Off Course-On Target

List with a Twist: My Best Learning Books in 2009?

I am always looking for the next great book to read and thought I’d tap into the collective intelligence, the annual end-of-the-calendar-year trend for lists, and the power of new tools such as Twitter to find the next great book to read. Below is some of the why, how, and what I have in mind.

Mashup of Old and New

I continue to be intrigued by the power that comes from creating mashups of old and new. In this case, it is about finding the next great book to read (how old can you get?) using a new means such as Twitter, blogs, etc.

In short, what I’m asking you to do is reflect upon books you’ve read this past year, choose one or more that you found to be the best learning book for you, and share this with the rest of us via a tweet.* Ideally you can also articulate with more detail on why you chose this particular book and post this to your blog, Facebook page, or otherwise share your thoughts with the rest of us.

I considered making this more wide open and going for “best learning resource” that could include books, websites, blogs, tweets, slides, presentations, etc., and perhaps we should expand this idea and format to other resources.  But for now, I have purposely limited this to that oh-so-yesterday medium—books—as I’m interested in finding more in-depth and detailed exploration of ideas, concepts, techniques, models, and the like. I not only find myself reading more than ever from a greater diversity of sources, dates of publication, and formats than ever, but as a voracious eBook reader, I find myself reading more books than I ever have (something which I already did a lot) and am finding exponentially more value in doing so. I’d like to continue that trend.

Vaguely Focused

I have also purposely focused on “learning books” and have left the definition and interpretation of what a learning book is in this context to be open-ended and up to you. You can treat learning as a verb or a noun, just make it personal and passionate. For example, you can decide to choose the book which was the best at:

• Stimulating your personal learning, was most provocative, made you think the most, perhaps one you disagreed with the most?
• Causing the most change in your thinking, your perspective, your behavior.
• Stimulating new ideas, new questions, new paths to pursue.
• Being most helpful in your personal learning and/or with learning in your organization—personal or professional.
• Affecting a change in learning as a topic/subject.
• Any other way you want to interpret what “learning book” means to you.

Like to learn by example?  Check out this list of “Books that Changed My Life” (and a very cool library pictured here as well) from Kevin Kelly.

List with a Twist

This is not an attempt to create a new top ten list, and least of all, any kind of most popular or bestseller list! There are lots of these and there are more to come I’m sure. And by all means, mention them here if you find some good lists that helped you find a great book for learning in 2009. 

While I would not want to stifle more input, rather than creating an echo chamber of agreement with someone else’s #myBLB09 tweet, I’m hoping you will either add your own book or tweet about an additional benefit you got from reading a book someone else listed. I will not be compiling a summative list, I won’t be taking votes, or in any other way trying to categorize or rate these books. The #myBLB09 will help enough with that. Rather I’m trying to stimulate more sharing of what you found to be the most valuable for you.  My assumption is that we will all benefit from our individual sharing of personal great reads.

However, I’m actually hoping to see hundreds or thousands of books listed here, which will enable each of us to add a new book to our own personal top ten list for 2009 before it ends all too soon.

Here’s how I’d suggest we can all help make this a productive and valuable resource and use of our time:

• Create a tweet with one of the best books you have read in 2009, which had a profound effect on your learning and perhaps that of others around you. 
• I’ve created a Twitter hashtag #myBLB09 and be sure to add #myBLB09 to your tweet so others can find, follow, and benefit.
• Avoid the temptation to list a book you plan to read, have skimmed, think you should read, or ones you think everyone else is reading!
• Reflect upon books you read in 2009 and do not limit this to books which were published in 2009. In fact, I’m hoping that we’ll see more old, obscure, forgotten books than those on any bestseller lists.
• Write less about why you think others should read this book and more about why it was so beneficial and influential for you. 
• Bonus points for a link in your tweet rather than text regarding the author, book, etc. so you can use more of the 140 characters to state why this is a great book for you! 

  Tip: Use the “custom naming” option in the URL shortener (bit.ly, snurl, tinyurl, etc.) that you use to make the link text more descriptive and part of your tweet text.  Search on “custom naming URL shortening” or the like for help with this such as:

  • http://www.seoconsultants.com/twitter/shorts/
  • http://www.geekpreneur.com/the-top-10-url-shortening-services

• Consider writing a more detailed account of how and why this was such a great learning book for you and posting this on your blog, Facebook page, or other ways you can share these thoughts with the rest of us. Then send a tweet with a link to your notes and include the #myBLB09 hashtag.
• If, as will often be the case, you have more than one great learning book you read in 2009, consider creating and posting your own personal list of “My Best Learning Books in 2009” and tweet a link to your list, adding #myBLB09 as well of course.

Help Me, Help You by Helping Me Help You

In the wonderful ways of the cyclical benefits of gifting, I’m hoping that by asking you to help me find my next great book to read, you will find your next great book to read. And at this time of year, if you are looking for a gift for friends and family, perhaps this will provide you with some gift ideas. However my real hope is that by doing this, I may in some small way be able to give a gift to you by asking you to consider giving yourself a gift—the gift of time for reading, thinking, and reflecting, which I find books to be great catalyst for. How’s that for circular!

While the end of year certainly brings with it lots of demands on your time, it can also provide an opportunity for the luxury of time to read. Consider it an investment in the future and an investment in yourself such that you can in turn be that much more useful and effective in helping others in the upcoming New Year and beyond. For those of you who use calendars and schedulers—electronic or paper—to help organize and manage your time, consider simply scheduling time for you to read something stimulating and provocative and the time to reflect and think about it all. It is no coincidence that in my experience with others who I regard to be extremely successful, I’ve discovered that they specifically carve out time for just this kind of activity at least annually and often more so. Why not you too?

