schneiderism

Matt Dickman recently conducted a really interesting reader poll over at his blog Techno//Marketer to get a sense of what people felt the most influential medium might be. The results are presented in the graph above. I believe it is a safe bet that his readers skew massively to the internet, but I believe they are still representative of the paradigmatic changes that have occurred in the greater media landscape. The broader theme here, that the ways in which people interact with information is changing, is something I am actively exploring myself. What is absolutely not surprising from Matt’s survey is the incredibly low performance of newspapers and radio. The EBITDA of newspapers has been trending down for years, and many historically prominent rags are facing irrelevancy to their audiences. Audience preferences and expectations with regards to how they engage information is changing, this interaction is very fluid, and while some struggle to adapt to this reality others have been slow to respond and are suffering the consequences of a dwindling subscription base and shrinking advertising revenues. That spells doom for those newspapers. The same is happening in radio, and the EBITDA of radio is tracking similarly to that of newspapers. At the heart of this is the reality that we are increasingly moving away from having things pushed at us, and increasing moving toward technologies and mediums that allow us to engage media and information in ways that are dynamic and customizable to our preferences. Also, there is an informational frequency issue and newspapers, especailly, have struggled to compete with the 24/7 nature of the informational engagement model of the web. Those that have moved to a comprehensive web strategy have struggled to find an appropriate revenue model, especially one that can scale. We are watching media evolution and the survival of the fittest, of the most innovative.

Going back perhaps a decade, many newspaper publishers failed to appropriately survey the landscape for strategic risk to their organizations. As a result, they missed important opportunities to substantively investigate and innovate their business models. The web has moved incredibly quickly and efficiently in becoming pervasive in our society, in our culture, and many publishers now face the incredible challenge of trying to change a business model when it is absolutely too late.

I came across this video this morning and it got my attention. Video is coming on strong as an interaction media, and we are only at the very, very beginning of how we will be able to interact with video. The direct manipulation of video as a way to navigate opens up a whole host of possibilities.

Discussions around the demise of print continue to intensify. Just last week I posted some of my thoughts on this matter, motivated to do so by the confluence of increased speculation as to the future of printed media. Then, yesterday, BAM! Steve Ballmer of Microsoft, in an interview in the Washington Post, speaks his mind on the issue when asked for his outlook on the future of media:

“In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down — my opinion.

Here are the premises I have. Number one, there will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form.”

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft

Video of the Ballmer interview:

I am not one to follow closely the predictions and strategies of Ballmer, or Microsoft, but this statement made my jaw drop. Fact: Microsoft is a force in the future of whatever media becomes. Fact: Microsoft devotes tremendous resources out of its tremendous resources to guide this future in a way that benefits Microsoft. Fact: Steve Ballmer is closer to this issue, in many ways, than the rest of us as he is leading Microsoft’s strategy with regards to media. Does his opinion have merit? Most definitely. He even points out that it might be eight years or it might be 15 years, the timing doesn’t really matter as the reality is that the result is inevitable.

Then, this morning via Twitter I come across a new post at FastCompany that approaches the issue from a slightly different angle, that the demise in print media is also being driven by huge changes happening in journalism. Newsrooms are shrinking, news media subscriptions are collapsing, and increasingly reporters are getting their information and tips from public web forums. That would make the big news media companies middle men for the news, with the end result being that the public gets this and prefers going direct to the source. Leaders at media institutions like the New York Times are in total confusion as to what is happening and what will happen next, and the New York Times has actually been a vanguard in pursuing the online media channel. Ten years ago the public needed the resources provided by the Newsweeks, NYT’s, and the myriad other special interest publications. The printed manifestation of this resource was the only interaction option. Following the change in that interaction, from the reliance on the printed piece to the irrefutable dominance of the online channel, is an exercise in realizing how traditional media outlets have been inept at surveying strategic risk and changing with the times.

It’s not just a big day for race fans, its a big day for science and space enthusiasts. In August of last year the Mars Phoenix Explorer left Earth to start its journey to Mars. Its mission is to arrive safely, land on the Martian North Pole, and dig into the soil there begin looking for the building blocks of life. It arrives today at around 4:45PM PDT. Arriving is the hardest part, as now the explorer has to successfully enter the Martian atmosphere (at 12,000mph) using parachutes to slow the rapid descent from 900mph to 250mph, and then fire landing rockets to prevent it from slamming into the Martian surface (see the video above). Its a complex landing, and the mission control team probably hasn’t been sleeping much these last few days, as the last five years of their work culminates today in about seven minutes of anxiety. That’s okay, though, as they have a number of ways they can distract themselves while keeping us updated on the the mission’s progress. For instance, you can follow the Phoenix mission on Twitter and get frequent updates and mission facts. The mission team also has a blog that is full of information and that will be used to post what the mission team is thinking and what Phoenix sees and discovers, as well as an information rich mission website.

