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Productizing_kraka

2009-10-16T08:02:00.001-07:00

Lab: Technology Prototypes

Research laboratories produce scientific findings and 'raw' lab technologies in the form of demos or "technology prototypes".

Lab technology is often entirely orthogonal to the product that will emerge from the process of successful technology transfer.
Nevertheless, we see many labs spending huge amounts of money and effort to investigate the marketability of their technology prototype as a product.
But a (lab) technology prototype is rather an aspect of a product still to be discovered.

A research
finding is NOT a product; a research result - in due time - may become part of
one or more different product.

Transfer: Usage-informed Prototyping, the process of 'discovering the product(s)'

The technology transfer process is really a process of
identifying and choosing between promising ways of "packaging" the
research result with other emerging and mature technologies into something that
provides discernible value to people using them.

Usage informed prototyping adds value to the
technology, transforming unfit technologies into fit ones. Some resulting product
concepts point to market opportunities that are outside the main stream of the
technology creator's primary business, that is, they could become likely
candidates for licensing.

Most interesting systems need to evolve during
development - and after deployment. Watching an emerging technology in the
hands of users is a powerful source of inspiration, made possible by robust
prototyping of the [user experience] design.

Pre-Productizing: Designing Product Concepts

Define the major user affordances of the technology
Identify and analyze plausible and sufficiently important usage domains where such affordances are likely to be important.
Build and design a robust technology prototype to be deployed in the most promising usage domain.

Watching an emerging technology in the
hands of users, in a process of "Constructive Deployment".
Discover product and service opportunities from observation of real behavior.
Observe early contingencies in the usage environment that can be deftly translated into opportunities.

(a) Survey: If any prior work exists on
markets, competitive analyses, etc., the survey will leverage such knowledge
but also complement it by applying a
usage-centered analysis.

(b) Concept Building: provides you with a data based value proposition for one or more
re-configurations of the technology, provides a "sanity check" with respect
to usage impact of such product concepts (may go direct to (d))

(c) Constructive Deployment: In return you
will get both an improved product concept and a substantiated value proposition
with data from before and after. ... It is much beneficial for the
final product concept when the study of the work practices has impact on the
(re-) design and packaging of the technology.

(d) Pre-product: improved product concept, substantiated value proposition, usage-validated
requirement specification (and research data) for handing over the technology to licensees or transferring it
to product development & marketing.

cornet_gdocs_index

2009-03-13T04:28:00.003-07:00

Here are the Links to the Open Documents that contain the current state of the (old) Proposal Text:

(For each chapter there will be one Google-document. The Old Proposal Text Building Blocks can be freely edited.
For the new draft text of the CORNET Full Proposal there will be fresh documents added here, again for each chapter.)

Evaluation Report (Click on link, add your thoughts)

000 | Old Proposal: Project Title (Click on link, add your thoughts)

001 | Old Proposal: Abstract (Click on link, add your thoughts)

002 | Old Proposal: Focus of the project (Click on link, add your thoughts)

003 | Old Proposal: Objectives of the project (Click on link, add your thoughts)

004 | Old Proposal: Scope / SME 2.0 graphical overview (Click on link, add your thoughts)

005 | Old Proposal: Old Workplan (Click on link, add your thoughts)

006 | Old Proposal: Old consortium description (Click on link, add your thoughts)

007 | Old Proposal: European innovation impact on SMEs (Click on link, add your thoughts)

008 | Old Proposal: Economical impact (Click on link, add your thoughts)

009 | Old Proposal: SME Innovation Community (Click on link, add your thoughts)

010 | Old Proposal: Exploitation (Click on link, add your thoughts)

cornet_gdocs_index

2009-03-13T04:28:00.001-07:00

Lev Manovich's new book

2008-11-20T06:39:00.003-08:00

"Software takes command" (pdf), here

"The new social communication paradigm where millions are publishing “content” into the “cloud” and an individual curates her personal mix of content drawn from this cloud would be impossible without new types of consumer applications, new software features and underlying software standards and technologies such as RSS. To make a parallel with the term “cloud computing,” we can call this paradigm “communication in a cloud.” If “cloud computing” enables users and developers to utilize [IT] services without knowledge of, expertise with, nor control over the technology infrastructure that supports them,”169 software developments of 2000s similarly enable content creators and content receivers to communicate without having to deeply understand underlying technologies."

