What does Web 2.0 mean...

(Update May 06: I've added an attempted French translation of this page in the Comments section.)

(Update Oct 05: original post has been deleted and replaced with a shorter version.)

Web 2.0 is creating lots of buzz at the moment, both positive and negative, and the inevitable 'dotcom' bubble comparisons have begun as the main players go into acquisition mode. I think it is too soon to be defining what is, and what isn't, Web 2.0. But I do think it's important to consider what it means and why it matters. So here's my attempt...

People: The Digital Natives

There's plenty of argument about the rise of the amateur versus the professional, and whether that's a good thing or not, as argued by Nicholas Carr in 'Web 2.0 is amoral' and Lawrence Lessig in 'Amateur journalists and professional trolls'. There are times when being a professional is an absolute requirement - brain surgery for starters - but in the wider world, the boundary between amateur and professional status can be very blurred. James Surowiecki's book "The Wisdom of the Crowds" makes a strong case against assuming the experts will always be right, and here is one example that I found particularly compelling, written by Gary Wolfe in the May 2005 issue of Wired Magazine (print edition, can't find the link online):

Civil engineers spent 4 years studying the deconstruction of the World Trade Center towers. Lesson learned: Disobey authority. In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do... According to engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of evacuation, along with the decision not to stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired... The people inside the towers were better informed and far more knowledgeable than emergency operators far from the scene... [They] answered their cell phones and glanced at their blackberries... News of what was happening [i.e. this was a terrorist attack, not an accident] passed by word of mouth, and fellow workers pressed hesitating colleagues to continue their exit...

Put that in your professional pipe and smoke it!

But there's another element that will influence what Web 2.0 becomes - the digital natives. In 2004, Marc Prensky wrote an article in Strategy+Business titled 'The Wisdom (and Worth) of Generation Tech'. He identified how a generation (mostly the under 25s) that has grown up surrounded by developing technologies, such as the Internet, has also acquired new behavioural skills that will challenge and change traditional ways of working. Those fully at home in a digital environment don't talk about information overload - they crave more of the stuff.

This generation is better than any before at absorbing information and making decisions quickly, as well as at multitasking and parallel processing

They are less concerned with 'command-and-control' hierarchies and more interested in 'just doing it!', whatever 'it' may be. The companies that harness this approach will be the ones who lead the Web 2.0 world.

Process: Internet Economics

We are seeing new economic models emerging from the Internet, currently highlighted by two key trends: The era of participation and 'long tail' markets.

Plenty of people are talking about this age of participation. I first heard Tim O'Reilly talk about it in his presentation 'The Internet Paradigm', and Yochai Bentler, professor of law at Yale University, identified the trend in 'The Rise of the Networked Information Economy'. The 'Cluetrain Manifesto' group have been talking about it for 6 years now. Like it or not (and certain 'professionals' in the media certainly don't), the Internet is bringing out properties that have always existed in people - the desire to help for non-monetary and voluntary reasons, the desire to talk, converse, argue, share... to participate. Business thought leaders are also recognising this trend, Tom Peters rants on and Charles Handy touched a nerve in his book 'The Elephant and the Flea':

"...perhaps we are all naturally inclined to be fleas of one sort or another, shoved against our instincts into logical boxes by our organisations, persuaded by our schooling to elevate reason above human nature..."

The second trend we are seeing is what Chris Anderson has identified as 'The Long Tail'. The Internet is riddled with power laws that have exponential growth curves. But most research has focused on getting to the top end of the curve - the law of the few. Chris Anderson instead identified the potential from not being at the top end of the curve. For example, he spotted that the market for books not even sold in a physical book store is far larger than the market for those that are. The average Barnes & Noble store carries 130,000 book titles. More than 50 per cent of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles.

"...with little or no sales costs, a hit and a miss are on equal footing"

The Internet has opened up markets to a far bigger range of supply and demand. The amateur who writes one book has access to the same shelf space as the professional author. Large scale success for the author will still depend on good ol' advertising and targeting the influentials, but that doesn't mean small can't sell. Seth Godin also supports this trend - small is the new big.

Technology: The Read/Write Web

We hear plenty of references to Web 2.0 being the read/write web, but perhaps don't pay it the attention it deserves - its too easy to get all giddy and excited about the myriad of new applications currently appearing. The concept of a read/write web represents a fundamental shift in how we use information technology applications.

Blogs and wikis are still immature technologies but they will influence the design of future content management systems and collaborative work space technologies. AJAX is introducing new interactive web applications that are challenging traditional software development methods, as described by Tim O'Reilly in 'The Internet Paradigm' and Adam Bosworth in 'Intelligent Reaction'. Web Syndication (RSS/Atom feeds) enable us to keep up with more sources of information without having to search for it. All of these elements will influence the way we work in the future. For the digital natives, it will be a natural progression. They are less attached to PCs and more interested in accessing information through mobile devices, when and where they need it. Traditional rich client applications, designed to run on a specific platform, will struggle to meet such demands if they don't change. The value of an application is becoming its ability to connect to, and interact with, the web. An application without a web connection becomes little more than an offline reader - sure you can author content offline, but that means you aren't participating. Your creations are worthless until you share them.

