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?  

Happy 50th Birthday, LEGO™ blocks!!

Those who know me, have heard me speak, or have read my writings know that one of my longtime favorite models and metaphors is that of LEGO blocks.

Actually, it was my children playing with them 20 years ago that caused one of my greater epiphanies and led me to develop the concept of Learning Objects back in 1992 and I plan to post this fun story on the origin of Learning Objects here on OCOT.

Although my LEGO block model is often criticized for being too simple, I still find it to be a powerful and profound one precisely because of its simplicity.

So how could I NOT mention this is the 50th anniversary of the ubiquitous blocks that were introduced in 1958? According to a January 28, 2008 article on Gearlog, "There are about 62 LEGO bricks for every one of the world's 6 billion inhabitants" and "7 LEGO sets are sold by retailers every second around the world."

• Check out this fun timeline that Gizmodo put together on the illustrated history of LEGO.
• View this list from Jennifer DeLeo at PC Magazine of "The Ten Coolest LEGO Inspired Gadgets"?  The list includes everything from LEGO iPod Stereo Speakers, a homemade LEGO MP3 player, a hard drive, a watch and a USB charger. 

What fun!

I've also previously written about  "The LEGO of Gadgets" and the LEGO-like attributes of the fun electronic components from Bug Labs that you can literally snap together to create your own new devices. Check it out!

In the abstract and from my perspective, the LEGO block model:

• Makes infinite scalability a practical reality. It addresses what I've previously referred to as "Living in a World of Exponential Change" and "The Snowflake Effect" of mass personalization at a global scale by enabling you to create infinite new combinations or "assemblies" that are entirely (though not necessarily) created from pre-existing blocks.
• Is based on having a large collection of very, very small "blocks" that can be created in advance of a given need or use. This is a key part of enabling a strategy of "readiness for the unexpected" and dealing with exponential rates of change.
• Adds to the "pool" of blocks for future reuse and re-purposing, because in many cases the creation of new assemblies causes new blocks to be made.
• The "blocks" can come from any source at any time and with no need for any pre-agreements or design.
• Is based on a low-level and simple standard that enables each block to be "snapped" to any other block (size of "pins" in actual LEGO blocks is always the same)
• Each block is "just right" in terms of size—as small as possible, but not one bit smaller (to misquote Einstein)—when it meets two criteria:
  • It can stand by itself, ready for use.
  • It would almost never be used by itself, since it is too small to be of value on its own.
• It enables models that cover both ends of the spectrum, providing for maximum repurposing AND maximum relevance and personalization.

And just to be clear, these "blocks" and this LEGO block model can be applied to literally anything and is certainly not limited to content. For example, I've worked with others to develop applications of this same model for human competencies, software, music. You can also see examples of "hard" objects, such as those in the top ten list mentioned at the beginning.

What applications or ideas do YOU have for the application of this LEGO block model?

Happy 50th Birthday, LEGO!  I, for one, am planning on using you more than ever in the next 50 years AND I plan on being here to help celebrate your 100th anniversary! 

Visualization Finally Coming to Interfaces Near You

I hope you've had a chance to check out the previous posting on "Musical Snowflakes" and try out Slacker and the just released Social.fm as examples of mass personalization and the Snowflake Effect in the world of music. If not, or if you didn't notice at the time, when you do try out Social.fm, you can experiment with the new visualization interface model that is becoming more popular, and which is in some Apple applications, such as iTunes and the new Mac OS, Leopard, where it is known as "Cover Flow".

As effective as it is simple, this technology restores the ability to flip through a stack of papers or albums and quickly stop at the one you are looking for or one that catches your eye. You'll quickly understand it after a few seconds on the Social.fm site.  You can also run this short video about Cover Flow. 

CAUTION:  Severe risk of time loss ahead!

YouTube has also started to include a version of this visual "flip through" interface. After you've watched a video clip such as the one above, you get a horizontal band of other related videos along the bottom that you can flip through with your cursor, see some of the underlying metadata about the one you are hovering over, and then watch it with a click. Very slick!  It's not only visually appealing, but it simply works well. And because the videos you are flipping through are all related to the one you just watched, see if you don't find yourself discovering many other unexpected things as you watch more and more. 

