Off Course-On Target

Redesigning Rather Than Crying Over Spilled Milk?

On a recent trip back to the USA for a few weeks, I noticed something new in the dairy section of the grocery store—a new milk container. The milk was the same, but the container was completely new—square in shape and made from recyclable plastic. A quick search online produced all the details, such as this NY Times article “Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth” and revealed what I thought was another great example of the rising role and increasing importance of design for a bright future. 

As I looked into this story of these new milk containers, I was struck by:

• The simply staggering improvements that were realized by a relatively simple redesign of the everyday milk container
• The role that consumers need to play in both the design process and the successful implementation of these changes into mass usage.

For those who have not seen these new containers, here is a quick overview:

• More efficient storage; new jugs store 50% more milk by volume and are stackable.  More milk can be shipped per truck and requires less refrigerated storage.  One retailer now stores 224 gallons of milk in the same space that used to hold 80.   Combined these reduce fuel and energy use dramatically.
• Does not require crates or racks for shipping and storage due to its stackable, flat-top design.
• With no crates to wash or transport, labor is cut by half (loading, returning, washing) and water usage is reduced by 60 to 70 percent. One dairy mentioned in the NYT article was using 100,000 gals of water per day just for washing crates!
• More milk per truck and with no crates to haul back, the number of truck trips to the store has been reduced from 5 per week to just 2, which is a major fuel saving, and it lowers the overall cost of milk 10 to 20 cents per gallon.
• Overall efficiency is increased; milk from the cow in the morning is on the store shelves by afternoon. When I was young I spent many summers on my uncle’s dairy farm and always long for the taste of truly fresh milk.

To summarize, these new milk jugs result in cheaper, fresher milk that requires much less energy, water and labor and is better for the environment.

Creating a better world through a different design approach

This example also gives me even more confidence and optimism that we can create a better world through a balanced approach that benefits all those involved in the entire cycle—from initial idea to design to production, consumption and recycling.

Has to be an instant success, right?  Not quite. The real challenge may well be our ability as milk consumers to adapt to these new containers, to UNlearn some of our ingrained habits, such as how we  do something as basic as pouring milk from a container. It turns out that many people spill some milk when they first try to pour from these new containers. Why? Because they try to pour milk the way they are used to doing it. Many people end up rejecting these new containers and go back to purchasing the older style of containers. To address this problem, some stores are even offering in store lessons on how to pour with no spills—by tilting the jug forward rather than lifting it up, a technique described as "rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip."

Spilled milk is clearly frustrating and wasteful, but rather than crying over it (sorry , couldn’t resist), the solution would appear to be twofold:  short term this appears to be a good example of one of my favorite themes of unlearning and relearning how to pour milk from these new containers without spilling and longer term, I suspect that there are additional design improvements that will make these containers even more spill proof and easy to use.

I think there is also a larger lesson to be learned from this example. I have to imagine that if a more holistic approach had been taken by involving consumers in the design process, the new containers would have been easier or more intuitive to use without spilling.

Maybe I’m just being my hyperbolic self and I’m seeing more than there really is, but I don’t think so. Look at some of these numbers and start multiplying them by the amount of milk consumed every day around the world. Seems like an amazing improvement to me, and all from a relatively straightforward rethinking and redesign of an everyday item.

Tapping into the "Prosumer" model

There is a lot of talk these days about the environment, being green, sustainability and so on, most of which is well intentioned and much needed.  However, it seems to me that these changes are often implemented along the lines of the historical roles for consumers and producers where the producers come up with the ideas, make the changes, and the role of consumers is to buy and use these new and improved products.  Not a bad model necessarily and one capable of producing good results as the new milk jug attests. However I’m advocating the need for a more “prosumer” and  collaborative approach to design where we are simultaneously producers and consumers. 

The term prosumer  was first coined by Alvin and Heidi Toffler in their 1980 book “The Third Wave” where they predicted what I think we are now seeing—a society where the previously separate roles and responsibilities are increasingly being combined or “mashed up”  to create a very new and different role for all of us.

I see a distinct trend towards a prosumer society where all of us will play an increasing role in the design process of everything around us. Keeping in mind that pretty much everything in our world that isn’t living matter has to be designed and built by us, this has very major implications for all of us and the world we inhabit.This is a theme I’ll be expanding on more in upcoming articles and podcasts here on OCOT.

More than anything else though, this new milk jug example has me pondering what other everyday items besides the lowly milk container could produce similarly staggering results. What if we were to look at them more closely and rethink the design and unlearn some of our habits for using them?  Packaging alone is an enormous area ripe for major improvement, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of benefits to be had from redesigning and rethinking our current products and practices. 

How about you?  Look around your home, office, car, or other places you frequently inhabit and try seeing using a newly critical eye to see what opportunities you can find. You don’t need to have a degree in design nor have it appear on your business card or job description to be a designer. All it takes is adopting a more critical and new look at everyday things, thinking differently and thinking about seeing anew those things we take for granted. Who would have thought that something as basic and “unimportant” as a milk container could produce such staggering improvements?  Let’s hear some ideas from the rest of us about what should be next in line for such redesign.

Don't Mean to Bug You, but .......

Jonas Salk, the man who developed the polio vaccine, once said "If all the insects on earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on earth would disappear. If all humans disappeared, within 50 years all species would flourish as never before." There would be some debate as to the precise figures and outcomes here but the point is well taken I think. No reason to despair either, but humble pie should probably be a regular part of our diet, and here's chance to gain some more IQ points from taking this new perspective.

The earth without people

If you're curious about a scenario of the earth without humanity, check out "Earth Without People, an essay by Alan Weisman in the February 6, 2007 issue of Discover magazine. Weisman describes some possible scenarios. His article includes the the chart shown here, which lays this out on a timeline. 

