Off Course-On Target

VMG

As most of you know, for the past two years I’ve been out conducting a grand experiment of learning, living, and working from my sailboat most of the time, as I explore and experience this phenomenal planet of ours from the vantage point of the sea. I am currently anchored at the small village of Rikitea on the Island of Mangareva, which is in the Iles Gambiers (cut and paste the lat/long pair 23 06.939S 134 58.098W into Google Earth if you’d like to see where this is).

One of my primary drivers for heading off on this new direction in life, was to turn myself into a truly fulltime learner and dive into the deep end of the ignorance pool.  I wanted to see if I could figure out how to swim and have fun doing it. It has been working extremely well too. Every single day is almost a nonstop set of learning experiences on just about every level you can imagine: personally, professionally, of other people and cultures, of geography, geology and archaeology, of all things mechanical, of the stars and solar system, of maps, of me and of the worlds above, below, and on top of the water.

I’m finding that there is an incredible amount of very deep lessons to be learned, as well as some extraordinarily helpful concepts and models that apply themselves to so much more than “just” sailing and a life aquatic.  One of these in particular, is a term unique to sailing called VMG which is the acronym for “velocity made good”.  This one has really struck me as an enormously helpful conceptual model and it has stayed with me throughout my adventure. Now I’d like to share it with you here, get your comments on it and offer it as a model that I believe you too would find very valuable, both professionally and personally.  Bear with me for just a bit while I quickly walk you through what VMG is all about in the context of sailing, and then I think you’ll quickly see how well this can be applied to most other things in life.

VMG or “velocity made good” is the measurement of the speed at which you are progressing toward your intended destination. VMG is vector-based in that it requires TWO values—speed and direction—in order to determine what the VMG value is.

Now, to get from point A to point B in a power boat, you’d simply follow the common principal that a straight line is the shortest distance between any two points, and you’d steer the motorboat directly towards point B.  There would be no need for this special term of VMG because you’d simply measure your speed over the ground or through the water and that would be how quickly you were progressing toward your destination.

In a sailboat, however, you are dependent upon the wind for your motive power, and it is not always possible to follow the straight line to your destination. For example, if the wind is coming FROM the point B you are trying to get to, then you have a problem.  In fact, until relatively recently in the history of sailing, it was only possible to sail in about whatever direction the wind was blowing; that is, downwind. This is why, for example, all the historical sailing routes of the world went in similar directions and to similar destinations. You were essentially at the mercy of Mother Nature and you literally went whichever way the wind was blowing.

To this day, many people assume that a sailboat is “pushed” by the wind and therefore, can only go downwind.  But in fact, modern sailboats are not dependent upon being pushed, they can also and most often, be “pulled” by the same principle that enables airplanes to fly—lift. The sails are carefully shaped and angled such that they act as a wing and create lift, which combined with the similar lift being generated by the keel under the water, enables the sailboat to move forward. While it is not possible to sail directly into the wind, it is possible to sail within as little as 30 degrees off the wind, and therefore you can now move towards, although not directly at, your destination, even if the wind is coming straight from this point. The technique is known as “tacking” and if you were to observe it from above, the path of the boat would be a zigzag pattern, since the boat is steered first to one angle (say, off to the starboard or right side) and then back to the other angle (to the port or left side).  By maintaining this angle to the wind, the sails and keel generate lift and move the boat forward, and you are able to tack or zigzag your way to point B.

Because you are never advancing directly towards your destination, you’re always moving away from it to some extent; your actual speed on the water is of little importance. What you want to know is how much progress you are making towards point B and THAT is what VMG tells you. Unless you are moving in a straight line directly towards your destination, your VMG is always going to be less than your actual speed over the ground. But how much less?  In approximate terms, if you are traveling at an angle of 90 degrees to your destination, then your VMG would be zero; that is, you’d never get there. Greater than 90 degrees and your VMG would be negative. So angles less than 90 degrees have some amount of positive VMG; therefore, you’d be making positive or forward progress towards your destination.  How much would be a vector or combination of your actual speed and the angle. This is how VMG is calculated. 