Whilst I don't think rich client applications are going to disappear any time soon (hey, I'm writing this article off line...), I do think we will see some significant changes in what they are used for. I also think their importance is beginning to diminish in areas where they have been leaders in the past. If these applications don't keep up with the web, they risk ending up serving niche markets. I look at the way my own working habits are starting to change. I used to use Outlook at work and home for email. But now, I find using a web-based mail application more useful for home stuff. At work, a fair chunk of the email I receive would be better suited to distribution as a news feed. Increasingly, communications that require a response have transferred over to instant messaging. I used to use Word to record information and my computer as the file store. Today, I increasingly use FrontPage or a browser to record and a web server to store... FrontPage is my rich client when I have my laptop with me, but I can also update and synchronise content using my PDA with a wireless connection and, interestingly, Pocket Word rules my PDA for recording information - an example of a rich client application crossing platforms... (update #2: in fact, thinking about it, FrontPage and Visio are the only apps without equivalents on my PDA - there's Pocket Word, Excel, PPT, Pocket Streets, Pocket MindMap, Pocket RSS reader, PDF reader, media player, MSN messenger... even OneNote can sync to it.)

Right now, I believe we are at an inflection point for many information technologies and I think the next five years are going to introduce a lot of changes in the way we work. Plenty of people like to promote a scenario that is all doom and gloom for Microsoft and all singing and dancing for Google. I wouldn't be so quick to judge on either count. We do not yet know who will rule this Web 2.0 world, they may not even exist yet. But there are certainly plenty of new contenders joining the established players - look at the likes of TypePad, del.icio.us and 37 Signals for starters.

Finally...

Ultimately, it is too soon to be defining what is, or isn't, Web 2.0. It is a bit like going back in time to 1939 and asking someone from that year to define World War II. Leave the definitions to the historians. What is important today is what this stuff all means when choosing and adopting new technologies and solutions. I think a successful Web 2.0 company will be one that is able to leverage the trends outlined here - Digital Natives, Internet Economics, and the Read/Write web. Instead of trying to predict the future, lets get on with creating it!

Note: Definitions are courtesy of Wikipedia. Be warned, that's the outfit Mr Carr dismisses as amateurish and inaccurate. Personally, I use it for simple research, not to read profiles of famous people, and its not let me down yet.

Web Site updates

Created and applied new style sheet, so managed to eliminate all tables bar those needed to do proper table stuff.

Systems Thinking has had a tidy up

Book note added:

• The Change Monster
• The Tyranny of Numbers

Talks updated:

• Brain Science and Education
• Intelligent Reaction
• Fierce Conversations
• Crashing with the nose up

Articles added:

• Big Ideas - Chaos
• Coase's Penguin

From Data to Knowledge and Beyond...

There has always been plenty of disagreement about what defines data, information and knowledge. If you are using these words when defining system requirements, it can be beneficial to calibrate your definitions with potential suppliers, partners and customers. These are the descriptions that I use. Definitions provided in quotes are taken from the Word IQ web site:

Data

"A datum is a statement accepted at face value (a "given"). Data is the plural of datum."

Data is a set of discrete facts that describe something - an object, event, whatever. There is no interpretation or judgement. Data alone will not tell you what to do, or what action (if any) should be taken.

Accuracy of data is critical since all information will be based on it. In most scenarios, computers are better than people at recording, calculating and retrieving data - in terms of efficiency, accuracy and consistency.

Information

"Information is a message, something to be communicated from the sender to the receiver, as opposed to noise, which is something that inhibits the flow of communication."

Information is created by interpreting data and making judgements. It is a message that should change the way the recipient perceives something. The process of creating information is consistent - the interpretation and judgements may change as the underlying data changes, but the rules used to make those interpretations and judgements remain constant unless there is an explicit reason to change them.

The process of creating and sending information is increasingly being automated by technology. Computers are starting to do a better job than humans at categorising and analysing data, spotting patterns and anomalies, and presenting recommendations. Recent reports have even shown computers out-performing doctors at interpreting x-rays... Fortunately for us, in systems centred around people, at least one recipient in the process does still need to be a human.

Knowledge

"Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience or learning."

Knowledge is created by people experimenting with different sources of information in different contexts. Because much of the process takes place in the mind, it cannot be easily observed or recorded (or automated by technology for that matter, humans still rule here). Knowledge comes from testing, breaking and adapting the rules used to create information. The environment in which knowledge is created is unique - the exact mix of information and context cannot be reproduced and the knowledge created may, or may not, be applicable to other scenarios. In short, knowledge can be messy and unpredictable.

Too many knowledge management systems downgrade knowledge to information in order to retain and re-use it. But failing to capture the reasoning behind knowledgeable decisions risks losing the true value of the knowledge.

Wisdom

"Wisdom is about making the best use of available knowledge"

Wisdom is the combination of experience with knowledge to distinguish between the plausible and the possible, with increasing accuracy and speed as experience and knowledge accumulate over time.

The following excerpt from the Cafe Hayek blog, written by Don Boudreaux in September 2004, compares wisdom to its poor relation, cleverness (and be warned, knowledge can lead to cleverness more quickly than it leads to wisdom):

Cleverness is not wisdom. it is not necessarily inconsistent with wisdom, but too often cleverness is mistaken for wisdom. And also too often, cleverness crowds out wisdom... It's important to be aware that the range of the possible is enormously larger than the range of the plausible. Wise people focus on the latter. Stupid clever people get all giddy and excited about the former.

When Ray Kurzweil talks about computing capacity surpassing brain capacity, I believe it is true in relation to information, but not for knowledge and certainly not wisdom. A computer is a long long way from understanding why animals make what can seem to be irrational decisions. That irrationality comes from behaviours driven by emotion, something a computer does not (yet) have. Emotion has a strong influence on knowledge and wisdom.

