Off Course-On Target

Adding Arrows to our Communications Quiver

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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.

The Power of 20/20 PowerPoint

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While catching up with this month’s Wired magazine, I noticed a short article with a very clever and descriptive title of “Get to the PowerPoint” from one of my favorite authors, Daniel Pink. Seems that Daniel has recently been introduced to the fun form of presentations known as Pecha Kucha (pronounced peh-chak-cha), which you may recall from my recounting using this format back in March and the great time I had. You can read about my thoughts on doing a Pecha Kucha style presentation and more details of this format and its history in the previous OCOT posting "Fast, Fresh and Furious".

Daniel found this Pecha Kucha to be much more than just a novel form of presentation, as did I.  As he put it, the simple 20/20 format of Pecha Kucha, (20 slides each displayed for precisely 20 seconds each):

".... turned PowerPoint ..... into both art form and competitive sport."

As is often the case, simple things are often the most profound and valuable. This certainly seems to be the case with PowerPoint slides where everyone is given but six minutes and 40 seconds (20x20) from start to finish, when every slide is given equal time, and then you're done! Think of how much time would have been saved and how much productivity would have been gained if even a fraction of the slide presentations you've sat through were compacted into this size, and presenters were required to boil their messages down to such succinctness. I got a kick out of Richard Nantel of Brandon Hall Research who was so taken by the economy of PK that in a posting earlier this week he suggested:

"I believe the designers of pecha-kucha should be awarded the Nobel prize in economics."

And YES, I'm quite aware that many of you may be wishing this for MY presentations!

I don't think that all topics or presentations are suitable for this format. But I have found it to be both liberating and humbling to approach presentations with this new insight into how often it is true that less is more. And I'm doing my best to practice what I preach! I'm honored to be touching down in Chicago tonight (Aug 28) just long enough to do an encore performance of one of my Pecha Kucha presentations at an Autodesk Leadership Summit. Then, at the Learning 2007 conference in October in Orlando, Elliott Masie and I will be hosting a Pecha Kucha Night as well as encouraging attendees to use this format elsewhere in the event.

Continuing my perpetual theme of the value (and rarity) of experiential learning, I strongly encourage you to try this out. Many of these events are done in a social context in the form of a Pecha Kucha Night. This format has worked well for the ones I've been involved in because they stimulate some great conversations when the PK presenters mingle with the crowd afterwards. The format also works well for helping to find and mine some of the gold nuggets that are hidden away within some of the more introverted and quiet individuals. Better still, think about scheduling an event or grab an opportunity to try out this PK style on one of YOUR next presentations.

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BTW, Daniel is the author of a book that I HIGHLY recommend called "A Whole New Mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future"  His views on the future are very much aligned with mine.  I think you'll find a lot of insights in his book that will change the way you see the world of the future and will show you how to excel within it. I'm looking forward to joining Daniel on the stage at Learning 2007 at the end of October and will have more to report to you after that fun experience.

No Future in Flapping!

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Thanks for your many responses to my recent podcast on "Confusing Flapping with Flying". Seems this "flapping versus flying" phenomenon is one that resonated with many of you and my posting helped to shift your thinking towards finding better solutions.

Several of you asked if I could elaborate on this topic more. Are there current. significant examples of this "flapping" model—replicating the patterns of past successes?

Virtual flapping doesn't work either!

The one example that leaps to mind might surprise you. I'm referring to Second Life, which I suspect almost all of you are at least somewhat familiar with. Second Life (often abbreviated SL) has been around for a relatively long time now (since 2003) and has been receiving a lot—some would say too much—attention, press, and hype. It is typically described as a 3D online virtual world that is, as their site puts it, "imagined, created and owned by its residents."  Second Life's Wikipedia entry provides more details, or you can do a quick search on "Second Life" or "virtual worlds" to find reviews, critiques and examples about it

First, let me get this out of the way right up front—I think that what Second Life has done is wonderful. It has done more than anything else to bring virtual worlds to the attention of more people. The hype/PR around it has been nothing short of stunning. SL will undoubtedly be recorded as one of the key milestones in the evolution of virtual worlds and the critical role they will come to play in our lives.