Fortunately, on modern sailboats such as mine, there is a digital readout that tells me exactly what my VMG is at any moment and this reading is what you learn to pay the most attention to because it is the “bottom line” of how well you are sailing towards your next waypoint or destination.  Figuring out when I’m going to arrive at this next point then is not based on how fast the boat is moving through the water, but what the VMG speed is.  You therefore adjust your sails and angle of your heading not to get the maximum speed but to get the maximum VMG.

What I’ve been finding even more fascinating though, is that if you remove the context of sailing and treat VMG as a general conceptual model, it becomes extremely useful in many other situations. Destination can now be any form we like, such as a personal goal or an organizational objective. As in the case of  sailing, you are often faced with opposing forces that work against you and keep you from being able to move directly towards your point B. Some would simply “go with the flow” and let themselves be controlled and pushed by these forces, and therefore go in similar directions and to similar destinations that were all “downwind”.  But if you really want to get to the point B that you have set your sites on, then it is possible to develop strategies that allow you to head “upwind”, without taking the opposing forces on directly, but very cleverly using those same forces to provide the metaphorical equivalent of “lift” to you and your team, thus enabling you to make forward progress, and ultimately arrive at your destination. 

Does this sound familiar?  Do you recall times when you have purposefully decided to take an indirect path, meandering in different directions that move you closer but not directly towards your goal?  If done with purpose,  it can be extremely smart and enable you to go against the flow, to succeed in spite of opposing forces, and to get where YOU want to go. 

You can see how well this all fits into my long time focus and the namesake of this site—the strategy of being “off course” and yet very much “on target”.  Yet for me the real lesson of VMG is in the value of having an accurate measurement of what my VMG is.  This is where I think we can also gain the most advantage in using the concept of VMG in other applications. What we need is a VMG meter for all of our other pursuits in life!

In many ways, I think it can be relatively straight forward to create a VMG meter for any application. First, of course, we need to have a clear and accurate sense of where point B is. What is the end state we are trying to achieve?  What are the coordinates of point B?  Then we need to know our current location, where we are now.  And finally, we need to know what is our actual speed AND at what angle away from our determined destination are we moving?  Put all these together and you get a very simple, but profound, guiding metric of your true progress. 

Think how well this would let you make adjustments to your strategies and implementations, and how quickly you could find out what effect this has on your VMG. For example, moving faster often seems to be a good thing: “We must be doing well, look how fast we are going!”  But how often has it turned out that you were making LESS progress towards your goal, even though you were “going faster”?  When would it be smart to choose to go slower at a different angle to reach maximum VMG? 

As with many of my “off course, on target” stories, including the original Apollo mission example that got me started with this whole line of thinking, it is all about getting good at constant course correction, which requires that you know where you are headed and how far off course you are at any given point in time.

So give this VMG idea a try in YOUR context. How well have you quantified the specifics of your “point B” destination?  How would you measure the “angle” away from the direct line towards your point B? How do you measure the speed that you or your project are moving at? If you can measure these, then you can put them together and create your very own VMG gauge, which will let you make constant course corrections and successfully reach that elusive point B destination before everyone else.

Would you rather join the rest of the crowd, go wherever the prevailing winds blow you, and let the external forces determine your future?  Or would you like to chart your own course?  Do the impossible and sail upwind. Fashion your own version of a VMG gauge, and you can purposefully put yourself very much off course, but equally much on target!

Happy sailing!

w
a
yne
=====

Great Thoughts

Here's another posting derived from my ever growing list of items to blog about.  This one springs from an article I read in the IEEE Spectrum back in Jan 2007.   

Did I mention I’m behind in my postings and the list is growing? However on the plus side I like this delay because it acts as a check on just how relevant and useful things are.  If it stands the test of time, it gets posted, and this one passed the test with flying colors.

