Off Course-On Target

Trust, Decisions, Communities, and Snowflakes

Trust still matters!

Surely it should come as no surprise to us that there are some basic characteristics that have always been and will probably always be required for successful human interactions, including those augmented by technology. One of these attributes—at the top of the list, some might argue—is that of trust. It’s a good example of something that has been a necessary component of success throughout human history, and is one that continues to reign supreme in our latest and greatest technology-infused solutions. 

For example, years ago Tim Berners-Lee had what he termed “the web of trust” at the top of his list. His vision of the architecture of the web and its future, laid out in his famous “birthday cake” diagram, placed trust at the top. As the excerpt below from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C0) explains:

"The Web is a collaborative medium, not read-only like a magazine. In fact, the first Web browser was also an editor, though most people today think of browsing as primarily viewing, not interacting. To promote a more collaborative environment, we must build a "Web of Trust" that offers confidentiality, instills confidence, and makes it possible for people to take responsibility for (or be accountable for) what they publish on the Web. "

In my previous postings, such as "Trust as a competency?! - Part 1 and Part 2" and  "Trust is Good!", I too have commented that trust can be thought of as a human competency and one which we can work on improving.  Stephen MR Covey has most recently done the most to promote this notion in his book “The Speed of Trust: The one thing that changes everything”.

Trusted Advisors:

I was reminded of the importance of trust while I was reviewing “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies” the recent study by Forrester Research, which was written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.  A Crave review "Study: Our friends are the best product reviewers" touches on trust and mentions this same study. I would have added to the title "even if we've never met them"!  FastCompany also had a good review on this study, including an interesting excerpt of one chapter.

As you can see from the graphic below, topping the list (83%) is the opinions of friends or acquaintances who have used the product or service. I suspect most of us would have guessed that. But I was surprised at the continued high regard for information on the manufacturer’s site (69%) and the low scoring of online reviews by a blogger (30%).

What stood out even more though was the collective power that is emerging from the feedback loops of reviews by a variety of sources of consumers. By my count, reviews from other consumers make up 5 or 6 out of the top 10 sources listed in this study (depending on whether you count bloggers as consumers).

This study seems mostly right based on my personal experiences and habits. When I’m looking for a new product or service, my first quest is to seek out the recommendations and reviews of others who have already used them, and then I too check out the manufacturer’s site. But the key distinction here, as noted in the study, is the reliance on the manufacturer’s site to give me “information” (or what I would say is more accurately called data), on their products and services rather than the opinions, which all the other sources represent. Like those in the study, I value the opinions of those whose values and preferences I know, but I also value highly the opinions of those I’ve never met, but who have used the products or services I’m interested in. 

Context = Relevance = Value

Better yet, I’m even more interested in and value the opinions of those who share some of my interests and contexts. Using myself as an example, I’m what is referred to as a “bluewater cruiser”, someone who lives aboard their sailboat full time traveling the world’s waterways and oceans. If I’m looking for some decision support for solutions to some of my boating-related needs (when aren’t I?!), my hierarchy of relevance might progress from boats to sailboats to liveaboards on sailboats to bluewater (open ocean) liveaboards on sailboats. Each one of these additional levels of context typically represents a very significant jump in relevance, such as the difference between what would matter if you were a weekend sailor rather than living aboard full time. So when I’m looking for solutions to problems and am trying to make better decisions and choices, finding others “like me” in this momentary set of conditions is of huge value.

Snowflakes One and All!

I suspect that my limited example how my contextual hierarchy can be relevant to me is not the shared by even one of you. Certainly there is no question that I have a penchant for the extreme. But try this: take a few minutes right now to come up with just one example of a hierarchy of relevance for something you have recently been needing some “decision support” for. Got it?  Now ask yourself, "How many others reading OCOT would share the same list?"  Probably few to none, depending on how much detail or how many levels you put into your hierarchy. Equally, however, I’m sure that if you took that same list and looked elsewhere on the web, you’d find a group of people who do indeed share many of these same attributes, and thus you will have found a highly valuable resource for making your decision or choice.

