IFTF's Future Now

An Economy of Bullet Points

A few posts ago I reviewed Chris Atkinson's new book Beyond Bullet Points. Correspondent David Goldberg at the University of Illinois chimes in with a somewhat contrary view in his excellent blog, which is worth taking a look at. He has some suggestions. Summed up: Bullet points in moderation. Update: Atkinson provides an interesting case study at his site.

links for 2005-03-19

• enabling ecommerce in rural India
  last column, on how there was huge money to be made selling to people at the bottom of the pyramid, left off talking of IIT-Madras’ Ashok Jhunjhunwala’s low-cost rural ATM that cost a mere Rs 27,000 compared to a normal ATM that you and I use which co
  (categories: social_software)
• The New Yorker: Fact
  "Whatever else the Iraq war is doing to American power and prestige, it is producing the creative and flexible junior officers that the Army’s training could not."
  (categories: blogging education Internet military collective_intelligence)
• Can Yahoo! Tap the Wisdom of Crowds?
  New Tech Buzz Game "gives tech-heads with a gambling bent another place to try out their forecasting skills, and their aggregate opinion about coming (and going) trends could eventually translate into intelligence."
  (categories: collective_intelligence)
• SkyscraperCity Forums
  (categories: architecture city place/space)

Blog-friendly companies

Technology Review's Wade Roush has a short article about employee blogging that offers an interesting data-point on the growth of corporate-approved (if not directly sponsored) blogging.

I think it's safe to say that many companies are still trying to figure out what in the world they're supposed to do with blogs. Some companies have internal blogs, while others have a mix of internal and external ones. (The latter is the Institute's model. We have Future Now; an internal, employees-only blog; and program-related blogs for clients.) But the free-for-all character of blogging is still threatening. Or, as a recent Money/CNN article put it,

On the one hand, corporate managers recognize the power of word-of-mouth as a sales tool. On the other hand, they're acutely aware of the dangers inherent in the rapid and widespread dissemination of company information.

Also muddying the waters are a small but well-publicized number of cases of employees being fired for blogging about work. But as Roush notes, there are at least a few companies who are embracing blogs wholeheartedly:

Many dot-com nostrums are best forgotten, but the idea that honest, unfiltered conversation between companies and customers might actually be good for business lives on—and, in fact, is being embraced by dozens of large firms, from Microsoft to Maytag. To the degree that open conversation does happen, it’s happening largely through weblogs, or blogs....

Most companies are still cautious when it comes to communicating with mainstream media outlets; employees are seldom allowed to speak with journalists without media-relations chaperones. But blogs have emerged as an exception, with more and more companies concluding that the public-relations benefits outweigh the risks. One of those companies is Sun Microsystems, which promotes employee blogging more aggressively than any other technology firm. "Sun’s employees are our most passionate evangelists," says Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s president and chief operating officer and the author of a company blog read by tens of thousands of visitors every month.... Sun’s Simon Phipps, whose job title is chief technology evangelist, says that researchers and developers can swap more ideas, build better software, and meet customers’ needs faster if they are active in online communities, where blogs play the dual role of soap- and suggestion-box.