The title of this posting “Great Thoughts” is the same as the article by Robert W. Lucky (IEEE Fellow), now retired. In it, he wrote: 

“There is a theory of creativity that holds that creativity is most often the product of the unexpected intersection of two previously unconnected thoughts. If you are thinking very hard about one such thought, perhaps you are suppressing the other thoughts that could connect with it. On the other hand, if your mind is a perfect blank…”

This is an interesting conundrum: not focusing too much on one thing yet not shutting out all thought, something that my ADD riddled brain can't even comprehend!

But for me, the takeaway here has more to do with the question of what constitutes “new” these days?  What makes something original?  What constitutes plagiarism or copying?  What is at the heart of innovation and creativity in the world today?

In this era where more and more things are mashups, a new assembly of previously existing things, is there any such thing as an original idea, song, drawing, text, etc.?  The answer is more "yes" than "no", I think, but it is worth noting that most of the time what is new and what makes something unique is not the bits and pieces that it is made from, but the selection of certain items and the way they are assembled into a new whole. And most often, the value of this new assembly is much greater than the sum of the parts.

This concept is nothing new really. Think of some fundamental examples such as text, where we have almost all existing words available in the dictionary (although the list is growing and evolving all the time), yet from this finite set of letters and words we can create an infinite number of written documents (e.g. articles, books, poems, and scripts). Or music where we have another finite set of notes and chords that enable us to create an infinite number of new songs, melodies, and even ring tones!

This combining of existing things to create new things, the heart of the Snowflake Effect is what makes it a scalable model. Not that we won’t also be creating new bits and pieces along the way, such as the new words which are added to dictionaries every year, but for the most part I think most of what is new and valuable, most of the innovation and creativity we are and will be seeing, comes from the serendipitous intersection of two or more previously existing things, be they thoughts, ideas, notes of music, letters and words, lines, arcs or circles.

So here’s to celebrating and fostering the creativity in all of us by focusing on being the unique snowflakes we all are and designing more and more new original ideas and “stuff” from what we already have around us.

Where Is Value in the Economy of “Free”

Seems like one of my recent postings “Good Luck Trying to Copy a Snowflake”  on the Long Slow Chat, resonated with many of you. The Long Slow Chat is a blog that Erik Duval and I are using to focus more on the Snowflake Effect. I got a lot of comments in particular about my note that:

“I think we are now in an era where there is an inverse correlation of ease of copying with value.“

I remember being struck by this idea when Kevin Kelly first published his article “New Rules for the New Economy” in Wired magazine back in September 1997.  He talked about the “The Law of Plentitude: More gives More".  When you couple this with the fact that value is directly related to scarcity, the uniqueness generated by the Snowflake Effect takes on a a very large and new value. 

For example, I have often observed that content has little-to-no value in and of itself. In large part, this is because content has become so plentiful and abundant. In this context, I’m using the term content to describe anything recorded or captured, such as illustrations, drawings, text, video, audio, and music. Largely due to the Internet, content has become increasingly easy to copy and distribute, and therefore its value, based on scarcity, has been on the asymptote towards zero and getting closer by the minute. 

But if there is an inverse relationship between value and the ease of copying, such that most content has no value, then where do we find value and in what?  Well, I believe there is still a direct correlation between value and scarcity. So in the case of content, the value comes from the mantra of the Snowflake Effect; that is, getting it “just right”—just the right content to the right person at the right time and in the right way.  Reflect upon this a moment and see what you think. Would you not find that your valuation of any piece of content is directly related to how useful it is to you at a specific time and in a specific context? 

To my way of thinking then, the value proposition for content is transforming it from a “product” to a “service”, since the value comes not from the content itself but from when it is the right content for the right person at the right time. All this is very much in keeping with my noun/verb perspectives but I’ll leave that for a future posting.