Enterprise 2.0 (short) - Dion Hinchcliffe

2008-11-20T06:20:00.001-08:00

    * Freeform: Only minimal upfront structure, with simple lists, tags, and microformats at first, with more structure later if absolutely needed.
    * Zero Training/Simple: Any barrier to use means that automatically fewer people will use the application or its more complicated features. The most successful sites on the Web require no training at all and guide the user to do the right things. Your business systems can and should be similarly effortless to use.
    * Software as a Service: Online software, with its functionality and information available on any computer, home or work, anywhere in the world, day or night, is the most productive and useful software possible. Installed native software just cannot compete with such persistent availibility.
    * Easily Changed: If a user can’t easily make the necessary change to the structure or the behavior of a system, he or she must have an expert — usually in the IT deparment — to do it, and get in line to wait for it, not to mention pay for it. This simply won’t do when there are ways to put much of this control back in the user’s hands. Using the structure of the Web to chunk up functionalty, the increasing use of feeds, badges, and widgets, will transfer many common IT tasks back to end-users in the next few years.
    * Unintended Uses: Preconceived notions about how an IT system will be used can cut it off from the most valuable uses down the road. RSS syndication is teaching us a lot about this phenomenon on the Web, as well as mashups. It’s all about letting the structure and behavior of IT systems emerge naturally and organically. Having open APIs, easily wired together pieces, and loose and fluid tools helps enable this as well. Discoverability of all of these is essential too. Examples: Not UDDI, search. Not Web services, RSS. Not portals, widgets.
    * Social: Business software tends to harness collective intelligence and even e-mail is social to a certain degree (but darn it, it’s push isn’t it?). Enterprise Web 2.0 software enables pull-based systems that enable people to come together and collaborate when they need to and are entirely uncoupled when they don’t. Enabling just-in-time, freeform collaboration is the key, and so is capturing and publishing the results to be reused and leveraged afterwards by others. Wikis combined with enterprise search do all this automatically for example.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=57

July 26th, 2006
Enable richer business outcomes: Free your intranet with Web 2.0

FAQ E2.0: Was ist "Enterprise 2.0", ganz kurz?

2008-11-20T04:12:00.002-08:00

Eine radikale Umpolung: Alles, was ein Unternehmen tut, findet dann per default nicht im geschlossenen Kern der Organisation statt, sondern im Web - (a) im halbgeschlossenen Netzwerk-Web (Team/Projekt-Mitarbeiter), (b) im halboffenen Netzwerk-Web (Projekt-Partner, Communities of Interest), (c) im WildWildWeb selbst (offener Informationskreislauf, als offene Konversation mit Märkten/Kunden).

Erst dann wird festgelegt, was im geschlossenen Kern (Sicherheitszone) statfinden *muss*. Also Maxime:
"So viel wie möglich der Unternehmensprozesse im offenen und halboffenen Web abwickeln, nur so viel wie unbedingt nötig im geschlossenen Kern."

Der Sinn: Die enormen eigendynamischen Netzwerk-Effekte nutzen, die das Web bzw. Web 2.0 ermöglicht, um Mehrwert zu erzeugen, der sich am Ende irgendwie auszahlt.

Merksatz: Web 2.0 ist Vernetzung als Prinzip - technische Vernetzung über das Web, soziale Vernetzung über Social Software, Informations-Vernetzung über (im weitesten Sinn) semantische Software.

FAQ E2.0: Was bedeutet das für KMUs?

2008-11-20T04:12:00.000-08:00

KMUs sind aufgrund ihrer besonderen Struktur eigentlich prädestiniert für "Enterprise 2.0": flache interne Strukturen, Flexibilität und Schnelligkeit, Grenzen Privat/Arbeit verfließend, komplex ausdifferenzierte Organisations-Prozesse sind de facto zu aufwändig, Vernetzung nach außen (Partner, Märkte, Branche) ist immer ein entscheidender Wettbewerbsfaktor, kollaborative Projekt-Vernetzung mit anderen KMUs ist in vielen Branchen eher Normalfall als Ausnahme.

Die allermeisten E2.0 Tools sind von innovativen IT-K(M)Us für die eigene Arbeit erfunden worden! (Paradebeispiel 237Signals, aber das gilt ganz allgemein).

