Off Course-On Target

The Future is about Winning!

Recently, I participated in a meeting with colleagues at Autodesk Inc. on the Future of Events (FOE), where we tackled how to make events, such as conferences, Autodesk University, user groups such as AUGI, communities, etc., more green and sustainable.

Autodesk Commitment to the Environment

While this post is not directly about the topic of sustainability and the environment, I’m delighted with the seriousness and depth with which we are treating these issues at Autodesk. Corporately, we have a strong Environmental Commitment and Environmental Policy. But more important to me is how this initiative is being distributed throughout the entire company. We are being encouraged to make it our responsibility both as employees and citizens.

This recent FOE meeting focused on finding ways to realize these commitments, policies, and goals through Autodesk events. The meeting was but one example of how we are committed to improving the environmental performance of both our own business operations and educating ourselves and partners to do the same.  In addition, we are committed to helping our customers improve the environmental performance of their designs through the software and technology we develop. I quite like that this has a win-win quality to it. These priorities and commitments are equally as important to the long-term success of making the world a better and healthier place as they are to our success as a company.

Winning vs. Losing

One thing that prompted me to write this posting were comments in the FOE meeting about how much some of us feel we have lost when it comes to event-based experiences. For example, people reminisced about how great going to a movie theater used to be—with all the smells, sounds and other very visceral characteristics. One participant added how it was also a family outing, and even though one memory included getting gum stuck in her hair, it was still remembered as a totally wonderful experience.

Many in the room lamented what they saw as the decline and loss of the "good old" movie-going experience. They felt that today more people seem to sit alone in front of their TV or computer screens to watch movies, films and video. I think this view is just the glass half full vs glass half empty way of looking at things.  I don't doubt that there are statistics to support that more  individual viewing is going on and that movie theatre attendance is down.  But let's be sure to look at the whole picture here (sorry, I couldn't resist). 

Best I can tell, the total picture shows that we have more people watching (and making) more movies, pictures, and films than ever before in history.  Being a glass-half-full type of person, I do not view the change of movie-watching habits as a loss (we can still have large group movie-going experiences for the most part), but as a great opportunity to have more choices and results from experiences with film, movies, and video (to pick but a few examples). What's more, the results of this increase in movie and video production and consumption is quite profound and powerful as a timely example demonstrated very well. 

Being a big believer in synchronicity, I was not surprised that on the same day as the FOE meeting, the New York Times printed “Bringing the World Together via Film” , an article about Pangea Day,  an event which "endeavors to bring the world together and promote understanding and tolerance through film." According to the article, the power of film is substantially increased when we extend this from the domain of experts only and include “the rest of us” who might be so inclined to create some original film and video. Far from losing the “good old” movie theatre experience,  we are gaining more experiences and more options to augment and increase the effect of film and video.  Sounds more like winning than losing to me, and to badly paraphrase the Bill Withers song "Use Me": If it feels this good to lose, then keep on losing me until you lose me up!

Learning from Past Patterns?

Why is it that whenever something new and innovative comes along, people perceive that it means the elimination of whatever went before? Not only are in-person events not going away, we are increasingly adding new types of experiences (see my previous posting Fast, Fresh, and Furious: “Pecha Kucha”...the New Karaoke? for one such example). We're human and as someone so accurately observed "we still like to smell each other" (by the way, if anyone knows the attribution for this please let me know).

I therefore want to encourage all of us to look at things like events very differently and set different expectations. Most of our old and familiar ways and experiences such as theater-based film, events, conferences, meetings, etc. are NOT going to be eliminated by the new any more than radio was eliminated by TV (see my posting Books—the NEW old medium for similar reactions about new technologies).

Rather, we have more opportunities to augment these historical models with new ones.  Look at the profound power of TED prize-winner Jehame Noujaim's simple wish to bring the world together via film.  One person, one wish can make all the difference.  What's yours?

So what new opportunities can you think of to pursue human expression, communication, dialogue, interaction, sharing, discovery and learning? Could there be any more worthwhile pursuit and benefit?  I think not.

Serious Play: Are We Humans the Biggest Computer of All?

Would you be interested in a future where the pursuit of fun and enjoyment was one our our major roles in life because it leads to solving extraordinarily large and complex world problems? For example, what if all of us helped to digitize all the content contained in all the books in the world? Almost none of this content is currently available on the Web or in any digital form and as such, is largely inaccessible to most. And would you be interested in a world where the relationship between computers and humans is a very positive and symbiotic one? I know I would. 

I'd like to bring your attention to some of the ways in which this is already happening. Let's see if this excites you so much that you'd like to not only participate in some of these processes, but also start to use some of these models to help solve some of the problems you and your profession or areas of interest face.

In my previous posting "Moving aLOM", I mentioned some of the exciting, yet daunting, challenges of the future of metadata, such as how to create, in staggering volume, some of the more "subjective" metadata—things like the infinite characteristics that describe people, places, and things—where we humans are still the only source. This effort would include things like creating metadata for all the images and videos out there—still a largely unsolved problem—the absence of which not only makes them very hard to find, but also makes the Web and computers very inaccessible to the visually impaired, which, with age, might include a lot of us!