You’ve done your best to be good all year right?  You not only deserve this gift, but in the end it will enable you to better gift the rest of us with an even more powerful and passionate you in 2010.

Looking forward to your help in finding the next great book to read.  Thanks!

Wayne

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* If Twitter and tweeting is new to you or you have been trying to figure it out, my experience is that this is one of those things that you can only learn experientially. Use it for a month and you’ll know if it is valuable for you. See my previous post “Twitterpated” for more details. Why not use this opportunity to start your experiential learning of Twitter now?

What if the Impossible Isn’t?

As I mentioned in my recent post “Reflective Reduction Sauce”, returning to my work universe after months at sea has led me to reflect upon some themes I encountered as a result of my attending the Learning 2009 conference. One theme I’m delighted to see more attention on is “What if the impossible isn’t?”

This theme is about the need to understand that we are living at a time where almost anything is possible. While I would still wager that the majority of people are not quite believers yet, I continue to have great fun exploring  what is the current “state-of-the-art of the possible” with others in my presentations and conversations.

What makes something possible includes such factors as:

• Does it exist? (invented/discovered yet?)
• Am I aware of it?
• Is it available to me? (out of private beta, out of the research lab, etc.)
• Is it ready for me?  (good enough for my use)
• Can I afford it?

Fundamentally, my sense, my message, and my belief is that the only thing holding us back anymore is our assumptions of what it possible, what we should be demanding and expecting as consumers, and the overall attitude we need to take that if something is not possible today, it will be tomorrow—almost literally. 

Living in the Age of Abundance

But I am not suggesting that just because something is possible or available, you need to use it. Quite the opposite actually. Our choices should be driven by our needs, our passions, and our curiosity. Yet this habit of trying anything new is a holdover from the previous era of scarcity whereby we would often feel a need to use something just because it came to our attention, arrived on the market, or was pushed at us as new and improved. 

As we transition into the age of abundance, I believe we need to assume that everything and anything is available and possible, and work from there. In doing so, I find it necessary to invert these earlier approaches and avoid the tendency of starting with a solution in search of a problem.

As many of us* start living in an era of abundance where anything becomes possible, it puts a wonderful pressure on us to think and focus more on:

• What do we really need?
• What are the essential characteristics we are looking for?
• What are our top priorities?

In grossly oversimplified terms, the way we have historically planned and designed is:

• To start with some ideal end state in mind and then develop back from that based on what is impossible.
• To build a solution based on what we think is possible and accept what is often a very significant degree of compromise in the process. 

In doing so, most of our sense of what is possible is quite dated and is based on unconscious assumptions.   Both of these problems are causing us to squander opportunities to improve and do things we believe are still only dreams, and the way to change this is to go after both of these problems.

Learning to Adjust Our Sense of What is Possible

With the rate of change increasing exponentially, our sense of what is possible and what is impossible requires almost constant real-time updating, and necessitates a new planning and project management model. This new model allows for dynamic updating when something that was impossible when the current plan was developed becomes possible. When this happens, the project should start using it and taking advantage of it.

This kind of updating can largely be addressed through technical means if all such requirements are well-articulated in the initial planning process, such that the needed capabilities and other requirements are quantified and stated and can thus be tracked for relevant changes.

However, our unconscious assumptions are a much more troubling and challenging problem because they lurk below our level of awareness and because they become indelibly ingrained into our habits, behaviors, and thinking. For example, my focus on the Snowflake Effect—the transition from an era of mass production to one of mass personalization—includes many such assumptions. Mass production is not reserved for the domain of manufacturing, but rather has permeated most societies and our overall way of thinking. 

When I talk about this meta theme of the Snowflake Effect, one of the most common and provocative questions that I ask is, “If we all seem to agree that each of us is unique, and furthermore that each moment and situation is unique, then why do we live in a world that is designed for sameness?” 

When we design something, we typically start by identifying the “target audience”, a group of people who are  defined by a set of common characteristics. The larger this audience, the better. Think about this for a minute. Imagine you are designing and developing any new product, such as a lesson for students, a book, a website, a car, or service. Do you find that designing all of these involves the same basic model based on an assumption of sameness?

And I get it. This model used to make complete sense. Mass production was a brilliant model in its time and we largely got to where we are today because of it. However, the great news is that most of the conditions and constraints which made mass production such a successful model have changed or have been eliminated, yet the model persists. Add to this the equally wonderful dynamic that truly amazing new capabilities, products, and services are becoming possible and available every day. We are increasingly moving to the point where the impossible isn’t.

It’s Time to Get Good at Believing in the Impossible

What to do?  What needs to change? First and foremost I think it is we who need to change—our thinking and our assumptions. We need to get good at believing in the impossible. In true synchronistic fashion, I recently received this quote from my good friend Murry Christensen which resonated strongly and added to my sense that this meta theme I’m discussing here is growing:

"We must learn to deal with possibilities instead of probabilities."

-- Verna Allee

And one of my favorite thinkers and writers is Kevin Kelly and he has been making these same kinds of observations for many years now. One of my favorite Kevin phrases is:

“Impossible in theory, possible in practice”

Kevin makes this observation in light of the many capabilities we are now immersed in  yet which only a few years or months previously we would have regarded as impossible. You can read Kevin’s piece on “Believing the Impossible” or watch his TED talks such as “The next 5000 days of the web” (included here), and “How Technology Evolves”.