It is quite amazing how much you do discover and learn in the process. Tying this example back to music...if you have not already done so, try using YouTube itself as a music discovery site. I think you'll be amazed at how much new music and artists you discover.

Right now, these are very simple implementations of visual interfaces, but they are examples of the continuing rise of visualization that is much needed within our human computer interactions. It's time to start planning for how you will take advantage of such visual interfaces as they become more commonly available for use with any kind of content within any application and on any OS. And imagine that the visuals will start to contain more information and have greater dynamic relationships between each item that you can see. An early example of this type of interface is shown in the Visual Thesaurus, demonstrated in the short video clip below.

While you ponder all these new developments from the music world, keep in mind that music is simply one area we can look to for inspiration and examples that we can adopt and apply to our own context.  While I believe that most everyone likes music, and will find value in these kinds of services, the real benefits (and the reason for my highlighting these music examples) are to encourage their adoption in other wildly divergent ways. 

These examples help us find and listen to music that is highly personalized to be "just right" for us. Now imagine having these same kinds of Snowflake Effect capabilities that help you find "just the right" content of any kind—from text to images to video and audio. What uses can YOU imagine?  How will YOU use these as they become more and more prevalent and available?

Be sure to share your thoughts and experiences with the rest of us. I look forward to hearing from you.

Musical Snowflakes Continue to Fall All Around Us

The world of music continues to be one of the richest sources of examples for the Snowflake Effect, where mass personalization, mass customization, mass contribution are all available to try.

The list of examples continues to grow exponentially.  A "Do It Yourself/ Build Your Own" model calls for a radical redesign, and this is what most products and services will need to adopt if they expect to survive in the future.

If you haven't tried using this aspect of mass personalization in the music services area, I'd recommend you check out the "Social Music Overview" page from TechCrunch for a list of options and a brief overview of each. Then, to best understand and evaluate the experience and the potential, you really need to try it yourself. 

See if you think that there is no turning back now. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no putting it back!  The vector of mass personalization and the Snowflake Effect is inevitable and will become the expectation that we have for most products and services, because we now know it is possible—a great thing from my perspective. But let me know your reactions and experiences as well.

Right now though, I'd like to bring a few of the newer developments and advancements from the world of music to your attention. 

Slacker isn't!

My first example is Slacker, and contrary to its name (in many cultures the word "slacker" refers to someone who does not try or work very hard), this site is a real winner. It's currently my top pick for the Snowflake Effect as its applied to music. 

You'll find a good overview of Slacker in this PC Mag review. On TechCrunch, you'll see that the founders of Slacker (each of whom is an online music veteran) have very big ambitions indeed.  In addition to their Web-based music service, which will compete with others such as Pandora, MOG, and Last.FM, Slacker is about to release (Dec 2007) a new portable player, which is reviewed here and is pictured on the left. This new portable player is WiFi-enabled, so you can have music streamed right to it, and synch it with your desktop and music collection. They have also announced a satellite car kit so you can have this music wherever you are. 

One notable addition over most other music personalization services is that the desktop version of Slacker (Windows only for now unfortunately) enables you to incorporate your own music library in the mix. What most impressed me, however, was the well designed interface that enables new degrees of personalization.  I'm referring to the overall human computer interface, not just the way it looks. 

Slacker is impressive and a significant improvement over other services. You can do as much or as little customization as you like quickly and easily. And no matter where you leave off in this customization, Slacker works to the maximum degree possible.

For example, my former favorite, Pandora, requires that you provide constant feedback by indicating that you like or don't like each song. If you stop providing this feedback, then it stops playing after an hour or two. This is all very understandable since it can't continue to improve without some additional input, so it knows if the music is continuing to be just right for you at just that time or not. However, most of us are unwilling or unable to constantly provide this feedback for every song while it is playing—at least not by the current norm of manually clicking a thumbs up or thumbs down button or a 1-5 star rating.  This method is too interruptive on a continuous basis. 

Slacker, in contrast to all the others I know, is set up to do the best it can with however much feedback you give it. Obviously the more you give, the more you get. However, that Slacker will continue to work very hard at playing music that is as personalized as possible to the information you've given it is a huge improvement.