The Exciting Work of Luis von Ahn

Perhaps most notable in this area is a relatively young new professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Luis von Ahn, standing at right in this photo with his PhD advisor Manuel Blum. Luis has already completed some amazing work on what he refers to as "human computation" and how to put "wasted" human cycles to use in solving problems a computer cannot solve at this point in time, but humans can solve easily. Luis also picks up on a theme we have discussed here on Off Course - On Target in many other contexts—the power of the "network effect" achieved by connecting everything and every one together. Human computation is obviously focused on the latter, and Luis wants us to consider having all of our brains connected together as an extremely advanced large-scale distributive processing unit. Not to worry, no wires or direct connections to your head are required!

Before I go any further, and especially if you are more of a visual and auditory learner, let me recommend that you immediately watch this talk called "Human Computation" that Luis gave on July 26, 2006, about the power of human cycles. This 51-minute talk is part of the Google Video Text Talk series (also highly recommended), and while it is long by some current standards, I feel very comfortable recommending this to you, since I'm convinced you'll agree it was a VERY good use of your time (actually Luis' talk only runs 40 minutes, and is followed by about 10 minutes of a good Q&A session).

Another excellent reference for you, which contains more fascinating details and examples of von Ahn's work, can be found in Clive Thompson's article "For Certain Tasks, the Cortex Still Beats the CPU"  in the June 2007 edition of Wired magazine.

Games with a Purpose

But for those who don't have the time right now to look at these things more, here is a quick synthesis of what I find so exciting and interesting about the innovative use of our human "compute cycles", and the use of "fun and games" for very significant and "serious" results. What von Ahn likes to call "games with a purpose".

One of the most common and effective examples of this type of human computation is one of Luis' first applications, which is known as "Captcha". The name may be new to you, but I'm sure you're already a veteran Captcha expert! Captchas are those slightly difficult to make out words that you are asked to identify and type into a box when you are signing up for web sites. Captchas are used for responses online and in other situations where we want to prevent automated "bots" from generating unending amounts of "spam" or other undesirable exploitations of such online experiences. The problem is how to differentiate between a human response and a computer response, and Captchas are a simple solution to this problem, as well as a simple example of a problem that computers can't solve by themselves.

In itself, this doesn't sound like that interesting of a problem, although certainly it is an annoying one! However, part of what I would see as Luis' brilliance is in the more primary problems he is solving with this process.

In the case of Captcha, the real problem being solved pertains to my initial reference about the challenge of digitizing all the content of the world's printed matter, such as books. For more background on this digitizing and scanning challenge, you may want to refer to my previous posting from Jan 2007 "Books—the NEW old medium". Specifically, the problem is with all the words found in printed matter that scanning and conversion technology cannot make out, because the medium has a crease running through it, or it is partly missing, or other factors which make it impossible for the technology to recognize the words correctly.  Yet, show these words to almost any one of us and we can easily recognize the word.

So all those "fuzzy" words in Captchas are NOT just some random words that are blurred to fool a computer. Instead, these are the images of words which scanning technology has failed to recognize correctly! Luis refers to this specific application as ReCaptcha and you'll find much more information there, as well as instructions and free plugins for you to embed within your own sites, blogs, etc.

And that's just one side of why Luis von Ahn was awarded one of the MacArthur "Genius" awards and a Microsoft Research grant, for he has also managed to put these types of solutions into a game format that starts to look at solving these kinds of problems at a scale that is truly breathtaking! 

Solving World Problems or Playing Solitaire?

In his talks, Luis likes to use a very compelling metric of human-hours, and he often compares statistics on the the amount of human-hours that are "wasted", in his opinion, doing something like playing Solitaire on a computer. I too have always been amazed at the number of people I observe when walking down the aisles of an airplane, for example, who are hard at "work" playing Solitaire, but I had no idea just how much time is spent on this. According to the statistics that Luis uses, over 9 billion human-hours were expended playing Solitaire in 2003 alone! Better yet, he puts this into perspective by comparing this activity to such things as:

• The building of the New York City Empire State building, which consumed about 7 million human-hours, and thus equates to just 6.8 hours of collective Solitaire playing.
• Building the entire Panama Canal, which took 20 million human-hours and amounts to less than a day of collective solitaire playing!

Metadata for All Images?

Now imagine if we were able to put this kind of "human computation" to more effective use AND still do so within the format of games that people can enjoy doing themselves! One example is another one of Luis' creations, and one that has been running with staggering results for over three years called the ESP Game. As we've discussed many times, experiential "learning by doing" is often one of the best ways to learn about something new, so I'd encourage you to not only read about the ESP Game on that site, but to play it for awhile. (Caution: can be very addictive and time consuming!) When you do, you'll see how it puts two or more players (there is also a single player version) into a friendly competition by typing in descriptive words for a given photo (that metadata thing again), and they get points whenever they both type in the same word.

So what? While progress is being made in image recognition technology, this is still largely a problem that computers cannot do. And ask yourself, do YOU take the time to "tag" or create all the metadata for the photos and videos that YOU post, such as who and what is in the photo? Didn't think so. Yet by using this type of game format, the ESP Game has been running for over three years with no drop off in popularity and as of mid-2006, it was very fast, very cheap, and very accurate. If this were done as a popular online game site, it would be possible to label all the images on Google Image Search in just a few weeks! No surprise then that the ESP Game has already been licensed by Google in the form of the Google Image Labeler, and is used to improve the accuracy of the Google Image Search. We humans are relatively competitive animals and we like to do what we enjoy, so this approach appears to have a lot of promise.

