Category: Four pillars

When I spent time studying change management, two aspects of the process intrigued me.

One, there was a lot of talk about “sustaining” the change of the S-curve, making sure that it didn’t decay back into the original position over time. And consultants earned a lot of money advising people how to make the change sustainable.

Two, there was growing evidence that there was a need for people who dealt with the “toxins” that emerged when “systems” (of people, processes, technology and culture) were put under the severe stress of radical change. And, as with most things consultant, a vogue phrase was created for the person who did this: the toxic handler.

Now that dates me, I’m probably using jargon that is at least 20 years old, but then that was the time I learnt about change management. But anyway.

I’m fascinated by the possibility that the internet will really start impacting people’s lives from a governmental perspective, that democracy will finally become participative. Tools alone can’t make this happen, neither can sympathetic regulation. As we found out in the world of finance, wanting individual share ownership to increase may be a laudable aim; yet, if you look at the UK, it would appear that private individual shareholdings actually declined over the last 40 years despite regulation and technology.

Why am I so fascinated by this possibility of internet-enabled democracy? I think part of the answer is because it would sound the death-knell of party politics, and I am not a big fan of party politics. I detest false polarisations, yet I am surrounded by them. And party politics tends to drive people towards these polarisations.

That’s why I was so interested in what Ivo Gormley was doing, why I was keen on supporting Us Now. It is important to discuss the art of the possible in the context of democracy and the internet, and to know what won’t work and why.

Anyway, with all this as background, I was on the lookout for detailed analysis of the Obama campaign from a post-event perspective. Was the campaign the beginning of something, or the end? Were we going to see a less apathetic, more engaged, voter population as Obama enters his presidency? Would the voters expect more from Obama as a result of the engagement they’d already had, and if so what? Would the internet continue to be centre stage amongst Obama volunteers? What would all this mean?

So I was delighted to see this piece of research from Pew Internet: Post-Election Voter Engagement. Here’s the summary:

Voters expect that the level of public engagement they experienced with Barack Obama during the campaign, much of it occurring online, will continue into the early period of his new administration. A majority of Obama voters expect to carry on efforts to support his policies and try to persuade others to back his initiatives in the coming year; a substantial number expect to hear directly from Obama and his team; and a notable cohort say they have followed the transition online.

I think all three of the findings above bode well for the future. One, that the level of engagement, particularly online engagement, will continue into the presidency itself. This is a good thing, a simple leading indicator of the sustainability of the change taking place. Two, that the voters expect to continue to engage directly with Obama. Again a good thing, shows that the democratisation taking place is not transient, has a chance of becoming permanent. And three, that the transition itself is being followed online; the internet will continue to be centre stage.

The signs of sustainability of change are good. Which only leaves me wondering about the toxins that will emerge (there is no doubt about their existence, just about their timing) and where the toxic handlers are going to be found.

In the meantime, I am encouraged. Thank you Pew Internet.

I’m going home
And when I want to go home, I’m going mobile
Well I’m gonna find a home on wheels, see how it feels,
Goin’ mobile
Keep me moving

Going Mobile (The Who, Who’s Next, 1971)

Pete Townshend was writing about a different type of “mobile” at the time, but that doesn’t matter, I’m prepared to exploit even the slightest opportunity to refer to one of the greatest albums ever. If you haven’t listened to Who’s Next yet, don’t waste any more time. Stop reading this and do the decent thing.

On the other hand, if, like many regular readers of this blog, you’re quite familiar with the album and its delights, then read on. For the purpose of this post is actually shown in the diagram below:

Taken from Good Magazine, it looks at the best and the worst countries seen from the specific perspectives of internet access and mobile handsets in use. You can see the original chart here.

I found three aspects of the chart intriguing:

• One, the mobile statistics seemed far more revealing than the internet ones, overall.
• Two, there were some unexpected names in the mobile top 10. For example, I was not expecting to see Antigua and Barbuda there, particularly when there is no other Caribbean country represented.
• Three, the mobile bottom 10 made very depressing reading. Too high a correlation between the lack of freedom, economic weakness and mobile scarcity. There is more here than a simple digital divide argument.

I need to spend more time on it before I comment further, but felt that a number of you would be interested in the information even at this stage.

For some people, 2008 was the Year of the Crunch. The year that Lehmans finally fell, the year that fresh MBAs suddenly stopped wanting to work for investment banks. The year that stock markets crashed worldwide, property prices slid alarmingly and jobs disappeared.

For some people, 2008 was the Year of the Change. The year that hope returned to many people as Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America. An amazing story when you think it is only 40 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you leave aside the markets and the elections, the storylines get thinner. The Mumbai attacks, the Beijing Olympics and the Large Hadron Collider are the principal ones that come to mind; events in Zimbabwe continue to concern and frustrate me, and the situation in Cuba only serves to mystify.

As was the case in Mumbai, 2008 was a time of sadness for many, as people lost their loved ones in wars and accidents and natural disasters. My condolences to all who have suffered loss. The world also said goodbye to some people known by all and sundry: Bobby Fischer, Paul Newman, Edmund Hillary, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Mark Felt (Deep Throat during Watergate) are those I particularly remember;  I also thought it was remarkable that Albert Hoffman, the man who discovered LSD, and Mahesh Yogi, the Maharishi who gave us Transcendental Meditation, managed to outlast their Sixties contemporaries so well.

For a small group of people, 2008 was the Year of the Shoe.

All in all, we’ve had better years, haven’t we?

But I’m not complaining. I have nothing to complain about. I have a great wife and great children, I enjoy my job, I’m part of a healthy and active and growing church, I feel part of my community. We have a warm house, the views are beautiful, there’s food in the fridge. A grand piano, a bunch of guitars, a flute. Two cats and a kitten. Books and music aplenty.

