Off Course-On Target

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

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

Mashup of Old and New

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

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

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

Vaguely Focused

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

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

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

List with a Twist

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help Me, Help You by Helping Me Help You

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

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

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

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

Wayne

_____________________

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

Write You Are!

For many years now, I’ve more often than not taken great exception to those traits and characteristics which  the “experts” and pundits say are the norm or the coming trends of our societies. They just don’t seem to match up with the reality I see all around me and what my sense of these trends are.

For example, I still keep reading about these grave concerns that we (especially the younger generations) are becoming isolated individuals who:

• Live in dark rooms lit only by the glow of our computer screens
• Have no social life and only limited “real” human contact
• Read less and write less
• Passively sit there all day clicking our mouse and watching endless video

I don’t know where all these masses of people are who the experts say are out there and are becoming the norm. I see mostly the opposite among all of the many groups, ages, nations, and cultures that I’m privileged to spend time with around the world. I see people of all ages, classes, and cultures who are more social than ever—communicating, sharing, reflecting, observing, analyzing, and otherwise engaging more than I think we may have ever done.

I think the reason for this vast difference in observations is mostly because these interactions don’t look and feel like they used to. Behaviors have changed and they don’t fit the norms and definitions of the past. But make no mistake—from all indications and observations I can make, the fundamentals of socializing, interacting, communicating, writing, probing, being curious, and other such fundamental traits are not only alive and well, but they are at an all time high and are increasing exponentially.

You can therefore imagine my delight in finding more and more examples in the past few months of others who have been noticing this same counter-trend. Even better, some of this has now been formally studied and evaluated, so it is no longer just a matter of opinion and a collection of anecdotal observations.

The “Stanford Study of Writing”

One of the more recent examples is the massive study called “Stanford Study of Writing” that was recently completed by Andrea Lunsford, professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University. Clive Thompson did a good synopsis of this study in a the Sept. 2009 edition of Wired magazine called “Clive Thompson on the New Literacy”. Lunsford studied college students from 2001 to 2006 and used over 14,000 samples of their diverse writings including formal assignments, emails, blogs, and chat sessions. Tellingly, 83% of their writing took place outside of their academic assignments. One of her conclusions particularly rang true to me when she remarked, “I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.”

Perhaps most importantly, this study showed that it is not just volume but effectiveness of writing that has increased so dramatically. I picked up a new word (always a great find for me) in Clive’s article that Lunsford uses to quantify a critical competency that her study showed had dramatically increased. Kairos is the ability of a writer to “assess their audience and adapt their tone and technique to best get their point across.”

New World Encyclopedia notes that in Panathenaicus, Isocrates wrote “educated people are those who manage well the circumstances which they encounter day by day, and who possess a judgment which is accurate in meeting occasions as they arise and rarely misses the expedient course of action.” Sounds like a pretty important skill to me!

According to Clive (something of particular note to those in education), Lunsford observed in her study that “students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn't serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.”

My Lessons Learned

Here is a short spur-of-the-moment list of some of my recent observations and learning regarding writing— both my own and that of those around me. I would be most interested to hear from you about how well these match or conflict with what you are seeing when it comes to writing and communication skills now and what you think will happen to them in the future.

• The diversity and quantity of outlets and motivation for writing and sharing is increasing at an exponential rate. It is easy to forget how much the pace of new forms of writing and distribution is accelerating. Not that many years have passed since many of us switched from paper-based writing of letters, books, and articles to the much more prolific digital forms of word processors. In the last few years, we saw the exponential growth of connectivity via the Internet and saw the rise of email and online forums. Laptops and mobile phones became mainstream and provided some of the catalyst for more outlets, such as instant messaging and SMS text messages. And in the past few months, we’ve seen even faster growth of phenomena such as Facebook and Twitter (to name but a few). Each of these provides yet another outlet and demand for writing, and we seem to be answering the call in droves.
• There is an equally rapid growth in the diversity of types and styles of writing. If you have been reading much of my writing, or worse had to listen to me, you know I graduated with honors from the University of Never-a-Sentence-When-a-Paragraph-Will-Do. For me, the brevity which outlets such as “tweets” and SMS texting ruthlessly enforce has been helped me to write (sometimes) with greater clarity and conciseness. As my dear friend Marcia Connor recently put it in an article she wrote about social media,  “If my friend Wayne can tweet, anyone can!”
• The motivation factors for writing are also increasing at similar rates and for more and more people. When I talk with others who maintain blogs, journals, websites, and email lists, and have a presence on Twitter and Facebook, most of them mention that knowing people are reading what they write, often commenting on it, adding additional points of view, etc., significantly motivates them to develop the habit of writing more often and sharing more of their experiences.
• Writing is becoming more immediate and more authentic. It resembles a conversation in terms of its characteristics—it is more spontaneous, more serendipitous, and more personal. And as with a great conversation, these tend to be much richer in their content and context.
• Writing is becoming more and more personalized, another example of “The Snowflake Effect”. This writing trend reflects firsthand experiences—writing about what you know, reflective writing, and writing that is much richer in value.
• Skills in analysis are becoming less important since this is increasingly automated and done for us with a mouse click. But  having skills for synthesizing is growing in value as we consume ever larger quantities of disparate information sources and types, reflect upon them, and put together our thoughts and ideas on what they mean and what trends and patterns we see.
• These changes in our writing provide more examples of how we are increasingly becoming societies of prosumers. For example, I don’t regard myself as a writer or a reporter, but when I recently found myself in the midst of the tsunami in Pago Pago American Samoa a few weeks ago, thanks to the wonder of modern communications technology, suddenly I was just that: an on-the-scene reporter, able to provide firsthand, immediate and very personalized reports via my tweets, emails and my blog.  You can read my accounts of this experience by following these links:
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part I
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part II
  • Doing the Tsunami Tango in American Samoa: Part III