I'm also particularly delighted to see SL and other similar virtual worlds becoming readily accessible to anyone. Virtual worlds are no longer the domain of any one demographic and SL has caused a lot of people, organizations, and businesses to not only become aware of them, but to seriously change their thinking. Some have chosen to take the risks that are required with all major shifts and change. 

If you have not signed up, created an avatar, and spent some time in Second Life, I'd strongly encourage you to do. SL is yet another example where experiential hands on learning is about the only way to truly find out what it is all about and form your own opinions. 

I've only logged about 10-15 hours in SL and have not offered much comment on it or other virtual worlds to date because they are still very much in the "flapping" stage, but I'm anxiously awaiting their evolution and emergence into a more innovative stage of application and value.

While it's true that you really can fly in Second Life (and I suppose you could even flap your arms like a bird), at this point in time, in every other respect Second Life could be the poster child of my story about flapping. Almost everything in SL is an exact copy of our physical or "real world".  As a result, I've yet to see what is innovative or improved by this model. For example, these virtual worlds have exact copies of things like land, in the form of continents and islands. You can build buildings and other objects, you can buy and sell things with cash using "Linden dollars", you can walk around, go inside buildings, sit in desks and chairs, and play "dress up". Where's the innovation and benefits in this?

Yes, it is true that SL lets you meet up with anyone at any time. While this does eliminate some of the barriers and certainly the cost of physical meetings, what advantage does it have over other ways of collaborating via phone, video, Email, IM, and Twitter?   

I am NOT criticizing the technology so much as our limited thinking and use of these technologies. We'd do well to remind ourselves that almost any disruptive technology or innovation that goes on to become very important, starts out being awful or silly or both. Early versions are extremely limited, work very poorly and cost too much. But the essential elements and advantages are there as well if we can look past these early deficiencies. 

Do some of you remember those large heavy bricks some of us so proudly carried around called "mobile phones" for example? 

The first one (1984) weighed 2 pounds, offered 30 minutes of talk time, and sold for $3,995!  But now look where we are!  Here is a fun photo of Rudy Krolopp, lead designer of the first cell phone, posing with the DynaTAC8000X and Motorola's new Razr cell phone from the recent MSNBC article "First cell phone a true 'brick'".

Or for those who are a bit older, how about the first "portable computers" that were portable only in that they had a handle on the top of a 30 pound box! 

As the focus of innovation shifts more and more towards software, the characteristic problems of early innovations also shift from cost, size, or weight to the limited imagination of those developing and using them. In other words, the problem is staring back at us every morning in the mirror! The good news is that the solution is also staring back at us. 

Those flapping away in Second Life know there is a problem and that they are part of it. Proof of its limited advantages and benefits at this stage in the hype cycle that I discussed in a previous post, are clearly borne out by the behaviors of the SL "residents" or lack thereof. This problem was the focus of the recent Wired article "How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life", which details an experience that many find common—it is eerily empty. The lights are on but no one's home! This article questions the huge investment that many commercial companies are making to create a presence in Second Life with virtual corporate buildings, hotels, night clubs, restaurants, and the like. As the worldwide head of interactive marketing at Coca-Cola put it:

"There was nobody else around." He teleported over to the Aloft Hotel, a virtual prototype for a real-world chain being developed by the owners of the W. It was deserted, almost creepy. "I felt like I was in The Shining."

Some of the limitations are based on the current state of the technology and bandwidth. The "fidelity" is still rather limited so virtual worlds still look and feel very distanced from the reality they are trying to replicate. However, as we've seen countless times, such as the cell phone examples above, these limitations are relatively short lived. More rapidly than most people estimate, the performance goes up and the cost comes down—often at exponential rates. I won't digress into any details now, but three areas to keep your eyes on are the development of "presence" technology; high definition visualizations of 3D environments and objects such as people, animals, buildings; and augmented reality.