I'm very big on the "discovery factor" of this kind of personalization, and this is another big plus of Slacker, which is why I'm using this as my current best example. As you use the Slacker interface to personalize the music, you are constantly exposed to more and more alternatives. Yet this does not overwhelm you with too much choice, because you can take it or leave it. Again, Slacker maximizes as much feedback as you've given it and keeps on playing great personalized music.  One particularly valuable new function is the ability for you to set the "discoverability" factor to any degree you like.  This is nicely summarized in the PC Mag review:

"To tweak your listening experience further, Slacker provides four ingenious fine-tuning options. Artist Discovery lets you control how much variety you'll get beyond the chosen artists (a lot, a little, or none at all), and Popularity determines whether you get "fringe" song selections, "hits," or something in between. The Favorites tool determines how often the selected station plays those songs you've tagged as favorites. Finally, there's Year, which narrows the selection to Classic, Older, Recent, or Current. (You can leave all these options set to Auto if you'd rather not get so specific.) Neither Last.fm nor Pandora offer anywhere near this kind of fine-tuning; the most you can do is vote yea or nay on the current song selection (which you can do in Slacker as well)."

Social.FM

Want more examples of the richness of the music world?  Check out the just released Social.fm, which is (as you might guess) a widget designed for  music sharing within social networks, such as FaceBook. Read the Nov. 12th Webware review "Social.fm rolls out fancy looking Facebook app, DIY widgets for everyone else" for a good overview of this new service. In addition to a nicely integrated FaceBook version, Social.fm has also announced that they are working on integrating better with with Google's OpenSocial initiative.  This is worth keeping an eye on IF and as OpenSocial creates a standard that enables interoperability for widgets across all applications and OS.  This is still a long way off and somewhat of a long shot, but it's very much worth rooting for and following up on.

Social.fm's announcement of Social.fm Mobile is also great example of convergence. This technology turns your smartphone into a music player for everything from your own music collection to digital radio and podcasts,

So, are you Off Course from your usual thinking, and where you are looking?  Most likely. But On Target? Even more likely!  Enjoy your experiential learning and I'll be back soon with more.

EOL and the power of MC2: Mass Contribution x Mass Customization

Some of my previous postings have focused on the need to dramatically increase the scale of our discovery of the unknown. I'm finding more examples all of the time that show a trend towards more mass participation and mass contribution by connecting everything and everyone together. The project we recently covered called the "Encyclopedia of Life" (EOL) is one such example.

But let's take a step back and try synthesizing this into something that give us direct and broader benefits.

As I noted my previous postings "New Perspectives: Looking Down and Under" and Third Wave, about the Open Ocean Initiative (OOI), EOL is not just another amazingly large scientific study with the resultant report and data. Instead, EOL is yet another great example of the pattern towards mass customization and mass contribution.

EOL will be using a mashup model by assembling lots of technology and data from many different sources into a single experience. This effort is not as flexible as I would like in terms of providing multiple experiences, and is much less "open" from a contribution standpoint than I would ultimately like, but it is still a huge step towards mass contribution compared to the historically typical static and closed research.

For the project, agents will collect all the information about a particular species from the Web and assemble it into a draft species page.Scientists will then review, edit, and authenticate the information. A species expert will sign each page.

This is a proven model, but is also one that will be challenged to meet their objective of exponentially increasing the volume and speed of cataloguing the worlds known species of life and even more so in discovering the unknown 90%.

But let's keep in mind that the context here is scientific data, and thus it lends itself much more to such scrutiny, accuracy, and expertise. Yet I can see that by truly opening this up to mass contribution by the global scientific community and providing a way to converge, connect and vet it all, then it is quite possible (I'd estimate probable) that this will create a tipping point and set off the chain reaction or network effect that can achieve the audacious goal of EOL, and do so in a fraction of the time.

However, the most exciting characteristic to me is the degree to which EOL is shining example of the trend towards mass personalization and the Snowflake Effect.  For example, when you're using EOL you can set up your level of expertise in a given context, you can post questions, photos and your own discoveries. After all, many of the currently known species have been discovered accidentally and by amateurs—a.k.a you and me!  Imagine the impact of adding millions or billions more "amateur explorers" to this process?!

Fail Forward Faster!!