His essay concluded with the following:

"During that same span, every dam on Earth would silt up and spill over. Rivers would again carry nutrients seaward, where most life would be, as it was long before vertebrates crawled onto the shore. Eventually, that would happen again. The world would start over."

And one bit of good news to some is that if all humans were to disappear, so too would some other species that have become dependent upon us, most notably the cockroach!  But for all of you cheered by this thought, remember that it requires that we leave first! 

Recommended Reading:

For more on this perspective, as well as a good read, I'm recommending you consider reading Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us. To help you decide if it's worth your time see Starting Over, the recent review (Sept.2, 2007) by Jennifer Schuessler who describes Weisman's book as

"wherein he imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species—ourselves—were suddenly and completely wiped out."

"When it comes to mass extinctions, one expert tells him, “the only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting. Weisman’s gripping fantasy will make most readers hope that at least some of us can stick around long enough to see how it all turns out."

Next up for your reading consideration and taking us back to insects, check out  Buzz: The Intimate Bond Between Humans and Insects. For some "decision support" with this one, read the excerpt and review in Discover called "Bzzzzzzz: Why insects are vital to human survival."

Bee-ware

Let's do another one of those "inverted thinking" flips we covered in my posting "New Perspectives: The Benefits of Looking Up!" Rather than consider our elimination, imagine what would happen if all the insects were to disappear?  According to Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson:

"If all insects were to suddenly vanish overnight, it’s likely humans would be endangered. All the plants that insects pollinate would disappear. All our detritus would pile up to colossal heights. Even the oceans would be affected. Nutrients would pour down off the increasingly denuded land into the sea, triggering massive algal blooms, which would exhaust the water of oxygen and threaten fish. And the impact on terrestrial ecosystems would be enormous."

“If insects were gone, you would break a large part of the terrestrial food chain. A number of birds would starve in no time at all. Those birds and other animals that depend on birds for food would disappear. Small mammals in the soil that depend, in part, on insects would disappear. It would be a catastrophic chain reaction around the world.”

Not to be confused with extinction which is the much more gradual decline, does it sound too far fetched that entire species could suddenly go missing? Well, as you may have read, this is exactly what has been happening in the past two years to the  honeybee. Millions of bees all over the world, representing in some areas over 70% of their population, have have been disappearing. They leave their hives, never to return nor to be found. In the USA, the wild honeybees have all but completely disappeared. This been labeled "Colony Collapse Disorder" (CCD) and remains an unsolved mystery.

BTW, don't be distracted by the erroneous reports that linked the disappearing bees to cell phone radiation!  However the research into this very serious problem of CCD may also be leading us to even greater understanding. For example it has been noted that just as industrial agriculture has created problems with pollution, antibiotic resistance, mad cow disease, etc., colony collapse disorder may be a result of a number of poor practices, including the fact that they've bred a superbee and most of the bees hauled around the country for pollination purposes are genetically identical, making them more susceptible to a bacterial or viral attack. On the plus side, InfoShop News has a related article "Organic Beekeepers Not Affected By Colony Collapse Disorder", which goes on to say:

“The problem with commercial operations is in pesticides used in hives to fumigate for varroa mites and antibiotics that are fed to the bees to prevent disease,” she said. “Hives are hauled long distances by truck, often several times during the growing season, to provide pollination services to industrial agriculture crops, which further stresses the colonies and exposes them to agricultural pesticides and GMOs (genetically modified organics).”

Even if the biology side of a world without bees is of less interest to you, consider the economic and human perspectives. In just the USA alone, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture has estimated that CCD has the potential to cause a $15 billion direct loss of crop production and $75 billion in indirect losses. CCD has caught the attention of Fortune magazine with three articles in the past few months including this quote from "As bees go missing, a $9.3B crisis lurks";

"We wouldn't starve if the mysterious disappearance of bees, dubbed colony collapse disorder, or CCD, decimated hives worldwide. For one thing, wheat, corn, and other grains don't depend on insect pollination. 

But in a honeybee-less world, almonds, blueberries, melons, cranberries, peaches, pumpkins, onions, squash, cucumbers, and scores of other fruits and vegetables would become as pricey as sumptuous old wine. Honeybees also pollinate alfalfa used to feed livestock, so meat and milk would get dearer as well. Ditto for farmed catfish, which are fed alfalfa too. 

And jars of honey, of course, would become golden heirlooms to pass along to the grandkids. (Used for millennia as a wound dressing, honey contains potent antimicrobial compounds that enable it to last for decades in sealed containers.)"

Bees for Pets?

Perhaps the insect world has its own version of outsourcing and offshoring?  As you may know, honeybee originated in Europe and are not native to North America. This bee has put undue pressure on the native bees, whose populations until recently were in decline. They're still sorting out why the native bees are making a comeback, but interestingly, native bees called Mason bees have been successfully used by some farmers for pollinating crops. As noted in this Wikipedia entry on Mason bees:

"Most mason bees live in holes and can be attracted by drilling short holes in a block of wood. They are excellent spring season pollinators and, since they have no honey to defend, will only sting if squeezed or stepped on. As such, they make excellent garden "pets", since they both pollinate the plants and are safe for children and pets."

Wait!  Don't Buzz Off Course Just Yet!

But enough of insects for now. You may be asking what this has all got to do with YOU? As usual, I'm leading you along a path and toward a target, however unexpected, convoluted, and latent. In the next few posts. I'll provide a few more varied examples which have common powerful and pervasive patterns lurking beneath which will help provide new perspectives and new models for all of us to use to solve today's complex problems with innovative solutions. If, as I hope, you've previously made some great discoveries here at Off Course - On Target, please follow me a bit further, and I promise to do my best to lead you to more great discoveries along the way, and make it all worth your precious time.