Still not convinced?  Watch these other TED talks and see if you change your mind a little or a lot:

• Pranav Mistry demonstrating his “Sixth Sense” device

• Juan Enriquez’s tour of some views of “mindboggling science”

• David Hanson showing his robots that “show emotion”

Believing that “the impossible isn’t” is what has led me to conclude that the dream of being able to seize every “teachable moment”, to have personalized learning experiences available for every person on the planet multiple times every day, and get to a “just the right” end state where we can get just the right stuff to just the right person at just the right time in just he right context, has become an achievable goal.

What about you?  When it comes to capabilities, products, services, etc., what is on your “wish it were possible” list? What, were it to be possible, would make the most significant difference in your professional or personal life?  My experience in pursuing these questions is that by articulating and sharing them, we will discover that many are already possible and those that aren’t can be put on our watch list, so that we will be notified in days, weeks, or months that it has just become possible. 

Sound impossible?  Just watch, it isn’t!

Wayne

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* Let’s keep in mind that in terms of world population (almost 7 billion), we are still the privileged few who live in in this era of abundance, and although this group is also growing exponentially, we all need to continue to work to distribute abundance.

The Snowflake Effect on News

I’m seeing a virtual snowstorm of recent products and services that are trying to find ways to “snowflake” their offerings.  My fellow Snowflake Effect partner (and one of my favorite snowflakes) Erik Duval recently posted an example  “Snowflakes at Time Magazine” showing how publishers are sticking their toes into this space.

These newer examples are also incorporating and addressing the context of “attention”; that is, what do we as unique individuals pay attention to, want brought to our attention, etc.  Read on to see what I mean.

Ohpan, a free personalized and interactive feed of breaking news, photos, weather, etc. is another recent example of a new service for highly personalized news from the web design company AType Studios. TechCrunch, which I find to be an excellent source for such news, had a good review of this on March 6th called “Ticker Feed Ohpan Offers Uber-Personalized News”

We’ve seen some earlier attempts to help us get “just the right” news items—ones where where you indicate topical interests and can build your own newspaper with GoogleNews and many other offerings. However, I see examples such as Ohpan’s technology as being a significant step up in the evolution of this kind of Snowflake Effect decision support, because it is adding more context from us individually, something it learns from our online behaviors: which sites we visit, what we save or forward to others, etc. 

There are also links to social sites that more of us are using, such as Facebook, as well as links to Gmail and Twitter. Of particular note is their provision of a feedback loop, so I can interact and provide more context by indicating individual news items I particularly like and either want more or less of, plus the option to share these choices with others. In my experience, this linking capability adds significantly to the overall “network effect” of improvement. I’m also increasingly delighted by the way this is providing the critical serendipitous discovery of news, sites, people, etc.

One of the more noteworthy items, which AType is apparently going to offer next, is the same feedback loops for advertisements, enabling us to indicate ads that we like, want more or less of, use, recommend to others, etc.

All of this is VERY much worth watching. This whole area of decision support is something I highly recommend that we all  keep an eye on as these sites develop, improve, and evolve faster and faster and get better and better.

Wish Upon a Star(fish)?

In a previous posting on September 21, 2007 called “New Perspectives: Looking Down and Under”, I wished for a “sea” feature to compliment the “sky” feature Google Earth had recently added back then. While I have no illusion that I had anything to do with it, you can still imagine my delight when Google Earth recently did just what I was hoping for... and then some!

With the new update to version 5, Google Earth now gives you the ability to explore and see the sea—you know, that stuff that covers more than 70% of the planet and of which we know embarrassingly little of?

But don’t take my word for it, go get this major update to an already fantastic tool and check it out for yourself.  If you already have Google Earth installed, then just go to the Help menu and choose “Check for updates” and it will install version 5.  Otherwise, head on over to the Google Earth download site and install it now.

I’ll let many of my fellow bloggers and reporters provide you with reviews and details to help you find some of the new nuggets that may be lurking below the surface (sorry!).  A quick search will give you lots of choices, such as this review in the NY Times and this one from the BBC and these videos over on CNET News.

I thought there were some very telling quotes from the Google Earth staff, such as:

“We had this arbitrary distinction that if it was below sea level it didn’t count,” recalled John Hanke, the Internet entrepreneur who co-created the progenitor of Google Earth, called Keyhole, and moved to Google when the company bought his company in 2004.”

And as fascinated as I am with the sea and this major addition to Google Earth, don’t let me limit your exploration of the new version to just the underwater world.  Google Earth has many other new features that are almost as exciting, such as “Historical Imagery” which let’s you go back in time and scroll through satellite images to see a time lapse visual display of things like the spread of disease or urban sprawl (or maybe those are the same?)

And for those like me who are also interested in the learning aspects of all things, be sure to check out new features such as a function called Touring which the NY Times article described as:

“.. let’s you create narrated, illustrated tours, on land or above and below the sea surface, describing and showing things like a hike or scuba excursion, or even a research cruise on a deep-diving submarine.”

And as Christopher Dawson reported in his blog on ZDnet Education

“Google has partnered with National Geographic, the BBC, Cousteau’s Ocean World, and several others to provide a wealth of information about everything from the global fishing crisis to footage of shipwrecks. Marine life census data, scientific expeditions, and countless links to information outside Google Earth make this a free treasure trove for science, social studies, geography, and even math teachers (how better to learn about coordinate systems?).”