Yes, but WHERE is that object in the photo?

Another problem that is even more challenging than identifying WHAT objects are in the image is identifying WHERE they are in the image. To do this, Luis has created another game called "PeekaBoom". The first player sees an image along with a word that describes an object within the image, and then clicks on the image where the named object is located. The second player sees only the object that the first player clicked on and types the word associated to that object. Once the second player guesses the correct word, the two players move on to the next image and switch roles. More details are explained in the video (you really should take the time to watch it!).

Human Computer Relations: Parasitic or Symbiotic?

Luis also notes how this transforms the current relationship between humans and computers from what he calls a parasitic relationship to a symbiotic one where:

"...humans solve some problems, computers solve others, and together we work to create a better world."

Sound far fetched? Well, in the less than two years that his limited experiment of the ESP Game has run, over 75,000 players have come up with over 15 million "agreements" (matched words). This rate would indicate that 5,000 players playing simultaneously could label all images on Google Images in about two months. Think about that...5,000 is NOT a very big number when you consider the numbers on many gaming sites. Therefore, it should be possible to label all the images on the Web in a few months. Again, I strongly recommend that you check out the video to get not only more details, but to see just how accurate, pragmatic, and promising this approach is. 

For example, it turns out that the results of a game such as PeekaBoom can in turn be used to help train computers to recognize objects and their location. Turns out that one of the reasons that computers are not yet very good at this type of object recognition and automated metadata generation is that there is very little data and examples to use to "train" the computers on how to do it. By capturing the results of all the human play in location identification of objects within images, this data can then be used to train computers to do the same thing"—allowing us move on to new challenges... and more fun.

Super Side Effects

I think you'll agree that this approach not only shows great promise in terms of solving some very large scale problems, but has some surprising and equally amazing "side effects", like how some people have used this to help them learn a language. This approach has spawned its own game called Babble, where two English-speaking players are shown a sentence in a foreign language that neither of them speak, and are presented with a list of possible meanings (in English) below each word. Players try to agree upon a set of English words that forms the most coherent sentence. The result is that this activity is surprisingly effective in translating foreign text into English without requiring anyone fluent in both languages. Think of the possibilities of this running at a larger scale!

Another "side effect" of this approach is how many players have noted that they end up finding other people who think very much like them, and thus they have a great sense of "intimacy" and closeness with their counterparts who play these games. Therefore, many  ask if they can find out who their anonymous competitors are to continue the conversation. At this point in time, all the game players are anonymous and no identities are revealed, but one could imagine this being used as a way to help discover other people "like you"—ones you'd want to meet and get to know better.

Common Sense Isn't that Common; yet!

And lastly from von Ahn's work, check out his new game Verbosity, which helps to generate what he calls "common sense facts" (again just more metadata really). One player is given a word and the other tries to guess what it is by completing fill-in-the-blank-type templates, such as "It is a type of ____" or "It contains ___".  The player who entered the original word can answer "true" or "false", but can't use the word itself. All this is very much like some party games that many of you have probably played, but the important difference here goes back to the original point of the summative network effect and how this can all be put to greater use. In the example that Luis shows in his presentation, the word "milk" would have some common sense facts such as;

• It is white
• It is a liquid
• It is often used to eat cereal
• It has lactose

Again, computers can not currently solve this kind of problem, and it is another an example of the need for massive amounts of metadata. Imagine if we started generating massive volumes of these "common sense facts" and they were readily available to all. 

More Competition = Less Carbon?

Lest you should think this is just a "one man show" from Luis von Ahn, I want to point out that there are many others who have been developing, adopting, and adapting similar models. For example, "Carbonrally: Carbon Challenge", which you can learn more about from the Nov. 20th, 2007 Webware post "Carbonrally: My carbon footprint's smaller than yours" by Martin LaMonica, is an application that is showing some great promise for improving the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions or the "carbon footprint" of individuals and organizations alike. Carbonrally adds the dimension of some fun and healthy competition to do better than others. As Martin describes it, Carbonrally is "tapping into people's tribal competitive spirit".

Whew!  That's quite an introduction to what I believe is both a powerful and profound pattern emerging—where the natural pursuit of fun, healthy competition, and challenges are combined into a game-based model that has already shown some of the ways we can solve large-scale present and future problems. It also creates a whole new relationship between us and technology. This model is not only interesting and fun, but it is a fascinating example of "user generated metadata", which I mentioned in my previous "Moving aLOM" posting.

Your Turn to Play!

Besides raising your awareness about "human computation" and the power of this approach, I also want to encourage all of us to put more time and energy into figuring out how we can inject more fun into work and other problem-solving situations. As you do so, I think you'll see an important job or task or problem  can be more fun if it's solved with some kind of game play, and where the solution remains very much a human one.

We can not, for now at least, expect computers to come up with such fun and game-based solutions by themselves! 

For starters, if you have websites or other applications where you have problems preventing spam or other misuses, consider taking advantage of some of the freely available plugins and nullities, such as those from the ReCaptcha site. Longer term though, please put some thought into which problems you could address with this model, and the ways you could do so by injecting the fun and challenge of a game-based approach into the more serious problems you need to solve...then share them with us here at Off Course - On Target.

I'm reminded of the great quote from Brian Suton-Smith who said:

"The opposite of play is not work; its depression!"