There is, of course, the big question of how to do all this with a strong degree of accuracy and authenticity. Similar to the challenge that something like Wikipedia faces, when anyone can post or edit anything, how do we know if we can trust the information? This is a very important and major issue for all of us to pay attention to and to participate in evolving some effective solutions. While Wikipedia continues to have its share of growing pains, why would we expect anything less of disruptive innovations? Some of Wikipedia's recent decisions are of concern to me regarding some of the restrictions they are placing on postings and editing;however I empathize with the difficult decisions they wrestle with and applaud the fact that they are making decisions, good and bad,and thus learning from their experiences, so the can put ever forward. 

Let's be sure to keep in mind that this is all a grand experiment and a learning process, and we should expect "failures" and relish the learning that they provide. From my perspective there is no question that we are much better off with this trend towards a much more transparent process, mass contribution etc. as exemplified by the likes of Wikipedia, and I welcome the rapid growth of this pattern with such additional efforts as the Open Ocean Initiative and the Encyclopedia of Life. Check them out and see what you think.

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The Encyclopedia of Life and Exponential Change

The day after posting my thoughts on "New Perspectives: Looking Down and Under" and Third Wave, I serendipitously came across a New York Times article called That's Life, which reviews a new project called "The Encyclopedia of Life" or EOL. This project is very similar in scope and importance to the study of the oceans, but also focuses more on life forms and the planet as a whole.

But what's particularly interesting about this project is how it's such a great example of a number of themes I've discussed here at Off Course - On Target.  For one thing, it presents more evidence of how we are "Living in a World of Exponential Change".

The opening of this article picks up right from where my previous postings left off:

"In one sense we know much less about Earth than we do about Mars. The vast majority of life forms on our planet are still undiscovered, and their significance for our own species remains unknown. This gap in knowledge is a serious matter: we will never completely understand and preserve the living world around us at our present level of ignorance. We are flying blind into our environmental future

Since the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus inaugurated the modern system of classification two and a half centuries ago, biologists have found and given Latinized names to about 1.8 million species of plants, animals and microorganisms — an impressive number but probably 10 percent or less of the total. Rough estimates of the number of species that remain to be discovered range from 10 million to more than 100 million.

But a new project in biology, an ambitious effort to create a vast new electronic database of known species, should make it possible to discover the remaining 90 percent of species in far less than 250 years, perhaps only one-tenth that time, a single human generation."

Sound too audacious? Impossible? Keep in mind that a related feat, that of cataloging the human genome, initially perceived as too big to solve, happened in a mere 10 years.

There's lots more to say about this fascinating project and I'll talk more about it next time.

Getting it Right

On Oct. 16th, I had the pleasure of giving a keynote called "Getting it Right" to the Autodesk Bay Area Manufacturing User Group or BAMUG. I was matched with fellow Autodesker Jay Tedeschi, who followed me on the stage and did a great job of putting my big picture and long range views into very clear context for these manufacturing design professionals. You can read more from Jay on his blog "The Gear Box".

My reference to "right" was two-fold:

• First, it refers to mass personalization and the Snowflake Effect: getting just the right stuff, to just the right people, at just the right time, in just the right context, in just the right ..........
• Secondly, it refers to the shift of human skills and value to right brain dominant skills and abilities.

As the slides below show the main topics I covered, including:

• How to avoid the "Perfecting the Irrelevant" syndrome
• The Snowflake Effect
• Skills of the future moving to the right side of the brain
• Applying the Long Tail to design
• The future of design

| View | Upload your own

Earlier this week, I had the great pleasure to be with Dan Pink and will have more on our meeting in a future posting. Dan is the author of one of my top recommended books right now "A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers will Rule the Future" and I've been using his observations frequently. 

In this presentation to the BAMUG, I noted the connections between Dan's thought on the future of right brain skills and how this ties directly to design. For example as Dan notes in A Whole New Mind:

“...businesses are realizing that the only way to differentiate their goods and services in today's overstocked, materially abundant marketplace is to make their offerings transcendent, physically beautiful and emotionally compelling." or as Dan also puts it, "the MFA is the new MBA“

MFA = Master of Fine Arts

MBA = Master of Business Administration

Given that the everyone in the audience at this BAMUG meeting were mechanical engineers (or other design professionals in the manufacturing industry), I pointed out how dramatic the effect of this shift will be on them individually and their professions. 