Aber bis jetzt wird E2.0 paradoxer Weise fast nur in größeren Unternehmen (> 250) als strategisches Thema betrachtet, weil nur die sich Experimente in abgegrenzten "Spielfeldern" leisten können (oder leisten zu können glauben).

"Enterprise 2.0" - ist das nur "Social Software" oder betrifft das auch 'klassische' Business-Prozesse, die bisher mit geschlossener Enterprise-Software (SAP, MS usw.) abgedeckt werden?

Hier muss man eben den kritischen Kern, also die Sicherheitszone des Geschäfts, genau identifizieren. Diese ist NICHT geeignet für E2.0. Das betrifft sicher die Abwicklung von finanziellen Transaktionen, auch Planungenund Kalkulationen.

FAQ E2.0: "B2B - E2.0" - wo verläuft die Grenze?

2008-11-20T04:10:00.001-08:00

Welche Business-Prozesse können davon profitieren, dass sie technisch in die "cloud", d.h. über IP/http verlegt und abgewickelt werden? Wenn das weiterhin völlig "geschlossene Prozesse" sein sollen, sind das eben klassische "Web Services". Die sind aber nicht "E2.0" - nämlich wenn die Daten im Web in geschlossenen Silos aufbewahrt werden anstatt benutzt werden, um Netzwerk-Effekte zu erzielen.

Cloud Services (link) wird dann erst zu E2.0, wenn Web-Technologie verwendet wird UND "Netzwerk-Effekte" eine entscheidende Rolle spielen: Also wenn dadurch, dass Information in offene oder halboffene Räume "hochgeladen" wird, Schneeballeffekte und Anreicherungseffekte entstehen, die auch für das Unternehmen als "Netzwerk-Teilnehmer" signifikanten Mehrwert schaffen.

B2B-Prozesse haben vielfach solchen potenziellen Mehrwert, insofern sie faktisch auf Vernetzung beruhen. Man müsste dann aber den Informationsaustausch-Layer ablösen von dem sicherheitskritischen Layer der Transaktionen von Geld und vertraulicher Information. Also: Informationen und Kommunikationen über kritische Objekte können im Halboffenen ausgetauscht werden, so lange die kritische Information selbst in einem anderen, geschlossenen System bleibt.

Grundsätzliche Maxime: Alle Geld-Prozesse müssen abgelöst werden von Informations-Prozessen. Alle Schnittstellen/Übergänge müssen sehr genau identifiziert und designt werden.

b2b definition (wikipedia)

2008-11-20T04:01:00.001-08:00

Business-to-business (B2B) is a term commonly used to describe commerce transactions between businesses, as opposed to those between businesses and other groups, such as business-to-consumers (B2C) or business-to-government (B2G). More specifically, B2B is often used to describe an activity, such as B2B marketing, or B2B sales, that occurs between businesses and other businesses.

The volume of B2B transactions is much higher than the volume of B2C transactions. The primary reason for this is that in a typical supply chain there will be many B2B transactions involving subcomponent or raw materials, and only one B2C transaction, specifically sale of the finished product to the end customer.

FAQ E2.0: Enterprise 2.0 (schnell und schlampig) - Ist das eine Technologie?

2008-11-20T03:05:00.001-08:00

"Web 2.0 is an attitude, not a technology." (Mc Afee)

"The most simple thing that could possibly work." (Cunningham, vgl. auch Einstein)

Es geht darum, die enorme Macht und Dynamik von Web 2.0-Information
& Kommunikation in einem quasi halbgeschlossenen Raum (dem
Unternehmen) zur Verfügung zu stellen. Das ist in sich widersprüchlich:
Die Effekte von Web 2.0 kommen um so besser zum Tragen, je größer und
je 'offener' das System ist. Und alle Unternehmen haben einen
kritischen Kern, der genau NICHT ins Netz soll (die berühmte, aber weit
überschätzte Sicherheit-Thematik).

Enterprise2.0 bedeutet im Kern eine radikale Umpolung: Offenheit und
Web-Vernetzung ist nun Normalfall, Geschlossenheit die absolute
Ausnahme:

    * Lightweight Applikationen (SaaS, Widgets) statt
überdimensionierter Silo-Software - wie Ward Cunningham, Wiki-Erfinder
sagte: "The most simple thing that could possibly work".