A simple scenario

To demonstrate the journey from data to knowledge and beyond:

Scenario:

September 2005, driving from the office to home. News report mentions that anti-fuel tax protestors are planning a demonstration to mark the anniversary of the 2001 protest. Fuel companies urge people not to panic-buy, stressing there is plenty of stock to meet normal demand.

Data:

• Fact: Journey from office to home = 83 miles
• Fact: Petrol remaining in tank (according to computer in car) = 117 miles
• Fact: Petrol stations located on journey home: 2 near to work, 1 at mid-point on motorway, 2 close to home
• Fact: Remaining petrol in car, on reaching destination, will last approximately 30 miles

Information:

• Interpretation: The car has enough petrol to complete this journey, but will run out early in to the next journey. However, 30 miles is ample fuel to reach one of the petrol stations
  close to home, as has been successfully tested on previous occasions. The news reports are stressing that there is no problem with fuel supplies at petrol stations and there is no need to panic.
• Normal Decision rule: It is a bit soon to fill up when departing from office (the tank is still 1/4 full); won't want to go to motorway service station because the junction will be busy due to rush hour traffic; won't want to be bothered by the time I get close to home - by then, eating food will take priority
• Normal Judgement: Fill up the car at the start of the next journey

Knowledge:

• Context: The anti-fuel tax protest in 2001 led to panic-buying - long queues and petrol stations running out of supplies. Chances are, people will ignore requests not to panic-buy this time in fear that the same will happen again
• Temporary edit to decision rule: Check first petrol station on journey home to compare against news report. Surprise, no queues. Perhaps people are being sensible this time...
• Judgement update: Decide to fill up at the last petrol station before home. I think panic-buying will start to happen and I don't want to risk being unable to fill up in the morning with only 30 miles of fuel left in the tank

Cleverness:

• Context: People do panic and start going to petrol stations to fill up, even if they've still got three quarters of a tank full. News reports on the radio talk about queues building and petrol stations running out of fuel, more people start to panic, and so the vicious circle begins...

Wisdom:

• New decision rule introduced: The normal rule is to never, ever, ever, queue for anything - I hate queues, queues are to be avoided at (nearly) any cost. Whoever said the British like queuing didn't ask me
• Context: Last petrol station from home has a queue
• Judgement update: Normal rule to be ignored; will resist urge to abandon queue and fill up in the morning. Risk that petrol stations will be empty in the morning has now been upgraded to high. Will sit in the queue, cursing the stupid clever people (clearly visible by the short amount of time it is taking for them to fill up their cars)

Outcome:

Had to queue for 20 minutes at local petrol station. Muttered about stupid clever people to bloke filling up alongside (his car was empty too). Both local petrol stations ran out of petrol within 30 minutes of opening the following morning... 36 hours later, people finally twigged there was no blockade at the fuel depots, and normality was restored.

Ah, the benefit of wisdom and knowledge...

Interesting side note on this story - different areas of the country responded differently to this mini-crisis. The likelihood of petrol stations running out of fuel correlated to the reporting style of the local news channels. Reporting in some areas focused on the concerns about running out of fuel, whilst other areas focused on why there was no need to panic because stocks were being kept higher to prevent a repeat of 2001...

References

• Book: Working Knowledge, by Thomas H. Davenport and Larry Prusack (1997, Harvard Business School Press)
• Book: Knowledge Unplugged: The McKinsey Global Survey, by Jurgen Kluge, Wolfrom Stein, Thomas Licht (2001, MacMillan)
• Book: The Wisdom of the Crowds, by James Surowiecki (2004, Little Brown)
• Blog: Cafe Hayek:Stupid Cleverness (September 2004)
• Site providing definitions in quotes: Word IQ

This post is being filed on the site under Elements > Process

Distracting Data

A follow on from the 'Dashboard Dangers' entry. Here is a simple example of why summary information can distract you from messy realities, from a different perspective.

From 'Imperialism and World Politics, by Parker Thomas Moon, published 1927 (Macmillan)

...Language often obscures truth. More than is ordinarily realised, our eyes are blinded to the facts by tricks of the tongue. When one uses the simple mono-syllable 'France' one thinks of France as a unit, an entity. When... we use a personal pronoun in referring to a country, for example 'France sent her troops to conquer the Tunis", we impute not only unity but personality to the country... all too easily we forget the flesh-and-blood men and women who are the true actors. How different would it be if we had no such word as 'France', and had to say instead: '38 million men, women, and children of very diversified interests and beliefs, inhabiting 218,000 square miles of territory' Then we should more accurately describe the Tunis expedition... as this: 'A few of these 38 million persons sent 30,000 others to conquer the Tunis.' This way of putting the fact immediately suggests a question, or rather a series of questions. Who are the few? Why did they send the 30,000 to Tunis? And why did the 30,000 obey?

A very different context, but the same argument. Summary information can lead you to make snap judgements and form opinions, when you should be asking more questions...

KPA - The new KPI?

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are being challenged by a new concept - the KPAs (Kids Party Approach) :-)

The following snippet is taken from the research paper "Multi-ontology Sense Making" by David J. Snowden

Imagine organising a birthday party for a group of young children. Would you agree a set of learning objectives with their parents in advance of the party? Would those objectives be aligned to the mission statement for education in the society to which you belong? Would you create a project plan for the party with clear milestones associated with empirical measures of achievement? Would you start the party with a motivational video? Would you use PowerPoint to demonstrate to the children that their pocket money is linked to the success metrics for the party? Would you conduct an after action review at the end of the party, update your best practice database and revise the standard operating procedures for party management?...