OK, enough from me. Stop reading this and fire up this latest offering of Google Earth and have fun doing your own exploratory and experiential learning.  Enjoy! 

Lucky for me, I am off in the morning to help a friend sail his boat from St. Martin to Miami. While you are in Google Earth, you may also want to check out this area and get a bit of a geography lesson while you’re at it.  Meanwhile I’ll be busy doing an even more intimate form of exploring and experiential learning. Which, by the way, is part of the reason for my limited access and postings of late, something that will continue for another week or so while I’m making this 1400nm crossing.  "Sea you" on the other side!

Happiness is the Snowflake Effect on Spaghetti Sauce

As Erik Duval, my fellow "snowflake" knows all too well from my incessant ramblings over the years, I’m of the sincere belief that the purpose of life is happiness.  By this I mean happiness or joy of the very deep, profound kind: experiencing great joy in your own life and living your life to help others to experience great joy in their's.  So while recently watching TED Talks, I was intrigued by a talk from 2004 called  “What can we learn from spaghetti sauce” by  Malcolm Gladwell on finding happiness with spaghetti sauce.  Malcolm’s talk is about his long standing fascination and respect for the work of Howard Moskowitz, a world renowned expert in “psychophysics” and author of Selling Blue Elephants. 

I found the whole thing to be a fabulous example of the Snowflake Effect.  Here's an excellent use of 17 minutes and 42 seconds of your valuable time.

In Malcolm’s description of what he gets from Howard’s work, he noted for example how Howard has been instrumental in changing people’s thinking in the food and beverage industry. Prior to Howard’s interventions and insistence with the food and beverage industry, “everyone was looking for universals”, “looking for one way to treat all of us”, “something to please all of us”, “finding the rules that govern all of us”, and being surprised or puzzled when they failed to be successful in doing so.

These are very similar to the questions Erik and I are raising in our focus on the Snowflake Effect. Why it is that we seem to live in a world designed for sameness when we live in a world inhabited by unique "snowflakes"?  In Malcolm’s estimation, the biggest change in science in recent years has been “the movement from the search for universals to the understanding of variability”.  Obviously you’ll need to listen to Malcolm’s TED talk to understand the context, (one of my ulterior motives here), and I ‘d also highly recommend listening to Howard himself, such as in this interview of Howard by Phil Windley on Technometria.

To me, Malcolm was articulating a great example of the Snowflake Effect on spaghetti sauce, science, and coffee.  The reason I think Malcolm is so passionate about happiness and Howard’s work (he has been writing and talking about his hero consistently for many years) is summed up in his closing line in this TED talk where he explains that he thinks the most beautiful lesson of Howard Moskowitz is “that by embracing the diversity of human beings we will find a surer way to true happiness.”  Couldn’t have said it better myself, Malcolm!  This is why Erik and I are so passionately pursuing a better understanding and awareness of the Snowflake Effect.

Loving Lexicographical Learning

Related to my theme of languages, but through pure serendipitous discovery via my addiction to watching TED Talks, check out this TED talk by Erin McKean on Redefining the Dictionary.

I LOVE this lady and her TED Talk for several reasons:

• As much as anyone, she’s in charge of the English language.
• She loves words and so do I.
• She gets to call herself a lexicographer, which as she explains also lets her say things like lexicographical which is a double dactyl like higgledy piggledy.
• Her desire to be a word fisherman rather than policeman, so she “… can go throw her net out and see what she can drag up from the bottom of the sea.”
• Her great sense of humor and ebullient presentation style.
• Her wonderful irreverence towards what makes a word “official” or “proper”, good or bad. Instead she focuses on what is useful for communicating.
• Her focus on inclusion rather than exclusion.
• Her appreciation and support for neologizing, which is the invention of new words and something I’m all too fond of doing!
• An entire presentation without ONE bullet point or text slide!  I’m inspired!

This is DEFINITELY worth 16 minutes and 02 seconds of your precious time!

Erin also maintains several blogs that are also worth checking out.  See her bio info below for links to a few of them and then go from there.

And if you liked this presentation, you probably will enjoy her great Slideshare presentation on “If Language Weren’t a Commons”.

If Language Weren't a Commons ...

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: isummit08)

From her bio on the TED site:

Why you should listen to her:

Much to Erin McKean's delight, her job as editor in chief of the Oxford American Dictionary involves living in a constant state of research. McKean searches high and low -- from books to blogs, newspapers to cocktail parties, The New Scientist to Entertainment Weekly -- for new words, new meanings for old words, or signs that once-favored terms have fallen out of use. ("Information Superhighway," anyone?) And it's clear that she relishes the hunt.

McKean is also the editor of the language quarterly Verbatim ("language and linguistics for the layperson since 1974") as well as the author of multiple books, including That's Amore and the entire Weird and Wonderful Words series. All that, and she maintains multiple blogs, too: Erin is the keen observationalist behind A Dress a Day and Dictionary Evangelist.

"Ms. McKean is part of the next wave of top lexicographers who have already or may soon take over guardianship of the nation's language, and who disprove Samuel Johnson's definition of a lexicographer as 'a harmless drudge.'"

The New York Times

View Erin McKean's Profile

Experts...like you and me?

In previous postings, I’ve pointed out that we're living in a world of exponential change and that this is affecting all of us in many different ways. You can find my thoughts and references on this with a quick search on exponential change on OCOT as well as my overall article and podcast. 