So, the entire Phoenix mission is going to be captured for us via an array of online tools. This is incredibly exciting, and it serves to connect us to the exploration and science that NASA leads in a way that is not only meaningful, but also basically real time.

The convergence of seemingly random events (the Print is Dead blog, this t-shirt, Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernhoff, and this presentation by Lynne d Johnson) has put the “Print is Dead” mantra in front of me several times in the last week. Oddly coincidental or representative of a growing sentiment, you decide. Obviously, print is still very much alive, but how we use print has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. Dramatically. The reality is that for some, print is in fact very dead. For others it is dying, and for a shrinking portion of the population… print is all there is. Print isn’t dead, but it is pretty ill and the prognosis is not good. You would be hard pressed to argue otherwise, that print is alive and well, as there is so much happening that clearly supports the hard reality that the ways in which we interact with information has quickly tilted to the digital.

Our mobile technology increasingly breaks down the usability barriers between where we are and the content we want. This is not just about convenience, either, it is very much about connectivity and the ease with which we can leverage diffuse networks to find what we want. How can the printed page compete with that? Print publishers are struggling with this reality, and working hard to figure out how to transition their content assets in a meaningful way to the array of digital channels before them. Some have pioneered great strategies for this, and benefit from not just increased audiences, but from the concept of content adoption. That’s what we do on the web, we adopt content and send it around. We point people to it. We fold it into how we navigate information, and personalize its place in our information networks. This is incredibly useful, and is the reason why I no longer subscribe to a physical newspaper and only a few printed magazines (that I subscribe to because I like them and there is not yet an online channel for that content). I don’t even hit most newspaper and periodical websites anymore as the content I want finds me through a myriad of personal technologies that do all of the work of searching for me. Popular and free technologies like RSS and Twitter. I have always been a reader, but I have never read as much as I have the last few years and I would say that close to 90% of what I read is online. Garrick Van Buren wrote a somewhat related post about this a few weeks back, and in that post he passed on a line that is unforgettable to me from an article in the New York Times:

“If the news is important, it will find me.”

Print is the opposite of that.

If you use Twitter, how many times have people asked you about it and what it does… and you totally butchered the answer? Probably at least a few. Struggle no more, as the video above is one of many from the cool cats at Common Craft. I have used their descriptive presentations more than a few times lately, and quite effectively. That’s because they are masters at taking something like RSS, and explaining it in simple, straight forward, and understandable terms. They are excellent story tellers and utilize paper models in a very simple and unobtrusive manner to support the information they are communicating. It works really, really well. Earlier today I used their RSS in Plain English to help a person who is internet challenged understand the benefits of that technology, and how it can impact their business. They got it.

You can see many of their presentations at Common Craft’s page on You Tube.

About a year ago I began investigating the possibilities of making my own wine. I have been a wine lover for a very, very long time and the next logical step for me was to learn how to make it myself, just the way I like it. This was when I discovered Crushpad, and got pretty excited. I came across Crushpad via one of the many wine blogs I was following at the time, and began to seriously consider how to make that happen. Crushpad offered something that seemed to be just short of owning your own vineyard and being formally trained as a winemaker. It also, at it’s core, leverages the internet and takes advantage of several web based technologies to tie you to the making, the process, and the waiting as your wine ferments.

First, though, just a bit of background. With the advent of the internet and all things social media, the wine world has gone through a massive transformation. People who are passionate about wine have an abundance of resources to explore to pursue that passion as completely, and obscurely, as they desire. They also can easily find thousands of others who share their passion and interest, and swap reviews and recommendations. Wine blogging has exploded in the last few years, as has blogging about everything else, but wine blogging has an incredibly focused audience. Two favorites that I subscribe to are Vinography and Winecast, which also offers some excellent podcasts. If you enjoy wine, check these two out. They are both massively networked to hundreds and hundreds of other wine blogs, but these two are my consistent favorites for the quality of the writing, the reviews, and the creative sentiment brought to wine. Another HUGE influence in the world of wine online is Gary Vaynerchuk’s wine library tv, Gary’s daily video blog of wine reviews and information with attitude, humor, passion and intelligence. It is also incredibly entertaining. Gary seems ubiquitous these days, and has brought an energy to wine online that is probably setting the bar very, very high. In fact, with regards to online marketing in general, Gary is very much an innovator, early adopter, and social media guru. More than most, Gary Vaynerchuk has quickly turned tools like Twitter into incredibly powerful connections to his audience. Rock on.