  These accounts were subsequently picked up by news services around the world, many of which were able to call me on my sailboat via my satellite phone and do a live interview as I was literally in the mist of the tumultuous effects of the tsunami in real time. This is not only something that was technically impossible a few years ago, but serves as a dramatic example of just how much we are becoming the “prosumer” society which Alvin and Heidi Toffler so presciently described in their book “The Third Wave” wherein we are no longer either a producer or a consumer, but are both at the same time.

• These changes in our writing skills and habits are not at all limited to the younger generation. This is a phenomenon affecting all of us who are living and writing at this time and in these environments.

Your Turn to Write!

I’m sure you can come up with many more examples of other trends and directions, skills, and consequences of the changes happening with our writing and communications. I therefore hope and encourage you to add yet another example of this trend by either posting some of your observations on your own blogs, tweets or Facebook pages, or directly here. I hope that my  own writing here is reflecting the positive traits of this exponentially accelerating trend.

Referring back to the Wired article I mention at the start of this posting, I thought Clive made a great point in closing when he noted: “knowing who you’re writing for and why you’re writing might be the most crucial factor of all.” Write on Clive!

Wayne

Snowstorm of News (Continued)

In my last posting, I noted a recent example of mass personalization or the Snowflake Effect taking hold of news. I just ran into another and perhaps even more significant example, which some are referring to as “printernet”, described as custom printing for newspapers, magazines, and even wikis.

PBS’s MediaShift web site, “Your guide to the digital media revolution” hosted by Mark Glasser, had a good overview of “printernet” in its recent posting “'Printernet' Vision Brings Custom Print Publications to Masses”:

“Publishing means newspapers, newsletters, books and posters in mass market quantities, but versioned and personalized for specific communities and individual users.”

Glasser’s article also notes the ties with another example of personalization, Time Inc.’s Mine magazine, which my fellow Snowflake Erik Duval recently noted in his blog post “Snowflakes at Time Magazine”.

Glasser’s article is very much worth reading because he goes on to show how “printernet” affects magazines,  newspapers, and wikis.

This is not only of interest to me because it is yet another example of the Snowflake Effect taking off, but also because of my fascination with how interesting and useful it is to mashup old models, such as print in this case, with new models such as the web, networks, etc.

It’s worth checking out to see what you think.

The Snowflake Effect on News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Snowflake Effect and “Just Right for Me” Decision Support

Here’s another Snowflake Effect example of how sites are starting to catch up on ways to help people deal with the abundance of choice and on providing what I like to refer to as “decision support”—helping all of us to make “just the right” choice and decisions at just the right time, etc.

This example is from BestInClass.com, which provides assistance on how to choose “just the right” digital camera.  In our previous world where products and solutions were mass produced, we saw “shootout” types of testing and reporting in magazines.  These publications would purport to inform us which camera was the “winner” and the best choice for us. But this information was completely devoid of individual context: what factors, such as price, picture quality, size, weight, convenience of controls, etc., did I care about the most?  Without these factors being taken into account, and with the combination of answers to all these preferences making what’s “just right” for me increasingly unique, then how could they possibly know which camera was best for me? 

Of course they couldn’t, and so we learned (often the hard way) that we still needed to try to sort through all this testing data, as well as opinions from friends (and strangers), and hope we could figure out the best choice.