Their jobs and skill sets have traditionally been focused on very left brain activities, such as analysis, and these are the very things that are becoming increasingly automated by the software they are using. 

I was able to show how Computer Aided Design or CAD programs that this audience uses, such as Autodesk AutoCAD Mechanical and Autodesk Inventor, have been increasingly automating more and more of these left brain skills—reducing or eliminating the time the designer needs to spend looking after them. Therefore the role of the engineer or user of these programs is to look after increasingly more right-brain dominant activities, such as synthesis, seeing patterns, making bigger picture design choices, and problem solving. 

Quite contrary to some of the dark bleak visions of the future predicted by futurists and science fiction writers, in which humans would be relegated to menial tasks and the "machines" would be doing all the "thinking" and be very "intelligent", a very different and very bright future is emerging—one where there is more reliance and focus on the role of the human brain to deal with these very right-brain-oriented skills of recognizing patterns amidst the chaos, seeing the bigger picture, developing holistic solutions, etc.

Meanwhile, the computers and machines are looking after more of the left-brain skills of analysis, and sorting through immense numbers of possibilities. Both sides of the brain and both sides of the human/machine relationship are very necessary. From where I sit, we are seeing a steady migration and matching of which side does what. 

The only danger I can see, and it is a very real and growing one, is to miss this shift to the right and miss the chance to be both more human and more valuable than ever. 

I'll come back to this theme of the shift to the right in future postings. For now, check out some of Dan's points, take a step back, and assess how this trend is affecting your job, your industry and your brain. Just the act of doing so is a great way to exercise the right side of your brain—so limber up, you've got everything to gain.

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Frontiers in Service

Recently I was honored with an invitation from Jim Spohrer to attend and present at the Frontiers in Service Conference on Friday, Oct. 5th, 2007 in San Francisco. Jim is the Director of Services Research at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA, and he has been a longtime colleague and inspiration. Our connection dates back to his days at Apple Computer in the late 80's when he was a DEST (Distinguished Engineer, Scientist, and Technologist) and program manager of learning technology projects in Apple's Advanced Technology Group (ATG). Many thanks to Jim for this opportunity.

I met Jim back in the late 80's when he was leading the effort to create Apple's first online learning community and vision for anytime, anywhere e-learning and the Educational Object Exchange. Jim is also responsible for coming up with the whole idea behind WorldBoard.

The WorldBoard idea came to Jim one day in 1996 when he was out hiking and saw an interesting plant that he wanted to know more about. He started to imagine the benefits of combining a new viewing system built into his eye glasses with digital photography, GPS, and location information, and a way to leave information at that location for the next hiker who asked the same question he had asked (remember this was 1996!).  Eventually, he came to call this notion WorldBoard and there is now a whole group called the WorldBoard Forum working on this and related challenges. The site is very "click worthy"!

Back in 2000 when I was creating  "Into the Future: A vision paper" for the American Society of Technical Development ASTD and the US National Governor's Association (NGA), I used Jim's idea of the WorldBoard as an example of "augmented reality", whereas all that talk at the time was about virtual reality. Check out my paper for more details if you're interested. I can't believe it was "only" seven years ago!  

The Frontiers in Service Conference, which I mentioned at the start of this post, was founded in 1992 and is considered by many to be:

"'...the world's leading annual conference on service research. The conference has a very global nature, and generally draws attendees from 25 countries or more from around the world. It is sponsored annually by the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland.'

The Center for Excellence in Service (CES) is a nonprofit organization composed of individuals dedicated to service strategy and research. CES combines its unique perspective of customer point-of-view and an exploration of a variety of services (with a focus on information technology) in order to provide business leaders and academics with the latest knowledge in service research.  CES also implements practical business objectives into its academic research, and this dynamic creates a partnership between the business world and academia."

I was particularly attracted to the dual attributes of this event and organization: they represent an international R&D community and one focused on the future of services. Services is a big focus area of interest for me. I see a future where our current distinction between services and products will be blurred to the point of requiring a whole new vocabulary to describe the emerging new world where products are becoming more service-like and services are becoming more product-like. 

This same view is also discussed in some of my prior postings, such as New Perspectives: Third Wave, where I point out author Alvin Toffler's predictions from 40 years ago where he envisioned that we would see a  blurring of the distinction between a consumer or a producer and his coining of the word "pro-sumer" to describe this.

