Doing things that matter

Today, at a time when Facebook announced passing 200 million members, there are still people who think that social networking sites and tools are a fad, an irritation, a waste of time. It doesn’t matter what you tell them: you can mention the role of such sites and tools in the Obama campaign, in the Mumbai terrorist attack, in challenging repressive regimes, in humdrum daily work. They don’t care, all this is just a waste of time. Just like e-mail was, and mobile phones, and BlackBerries. Just like computers were before that. Or for that matter the telephone.

None of them will read this. So I’m not writing it for them.

I’m writing this for you. Because we can show them that there is undeniable value in social networking sites. By using them to raise money for good causes.

Like this one: Gimme Shelter. Let’s show them.

Of markets and black swans and opensource and software

I was reading a column by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Financial Times yesterday, where he lists “ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world”. You can read the whole piece here, or download the pdf from Taleb’s own site.

I couldn’t help noticing how striking the relationship was, between what he was putting forward for financial markets, and what we consider generally to be the principles of opensource and of good software development. So I decided to list each of his principles below, with brief comments in italics seeking to explain the same thing in a software context.

  1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Make sure you test early, test often, test small.
  2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Opensource is pretty much predicated on this: “losses” are borne by individual contributors, “gains” are shared by all participants
  3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. Opensource communities make use of tools like commit logs for this very purpose, looking at the prior contributions made by a participant before letting the changes in
  4. Do not let someone making an “incentive bonus” manage a nuclear power plant — or your financial risks. We’ve all seen what happens when incentives for technology staff are not aligned properly with business objectives. This is why the most important job of a CIO is “dial-tone”, reliable secure operations at an affordable price
  5. Counterbalance complexity with simplicity. Build software on a “high cohesion, loose coupling” basis
  6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning. Make sure that the people who make software decisions actually have software experience
  7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. How many Linux ads did you see when Linux came out?
  8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Don’t cure proprietary-software addictions by giving people more proprietary software
  9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert advice” for their retirement. Rely on something real. Code. Code is King. Not slideware.
  10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Again an opensource principle. Cannibalise. Reuse.

So what would happen if financial markets get run on opensource principles? Complete transparency. Open inspection. Visible track records. Compartmentalisation of losses, sharing of gains. Moderation not regulation. And yes, the capacity to “fork”.

[Update, with Tongue Firmly in Cheek: If the banking system needs to learn from the software industry, is the opposite true as well? Are we approaching a time when large software firms will need bailing out? http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/microsoft-asks-feds-bailout-720 ]

On song: The Artist Quiz Thingy

Jay Singh of Pink Noise got me started on this post, by sharing a note in facebook, where she said:

Pick an artist, and using SONG TITLES from only that artist, cleverly (preferably) answer these questions. This is harder than it seems!

ADDITIONAL RULE: You cannot use the same artist I did, or duplicate song titles even if they were performed by another artist.

  • Are you a male or a female? Babylon Sister(s)
  • Describe yourself: Glamour Profession
  • How do you feel about yourself? The Nightfly (ooh)
  • Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: Black Cow!
  • Describe your current boy/girl situation: Haitian Divorce (no, no, no, no just kidding of course)
  • Describe your current location: The Caves of Altamira
  • Describe where you want to be: The Caves of Altamira (not allowed but who cares?) Okay, okay then: Green Flower Street
  • Your best friend is: My Rival
  • Your favourite colour is: Deacon Blue
  • You know that: Katy Lied
  • If your life was a TV show what would it be called?:Pretzel Logic (for sure!)
  • What is life to you? New Frontier
  • What is the best advice you have to give? Walk Between The Raindrops

Oh, and the band is: Steely Dan

The idea intrigued me, so I had to give it a try. And here are my answers:

  • Are you a male or a female? The Great Pretender
  • Describe yourself: (I Don’t Want To) Hang Up My Rock & Roll Shoes
  • How do you feel about yourself? It Ain’t Me, Babe
  • Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine
  • Describe your current boy/girl situation: Right As Rain
  • Describe your current location: All Along the Watchtower
  • Describe where you want to be: Up On Cripple Creek
  • Your best friend is: You Angel You
  • Your favourite colour is: Out Of The Blue
  • You know that: I Shall Be Released
  • If your life was a TV show what would it be called?: The WS Walcott Medicine Show
  • What is life to you? Life is a Carnival
  • What is the best advice you have to give? Don’t Do It

The band? The Band! With a little help from Dylan.

BTW Jay is my cousin, and a great person.

Twitterprompter?

I like reading Andrew McAfee’s blog. I’ve known him for some years now, and count him as one of my friends. Reading his blog is a bit like chewing on good chillies or drinking decent sancerre, there’s a lot of value in the aftertaste. It lingers, pleasurably, and makes you think.

A few days ago he posted this: The Good and Bad Kinds of Crowd. It was all about prediction markets, something I’m deeply interested in. Tom Malone and his crew over at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence are doing some really good work in this field, do take a look if you’re interested in the subject.

Back to Andy’s post. While it was primarily about prediction markets, there was a distinct and separate makes-you-think aftertaste:

Do you have any tips on how to be a good Twitter-assisted public speaker?

So I put that on my back burner. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, primarily in the context of education, and I wanted to step back and think again in the public speaking context.