In the coming era of the Snowflake Effect, where things are increasingly being mass customized—witness for example the continuing growth of more and more choices of digital cameras and their options—we need more help than ever to find just the right camera, or whatever product, service, person, or content that we are seeking. Increasingly we “know” that a “just right” choice is out there, but finding it and choosing it is the big new challenge.

While BestInClass is but one small example, consider how this offering is trying out ways to help us with decision support in selecting “the best digital camera for me.”

In addition to checking out the BestInClass web site, you can also find other reviews about it online, such as the March 15, 2009 posting on TechCrunch “BestInClass Tries To Help Consumers Find The Perfect Digital Camera”

While they are focused on electronic equipment and expect to add more types to their offerings, it doesn’t take much extrapolation to start to imagine this same type of service being offered for other kinds of decision support (e.g. Who is the best person for me to ask this question of?  What’s the best thing for me to read/listen to/watch to learn more about this?  What’s the best way for me to get up-to-speed on using this piece of equipment?

I’d be curious to know what other examples of decision support you are seeing, and I’d especially like to learn about your experiences with them.  What kinds of choices and needs do YOU see coming next or want to see?  What are YOU or your organization doing to offer this type of decision support to your clients, members, students?

We “snowflakes” need all the help we can get, so we can “get better at getting better” with our decision making. I see this kind of support becoming increasingly available and I expect it will continue along an exponential growth curve.

More on Mashups

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how long it takes to get articles published, and even less so, how I make it worse by taking much too long in letting you know when they are.  However in spite of the delays, I’m delighted to finally let you know about a recent article I wrote for BECTA, the British “government agency promoting the use of information and communications technology; news, projects and resources on lifelong and special education.” They have been doing outstanding work for many years, and have a section called Emerging Technology for Learning (ETL), which is one of my regular “feeds” for learning and technology.

I was therefore most honored to be asked to write an article on mashups, which I titled “The Snowflake Effect: The Future of Mashups and Learning”

The key point I try to make in the article is that in order to realize the true power and potential of mashups, we need to understand and treat this as a conceptual model with fundamentals that can be applied to almost anything. To make this point I used as many existing examples, technologies, and applications as possible to help illustrate how mashups are already being used with great diversity, albeit on a small scale so far.  This subject exemplifies Gibson’s great quote that “The future is already here, it is just not very evenly distributed”, and I hope that the article will help to “distribute the future” a bit more evenly by encouraging you to consider using the concept of mashups for many more applications than you may currently be doing.

Please take a few minutes to look over this article, and more importantly, all the other great topics within the BECTA and ETL sites.  Please also be encouraged to add your comments to the articles that you do read, as this adds immeasurable value for all of us.

Past Meets Present to Create the Future of Easter Island

I am as remiss as I am delighted to be able to finally get around to sharing some of the fascinating work taking place on one of the world’s most remote locations, Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, and to introduce you to some of the even more fascinating people doing this work. 

Most of us are probably familiar with the mysterious stone carvings on Easter Island called Moai (pronounced mo´-eye) and they are indeed impressive.  Some of you may recall the book “Collapse” by Jeffrey Diamond and recall how he used Rapa Nui as a blueprint or roadmap to societal implosion, all of which seems all too relevant and most valuable in these current times.

However, even more impressive is the story of the people and the history that lies behind the blocks of stone. It is in part a story of great sadness and devastation as the residents desecrated the island (and nearly themselves) by clearing literally every tree in order to create these statues. Yet this is also a story with great hope and inspiration as these challenges are being resolved with remarkable human ingenuity and determination augmented by some of today’s hardware and software. I continue to be more and more fascinated by the whole new solutions and results that emerge when we mix or “mashup” the old with the new, and these efforts on Easter Island are yet another great example.

Jeff O’Brien has recently done a great job of telling this story in his Jan. 13, 2009 Fortune magazine article “Saving Easter Island” and in this accompanying video interview.  I am very confident that you will find it a good use of your time to take a few minutes to read the article and watch the video.

You will be introduced to Sonia Haoa, a 55-year-old native of the island and the lightening rod for efforts to capture the history of the island and save it from further destruction. The article and video will also introduce you to my friend and colleague Pete Kelsey who has been instrumental in helping Sonia and others on the island take advantage of some of the benefits of modern technology and techniques to create a much more in-depth and accurate capture of the geography and history of the island. They have used this technology to see whole new connections and ways forward for the future.  Pete works at Autodesk Inc. and is the resident expert in the software, such as AutoCAD Civil 3D, and the whole area of civil engineering

Together Pete, Sonia, and a team of other people from local and from other technology companies are in the process of digitizing the whole island to create models so accurate you can now see the original chisel marks from when the Moai were carved out of the volcanic rock blocks. It is from lessons like the ones coming out of this work on Easter Island that Autodesk and all of us can learn more about how to combine the past with the present to make a much better future.