To continue with this theme, today I'd like to explore how this world of exponential change has affected our concept of expertise and experts. Has it changed as well? What do you do when you need some assistance and there are no experts to be found based on our traditional definitions? 

The rapid introduction of technologies such as entire new programing languages, new software and hardware; or on the social side, things like social networking, un-conference event models, and so on, challenge our understanding of expertise,  and our traditional models and techniques for obtaining expertise and for finding those who have it.

While it is often true that there are very few completely new ideas and so many very new things are based on very old ideas, previous work, models and products, it still seems as if we are seeing more that are truly new and different. Being so new, we have no Ph.D programs,  certification programs, or other credentials in place, and in many cases, not very much experience or expertise at all because these technologies  and models are new to everyone. It helps in part that large scale adoption of anything new typically takes 10 or more years (see this “Long Nose” post by Erik Duval for more on this) but it often takes even longer for us to establish the traditional forms of denoting expertise and creating the experts themselves. What do we do in the meantime and even more so what do we do as the rate of change trends ever upwards?  Will our traditional models continue to work at all? For example:

• What does this mean for “boards” or other committees of experts for an organization, company, association?  If these are becoming less effective what is the better choice?
• In the absence of any “formal” credentials, how to you find and deploy individual experts and consultants? 
• Is there a value to a “panel of experts” at a conference?  If so, who should be on the panel?
• How does our understanding of new more contrarian models such as “wisdom of the crowds” and the “Blink” approach affect our definition and use of experts?

You get the idea, and I’m sure you can come up with your own list as well. 

Finding Solutions

I quite like and often quote Einstein’s observation that:

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."

More often though, I think our problem is that we are restricted by our thinking which as been shaped by the previous paradigm and so we search for solutions to the new paradigm from within the old. As we seek to find and develop solutions to this new challenge of identifying and finding expertise and experts, we can take advantage of the way other things are growing exponentially.  For example:

• The degree to which these technologies can help us find and connect with others who are focused on the new “thing” we are interested in.  There are usually many more experts and more expertise out there than we assume or were previously able to find.
• The increased exposure more and more of us are having to new products, programs and ideas and therefore pursuing our curiosity with them thus taking the first steps towards developing more expertise.
• The increased access and availability for learning about and experimenting with these new ideas, products and services.  This is especially true in the form of the more informal learning we are increasingly doing through our daily forms of (re)search, reading, listening and otherwise consuming the exponential growth of “content” available to us.

Experts "R" Us!

So how do we find the right experts and expertise at the right time?  First, we need to get better at finding expertise that often goes unnoticed or remains unknown to us.  If you don’t know it’s there, then it essentially doesn’t exist!  In my experience, we often fail to find experts because it doesn’t appear in most people’s job description or title.  Have you ever had the experience of meeting someone AFTER a project was over (typically in an informal setting) and realizing that they have this incredible expertise and experience? Have you caught yourself saying something like “Where were you when I needed you?”  And worst of all, did you find that they were right under your proverbial nose, right next door or even already working for or with you?

I’ve long advocated that we need to work to dramatically scale up the amount of metadata we have for each of us. By this I mean the enormous list of individual attributes that define and describe us as unique individuals—deeply detailed metadata inventories of our skills, competencies, experiences, aptitudes, attitudes, knowledge and so on—and have it all being dynamically updated on a constant basis as we acquire new skills, have new experiences as well as those we lose from lack of use.  Just imagine how valuable it would be to find just the right person at just the right time when you need to add someone to a project team or have a question you need answered or an idea to test out.

Exponential Growth of Experts?

And perhaps most of all, we need to consider the potential of developing more expertise within each and every one of our exponentially expanding world population (currently 6.7 Billion and counting!).  We need to learn to see and find the expertise in all of us, both collectively and individually. By collective, I am thinking of the growing awareness and understanding of the latent expertise that lies within a large group of people. This idea is nicely captured in James Surowiecki’s book “Wisdom of the Crowds”.  This is increasingly happening as we become more and more connected to more and more people and things. 

Individually I am thinking that if something is very new, then an “expert” could be defined as whomever has the most experience—often the individuals who have been early adopters, high risk takers, and those who jumped in from the beginning and have the most experiential learning as a result.  If you believe, as do I, that every one of us has some degree of expertise and our numbers and our amount of expertise is growing at an ever faster rate, then therein lies much of the solution to the problem of finding experts for the exponential growth of new ideas, products, and services. It all sounds very “loopy” (consider the source!), but it seems to me that we can indeed invert Einstein's observation and best find solutions for a new paradigm from within the NEW paradigm.

We probably need to get much better at learning in real time as we jump in and try out these new products, services and ideas.  We need to get better at doing a lot of post-mortems to analyze what worked, what didn’t would be smart.  Getting over our apparent reluctance to admit to or review failures, and instead learn from what doesn’t work well. If increasingly more things are very new and we have less and less experience with them, should we not expect to be in an almost constant state of exploration and discovery and expect “failure” to be more common than success? 

I don’t mean "failure"in a negative sense, nor do I mean that failure should become the goal. Rather, learning from what doesn’t work seems in my experience to be at least as valuable or more so than that which does. We’ve long known about the value of “practice” but usually separate and distinguish this from “the real thing” and regard practice as what we do to get ready for the real performance.  Perhaps we now live in a world where ALL we do is practice and strive for continuous improvement.