And I look forward to hearing all the innovative and creative ways you will come up with to solve problems—large and small—and replace depression with play. Have fun!

Getting it Right

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

My reference to "right" was two-fold:

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

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

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

| View | Upload your own

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

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

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

MFA = Master of Fine Arts

MBA = Master of Business Administration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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del.icio.us tags: Autodesk, Inventor, AutoCAD, mechanical, engineer, right brain, left brain, whole new mind, Dan Pink, exponential change, BAMUG, CAD

Technorati tags: Autodesk, Inventor, AutoCAD, mechanical, engineer, right brain, left brain, whole new mind, Dan Pink, exponential change, BAMUG, CAD

New Perspectives: The Third Wave?

In my recent posts on New Perspectives: Looking Up! and Looking Down and Under, I reviewed a series of new initiatives and technologies ranging from several significant efforts to explore and document the great unknown of earth's oceans to the new capabilities of Goggle "Sky" and  the hidden flight simulator in Google Earth. I chose these examples, in part, to provide you with some new perspectives and because I agree with Allan Kay that:

"a new point of view is worth 80 IQ points."

I thought each of these provided some new perspectives and are very much worth your attention in and of themselves.

However, my primary purpose and point was that I think these examples offer evidence of powerful new meta patterns and trends—"meta' in the sense that I believe that they are operating at a very profound and pervasive level and are affecting more than we may realize.

What is fascinating to me about the marine projects, for example, is that they are being designed not only to provide a huge increase in the quantity and quality of marine data, but the measurement tools and technology they will use is being made accessible to everyone and available on a continuous basis. This is a major shift in approach that believe is a characteristic of the times we are living in.

In spite of all the hype that surrounds buzz words such as Web 2.0, what I see here is a much larger and more profound pattern towards openness and bi-directional functionality. To me, these examples represent the realization of what Alvin Toffler and his wife, Heidi. so presciently described as a "pro-sumer" society. Back in the 60's and 70's when Toffler first wrote about this idea in their best sellers of the time Future Shock and Third Wave, he predicted that we were moving from the industrial evolution which he characterized as the "second wave" ( the first wave was agrarian hunter/gatherer) towards a third wave where we would not be categorized either as producers OR consumers, but rather we would be both, simultaneously.

We've seen this pattern emerging with the evolution of Internet, and World Wide Web, and as related tools have become more "read/write" (consume/produce) and more mass contribution-oriented. Mass production and read only (consume) are becoming a thing of the past. 

But most of these tools are characterized by or limited to the technology world. Now we see this same pattern emerging in new and very different spheres—the marine and space examples we've just looked at, and the pattern becomes much clearer, much larger, and much more powerful. 

In the case these oceanic projects, they are creating an infrastructure of interconnected tools and technology that will be widely available to all who wish to use them. Not only will almost any of us have access to oceans of data (sorry, couldn't resist)—a huge gain in itself, these projects will also enable public and other scientists alike to take control of the tools themselves. Imagine YouTube filling up with high def video content uploaded in almost real time from these projects. Imagine controlling the cameras to make your own videos!.   

So what?  Well among other shifts, these patterns promise to cause increasing acceleration of the rate of change (part of Living in a World of Exponential Change) with some equally rapid and radical results. As Professor Oscar Schofield, a biological oceanographer at Rutgers University put it:

"the data gathered already had upended some of what he was taught in graduate school, from the way rivers flow into the ocean to the complexity of surface currents." and went on to say:

“When there’s a hurricane, when all the ships are running for cover, I’m flying my gliders into the hurricane,” using his office computer, Professor Schofield said. “Then I’m sitting at home drinking a beer watching the ocean respond to a hurricane.” 

“What’s great about oceanography is we’re still in the phase of just basic exploration. We’ve discovered things off one of the most populated coasts in the United States that we didn’t know yet. O.O.I. (Open Ocean Initiative) will take us one level beyond that, to where any scientist in the world will be able to explore any ocean.”

Now THAT is powerful change and a wave I plan on riding. More likely this meta-trend will affect all of us more along the lines of the way a rising tide raises all boats in the harbor. It is likely that we are all "rising" already, whether we know it or not.

Well, I hope you're feeling much "smarter" now with all these new perspectives and extra IQ points.  As a sailor, I'm obviously fascinated with the ocean, but I'm also trying to use these larger trends to get a bit "smarter" myself by looking at the world from new vantage points, such as Outer and Inner Space. 

Isn't it fascinating that the more we learn the more we understand how much more we don't know? "Curious for life" is a goal I hope you share too and that this little "drink of water" will motivate you to learn much more about the aquatic worlds all around us. Sea you soon!

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Technorati tags: oceans, patterns, trends, future, prosumer, Toffler, change, exponential change

del.icio.us tags: oceans, patterns, trends, future, prosumer, Toffler, change, exponential change

Virtual Lift Off?

This is the last posting in my recent three-part series on "flapping", where we've been exploring how we are often off target when it comes to being innovative. We often try to replicate how things worked previously ("flapping") instead of focusing on the essential elements ("flying") to give us what we want.

In the first part "Confusing Flapping with Flying", I observed how we finally succeeded at flying when we stopped trying to copy birds and insects and instead focused on the essential elements of flight, such as lift. In the second part "No Future in Flapping", I introduced one of the most recent examples of "flapping"—virtual worlds such as Second Life.