So, back to Crushpad, which I found via this exploding online community around wine. What I found so compelling about what the folks at Crushpad are doing is how easily they can connect you to the most important aspects of making wine… choosing the grapes and detailing the style of wine you want to create, along with keeping you apprised as your wine develops over time. They do this by forging very strong relationships with the grape growers and partnering with excellent winemakers. You can be involved at whatever level you would like, from incredibly hands-on and present at every step, or simply by checking in via web cam. You can monitor the progress of your wine via a dashboard and feel connected to the maturation process, etc. All very cool. Now, I have yet to actually DO this, but am again thinking about how to make it happen. It is just a bit cost prohibitive for me, but my idea last year, and the idea I am about to revive, is to get together a small group of similarly passionate wine lovers and have everybody “buy in” to the wine that I plan to make. Crushpad offers a number of different approaches to getting in, but my thinking is to put a group together and buy an entire barrel, which equates to roughly 25 cases, or 300 bottles of wine. I’m thinking 10 investors, which would give each investor 30 bottles of wine when completed. Taking this full circle, we would have a label designed for the bottles that tells this story, and acknowledges each individual investor, thus also personalizing the experience for them. They can monitor our progress online, and I will blog about the entire experience here. I’ve only just revived my motivation for doing this, and this could be considered the first VC round for my first experiment in making wine. I’m a Wine 2.0 startup. If this is something enjoyable, and if the wine is really good, I want to make this an annual experience and expand the number of people and the types of wine we make. My sense is that this would be really, really fun.

I just came across this excellent video, via [paul isakson] that nicely ties together what I and about a million other people have been writing about with regards to social media and the ways in which we engage and share information. Not so much how things have changed, but how they are changing. It is definitely worth watching.

You might remember the original Shift Happens video that made the rounds just over a year ago. It put forth some pretty startling information about the modern realities we face with regards to globalism, the internet, and the exponential rate of change in technology. I was recently sent this “updated” version that builds on some of the information put forth in the original. It’s well done, very interesting, and a little bit awe inspiring. We live in interesting times. The updated version above is from around June of 2007, meaning that much of the information is already outdated.

THEN

You interact with your friends/contacts/resources/anybody in person, via written communication that exists in hard copy, or on the phone. Those are the options. You need to seek people out, you need to connect in real time to avoid a serious time delay. Information exchange happens, but in fits and starts and you cannot easily catalog or file for future review, not without a hard copy of some sort. The shared base of knowledge exists in libraries and is impossibly difficult to update, and inconvenient to access unless you live in a library. Personal knowledge grows incrementally with each contact or interaction, but this takes time. A lot of time. It is an investment in time. Networks tend to be based around a shared niche interest or experience. Things are dimensionally very simple, and incredibly slow relative to Now. Communication occurs mostly in person and technology serves as a somewhat inferior stand-in for actually being there. Information exchange platforms are incredibly limited. Personal networks are predominantly local and regional.

NOW

You interact with your friends/contacts/resources/anybody whenever you want, and increasingly wherever you want. Sometimes this is in real time. Sometimes it is spur of the moment. They don’t need to be there. You don’t need to be “there.” Information exchange platforms allow you to retroactively review the activities/postings/information of your networks. You can easily catalog and file for future review. You can access what your network contacts are reading, doing, researching, watching and listening to. The shared base of knowledge grows exponentially and is manifested in all manner of social networking sites and through social media, and begins to link us together through idea, intent, and inspiration. You have multiple and many networks based on niche interests and experiences, and some of these overlap. Things are dimensionally interconnected and massively distributed. Communication is predominantly, if not near totally, technology based and in many, many cases the preferred mode of interaction is virtual. The information exchange platforms are diverse and expansive in reach. Personal networks are national and global.

SOME POINT BEYOND NOW

Ubiquitous communication. Technology is transparent as it supports us in our interactions. Platform choice is automatic and relative to location, connection, ease and efficiency. The collective base of knowledge and experience permeates reality in its total accessibility and instantaneous upload/download. Video, audio, and the printed word merge into one big seamless information amalgam. We’re on all of the time, and we love it. When we need to know something, we know it. Interconnectedness is not an abstract concept with those who have it and those who don’t. We pretty much all have it, or can have it if we want it. Interconnectedness is reality and reality is interconnectedness. Personal networks are vast and global.

Some Point Beyond Now is very probably really close. That means that Now will have only actually occupied maybe a few years, perhaps a decade or so at the most. Then was measured in nearly an entire century, 60-80 years depending on how you see it or how you lived it. The time previous to Then… well, that would be almost the whole of human history.

In February of last year I and a co-worker had an excellent time at Adaptive Path’s MX Conference held in San Francisco. The speakers were solid. The cool, smart and interesting people-to-meet quotient was quite high (including Adam Richardson of frog and Brooks Protzmann of Dell). I immediately became an advocate, have blogged about some of the speakers here, and continue to relate back to the experience and what I learned. The theme of the conference, “Managing Experience through Creative Leadership,” is one that is clearly industry agnostic, focused on creating successful and engaging audience experiences, and stands to benefit a multitude of businesses and teams regardless of their proximity to or intersection with a stereotypically “creative” business. This stuff should matter to all of us.