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Technorati tags: insects, bees, colony collapse disorder, CCD, perspectives, books, patterns, research, Jonas Salk, Alan Weisman, Earth Without Us

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The Power of 20/20 PowerPoint

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While catching up with this month’s Wired magazine, I noticed a short article with a very clever and descriptive title of “Get to the PowerPoint” from one of my favorite authors, Daniel Pink. Seems that Daniel has recently been introduced to the fun form of presentations known as Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha), which you may recall from my recounting using this format back in March and the great time I had. You can read about my thoughts on doing a Pecha Kucha style presentation and more details of this format and its history in the previous OCOT posting "Fast, Fresh and Furious".

Daniel found this Pecha Kucha to be much more than just a novel form of presentation, as did I.  As he put it, the simple 20/20 format of Pecha Kucha, (20 slides each displayed for precisely 20 seconds each):

".... turned PowerPoint ..... into both art form and competitive sport."

As is often the case, simple things are often the most profound and valuable. This certainly seems to be the case with PowerPoint slides where everyone is given but six minutes and 40 seconds (20x20) from start to finish, when every slide is given equal time, and then you're done! Think of how much time would have been saved and how much productivity would have been gained if even a fraction of the slide presentations you've sat through were compacted into this size, and presenters were required to boil their messages down to such succinctness. I got a kick out of Richard Nantel of Brandon Hall Research who was so taken by the economy of PK that in a posting earlier this week he suggested:

"I believe the designers of pecha-kucha should be awarded the Nobel prize in economics."

And YES, I'm quite aware that many of you may be wishing this for MY presentations!

I don't think that all topics or presentations are suitable for this format. But I have found it to be both liberating and humbling to approach presentations with this new insight into how often it is true that less is more. And I'm doing my best to practice what I preach! I'm honored to be touching down in Chicago tonight (Aug 28) just long enough to do an encore performance of one of my Pecha Kucha presentations at an Autodesk Leadership Summit. Then, at the Learning 2007 conference in October in Orlando, Elliott Masie and I will be hosting a Pecha Kucha Night as well as encouraging attendees to use this format elsewhere in the event.

Continuing my perpetual theme of the value (and rarity) of experiential learning, I strongly encourage you to try this out. Many of these events are done in a social context in the form of a Pecha Kucha Night. This format has worked well for the ones I've been involved in because they stimulate some great conversations when the PK presenters mingle with the crowd afterwards. The format also works well for helping to find and mine some of the gold nuggets that are hidden away within some of the more introverted and quiet individuals. Better still, think about scheduling an event or grab an opportunity to try out this PK style on one of YOUR next presentations.

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BTW, Daniel is the author of a book that I HIGHLY recommend called "A Whole New Mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future"  His views on the future are very much aligned with mine.  I think you'll find a lot of insights in his book that will change the way you see the world of the future and will show you how to excel within it. I'm looking forward to joining Daniel on the stage at Learning 2007 at the end of October and will have more to report to you after that fun experience.

Shift happens—especially in your mind!

I want to alert you to an article and a book that recently came to my attention with some compelling empirical evidence that shows how effort and attitude really DO matter and that learning to “embrace failures” appears to be a discerning factor of those who succeed.

Carrie Bustillos, a long time Autodesk colleague and a Stanford alumni, passed along a recent article “The Effort Effect” from Stanford magazine about Carol Dweck’s research and her book Mindset:The New Psychology of Success. This book definitely makes it onto my highly recommended reading list.

Dweck proposes that we typically have one of two types of “mindset”: fixed or flexible/growth. Those with a fixed mindset think that their talents and abilities are preset. They simply are what they are and you just have to accept them. Intelligence and talents are basically what they were born with. This group, according to Dweck, is destined to go through life avoiding challenge and failure and not reaching their potential. On the other hand, those with a flexible or growth mindset regard their intelligence and talent as something that is malleable and can be developed over time.  This group is destined for growth and success.

Dweck was led to this research because she was curious as to why talent is not a good predictor of success. Why do some people achieve their potential while others who are equally talented don’t?  And she also asked herself, “What makes a really capable child give up in the face of failure, where other children may be motivated by the failure?”

It is important to note that the title “Mindset” is a play on words and Dweck is NOT recommending that we have a “set mind.” Nor is she simply championing “the power of positive thinking”. Rather, Dweck is proving how much of a difference it makes for those who choose to think about their abilities, intelligence, and talents as being very flexible.

What I really want to emphasize is that this means WE are in control! Being more successful, and realizing more of our individual potential, is a choice each of us can make. To me, some of her most fascinating experiments were those where she demonstrated that simply by changing the attitude or expectation that individuals had over their abilities (fixed versus flexible) completely determined the outcomes. Her research shows that those who have a flexible mind rather than a set or fixed one are more often successful.

“The Effort Effect” article recounts just such an example. Last November, Dweck served as an advisor to a top soccer team school from the UK whose performance director was concerned that many of their top players had a large gap between their actual performance and their potential. Of note was the fact that these top players were the most resistant to the school’s century old motto—arte et labore—“skill and hard work” and had the least motivation for serious training. With Dweck’s help, they identified the problem as somewhat cultural, since many believed that “star players are born, not made”, so what was the point of practicing?

The Stanford article outlined a recent study that Dweck and her colleagues conducted:

“‘Study skills and learning skills are inert until they’re powered by an active ingredient,’ Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but won’t want to if they believe their efforts are futile. ‘If you target that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any reason to hope for.’”

