Many of you were intrigued by some of my former postings such as Snowflakes Effect Hits Financial Models: Snowflakes funding Snowflakes about how the Snowflake Effect of mass personalisation is affecting the financial world and in particular with loans and investments. Some wondered if this was just a few random examples but I think this recent overview on TechCrunch shows that this is already building into a full fledged snowstorm with what they refer to as “crowdfunding” having reached 1.5 Billion dollars already and set to double this year.
The funding of projects by individual snowflakes is another example of both the Snowflake Effect on financial matters such as the example of the “Pebble” watch I wrote about in Snowflake Wrists?. When I wrote about this Pebble watch that is one of the projects on Kickstarter two weeks ago they had already blown past their $100k goal by raising $2.6 million, as of today (May 8) they are about to pass the 10 million dollar mark! Kickstarter is “a funding platform for creative projects” and their blog recently had this “Blockbuster Effects” article which highlighted two other projects and answered the questions “Do more projects mean competition for the same dollars?” and “Are these projects stealing backers from other worthy projects?” by showing that in fact these have the opposite effect as both the overall funding and project numbers continue to grow dramatically. The full and abridged versions of the “Crowdfunding Industry Report” are available at the bottom of the TechCrunch article.
These are but a few examples that confirm what Erik Duval and I have been evangelizing for many years now, that The Snowflake Effect is a profoundly pervasive revolution which is affecting almost all parts of our lives on a global scale. There are over 7 billion of us snowflakes on the planet and as each one of us takes on the responsibility and control of our lives, love and learning, the results are going to be staggering.
When I started this blog six years ago I knew that I would “giving away” my thoughts for free. Some might say that’s all they’re worth. I’ve also kept the site ad free for a couple of reasons – ads don’t pay much, they get in the way of readers and I want people to focus on the conversations here or just get information they need. No ads sets me apart from many other sites, so that’s a good thing in the long run. I make my money mainly by consulting and less from speaking and writing. Externally, this blog is one big business card. Internally, it’s my knowledge base that informs my work. In addition, it’s a way to communicate with my peers.
I would surmise that ten years ago it was easier to sell a research report than it is now. There was less information available online for free. However, I think there is still a growing market for mass customization. That means a customized research report for me that’s different than one for somebody else. That’s pretty well what I sell: customized strategy & analysis for the specific context of each client. The challenge for Janet (and all of us in the custom information business) is figuring out the 90% that we should give away for free and the 10% that has market value and that we can charge for.
This posting by Harold Jarche, and the ensuing links and comments, has an interesting riff going on emerging business models and the tension between what is free and what is charged for. Worth reading and contributing to. Here's some of my thoughts;
One of the things I got from Kevin Kelly when he first wrote "New Rules for the New Economy" (still excellent reading IMHO) was that there is an inverse relationship between value and ease of copying/distributing. As with most, this is not an absolute rule but I think we are seeing this played out more and more and I find it helpful to think in of value being tied to uniqueness and that which can not be easily copied or distributed.
Along these lines, the notion of "mass customization" resonates strongly with me as it is the root of my incessant championing, along with my great friend and colleague Erik Duval, of mass personalization and The Snowflake Effect. However the other distinction which I find helpful is to see the transformation, metaphorically speaking, of the movement of value from nouns to verbs, or conceptually at least, from product like to more service like.
Information is a noun/product when it is in the form of a report or document created on spec or in advance of a specific use or client. Whereas it is a verb/service when it is a collection of "just the right" information matched to a specific person/group and context. I would posit that information in and of itself has little to no value. The value of information comes when it is Snowflaked or "just right" as in just the right information for just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right context on just the right medium/device, etc.
The key term in here is context. IMHO we will continue to see context, contextual computing and contextual technology play an increasingly critical role as the value of the Snowflake Effect of getting it "just right" becomes more and more the focus of our economy and life.
As many of you would know from past posts, podcasts and talks, my fellow snowflake Erik and I are working on developing and sharing our thoughts and passion around what we call The Snowflake Effect, which is our vision of a world designed for the uniqueness of each person, group and situation.
Erik and I also love experiential learning and discovering new ways of getting things done. We noticed how often we are struck by the power of conversation both literally in the great conversations we have but also as a conceptual model that includes things like the way most good conversations have a very serendipitous quality to them in that you really don’t plan or know in advance where a conversation is going to go and yet they so often lead to great discussions.