But I also believe in the old adage that “the more things change the more they stay the same”, and so we will continue to have the more traditional types of experts who are deeply specialized.  They will remain highly valuable and sought after.  However, given the enormity of the number of problems we have to solve, both large societal ones and small daily ones, and the fact that these are growing exponentially, we need, as they say,
"all the help we can get."  And I for one simply can’t imagine how we can be effective in solving problems through linear approaches, such as continuing to depend upon our traditional model and definition of expertise. 

As we start to live and work in this world of exponential change, we need to think exponentially as well. We need develop solutions and models which scale exponentially. Rethinking our definition of expertise and experts to be on more of a sliding scale and where we assume that each and every one of us have valuable expertise to offer seems to me the best direction to head as we search for more experts like you and me!

Designing Your Own Future!

Carrying the rather magnanimous title of “Strategic Futurist”,  I try to always clarify that I have no crystal ball, no special powers for prediction of the future (nor any other special powers for that matter!), but I do believe that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” as Alan Kay said.  However, I have become somewhat skilled at discovering and observing trends and patterns that I believe will help us to shape and design our futures to be bright and positive ones.  Today I’d like to highlight some recent examples that add credibility to this model of designing your own future, and I for one could not be happier with the progress and trend. 

It seems that the topic of the future is particularly popular of late.  In my recent posting “Inventing the Future?” I wrote about the fascinating new joint venture between Jane Congeal and the Institute for the Future called Superstructure, "the world’s first massively multiplier forecasting game" which is about to start September 2008 . With a tag line of “Superstructure! Play the game, invent the future”, you can see why I was immediately attracted.

Rather than fatalistically accepting that the future as something that happens to us, I believe that we can both individually and collectively invent and design our own!  I also see this as part of using serendipity as a serious strategy for success.  More on that later.

Web of Fate; NOT!

Mark Alert recently (July 16, 2008) did a good job of highlighting several of these new examples of what I would see as “designing your own future” in his e-Clippings: Learning As Art blog post called Forecasting the Future:  Prediction Markets & MMOG's.  In particular, check out the Web of Fate(Wof).  Despite the title, I see WoF as serendipitous and by design rather than fatalistic. It is, in their own words:

“.. a social experiment that harnesses the collective intelligence of the web to visualize and uncover hidden relationships among future and historical events."

They do this by providing everyone (yes you too!) the opportunity to add their own thoughts in a variety of ways. You can make your own predictions, quote a prediction from someone else you agree with, set a future goal, or create a time capsule.  Web of Fate also offers another way of looking at this with their “Semantic Future: explore the meaning of everything”,  accomplished by their semantic analysis engine that extracts meaning from historical, present and future events and draw connections among them.

Since I'm a very visual thinker, I particularly liked the way that WoF is synthesizing all of “our” input to create the Web of Fate visualizations.  Given enough input, I think these will go a long way towards helping us spot trends and patterns that I find so enlightening to the process of designing your own future. 

World Mural Project:  Youth is Not Always Wasted on the Young!

But I’ve saved the best for last.  Chris Dawkins, another blogger I recommend, wrote a terrific summary of the “Intel World Mural project - just what will the next 40 years bring?”.  Chris is behind the Ziff Davis blog on Education and I’ve written more about him and his blog in my previous post “Scan, scan, scan as fast as you can”. I recommend that you subscribe to his feed, if you don’t already.

But the treat today is to direct your attention to the World Mural Project, which is part of Intel’s celebration of their 40th anniversary as a company (July 18, 2008) when they will unveil what they describe as:

“...one of the world’s largest web based digital murals designed by youth.  More than 530 young people from 21 countries around the globe share their vision on what computers will allow us to accomplish in the next 40 years.”

To see for yourself, just click the “View Mural” link on the World Mural site. I hope you will have as much fun as I did exploring the various visions from the young contributors.  The interface is fun and whimsical, and it allows you to move around to different countries and regions and then click on the individual contributions.

Chris pulled out this quote from Intel spokesperson Agnes Kwan, which gives a great glimpse into the future that some of these “kids” see:

"Some of the themes that the kids have expressed are: having multi-function, wearable computers, achieving a greener environment on Earth, greatly improved healthcare, vastly improving our brain power, experiencing virtual education, communicating through holograms, teletransport, living more relaxed, peaceful lives, and living on Mars.”

Also worth checking out is the Intel Computer Clubhouse through which the mural project was developed.  This network is an after-school community-based technology learning program that enables youth in underserved communities to acquire tools necessary for personal and professional success.  The Clubhouses were an ideal way for youth to collaborate on the mural and create a dynamic and unified piece of art that represented a global world view.

I think this is also a great example of another trend that I highlighted in my post “Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery and Design” where I see more and more innovation and ideas coming from the underdeveloped and underserved groups and regions of the world (many of them located inside otherwise very “developed” regions and countries, I might add!).  In any case, a very good use of your time would be to check out both the World Mural project itself and the Computer Clubhouse project.  Consider getting involved yourself as a volunteer, mentor or trainer in these projects.

Who better to involve directly in designing our future than those who are going to spend the most time in it and who likely have entirely new and fresh ideas and perspectives than those of us who may be more often shaped by the past?

I particularly liked the line and the link found in the Web of Fate site:  “The Solution:  You have the solution”    OK, OK, so it’s a form and you know I subscribe to the “all forms must die” attitude, but in this case the potential for the benefits of your input outweigh the format and I’d strongly encourage you to add yours to the collection and check back regularly to see how our future is shaping up!