I was also immediately drawn to Dweck’s work when she cited one of my favorite examples and topics, Betty Edwards classes and book on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Dweck noted how Edwards' results show that tests are typically poor at measuring potential because most adults think they can’t draw and for the most part I’d add that the majority feel they are very “left brained” and logical and only a rare few are “gifted” with artistic and other so called “right brain” talents and tendencies. Yet what Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has proven to thousands of adults who have taken the course or used the book, is that anyone can advance from the typical kindergarten-like attempts at drawing say, a portrait, to astoundingly accurate and beautiful portraits by these same “talentless” adults in just a few classes. That would certainly shift your mind set!

One of the things I really liked about Dweck’s book and work and why I’m recommending it for your consideration is that unlike so many others, her conclusions are grounded in over 30 years of solid and rigorous research with many different groups. She is not just theorizing or stating her opinions.

For more insights from Carol Dweck on how this plays out in education and training, I recommend reading the interview with her in Education World, “How Can Teachers Develop Students' Motivation—and Success?” In the interview she explained:

“This is a really interesting question, and the answer is surprising. There is no relation between students' abilities or intelligence and the development of mastery-oriented qualities. Some of the very brightest students avoid challenges, dislike effort, and wilt in the face of difficulty. And some of the less bright students are real go-getters, thriving on challenge, persisting intensely when things get difficult, and accomplishing more than you expected.

This is something that really intrigued me from the beginning. It shows that being mastery-oriented is about having the right mind-set. It is not about how smart you are. However, having the mastery-oriented mind-set will help students become more able over time.”

Now for some additional reading that takes Dweck’s work in very different directions, you may want to look at the following:

• Guy Kawasaki picked up on Dweck’s work on his blog How to Change the World, which generated a lively set of comments and discussion. They took this off into a whole different direction and to my way of thinking, missed much of the key points of Dweck’s research,  but I still recommend it for your reading.

• Malcolm Gladwell’s blog and his New Yorker article “The Talent Myth:Are smart people overrated?” highlights a common and very troubling myth that is rampant in much of the business community. This was expounded upon at great length, and unfortunately to great effect in the book The War for Talent, written by a group of McKinsey & Company consultants who meticulously researched what made top performing companies different from the others. They concluded that:

“Success in the modern economy requires "the talent mind-set": the "deep-seated belief that having better talent at all levels is how you outperform your competitors." 

Unfortunately this “talent mind-set” became the doctrine of many managers and companies, the shining (for a moment) example being a company that was entirely built upon this model and had this embedded into the corporate DNA and culture. The company was Enron.

As you can see Dweck and her research have definitely sparked a lot of interest and diverse applications. To bring us back to Dweck herself and a focus on learning, here are some of Dweck’s tips from the Stanford article's sidebar "What Do We Tell the Kids, which I thought many of you would find very useful. Although they are aimed at children they can easily be adapted for adults and applied to many situations both professionally and personally.

• Listen to what you say to your kids, with an ear toward the messages you’re sending about mindset.
• Instead of praising children’s intelligence or talent, focus on the processes they used.

Example: “That homework was so long and involved. I really admire the way you concentrated and finished it.”

Example: “That picture has so many beautiful colors. Tell me about them.”

Example: “You put so much thought into that essay. It really makes me think about Shakespeare in a new way.”

• When your child messes up, give constructive criticism—feedback that helps the child understand how to fix the problem, rather than labeling or excusing the child.
• Pay attention to the goals you set for your children; having innate talent is not a goal, but expanding skills and knowledge is.

Dweck continues, "Don’t worry about praising your children for their inherent goodness, though. It’s important for children to learn they’re basically good and that their parents love them unconditionally. The problem arises when parents praise children in a way that makes them feel that they’re good and love-worthy only when they behave in particular ways that please the parents."

Whether it is your children, your co-workers, employees or yourself, I hope you enjoy reading more and find this topic intriguing and valuable. Here at Off Course - On Target, I'm aiming to help shift your mindset to the flexible setting!

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Dangerous Assumptions

My good friend and colleague, Erik Duval has a blog that I recommend you read regularly, as I do. Erik is a professor in the research unit of the Hypermedia and Databases Group, in the computer science department at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, located between Brussels and Antwerp. 

In his recent posting “Learning and Libraries”, Erik tells the story of the wonderful new library that has recently been built on his otherwise quite old (founded in 1425) campus, but notes that he and his students never use it!  As he puts it:

“I never go there. Neither do my colleagues. Nor my students. Why would we? All our material is available on-line. If it isn’t, it kind of doesn’t exist.”

He continues by asking why libraries don’t do some things that he would value highly, such as:

“Why don’t they inform me when someone is downloading my papers? Referring to my papers? Why don’t they alert me to papers I will probably want to know about?”

I could not agree more with Erik. Here is an important role that libraries lack. I suspect that their failure to take on this role comes, in part, from the fact that they have confused their value proposition—delivering the services that library users need—with what a library is and does on a day-to-day basis. Erik points out:

“This is an area that is very much in flux: the conservative reflex with many librarians is easy to understand but they really risk “perfecting the irrelevant”, as my friend Wayne Hodgins would say.”

As his example so clearly illustrates, many libraries seem to believe that they are there to be a physical repository for very physical objects, such as books, journals, and periodicals, and to provide a great place to read, study, find books and other materials—all of which, of course, still has some value.

However, as Erik so rightly points out, their real value proposition is the SERVICE they can and sometimes do provide. Most of us have had a least one experience with a great librarian who was able to help us find just what we needed—to help us solve a problem, to research an assignment, or write a paper. This service is an invaluable asset—one that I desperately need many times every day!

Erik’s questions highlight several other good examples of the kinds of services that would endear a library to most of us, yet are ones that very few seem to be considering. Hopefully his post and others will stimulate more awareness of this situation and we’ll see more librarians addressing these issues and offering these services.