I am content and happy. Two years ago this Christmas, I’d just gone into ventricular fibrillation, my life expectancy was being measured in minutes, my “ejection fraction” was nearly at single figures. Now my medical insurers refuse to pay cardiologist visit bills on the basis I don’t need such services. I am content, happy and glad to be alive.

That’s what I wish for all of you, for 2009. Contentment. Happiness. Gladness in being alive. And this photograph, my all-time favourite, is to help you remember what’s important. A boy sitting on the steps of an orphanage holding on to his first pair of shoes. I know I’ve written about this photograph before, but I have no qualms in referring to it again. None whatsoever. [Update: Over the years I’ve discovered the name of the orphanage and, more recently, even the child’s name. Such is the power of the web.]

To all of you. 2009. May it bring you contentment. Happiness. Gladness in being alive.

…..and my own Maltese Falcon while I’m at it?

I’m paraphrasing the kind of utterances of Adam Savage (of MythBusters fame) on a mesmerising video you can watch here. I’d never heard of FORA.tv until a friend of mine, @bb42, tweeted me a few days ago and *told* me I was going to *love* the video.

Bill, you were right. For the rest of you, particularly those who are obsessive, those who understand obsession, those that are closet obsessives, I’d recommend your giving up seventeen minutes of your time. It’s worth it.

My thanks to those of you who commented, tweeted or wrote to me about my post on the customer perspective yesterday.

Some of the questions raised were such that I felt a follow-up post was of value, so here goes. I’ve tried to structure it as a small number of points that clarify and simplify what was stated yesterday, while still remaining readable as a stand-alone post.

1. Subscriber-driven: The real shift taking place is one of control, passing from me-the-publisher to me-the-subscriber. In future the smart money is on environments that empower me-the-subscriber, and on environments that help me-the-publisher offer a better service to me-the-subscriber. For example, a blog platform that allows me-the-publisher to offer me-the-subscriber the ability to subscribe to the blog feed by tag. So someone should be able to say “I only want JP’s posts on cricket and on cooking”. Or, as is far more likely, “I want all of JP’s posts except for the ones he does on cricket and on cooking.” The ability to get granular control of the feed will become more important. A note of caution: we shouldn’t waste our time trying to standardise tags, it’s the sort of thing we’ve all wasted our time doing before.

2. General different from specific: As a result of the shift, we will land up with two types of habitats that me-the-subscriber will frequent. One is a general habitat, a meta-habitat for aggregating everything. The second is a topic- or tag-specific habitat. Aggregation will take place in both habitats, but the type and nature of the aggregation will be different. Twitter and FriendFeed are general habitats. Last.fm and Flickr and blip and dopplr and even seesmic are specific habitats. The habitat of choice will determine the etiquette required. You do not fill a general habitat with an overload of specific information. You cannot write on cricket in the Times as if you are writing in The Cricketer, the depth and frequency have to suit the habitat. It’s called being courteous to your subscribers.

3. Social objects need graphic equalisers: Facebook learnt this lesson soon after the news feed was released, but it’s worth repeating. General habitats need sliders, need mixing desks, need graphic equalisers, in order to allow me-the-subscriber to manage the balance of what’s coming in. This is despite the fact that I choose whom and what to subscribe to. Me-the-subscriber needs the sliders, the graphic equalisers, because me-the-publisher is sometimes inconsiderate and makes too much noise of a particular type. Like telling me where he is every 10 minutes. I’m interested in where he is, but not that much. Like telling me when he turns the page while reading a book. Like telling me about each and every song he is listening to. What I want to know is where I can find out the detail if I want it. In the meantime, I only want him to give me a sample of what he’s doing, show some judgment.

4. Me-the-publisher needs tools in the specific habitats that allow this sampling to take place. So for example I need to be able to say, in a general habitat like Twitter: “Hey guys, I’m over at blip.fm DJing as http://blip.fm/jobsworth if anyone cares” And then people who are interested can do something about it. And as me-the-publisher I can choose to send over a tweet for every tenth song I play. And you, as me-the-subscriber, can choose to change that frequency up or down. And the publishing/subscribing platforms will have to deliver as needed.

5. Signals become more important: The general habitats become aggregators of aggregators, where as publishers we signal our availability to subscribers. Come join me I’m cooking at. Come join me I’m listening at. Come join me I’m watching at. The choice of participation is always the subscriber’s. [Image courtesy ecoustics forum].

6. Visualisation becomes even more important, as do the tools used for visualisation. [PS top image above attributed to manyeyes and IBM; bottom image attributed to www.wordle.net] As subscribers, we will have better and better tools to convert firehoses into capillaries. That is really the only way we can avoid the potential overload risk of aggregation.

7. Mobile devices rule. There will be a number of general habitats, based on subscriber preferences. Some (most?) will be designed natively for the mobile device. As with general habitats, specific habitats will not be monopolies. People will choose one over the other, but retain the freedom to move from one to the other. Any attempt at lock-in will either fail (by being subverted) or atrophy to death (because it won’t be adopted).

8. Unsubscribe: We will see a major rise in usage of “unsubscribe” facilities. Clay Shirky famously said that wikis worked because the cost of repair is kept as low as the cost of damage. The same is true of how we subscribe to, and unsubscribe from, people and feeds. The cost of unsubscribing can and will drop. It must drop. As will the cost of unfriending, unfollowing, unwhatever-ing.

None of these ideas is new. All I’ve tried to do is to provide some context and some narrative to my idle ramblings about what it means to move to a subscriber driven world. Comments as usual welcome.