most had at least “stuck their toe in.” Highlights included a discussion of the use of Facebook as a tool of public information and using Twitter on a website. We heard success stories about the use of web-based promotions and using Social Media interaction to answer inquiries.

Information and “tips” were freely exchanged and it was evident that there were a lot more stories to tell from those in the room. There will be another forum next month and we will keep the conversation going.

In a broader sense, this was also about learning to collaborate: to work together toward a common goal. The real value of these sessions is in getting to know each participant; the elements that are important to his or her enterprise, and to develop a positive regard that can be used to help all succeed.