So let's try to stop flapping and start flying.  Think about this example of Second Life...its potential and its problems.

• What is it about being with people at conferences, in meetings or in classrooms that is unique and valuable?
• How can we use something like virtual worlds to dramatically increase the quantity and quality of these essential elements and benefits of physical meetings while concurrently reducing or eliminating their real world limitations?

See if you can discover what those essential elements are (the "flying" rather than the "flapping") and share them with me. I'll get back to you in a few days and give you my thoughts and ideas about it as well.

Flapping in the real world (something completely different and yet, the same)

Just so we don't completely dismiss the potential advantages of flapping though, I thought some of you would be intrigued by some recent news about the unusual flapping that enables bats and hummingbirds to be such amazing fliers. In the recent Scientific American article "Bat's Wings Strokes Unlike a Bird's" researchers have learned how these flappers are able to hover. In the case of bats, they seem to do so by turning their wings upside down as they flap.  Anders Hedenström of Sweden's Lund University, first author of one of these reports: 

".... that this seemingly awkward motion in fact produces lift, says theoretical biologist Anders Hedenström of Sweden's Lund University, first author of a report published online today in Science. "It actually generates a useful force also on the backswing, which is a very good thing when it hovers,"

Nice validation of our previous observation that one of the essential elements of flying is LIFT and that the point is not so much HOW you achieve lift, but just that you do! 

This study does have some very practical applications for we humans. Hedenström is currently talking to researchers who build small flying machines to see if the wind tunnel results can help out. As he says, the study "gives detailed information about how a small autonomous flying system works."

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Ambient and Informal Information Filtering

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If you are reading this, then you are probably aware of the growing challenge that we all face of information overload. Even if you don't suffer (as I do) from the medical version of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), a global level of ADD seems to be affecting us all, because we simply have too many things to pay attention to. 

The Internet has helped us to discover that the more you learn, the more you find things that you don't know, but are interested in. On a daily basis, we are discovering more people, places, things, topics, professions, gadgets, and problems through more avenues than ever before. 

How many times do you find yourself asking "How did I get here?" after following some thread of interesting and related web links? How often do you ask a similar question in a conversation with a colleague or friend?  At least for me, this opportunity for overload on the Internet is one of those love/hate relationships...yet I want more!

BUT I also want to do more RELEVANT finding and learning. Now, I don't want anyone or anything to MAKE the decisions for me, but I'm desperately seeking assistance in making more decisions, faster and better. In other words, I'm looking for "decision support" that is designed to match the exponential increase of learning and information out there. 

This is hardly a trivial problem, nor is it one I suspect we'll have mastered anytime soon, but what I'm finding is that there is an increasing amount of decision support available. So I wanted to bring two kinds to your attention today (if you've got the time and attention?!).

I like to think of information as "that which informs".  It is a simple yet profound perspective that I've found extremely helpful. Claude Shannon, often referred to as "the father of information theory", put it best when he said "information causes change; if it doesn't it isn't information"  For me, information can take almost any form—text, people, drawings, graphics, machines—literally anything I can sense, I suppose. And it is only information if it is new to me, which could mean it is something I've seen before, something that itself might be very old, but is now in a new context, or now I'm able to understand it or see it in a new light. In other words, information is something relevant to what I'm thinking about or working on at the time. 

You can see how this is topic is such an important part of my focus on mass personalization, the Snowflake Effect, and getting everything "just right" as in just the right information to just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right way, etc.

Because if what IS information is all so personal and contextual, then information filtering is itself a tricky business. We only want to filter out the irrelevant stuff, yet that saying about "one person's garbage is another person's treasure" certainly applies to information and ideas. But I worry that serendipitous discoveries of great things will get lost in these information filters.

Therefore, I think that we humans will be a significant part of the process of successful information filtering, and at least right now, what we need is that decision support layer between us, along with the delightful deluge of choices. We need something to act as our personal agent to bring us more things which have a high probability of being relevant, while providing some tools and techniques that help us make better decisions faster.