links for 2005-03-18

• Sun Microsystems: Blog Heaven
  "[T]he idea that honest, unfiltered conversation between companies and customers might actually be good for business lives on—and, in fact, is being embraced by dozens of large firms, from Microsoft to Maytag."
  (categories: blogging)
• Blogging is all fun and games, until the boss finds out
  On company policies toward blogs. "For companies, the growing popularity of blogs is a double-edged sword."
  (categories: blogging business)
• Firms taking action against worker blogs
  "Flight attendant Ellen Simonetti and former Google employee Mark Jen have more in common than their love of blogging: They both got fired over it."
  (categories: blogging business)
• Blogger dismissed from Microsoft
  On a blogger and contractor who was fired after posting pictures from the Microsoft campus.
  (categories: blogging business)
• Sun Policy on Public Discourse
  Sun's policy regarding employee blogging. Interestingly, it's posted on Tim Bray's site.
  (categories: blogging business)
• How To Get Rich & Famous By Blogging At Work
  A tongue-in-cheek (I hope) guide to blogging about work. Includes suggestions like "Examine The Contents Of Other People's Desks When They Leave The Office" and "Take Covert Pictures Of Your Co-Workers & Boss For Fun Blog Commentary."
  (categories: blogging business)
• Blogs May Be a Wealth Hazard
  "[T]he consequences of posting work-related entries or photos can be sudden and shocking. This issue could be solved, experts say, with some policy tweaking."
  (categories: blogging business)
• so this is mass communication?
  "This is a meta-blog: a blog about blogs. Kaye Trammell is an assistant professor of mass communication at Louisiana State University. She researches blogs."
  (categories: blogging)
• Harness the power of blogs
  Tim Anderson argues that "there's no escaping the fact that blogs are now a significant part of a company's internet presence. It is no longer just the corporate web site."
  (categories: blogging business)
• Ready, Aim, FIRED: Blogging Employees In the Spotlight Again
  Excellent overview of blogs, HR law, and corporate policy. Written by an employment lawyer.
  (categories: blogging business)
• Beware if your blog is related to work
  Yet another "people fired for doing this strange thing called 'blogging'" article.
  (categories: blogging business)
• When blogging gets risky
  Yet another article about people fired for blogging. Indeed, it's largely the same people who are always talked about.
  (categories: blogging business)
• It’s Not Dangerous
  Tim Bray argues that the fired-for-blogging meme is "a bunch of BS. For most people, blogging is a career-booster, both in your current job and when you’re looking for your next one."
  (categories: blogging business)
• Non-Blogger Fired For Blogging!
  Anil Dash argues that "nobody's ever been fired for blogging." People get fired for stupid behavior no matter the medium.
  (categories: blogging business)
• Dinner with the fired Google blogger
  Thoughtful Robert Scoble post on work blogs, and how bloggers can avoid getting into trouble. More focused on cultural norms than corporate policy.
  (categories: blogging business)
• "nobody's ever been fired for blogging"
  Danah Boyd reflects on the potential that the "fired for blogging" meme could have on blogging's public image.
  (categories: blogging business)
• I.D Magazine
  "Who are these people? And what do they do from 9 to 5?"
  (categories: future)
• The future of the future
  Disappointment over Kurzweil's Law not being followed in the 2000s. Get with it, people!
  (categories: future)
• Trust in online communities: people and machines
  "Two presentations at SXSW on trust and online communities could not have been more different." Hello! Trust isn't a technical feature! It's a social phenomenon!
  (categories: blogging collective_intelligence)
• Idea management: Everyone’s an innovator
  "The premise behind idea management is that the innovation process is too important to be left to chance."
  (categories: collective_intelligence business)

IAOC Blog on New Communications Models

There is a discussion on blogs, PR and new communications models at the International Association of Online Communicators blog site. If you are interested in the subject, take a look. Disclosure - I am one of the participants so this plays in the shameless plug category.

Geo-Spatial Gestural Interfaces

Many will remember Tom Cruise in Minority Report, standing in front of a clear screen and methodically gesturing to manipulate data and run analyses. Are these kinds of interfaces possible and practical?

A recent report on work underway at Penn State University is about combining gestural interfaces and dialog to control geospatial interfaces. Its described at their GeoVista site. Designed to be used in high stress situations, such as emergency management centers, to help partipants collaborate and interact with complex geospatial data. There is also considerable attention paid to the use of such systems by non-expert personnel.

I have worked on some relatively primitive GIS systems, that linked multiple executive decision makers, and this would have been very useful. Note too the inclusion of behind the scene models to help users simulate multiple conditions. Ideas like these could radically change how we efficiently interact with data ... in the future you may be trained to do interactive data mining like playing a piano.