I was therefore delighted to find that Kevin too has also been working more on this theme of copying and value, and he has recently published his thoughts in an intriguing article called “Better Than Free” on his blog The Technium, which is also the new book he is working on. But this same article has also just been published on the Change This site in PDF format.

I highly recommend that you check out this article from either source to get some new perspectives on where value comes from in this economy where “free” is increasingly predominant. Kevin addresses the challenge that most others seem to ignore or deny, which is "where will value come from and how will there be a fully functioning 'free economy'?"  As Kevin succinctly said:

“How do you make money with the free?”

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.
When copies are super abundant, stuff which can't be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.

As you will read in his article, Kevin goes on to describe eight things which are “better than free” and are values that can't be copied, which he calls “generatives”:

“A generative value is a quality or attribute that must be generated, grown, cultivated, nurtured. A generative thing cannot be copied, cloned, faked, replicated, counterfeited, or reproduced. It is generated uniquely, in place, over time.”

The eight generatives are:

1. Immediacy
2. Personalization
3. Interpretation
4. Authenticity
5. Embodiment
6. Patronage
7. Findability

As you can imagine, I was particularly interested to see "personalization" on this list. From my (no doubt biased) perspective, the whole list is part of the Snowflake Effect, where getting to a state of “just right” is key. And more so than characteristics, this list of generatives creates a list of qualities and competencies that will be increasingly important and valuable for all of us. More on that in some future postings.

I particularly liked a note Kevin makes at the end of the article:

“In short, the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.”

Attention is about as personal a quality as I can imagine, and is one which I value especially since I suffer so acutely from a deficit of it.

I’ll have more on this whole theme of copying, originality, sources of value, new competencies, and attention in future postings. For now, I’d recommend that you give some of your very valuable attention to this topic and this article, and I look forward to hearing more about what you think about the sources of value in an economy of "free."

Babelfish Requires Babbling Too

For those of you who were around then, remember the arguments for Esperanto back in the 1970's?  According to Wikipedia, "Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. "

Developed in 1887 by Polish physician Ludovic Zamenhof, Esperanto as stated in "The Decline and Fall of Esperanto: Lessons for Standards Committees"  was supposed to be  "a simple, easy-to-learn language. His goal was to erase communication barriers between ethnic groups by providing them with a politically neutral, culturally free standard language." The authors go on to say:

"... by the 1970s, Esperanto was receiving serious attention from linguistic scholars, with numerous publications appearing in academic journals.

[But] "Despite the logical concept and intellectual appeal of a standard language, Esperanto has not evolved into a dominant worldwide language."

While I agree that anything we can do to increase communication is a plus, this notion of inventing an artificial language, and then all of us acquiring a new one that we would have in common, makes no sense at all.  It has no history, no future, and no culture and these aspects of language are not only important for communication, but I believe for acquiring a language.

For many years I've proposed that technology would play a major role in our ability to communicate with one another.  And in fact, language translation capabilities are growing and getting better.  But while I would have formerly thought that we won’t need to know more than one language since given enough time, we'll have the Babelfish, an idea put forth by Douglas Adams in his book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, my recent experience with learning a new language, specifically Spanish, has changed how I view this.

I realize now that my ability to communicate effectively is not limited to just saying the right words, it’s about semantics; communicating meaning.  A Babelfish would not address the cultural contexts that are so important to communication. Acquisition as humans of multiple language capabilities involves more than technology. Technology will indeed play a role, but it will not be sufficient in and of itself.

Given that a Babelfish won't solve all of our communication problems, what can we do to make it easier and more efficient and effective for all of us to acquire more languages? My most recent experience of one-to-one instruction in Spanish is a model we all should be looking at because my sense is that it is quite scalable, effective and has many indirect benefits.

The Power of Conversation

For one thing, this method of learning a language was quite effective and amazing. Three times I started with a new instructor in three different locations.  Not once was there any discussion over the methodology or how we were going to teach me Spanish. Most striking was my experience with the first instructor Axel, because I had no Spanish capability whatsoever (not counting commonly known phrases, such as gracias or buenos días).