Ambient Information?

Some of the best information filtering today seems to work very informally or indirectly. I've heard this referred to as "ambient information" by some and I think it's a good description. Ambient information is aimed at reducing data overload. It acts as a "decision support device" by moving the information into the world around us. It is a bit like staring up at the night sky and discovering that you can see clusters of stars best when you don't look at them directly but rather, off to one side. Here are two examples of what I'm referring to as informal information filtering and ambient information:

PARTiCLS:  Paying Attention to Personalized Aggregation

PARTiCLS is a web-based RSS application that appears on your desktop as a constantly scrolling set of headlines for you to consider. It's a bit like a scrolling stock ticker. Developed by the Australia-based startup behind APML, its co-founder Chris Saad described PARTiCLS as "an attention management engine for busy people who deal with a constant stream of incoming information." "Particls to take RSS Mainstream" by StartupSquad provides a more detailed review. I've been experimenting with a "pre-beta" version for the past few months and now it is available as a public beta (fascinating how the whole beta phenomena has evolved, isn't it?).

PARTiCLS is also a good example to me of the maturing of RSS. In particular, it provides a very "Grandma-friendly" interface (this is a reference to my recent "Going after Grandma" post). While RSS is popular with some audiences, it has not been at all friendly to the true masses, who have been slow to use it. Nor has RSS even begun to reach its potential. I'm convinced that RSS will continue to grow and evolve in importance, and applications such as PARTiCLS will help it to make inroads with the masses. It's worth a look.

I'm recommending that you try "learning by doing" with PARTiCLS is so you can experience a form of informal information filtering that I referenced at the outset of this post. To get started with PARTiCLS, you can simply enter any number of words, in any order. No syntax, no forms, just stream of consciousness; whatever comes to your mind at the time. The entry box is available at any time.  It lets you see what your terms are, and you can add or delete them as your interests change.

What I was REALLY hoping to see in future releases of PARTiCLS is the ability to monitor my "attention" and then for it to either start automatically adding appropriate terms to my list or recommending ones for me to add. I'm delighted to see that they have started down this path with "Auto-detected interest" and "Auto subscribe" features that scan your browsing history and detect some of your attention data, and then automatically subscribe you to new sites that you are visiting regularly. 

Something else that really sets PARTiCLS apart from other RSS readers and applications is its ability to sort out how important new information is to you and then use proportionally different means to alert you to it. For example, general information might be displayed on the news ticker that I mentioned earlier, whereas more important items might appear as a popup alert, and urgent information might be sent via SMS to your phone. PARTiCLS has also just added a new "inTouch" option that enables you to embed a PARTiCLS link on your web site or blog. When readers click on it, they can automatically use PARTiCLS to monitor topics that you cover.

I recommend that you take it out for a test drive, and let me know what your experience is like when you do. Does it have the right balance between being a form of "ambient information" or is it too distracting? How well does it help you sort out the important and relevant stuff for you?

Orbs

Even more indirect, informal, and perhaps effective are some emerging "ambient information devices" such as the Ambient Orb pictured here, as well as an ambient umbrella that glows when rain is likely to occur.  Ambient Devices (the company) positions this as being the best of both worlds of "push" and "pull" types of information distribution. In their article about the orb device, the New York Times said :

"This is ambient information''—the newest concept in how to monitor everyday data. We've been cramming stock tips, horoscopes and news items onto our computers and cell phones—forcing us to peer constantly at little screens. What if we've been precisely wrong?"

Since their introduction, some of which were dismissed as "just a fad", there have been some very successful and "serious" implementations. For example in the recent (Aug/07) Wired magazine article "Psst! You're Wasting Electricity", reporter Clive Thompson thinks that "the desktop orb could reform energy hogs".  His article cited the growing use of orbs or other forms of ambient information by power companies to help customers reduce their bills and their energy consumption. For example, Southern California Edison power company got its customers to reduce energy use by 40 percent. This was also after several very unsuccessful attempts using automated phone calls, text messages, and emails. 

