Off Course-On Target

Reflective Reduction Sauce

As many of you know, I am privileged to live in two parallel universes: one where I am the strategic futurist at Velocity Made Good Inc. (VMG), as well as speaker, provocateur, etc., traveling the world by planes, trains, and automobiles, and living at the speed of thought; and the other where I live and work on my sailboat, the good ship Learnativity, wandering and pondering the world one nautical mile at a time. Each time I move from one universe to the other, the shapeshifting process produces a tremendous amount of new learning for me.

Upon my most recent return to my fast universe, where I was immediately immersed in the Learning 2009 conference in Orlando last week, the learning was wonderfully severe. 

With a few days to reflect and do some cognitive “simmering and sauce reduction”, a few recurring themes and observations emerged for me: 

• Authenticity
• Curiosity
• Confidence
• Faith and Trust
• Unconscious Assumptions
• Redefining Experience
• Uncertainty
• Readiness for the Unexpected
• What If the Impossible Isn’t?
• Personal Capitalization

I’m sharing something about each of these with you in the hopes that they will be of some value and spark additional feedback and conversations. Each of these deserves and demands some explanation and discussion, so I’ll write about each one in a series of posts to follow. Today, I’m starting with Authenticity.

Authenticity

Authenticity has been a recurring topic for me for several years now, and it is one I am finding in both of my parallel universes. For me, authenticity is about the quality of being genuine, and it is one of the best examples of how the most profound and important things in life are the simplest. 

Authenticity can be and is applied to products and things such as content. In a previous post “The Land that Never Was”, I outlined some of my views on how the whole definition of what is real and genuine is either getting more difficult to determine or perhaps is just being redefined as the difference between real and synthetic becomes less and less and, in some cases, the distinction disappears completely. 

At the Learning 2009 conference, I heard both the topic and the word “authentic” in many of the sessions and in the hallways. There was a lot of conversation about authentic content for example. Authentic content is not to be confused with simply the poor quality of content, but rather it is about how accurate and relevant the content is, how true the “voice” of the content is, how relevant is it, and so on. 

A few months ago, while in my other nautical universe, I had a very personal experience with authentic content when I found myself on my sailboat in Pago Pago harbor in American Samoa on September 29th, a day which I have since referred to as “Tsunami Tuesday”. You can read more about this fascinating experience in on my Learnativity blog (Part I, Part II, Part III) and in my previous posting here on OCOT “Tsunami and Technology: Powers That Be at Sea” where I discuss how I found myself being the on-the-scene reporter (by virtue of being there in person), which I shared via the wonders of current technology, such as my satellite phone. This technology enabled me to send out test messages to Twitter and hence be picked up by many other bloggers and then by the world press.

In the weeks that followed, I was deluged by emails, texts, calls, and tweets from some of those who had been staying informed about the tsunami and about their friends and family who were also there at the time. What most struck me though were the common comments I heard about how extremely effective the reporting was, especially via those who were sending out tweets and writing blogs using firsthand accounts from those who were actually there. 

What I picked up from all this was that it was much more than the obvious fact that we were there. It was the authenticity that came from living this experience. We were being directly affected by this amazing natural phenomenon and were dealing with the reality of saving our ships, our possessions, and our friends and family, and were sharing it as it happened.

In the case of content for learning, training, and education, I am hearing about increasing awareness and demand for content that is similarly real, firsthand, relevant, and coming from those who have direct experience. Perhaps this simply goes back to emphasizing the age old advice for any writers or content creators to “write what you know”.

However, this conversation about authenticity and genuineness goes way beyond the narrow definition of content. Most notably, it is about us as people being genuine. Previously this quality of genuineness has been applied mostly to organizations such as businesses, governments, and non-profits, and has been about exposing when these are organizations are not representing and presenting themselves accurately and genuinely.  More recently, however, with the increased depth and breadth of the conversation that now takes place between consumers and producers, teachers and learners, and politicians and constituents, authentic and genuine conversation has become possibly the predictor and predicator of success.

One of the most direct and best versions of this idea came from the conversation between Elliott and Betsy Myers at Learning 2009. Betsy impressed me both for what she said as well as how she said it. She is extremely engaging and effective. One of Betsy’s primary topics is “authentic leadership” and in her conversation with Elliott, she stressed key issues such as curiosity and courage. She spoke to me particularly when she recommended that each of us should “have the courage to be your authentic self”. 

For me, cultivating this quality is not something reserved for those who knowingly obfuscate their real selves, but also is something each of us needs to keep in mind when we fail to be who we really are—when we create too great a gap between who we are on the inside and who we present on the outside.

While it has always been a laudable goal to be true to yourself, I think that with the advent of modern communications technology, and most recently, the rise in the use of social media such as blogs, podcasts, Twitter and Facebook, authenticity and genuineness are being rigorously tested for and demanded far more than ever before. 