Recommender systems are helping to synthesize the often overwhelming volume of such input and feedback from these sources of opinions and reviews. These systems reveal patterns and key factors that characterize our very personal usage patterns and preferences—ones that even we are often not aware. They constitute some of the evolution of what Erik Duval and I are referring to as The Snowflake Effect (see also  "Do blind people dream?" and "Musical Snowflakes Continue to Fall All Around Us" for some recent examples).  In this case, it means that we are increasingly able to tweak and tune these recommender systems and decision support tools to be ever more relevant to the combination of conditions and circumstances that make every one of our situations into one that is truly unique...like every snowflake. Using the results of the Forester study as an example, consider the multiplication factor that comes into play when you can not only get reviews and feedback from friends and other consumers, but you can narrow this down to those who share your values, interests, preferences, and the like. 

The Value of Communities

I raise all of this in light of the continued interest in (and lots of hype about) “communities”. I think, at their simplest level, communities can be two or more people with something in common. This study points toward one particularly tangible and powerful attribute of communities—as a collection point and source of reviews, recommendations, and opinions, which we will continue to value highly and use daily to help us make decisions. It is likely safe for me to assume that anyone reading this has the distinct advantage and privilege of living in an environment of plentitude and abundance and perhaps the greatest challenge presented by such an existence is that of making more and better decisions and choices. 

Unlike those in Groundswell study, I place a very high value on the opinions of other bloggers, but I would note that more and more of these are blogs from those who share some similar and relevant characteristics with me as it relates to my decision support needs. Using my previous sailing example, some of my best sources of decision support come via other blue water cruisers who are using blogs as a way to document their experiences, and especially those with whom I share other specific similarities, such as routes, locations, ship type, engines, rigging, etc.  Many of these bloggers are also typically members of larger online communities, such as one I frequent a lot lately comprised of other bluewater cruisers who are on the west coast of the Americas and are heading south. So this is another example of contextual hierarchy.  You can probably imagine the extremely high value that this select group offers for helping me to make better decisions on everything from finding great anchorages to route planning, weather updates, recommended (and not) equipment. And, of course, I’m able to add value back by posting my feedback with answers and responses to questions posed on the community site and by posting my experiences and observations to my own sailing blog.

Personal?  Professional?

Best of all perhaps, the extremely high value of these sources that provide highly relevant decision support seem not to be bound by the distinctions of "personal" versus "professional". Hence, we are seeing the increasing use and value of more “professional” sources, such as LinkedIn and other sites, such as FaceBook and MySpace, for very job-related and professional applications. They are certainly not limited to use by any one demographic group, such as the “younger generations”....whatever that means.  After all, what could be more personal than one’s vocations, jobs, hobbies and work? All the more exacerbated by the blurring distinction between one’s “personal life” and “work life” (for better and for worse, I might add).

But before I digress any further, this blog is called Off Course – On Target for a reason you know, I’ll leave it at that for today.  My purpose in this posting is to observe the growing need for continuous improvement to the decision support structures we use so that we can all survive and thrive in the new economies of abundance and a world of exponential change. For me, these are a wonderful combination of timeless human attributes such as trust and conversation augmented with new capabilities and reach provided by technology. Let’s do keep in mind that as a percentage of the world’s 6.6 billion population, a minority of us are privileged enough to live in these economies of abundance and have these very good problems to solve. As we work to have this abundance flow to all, so too will we be helping by developing effective decision support structures, habits, and techniques to share and accompany the spread of abundance.

I’d be curious and anxious to hear some of the other attributes and sources that you are using for your own decision support. What helps you make more and better choices from the exponentially growing list of options? Which tools and services are you using?  Which new techniques and habits are you trying?  What do some of your contextual hierarchies look like?  Who, what, and where do you go for opinions to help make decisions and using "trust" as a delimiter, how would you rank these?  

Future Sources of Innovation, Discovery and Design?

Perhaps it is just a case of seeing what I want to, but I seem to be finding more and more evidence to support my long-term prediction that for the next few decades at least, we will find that one of the greatest sources of innovation, new ideas, and inspiration will be the developing regions of the world. This is due to:

• The benefit of starting with a a clean slate and having no pre-existing infrastructures, customs, and behaviors to overcome.
• The driving force of necessity, which, as the saying goes, is "the mother of invention".
• The fact that creativity and innovative thinking lies within all 6.6 billion of us on the planet! 

Whatever the reasons though, I think we all have a great deal to learn and benefit from these often overlooked and unexpected sources.