My other concern is the prevailing assumption that Erik mentions at the opening of his posting about information and materials: “If it isn’t [online], it doesn't exist.“ Although I very much want this to be true, and believe that we are on a path toward this end, I also believe that we are far from attaining it.  For example, although I don't have the exact statistics, I believe the vast majority of the world's books, and even their metadata, is not online. So those who assume that an online search will find "everything" that exists on a topic are probably missing out on a lot, perhaps even the majority of relevant resources.

Less than 10% of the world’s population has access to the web. Therefore, the majority of the world’s population, as well as their content, books, customs, etc., are missing. You quickly can see that what we can currently find on the web is a very small percentage of who and what we can discover by other means and benefit from.

I agree that this situation is improving and that the more interactive and social nature of networks forming on the web help to resolve some of this. For example, another person can point you towards something you formerly missed.  But it is dangerous for us to assume that when we search, we have the majority of resources available to us.

I touched on this topic in a previous Off Course – On Target posting called “Books – the NEW old medium” To some extent, this is a known problem and  enormous efforts are being made to remedy it. Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book” project, Google Book Search and Microsoft’s “book search” project, to name but a few, are scanning and digitizing more of the world’s books and printed content to make it available online to all.

More projects are being added all the time. Techshout.com just announced that around 800,000 books and manuscripts from Mysore University in Karnataka, India will soon be digitized by Google.

However, for the foreseeable future, I hope that we remain very aware of just how limited online searching is and that we continue to check our assumptions that “everyone and everything is available online, otherwise they don’t exist. “ Let’s work on this as a goal and understand that until we get much closer to realizing this, we will need to supplement our online searching with more finding through other means.

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Jumbled Joomla: there is no "B" in Joomla!

In my previous post (April 26) "Wassup with Web 2.0?" I noted two new tools, Joomla! and Zude that I believe to be of significant importance and very much worth having your checking out. Unfortunately, I spelled Joomla! wrong and thus put in the wrong link and directed you to a related but incorrect web site. Mea culpa and my apologies for any confusion.

Joomla! does NOT have a "B" in their name as I had mistyped, so please note that the correct URL is www.joomla.com and name is Joomla!   I've fixed the link now in the blog posting (one of the many benefits of dynamic publishing!) and wanted to alert those of you who may have already tried it and were confused.

I've already had many of you express an interest in both Joomla! and Zude and as I noted in my earlier keynote posting:

"This is NOT an endorsement of either of these applications, but rather to provide you with what I believe to be GREAT examples of the tipping point that is developing around my theme of “MC2(squared): Mass Customization x Mass Contribution”.  Have some “serious fun” spending some time to “play” with both of these and I’m convinced you will start to see how these enable and encourage almost anyone from your grandmother to your 4 year old nephew to be able to be both a content producer and consumer and do it all THEIR way.  I am particularly intrigued by the combination of both these types of “applications” with something like Joomla!! providing the functionality for content management however formal or informal, and something like Zude providing the functionality for assembling just the right stuff, just the right way, just for me.  Keep your eye on these types of functionality and I’ll be reporting more as I do so as well."

I'm particularly looking forward to the official release of Zude tomorrow (May 1st)  If you didn't catch it in the previous post, rather than try to explain Zude I recommend that you check out the ZDNet posting, "Zude’s drag-n-drop Web authoring/remixing make it the Switzerland of the social Web" that this posting with a video interview with Zude founders and a product demo.  AND for those of you who would like to do some experiential learning or "serious play" then be sure to get over to the www.zude.com, have some serious fun with it, and report back with your reactions and responses.
UPDATE:  Can't wait till tomorrow to get started?  Good news, David Berlind over at ZDNet just posted the code (9833) to let you in to the Zude site as an "early adopter" so you can get started RIGHT NOW! David also put up some of his initial reactions and comments which completely match my experience to date and I'd recommend that you read his posting; "Zude offers ZDNet readers early preview code in advance of May 1 beta launch"

In the hope that it will stimulate more of you to share your experiences, here are some of my very brief and very early reactions and thoughts so far:

Joomla!!
• Is intriguing as a powerful, open source “content management system” for the rest of us
• Completely separates content from the “presentation layer”
• Seems to be tremendously flexible in the way almost anyone (low skills like me) can create any form of content and have it show up however you like it
• Works on a “repository” type of model where all of the “articles” (content) and the applets, widgets, etc. are available for you to call up, display, layout or interact with
• enables “rules” to be easily created such as interactions between the individual objects and enable the site to dynamically determine how and what content is displayed for example

Part of my interest in Joomla! is that in the past month, several of my “trusted advisers” have independently decided to start using Joomla!!  Believing in synchronicity and serendipity rather than coincidence, I take great note of this “pattern” as being significant. Having said that, I am also hearing and reading good things about another open source CMS called Drupal and there are many more available as well. I’ve heard from some that Drupal creates much better code and was designed more bottom up as an application, whereas Joomla! is developed more “top down”, meaning that functionality is where they started (doing stuff with content) and then kept building up code by adding features over time.

Zude:
• Is a very new and very different way of working with content. (goes live as of May 1, 2007)
• I’m intrigued by its potential to be a truly universal content aggregator that let’s anyone and everyone have it “just right” and just their way.
• Zude appears to be COMPLETELY independent of the operating system or browser
• AND completely independent of the source of the content that you drag and drop onto your “pages”—anything from content that is from your local hard drive to server based content to web-based content
• Best explanation is probably in this short video and demo

I've always had huge respect and admiration for Alvin Toffler, one of the true futurists of our time and author of prescient books, such as Future Shock and The Third Wave. Toffler coined a great term "ProSumer" to indicate a future he predicted back in the 1960's where we would be both Producers and Consumers at the same time, and I see this coming true here and now. I’m specifically interested in how these two technologies (Zude and Joomla!) might work well together with Joomla! being the choice when we are in “Producer mode” serving as a central CMS for everyone from average individuals up through huge organizations, and then Zude being the tool for “Consumer mode” when I or anyone else is wanting to have more control over the content they are consuming and sharing. All of this enabling what I've been referring to as "The Snowflake Effect" of just the right content at just the right time in just the right way, etc. etc.