To try to reduce our tendency for flapping or copying the past as we develop these virtual worlds, I asked you to think about the true value of being with people at conferences, in meetings, or in classrooms. What is it that is unique and valuable about these experiences? And to ask yourself how we can use something like virtual worlds to go after these essential characteristics and benefits on a greater scale and frequency. Hope you have given this some thought. Now let's look into this further.

First let me emphasize again that I am NOT suggesting that virtual worlds are a waste of time. Quite the contrary. I strongly encourage you to spend some time in virtual worlds, such as Second Life, if you have not done so recently. I also want to ensure that we don't reject or forget these innovations at this early stage of their evolution, since I'm convinced they will rapidly become significant for most of us. 

Looking more closely at the key characteristics of in-person experiences, we might notice for example that as most of us mature, we develop skills such as the largely unconscious ability to read the body language, gestures, facial expressions, eye movements, and voice inflections of others around us. We rely on these, in turn to figure out:

• Who we trust 
• Who we want to spend more time with 
• The person's mood 
• How interested the person is in our conversation 
• Whether a person agrees or disagrees

We also use many of these same elements to communicate with others in very important ways with a look, a wink, or a sigh. When we are together with others at conferences, meetings, and classes, the most value often comes from the serendipitous discovery of someone who is of great value, because they have deeply similar interests, experiences, or talents. How can we retain and enhance these when we are together virtually?

At the other end of the spectrum in-person gatherings have major limitations. You only have time to attend so many, can only afford the travel for a small number, and only benefit from those who join you in that same place and time. Even when you can be there in person, you usually only benefit from those who either speak your language fluently or when someone is available to provide translations.You also have very limited opportunities and methods of finding others who would be of most value to you. 

Can you see how this kind of analysis helps us to identify the essential elements we want to retain and equally the limitations we want to overcome? Doing so helps prevent us from our historic behavior of copying the past ("flapping"), and keeps us focused on innovating and improving ("flying"). When it comes to person- to-person interactions, meetings, and the like, how can we use something like virtual worlds to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of these essential elements and benefits that physical meetings provide, while concurrently reducing or eliminating their real world limitations?

I don't predict, nor really care if Second Life and Linden Labs are the ones to lead the way out of the flapping stage into much more innovative and beneficial applications. Indeed, history suggests that it will be others. No matter who it is, I'm convinced that things like virtual worlds and augmented reality will bring huge benefits and changes to our ability to learn, collaborate, work, and live together. However, this will await the inflection point that occurs when we focus on taking off and flying instead of running around "flapping" and perfecting the irrelevant. 

As you look at your own behaviors, as you evaluate and experience other "innovations" and the "next big thing", check to see if you are focused more on "flapping" or "flying".  I look forward to seeing you all at increasingly higher altitudes as we "fly" into the future together.

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Adding Arrows to our Communications Quiver

DOWNLOAD AUDIO

Well, seems that the Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha) 20 x 20 format for slide-based presentations is really catching on! Pecha Kucha restricts you to exactly 20 graphic slides for exactly 20 seconds each, which amounts to a total of six minutes and 40 seconds.

I received a lot of responses from all over the world about my most recent posting on this topic "Power of 20/20 PowerPoint", and after my most recent PK presentation in Chicago, USA on Tuesday night.  I've also been contacted by an author in Japan who is putting together a book on Pecha Kucha, so stay tuned for more.

Interestingly, this topic exemplifies some of the other topics we've been discussing at Off Course - On Target, such as hype cycles and decision support. So in response to several of the questions I received and with some concern for other trends I'm seeing surrounding the adoption of this Pecha Kucha 20x20 model, I thought I'd provide the following additional thoughts and suggestions.

Life is a giant Boolean add function!

As with most formats, Pecha Kucha (PK) is best used as a new way to present ideas, assist with communication, etc. We need be aware of the hype aspect surrounding PK. I've found it quite common for people to fall in love with a new "thing" and start to insist that it be used in all circumstances. I've even seen whole companies or groups make it a policy that PK be the only format allowed! Of course, in due time, they will change back to a more balanced approach, following the natural flow of the "hype cycle" I described in an earlier post.

We humans seem to have this built-in tendency that whenever some new big thing comes along, we immediately react by focusing on all the "old" things that are now "dead", eliminating or subtracting them from our lives. Wasn't TV supposed to kill radio? Wasn't e-Learning going to "kill" the need for teachers, books, etc.? If we can learn from history though (let's hope!), we'll find that we rarely completely eliminate anything. Life is like a giant Boolean add function!

For me, PK is a fabulous new choice that we have in our arsenal of tools for expression. Just as we are beginning to learn (well some of us are) how to make a good decision about when to use e-mail, when to use a phone call, when to use Instant Message or Twitter, when to meet in person or send a handwritten note (remember those?), we need to be better at knowing WHEN PK is the best choice for a given situation and skilled at using the PK format well.

New and innovative ideas and technology are often very disruptive, so there is no question that they cause change and upheaval, but they rarely eliminate what has gone before. Television has certainly changed the role of radio, but when I checked as recently as this morning, radio was a VERY viable medium, and one that is in fact enjoying a great amount of innovation and growth. Consider, for example, HD radio, satellite radio such as XM radio and Sirius and Internet-based radio, such as Pandora, Last.FM, and Public Radio International (PRI).