Make This Personal!

I hope you too find some of these new examples inspiring and insightful and that you will check them out.  However, all of these are acting at a very high level. Most change occurs much closer to the ground and with more specific applications.   Therefore perhaps most important and valuable is the potential for YOU to adopt some of these examples to your own work and areas of interest.  What is to stop you from creating your own game along the lines of Superstruct to drill down on designing the future on a much more focused level of your own industry, profession, hobby or other areas that you are passionate about?  It “only” takes a good initial premise or scenario to cause some of that incendiary “Spontaneous Creative Combustion” in your own organization. How could you involve younger minds in helping to see and shape the future of these worlds you are a part of?  How could you instigate an outbreak of input and feedback within your groups and utilize the semantic analysis from something like the Web of Fate to spot trends and directions that will help you direct and design the future?

At the risk of beating this theme to death, let me restate that I am NOT interested nor optimistic about these examples I’ve highlighted for their predictive capabilities, but rather for their assistance in helping each and every one of us to play a part in designing a future that is both bright for all and is one we can be proud of and part of.

But most importantly I’d like to know how do YOU see the future shaping up?    You know where I stand but how do you see it?  Bright or dark?  Is the future fatalistic of serendipitous?  Done to you or something you have a hand in?

Inventing the Future?

I've been a big fan of Jane McGonigal ever since I had the chance to talk with her at the Learning 2007 conference where we were both speakers. One of the many reasons I so like her work is her focus on what is called “alternate reality gaming” or ARG (gotta have an acronym or it ain’t real right?).  While Jane is a very fun person (who else would carry the title of  "Head PuppetMaster"?), trust me when I say that her work on games and their consequent results has been very “serious” indeed. Harvard Business Review called her theory of "alternate reality business" one of the "Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas of 2008".  Check out Jane's company AvantGame and her blog for more information and I think you too will soon be a big fan.

I’ve been promoting augmented reality over virtual reality for a long time, and Jane’s unique approach of adding gaming to the equation is brilliant. I believe that Jane and her games are the best examples that I know of for showing off some of the true power of applying game theory. I especially appreciate the truly unique approach and out-of-the-box thinking she has brought to gaming. Jane’s games are also great examples of a common theme here on OCOT—the power and beauty of simplicity. Unlike most game examples, which typically involve a lot of hardware and software technology and are highly dependent upon the game developers and platforms, Jane's games are an extremely “low tech” model that puts the game players in charge. It all starts with and is based upon a simple opening statement or premise and is then left up to the players to provide all the excitement and direction online, usually with simple tools such as e-mails, blogs, and IM. You can see this for yourself by checking out some of her past successes such as World Without Oil, Cruel 2 B Kind, and I Love Bees.

Superstruct is Super!

All this is just an introduction though to a new joint venture that I'm intrigued by and which Jane is leading with the Institute for the Future called “Superstruct”. They describe it as “the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. It’s not just about envisioning the future—it’s about inventing the future.”  As with all her alternate reality games, this one starts with a scenario. In the case of Superstruct, it begins with the following:

"Humans have 23 years to go:  Global Extinction Awareness System starts the countdown for Homo sapiens. PALO ALTO, CA — Based on the results of a year-long supercomputer simulation, the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has reset the "survival horizon" for Homo sapiens—the human race—from "indefinite" to 23 years."

You can read the rest of the details in the link above and this Superstruct FAQ.  Highly recommend that you take a few minutes to check out the link to Superstruct to learn more. Although the game doesn’t officially start until September 2008, they have already started a precursor in the form of comments to the announcement and an initial premise of:

"It’s the summer of 2019. Imagine you’re already there, and tell us a little bit about your future self. Where are you having dinner tonight?"

For more on Superstruct and other AR games check out the ARGNet for more alternative reality games.  While it is obviously still early in the process, I was struck by the degree to which the initial comments seem to see and predict a very negative future, and it's all the more reason for us to all take a role in changing this by envisioning and designing one that is positive. If you believe as I do that WE are ultimately in control of the future, then why would we design and aim for anything less? PLEASE be sure to check out the comments and add some of your own!

Forget Predicting the Future. Let's Get Busy Designing It!

What I'm most passionate about, and my reason for alerting you to this new glimpse into the future, is the whole idea of not predicting the future, but "inventing it" as Jane has also been known to say. This of course parallels one of my favorite Alan Kay' quotes:

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

This hands on, get involved, take responsibility and action approach has always spoken to me loudly, and so I’m struck by the increasing number and diversity of ways that this is actually happening and how we collectively can and are creating the future. It sure beats the more typically fatalistic attitudes I seem to run into so often that "they" are causing everything or that technology is somehow in control of our future. I'm desperately hoping and sincerely believe that as these recent examples show, we are seeing the turnaround of the "victim mentality" that seems to have become so prevalent and we are going to seize both the opportunity and the responsibility to make the future one that we want to live in and be a part of. 

Game on!

Spontaneous Creative Combustion?

"Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." – Scott Adams

Cultivating Creativity?

In my previous post “Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery & Design” we looked at the growing number of examples of great innovation and creativity that are to be found in developing regions of the world.  I’m interested in looking at these developing regions, not only for the innovations and ideas emerging from them, but also to study these unique environments to better understand their essential elements.* By understanding them, we might be able to replicate and share, and thus raise the volume of creativity, innovation, and invention to all new highs. We certainly have plenty of problems that are begging for creative solutions!