...No, instead, like most parents, you would create barriers to prevent certain types of behaviour. You would use attractors (party games, a football, video) to encourage the formation of beneficial largely self-organising identities. You would disrupt negative patterns early, to prevent the party becoming chaotic or necessitating the draconian imposition of authority. At the end of the party you would know whether or not it had been a success, but you could not define (in other than the most general of terms) what that success would look like in advance.

OK, I'm not saying that systems centred around people are exactly like kids parties... :-) but there are some similarities - you can rarely guarantee precisely what your return on investment will be in advance when deploying collaborative technologies, but you do know it's the right thing to do. The challenge is getting the bean-counters to agree...

Here's another example:

[One] credible part-time Blogger on $500 a month, writing from the front lines on their behalf could have saved Kryptonite millions of dollars. Not to mention decades of slowly-and-painfully built brand equity.

Read here for the full story. The article describes how a company lost millions by not solving a product quality issue quickly enough and failing to respond to criticism that quickly spread thanks to the Internet.

Now imagine you run a successful company where operational costs are tightly managed (nothing unusual) and somebody suggests you pay somebody to just write a blog about your products - the good, the bad, and the ugly. No guidelines, minimal boundaries, zero measurements... Not many CEOs would be very agreeable to such a proposal. And imagine asking the legal department...

This is the challenge with any system involving people - knowledge, messaging, learning, collaboration, portals, social networks etc. You know that such a system will provide some benefits and could provide huge benefits to the business, but it is damn near impossible to prove ROI in advance. You will always have plenty of evidence after the fact, but 'told you so' provides little comfort when not doing something leads to trouble. This is one of the reasons why 'bottom-up' implementations of technology tend to be the most successful - by providing value at the grass-roots level for minimal cost, avoiding the need to come up with measurable ROI in advance.

It's not much consolation that plenty of management gurus have tried explaining this challenge:

97% of what matters in business can not be counted - W. Edwards Deming

Oh dear!

If you are not prepared to start viewing people as an asset to the business, instead of a cost, the success of any system centred around people will be, at best, limited by the drive to measure predictable and quantifiable value. How about trying KPAs next time?

Related topics:

• Book: The Tyranny of Numbers
• Talk: Crashing with the nose up
• This post is filed on the site under Elements Process

The Information Challenge

In July 2002, Gartner published a research paper "The Knowledge Worker Investment Paradox" highlighting the challenges faced when implementing systems to retain knowledge. Their research confirmed what many have known since 'knowledge management' systems first appeared:

1. Employees get 50% to 75% of their relevant information directly from other people.
2. More than 80% of enterprises’ digitized information resides on individual hard drives and in personal files.
3. Individuals hold the key to the knowledge economy and most of it is lost when they leave the enterprise.

To show this visually:

1. Employees get 50 - 75% of their relevant information directly from other people

On the bar chart, the blue section represents information stored in peoples' heads. Some of that information may also exist in written form, but we still get the information direct from a person rather than look for it on a computer or in a filing cabinet...

2. More than 80% of enterprises' digitised information resides on individual hard drives and in personal files

We know that the large majority of information remains in peoples' heads. Of the information that does get stored in written form (digital or paper), 80% is located in individual documents and applications, difficult to access by anyone other than the owner/author.

On the bar chart, the blue section represents the amount of time we get answers direct from other people, the green section represents the information we retrieve from private data sources. The orange section at the bottom of the chart represents the amount of information we find in shared data sources, such as intranets and company-wide applications.

That means that, being optimistic, 10% of an organisation's information is available as a shared network resource... so how's that search engine project going? ;-)

3. Individuals hold the key to the knowledge economy and most of it is lost when they leave the enterprise

No surprises here - this concern alone launched an industry around knowledge management. Unfortunately, most forgot to acknowledge the human side of the equation when attempting to suck knowledge out of peoples' heads to increase that 10% pot of shared data...

Why does this all matter? Too often, companies focus massive efforts on implementing organisation-wide technologies to make information 'easy' to find. This includes implementing advanced search engines and corporate taxonomies. All in order to be able to find approximately 10% of the organisation's information. Now, that's not to say such efforts don't have value, I just worry when I see a large investment in time, money and resources be focused on so narrow an area of the organisation's information assets. There are quicker, simpler, and easier tools that can be implemented to help unlock the other 90%, yet they can be ignored in the quest to create the 'perfect' company index...

Companies that focus on collaboration and improving the ability for people to find each other and share expertise typically see far greater returns on their investment than those who focus on organising written data. The advent of XML and tagging to improve retrieval techniques will improve search dramatically, but it still focuses on explicit information - you can't tag stuff in peoples' heads.

Still not convinced? Try this quote:

People are 5 times more likely to ask another person for information than query a system - Tom Allen, MIT

That's saying, 80% of the time, we go to people first - makes Gartner sound optimistic...

• This entry is filed on the web site under Elements Process The Information Challenge

Web Site updates

Finally started to write up a topic that is one of the main reasons for creating the site...

Topic 'Systems Thinking' is now online, along with sub topic 'Causal Loops'

Related topic 'Growth' has been updated, covering exponential growth - what it means and why it matters.