What I’m interested in getting from any of you (in all your spare time!) is some initial reactions, technical evaluation and your overall rating of where you would rate each of these relative to their importance for the future and worthiness of more of my and perhaps your time and attention?? Are these important new tools and methods of working with content or nothing new? Will this type of capability be a catalyst for massive change along the lines of how blogs have changed behavior and content? Will this catch on with "the rest of us" from grandparents to grandchildren" or it is just for geeks and the technically proficient?

IF you get any time to have some “serious fun” playing with these I’d be MOST appreciative of your thoughts and reactions. More to follow here on Off Course - On Target as we all get some time to do more of this critical kind of serious play.  See you in the sandbox of life and learning!

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The Old Medium has become the New Content (Part 2)

In my previous entry, I pointed out that the current distinction between a TV and a “computer” is becomingly increasingly arbitrary and irrelevant. TV, the old medium, is transforming into content. An explosion of “digital surfaces” everywhere--on cell phones, cameras, desks, appliances, airplane seats, and billboards, and even mirrors—is just the beginning of Marshal McLuhan’s profound observation that as our communications evolve, the old medium becomes the new content.

Lest you should think that we have just about hit the limit of how many different screens, displays or digital surfaces you can be surrounded by, brace yourself for “digital paint” and “digital paper”!  Based on what I'm privilege to see in research labs for the past few years, the introduction of this technology into the marketplace can’t be far off. If you are not familiar with this concept, imagine a substance at the molecular level where each molecule is a tiny sphere where one half of its surface is black and the other half white. Each black and white sphere can easily be controlled by electrical input so that either the white or the black side is facing up. Now simply mix this substance into paint or wood pulp or plastic and you suddenly have the ability to make ANY surface digital and capable of displaying ANY image you’d like with almost infinite resolution.

You can see the possibilities. Imagine binding a few pages of digital paper together to create truly digital books!  Oh, and note that the images on this digital paper can move so suddenly that you can be watching “TV (the content) in a book.” Just throw in some other colors with those black and white molecular spheres and we’ve got color screens literally EVERYWHERE!  An equally frightening and exciting vision for most of us, I suspect.

To add even more to your degree of excitement—and fright—the surfaces will include “proximity detectors” that know it is YOU who is nearest to them so they can display highly customized content based on what you are “broadcasting” or what the system behind the surface knows about you.
I strongly recommend that we stop using these terms of TV and television to refer to a device or a medium and understand instead that this previous medium has now transformed into content (see Fortune magazine’s article “TV is Dying?  Long Live TV!”) While we are at it, let’s reconsider terms such as “computer” or “computer screen”. These too will soon be antiquities that future generations will find “cute” and “quaint”. Instead, let’s understand that McLuhan had it just right with his comment that the old medium becomes the new content.

My BIG question is this: “What content do you want and where and when do you want it?” Those of you who have read or listened to me previously know that I am passionately committed to:

• A lifelong vision of mass customization and ultimately, personalization of content, context, competencies.
• A future where every person on the planet is able to have deeply personalized learning experiences daily. 

So the challenge (and a grand one it is!) is how do we get what I call the Snowflake Effect: just the right stuff to just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right way on just the right medium (and likely a few other “just rights”).

More to follow as always.

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Trust is good!

In a previous posting, I talked about “trust as a competency” and my discussions with Stephen MR Covey about his recent book The Speed of Trust: the One Thing that Changes Everything. So I was intrigued by a recent article “Corporate Philanthropy Inspires Trust: Does It Also Prompt Higher Profits?”  on the Knowledge@Wharton web site. This article also ties in nicely with two topics that I will cover more in the future—trust and “doing good to do well”.

As summarized in the article's introduction:

"Wharton finance professor Vinay B. Nair and two other researchers looked at whether being charitable -- such as donating money to medical research or to organizations that promote economic self-sufficiency -- helps a company's financial picture. They concluded that it all depends on the type of industry.” 
And “They cite a survey last year by the Economist on corporate giving. Of the 135 executives and 65 investors who responded, 85% said corporate social responsibility was a "central" or "important" consideration in investment decisions. That figure was almost double the 44% who responded similarly five years before.  But Nair and his colleagues theorize in the paper that charitable giving may be good for the bottom line because it helps to convince consumers that a company and its products are trustworthy. Trust factors into many purchases, particularly when it is not obvious why one product is better than another. Nair uses the example of "natural food" products, which typically are priced higher than standard items even though they may not taste any better. Natural foods are a rapidly growing business."

While I’m very supportive of this notion of “doing well by doing good”, I think this article unfortunately exemplifies a very traditional approach to corporate philanthropy. In doing so, they miss an alternative model that can have much more impact for both sides and provide a very sustainable way for corporations to be very philanthropic. This alternative model is characterized by “enlightened self-interest” and is what I like to refer to as “strategic philanthropy”.

The Wharton research missed an opportunity when they specifically excluded from consideration:

“… good deeds that could also have the effect of boosting a company's productivity and, in turn, its profits. For instance, a company's decision to operate an environmentally friendly plant could increase efficiency. Likewise, a company that offers flex time and good maternity leave benefits may reap the benefits of a more loyal and productive workforce."

Strategic philanthropy is not an oxymoron!  Some define it as "how companies can provide money, capabilities, and partnerships to charitable causes in ways that sharpen their own competitive edge.”  One of the best explanations of this different approach to philanthropy was in a 2002 Harvard Business Review article “The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy” by Michael Porter, University Professor, Harvard Business School, and Mark Kramer, Managing Director, Foundation Strategy Group.