Therefore, just as instant messaging (IM) didn't eliminate e-mail or phone calls, neither will PK eliminate more "traditional" forms of presentations. Instead, PK will help us improve one of the most powerful and requisite skills we have and need—the ability to communicate effectively, and to share our ideas. And if we can really learn from history, we will skip right over the early phases of the hype cycle and get right onto the "slope of enlightenment" and "plateau of productivity stages!

Getting Started with Pecha Kucha

I suggest following these guidelines for those getting started:

• Stick to the PK model of exactly 20 slides, automatically timed (not in control of presenter) for exactly 20 seconds each. PowerPoint has a built-in timer function that can manage this.
• Limit the preamble or explanation to an absolute minimum (30 seconds?) before the 20 second count begins and before the first slide comes up. If you need more than that, you've missed the point of the PK model!
• Only use great graphics for the slides. No bullet points, no text, no cheesy clip art. I recommend photographs that can either be created by the PK presenter or are increasingly easy to find on the web at photo services such as Flickr (mind the copyrights and licenses, please). Providing the assistance of people who have a good eye can be a big help.  As with many things, putting a PK presentation together is a big part of the fun and the challenge.
• Go after a range of presenters from those who are experts or at least prolific presenters to those who you never hear from or who dread having to give a presentation. My experience is that everyone benefits tremendously from tapping into the spectrum between these two extremes.
• Put as much thought as possible into creating a conducive environment for this style. While a standard audience/presenter format with stages, podiums, and seats can certainly still work, the nature of PK is that it is very mentally stimulating, so having a venue that puts people closer together and encourages discussions before, during, and after the individual presentations is very helpful. 
• Consider turning your PK gathering into a very social event such as with a club or pub type of atmosphere—casual chairs, floor seating, and drinks provided. At some of our Autodesk events, we even created a version of martinis we call "Pecha-katini" to help lubricate the conversation!  If you check out the PK web site you'll also see that this very social form of PK is happening in cities all over the world, and you may want to attend one.  Lots of variations possible, be creative!
• Use standard, though often ignored, good practices for writing or speaking. Talk about what you know. Even more so, talk about something you are passionate about. This can still include "serious" or business topics, but can also include more personal interests such as hobbies, life experiences, former careers, or things that drive you.

Basic Benefits

Although all of us can appreciate the value that comes from reducing presentations from their typical 60 minutes or more down to six minutes and 40 seconds, I've found even greater value from the PK model in such things as:

• Essence. The PK style forces presenters to really put some deep thought into the absolute essential points they want to convey. With only 20 slides and only 20 seconds to spend on each one, you the presenter have to make what seems like difficult choices (every one of our ideas is great right?!). As a presenter, I find this reduction process very valuable because it tends to help me convert more of my tacit knowledge into explicit forms and helps me make tough but clarifying choices about what the true message really is. For audiences, this kind of critical thinking on the part of the presenter tends to produce much greater value, leaving only valuable "nuggets" of information. I've found, for example, that PK style presentations generate a LOT more discussion afterwards between the audience and the presenters. When used at conferences as an opening evening, PK presentations often become a constant follow-on reference for the remainder of the event... and long afterwards. 
• Graphic communications. Here is a phrase we all know, but seem to practice very little. Most slides have WAY too much text, too many bulleted points, and rarely use effective graphics. Perhaps the PK 20x20 format uses the old adage that  "a picture is worth a 1000 words" to pack so much into every 20 seconds?  Forcing the issue to the extreme by requiring presenters to only use graphics necessitates the thoughtful selection or creation of an image that that effectively captures each of their 20 points. It's not always easy to accomplish, but when done, it is definitely effective.
• Pursuit of passion. As I mentioned in my getting started list above, PK seems to work best and seems to lead presenters to find and speak on topics they really know and really care about.  Isn't that a common trait of just about every great presentation you've ever heard? Yet how often do we sit through presentations that are almost as uninspiring to the presenter as they are to the audience?  I'm not sure I understand just why, but the PK format seems to have a natural affinity that brings out the passion in presenters. It seems to be especially effective for those who rarely make presentations or speak up or who don't think they have much to contribute. PK helps them find their "voice" and acts as a vehicle for transporting their message to others. Powerful stuff!

Serious Play = Serious Fun => Serious Performance Improvement

How might we get even more power out of this fun new format?  Let's develop MANY more styles and formats for this very useful way of sharing and communicating using audio, graphics, slides, etc. 

The point of PK is effective communication, converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, as well as helping to transfer, share, and build upon our ideas and transforming them into reality. Don't we want and need as many choices as possible to accomplish this more effectively?  So let's experiment more with the PK 20x20 format.   

After some initial experience with the PK 20x20 format, start playing with the format. Try to find delightful deviations and innovative improvements—with the end goal of capturing, sharing and creating ideas faster and better. In addition to the obvious choices of trying even fewer slides or using less time per slide (2 slides 2 seconds anyone?), consider breaking outside our self-imposed cognitive boxes on presentations. 

• Who says that there has to be any talking at all? Music perhaps?
• How could you incorporate video into this type of format? 
• How about a "game" (serious fun) where 20 slides are chosen by the audience or someone other than the presenter who has to then say or do something in 20 seconds to add value to each slide?
• How about 20 people doing one PK presentation, where one person speaks per 20 second slide?  Now THAT would be an improvement on the snoozer "panel presentations" we've all been through, wouldn't it?!