Reading versus Doing

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand - old Chinese proverb

When explaining why it is so difficult to successfully record knowledge in a database (the primary goal of too many knowledge management systems), I use the example of tying shoelaces.

Imagine that an alien just walked through the door, never having seen shoelaces before. In order to avoid being zapped by the military, it is crucial that the alien put on a pair of shoes with laces (humour me here). Would you:

a) Show the alien how to tie shoelaces

b) Hand the alien the 'How to tie shoelaces' manual

How easy would it be to write a detailed, alien-proof, set of instructions on the art of tying shoelaces? Compared to just passing the knowledge on direct by showing the alien how to do it.

Successful knowledge support systems concentrate on getting people working together, sharing knowledge and expertise. The end result will be more knowledge acquired and shared by more people than could ever be recorded in a database. The following quote says it all:

"Knowledge in a database is like food in a freezer. Nothing ever came out in better shape than it went in." - Frances Cairncross, The Company of the Future

Trying to cover all potential caveats when attempting to record knowledge is incredible difficult. Invariably either the context gets lost or the knowledge becomes too simplified to be of any real value.

Now, who would have thought, it turns out there is a web site dedicated to the art of tying shoelaces, as mentioned on David Weinberger's blog. :-)

...so, next time you happen to need to teach a pair of newbies how to tie their shoelaces, point one to the web site and teach the other one yourself - see who masters the art first...

A portal won't slay the dragon

When portal mania took hold in 2002, a simple enough question often went unanswered: "what is the portal going to help you do?" (As opposed to what it is going to help you know.) I tried using the following story to demonstrate.

First, a confession: I pinched someone else's idea. This is based on a story I heard told by Roger Schank, Chief Education Officer for Learning Services at Carnegie Mellon West, talking about the benefits of story-telling in Education.

OK, are you sitting comfortably?

Once upon a time, there was a magic kingdom under threat from the fiercest of dragons. The king decided the dragon had to go, and assembled his most trusted advisers to decide on a plan of action.

"We need a portal" said the Chief Information Advisor (CIA, pardon the pun). "Then we can gather all the facts and resources we need in order to be able to slay this dragon." "Let it be done, " commanded the King and handed over a chest full of gold coins.

And so the CIA set to work. First a Dragon Slaying Portal Committee was formed, to decide on what information was needed, and in what format. All areas of the kingdom were to be consulted and integrated into the portal. Engineering contributed maps and weapon designs. Sales & Marketing cross-checked the CRM system against the War Archives, looking for past relationships with the dragon community. The Project Managers built a project plan (no surprises there). The Lawyers reviewed dragon rights - a lawsuit was to be avoided at all costs...

Thanks to the benefits of personalisation (a key feature in any good portal), the Knights received detailed information about flame-breathing techniques, dragon-fighting strategy and what was widely believed to be the best way to kill a dragon. The Negotiators received in depth know-how about dragon-speak, dragon-lore, and the dragon-habitat. The Cannon Fodder received their own personalised portal, detailing how easy it was to kill a dragon, nothing to be afraid of, you just had to stand in front of one and wave your hands...

The King looked at the Key Performance Indicators on the Portal Home Page. He was impressed, there was no stone left unturned in the pursuit of knowledge about the world of dragons. And, according to the Chief Financial Adviser, the portal had come in on time and under budget. 5 gold coins were returned to the King. He was, indeed, a happy man.

But there was still the small matter of a dragon to be slain...

The day of attack dawned. A news ticker scrolled across the Portal Home Page, announcing the departure of the Brave Warriors chosen for the job. The portal included an integrated media player - mobile web cams would enable live footage to be streamed through the portal and viewed across the kingdom. Business Activity Monitoring would be used to check actual battle progress against the project plan, and Real-time Communications would enable the Strategists to communicate instantly with the Brave Warriors during battle, should a change in tactics be required.

The Brave Warriors trekked across the kingdom, the GPS system advising them to turn right, 50 steps past the next mountain.

The Cannon Fodder were, unsurprisingly, first to go. It turned out that someone had mixed up their metres and yards when entering the fire-breathing distance.

On first sight of the dragon, which was much bigger and much fiercer looking than the mug shot on the portal, the Negotiators wisely dived for cover, congratulating each other for time well spent passing the 'How to hide from a dragon' module on their Virtual Dragon Habitat course.

The Knights were made of sterner stuff and engaged in battle. But none of them had ever actually fought a dragon before. The flames were hotter than expected, the weapons weren't tested against a dragon as big as this one, the dragon moved far quicker than the computer simulation back in the lab at the castle, and the plan of attack didn't allow for losing the Cannon Fodder so soon... The First Knight got toasted, whilst reviewing strategic options on his PDA. The Second fell off a previously unknown cliff (the GPS hadn't been updated in a while). The Third ran away and remains in hiding to this day. His web cam footage has been entered as evidence of poor conduct by the Lawyers and is now one of the most popular downloads from the Internet.

When the dragon calmed down, the Negotiators reappeared and struck a deal. The Chief Marketing Adviser took control of PR, and everyone in the Kingdom now thinks the dragon is a warm and friendly character. The dragon started a blog to further build relations with his new found friends, and even has his own personal page on the portal. The CIA has begun work on implementing a "fire-wall" :-)

The moral of the story... Having information available at your finger tips isn't much use if you aren't prepared to use it. In a scene from the film 'The Matrix', the character Morpheus nails it: "There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path... "

Virtual vs. Reality

Good comment in a Wired Magazine (print ed.) article: 'Dream Factory' by Clive Thompson. The article was about the growing interest in custom manufacturing, where you can download some CAD software, design what you want on your computer, and receive a physical prototype by FedEx.