Amazing Afrigadget (www.afrigadget.com)

The most recent example of one such fabulous source of innovation and invention is called Afrigadget. Thanks to Kelly Rupp, my champion at Autodesk, and Jeff Wilk at TenCue for the link.

I highly recommend you check out some of the fascinating postings on the AfriGadget site.  Some recent ones that I think you might find particularly worthwhile and interesting include:

• An interview with Simon Mwacharo, an entrepreneur whose small business CraftSkills, is based in Nairobi, Kenya. His business focuses on designing and building self-sustaining renewable energy projects in places that do not have access to the electric grid.
• "Powering African Schools with Toys", which is the story of a young inventor, 23-year-old Daniel Sheridan, and his vision of how children playing on a school yard teeter-totter (seesaw) could supply significant amounts of electrical energy for the area.
• A fascinating online overview with lots of great links to mobile phone solutions from another great resource, Jan Chipchase, who works for Nokia. As AfriGadget says, Jan “can best be described as a design and usability ethnographer. He explores the way mobile phones are used worldwide, and reports back to Nokia’s design team. He’s a fascinating person to talk to, and I thought I might highlight some of the stories he’s come up with while exploring in Africa.”
• The Village Phone project (by Grameen Bank) happening in Uganda. Jan has taken an excellent picture and annotated it with the important facts about this project in a rural Uganda.

  

  For more information about Jan, read this recent NY Times article, and of course, you can subscribe to his blog, Future Perfect.

Well, you get the idea, this site is just full of inspiring stories of powerful, yet often very simple, solutions coming out of Africa. I highly recommend the AfriGadget site as a worthwhile place to spend some time during your next web surfing session.

Benefiting without Eliminating?

As I noted at the start of this posting, one of the key reasons why developing regions are such a rich source of ideas and innovation is that they lack the prior use, habits, and infrastructure that are present in the more developed parts of the world. As you check out the postings on AfriGadget , consider one of the ongoing questions I ponder about all this:

How we can find a way to reap the benefits of these new discoveries, inventions, and innovations, have them spread to everyone and everywhere who could benefit, and yet not interfere or negatively change or inhibit these sources? 

The value is partly that people in these regions have not been affected by our thinking, models, assumptions, etc., and so what concerns me is how do we tap into these sources without affecting and changing them?

100 Days and it’s gone?

Perhaps we can't avoid affecting and changing them. Maybe we just want to be sure to maximize the benefits and innovation coming from these sources. This situation might benefit from a tactic I’ve long practiced with new employees, staff, or team members who join an organization that I am part of. I make it a point to meet with these new arrivals, not only to welcome them, but to tell them that for the next 100 days, they have a unique and special value to offer. Because they are new and not indoctrinated, they will see things differently than those who have been with the organization for some time. They will have different assumptions, and they will suggest different solutions to problems. My choice of 100 days is relatively random, but in the several decades I’ve been doing this, it seems to be the amount of time it takes before their newness is lost, and with it this unique and transitory value.

Of course, I am also quick to point out that this is hardly the end of their value (let’s hope!), but rather that this is the moment in time when they have a unique value to offer.  My specific recommendations are to have them ask those '”dumb questions” quite loudly and proudly, since they often serve as the spark of new thinking that leads to a better solution. I recommend that those who are around these new arrivals tap into this special value and ask the newcomers for their opinions, their perspectives, and ideas.

More commonly, new people tend to be quiet, study the situation, and assume that they won’t have as much to offer until they get “up to speed” with the norms of the organization and thinking of others, but that approach misses out on a great opportunity.

Learning from the OLPC example?

A more direct example, that I’m still pondering, is the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project and similar efforts like:

• The Classmate PC, a low-cost laptop by Intel
• Digital Textbook, a South Korean project that intends to distribute tablet notebooks to elementary school students, and put computers in the hands of the masses in many developing regions. 

More specifically, I wonder whether OLPC's decision to offer only the new equipment, but no teacher training, set curriculum, guidelines, and “how to” type of information, was a “bug” or a feature?  In part, this was apparently a budget issue—no funds for such materials and programs—but as you might guess, I actually think that purposefully NOT providing this type of training and guidance will produce much more innovative uses and outcomes than if all the “experts” had provided their guidance, opinions, directions, and methods.

