Day: 30 October 2006

I had a strange postcolonial upbringing.

Imagine this: Calcutta, 1965. The Dalhousie Athletic Club, in the middle of the wonderful green lung that is the Maidan. (In fact I think the Dalhousie Athletic Club’s maidan branch was colloquially referred to as the Maidan Club, but I could be wrong).

I’ve just had my first tennis lesson, and, luxuriating over a Coke with ice and lime cordial, I watch this tranquil very-British scene unfolding in front of me. Gentlemen and ladies bowling in whites. They have their hats on, but the sun hasn’t. Occasional sounds of leather on willow in the background. A bar that would do any rugby club proud, shored up by drinkers who would also do any rugby club proud. Regaling all in their regalia. And, almost surreally in the midst of all this, there’s someone wandering around collecting pools coupons. Yes, pools coupons, while Jackie Charlton (the before-combover version) scores for Leeds United in a Pathe-like newsreel in the background.

And a few days later, true to type, I saw everyone crane and stretch to hear the evening’s results and check their coupons.

My fascination with soccer results probably began around then, aided and abetted by the apocryphal story of that wonderful team Stenhousemuir Nil, and by the delivery of James Alexander Gordon. [Note to people who don’t follow UK soccer. Stenhousemuir is a venerable and much-loved Scottish soccer team, affectionately called Stenhousemuir Nil, apparently because of the regularity with which that particular phrase got used during Final Score, often as announced by James Alexander Gordon].

Which brings me, somewhat circuitously, to the point of this post. I wanted to write about Enterprise 2.0, but realised that it now has so many connotations, anchors and frames that it was about as meaningful as Enterprise Nil. Whatever label gets you going. It’s only a label.

Chris Messina makes some interesting observations in a post about IE 8 and microformats. I quote from him:

With discussions around support for microformats in Firefox 3, and Apple showing strong support for microformats as well, it’s only a very short amount of time before we can move on from the “so who’s using microformats?” question to “okay, so now what can we do with them?”

And there’s the rub. Now, with microformats, all this Web 2.0 (or Web Nil, if you prefer) stuff is really getting into the enterprise. People may have wondered about social software; they may have wondered about mashups and videos and music. But with microformats, those arguments will fade away. Even troglodytes will begin to see the value, hidden as it is amongst amongst the WMD.
I’ve tried (and failed) to get much traction for microformats in the past; success was rare other than in the simple identity space, which is not a bad place to start, along with calendars and contact details. But there’s so much that can be done with low volatility “reference” information in pretty much any industry, covering product and inventory codes, location information, customer information, currency and value information, you name it.
So thanks, Chris, for reminding me.

The time has come. Enterprise, be ready. Microformats are go. Watch this space.

And for once a standard has emerged that hasn’t already been sacrificed at the altar of vendor whoosis. For once it has been about market adoption. Which is why it will work.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom Malone shortly after he’d published The Future Of Work, at Supernova 2004 (thanks to JD Lasica for the coverage), where we were both speaking. [If you’re interested in what a 21st century firm will really look like, you must read Tom’s book, especially in conjunction with that of John Roberts, The Modern Firm.]

Last Friday, Tom, along with a few others, kicked off a large-scale experiment. Called We Are Smarter Than Me, it brings together MIT, Wharton, Pearson and Shared Insights, seeking to confront and confound a particular paradox. In their own words:

• A few books have recently been written on this topic, but they all fail to confront one central paradox. While they extol the power of communities, they were each written by only one person. We’re putting this paradox to the test by inviting hundreds of thousands of authors to contribute to this “network book” using today’s technologies.

We’ve had experiments where people have collaborated on books online before (Dan Gillmor’s We The Media comes to mind) but I’ve never seen anything of this scale. I understand that over 1.5 million invitations have been sent out; no I did not get one of them :-) but that did not deter me from signing up. Check it out for yourself, barriers to participation are remarkably low. Which is a good thing.
Currently I’m just lurking, taking a look at what’s happening, as the structure and content of the book morphs around me lazily. Insane, like a smoke-ring day when the wind blows. Soon I will figure out where and how I want to participate. Follow the links to We Are Smarter if you want to know more.
I’m also intrigued by something else about the cultures forming in this giant Petri dish. I’ve always believed in a simple rule-of-thumb about opensource communities:

• For every 1000 people who join a community:
• 920 are lurkers, passive observers
• 60 are watchers, active observers capable and willing to kibitz
• 15 are activists, actually doing something
• …and 5 are hyperactive, passionate about what they’re doing, almost to a point of obsession

I shall watch with interest as the numbers grow, to see how close my rule of thumb is to reality. Any views out there, or shall I start a prediction market on this?

One final thing. One of the trends the book is meant to pick out is that of microfinance. I wonder. I just wonder. Take the network book and attach it to network funding, make it available on-demand whenever, wherever, however. I wonder.