I’m going back again this year, and those that know me have already heard this about a thousand times. I have sent out invitations to join me at the conference. I am attending with a co-worker and friend, who also is a participant in our yearly “Innovation Tours.” This year’s tour begins with the MX Conference, and then we are scheduling tours and information sessions with a number of companies and organizations in and around the Bay Area. This should be an inspiring and invaluable trip, and an opportunity to make some great connections.

I received a confirmation email from Adaptive Path, and in that was something that I thought to be incredibly cool. They are paying a lot of attention to the time we are not at the sessions, and creating opportunities for all of the attendees to cross paths. There are the obligatory end of day cocktail receptions, and daily lunches scheduled as part of the conference, but it is the reservations for tables of eight made at restaurants around San Francisco that struck me as especially cool. As an attendee, just decide where you want to eat and show up. The reservation is already made and you have no idea who you will be dining with, which presents all kinds of happy accidents. It’s a dining/conference mashup, and a service for those not familiar with the city to get them out and meeting others.

So, yeah, I’m looking forward to this conference. I’m planning on live tweeting (inspired by David Armano’s tweets from the AdAge event a few weeks ago) the interesting things that I learn, and will try to recap at the end of each day here on schneiderism. You can follow the conference on twitter by following me.

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

Heavy, heavy day. Great discussion, new connections, incredible research, and too many emails and phone calls. I feel tired in a good way and as a contrast to the rather intense post of yesterday I offer this really rich animation just sent to me by a co-worker and via Vimeo. This is about all I can handle for the moment but am working on a number of posts on topics like the upcoming MX Conference in San Francisco from Adaptive Path, which I am attending, and a new Workplace of The Future piece stemming from conversations with Darren Shavor of Steelcase. Good times.

This interview with Hugh MacLeod by Shel Israel, which I came across because I follow Hugh on Twitter, is reinforcing of a conversation I had last evening about how companies might begin thinking about social media, and how social media might be helpful in building strong connections with their audiences. Specifically, we were discussing a company that produces outstanding content that people pay for, that when they find they generally love. Content that stands qualitatively above comparable content from most all of their competitors, but content that is ultimately difficult to find unless you are specifically looking for it. This company has no active digital strategy, that I can tell, and has not begun considering the benefits of meeting their audiences on their own turf. Imagine if they did? The really cool thing here, for this company in particular, is that there is virtually no risk and minimal cost for beginning to experiment with this. But there is a tremendous amount to gain, and to be gained in a way that is authentic and meaningful for those who seek such a connection and value the content that they create. That’s cool. And exciting. And potentially a wasted opportunity.

That’s a line from a really excellent slide presentation by David Armano and via FutureLab that succinctly summarizes some of the best opportunities for companies today as they contemplate their interactive marketing strategy, and how best to connect with their audience(s).

Three of his points here that are especially meaningful to me:

• Leverage the WordPress Content Management System - Huge value here, especially when combined with a thoughtful content strategy, analytics, and the focus to continuously improve and help audiences get the information that they seek. You’re only as good as your content is fresh. I am an enormous proponent of Wordpress as not only is schneiderism built with it, but two sites I am currently involved with are also taking advantage of what Wordpress offers. It has become a powerful technology for efficiently building effective websites and is very customizable from an interface design standpoint.

• Combine technologies for a stronger strategy - Like using Twitter to promote new content or priority links to people that choose to follow you. Effectively combining micro-marketing technologies can create an incredibly macro effect by making it incredibly easy for people to find you, your company, or your perspective and to help you communicate to a much broader audience very quickly, efficiently and cost effectively.

• Orchestrate infinite touchpoints - This is perhaps the most powerful slide in Armano’s presentation, and it relates very directly to the effective combination of technologies. Your messages can and should manifest themselves in a number of ways, and in a number of places. Starting with an effective website, also think about a mobile strategy, how you should use online social networks, and sites like Slideshare, YouTube, and Twitter. Effectively combining these into a range of audience touchpoints is powerful, and ultimately worth spreading your investment. In terms of platforms, it would seem shortsighted to invest in only one (like a website) when a little additional effort can position you with a range of effective communications technologies, and the technologies that your audiences are using to get information. This would be the embodiment of the whole “meet them on their turf” strategy.

Another great line from the presentation is “make the participant the star.” Armano presents a total of ten points related to investigating your interactive marketing strategy, and they are all pretty tight so I suggest taking a moment to view the entire presentation.