We had a great example of just this kind of serious play and serious fun on Tuesday at the Autodesk Leadership Summit I mentioned earlier. Pete Kelsey **, a good colleague at Autodesk, along with fellow Autodesker Andy Ramm, did a great job of this kind of out-of-the box thinking and experimenting with PK. They created and delivered a PK on the history of blues music (one of my favorites!), which was a particularly fitting and relevant topic since we were doing this in the current home of the blues—Chicago.

But not only did they do their PK as a duo, Andy did all his "talking" via his guitar, as is typical in blues music, while Pete provided the spoken explanations. They still followed the same 20x20 format with some great images of major blues artists and evocative images of the life and times that produced this musical genesis of one of the most popular music styles today. But they also added the power of music, not only to demonstrate the topic (blues music), but to communicate their message to the audience. It was very effective and a great example of the type of experimentation that we need to do more of. 

I hope this posting encourages you to try out this format and have some serious fun playing with it. What ideas can you can come up with for ways to experiment, extend, and improve  on this fun and effective presentation format? Share them with the rest of us so they can become  arrows in our quiver of ideas that we can use to practice being on target, and help us make more  effective use of our collective intelligence!

 

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** Pete Kelsey has a blog that you should check out if you have any interest in civil engineering, roads, bridges, geography, mapping, etc.  His blog goes by the great title of "The Dirt: Map it, Move it, Manage it, Roll in it". In addition to his GIS topics and technology, you might also find it valuable for the experimenting that Pete does in this blog with things like self-created video. Pete is a fellow world traveler, spending most of his time on the road going to some truly interesting locations (Easter Island, Guam, and Seoul in the past few weeks, for example) and packing a really unique point of view wherever he goes. Definitely worth checking out.

Confusing Flapping with Flying

For a number of years now, I've shared a short story that many have said has helped them to think outside that proverbial box, giving them a new perspective on solving some of their more vexing problems. This is the story about how we often confuse “flapping” with “flying”.  It's only natural to assume that the experts know the best way to do something. But is this actually the case?

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DOWNLOAD Size: 4.1 MB Duration: 11:34 Transcript: 391 KB

In this podcast, Confusing Flapping with Flying, I show that with new ideas and new technologies, we often get stuck when we try to mimic the experts. Instead, we need to focus on identifying and understanding those essential elements that can help us make quantum leaps forward, and take us to where we really want to be.

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Obviating the Org Chart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Hidden Workforce

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I am overdue for several notes about "org charts" so will try to catch up with this post and the next. I'm also behind in my reading (is there any such thing as being caught up?) but wanted to bring your attention to a recent article in Fortune magazine on "The Hidden Workforce".   

"Hidden" in this case refers to the more informal organization and the way things really work. Most who have worked in any kind of large organization know that to successfully work within an organization, you need to figure out who the "go to" people are for given issues, topics, and expertise as well as who to avoid. The opening of the article sums it up very well: 

"Anyone who has ever worked knows that the org chart, no matter how meticulously rendered, doesn't come close to describing the facts of office life. All those lines and boxes don't tell you, for example, that smokers tend to have the best information, since they bond with people from every level and department when they head outside for a puff. The org chart doesn't tell you that people go to Janice, a long-time middle manager, rather than their bosses to get projects through. It doesn't tell you that the Canadian and Japanese sales forces don't interact because the two points of contact can't stand each other." 

What's your OQ? Take our quiz. 

In every company there is a parallel power structure that can be just as important as the one everyone spends stressful days trying to master.......successful managers must understand this "constellation of collaborations, relationships, and networks," particularly in times of stress and transition. "We're not saying you can formalize the informal," says Katzenbach. "We're saying you can influence it more than you do."

Ahead of me as usual, a long time colleague Jay Cross also noticed this Fortune article in his "Kindred Spirits" posting last week. I suspect that Jay was interested in this article because of the study called "The Informal Organization" which spurred the Fortune article and because Jay has been bringing some much needed attention to the issue of "informal learning" on his blog and book by the same name.  Both of them are worth your time.

Jay and the Fortune article provide some additional links that are worth looking at such as the New Roundtable site by Rob Cross who recently published the book "The Hidden Power of Social Networks" and Orgnet.com which are both focused on the details of social networks and how to bring these otherwise invisible patterns into focus. 

This type of work is the crux of the Fortune article, and it outlines the work being done with Social Network Analysis (SNA).  The article has some very illustrative examples of how some diverse organizations have tackled problems such as energizing a sluggish culture, grooming leadership, keeping the talent happy, and improving collaboration. This has been an area of study for many years and I've always been fascinated with how social networks and technical networks are so amazingly similar. For example, in both cases the analysis of network "traffic" is able to clearly show the "hubs and spokes" of a network—be it a data network or a human network. In one of the cases outlined in the "Hidden Workplace" article, 300 peak performing executives and senior managers from Lehman Brothers, a large investment bank, worked with Rob Cross and Network Roundtable and:

"..... generated a graphic for everyone, a web of nodes and networks that allowed each executive to see who is connected to whom. The analysis assessed the strength of each person's network relative to others in Cross's database. It also mapped information flows. Several types emerged, including "connectors," who had the most extensive direct ties, and "brokers," who had the most diverse networks and who were key to getting things done. Then there were the 'bottlenecks,' who— either because they were overworked or because they hoarded information—kept things from happening. All the employees were able to see if they were on the periphery of networks or in the middle of them."