Similarly, I believe we are seeing more evidence of a parallel pattern of convergence between products and services. Furthermore, I expect we will see this materialize on a mass scale in MUCH less than the almost 40 years it took for the "pro-sumer" society to emerge. 

At the Frontiers in Service conference, I had the honor of being on stage with Dr. Michel Wedel (University of Maryland) and Dr. Sajeev Varki (University of South Florida, USA), two eminent experts in the areas of recommender systems.

In our session “Rating Recommendations: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”, examples from the world of music predominated much of the discussion, since they provide so many tangible examples of what is already possible for mass personalization through feedback loops, metadata, and recommender systems, which address the tricky challenge of personalizing our listening experiences. Consider for a moment just how difficult and "fuzzy" this problem is to get some assistance with choosing "just the right" song at just the right time for just you and just your context at any given moment.

Given my affinity for mass personalization and what my co-conspirator Erik Duval and I refer to as the Snowflake Effect, you can imagine why I was delighted to be there.

The name Snowflake Effect refers to the fact that you are like a snowflake; there is no one else quite like you, and of course that also makes you just like every other snowflake!  But moreover so too is every situation, every project unique, so we're aiming for enabling each of us to have "just the right" people, content and "stuff" at just the right time in just the right context on just the right medium, etc,

In my presentation to this group (see slides below), I posed the question that if this observation of uniqueness has arguably always been the case and is SO obvious, then why do we live in a world that assumes the opposite?  If we look around us, almost very product and service has been designed for some relatively large number of people, a "target audience, customer or demographic" and a whole set of assumptions about how everyone in this group is the same! But the times they are a changing!

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I went on to suggest that it is now possible to have such mass personalization, that there are more and more examples showing up every day, and therefore there are more and more people who know this is possible and are demanding it. Such "market demand" is usually met. 

My additional point about what's new was the degree to which we are seeing what I call "MC3", the combined multiplier effect of:

Mass Customization x Mass Contribution x Mass Conversation = Mass Personalization

The R&D work , which Dr. Wedel and so many of the international researchers in the room are doing in this area, promises to accelerate this trend much further, much faster. 

I always relish any chance to get in front of people doing the really hard work of research and development, because it gives me the opportunity to suggest some new areas of research that some of them might pick up on. Such opportunities have just been too good to turn down and have proven extremely effective in the past. Perhaps being a bit overzealous, I couldn't resist providing this latest opportunity to be in front of such a prestigious and international group of R&D experts, so I put up the following list of key challenges I see facing both the service industry (the focus of this group) and mass personalization:

• Scalability:
  • Global personalization at a planetary scale
    • e.g. 6.6 billion people on the planet growing exponentially
  • Uniqueness is unique and infinitely so
    • n degrees of personalization per every person, place and thing
    • n radio “stations” per person
    • n-number play lists
• Sustainability:
  • Mass contribution models
• Transferability:
  • Portable Feedback and Attention data
  • Re-purposing from strange sources
  • Not “just” for content
    • Think about competencies; for example, “just the right” people
• Transparency:
  • Dynamic pattern recognition and speculative computing
  • Minimizing the direct explicit input required from individuals
• Metadata Matters:
  • Automated metadata generation
  • Attention metadata
  • Context acquisition
  • Inferred metadata and implicit metadata acquisition
    • e.g. the “missingness” that Dr. Wedel noted)
  • Mood metadata
  • Subjective vs. objective metadata
    • Genome projects (e.g. Pandora Music Genome Project

There's too much to cover in more detail in this posting (lucky you!), but I will use some of these items as fodder for future postings.

My thanks to Jim Spohrer, Ronald Rust, and the Center for Excellence in Service organization for this opportunity to learn about the many exciting R&D efforts underway and the chance to suggest some of the future work they might take on. Based on what I saw and heard at the conference, I'm more optimistic than ever that the dream of having the Snowflake Effect lead to mass personalization on a planetary scale is well on its way to becoming a reality!