This is going to be a bit stream-of-consciousness, but I want to share these thoughts. I feel like I am experiencing a slow motion revolution of sorts, one that has been underway for a while, as I’ve suddenly experienced a lot of discussion around broken models, agencies of the future, emerging media, and the new marketing… primarily from the kickass blogs (all now featured in my blogroll on the right, so visit them often) of Tim Brunelle, Todd Defren, Garrick Van Buren, and Matt Dickman. Garrick and I have actually had some killer conversations IN PERSON, as well. Anyway, this discussion has really been happening for years (in slow motion…), but lately it seems more intense, more focused. I think some people are scared, and others are excited. Why? These two camps, scared and excited, pretty much align perfectly to those that don’t get what is happening in the world of media, advertising, communications, and people’s expectations for same, and those that do get what is happening. I am beginning to hear with more frequency references to “New Marketing,” “New Advertising,” and “New PR” from those that appear to get this reality. What makes them new?

Well, pretty simply, three things… and how they are successfully dealing with them:

1. The increasing prevalence of the internet in a pervasive, accessible way, and…
2. The reality that the internet is rapidly becoming everyone’s medium of choice.
3. The fact that traditional advertising, PR & marketing is largely irrelevant given 1 & 2.

I’m certainly not the first to point this out, but it would seem prescient to remind ourselves (especially those of you that are scared) that things are now very, very different than they were even five years ago. People ignore advertising and messages. They find them irritating, and are annoyed when these things are pushed at them. But even in the context of social media, old models persist. At lunch today Aaron Keller of Capsule pointed out that the ads on his MySpace page really bothered him because he didn’t care. They were for companies that he’s not at all interested in. They took up space and were irrelevant and distracting in a bad way. That is the old model in action. Let’s look more closely at how that happened:

1. Company with an internal marketing team wants to get a message out.
2. That message is that they are “current, with it, and meaningful to the kids.”
3. They engage an agency of sorts.
4. Agency brainstorms and comes up with banner ads. Ugh.
5. Agency says “You should be advertising on MySpace, where the kids are.”
6. A big media buy and campaign investment later, it’s lunch conversation for us.

And so it goes. The advent of the internet changed a lot of things, but one thing it really did well was create a communications platform that empowered a lot of people to start talking about their likes and dislikes and about their experiences. It began to connect people in new and meaningful ways based on this talking. Suddenly, what was being said mattered. It came from real people, and felt much more authentic. In most cases it WAS/IS authentic. Suddenly, you could niche down as far as your interests demand and suddenly, advertising, marketing and PR in the traditional sense seemed somewhat less relevant, and sometimes totally irrelevant. Not good for traditionalists in these industries. The internet has allowed us to refine the skill of ignoring everything except that which we are interested in. Going back to those that get it, it would seem the smartest thing to do in these industries is work really hard on connecting people with the information, products, services and companies they are interested in. To help them connect, to support them, to make it easy. For the agency to be the advocate for the audience, which probably sounds totally heretical to some. This is a partnership with audience that is pretty cool, and yet to be really figured out. It won’t be advertising, marketing, or PR when it is figured out… it’ll be something “New.”

Social media is the panacea du jour. It still feels new, and for many it still remains unknown territory. It seems like something business should be doing, and businesses are trying to understand how social media may or may not support their objectives. For this, they look to the agency specialists, those whose job it is to embrace the cutting edge and live innovation in communications, those that are supposed to have the backs of business when it comes to strategic marketing planning. Brian Morrisey’s Social Media: ‘Agencies Don’t Get It’, Survey Says last week in Adweek reveals that agencies may be the wrong ones to turn to for social media insights.

This is because nobody has really been able to “figure out” social media yet, least of all the agencies, and that may be the point. Perhaps the organic, authentic nature of social media makes it not-figure-outtable. Various agencies continue to try, and experiment with approaches that range from the bizarre to the probably effective, but in reality the environment is still very, very fluid. This reality presents the paradox of agencies knowing that social media is a big thing, and professing to be ahead of the curve on this big thing, but not really knowing how to work with this big thing to create value for their client businesses. Participation is an art form, but they are all still experimenting. That is dangerous for businesses. And expensive.

Last week a co-worker said to me that blogging is so “last year.” I laughed, and pointed out that the ROI of blogging for businesses has not even begun to reach a level of note. If he was referring to people blogging about their cat, I am inclined to agree, but the power of social media for business is very, very much in its infancy. He did not know what he was talking about. I suspect that with regards to social media, most don’t.

A choice quote from Morrisey’s article:

“You get the sense that agencies talk a good game. They put up a good presentation about what social media is, but when you get to implementing campaigns, the day-to-day management skills are not meeting the marketers’ expectations.”