With this success, I noticed that Ambient Devices is now selling this "Energy Joule" device that plugs into any wall socket and provides up-to-date readouts of the cost of the energy you are currently consuming. 

But it is this success at changing behaviors that I found to be most interesting and promising here. It fits very nicely with my previous notions of "decision support", since these devices are helping to manage the information overload and helping us make better decisions. 

You may have experienced another form of this if you have ever driven a vehicle with some a real-time fuel consumption readouts on the dashboard. Even better might be one that added the current cost of the fuel and read out in units that we all seem to understand very well and react to—money! 

Thompson goes on to suggest:

"Maybe the real killer app for ambient information isn't alleviating data overload or tracking investments. Maybe it's taming global warming. To improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions, we first need to make omnipresent the hidden facts about our usage—paint them on the world around us." 

Sounds a lot more effective and immediate that many of the other ideas out there and it is one that I could see actually changing behaviors and trends.

Already one company, DIY Kyoto has a device called Wattson that both monitors your energy consumption AND sends the data to a web site so you can compare your usage with others worldwide. As Thompson astutely notes in his Wired article: 

"The hope is that it could spawn a cascade of conservations. It's fun seeing your personal energy tab go down by kilowatts but just imagine watching the world's usage plunge by terawatts or petawatts.  Now that's fun."

For whatever purpose you might have, I'd strongly encourage you to do some experiential learning with these new forms of information filtering and decision support. I'd love to hear about your use of these models and how successful or not they are at changing behaviors and improving decisions.   

In future posts, I'm going to pick up on this idea of using fun for serious purposes, while it seems to produce important results. Stay tuned.

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Whither goes Web 2.0? The value of hype cycles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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Cooking up a Snowstorm!

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

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

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

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

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

IM cooked

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

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

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

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

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

BakeSpace 

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

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

GroupRecipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Going after Grandma!

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On March 21, 2007, David Berlind made a series of excellent points in his post "Dave Winer vs. CNET, platforms of personal expression (PPEs), and why Grandma matters". The title gives you a clue about the wide range of things David takes on in this single post!  His post is a bit of a rant, (something I'm fond of doing too) and it's rather lengthy by some standards, but he makes some great points that I've been meaning to bring to your attention for a while.

David's post might be a bit technical for some, but his points reveal some profound trends and patterns that I believe are of high interest and relevance to everyone here on OCOT. (Off Course - On Target)

I'll leave you to read the first part of Berlind's post on your own, which brings attention to someone I really respect—Dave Winer—who has pioneered a long a long list of technologies (RSS, for example). Back in about 1999, David created one of the first (some would argue the original) blog technologies with a program called "Userland Radio", along with the whole notion of a desktop aggregator. I started using Radio around 2001, and discovered just how powerful the concepts of blogging and aggregating were, and how they contributed significantly to mass personalization. 

Not only that, but Userland spoiled me early on with easy web page creation AND the ability to work equally well online or off. This ease of use is something we still don't find that often. In fact, I lamented about it in a previous post about the whole online/offline issues.

Pioneers rarely get their due, so I was delighted to see Dave Winer receive some long overdue and well deserved recognition for his contributions. However what I really wanted to bring your attention is found halfway through this long post when Berlind makes the great observation:

"Everyone seems to be violating the golden rule of ecosystem supremacy: He (or she) who turns Grandma into a software developer wins. Period. Have we not learned anything from Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel—some of the first pieces of software to do this? Think about it?”

And " ...particularly about the hard work it takes and the challenges in avoiding confusion—that is the Holy Grail. That is what it takes to turn Grandma into a software developer without her knowing it (blogging tools already turned Grandma into a Web publisher without knowing it). That is why people like Grandma are drawn to a platform of personal expression. That is why people like Grandma will stay with or leave a PPE."

I like that! "Platform of Personal Expression"  It gets to the heart of mass personalization and the whole Snowflake Effect that I am so fond of ranting and raving about. I like this notion of being "Grandma friendly" and providing "Grandma glue" as a fun way to bring attention to the critical difference between invention and innovation. Invention is when something is first created, whereas innovation is more about timing—when an invention catches on and is put into mass use. 