    * "Information wants to be free" (d.h. sozial und technisch extrem leicht austauschbar, nicht gebunden an Apps und Formate)

    * "Information will leben" , d.h. zirkulieren: Fokus auf
Zirkulation von Daten (nicht: auf Speicherung), d.h. data reside in the
cloud. Speicherung ist sekundär, nur zirkulierende Metadaten machen
Info-Objekte wirklich lebendig und virulent. Faktisch: Nur die daten sind im (Arbeits-)Speicher, die zirkulieren.

    * Lose gekoppelte MicroApps (> Eric Schmidt, Google, über "Web
3.0")) mit je einer Funktion statt Multi-Funktions-Software (Widgets,
Browser Plug-ins, auch als Desktop-App-Plugins denkbar)

    * MicroApps bewegen Microcontent - (> Mikro bedeutet hier sowohl
Mikro-Software als auch Mikro-Aufmerksamkeit, was beides in
"Micromedia" zusammentrifft - also in Mobile Phones, in kleinen
Widget-Interfaces ...)

    * MetaApps bewegen Metacontent - die zirkulierenden
Microcontent-Items bestehen v.a. auf Verweisen, die wieder auf Verweise
verweisen .... d.h. die sicherheitsempfindlichen KritischeKern
Informationen werden anderswo gezielt übertragen (in geschlossenen
Business-Prozessen) und auch das aufmerksamkeits-aufwändige
Makro-Wissen wird anderswo gezielt übertragen (in Büchern, F2F ...)

    * Perpetual Beta (> O'Reilly): Klein anfangen, aber sofort, und
immer mit dem Einfachsten, das gehen könnte (technisch wie usermäßig).

    * Design-driven / User Experience-driven: Ausgangspunkt ist immer
die/der User, nicht die komplexe Funktion (die Organisation ...).

    * Netzwerk-Effekte by default (> O'Reilly): Enterprise2.0 ist
nur dann wirklich gegeben, wenn es um Netwerk-Effekte geht: durch
schnellen, intensiven Austausch reichert sich Information laufend an
und weitet sich das Netzwerk laufend aus. Diese Effekte können eher
technisch hergestellt werden (filtering, aggregation ...) oder eher
sozial (Menschen in verbindung bringen), aber beides verschwimmt
letztlich in Gestalt von "Application Design".

    * Überall, wo Netzwerk-Effekte NICHT nützlich oder sogar gefährlich
sind, ist Enterprise2.0 NICHT geeignet. Hier geht es dann darum, die
Grenzen und Schnittstellen genau zu definieren. (Dass sie gegenwärtig
extrem schlampig und unscharf gehandhabt werden, ist eben ein Grund für
die ungelöste Sicherheit-Problematik von Unternehmen, die am
Internet/Web hängen.)

TV UX

2008-07-31T04:13:00.001-07:00

Der
PC ist trotz Maus immer noch sehr weitgehend eine keyboard-getriebene Textmaschine
(einschließlich semantisierter Grafik). Die mobilen Devices
werden tendenziell als Erweiterungen des eigenen Körpers erlebt
(thumb-driven, gesture-driven). Die Einheit von TV-Schirm und
Fernbedienung ist dagegen eher vergleichbar mit einem „magischen
Stab“, der bewegte und sprechende Bilder herbeiruft. Während
der PC-User den Screen als „Monitor unter Kontrolle“ erlebt, und
das Web zugleich als gedankliche Assoziationsmaschine, gehört
das TV-Gerät immer zu einem Raum – entweder als „kleines
Kino“ (HD), oder als „Fenster“ zu einer Ersatzwelt sprechender
Menschen, oder einfach als permanent flackernder
Einrichtungsgegenstand (die Zweit- und Drittgeräte).

Die LMS die! You too PLE! Lleigh Blackall

2008-07-07T11:16:00.001-07:00

Our dam walls of knowledge have burst! and no amount of sand bagging
will stop the flood that is clearly discrediting our authority over
learning. Media, and with it communications, will evolve (as it
certainly has in the last 50 years or more) well beyond the limitations
of our classrooms.

Some Comment ...