"...I'm reminded of a stern lecture [Saul] Griffith delivered about the dangers of designing solely on computers: When you're operating in a vertical realm, it's hard to feel any consequences. It really is too much like a video game. "You learn a lot from actually holding your materials in your hands," he told me... "The computer screen is forgiving; the real world isn't."

I can imagine using that quote again in a meeting... :-)

* Saul Griffith, co-founder of Squid Labs.

Sleep

Why we spend approximately one third of our lives fast asleep is a fascinating topic. Someone once told me that if you deprive a person of sleep for 12 days, they die. Have no idea if it's true - can't imagine there being many volunteers to test out the theory.

Anyways, Washington Post has an article about the importance of sleep: Scientists Finding Out What Losing Sleep Does to a Body. Not too many surprises but a good reminder that can get forgotten in an increasingly hectic world.

And a related article over on Wired: Dark Underbelly of Technology. The author might call himself a luddite, but I agree with his sentiments (and I don't think I'm a luddite). I love technology when it provides practical benefits for people and, thanks to owning horses, I love getting back to nature too. Keeps things in perspective - it's all about balance. Mememorandum and tracking a few key blogs are enabling me to follow tech news much faster than before, freeing up time. For me, time is the most precious commodity there is.

It might be broken, but I can't see it...

Good article written by Jakob Neilsen over on www.useit.com, discussing the history of the graphical user interface (GUI), and the reality that the current method of WYSIWYG (whizz-ee-wig: What You See Is What You Get) menus is going past its sell-by date. Jakob then discusses the work Microsoft is doing with the new Office 12 UI, and coins the term WYGIWYS (wig-ee-whizz: what you get is what you see). One of the main reasons Microsoft has decided to redesign the UI is that a ridiculous percentage of feature requests are for features already in the product, suggesting that people can't find the tools they are looking for...

I fell into IT back in 1991, when Word Perfect led the word processing world (on DOS) and Lotus 1-2-3 was the spreadsheet to use (on Windows 3.x). In those days, a WYSIWYG menu was easier to access from the keyboard than the mouse. As a bit of a spreadsheet queen, I could update a formula, format the results and send the file to the printer in less time than it would take to move your hand over to the mouse. When I discovered macros, it just got easier :-) You entered the commands once inside curly {} brackets, assigned a short-cut key and hey presto! Those were the days...

As desktop applications developed, it became more difficult to stick with the keyboard - so many extra key strokes were required, it was easier to just use the mouse. But the mouse was still not as efficient as those early days with the keyboard.

Radically changing the UI of such a well known application is a brave move. I'm still a bit of a spreadsheet nut, and when I first saw the O12 UI demonstrated... well... I hated it. Sure, the actual demos using data then looked very cool, but my initial reaction, when Excel was first opened, was Yuk! I was pretty disappointed with myself - I'm normally the one advocating change and here I was, hating the thought of it... So, with an Excel 12 phobia rapidly developing, I installed the code last week (note: the code is not publicly available, I work for Microosft). With trepidation, I launched Excel.... yup, same reaction. I absolutely hated looking at it. Bring back my menus I thought, I want my customised toolbar. I started to enter some data, started experimenting with formulas to play with the new visualisation capabilities (very slick), but still there was some serious animosity towards the new ribbon that has replaced my beloved menus... and then I closed Excel. I just didn't want to play with it any more. This is the worst reaction I have ever had to a new software feature.

Why am I writing about all this? For one simple reason. I will learn to love the new UI, and when I do, I'll find it easier to work with Excel than before, and I'll wonder why I had such a problem with it in the beginning. But I need to remember and record this initial reaction, because I know I'm going to see it again, in the not-to-distant future. I'll be analysing my own learning curve hopefully to make it easier amd smoother when others react like I did. Conveniently, my mom's a bit of spreadsheet queen too, so I'll have a volunteer to test the process on.

Back to those early days... In 1993, the company I was working for decided to switch to none other than Microsoft Word, and I was tasked with migrating the secretaries from Word Perfect (v5, still running on DOS - that's the old blue screen version, for those who remember it). Well... Hell hath no fury like a secretary losing a customised Word Perfect menu system. You would have thought I was forcing them to switch to stone tablets. They absolutely hated Word, with a passion. I remember spending an entire weekend migrating their blessed menus, macros and short cuts to the nearest equivalents I could muster in Word. And my name was still mud for at least 6 months! I couldn't go near one of them without receiving a lecture about why I was ruining their ability to work, how much longer it was taking them to do anything, how awful this weird GUI thingy was, yade, yade, yade. The list went on and on... But they did finally get used to it, and then they started to do stuff they couldn't do before. When, 2 years later, it was everyone else's turn (email had arrived and the need to swap files led to standardising on Microsoft Office - let's not start that argument), they were the advocates who helped train everyone. Oh how they would laugh if they could see my reaction today. I seem to recall I wasn't too sympathetic to their cause at the time...

Moral of the story: When we don't think or realise a system is broken, we will be incredibly reluctant to change it for something unfamiliar, no matter how reasonable the argument for change is. Understanding that feeling makes working through it a whole lot easier...