In their article, they asked "Should corporations engage in philanthropy at all?" and argued that companies might be better off NOT engaging in traditional philanthropy if it is done in an ad hoc way, (such as a small amount of dollars being given to a charity or local cause) or is used just for public relations, advertising, or high profile sponsorships. However, Michael and Mark believe that when the philanthropy is strategic and tied to companies' social and business objectives, there are greater benefits.

Porter and Kramer found that only a few companies actually engage in strategic philanthropy. At the time, they cited Cisco as a company that has truly maximized the value of philanthropy by focusing on both its economic and social objectives through the development of the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

Since this Harvard Business Review article can only be ordered as a reprint , here is a good synopsis of the article:

“When it comes to philanthropy, executives increasingly see themselves as caught between critics demanding ever higher levels of "corporate social responsibility" and investors applying pressure to maximize short-term profits. Increasingly, philanthropy is used as a form of public relations or advertising, promoting a company's image through high-profile sponsorships. But there is a more truly strategic way to think about philanthropy. Corporations can use their charitable efforts to improve their competitive context—the quality of the business environment in the locations where they operate. Using philanthropy to enhance competitive context aligns social and economic goals and improves a company's long-term business prospects. Addressing context enables a company not only to give money but also leverage its capabilities and relationships in support of charitable causes. Taking this new direction requires fundamental changes in the way companies approach their contribution programs. Adopting a context-focused approach requires a far more disciplined approach than is prevalent today. But it can make a company's philanthropic activities far more effective.”

With this different model in mind, you might want to check into the “what and how” of your organization’s philanthropy.  I suspect that most of you will find that the traditional model is being practiced. And while I want to be clear that just about any form of philanthropy should be applauded (and certainly there is no end to the need for such giving back), I’d like you to consider how much more effective and lasting it could be if we were to adopt the model of strategic philanthropy. Wouldn't this approach be more effective, sustainable and able to increase over time?

As I mentioned at the outset, this topic of “doing well by doing good” and specifically this model of “strategic philanthropy” is one that I will return to in future postings. In the interim, please let me know if you have any examples or comments to support or refute this model.

For now, I’ll leave you with a great summary of philanthropy that I found on the web site of a company called Strategic Philanthropy:

An Effective Giving Strategy:

• Meets personal, corporate or organizational interests and passions
• Defines an essential mission, purpose and priorities
• Addresses/responds to real needs in local and world communities
• Incorporates clear, established rationale and operational procedures
• Integrates an ongoing evaluative component that is meaningful, flexible and accessible to all involved
• Benefits from, and contributes to, the experiences of others by connecting to the larger philanthropic community
• Is a journey of learning and listening

And…most importantly…is fun and deeply fulfilling.

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Books—the NEW old medium

Why is it that whenever something new and innovative comes along, one of the first reactions of the press and pundits is that it means the elimination of whatever went before? When television was first invented and began to become popular, the “conventional wisdom” was that it meant the end of radio. Who would want to listen to a talking box when you could have talking pictures?! Well I don’t know about you, but when I last checked (this morning) radio was an even more viable medium than ever.

TV certainly changed radio and how we listen and interact with it, and I’m not sure there are too many households sitting around the radio listening to programs in the evenings. But far from being eliminated, it seems that radio is currently experiencing its own revival via the likes of Internet-based radio and satellite radio. And for me, podcasts are an extension of radio, bringing back a flood of a new, more vibrant and relevant form of “talk shows”.  This is all very different than in the past to be sure, but to my way of thinking, it is also vastly improved, reaching more people and having a greater impact than ever.

Similar predictions have been made about other innovations: eLearning meant the end of classrooms and teachers, online sites meant the end of newspapers, DVD’s meant the end of movie theaters...and the list goes on. After observing this phenomenon for many years now, I can only conclude that it is an odd characteristic of human nature, and we just need to try to learn more from these lessons of the past and match these realities to our predictions and expectations.

Earlier this week (January 21, 2007), I read about this very same syndrome being applied to some new developments. In this case, Bryan Appleyard made some interesting commentary in his UK Sunday Times column with the headline “Could this be the final chapter in the life of the book”. This was his reaction to the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to scan the content of a majority of the world’s books and make this content discoverable online.

In case you were not aware of these developments, here is a quick review of the past few years:

Back in 2003 Amazon started to “unbind” books it offers with the introduction of their “Search Inside the Book” project which will help you find the exact page and associated text and context you are looking for. They have gone on to add programs such as  “Amazon Pages”, which  “unbundles” these digital books so that customers can have online access to any page, section or chapter, and a program called “Amazon Upgrade” which will allow customers to "upgrade" their purchase of a physical book on Amazon.com to include complete online access.

Google got involved in 2004 when they introduced a program they initially called Google Print to “help users search through the oceans of information contained in the world's books.”  In December 2004, Google extended this idea when it made a deal with five libraries—NYPL (New York Public Library) and the universities of Stanford, Harvard, Michigan, and Oxford—to scan their stocks, making their contents available online, and renamed the service Google Book Search. Ultimately, they predict that some 30 million volumes will be involved and they claim to be scanning about 3000 books per day, a rate that would translate into more than 1 million books per year.

Microsoft and MSN have also been working on similar “book search” projects that scan printed content and make it accessible online. In November 2005, they made a deal with the British Library to scan 100,000 books from its vast collection with over 25 million pages to be scanned the first year alone.  And in June 2006, the universities of California and Toronto agreed to lend their collections of out-of-copyright material held in trust. In concert with the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft will scan and index the materials for use in its Windows Live Book Search.  This month (January 2006) they also plan to add books from the New York Public Library, Cornell University and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine, which are being scanned by robotic machines.