From the beginning, Axel and I started talking in Spanish and never stopped during our five hour daily sessions together for two weeks.  We didn't have a conversation about this, but the unwritten rule was that we were not going to use any English beyond that which was absolutely necessary. I'm not quite sure how we managed to do this, but I know we used a lot of Pictionary and Charades techniques.  Our interaction worked really well when the other person understood it was a game of "guess what I'm drawing/acting out"

Early on, one of the most important phrases I learned was "como se dice" (How do you say), but what really made it effective was how I used it as a signal for starting the guessing game. Instead of tacking on the English word at the end, such as "como se dice binoculars", what worked well was for me to have to describe binoculars in whatever limited Spanish I had supplemented with drawings and diagrams.  There's something about having to work at it more and taking the time and effort to acquire the words. Plus I had to use what little vocabulary I already had to acquire more vocabulary. That's a really effective model.  More importantly and as things advanced,what I was asking for was not a word but a phrase, a saying or a sentence that would convey my meaning rather than a translation of my words.

One reason why I think this model can scale so well is that the only real requirement of the instructors is that they are fluent in the language being learned, Spanish in this case. I don’t think instructors need to know much of the other language...in this case, English.  Nor did I find any need for the instructor to have any significant instructional skills beyond patience because for our sessions, my instructors and I were literally “just” having a conversation. Since the whole model is immersion-based, we're not going to use English, then knowledge of my language was not required.  So I've concluded that any two people can use these techniques for language acquisition.

There are some limitations or concerns within this model. For example, what if the conversation occurs between two people who do not speak "proper" English or Spanish?  To share well, all of us will need to have more consistency in the way we speak a language. Jargon and slang are always a problem in an isolated group.  But the solution is simple.  You need to get out more.  The more you expand your circle of people, the better chance you have of learning a form of the language that is understandable by many.  This is not a new phenomena: as the audience grows, so too does the need for a common way to speak a language. Take broadcasting or something like national news for example. In Canada, national radio and TV broadcasters speak “proper English” or as my mother would say "the Queen's English" that is devoid of the local color, accents, and jargon of what you would hear on the streets of any one province or geographical region.

The Topic Doesn’t Matter at All; It is All that Matters!

For this model of language learning to be really effective though, I think the two people need to feel that there is a value in both of them doing so. In the case of the instructor, it's about getting paid.  But also, having something in common other than the language is a huge factor in effective language learning. All of my tutors said how much they were enjoying the teaching because the conversation itself was interesting.  I think it's because we had a real conversation...they were interested in WHAT we were talking about.  What might have made it more valuable too was that I took the lead.  While I was interested in learning Spanish, I also had an ulterior motive. I had a zillion things that I wanted to talk about because I was interested in learning more about them, their culture, their city and region such as "What's family life like?" "Do you have a computer at home?" "What kind of music do you listen to?"  So it took some of the pressure off of the instructor to provide topics of conversation and also engaged the instructor in some authentic conversation that was interesting, relevant, and engaging to them irrespective of the language.

Following along with the theme of Off Course - On Target: how effective is it to get to a goal indirectly? Obviously I wanted to learn Spanish.  But by just having a real conversation, we approached this goal in an indirect sense.  A conversation about the importance of authenticity in musical performances for example, in one sense, has nothing to do with Spanish.  It just happens to be that we agree that the only way we're going to talk about music is in Spanish.  No stilted arbitrary "Look, look! See Spot run" or "today we're going to turn to Chapter 3 and talk about what clothes to wear in the morning."  In fact, during our informal sessions, we used no books other than a dictionary, and we talked very little about grammar. Instead we were both actively engaged in a conversation of mutual interest.

One-to-One is a Scalable Model

So, if two people were to share a common interest in a work project, they would already have the context and content of the conversation. Now, can we add language to it?  Can we say, "I need you two to solve this work-related problem, and oh by the way, one of you only speaks French so you’ll have to do all your communicating in French?"