Jim Nail, CMO and CSO - TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony

Set aside your disdain for sticky web monikers for a moment. I have been following the “The Workplace of The Future” for a while now, and have been writing about it since last July. The Innovation Tours that I organize for my team are focused on surveying where boundaries are being pushed and how businesses are responding to changes in the ways people want to work and the resulting impact on meaningful workplace design. No doubt, the demands on the physical workplace environment are changing right before our eyes, being driven by rapid changes in technology, notions of work, telepresence, and shifts in workforce demographics. Intersecting these drivers is the concept of Office 2.0, which encompasses the increasing number of web-based collaborative work applications, such as the smart suite of web applications from 37 Signals. They are a fast, efficient way for users and teams to organize, manage, disseminate and develop information using a simple, intuitive interface. The value of these applications are that they let you work remotely with people in ways that make us less dependent on desktop workstations and organized offices. At their heart, they functionally support collaborative idea and project development and the efficient sharing of documents and files, but the potential for how they will potentially change the ways in which we work go far beyond the functional benefits and they will ultimately influence what work actually constitutes.

Google is in this space with the web-based offerings Google Apps, and Microsoft is throwing its weight behind a rekindled web-based initiative. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller start-up applications also struggling for attention. Start using these tools now. Familiarize yourself. Encourage your teams to do the same. In the imminent future more and more of our work will take place on the web, leveraging web-based applications, and less and less of it will happen within the confines of an office. Smart companies are already there, and are redefining their models based on their own understanding of how Office 2.0 benefits them. In the short term, the biggest benefit for companies is the liberation from legacy notions of space and real estate, in the long term a benefit will be a workforce distributed globally, not locally. Physical offices will become less about the housing of workers during working hours and more about space that supports in-person meetings and collaboration. Think about how you were working ten years ago, think about how you accomplished your tasks and contrast that to how you work now. Now recall ten years before that, and if you’re old enough, ten years before that. I think it is safe to say that we would be hard pressed to not acknowledge the dramatic change that continues to occur, only with increased speed.

There is an annual conference, aptly named the Office 2.0 Conference, focused on exploring developments around Office 2.0 which I am planning on attending this year.

Robert Scoble recently talked about web-based work apps in an article for Fast Company.

This is an unbelievably useful tool. Everyone is well familiar with hyperlinks. But what about all of the other words on a page? What if you want to investigate them? Now, you can… and very, very easily. They’re called hyperwords, and I strongly suggest you check out the demonstration as I feel this will be one of the most useful web tools you’ve come across. Ever. I’m not kidding.

Basically, hyperwords allow you to click or hover on any word on a web page and surface a menu that provides you with a whole range of search, capture, translate and organize options. Very, very cool. I just activated the program for Firefox and experimented with it for about five minutes and literally had my jaw dropped. It took me about two seconds to decide to share with you here.

Thinking a lot about how you practically go about creating and fostering a culture of innovation. Discussed this in earnest in a previous post, and threw down some Gary Hamel. In that post it was discussed that an innovation culture must begin at the top. That, and in order to achieve this an organization has to wholesale eschew legacy, arcane management and control methodologies. That is an incredibly tall order for most cultures. They exist to exist, not much more beyond that.

There is obviously a lot more to how you create a culture of innovation. I tried a little experiment, and want to share the results with you. I posted a question regarding how you create such a culture to my LinkedIn network, and received a broad range of answers. Below is the question put out there, and the answers received to date:

How can a company create a culture of innovation?

We hear it all of the time… “we need to create a culture of innovation!” Sounds good. But, where do you start? How do you go about creating that? How do you ensure it has longevity?

Would like your insights and to hear your experiences.

~~~~~

“Man of action never speak. Creativity creates marvels. They don’t need guidence. It is inborn. Can u force somebody to draw or paint?”

Mamta Narang

~~~~~

“Step 1: First you would need to understand your organization culture, evaluating its approach to change…innovation in fact generally implies deep changes, in culture , in perspective, in the day by day apporach to problems, even in the way information are shared and in the way people communicate.

If you realize that your organization is already “transparent” to above mentioned issues, you move to step 2 , otherwise you need first to implement a Change Management Dpt. , leading the people side of change.

Step 2 : you need to encourage your people toward whati is called “lateral thinking”, organizing a rewarding “Best Ideas ” …people need to feel they work in a challenging enviroment.

Step 3: give your best worker time enough to study and to share their toughts”

Private

~~~~~

” There are plenty of corporate examples, like IBM and 3M.
Employees are given time each week for creative exploration of concepts and ideas, as well as the resources (people, material and money) to pursue them.

You have to AND you can structure in innovation.”

Ray Miller

~~~~~

“Flexibility is key. There are few things more guaranteed to stifle innovation than a rigid inflexible business process that must be obeyed at all costs. Another vital ingredient is the acceptance that not every idea can be a roaring commercial success. Often, budget is needed to test an idea, simply to find out that it’s actually not that good. It’s money well spent.”