Les extremes se touche?

However, I believe there are ways to bridge these two extremes of providing no assistance and providing too much.  There are LOTS of parallels here to what makes for great teaching and great learning, and I’ll explore some of these themes later. But for now, sparked by the brilliant light shining out of these often overlooked sources of creativity, I want to focus our collective attention on them to see what we can learn from them, and how we might all benefit more.

I am not suggesting that these developing regions are the only sources of inspiration, innovation, and ideas, nor am I suggesting that as they become more successful, they will lose this wellspring of inspiration. Certainly human history shows otherwise.  No, I’m pondering this idea with you because I’m anxious that we pay attention to the characteristics of innovation and invention. I'd like to see us work to find more ways to increase exponentially the volume and diversity of inventions, innovation, and discovery to match this world of exponential change and its accompanying challenges that we are now living in.

I think about these questions ALOT, and so I’d like to develop them a bit further in a future post.  For now, I leave you to enjoy and benefit (I hope) from checking out Afrigadget and stimulating you to both look for more and send along some of your favorite sources of innovation, creativity, and invention, wherever they may be.

And as always I’m VERY interested in your perspectives and views. Does this match examples that you are seeing?  What are some of the best sources for innovation, invention, and ideas that you are aware of?  Think about your last "Aha!" moment, streak of creativity, or invention.  What were the conditions and the environment as this was happening?  See any common elements in these?  Or do you see any common elements that we want to avoid—those that stifle or reduce creativity?  I'm anxious to hear your comments, and I’ll be back shortly with more of my thoughts on increasing the volume and diversity of creativity in the world.

Living and Learning at the Beginning of the Cognitive Age?

The New York Times recently published an article by op-ed columnist David Brooks"The Cognitive Age" that I think is very worthwhile reading. While I have no interest in the political aspect of this piece, I do have a great deal of interest in his main point about the economic connections to skills, and about the future being one of "cognitive talent", as well as Brooks' keen observations about the connections to learning.

I've often observed that for the past few thousand years, we as humans have focused on leveraging and augmenting our physical abilities—initially with basic tools such as the lever, the wheel, pulleys, screws, etc. and then on through machines, internal combustion engines, hydraulics, electricity and robots. All of these enable us to do things we either could physically not do ourselves or give us the ability to do them faster, easier, and at greater scale. While this will likely continue for some time, my sense is that we are at the point of diminishing returns (have been for some time), and that the future (and some aspects of the present) is about putting more and more focus on leveraging and augmenting our cognitive capabilities. The most obvious example is computer technology that enables us to do things with our brains that we either could not do or now can do much faster, easier, and at greater scale. 

Of course, much has been written about the "knowledge worker", but the most common picture painted seems to be based around an office or desk job model. I think the vast majority of jobs will be elsewhere: on site, in the field, mobile, and other environments. What's more, many jobs—the majority I believe—have been categorized as skilled labor, blue collar work, and other such labels.  It's thought that these jobs will either be eliminated or relegated to low skills and low wages.

As mentioned in my previous post "Human History is Additive Not Subtractive",  these prognostications of the experts seems very much at odds with what has actually been happening. Consider everyday needs of most people for services, such as car repairs, plumbing, health care, and manufacturing. In all of these cases, we find perhaps the most amount of change. They are becoming more and more cognitive-based, rather than manual-labor-based.  While you still get your hands dirty doing many of these, it is the brain of those doing these jobs which is doing more and more of the work. Brooks points out this same kind of disparity with globalization:

"But there’s a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn’t really explain most of what is happening in the world. Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S."

The article goes on to make the key point for me:

"The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked."

I think it is also worth noting how well this matches up with and augments the astute observations that Daniel Pinks makes about the characteristics of the coming "Right Brain Economy" in his book Whole New Mind.  You can read more about this and how it ties into this same theme in my previous posting "Getting it Right".

In his blog "Connecting the Dots", Steve Borsch had a recent posting called "The Cognitive Age: Why Social Media Matters", which references Brooks' New York Times article and adds some interesting observations. He sees social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace as well as trends I've commented on previously, such as crowdsourcing (originally coined by Jeff Howe in this worthwhile article in 2006 Wired magazine), are tied into the emerging cognitive age Brooks outlines so well.