So I’m pondering this with you because I’m anxious that we pay attention to the characteristics of innovation, invention, and the like, so we can work to find more ways to increase exponentially the volume and diversity of inventions, innovation, and discovery to match the world of exponential change (and its accompanying challenges) that we are now living in.

It seem to me that most things are the result of the environment and conditions we are in at the time, and I think this holds true for something as fleeting as creativity.  So I’m wondering: how can we better understand the environments and conditions that seem to spark the most creativity?  Based on this understanding, we could create more of such environments—ones that are enriched with these characteristics and bring out the creativity, innovation, and inventiveness more often and for many more people than the current and historical norm.

*See my previous posting and podcast “Confusing Flapping with Flying” for more on my thoughts about essential elements of great inventions and innovations.

Spontaneous Combustion

We could use a favorite analogy of mine to help us with this—that of spontaneous combustion.  In my own layman’s terms, spontaneous combustion is when fire unexpectedly and unintentionally breaks out without any apparent cause of ignition, such as sparks or flames. I learned about spontaneous combustion firsthand in some of my former lives when I was a mechanic, a woodworker, and an industrial technology teacher and became critically aware of the fire hazard posed by leaving oily rags, sawdust, paper, etc. lying around or in open waste containers. But as I’m often wont to do, I inverted this negative and dangerous characteristic into a powerfully positive one and abstracted it into a conceptual model, so what I really took away from it was a fascination for indirect causation that still sticks with me today as you’re about to see. 

From what I’ve been able to read and research, we (scientists) still don’t fully understand spontaneous combustion,† but what we do know are the conditions that make it more likely to happen, such as the presence of chemicals (oil, resin, varnish combined with flame supporting materials such as rags, sawdust, paper and oxygen). The simple preventative solution therefore is to make sure things like oily rags are stored or disposed of in sealed containers to cut off the air/oxygen supply.

†Of course we do have this YouTube video on “How to: Do Spontaneous Combustion”.   BTW, for most of you, I recommend it for watching and NOT for experiential learning!

Brains on Fire! Spontaneous Cognitive Combustion?

I’m sure you can see the connection here to creativity, which seems to me to be a form of spontaneous creative or cognitive combustion—when a sudden creative thought that just comes to you, an unexpected "Aha!" moment bursts into flame without any apparent cause. 

So what if we want to purposely cause a chemical spontaneous combustion? What if we want to have a fire break out without directly causing it, such as by lighting a match?  In a lab, we can do so by carefully controlling a set of conditions (types and amounts of flammable liquids, supporting materials, etc.) and creating an environment (temperature, oxygen, humidity) that raises the probability of spontaneous combustion. We may not know just when or where the fire will begin, but we can expect that it will happen somewhere in the experimental container relatively soon. 

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this. What are the conditions, materials, and environments that lead to spontaneous cognitive combustion?  What are those essential elements that can reduce the amount of "flapping" we do and increase our innovation, invention, and creativity?

At a very general level, some of this can be addressed by thinking differently, outside the proverbial box so to speak, being contrarian, converting the negative energy of naysayers into positive energy that drives you to succeed all the more.  But let’s try to go further.

To help us do so and to use this opportunity to start a few "fires" on this topic... I’m sure we’ve all suffered from bouts of what might be called “creative constipation” when, try as we might, we just can’t seem to squeeze out a new creative thought, solve a problem, or otherwise "hit the wall"... I thought that Robert Lucky put it well in his IEEE Spectrum article (Jan 2007) called "Great Thoughts" where he posited:

"There is a theory of creativity that holds that creativity is most often the product of the unexpected intersection of two previously unconnected thoughts. If you are thinking very hard  about one such thought perhaps you are suppressing the other thoughts which could connect with it."

This leads to the often observed benefit of taking a break, going for a walk, or otherwise distracting yourself from the problem at hand. But it is the theory on creativity that I most strongly concur with—the notion that there are very few truly new ideas, but rather that we are constantly building from and upon previous and existing thoughts and ideas and the new springs from the intersection or collision of two or more previously existing but unconnected thoughts.  Hence my fascination with the concept of mashups‡ and why I see these as a fundamental characteristic of the future. 

‡ I also like the fact that my spell checker keeps wanting to correct the spelling of mashups to smashups as I’m equally big on the need for disassembly and “creative destruction”, but I’ll wander and ponder that with you in a future posting.

Inspiring Combustion: Why Wait?

One of the most common and rewarding comments that I receive from many of you after my talks and postings is that they help you connect a set of dots/thoughts which you knew about and that were previously “out there” but which had not been connected the way I strung them together.  A “necklace for the mind” as one most complimentary person put it to me. I take these as the highest compliments I can receive—to have helped to cause (in my own direct fashion) some spontaneous cognitive combustion in others. I’d be honored to be regarded as a cognitive pyromaniac and can only hope to continue to cause and stoke more "fires" and "fan the flames" of global creativity.

But what about YOU?  Take a few minutes—you deserve the break—to think back to times when you have been particularly creative, inventive, inspired, or your brain was otherwise "on fire". Look for some patterns. What are their commonalities?  In particular, I encourage you to focus on the overall "environment" you were in at these times, such as colors, sounds, furniture, views, movement, other people, time of day, lighting, what you were doing just beforehand, and so on. Please share (either with comments here at OCOT or on your own site) the essential elements of creativity you come up with. 

Here’s to creating a world of spontaneous cognitive combustion for all of us.