Off Course-On Target

The Snowflake Effect on News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on Mashups

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

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

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

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

Past Meets Present to Create the Future of Easter Island

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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