Conversation is also very powerful for what my dear friend and fellow snowflake Marcia Conner so ably articulated in her article for FastCompany called “Do You Talk to Think or Think to Talk?” I, in particular, talk to think. I figure things out and come up with new ideas, analogies, and stories in the process of having a great conversation with others. And I think to talk when I put time into reflective thinking, developing new models and concepts and then sharing them with others when I get the opportunity to talk with them.
There is so much that we can learn from conversation, and so for all of the reasons above and several more, Erik and I decided to put some of these thoughts into action and practice what we preach. We have started some new ways of learning from conversation and using conversation as a way to develop some of the content and discussion around the Snowflake Effect.
So far, we have two ways we are experimenting with this:
Long Slow Chat is a web site/blog we have recently started up with an agreement that both Erik and I will post one small “snowflake thought of the day” each and every day of the week. "Long and slow" because we expect this to continue for some time and "Chat" because we will try to keep each posting down to a small single thought. The previous link will take you to the blog where you can read what we have chatted about so far and send in your comments and reactions to help drive the conversation further.
TWiSTwhich stands for This Week in Snowflake Talk, where we record a weekly conversation we have on some of the points we’ve made the past week on the Long Slow Chat. We make these available to anyone interested either directly from the Long Slow Chat site or from this link where you can subscribe via iTunes.
Both of these are experiments we are conducting and are very much works in progress, and we hope that some of this will be of interest and value to many of you, so please check it out whenever you can and let us know what you think. We are VERY anxious to get your comments, reactions, and ideas about this way of working.
Erik and I will be spending more time and energy on the Snowflake Effect and posting as prolifically as we can to the Long Slow Chat site so please head on over there and consider adding a feed for these Long Slow Chat posts and TWiST podcasts as we continue to explore the Snowflake Effect.
** update of original post of Oct.17, 2008 to correct typos and add correct links
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.
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.
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!
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!)
Since you may have caught my recent podcast UNLearning: the New Skill of the Future, I thought you’d get a kick out of this recent article in [email protected] reporting that scientists have successfully used a drug on mice that "...can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact. A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact."
One possible (and positive) use for humans would be to eliminate particularly disruptive and fearful memories, such as those that cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This research is also helping us to understand how various parts of the brain work, along with their association to specific memory, thinking, actions, and capabilities. This research can also help in our quest to improve our overall learning capabilities.
And for a more irreverent approach to this news item, you might want check out Episode 55 of “Cranky Geeks” with John Dvorak. If you can make it through the first minute or so, you’ll see that they make some good points and references to movies and stories about the dangerous side of memory erasing.
As is often the case with science fiction and other fictional stories, the recent movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may not be too far off from reality. As is usually the case, new capabilities can be used for wonderfully positive purposes as well as equally frightening and scary ends. However, let’s remind ourselves that WE make the decisions, not the technology or the ideas. We can be both the problem and the solution. Not sure I’d want it any other way.
For now though, I prefer to stick to more unaided means of obtaining the critical skill of UNLearning now and in the future. On the other hand, I am also convinced that some, perhaps the majority, of the most significant improvements we are going to see in our abilities to learn, unlearn, and relearn over the next 25+ years, will be from neuroscience and other scientific approaches to cognition, learning, and performance.
Can we really be that far from instantly acquiring skills such as those shown in the movie The Matrix where capabilities, such as martial arts or flying a helicopter, can be downloaded into your brain and body? (speaking of which, if anyone has a link or file of the scene where Trinity learns to fly the helicopter on the roof, can you send it to me? It would be handy to have for such topics).
I’m fond of the line, “Careful what you wish for; you just might get it”, because I think we are getting what we wished for more and more every day! So the key question for us to answer remains, “What will we do with these enablers (be they technical, chemical or cognitive) when they arrive?” and how will we apply them in ways that produce very positive effects and outcomes for our learning and performance? Life is for learning. Let’s live and learn to the max!
Many of you were intrigued by some of my former postings such as Snowflakes Effect Hits Financial Models: Snowflakes funding Snowflakes about how the Snowflake Effect of mass personalisation is affecting the financial world and in particular with loans and investments. Some wondered if this was just a few random examples but I think this recent overview on TechCrunch shows that this is already building into a full fledged snowstorm with what they refer to as “crowdfunding” having reached 1.5 Billion dollars already and set to double this year.
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