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del.icio.us tags: Frontiers in Service, service, Jim Spohrer, Center of Excellence, Toffler, prosumer, pro-sumers, Future Shock, Third Wave, personalization, Snowflake Effect, Erik Duval, metadata

Technorati tags: Frontiers in Service, service, Jim Spohrer, Center of Excellence, Toffler, prosumer, pro-sumers, Future Shock, Third Wave, personalization, Snowflake Effect, Erik Duval, metadata

Obviating the Org Chart

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Many of my audiences have asked me to comment  on my observation that we are seeing the obviation of the org chart in most organizations. Org charts and organizations are typically organized by grouping people by their common functional roles—accounting, engineering, marketing, sales, etc. but while I see continued relevance and value in these functions I don't see much value in grouping people this way. In fact, most of the time is seems that individuals and groups succeed in spite of the way they are organized, not because of it. Perhaps this is because in reality, almost all work is project-based and project teams are very multifunctional and made up of people with a very broad range of functional roles, skills, and expertise.   

How many times have you been shocked or surprised when you see the job titles and locations on the org chart where your fellow team members come from? How often have you found the most valuable members of a very successful project are the ones who were "accidentally" on the team or discovered by pure serendipity at the water cooler? Or how often have you been such a "surprising success" on a team? 

Over the past 10 years, as I travel to more and more locations around the world and have the privilege to be with more and more diverse groups, I've found this to be an increasing trend and pattern of success.  Similarly, when project teams are staffed according to the more "formal" type of classifications or "by the org chart", they are much less successful or at least rarely peak performers. 

But we still need some help in finding the right people, in being discovered ourselves and put on project teams where we can make significant contributions and truly realize our potential.  So if the org chart and other traditional methods are not working, what is? The social networking analysis that I noted, as well tapping into the "informal organization", are two areas that will help significantly. However, there is a way to apply these larger meta-trends to how we can be more effective in putting ourselves together for success as organizations, teams, or any other "assembly" of individuals.   

For example I've suggested that such collections of individuals are yet another form and a great application of the "mashup" models that are emerging (search "mashups" on OCOT for more details on this topic)  Successful teams and groups are also following some of the "un" trends such as unconferences and unlearning which are becoming more and more common and successful as they too focus on the informal aspects of these activities.   

I also see great promise in following the meta-trends of metadata and "getting small" as these apply to people. No, no, not smaller people <g> but smaller characterizations or categorizations of people—all of us. Recognizing each of us us as the unique "snowflakes" that we are. 

How?  By shrinking the organization from a set of boxes on an org chart to a collection of individuals, and "shrinking" individuals down into a long list of rich "metadata" that details all their skills, knowledge, experience, attitudes, aptitudes, abilities, etc. Each of these pieces needs to be as small (detailed) as possible.   

Yes, the length of this list would be huge—millions or more "lines" for each snowflake (person), multiplied by how many individuals are in the organization, and multiplied again by the relationships, past and present, and the "network paths" between them.

But so what if the size of this "database" is daunting? Storage availability is increasing exponentially, cost is on the asymptote to zero and computers love large, so let's take more advantage of all this.  Imagine if you could put together a detailed list of exactly the characteristics or skills or experience you were looking for, and launch this as a rich query into that equally rich database!  Imagine  pattern recognition and recommender tools could help you put together these queries based on the peak performance of individuals and teams that are similar to the one you are putting together. Now compare this to how things have been done to date with blunt instruments like org charts. No contest right?   

And yes, I also see this as another example of how pervasive the simple Lego block model is, not by treating people as blocks, but by enabling each of us to discover "just the right" people... or be discovered ourselves. This discovery model could not only be for full project teams, but for almost any combination of individuals for any purpose—finding the right person to ask a question, to add to an IM conversation, or to meet at a conference.   

This model also helps to show why I'm always advocating that we look way beyond our individual fields of interest and expertise when we are looking for tools, technology, techniques etc. We need to see through the specific context of those being used ,so we can see the underlying and even greater value, if it is there. For example, in the case of this topic of finding "just the right people", I'm hoping that we will start to see how something like the newly advanced forms of "dating technology" can be even more powerful just by changing the context from love to learning, or from romantic relationships to peak performers. 

Yes, dating technology and org charts seem a long way apart as do Lego blocks, snowflakes, and social networks, but hopefully you are finding your time here at Off Course - On Target to be worthwhile and that it is living up to the description of "Where unexpected paths lead to great discoveries".  Here's to more unexpected paths and more discoveries for all of us!

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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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