So how is this method of language learning scalable?

1) It isn't limited to people with instructional capabilities. If everyone of us can be a teacher as well as a learner, here's a wonderful example of it happening.

2) It can be applied to any situation so long as both individuals see a shared value in having the conversation.

3)  It leads to higher performance as the choice of people increases dramatically and we are able to get just the right people matched up with just the right jobs, roles and teams.

IF we really are living in a global economy or a global existence where our location doesn't matter so much anymore and our work is more conversationally related, more idea related, then here is an opportunity, if not a need, to be able to communicate more effectively.  Think of the richness of our experiences and our ability to communicate if we were all acquiring the ideas and concepts that come with using words or phrases that do not have equivalents in other languages...words like gestalt, zeitgeist, schadenfreude, or phrases like joie de vivre, crème de la crème, or c'est la vie which English speakers have adopted to convey ideas that were not originally part of the language.

So here's what I’ve learned from my recent language learning experiences and want to leave you with:

• Words are a means to an end, and the end goal is the ability to effectively communicate our ideas, concepts and opinions.  Therefore, it is all about semantics, meaning, and common understanding.
• Phrases, sayings, references are key to conveying meaning.
• If a common language is removed from the requirements of choosing team members, this dramatically increases the ability to find “just the right people to pair up or to have on a high performance team.
• Language helps us learn more about each other, broadens our awareness of other cultures, models, metaphors, stories, and perspectives.
• Common understanding leads to less conflict from misunderstandings.
• Almost anyone can be a language instructor in this model since there are very limited teaching or language skills needed.
• Authentic conversation, relevant to all involved, is key to language acquisition.

Unfortunately for you I’m just warming up on this overall topic of languages, learning, and living, so stay tuned for more of what you’ve come to expect from OCOT: unexpected paths that lead to great discoveries!

Happiness is the Snowflake Effect on Spaghetti Sauce

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

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

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

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

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

World Languages: Going Colorblind?

"Maps courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps used with permission"

In case you find it as interesting as I did, here is the list (according to www.geographic.org) of the top ten most popular languages in the world. See the map above and this full list of the top 50 languages.

1. Mandarin	(1120 Million)
2. English	(480M)
3. Spanish	(332M)
4. Arabic	(235M)
5. Bengali	(189M)
6. Hindi	(182M)
7. Russian	(180M)
8. Portuguese	(170M)
9. Japanese         10. German	(125M) (98M)

** note this list was updated Oct.1 to correct errors in list tabulation that omitted Spanish!  Apologies for confusion and thanks Kean for correcting!

As is often the case with these kinds of lists and large scale estimations, we need to keep in mind that there are many different ways of counting and measuring things, such as the amount of people who speak a given language. Do you only count the first or native language?  Do you group dialects together?  What constitutes fluency? To prove my point, I've picked two other equally interesting lists of language by population that you can find here and here. No doubt there are many more to be found by simply searching online.

What these lists and maps don't show us is how these languages are spreading throughout the world based on both the movement of people from their country of birth to other countries for work or through marriage for example, as well as the spread of languages via people learning new ones, organizations setting up offices, factories, and other operations around the world, etc. 

In the next 25 years or so, especially with the augmentation and acceleration of language-based technology and translation, I wonder if we are headed for a world that is "colorblind" when it comes to languages, and the need for these maps becomes somewhat obsolete?

Loving Lexicographical Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Language Weren't a Commons ...

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

From her bio on the TED site:

Why you should listen to her:

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

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

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

The New York Times

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Coming to our Senses

If you have been kind enough to listen to me or read some of my entries on OCOT or my other writings, you may have correctly concluded that I suffer from a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Contrary to popular opinion (and even some “experts”), ADD is not about a LACK of “attention” but rather, an excess of it! 