Alison Coulson

~~~~~

“You have to make it worth while and beneficial for people to share knowledge within the organisation. Most employees with a traditional mindset think they are undermining their own position by sharing their knowledge. As a result no innovations will take place, because in a culture of innovation the lone genious is replaced by inter disciplinary teams. You have to change the cultural environment to stimulate new behaviours.”

Morten Lindholm

~~~~~

“The value system in the company needs to support that culture. Examine the systems, processes, corporate communications and rewards and figure out what the values really are (not what they are stated to be). Often times the heroes are firefighters and systems and processes are about removing variation - attributes that are very much about not innovating. What are the real values that all of your systems, processes, rewards and communications really need to support? It is very likely that each of them must evolve to support a more innovative culture.

That may sound insurmountable, but you can start by determining the most likely areas where innovation would be helpful to the business. Are you most interested in innovative new products, innovative processes or an innovative business model? The answer helps drive what the first moves are. Even when trying to start, adjustments must be made in congruence across all aspects of that part of your systems, processes, rewards and communications.”

Bob Becker

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“Check out Phil McKinney’s podcast, Killer Innovations, for some ideas.”

killerinnovations

Kore Peterson

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“It MUST come from the very top of the organization, define what innovation means to you and your organization, develop problems for your people to start thinking about, reward systems must be changed to drive toward the creative and innovative behaviors you are seeking, constant and consistent communication of the need and desire to innovate, demonstrated increased tolerance for risk and failure, mandate time for thinking, tinkering and collaboration, increase opportunities for horizontal communications, and finally, implement a few of those promising ideas!!!”

Paul Williams

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“In my (our company’s) view from working with innovation for more than 20 years is that the innovation capability (innovativeness) of a company consists of three elements:

1) Steering fo innovation
2) Atmosphere of the organisation
3) Channels

The steering has to do with the fact that in order to generate new ideas, one needs to have some direction, guidance on what the ideas should be about. The atmosphere has greatly to do with the management style in the company (in all levels), how line managers take in new ideas and improvements. The third part has to do with how well the comapny is able to gather the often rough ideas from the people and foster them into readymade innovations. Good ideas are only a start, they need to be implemented well.

First thing you need is a good understanding of the current situation. Without knowing where you are and where the biggest challenges are you can not aim in the right direction. This can be obtained through a number of ways from surveys to consultative analysis. Key is to start at the top, but make sure to go all the way (vertically and horizontally) to the different parts of the organisation. Innovation needs to be built all around, naturally in different ways in different places. The activities may vary from training of innovation methods, building processes and systems, starting up innovation organisations of many sorts, having idea competitions, etc. This depends on what the problems are - this can only be analysed with enough information. ”

Olli Kuismanen

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“Actions will create more innovation than any words you can speak. If you seek to create a culture of innovation it must be more than lip service and must begin at the top.”

Eileen Bonfiglio

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“There is an inherent creativity in everyone - specially when we talk about the subject area of work of people. For modern workplaces, innovation cannot come only with creativity but also require core knowledge about the subject.

I also believe that people are NOT a problem - most people do want to contribute and want to bring their best ideas (unless you are talking about some hopeless crowed where this question anyway doesn’t apply!)

The issue, however, really is that no new idea can succeed without sever effort and keeping faith in it. Unless the management (who determines the resource allocation), support this activity, and if he management is inherently not risk taking in nature, most efforts to create innovations will become a failure.

The ultimate key to organizational innovation i believe an open, transparent and risk taking culture and the real competence of the people. People is the only thing really matters! ”

Diphan Mehta

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Thanks to everyone for taking the time to offer their perspective on creating a culture of innovation. I think the differences and similarities in the answers is indicative of both how seriously we take this question, and how complicated the issue really is.

That’s a quote from Bruce Sterling’s presentation last week at Connecting ‘07. I am going to try to quickly tie together three prescient ideas for you, and Bruce Sterling is the rope I will use. His talk last week covered two paradigmatic concepts, that of spimes, and “the internet of things.” There is much discussion around the concept of “connectedness” and “interconnectedness,” and the realization that in a complex intertwining of relationships, everything really is connected to everything else. These two ideas, spimes and the internet of things, take interconnectedness to an entirely new level. The concept of spimes was initially introduced by Bruce Sterling at SIGGRAPH Los Angeles in 2004. A spime is a still theoretical object that can be tracked through space and time for its entire lifetime. There are six existing technologies whose convergence will allow a spime to happen:

1. Small means of remotely and uniquely identifying objects over short ranges, like radio-frequency identification.

2. A mechanism to precisely fix object location, such as a GPS.

3. The ability to mine large amounts of data that match criteria, like internet search engines.

4. Tools, such as computer-aided design, that enable the virtual construction of nearly any kind of object.

5. The rapid prototyping of virtual objects into real ones by means of sophisticated, automated fabrication of a specification for an object, through 3D printers.