For me however, Brooks synthesizes this all down to make the most compelling point about the often misguided views of globalization with his note:

"The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called 'the Chinese' or 'the Indians,' are doing this or that.

But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy—the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. (emphasis added)

If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner."

This certainly matches up with my experiences of traveling the world and working with so many people of diverse cultures, countries, industries, and jobs. Going back to my opening comments, you can see why I was drawn to Brooks' observations that we are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, and that indeed the future is all about leveraging and augmenting our cognitive abilities. 

As Brooks notes, this all aligns very well with the need for an increased focus on learning. In some future articles, I am going to look at the flip side of the learning coin: teaching as a skill set that we will all want and need be more competent with if we are to survive and thrive in a cognitive age. 

And what do YOU think?  Does this match up with what you are seeing within your own job and practice as well as within your community, your children and your experiences with the world at large? Send in your comments, critiques, counter views or additional examples of these trends.

Cool Tools We Use

Over the years, many people have asked about some of the "cool tools" I use to do some of the things I do, which range from presentations to podcasts, welding to woodworking, and sailing to speaking. 

In one such discussion a few months ago, long-time colleague Tom King, who now also works with Elliott Masie and the Masie Center as a "Masie Fellow", sent me the following note:

"I'm fascinated by some of the nifty tools I discover one way or another through contact with you. Things like doodle.ch or SlideShare or however the heck you get transcriptions of your podcasts. A totally separate and intriguing topic is how you quickly create such compelling, lengthy, thoughtful posts, podcasts & presentations. I've already seen quite a preso on "Whole New Mind" from you."

"Moving back to nifty tools....I think the interesting idea here is how these tools are discovered and shared-- and what makes them good. That process of discovery & recognition seems to be the long-term value, even if any given "nifty tool" has a place that is only ephemeral in the Internet-time mid-term time phase."

And he went on to say:

"For what it's worth, I think the best tools develop when the tool will "scratch an itch" for their very own developer... or someone near & dear to them. Likewise, I think the best recommendations for a tool comes from someone who uses it, and the second best source is a recommendation from someone who has a trusted/respected source that uses a tool. If the user is passionate enough to convey the value to that second party (who may not even use such a tool), and then recommends it to me.. well sometimes I find that is actually the best recommendation."

Couldn't agree more with your observations, Tom !  I too find great value in discovering such tools, tips, and tricks from you and others. 

Tom being Tom, he had already started to post some of his favorite tools, tips, and tricks on his blog Mobilemind (highly recommended BTW), and you can check out his lists of favorite Web Solutions and his favorite applications from earlier this year.

Cool Tools Kevin Uses:

Of course this is not a new idea. Another of my favorite people, Kevin Kelly over at Wired magazine, has has been doing a phenomenal job of covering a similar idea on his site Cool Tools.  His description is right on target for me:

"Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or web site that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We only post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted."

Even Dads can be Cool!

And then there is the totally cool offshoot that sprang up a bit later by Chris Anderson at Wired magazine called Geek Dad.  Check it out, no matter what your gender or status. 

So Many Tools, So Little Time

But what about the rest of us?  I truly believe that every one of us (yes, that includes YOU!) has cool tools that we use on an every day basis.  Even more valuable are cool stories about how we use these tools and how we came to find and use them.  How many of the cool tools that you use did you discover by seeing someone else use them?  Many, I suspect, but the problem is that as great as such serendipitous discovery is, it doesn't seem to scale very well. Considering that there are about to be 6.6 billion of us populating this planet, I think we may all have a few more to discover!

Later on in my discussion with Tom, I noted that I too am fascinated by the process of discovery, and I often point out that discovery is the opposite of invention—that discovery is the finding of something that already exists—whereas invention is the creation of something that never existed before (though most often consists of new combinations of previously existing ideas or things).  My point is to emphasize the differences and the power of going after both. I’m equally intrigued by the differences between invention and innovation, but I’ll stop myself from digressing (lucky you!) yet again. I merely want to emphasize how strongly I agree with Tom's larger point which is the value of the process of discovery and sharing.