Pete originally went to Easter Island out of pure curiosity and to check off one of the items on his “Bucket List” (name of a highly recommended movie BTW) of things to do and places to see before he “kicked the bucket”.  However his curiosity and talent soon led him to connect up with Sonia. And the rest makes for a great story that is still unfolding, but you can get started on with the article and video. 

* You can also track the whole project on the Easter Island project diary blog.

Best of all, I will soon have the great privilege of meeting some of these people in person and seeing their work first hand, since I am about to set sail for this remarkable remote island this month. I’m currently in Costa Rica finishing preparations on my 50’ sailboat “Learnativity” and expect to set off later this week for Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands from where I’ll turn south and make the open ocean crossing to Easter Island. If you get out your atlas or fire up Google Earth, you’ll get a better sense of just how remote Easter Island is and develop a bit more appreciation for the importance and the challenge of the efforts being made there to build a whole new future for the island and for the rest of us.

I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to read this article and watch the video. I think you’ll soon become as fascinated with this as I am and a bit more aware of the wonderful diversity and vitality that is on this planet we share.  There are lessons for all of us and on many levels including geographical, historical, sociological, and personal to be gleaned from the history of Easter Island, as well as its present and prospective future. 

I look forward to reporting back to you when I’m on Easter Island with more photos and stories of some of my personal experiences, interactions, and perspectives.  Until then, enjoy some virtual traveling and some learning from the comfort of your chair, and please join me in a salute to the ingenuity of people like Sonia, the energy and spirit of people like Pete, and the great mashups of old and new that can help make this a better place for all of 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."

Snowstorm of Chat, Conversation and Content

As many of you would know from past posts, podcasts and talks, my fellow snowflake Erik and I are working on developing and sharing our thoughts and passion around what we call The Snowflake Effect, which is our vision of a world designed for the uniqueness of each person, group and situation.

Erik and I also love experiential learning and discovering new ways of getting things done.  We noticed how often we are struck by the power of conversation both literally in the great conversations we have but also as a conceptual model that includes things like the way most good conversations have a very serendipitous quality to them in that you really don’t plan or know in advance where a conversation is going to go and yet they so often lead to great discussions. 

Conversation is also very powerful for what my dear friend and fellow snowflake Marcia Conner so ably articulated in her article for FastCompany called “Do You Talk to Think or Think to Talk?”  I, in particular, talk to think. I figure things out and come up with new ideas, analogies, and stories in the process of having a great conversation with others.  And I think to talk when I put time into reflective thinking, developing new models and concepts and then sharing them with others when I get the opportunity to talk with them.

There is so much that we can learn from conversation, and so for all of the reasons above and several more, Erik and I decided to put some of these thoughts into action and practice what we preach. We have started some new ways of learning from conversation and using conversation as a way to develop some of the content and discussion around the Snowflake Effect. 

So far, we have two ways we are experimenting with this:

1. Long Slow Chat is a web site/blog we have recently started up with an agreement that both Erik and I will post one small “snowflake thought of the day” each and every day of the week. "Long and slow" because we expect this to continue for some time and "Chat" because we will try to keep each posting down to a small single thought.  The previous link will take you to the blog where you can read what we have chatted about so far and send in your comments and reactions to help drive the conversation further.
2. TWiST which stands for This Week in Snowflake Talk, where we record a weekly conversation we have on some of the points we’ve made the past week on the Long Slow Chat. We make these available to anyone interested either directly from the Long Slow Chat site or from this link  where you can subscribe via iTunes.

Both of these are experiments we are conducting and are very much works in progress, and we hope that some of this will be of interest and value to many of you, so please check it out whenever you can and let us know what you think. We are VERY anxious to get your comments, reactions, and ideas about this way of working.

Erik and I will be spending more time and energy on the Snowflake Effect and posting as prolifically as we can to the Long Slow Chat site so please head on over there and consider adding a feed for these Long Slow Chat posts and TWiST podcasts as we continue to explore the Snowflake Effect.

** update of original post of Oct.17, 2008 to correct typos and add correct links

Loving Lexicographical Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Language Weren't a Commons ...

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

From her bio on the TED site:

Why you should listen to her:

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

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

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

The New York Times

View Erin McKean's Profile