6. “Cradle-to-cradle” life-spans for objects when combined with cheap, effective recycling.

The second concept, referred to as “the internet of things,” is the expansion of the internet to encompass real objects as they exist in space and time. This “object hyperlinking” is the success of the internet in tagging, searching and relating information in the virtual world applied to the real world. The internet of things will be made possible by the creation of spimes, one begets the other, and this is where things begin to get really, really interesting.

The third concept, the one that makes the relationship between spimes and the internet of things really sing… is sustainability. When everything can be tracked at every point in its life cycle, you begin to understand patterns of material flow, manufacturing, material use, object use, object termination, and ultimately object material recycling and reuse. The whole thing starts over again. Knowing that you can track the material and process of object creation, that you can track that object’s life, and track the harvesting of the materials used to make it… you’re tracking everything, and the ability to reclaim that material means that you can find a use for all of it. That’s very powerful, and ultimately led to the quote that is the title for this post. When you have an ability to understand and monitor the context of materials and resources you have the potential to see patterns of use and patterns of need. Sustainability aligns those two and completes the circle. As Bruce Sterling put it last week, sustainability is the killer app.

Original story via core77

Blogging is not going away. It may be changing, but it is not going away. I came across the statistics below via Converstations, whose RSS Feed I subscribe to, awhile ago and am only now getting around to sharing it with you.

The reality is that business is only just beginning to understand the value and power of the conversation created with their customers through blogging. This is an honest dialog, and one that customers are increasingly demanding in order to determine the authenticity of the products and services they consider. I don’t know about you, but I subscribe to dozens of blogs that cover a range of topics… from art to marketing, from cooking to parenting. I also read tons of magazines, but that is more of a luxury. I engage with blogs daily, and try to work on my own blog daily. For me, this is of tremendous value, and after reviewing the stats below I think it is safe to say that I am very much not alone in this thinking:

• Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
• More than 147 million Americans use the Internet.
• Over 57 million Americans read blogs.
• 1.7 million American adults list making money as one of the reasons they blog.
• 89% of companies surveyed think blogs will be more important in the next five years.
• 9% of internet users say they have created blogs .
• 6% of the entire US adult population has created a blog .
• Technorati is currently tracking over 70 million blogs .
• Over 120 thousand blogs are created every day .
• There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day .
• 22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs .
• 37% of blog readers began reading blogs in 2005 or 2006 .
• 51% of blog readers shop online .
• Blog readers average 23 hours online each week .

This list of blogging statistics is at BlogWorld Expo.

Over the last couple of weeks we have had a series of severe thunderstorms blow through our area. This has wreaked havoc on our wooded yard, causing us the loss of a couple of trees and breaking a few quite large branches. Initially, I figured we would just hire a service to come and take care of the tree carcasses. In particular, there was one tree that had become a “widow maker,” an ominous name given to a tree that has fallen but is now supported by another tree. Very dangerous. We also had an enormous limb that had broken but not completely separated from the tree trunk, and was hanging precariously over the entrance to our garage. Also very dangerous.

Here’s the deal, our lot is full of trees. This will happen again, and again, and again. For the money that we would pay for a tree surgeon to come and take care of our immediate problems I could acquire the necessary tools and figure out how to do this stuff myself. I presented this option to my wife, and she quickly concluded that I had a death wish. I don’t. I just saw this as an opportunity to become more self-sufficient. I had never even held a chainsaw. I had no experience with cutting trees and bringing down limbs. I did have a secret weapon. Web 2.0.

Here’s what I did:

1. Googled “how to fell a tree”

2. Went to the first result , then hit a few more to verify information

3. Searched YouTube for “how to cut down a tree”

4. Watched a few videos, then Googled “how to cut down a tree safely”

5. Found this great site, expertvillage, and watched several step by step videos

6. Went to wikihow to further verify information (this is serious stuff)

7. Then I began researching chainsaws at Amazon and FindArticles, reading user reviews carefully

8. Did a price search here, ended up finding the best price at Sears locally

9. Went to Sears, purchased chainsaw (the Husqvarna 142), protective gear, nylon rope, loppers and an axe

I did the bulk of the work this past weekend and am happy to report that I did not maim or kill myself. I made a couple mistakes, but because I took the time to properly inform and protect myself my mistakes were quickly, easily and properly managed.

The success of this DIY project was completely based on user-generated content, online video, and powerful search algorithms. The availability of this content, and the ease of accessing it, meant that before I fired up my new chainsaw for the first time I had a plan of action and had thoroughly reviewed all safety precautions. This project worked for me because of the benefits of web 2.0, and if I had purchased my gear online I would have completed the entire process without actually talking with a real person, other than my wife… who is pleasantly surprised that I am still in possession of all of my appendages.

Bonus: My new chainsaw and axe are both orange.