More recently (and what prompted the Times article) were some comments from Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe who said at the “Unbound” conference at the New York Public Library,
"We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online."  From this, Appleyard concluded that "We are, it seems, about to lose physical contact with books, the primary experience and foundation of civilisation for the last 500 years."

Of course, Appleyard may well be right that as the content of books becomes available to us online (as I would believe is inevitable and will happen much faster than predicted), it will change both the way and the amount we interact with physical books. But how the form or medium upon which text is transferred has anything to do with how it is used and interpreted is beyond me.

Appleyard goes even further with his “sky is falling” style of predictions to say:

"...it is the teachers who will have the final say. They will determine whether people will read for information, knowledge or, ultimately, wisdom. If they fail and their pupils read only for information, then we are in deep trouble. For the net doesn't educate and the mind must be primed to deal with its informational deluge. On that priming depends the future of civilisation. How we handle the digitising of the libraries will determine who we are to become." 

Wow!

But fortunately some reality prevailed in the form of good commentary from several other sources. A UK colleague of mine, David Worlock of Electronic Publishing Services, who was also speaking at Unbound said, “Ultimately it’s not up to Google or the publishers to decide how books will be read. It’s the readers who will have the final say.”  Here here! And from down under, Stuart Corner on ITWire  provided reactions to Appleyard’s comments that I would strongly agree with.

As Appleyard notes, even the British Library sees this digitization and access to content to be a great thing:

“Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, refuses to see this in apocalyptic terms. With 100,000 of her books being scanned by Microsoft this year, she regards the ultimate digitisation of the library’s entire 150m-item collection (journals included) as 'a wonderful outcome, though I suspect I’ll be long dead by then.'"

I certainly share the concern for any bias towards either American or English books, literature, or culture, which is raised here, however I would agree with Brindley that this is highly unlikely to happen. Brindley notes that search engines are still in their infancy and that even Google has competitors who are bound to eat into their monopoly. She goes on to say that “improved technologies will make search results more like indexes, working more precisely as knowledge providers than simple information dispensers.”

I was just delighted to finally see some acknowledgment that the majority of the world’s content is NOT yet available on the internet at all! Books are but one great example, especially those in most libraries. Then there are related issues of the degree to which most information in magazines (and especially journals) are still difficult to discover online. Yet to listen to some people, you’d think that if content doesn’t show up in a search result, it doesn’t exist. I, for one, can’t wait to have this mass transfer of content to digital forms occur and for it to be accessible for mass discovery.  And I suspect that as noted in my upcoming podcast “Living in a World of Exponential Change”, this will happen MUCH sooner than expected. Now we just need to shift the focus from searching to finding!  But that’s a topic for another posting.

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Trust as a competency?! - Part 2

In Stephen Covey’s book The Speed of Trust: The one thing that changes everything, he focuses on the role of trust in the context of leadership and business or professional situations. One of his most fascinating points is the notion of treating trust as a competency—something that we can do something about. Covey makes a strong connection between trust and confidence (as opposed to suspicion, for example).

His reference to “speed” in the title is about how he relates trust to speed and cost. Specifically, he notes that as trust goes down, cost goes up and speed goes down. When trust is low or absent, things take longer because more time is spent gaining sufficient confidence to make decisions and move forward; hence costs go up accordingly. This is what Covey refers to as a “trust dividend”.

Continuing with my common theme about the value of breaking things down into very small parts, I want to point out how Covey breaks trust down into 13 behaviors that can help to build trust. These include:

• Talk straight. Be honest and tell the truth. The opposite of spin for example
• Create transparency. Operate on the premise of "what you see is what you get."
• Demonstrate respect. Treat everyone with respect, especially those who cannot do anything for you.
• Show loyalty. Acknowledge others' contributions. Speak about others as if they were present.
• Deliver results. Accomplish what you are hired to do on time and within budget.
• Practice accountability. Don't blame others when things go wrong.
• Keep commitments. When you make a commitment, you build hope. When you keep it, you build trust.

In his onstage interview, Stephen picked out the first two of these behaviors (Talk Straight and Create Transparency), and when we talked  later he added two others:

• Get better. Seek feedback. Staying current.
• Listen first. We usually listen with the intention to reply, not to listen to understand.

There is nothing new or revolutionary about any of these behaviors and in spite of the more questionable actions we see around us, most of us were brought up learning about these constructive behaviors from parents and others, yet their application seems all too rare. I'm reminded of one of the great book titles of all time, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum.

However, one of the major benefits of breaking trust into all its constituent pieces is that you can deal with each one individually or in smaller groups. Treating trust as a competency enables you to identify those components that can be learned or are “trainable” and use these to actually build and improve upon the trust in a relationship or within an organization or group.

What I particularly like about Stephen’s perspective on trust is how he challenges the age-old characterization of trust as some vague social virtue. I found it particularly positive and empowering to remove trust from the constraints we often attach to it—as being something people have a fixed amount of or they are born with and thus is something you can’t do much about.  This view renders us helpless to do anything more than look for as much of it as possible. Instead, by treating trust as a competency, trust can be a solid economic driver as well as a learnable and measurable skill. While the focus in the book is largely on the professional application almost all of this can be applied at the personal level and produces deeply advantageous and sustainable success in all dimensions of life.

This is all very much worth reflecting upon.  Read through Covey’s list of trust behaviors above and consider the rating for:

• Yourself personally in your dealings with family and friends
• Yourself professionally at work and with your business colleagues and dealings
• Your team or department
• Your overall organization or company

And most importantly, what can you do to improve these? Given that almost all of our interactions with others—our communications and our leadership abilities—hinge upon trust, don't we want to have this as one of our greatest competencies?

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