And forgot all about it.

Then, this evening, I was reading Gary Hamel on The Facebook Generation vs the Fortune 500. Gary makes some useful observations on the reasons for the “versus”. He proposes a dozen “work-relevant characteristics of online life”, which I list below:

All ideas compete on an equal footing
Contribution counts for more than credentials
Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed
Leaders serve rather than preside
Tasks are chosen, not assigned
Groups are self-defining and -organising
Resources get attracted, not allocated
Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it
Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed
Users can veto most policy decisions
Intrinsic rewards matter most
Hackers are heroes

Gary prefaces this list by saying “In assembling this short list, I haven’t tried to catalog every salient feature of the Web’s social milieu, only those that are most at odds with the legacy practices found in large companies.” And that resonated with me, it resonated with the findings that Andy had made while observing us at the bank during his early Enterprise 2.0 research.

Which brought me full circle to his question. How does a public speaker make good use of Twitter? And this is where I found myself:

1. Twitter is a hecklebot

A hecklebot is “A device that allows audiences to provide feedback to speakers using wireless technology to tie into an open IRC line”.  I’ve been partial to hecklebots ever since I first saw Joi Ito talk about it, use it, demo it in 2004. [I’m convinced that there is a lot of value to be gained in using hecklebots in primary and secondary education, but more of that later. That’s a whole another post.]


2. Twitter is a backchannel

This is what Wikipedia has to say:

Backchannel is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks. The term was coined in the field of Linguistics to describe listeners’ behaviours during verbal communication, Victor Yngve 1970.

The term “backchannel” generally refers to online conversation about the topic or the speaker. Occasionally backchannel provides audience members a chance to fact-check the presentation.

First growing in popularity at technology conferences, backchannel is increasingly a factor in education where WiFi connections and laptop computers allow students to use ordinary chat like IRC or AIM to actively communicate during class.

Roo Reynolds has a worthwhile piece about backchannels at the recent SXSW. [Note to self. You were born in the wrong country to be at Yasgur’s farm. You’re past it now,  officially too old to go to Burning Man. You haven’t been to one SXSW as yet. Must try harder.]

3. Twitter allows rich context to be embedded and replayed

If you go to the Roo Reynolds post I refer to above, you will see a link to the video I show a still from. Hearing the podcast is one thing. Watching a Youtube video is a little better. But watching the video with a backchannel overlay is something else. A much richer experience.It’s like smelling the burger van at the soccer ground, you get the ambient intimacy that Clay Spinuzzi talks about.

4. Twitter is my teleprompter

A teleprompter (or autocue) assists presenters by spitting out predefined scripts on to a visual display. What Twitter is capable of doing is something richer. It can make this process interactive, by allowing the audience to influence the “script”.  Think of it as what would have happened if the Cluetrain gang had designed the first teleprompter.

5. Twitter is my ambient tag cloud collector

With tools like Wordle, one could take the RSS feed for tweets related to a conference (ostensibly using appropriate hashtags or equivalent), get them Wordled and shown up on a screen that the presenter can see.

I think there’s a lot that can be done. The hecklebot and backchannel are both great inventions, but they lack one thing that twitter has in spades. Accessibility. You don’t have to be a geek to tweet. Which means that people are more inclined to participate in what you’re doing. [If, as a public speaker, you don’t want people to participate in what you’re doing, I would suggest you take up time-travel. Backwards of course. You’re in the wrong century].

There’s another big thing about using Twitter as the backchannel. Questions and comments are constrained to 140 characters. Which means that the speaker finds them easy to assimilate.

Also, as I’ve tried to show with the Wordle example, the presenter can sense the mood of the crowd by looking at the tag cloud created by the tweets. And tailor what she’s saying accordingly.

The presenter gets valuable feedback loops, questions, directions, atmosphere. Participants get simpler and easier access and embedded context. Absentees get to feel the atmosphere as an overlay on the video. There’s something for everyone.

Just musing.

Incidentally, somewhere in Andy’s post, he mentions that “Pistachio” Laura Fitton will be observing his class and commenting on their tweeting. The last two times I met Laura (who knows more about twitter than anyone else I know), Andy was present at one of the occasions and Chris Brogan(who knows a great deal about social media and public participation) at the other.

So Andy, Laura, Chris, what do you think? Am I making any sense?

The splendour of the web

This past month or so, I’ve been absolutely delighted with the sheer splendour of the web, the incredible richness and diversity of stuff out there. And all so easy to get to. Here are a few of the sites I’ve really enjoyed, mainly arrived at via Twitter or StumbleUpon. Some I’ve come across before, some I’ve visited for the first time. They all share one thing though: they gave me enormous pleasure:

Lego Art: Where Christoph Niemann struts his stuff. Lighthearted, enjoyable, a whole new way to look at New York.

Scanwich A fine collection of cross-sectional photographs of sandwiches; the Katz’s deli helpings look as enormous as ever.

Radiology art The hamburger shot was interesting, as was the cellphone. But this clamshell stole the show for me.

Red Chillies: One of my favourite cookery blogs, written simply and beautifully

I know it’s going to take a while for people to figure out the right things to do about intellectual property on the web, but I do wish they’d hurry up. Just look at the stuff that’s out there despite the poor laws.