So, thanks to Tom for the push. I'd like to see what we can do here on OCOT and as a group to explore and discover more Cool Tools. For starters, here are some quick thoughts from me and questions for all of YOU:

• Is this a topic that you would find to be of high value?
• Would YOU consider contributing one or more of your top cool tools and stories of how you discovered it, use it, etc.?
• Would this topic be well served by having a longer term “theme” or space on OCOT that is dedicated to “cool tools I use”? Or would one or two blog posts suffice?
• Might we be able to create a template that would help people describe their cool tools and stories, and make it easier for others to discover and use them? 
• Would a wiki-like capability work best for this, so that any given tool or technique could be expanded over time, so that other could add their examples of how they use the same tool differently, provide additional techniques or suggestions for getting more out of them, and add their own stories about how they came to discover the tool?
• Might “Cool Tools I Use” be a big enough topic to deserve its own “space” (section of a site, whole blog/wiki itself, etc.)?  For example, this could be a really eclectic mix of tools, where we are looking to discover them in any and all applications, walks of life, etc.

Please send in your comments or e-mails to let me know your thoughts on these questions.

Serious Fun, so let's make this a game!

In many cases we cease to consciously think about these tools. We use them so frequently and for so long that they are part of our "unconscious competency".  To "discover" them again, you may need to start noticing them again. 

So let's turn this exercise into a version of a once popular game based on the premise "If you could only take 10 things with you to live on a remote island for 10 years (randomly picked numbers), what would those be?"  And in the spirit of a game, let's not get too literal with this. Let's imagine that our basic needs for survival are met and focus instead on those things we could otherwise not live without.  In most cases, we probably could live without these, we just don't want to!

And let's really do some coloring outside the lines with this theme and not restrict ourselves to computers or the net!  I could imagine collecting “cool tool” ideas for anything from cooking to car repair to computers or canoeing (today’s post is brought to you by the letter C!).

Let's get Started!

In the interim, I thought I'd get things started by creating a "Cool Tools I Use" theme here on OCOT and use this to collect and share some of the cool tools each of us have found invaluable and to also share, perhaps even more importantly, the ways we found them or how they found us.  What I'll do on OCOT to help with this effort is create a metadata tag called "Cool Tools" and make sure all "Cool Tools" entries are marked with this tag so you can find them easily in the future.

Oh, and just for clarity, let's be clear that this is NOT to be used for nor does it represent ANY endorsement of promotion of a company or a specific product. These are authentic stories about "Cool Tools" that we use all the time and would not want to be without.

Should be fun, and if not, we won't do it! 

Now it's YOUR turn!

OK, that should be more than enough to give you an idea of what I'm thinking about.  Now it is YOUR turn to think about the "Cool Tools" you use and would never want to be without.  Send me your responses to my previous questions and we'll follow through accordingly.

Meanwhile, have a "Cool Tool" you use and want to share?  Send me your favorites with the following information and I'll start collecting and publishing yours and more of mine.

• Name of the tool and source for getting one.
• What does it do?
• How did you come to discover this?
• How do you use it?
• Why is it on your top ten "Cool Tools I Use" list?

I'm sure EACH of you have a list of tools you would not want to be without, and you probably have tools you know that are much better than the ones I have on my list. I can't wait to start to learning and benefiting from your cool tools!

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Whither goes Web 2.0? The value of hype cycles

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I’ve been concerned for some time that hype often interferes with the adoption of powerful ideas, especially when the hype prevents us from seeing how these ideas change the way we think or view the world, or otherwise provide valuable nuggets that we can use later on. This problem is no less true for what has been happening with Web 2.0.

Jared Spool at User Interface Engineering apparently shares this same concern. I highly recommend you take some time to read his recent paper called “Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype" where he says:
 

“Problems not withstanding, we still feel that this emerging standard, combined with other new tools, such as AJAX and open source infrastructures, makes for a new and exciting environment. There's been a tremendous amount of hype surrounding all these new developments, but, for once, we are thinking that there really is some power that is beneath the hype that is worth paying attention to.”

Not only does he talk about the shortcomings of so much hype, but he also discusses a number of things that, parallel my own perspectives:

"The speed and ease at which these new applications were built is what is getting us very excited about the potential of the Web 2.0 world."

