Off Course-On Target

Getting to "just right" getting closer

A recent posting on TechCrunch "Check-Ins, Geo-Fences, And The Future Of Privacy" had a good summary of the balancing act between privacy and geo-location and worth a quick read.  The addition location related information is a key component to the critical addition of context required by the the Snowflake Effect principal of getting things "just right" as in just the right stuff to just the right person at just the right time on just the right device in just the right way.  However there is, and likely always will be, the need to keep this location based information in context itself so that your location information is being used when you want it, with whom you want it and where it will add value.  And it can't require too much explicit input or action on our part as we simply won't remember and won't take the time and trouble to do so all the time which severely reduced the value for us and others.  So we need all the help we can get to help us make smart decisions and do so as automatically as possible yet all the while maintaining the various levels of control each of us will want, which in itself is a context based "it depends" type decision that is constantly changing.

And we are getting more and more help with all these decisions from many sources and each of us have an growing army of support in the form of other people and all their input as well as devices that are finally beginning to gain some "smarts" and be able to do more than what we explicitly tell them to do.

It was therefore most interesting to me to read the comment:

As apps and mobile devices become more geo-aware, a balance will need to be struck between the over-sharing creepiness of constant location broadcasting in the background and the annoyance of the constant check-in chore. On Tuesday, at our Disrupt conference, Facebook’s VP of Product Chris Cox described a future where phones are “contextually aware” so that they can “check into flights, find deals at grocery stores,” and do other things for us at that right place, at the right time. “These things take a bunch of clicks now—it’s all wasting time,” he said. “The phone should know what we want.”

And in other location related news:

Latitude’s New Dashboard View Is Exactly What Passive Location Needs

Tweetdeck Adds Location Column, Integrates Foursquare

Friends Around Me IPhone/iPad App Lets You Interact With Friends Or Strangers, Just Like They Were Really There

Context and contextual awareness IS the next great frontier when it comes to technology advancements and the continued exponential rate the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization is increasing.

Wayne

via snowflakeeffect.wordpress.com

Environment matters!

Good article in Fast Company on Creating Engaging Spaces for Engaging Ideas that served as a reminder how important environment is to us in augmenting and supporting our learning and living.  I’ve come to be totally convinced that we are essentially products of our environments and that we still understand very little about these effects and seem to most often chose to ignore what we do know.  I do my best to pay more attention to how environments affect me and to do a combination of creating environments that work best for me for a given function and conversely how to adapt to an environment I’m in for maximum benefit.

For example when I used to spend a lot of my time in airplanes flying around the world I found that the environment in an airplane seat, especially on longer flights, was ideal for me for reflective thinking and note taking and new idea generation.  So I rarely got out my laptop, phone or tablet and instead spent a majority of my seat time with my pen & paper (usually the real thing, sometimes digital) and jotted down notes as I reflected back on recent conversations, visits, reading, presentations and the like.  Environment is also one of the top reasons why I am finding my current lifestyle of living aboard my sailboat “Learnativity” and seeing the world from this aquatic perspective, to fit me so well.  I made this unusual move to focus on learning as a way of being and now into my third year of this it is exceedingly successful.

So with this in mind I recommend you take some of your valuable time to consider what has recently been going on at Stanford's new d.school building designed for innovation.  At the recent “trade show” like event they discovered the value of environment and noted:

Out goes the tech-focused approach of maximizing the number of iPads. In comes a human-centered approach of creating a warm living room. Using the nice furniture (on wheels) from the d.school, we created a nice cozy environment in the 8-foot by 8-foot space allotted to us.

A hunger for good learning - O'Reilly Radar

via radar.oreilly.com

Well worth watching and reflecting upon. Good notes and comments from Dale Dougherty @dalepd on O'Reilly Radar.

IMHO, more examples of the need for and the increasing ways the Snowflake Effect of mass personalization of learning is happening.