As history shows, success often does not go to the original inventor, but rather, to whomever can bring the invention to the masses. And in some cases this is a matter of when the masses are ready! 

Later on in the post, Berlind notes how those who take their eyes off the prize of mass adoption usually falter and fail. Even as fabulous as Userland Radio was, you'll notice that it was not adopted by the blogging masses. I suspect most people these days have never even heard of it. Berlind also notes some recent examples of companies that appear to "get Grandma" such as yourminis and Netvibes.  I  strongly encourage you to check them out.   

Which leads me to Berlind's key point : 

" the idea behind yourminis is that anyone can build a similar Grandma-friendly widget that abstracts an API (or APIs) and share it with the other members of the yourminis community. In other words, to the extent that MySpace, Typepad, and other turnkey platforms for personal expression should be including a directory or palette of widgets from which to choose (and drag n drop), yourminis is now just such a palette, albeit a third-party one."

Netvibes and yourminis are more examples of the power of mashups. In particular they focus on the use of widgets which are little "mini apps" that typically appear as an icon or simple graphic. You can drag and drop or otherwise assemble these into a "just right" collection of functionality (a mashup). VERY Grandma friendly, and no coding required!   

Even better, in terms of mass adoption, as Berlind puts it:

".... the idea behind yourminis is that anyone can build a similar Grandma-friendly widget that abstracts an API (or APIs) and share it with the other members of the yourminis community." 

This killer combination of being both Grandma-friendly and sharable creates an ever expanding cycle of growth and improvement. This cycle is behind the truly revolutionary kinds of exponential growth and change we are seeing around us.  I also find it noteworthy that the yourmini widgets work equally well when you drag them to your desktop OR a web site or blog! Let's hope that soon we will no longer have to make this distinction (web versus desktop) at all!  As they summed it up on the recent TechCrunch post Yourminis Delivering Triple Widget Play:

"Today, with the assistance of Adobe's Apollo platform and some clever thinking Yourminis delivers a triple play of widgets: online personalized desktop widgets, actual desktop widgets and blogs widgets."

While I realize that some find it too simplistic, I'll continue to compare all  of this (conceptually) to the power of a meta-model, which resembles Lego blocks wherein everything is made up of very small self-standing "blocks" that can be "snapped" together to create an infinite number of unique solutions or assemblies (aka mashups). The key characteristics of this meta model include:

• Small as possible, but not one bit smaller. Two tests determine if this "just right" degree of smallness has been achieved:   
  • Do the "blocks" stand by themselves as functional units?   
  • Are they "useless"  by themselves?

While they could be used alone or by themselves (the first test of self-standing), you probably never would. As with Lego blocks, the individual blocks are as small as possible (we don't want to melt them down to liquid plastic, for example), but by themselves they are "useless". We are unlikely to ever use just one block.

• Low-level standards.  With Lego blocks, the "standard" is the pins or nubs on each block. By maintaining this one absolute standard for all Lego blocks, the manufacturer has ensured that regardless of the block size, color or type, regardless of when they were made (old or new) and regardless of what specific set they might be from (space travel, undersea, medieval, etc.) ANY block can snap together with any other block.

In my experience, whether we are dealing with content, code, people (skills, knowledge, abilities), hardware, manufactured goods, or just about anything else, establishing and maintaining this Lego-like meta-model enables solutions to have the infinite scalability, and mass contribution that is at the heart of mass personalization and the Snowflake Effect.

Note, however, that this new era also brings with it a need for much more direct involvement and experiential learning, a.k.a my favorite form—learning by doing!  So PLEASE do everything you can to spend as much time as possible having some "serious fun" trying these things out for yourself and with others around you. 

Software should be and will be a form of personal expression, and I could not be more delighted or excited about how rapidly this is happening and how it is ushering in the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization at a truly global scale. 

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