And speaking to the power of mashups, which I’ve addressed here at Off Course – On Target, he goes on to say:

"Evocative of Dr. Frankenstein building a monster in his attic laboratory using body pieces he found lying around his neighborhood, people with a little skill can create new applications using common elements found lying around the Web in almost no time at all. As the skill requirements for building these applications are decreasing, we think this opens a whole new world of possibilities."

Jared goes on to offer more examples of the emerging and lasting power of Web 2.0 characteristics such as APIs, RSS as an interface, folksonomies, and connections via social network, then finishes with an emphasis on the faster/cheaper nature of application development as well as some of the work remaining to be done. 

Fortunately, Web 2.0 seems to be progressing through the hype cycle, a concept developed at Gartner, an information and technology research and advisory firm headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The Gartner hype cycle model is too restricted to technology for my liking, but I do find it useful as one form of "value filtering".   

The first three stages of the Gardner Hype Cycle are a great test or filter for new ideas and technologies. If the technology survives the initial hype, then there is really something there of lasting value. I like to put the most focus on things after these initial stages, after the bubble bursts and look for the "residue" that remains—typically very valuable little nuggets we can gather, put to use, and hopefully lead to mass adoption.  Hence my bringing this hype cycle model to your attention as a useful technique and tool for your arsenal to help sort through all the choices and "next big thing".

In my opinion, some parts of Web 2.0 are now moving into these phases the Gardner Hype Cycle:

• Slope of Enlightenment, where the press has lost interest, but some businesses continue to experiment with the technology to determine its benefits and practical application, if any.
• Plateau of Productivity where the technology becomes more stable, and the benefits become widely demonstrated and accepted.

If you find this model valuable, you can check out this list of other industries and topics that Gartner has applied it to. You may also want to check their use of the hype cycle in their "Emerging Technologies" report".  The report has three sections, Web 2.0, Real World Web, and Applications Architecture from August 2006. I think many of the major themes mentioned, such as Collective Intelligence, Mashups, and Location Awareness, have lasting value.

Philipp Keller recently used this model plot out the evolution of tagging (creating metadata) since its inception about 2003.   

Do you feel that you're caught up in a hype cycle?  With all the new tools, technologies and trends coming your way, are you finding it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff ? You might want to try to using Gartner's five phase model to plot these technologies out for yourself to help you decide what's worth keeping.

Hope this helps and as always please send me your comments.

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Cooking up a Snowstorm!

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As someone who just loves food, eating, and cooking, I've often been struck by the parallels between eating and learning. Feeding the mind and feeding the body have lots in common. So I have used their similarities as the basis for many of the stories I tell onstage, because they help illustrate the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization. 

While we've obviously had to pay attention to food as one of the basics of existence (food, clothing, shelter), interest in food seems to be escalating to whole new levels these days. I'm delighted, for example, at the veritable explosion of television and web-based shows that cover everything about food:

• The production of food sources, farming, fishing, gardening 
• Cooking, baking, and meal preparation 
• Finding great places to eat, delicious new recipes, new culinary talents, etc. 

Heck, now there are entire television networks dedicated to food and drawing huge audiences of all ages! And just take a look at the magazine rack when you next visit a bookstore to see how many magazines are dedicated to these topics.

So I thought you'd be interested in some new sites about food that have popped up recently. Webware.com has a number of recent posts and commentary about food-related sites. Here are three that I  think exemplify these food trends and what else we can learn from them.

IM cooked

This site is an interesting example of the trend away from "mega sites" to more specialized ones. More of the Snowflake Effect from my point of view. IM Cooked provides a place for people to share their knowledge, interests, and passions for cooking via video.

To get a feel for IM Cooked, you might want to take a few minutes to watch one of its currently top-rated videos "Man Makes Chicken with Pears" presented by the always quirky and fun Christopher Walken.

There are lots of videos available about cooking on the Internet, and even YouTube is an option for posting food-related videos, but the challenge with any general purpose site is how to find both content and the people who share your specific interests.

Another challenge is how to make these information sources more pro-active, so that you are constantly assisted in your quest to discover new ideas, ingredients, and recipes, and the people who share your passions. Or as I often like say, "Doing more finding than searching." 