Microcintent definition (Anil Dash, SixApart)

2008-07-04T02:43:00.001-07:00

"Microcontent is information published in short form, with its length
dictated by the constraint of a single main topic and by the physical
and technical limitations of the software and devices that we use to
view digital content today. We've discovered in the last few years that
navigating the web in meme-sized chunks is the natural idiom of the
Internet. So it's time to create a tool that's designed for the job of
viewing, managing, and publishing microcontent. This tool is the
microcontent client.!

meta-information ...

Microcintent definition (Anil Dash, SixApart)

2008-06-25T05:45:00.001-07:00

Facebook will take over the World (AOL 2.0)

2008-05-25T13:25:00.001-07:00

saving comment to the lifestream. "basically it's about
metaphors. what is the metaphor one uses for "being on/in the Web"? it
could be "search", or "conversation", or "me & my friends", or even
"research", or "writing oneself into existence" (eg. via Twitter). or
some combination, of course. and yes, most people define themselves as
"social" in a quite simple way (to avoid the term "primitive"). like
"e-mail" (another social metaphor) still being the killer app of the
Internet, at least here in Germany, which is admittedly a late adopting
country. so i fear Josh may turn out to be right."

What does the Web 2.0 Office look like?

2008-05-25T12:45:00.001-07:00

According to Brian Lamb: "Email | Office Suite | FileStore/Share | VPN | Synchronous Voice | Wiki | Blogs | Backups | Calendaring | Project management [GTD]"

To add my view: The Office environment can be described systematically along these lines:

(1) Main focus (email, phone, face2face, workspace on desk/screen) -- semi-focus ("in between" & multitasking, with some focus - like link-blogging, delicious-tagging with comment, ) -- Continuous Partial Attention (partial, peripheral, intermittant; like status & twitter) -- background (the sea one is swimming in, without noticing it, both in realspace and in mediaspace)

(2) communicating - mailing - presence (sensing & making felt)- scanning information - reading texts - writing texts

(3) voice - text

(4) synchronous - asynchronous

(5) active - passive - neither nor (semi-active/semi-passive)

maybe there is more.

Information Work: 3 Types

2008-05-20T04:11:00.001-07:00

adapted from Mark Bower:

Knowledge Work
Creating, consuming, analysing, transforms and managing information
Managing ideas, projects and teams
Starting with ideas, which are then built into a new document/report/form/business process
Working in an unstructured, free-form way

Structured Task Work
Creating, consuming and processing information, but doesn't transform or manage
Finding facts quickly, creating documents, edits, writing & processing information
Working mainly within structured, pre-defined workflows

Data Entry Work
Creating and consuming data within pre-defined systems
Working with standardised documents, files, lists and forms
Working strictly within structured, pre-defined workflows

Anil Dash Copy & Paste

2008-05-16T06:09:00.001-07:00

http://www.dashes.com/anil/2008/03/embedded-journalism.html

Matt Webb Ripped: Getting Things Done As a finite-state machine

2008-05-05T14:19:00.001-07:00

(sorry for ripping, just to thin it over for myself, here's the original:)

Computer programmes are something else that have to not halt unintentionally. The way this is done is to model the application as a collection of finite-state machines. Each machine can exist in a number of different states, and for each state there are a number of conditions to pass to one or another of the other states. Each time the clock ticks, the machines sees which conditions are matched, and updates the state accordingly. It is the job of the programmer to make sure the machine never gets into a state out of which there is no exit, or faces a condition for which there is no handling state. There are also more complex failure modes.

Getting Things Done, David Allen, describes a finite-state machine for dealing with tasks. Each task has a state ('in,' 'do it,' 'delegate it,' 'defer it,' 'trash' and more) and actions to perform and conditions to be met to move between the states. The human operator is the clock in this case, providing the ticks. This machine does have exit points, where tasks stop circulating and fall off.

The cleverness of Getting Things Done is to wrap this finite-state machine in another finite-state machine which instead of running on the tasks, runs on the human operator itself, the same operator who provides the ticks. The book is set up to define and launch the state machine which will keep the human in the mode of running the task machine. If they run out of tasks, the GTD machine has a way of looping them back in with tickle files and starting again the next day. If they get into a overwhelmed state, the GTD machine has a way of pruning the tasks. If they get demotivated and stop running the task machine, the GTD machine has ways of dealing with that. Alcoholics Anonymous has to deal with this state too, and it's called getting back on the wagon. The GTD machine even has a machine wrapped around it, one comprising a community to provide external pressure. Getting Things Done is a finite-state machine that runs on people; a network of states connected by motivations, rationale and excuses, comprising a programme whose job it is to run the task machine.