And Now a Word from My Symptom

Those of us with ADD are unable to pay attention to just ONE thing at a time and are instead forced to pay attention to every sensory input all of the time. We try to make sense of things when EVERY thing is demanding our focus. All of our sensory inputs are dealt with equally and simultaneously. 

What we can’t do, for example, is turn down the volume on every sound except the one we want to focus on. We can't tune out the movements we see around us or choose not feel every input through our skin. In other words, we can only pay attention to EVERYTHING, all at the same time and all at equal levels.

I’m one of the fortunate few with ADD who, long before I knew what it even was, began to develop  coping skills and techniques to survive with these traits. They didn’t seem like anything special to me.  For the longest time, I just assumed everyone else was having the same experience.  And somehow I managed to start turning these “bugs” into features that have enabled me to be as successful as I am and to do what I do. If everything demands your attention and you find everything interesting, then life is very full!

If you are interested in learning more about ADD, look at some of these  alternative descriptions.  And on the topic of attention itself, I know of no better source than that of my dear friend and fellow ADDer Marcia Conner and her Ageless Learner site’s section on Attention and on How Adults Learn.

But now, back to the topic at hand (see what I mean?!)

It All ADDs Up

So why are my ADD tendencies relevant here?  Because its a way to introduce a meta theme that I'd like to address on OCOT. Just as my own natural sensory interface presents challenges, so too are the challenges of developing human/machine sense-based interfaces. Over a series of postings, I'd like to address:

• The use of our human senses as ways through which we communicate and interact with machines, computers, and technology, and ourselves. 
• Other interrelated topics both individually and as a collective whole. 

I’ll do my best to stay "on target" as I wander around "off course" and divide my pursuit of this trend toward more natural and sense-based interfaces into several separate posts. I see it playing a critical role in the future I am both designing and imagining.  

The Missing Link?

Interestingly, this whole topic of natural or sense-based interfaces does not seem to have any common singular term or definition. Or perhaps I just have not found it and some of you can point me to it?  I’m aware of categories such as:

• HCI  Human Computer Interaction/interface
• HMI Human Machine Interface/interaction
• User Interface

But these all seem to be differentiated based on interactions with specific types of technology, computers only, or segmented into individual human senses, such as touch with the use of haptic interfaces and technology with tactile feedback . And I can find definitions of HCI, HMI such as this one from Wikipedia that describe them as:

“...the 'layer' that separates a human that is operating a machine from the machine itself.”

However, my interest is in the larger meta theme of using all human senses and eliminating the “separation layer” between machines and ourselves so that they are invisible and we can directly connect and communicate through our senses. I’m want to ensure that we are taking the more holistic and inclusive view of the use of ALL of our senses, not only because we have so many that are being underused, but also because it is often the combination of multiple senses that make up our best experiences and interactions.

Making Sense of and Better Use of Our Senses

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll address the meta theme of sense-based and more natural interfaces through a variety of posts, podcasts, and perhaps some interviews over the next few months. I’ll alternate between the big picture view of the use of senses in general and the use of them collectively, then look at the use of individual senses such as touch and feel, audio, visual, and so on. I will also cover the use of combinations of senses for better, more innovative designs and solutions for interacting with technology...and each other. Add to this the coverage of tools, technology, and examples of real world applications of sensory-based and natural interfaces and I think we’ll have a lot of fun and learn a lot in the process. These posts will be intermixed with other topics on a regular basis and spread over many months for as long as my and your interest continues to be high.

Oh!  Look at that cool blue butterfly that just flew by!  Hmm, I wonder what kind of plane that is flying overhead?  Now what was I saying?  Oh yeah, senses, interfaces, human interaction... 

Hang on, fasten your seatbelts low and tight, we’re about to take off on what should prove to be a fun and very "off course", very "on target" sensory journey!

Experts...like you and me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding Solutions

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

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

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

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

Experts "R" Us!

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

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

Exponential Growth of Experts?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Designing Your Own Future!

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

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

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

Web of Fate; NOT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make This Personal!

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

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

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