There is no question in my mind and experience that being your “authentic self” takes real and constant courage. However, there is also no question that the benefits of doing so are greater still. Does this match with what you are seeing and experiencing? What other ways are you seeing authenticity becoming an increasing priority?  I look forward to hearing from you.

Wayne

What It’s All About

Want to see what it is all about? Want to see a real live humanitarian and all around great person?

Check out this video of my dear friend Linda English, a founder and Director of Membership Development, Learning for International NGOs LINGOs, www.lingos.org

This is from the Microsoft Alumni Foundation, Honors 2009 Integral Fellows ceremony on Wednesday (Nov.18, 2009).

You GO girl!

Write You Are!

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Stanford Study of Writing”

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

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

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

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

My Lessons Learned

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

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

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

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

Your Turn to Write!

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

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

Wayne

I Did It My Way!

One of the main tenets of the Snowflake Effect is that of mass customization and ultimately, personalization. As such, I try to follow trends that would indicate if things like mass customization are actually starting to happen and if William Gibson’s great line that “The future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.” is being realized.

On-demand manufacturing is one area of interest. A recent article in Fast Company from October 1, 2009 called “Zazzle Dazzles on Demand” talks about the success that Zazzle is having with this new method of manufacturing. Since 2005 they have been focused mostly on customized printing of things like T-shirts, mugs, shoes, business cards, etc. Zazzle is now seeing over 200,000 new items designed on their site DAILY! Most orders are processed in 24 hours and they claim to be able to go from order to finished product in as little as 17 minutes. For example they recently enabled Keds the shoemaker to have individual customers, many of them children, design each individual panel of the shoe (as well as the insole) with art or designs of their choosing.

This radical shift from the days of mass production, where everything was the same, is not only affecting manufacturing but perhaps more so sales and business models. These quotes from Zazzle’s CEO Robert Beaver exemplify the ways their customers are evolving to take advantage of these new capabilities. He notes, for example, that:

“The competitive mentality is If I help somebody else, that’s going to take dollars out of my pocket. But that isn’t the way our sellers are thinking. More sellers enhance the overall quality of the marketplace.”

And he also made the point that many of their biggest customers such as Disney, LucasArts, Matell and Getty Images, learned that:

“... this wasn’t about posting your 10 most popular designs—that’s retail. Unlock everything.”

These observations are very much in keeping with one of the undercurrents of the Snowflake Effect which Eric Duval and I speak to a lot: that of now living in a world of abundance where choice and design are becoming the critical value propositions. While the Zazzle example is a relatively mild degree of mass customization, at least compared to what I see coming, this is a here and now example that shows how we are also headed for a society of “prosumers” where we are not nicely segregated into being either a producer or a consumer but rather part of a totally new set of roles and rules where each of us are both consuming and producing concurrently.

I’ll continue to bring you more examples of these future trends and directions in the hopes that it helps you to see how these changes will impact your world and life and helps you be better prepared for and gain more benefits from the Snowflake Effect.

-- Wayne

Infinite Learning: The Ultimate in Life’s Frustrations or Gifts?

When I was a young boy I remember spending days on end pondering the question “If you take one step forward towards an end point, and each step is exactly one half the distance between you and that end point, how many steps will it take you to get there?” The seemingly illogical answer is that it takes an infinite number of steps and you never get there!

Similarly confounding and one of the conundrums we all discover about learning is that the more you learn the more you realize how much you don’t know. With each answer comes more questions and so the amount you realize you have to learn grows exponentially!

Brian Greene, a noted physicist and author, penned what I thought was an excellent article in Wired ((May 2009) called “Questions, Not Answers, Make Science the Ultimate Adventure” summed it up beautifully. Brian, by the way, is the author of two excellent books that have helped satisfy some of my continuous curiosity of the cosmos: The Elegant Universe”and The Fabric of the Cosmos.

I like Brian’s observational skills and writing, and his article included some great observations such as:

“To be a scientist is to commit to a life of confusion punctuated by rare moments of clarity.”

and:

“Every so often the blur resolves, but the respite is short-lived; the next puzzle demands focus. This, really, is the joy of being a scientist. Establish truths are comforting, but it is the mysteries that make the soul ache and render a life of exploration worth living.”

Brian’s experiences resonate strongly with mine, and I think and hope that each of us can substitute our profession, domain, or interest for his use of “scientist” or “science” and feel the same way.

What I do know is that just like the answer to my childhood “how many steps” question, I will take as many steps forward in learning as my life allows and yet never arrive at a an endpoint of knowing all. For some perhaps, this is the ultimate frustration and makes learning futile. But for me and I would hope for most, the journey, the pursuit of knowledge, and understanding, is the destination. One of the greatest gifts in life is that I will always have an infinite supply of things to be curious about and to learn.

My fondest hope is that we will all be fortunate enough to marvel at the mystery of things around us, be forever curious, and be blessed with a journey in life that is one of unending learning.

-- Wayne