13 #

Websites can also be seen as finite-state machines that run on people. Successful websites must be well-designed machines that run on people, that don't crash, don't halt, and have the side-effect of bringing more people in. Websites that don't do this will disappear.

Instead of a finite-state machine, think of a website as a flowchart of motivations. For every state the user is in, there are motivations: it's fun; it's the next action; it saves money; it's intriguing; I'm in flow; I need to crop the photo and I remember there's a tool to do it on that other page; it's pretty.

If you think about iPhoto as its flowchart of motivations, the diagram has to include cameras, sharing, printers, Flickr, using pictures in documents, pictures online and so on. Apple are pretty good at including iPhoto all over Mac OS X, to fill out the flowchart. But it'd make more sense if I could also see Flickr as a mounted drive on my computer, or in iPhoto as a source library just as I can listen to other people's music on the same LAN in iTunes. This is an experience approach to service design.

Users should always know their next state, how they can reach it, and why they should want to.

If I were to build a radio in this way, it would not have an 'off' button. It would have only a 'mute for X hours' button because it always has to be in a state that will eventually provoke more interaction.

Designing like this means we need new metrics drawn from ecology design. Measurements like closure ratio become important. We'll talk about growth patterns, and how much fertiliser should be applied. We'll look at entropy and population dynamics.

Maybe we'll look at marketing too. Alex Jacobson told me about someone from old-school marketing he met who told him there are four reasons people buy your product: hope, fear, despair and greed. Hope is when your meal out at the restaurant is because it's going to be awesome. Fear is because you'll get flu and lose your job unless you take the pills every day. Despair is needs not wants: buying a doormat, or toilet paper, or a ready-meal for one. Greed gets you more options to do any of the above, like investing. Yeah, perhaps. Typologies aren't true, but they're as true as words, which also aren't true but give us handholds on the world and can springboard us to greater understanding. We can kick the words away from underneath ourselves once we reach enlightenment.

Matt Webb Ripped: Micro/Macro Structures

2008-05-05T14:18:00.001-07:00

(one of his astounding notes from the 2007 notebook:)

Micro/macro structure is the first of the challenges that faces the Web: Micro Pattern recognition

What microformats and other forms of structure do is increase the resolution of the Web: each page becomes a complex surface of many kinds of wrinkles, and by looking at many pages next to each other it becomes apparent that certain of these wrinkles are repeated patterns. These are microformats, lists, blog archives, and any other repeating elements. Now this reminds me of proteins, which have surfaces, part of which have characteristics shared between proteins. And that in turn takes me back to Jaron Lanier and phenotropics, which is his approach to programming based on pattern recognition.

So what does phenotropics mean for the Web? Firstly it means that our browsers should become pattern recognition machines. They should look at the structure of every page they render, and develop artificial proteins to bind to common features. Once features are found (say, an hCalendar microformat), scripting can occur. And other features will be deduced: plain text dates 'upgraded' to microformats on the fly. By giving the browser better senses - say, a copy of WordNet and the capability of term extraction - other structures can be detected and bound to (I've talked about what kind of structures before).

The technological future of the Web is in micro and macro structure. The approach to the micro is akin to proteins and surface binding--or, to put it another way, phenotropics and pattern matching. Massively parallel agents need to be evolved to discover how to bind onto something that looks like a blog post; a crumb-trail; a right-hand nav; a top 10 list; a review; an event description; search boxes.

The macro investigation is like chemistry. If pages are atoms, what are the molecules to which they belong? What kind of molecules are there? How do they interact over time? We need a recombinant chemistry of web pages, where we can see multiple conversation molecules, with chemical bonds via their blog post pattern matchers, stringing together into larger scale filaments. What are the long-chain hydrocarbons of the Web? I want Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to be mining the Web for these molecules, discovering and name them.