The importance of a good user interface

When Microsoft launched SharePoint Portal Server 2001, it was regularly slated by most competitors and analysts, and written off by many customers. Now it did have its challenges, scalability being the biggest one, and some of the features needed (a lot of) improvement. But it had one advantage over most, if not all, of its competitors at the time - its user interface (UI). It integrated with Windows and Office (2000 and XP), and made simple document management, including applying basic workflow and metadata, very easy to do with minimal training. I have seen examples of incredibly expensive IT projects fail for want of a good user interface. From personal experience, my frustrations with Siebel were caused purely by its confusing and illogical navigation. (The benefits of working for a software company? An internal team wrote an in-house client that made it much more usable.)

With I.T. projects, I always worry when the UI gets dismissed as unimportant or irrelevant (it happens a lot), and all focus is placed on 'back room' features. Sure, you need a system to be reliable, secure, scalable, and it has to be able to do the job it's designed for. But it's pointless having the king of applications deployed, if the user interface is so bad nobody ever uses it or, worse, wastes hours of time trying to get to grips with it or, worse still, uses it incorrectly...

...and this issue is multipled 1000x when dealing with I.T systems that require regular human interaction. Think portals, content management, team workspaces, all forms of messaging...

CEOs and the blog world

It's funny how 2 events unexpectedly connect...

I was updating my 'web links' page, putting in the home page links for blogs I've listed there, and was just thinking how most of them were TypePad accounts (I nearly started this blog on TypePad)...

...And then I flicked over to SharpReader, to have a quick last scan of blogs before shutting down for the night... and Loic LeMeur (Mr TypePad) has a blog entry about meeting Steve Ballmer during his Munich visit. It seems that Steve had never heard of him and didn't realise how successful TypePad has become. Maybe he should have asked Robert Scoble about who's who in the European blogosphere? ;-)

CEOs may be wise not to blog themselves, but that doesn't mean they can ignore them completely. Robert Scoble (who works for Microsoft) is up there on the blogging A-list. Seems common sense that Microsoft's execs ought to check in with him from time to time, especially if they're attending a meeting remotely related to social software and blogs - would save their researchers a lot of leg work. I think this will become increasingly applicable to CxOs, but especially those heading up the most visible organisations, globally and at local levels too...

Perception

Ah, the age old quote ' perception is reality'

Here's a couple of web sites with great illusions that show how our eyes can decieve us.

eChalk.co.uk - Colour Perception

PatMedia - Cool Illusion

Regarding the second one, I have it on good authority (my mom) that it works better if you shut one eye :-) Oh.... and apparently if you stare at it as long as mom did, you'll get a headache :-(

I love these sorts of tricks - they can be provide a great intro when challenging peoples' opinions about a subject, something I've had to do in the day job on a few occasions...

Web Site updates

Areas on the web site that have had the most content added during the last week:

Research - posted notes from books, talks, events and articles...
Downloads - uploaded a couple of presentations that I've used more than once (alwasy a good benchmark for usefulness).

Added some bits and bobs to the other areas too, this brain dumping takes time. Oh for a USB connection...

Dashboard Dangers

The concept of 'dashboards' - tools that present top level information collected from different data sources and presented in a single consolidated view - first appeared in the early days of portals (most v1 portals looked like dashboards). They are now making a comeback, often under the title 'business scorecard' with 'key performance indicators' (KPIs). Real-time communications and analysis technologies enable us to aggregate information, analyse, discuss, and decide quicker than was ever possible before, and dashboards are becoming the meeting point where it all happens - new richer web applications and development tools have reignited the trend in dashboard interfaces. In the world of application integration, 'business activity monitoring' is gaining ground, where processes are monitored and updated in real-time.

But there is a risk associated with relying too much on dashboards, particularly when making decisions that can affect business strategy. Having a single 'dashboard' can look nice, neat and tidy compared to switching between multiple applications on your desktop. But the price can be over-simplification of complex issues. The ease and convenience of viewing top-level patterns may stop us from drilling down into the messier, time-consuming details, and those details often hold the keys to real causes.

This concept has been noticed by others. The following quote is taken from an entry over on Steve Pavlina's web log. (The full article is here)

...In her book 'Brain Building In Just 12 Weeks", Marilyn vos Savant suggests that TV reduces your capacity for rational thought. One reason is that TV over simplifies reality. You are presented with subjects in a matter of minutes where everything is nicely wrapped up at the end. Reality is reduced to labels like good or bad, funny or serious, smart or dumb. This harms clear thinking by conditioning you to expect that most problems have a simple clear solution (and, if not, then it will be an overly dramatic solution). But real people and events defy labels. Real life weaves a much richer tapestry than TV. TV skews your map of reality...

Spot the similarities? There are roles where a dashboard adds huge value. Automated management of I.T. systems for starters, where a red alert flashing on a dashboard (and sent to your mobile phone) can warn you about a systems failure that needs immediate action. Business activity monitoring can provide an early warning system for processes that don't produce the desired results and enable them to be changed before problems escalate. But sometimes (in fact, quite often), allowing time is the essential ingredient for success. Compare the following two charts:

The first chart shows data plotted for 1 year, between 1992 and 1993. The line appears linear - quantity has increased over time. It's also quite flat - we might think the increase in quantity is not sufficient to warrant the investment we are making, and decide to change the system. But what if we had persevered? The second chart shows the same data but within 10 years of results. The line is clearly exponential, it just took longer than planned for the investment to pay off. We would not have been able to see or prove this growth curve until after it had happened.