But having too many niche sites also gives us a new problem in this age of abundance—the challenges that come from so much choice. I think the solution is neither a matter of going for even larger mega sites nor moving towards more niche sites. Rather, we need to move toward creating better social and automated recommender systems and having more pattern recognition that helps us mine the exponentially exploding volume of "stuff" out there, so we can zero in on just the right individual people, files, content ,and ideas that match our unique situation at any moment in time.

BakeSpace 

This site puts the focus on the food rather than the technology, something that is "so yesterday" as my kids used to say to me, but it is also so relevant that BakeSpace doesn't use Ajax or other latest "gee whiz" technology. Instead, this site helps to connect people who share a common set of interests and enables them to pursue their passions better alone and with others. As Caroline McCarthy put it nicely in her review on Webware "after all, if it doesn't taste good, it doesn't matter how well it's arranged on the plate."

I also think the tag line for the BakeSpace site is very apropos: "Come for the food. Stay for the conversation."  I'd be so much happier if we were putting more focus on conversations than community!

GroupRecipes

Over ten years ago, my daughter Lia, who was 13 at the time, hit upon a great technique to figure out what to cook up for dinner or some other meal. She would check out the contents we had on hand in the kitchen, decide what she felt like eating at the time, and then she would fire up a browser and enter these ingredients into a search engine. Her request would return a list of recipes that contained some or all of these ingredients. Inevitably, it helped her to discover a great recipe, which she'd print out, and then she would head back to the kitchen to whip it up. Worked great and it is something she still does now that she is living on her own.

GroupRecipes takes this same basic idea, but makes it even more personalized. For example, they have a StumbleUpon-like feature that is one of my favorites (you have tried StumbleUpon, right?!).  StumbleUpon increases what I call the "serendipity factor". You enter a food you'd like to "stumble upon" and then GroupRecipes uses these to find matches and provide ratings of probability that you will like a given recipe. Think of it as the "page rank" (what makes Google searches work so well) for food.

By helping you discover not only other recipes, but other people who are more like you in this very specific context, GroupRecipes adds the social aspect and improved discovery of those things you like. 

In this age of abundance, the problem is so much great food, so little time!  So this ability to have some "decision support" is a huge help.

So as you can see there really are tremendous parallels between feeding our minds and our bodies. It's also worth noting that the upcoming Learning 2007 will feature chef Bobby Flay as one of the keynoters. Elliott Masie plans to interview Bobby on this same topic of the parallels between learning and cooking, and how both can benefit. I'll be there and will have more to report back to you at the end of October.

Hope this post helps to feed both your mind and your body. As you do so,  I hope you will feed the rest of us with your comments and suggestions. (sorry, couldn't resist!)

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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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e-Clippings (Learning as Art)

In my last posting, I mentioned Mark Oehlert's recent  “e-Clippings” blog entry about Netvibes Universal Widget API. Mark Oehlert is someone I’ve known for many years, from back in the days when he was working for the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative when we created such things as SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model). 

Mark is a walking encyclopedia of historical references and is relentlessly curious about most anything to do with culture and technology in the context of learning. He probably should have been an anthropologist, but fortunately for us he has devoted his expertise to the world of learning and his e-Clippings blog is very much worth subscribing to and checking out if you are looking for a steady stream of what’s new at the intersection of culture and technology in the world of learning.

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Erik and Ecuador

While our time together in Guayaquil Ecuador only overlapped by a few hours, it was a treat as always to meet up with my great colleague and friend, Erik Duval. I won't even start to try to list Erik's many accomplishments, positions, and leadership, but suffice it to say that Erik is easily one of the brightest stars I know (and I mean that both figuratively and literally!).

In his "day job" when he is not out traveling, leading and speaking, he is professor of the research unit on Hypermedia & Databases, at the Computer Science Department of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven located just outside Brussels. You can find out much more about Erik on his home page.

Erik is largely responsible for the recent development of a Latin-American network of learning object repositories. One of his many talented grad students, Xavier Ochoa is from Guayaquil and he organized the first Latin American Conference on Learning Objects (LACLO). As per my previous posts, I had the privilege of being asked to give the opening keynote at this event last week and Erik was the other keynoter on Thursday. Erik's presentation on "Open Learning" has some excellent points, and you can find his slides (using the very handy new SlideShare utility BTW) and his comments on his blog.

Be sure to check out Erik's other posts and sites. I think you'll want to subscribe and be a regular visitor. I know I am!

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