Consulting 2.0: complexity vs. single tool software

2008-04-19T15:00:00.001-07:00

Lee Bryant, Headshift: (excerpts) The current beauty of the enterprise social computing market lies in the fact that there is no product. It is a consulting, not a software market: the value is to build processes from basic tools. Tools are "basic" in the sense that they do not conform the one problem one solution rule that prevails in IT. These tools are aliens: they have been built for individual web-users, not organisational processed work. These tools consequently require translation because they are unfinished products for the organisation. They offer room for intelligence and exploration as they need to be contextualised, mixed and tweaked to be organisationally relevant and compliant. It is this very nature of unfinished product that opens doors to thinking more profoundly processes and therefore, potentially, the whole organisation. These tools adapt to the organisation, not the way round (as classical software do). The level of flexibility and granularity they offer in terms of functionality open doors to building tailored processes, which is a source of efficiency.

A lot of decision makers do not offer their colleagues and organisation the chance to seize the opportunity offered by social computing. When working on an enterprise social computing project, we have the possibility to revamp / enrich quite a lot of fundamental processes. We have the opportunity to rejuvenate the organisation, create new sources of efficiency, competitiveness and wealth.
We often don't because the client is rarely educated for that. There is a whole literature on the blogosphere related to this reality so I won't detail. We have to trace this back to the education of managers. This would call to open the Pandora box of complexity and enter the field of thinking both the process and the organisation at the same time.

Enterprise 2.0 is not only the mere implementation of social computing behind the firewall (what and how) but more fundamentally the introduction of employee participation on managing the organisation (why). We have witnessed how web 2.0, i.e. people participation on the web, dramatically transformed the web. Enterprise 2.0 is there to have the same impact on organisations. Lee and Livio anticipated this in 2002 when they created Headshift.

Social networks are very powerful in mapping weak ties, those ties that prove in reality very strong. Mapping social relations (aka social network analysis) beyond the organisation chart offers a more realistic view over the organisation, the real organisation. It displays what connections are in place to have things work; what arrangements are in place to bypass official processes that are either too old or too narrow to really work. Getting to know these human connections is a dramatic advantage when it comes to managing or changing an organisation. It helps "change managers" change the organisation with less blood and tears. Enterprise social computing therefore helps organisations recover their real identity and evolve more easily.

What social computing offers are tools for idea generation, conversations and collaboration; to potentially all individuals. Not only it renews and enriches the whole process of managing knowledge from a blunt idea to a validated product (product, service, process, report, ...), but it opens doors for having employees voice to participate in improving the whole organisation. Enterprise social computing therefore fuels the dynamics for learning organisations.

But what is at risk with the growth of software instead of consulting is the disappearance of this opportunity window to profoundly modernize organisations and change our lives. One problem - one solution software can only favour status quo.
The risk is to close the Zoo and re-open the Museum.

MicroPulse Radio

2008-04-19T14:59:00.001-07:00

man könnte natürlich den Pulse auch wirklich buchstäblich für webradio verwenden.

man wirft einen titel, wie in MixWit, in den pulse. da ist er dann, in der queue, die abgespielt wird, wenn der pulse kommt.
default vielleicht: 3 stücke hintereinander. oder wirklich nur je 1.
dazu einzustellen: "heavy rotation" (5 wiederholungen), medium rotation (3x), quick scan (1x)

der sinn wäre dann, dass man bestimmte stücke "studiert", also gezielt hört, nicht als wallofsound.
also vielleicht die aktuellen favoriten aus irgendeinem webradio da hinein, in einen loop, der die aktuellen 10 stücke hat.
die wieder raten, taggen und in rss-lists = playlists schicken.

ich würde jetzt Ragoo von der neuen KingsOfLeon hineintun wollen.

IM on e-books

2008-04-08T03:59:00.001-07:00

Markus Flatscher: ...

Anti-Kindle von Charles Arthur im Guardian.

Fand (1) seine Beobachtung interessant, dass die Default-Schrift im Kindle viel zu groß sei, sodass man sie zum komfortablen Lesen kleiner stellen muss.

(2) ===quote===
it would be foolish to predict how electronic reading is going to pan out, because there are two unstoppable trends going on which have been continuing for at least 20 years and show no signs of letting up: people prefer to read bite-sized pieces of information, and people are reading more distinct pieces. Whether we're reading more in terms of the volume of words compared to 20 years ago is hard to tell, but I'd guess so. That means electronic newspapers - the sort that you update at the railway or tube or even bus station - will have some sort of future.
===unquote===

Stimmt sicher auch, jedenfalls viel eher als Steve Jobs hirnverbrannter Kommentar dass mit ebooks aus prinzipiellen Gründen nichts zu machen sei ("The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.")