... Combining gestures and dialog is important, according to MacEachren.

"Spatial concepts are vague for computers," he said. "When a user tells a computer a location is 'near,' 'between' or 'north of' something, it has trouble interpreting what that means. But when you add hand gestures, the accuracy improves."

The technology is meant to work with large screen displays. For example, a crisis team tracking a hurricane might say, "Let's look at the population distribution here in the southeast" and gesture at a map on display, circling the region of interest.

The computer can interpret the combination of voice and gesture commands, zoom in the area and act on the next series of queries. The team member might gesture to indicate the possible track of the hurricane and ask the computer to display what areas would be most affected by flooding if the storm tracks north or south of the current location ...

links for 2005-03-17

• Larry Lessig opens wiki to help revise his 1999 book "Code (and other laws of Cyberspace)"
  (categories: copyright law collaboration wiki)
• CPH127: Design and Innovation are Boarding
  A "blog about the major influence of design as a motor for innovation, and like wise the other way around."
  (categories: design)
• Elephants Send SMS to Tell Where They Are
  In a test in Africa, "when elephants start to approach their fields, the farmers are alerted by SMS in time to politely ask the elephants to move over and save their crops."
  (categories: mobility environment)

RSS feed looks better

For those of you who read Future Now through an RSS reader, a present: actual, honest-to-goodness formatting.

Meaning paragraph breaks, indents, blockquotes, and all the other good stuff that you see on the blog itself.

I now feel like an idiot for not improving the layout of the feed long ago.

Work blogging

I've been collecting examples of work-related blogs recently (an enterprise that generally just requires seeing what Steve and Franz post), and via Gridskipper found one that completely fascinates me: English Cut, a blog by one of London's bespoke tailors.

I think that in addition to appealing to my barely-suppressed Anglophilia (I did write a book about Victorian astronomy, after all), what I find compelling about the site is its discussion of the craft of tailoring, and the street-level view of the business. (Of course, Saville Row isn't your ordinary street, but still.) I think it's safe to say that corporate blogs are still very much figuring themselves out; but blogs like this-- written by individuals, offering a window into their occupational practice and culture-- make instant, immediate sense.

Indeed, it's a good model for our own efforts to do interesting blogging with-- or for-- our clients.

User innovation

The latest issue of The Economist has an article on user-driven innovation. It's well worth a read, as it brings together a couple of important themes-- user reinvention, the economics of open source, and technologies of cooperation and collective action:

How does innovation happen? The familiar story involves boffins in academic institutes and R&D labs. But lately, corporate practice has begun to challenge this old-fashioned notion. Open-source software development is already well-known. Less so is the fact that Bell, an American bicycle-helmet maker, has collected hundreds of ideas for new products from its customers, and is putting several of them into production. Or that Electronic Arts (EA), a maker of computer games, ships programming tools to its customers, posts their modifications online and works their creations into new games. And so on. Not only is the customer king: now he is market-research head, R&D chief and product-development manager, too....

[T]he rise of online communities, together with the development of powerful and easy-to-use design tools, seems to be boosting the phenomenon, as well as bringing it to the attention of a wider audience, says Eric Von Hippel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is about to publish a book, “Democratising Innovation” (MIT Press). “User innovation has always been around,” he says. “The difference is that people can no longer deny that it is happening.” Indeed, it is “very likely that the majority of innovation happens this way,” says Mr Von Hippel. Such innovation, he says, has a “much higher rate of success”....

At the heart of most thinking about innovation is the belief that people expect to be paid for their creative work: hence the need to protect and reward the creation of intellectual property. One really exciting thing about user-led innovation is that customers seem willing to donate their creativity freely, says Mr Von Hippel. This may be because it is their only practical option: patents are costly to get and often provide only weak protection. Some people may value the enhanced reputation and network effects of freely revealing their work more than any money they could make by patenting it. Either way, some firms are starting to believe that there really is such a thing as a free lunch.