It's not just time that's important. Often, particularly in innovation and idea generation, unexpected 'failures' create new solutions. We learn from our mistakes. Dashboards can be used to prevent us from making those mistakes.

Charles Handy describes this risk, in his book 'The Elephant and the Flea'.

...My first independent command was running Shell's marketing company in Sarawak. There was no telephone line to the regional head office and my bosses in Singapore. We managed because we had to. And maybe it was better, because there was no real way they could judge me other than by results. Things had to be pretty worrying for anyone to spend two days coming to visit me in what was not the most luxurious of places... If I made a mistake I at least had the chance to correct it before anyone noticed. That might not be possible today without a lot of self-discipline by superiors. Fewer mistakes, maybe, but less learning, less responsibility.

Make sense? It does to me. The danger with dashboards is that they encourage us to over simplify and jump to early conclusions that may not be representative of the real situation. They can prevent us from making mistakes, when making mistakes can provide vital learning opportunities. They can discourage us from trusting people to take responsibility and find a solution. We are no longer satisfied with viewing the results after they happened, we want to use the dashboards to predict the future and enable us to change direction immediately. We can do that, and there will be times when that ability provides great results. But we also need to appreciate the risks involved in not giving people the time and trust to find solutions for themselves. Dashboards in the wrong hands can ruin an organisation...

• This entry is filed under Analysis on the web site.
• Related site topic: Growth - explaining the differences between linear and exponential growth

Update: broken link fixed

Avoid Perfection

The most successful systems today are those that grow 'bottom-up'. Why? They are inherently more adaptable and easier to change because no one person 'owns' the design. And being adaptable is more important today than ever before, as the world seems to change so fast. Charles Darwin identified the core element to survival - responsiveness to change. A need for perfection (often seen in top-down design attempts) does not sit well with a need for continuous change.

Read more on the Site Topic: Avoid Perfection

How not to blog

Proof, if any were needed, that marketing has a long way to go to 'get' blogging. Tom Coates wrote a personal blog entry about contacting his father. For reasons known best only to them, a marketing company used a fictional character to write a 'personal' comment to that blog, promoting their product. To call it tasteless is an understatement. Given Tom's a fairly well known blogger, it will be interesting to see what damage it does to the marketing company's reputation. And that's the whole point - in this world, as articulately described by The Cluetrain Manifesto, reputation and trust is everything. What that company did was stupid. They have, at least, responded with an apology.

Found in translation...

One of those weird moments when your brain is still waking up whilst travelling on an early morning flight…

When you ask for water on a flight between the UK and Germany, you are asked if you would like ‘sparkling’ or ‘plain’. The normal terms used in English are ‘sparkling’ or ‘still’, yet the German-English translation is in fact a more accurate pairing – ‘plain’ is the opposite of ‘sparkling’ when used to describe something, ‘still’ is more the opposite of ‘fizzy’ and refers to motion (or lack of). Fizzy is often used in speech but rarely seen in print, except for referring to the true ‘fizz’ – champagne.

Do we hate our jobs?

Was just reading an article over on Business Week Online, about the importance of attracting talent and questioning why businesses continue to ignore the issue (another topic for another post). At the end of the article was a quick survey:

Q: What percentage of your workday do you spend doing things you like to do?

• 0 to 25%
• 25% to 50%
• 50% to 75%
• 75%

I clicked on 50% to 75% to be on the conservative side – admin and dull stuff sometimes takes a bigger chunk out of my day than I’d like it to, and occasionally I get dragged into doing something I'd prefer not to, but not sure it adds up to more than a quarter of my work time over the course of the year…

When I saw the results, well… I was shocked. I didn’t expect the numbers to be that bad. At the time, there were 807 votes with the following results:

• 0 to 25% = 43.2%
• 25% to 50% = 24.7%
• 50% to 75% = 19.3%
• > 75% = 12.8%

Nearly 70% of people spend more than half their working life doing stuff they don't like doing???!!! That's plain crazy! I guess some people feel the rewards they will get are worth the trade off, but I’m with Steve Jobs, live each and every day to the fullest. And companies need to think about these statistics. What impact could there be on productivity and outcomes if they made work more enjoyable…

Related Site Topic: The Employee

Anybody can draw

Sat listening to BBC Breakfast News with a cup of coffee, catching up on my reading pile (horses are fed and it's too early to turn them out). They have a section covering 'Drawing week' (or something similar) with both presenters claiming not to be able to draw

I was recommended a great book that proves absolutely anybody can be taught to draw. It's called 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards

And it works! What's amazing is that it doesn't seem to matter how good/bad your initial drawing efforts are, everyone ends up able to draw with similar results

The most fascinating exercise is drawing a picture upside down. Even with the most simple of line pictures, your drawing is far far superior when you draw it upside down. You capture subtleties that your brain skips over when you look at the picture as a whole (viewing it upside down confuses your brain - can't figure out what the picture is, so stops trying to and lets you draw it exactly as it is).

Map Business

Article in Information Week: Microsoft And Google In Race For Online Maps.

Interesting comment from the Del Ross, VP of global of e-commerce at Intercontinental Hotels Group Inc:

"When deciding on what hotel to stay in, there are two hugely important questions that come before price: Where's the hotel in relation to where I need to go? And what's surrounding the hotel?" Ross says. Maps have become "a critical component to being able to sell effectively on the Internet."

A lot of the news coverage has been all about Microsoft vs Google, but the real interest will be studying how the availability of these mapping tools affect businesses.