It's definitely worth your time to read this article and related links. Next post I'll talk about the trend toward obviating the org chart. Stay tuned!

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Brazil or Bust! (Part 2 of 2)

In my previous post, I told you about my adventure getting to this year's eLearning Brasil 2007 conference in São Paulo. The theme of this year’s event was The Influence of Leadership and Technology on Organizational Learning and Performance.

The conference itself was (and always is) very interesting for me and for all the attendees, based on past and present conversations and comments I have received. Obviously the majority of the attendees are from Brazil, but a growing and significant percentage of attendees are from other South American countries, such as Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador, as well as from Europe and North America. A full range of academia, especially universities and trade schools, commercial businesses, government personnel, and technology vendors are also well represented and are similarly diverse geographically.

Along with the eLearning conference, there is an awards ceremony for an annual competition t on technology that supports the visually impaired. The results are always amazing, and this year was no exception. So you can see why this is one of the only events that I regularly attend and why I get so much out of it.

As I mentioned earlier, Elliott Masie came to the conference via Internet-based video from his home in Saratoga Springs, New York, which worked extremely well. Elliott covered a range of key issues that he sees coming up over the next few years as well as some that are appearing now.

For example, he noted how people worldwide are feeling overwhelmed and distracted and the impact this is having on learning and performance. In this context, Elliott posed the question of whether good learning can take place at your desk and particularly, at work or on the job.

Next we discussed with the audience how there are similarities between cooking and eating, and learning and training, a comparison Elliott and I have found fascinating and valuable for several years. We reached a consensus that there are deep similarities between these two very human practices, so much can be learned from comparing them. The connection between learning and the world of food and eating appears to be so strong that Elliott is having master chef Bobby Flay join him at Learning 2007, where he will be cooking while Elliott is interviewing him about the design, innovation, and evolution of cooking, and how it relates to our world of learning. Best of all, we will get to sample some of what Bobby has cooked up. Now THAT is performance and learning at their best, don’t you think? ?

Next, we kept Elliott on line and on the screen and brought two other global leaders—Dr. Alistair Benson, Academic Director of Manchester Business School Worldwide, and Eric Shepherd, President, Question Mark Corporation—onto the stage for a Socratic Dialogue on “The Influence of Leadership and Technologies in Organizational Learning and Corporate Performance”. In a wide-ranging discussion, we covered observations such as:

• Contrary to the rhetoric that large numbers of workers are retiring and so we should be concerned about the “brain drain” that this would produce, we are seeing the opposite happening in several ways. First, just because people are eligible to retire based on age and years of employment, doesn’t mean they will, and indeed many are choosing not to. While in many cases, this change in the age of the population may involve a change in the kind of work and conditions, such as shorter work days or weeks, more flexibility, different roles, or more of a facilitative and consultative role, the real change is that people are living longer and working longer…A LOT longer.

Secondly we noted that this change would produce a broader range of chronological age among individuals on a team and in an organization. In many places, for example, we are seeing people enter the workforce earlier, sometimes because they are sought out by employers and are convinced to leave their education and training programs earlier because they already have sufficient skills and the knowledge that is so badly needed. Combined with the people from other end of the age spectrum, we can expect teams whose membership spans teenagers to centenarians. A good discussion ensued on what this means for learning and for working.

• An audience member from the São Paulo area talked about the challenge his company is facing from the lack of people with engineering talent and what should be done about this. The ensuing discussion found that this phenomenon is broad-based in most countries in the Americas and Europe and quite the opposite in developing regions, such as India and Asia.

The discussion included the trend of “mass contribution” by increasing numbers of people. Knowledge and expertise is now being captured through e-mail and instant messaging to blogs and wikis. There is, however, a missed opportunity to “mine” the growing repositories of such communications for the nuggets of knowledge, patterns, and other value within.

After a short break, I had the audience to myself—a wonderful opportunity. Beforehand, I had them choose one of several themes that they’d like me to talk about and to my delight, they chose “The Snowflake Effect”. We took a fun hour or so going through what is currently my favorite topic: uniqueness and the Snowflake Effect. Here are the slides from my talk:

One of the things I value about the support I’m afforded from Autodesk is being able to spend time with bright. eclectic people in different locations on this planet every day.  This gives me the chance to test just how broad and applicable are the trends that I see. This diverse range of people from Brazil and South America confirmed once again just how powerful these notions of mass personalization, mass contribution, and the Snowflake Effect really are and how well these translate into their context. 

Given this tremendous validation and confirmation from so many locations and so many contexts, my close colleague and friend Erik Duval and I are hard at work developing the Snowflake Effect into a full conceptual model and articulating this in much greater detail. Please stay tuned for upcoming announcements when we will have a site dedicated to the Snowflake Effect where we will be asking for your input, reactions and critiques.

For now, I hope you find some good value from my most recent experience in the great metropolis of São Paulo. And my sincere thanks to Francisco and the super staff of MicroPower for the great job you do of making eLearning Brasil somehow better every year. It’s an honor and a privilege to be a part of the whole experience.

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