Ja, ich glaube, dass flashige kleine Reader-Applikationen mittelfristig mal die Zukunft sind. Da wächst auch was zusammen -- weiß nicht, ob Du die neue Adobe DE-Linie gesehen hast:
http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/
Der Reader ist super -- ist wohl die erste wirklich kleine nicht gebloatete, wirklich schnelle Applikation, die Adobe je auf den Markt gebracht hat.

Keine Initialisierung von 500 Plug-Ins, keine Volltextsuche mit Response-Zeiten von vor zehn Jahren.
Ich verwende das ausschließlich für PDFs an Stelle das Adobe-Readers.
Die Bookmark-Funktion kopiert automatisch Snippets.

So was in der Art müsste man als kombinierten ebook- und Feed-Reader haben.
Würde mir erwarten, dass das im Lauf der nächsten 1-2 Jahre so der Fall sein wird.

Du kannst selber beliebige Files zu Deiner Library hinzufügen. (Falls es das ist, was Du meinst, bin mir nicht sicher) - aber wie gesagt, es ist nur ein Reader, die ganze Online-Schiene (feeds usw.) fehlen leider.

Martin: kann man mit FeedJournal hineinholen: das gibt PDF aus

Markus: Was ich auch gut finde:
===quote===
Digital Editions 1.0 supports bookmarks, highlights, and text notes via its "bookmarks" panel. These annotations are stored in an open XML format separately from publications to enable seamless annotating across PDF- and XHTML-based (epub) publications and to set the stage for future social networking features (such as sharing annotations within a community of readers).
===unquote===

Ich hoffe, dass es in diese Richtung geht. Ich bin da vielleicht altmodisch, aber ich möchte unbedingt, dass PDFs eine Zukunft haben -- das ist aus meiner Hinsicht die einzige Hoffnung, dass wir an den Endgeräten jemals vernünftige Typographie bekommen werden (was, wie gesagt, vielleicht altmodisch sein mag, mir aber ein großes Anliegen wäre.)

Martin: wie würde der workflow sein?
(1) Web-Text > merken in InstaPaper
(2) Aus InstaPaper heraus, bei schneller Vorlektüre, in ein Google Notebook werfen, das "FeedJournal_topic" heißt.
(3) Mit FeedJournal ein PDF-Journal generieren und downloaden
(4) alle PDFs kommen in einen Ordner, der ToRead heißt
(5) mit DigitalEditions importieren

Am besten automatisierter Workflow: man müsste sozusagen nur eine Pipe wählen, welche Foodchain man möchte (BOOK oder MICROCONTENT zum
Beispiel), und dann würde das alles entweder vollautomatisch ablaufen oder der
workflow step-by-step für mich zum nachklicken, wie bei einer installation,
vorgelegt.

On Personal Informatics, Social Objects, and Design for the Future

2008-04-06T10:21:00.001-07:00

This is a compressed version of an IM-Interview with Matt Jones (by Ryan Freitas of AdaptivePath, March 2007). I'm re-publishing it here a sort of - quite fascinating - essay. The full version is here. --

Well - let’s dial back the Delorean a little to Jyri’s coinage of “social objects.” He was coming at it from social science, specifically “Actor-Network Theory” where sociologists consider everything to act on everything else - people, environments, tools, and consider these systems to understand how people socialise with each other, mediated by tools, objects, environments etc. So the ’social object’ in Jyri’s thinking is the centre of gravity of some social transaction. And it’s also the trigger… and the transmitter of sociality. The canonical case being a photo in Flickr.

It functions as both artifact and instigator. In dopplr’s case it’s the “trip.”An information wake as it’s been called.
I guess the interesting thing we’re coming to see is that the ‘placing on the network’ is becoming less of a conscious act, and more the default state

Dopplr is about the future. [As a user,] you’re creating a model of the future - a proposal of behaviour if you like. That becomes the social object. Part of the sociality is negotiating and changing that - optimising it before it happens. Which is a little bit of what my talk is going to address - the act of making models together.

By participating in these communities, are are we in some sense commoditizing our behavior? While we’re experiencing it through the proscenium arch of the laptop - maybe. But we’re seeing the ‘everting of cyberspace’ into the real world as William Gibson put it. I’d take the example of Twitter at conferences compared to twitter as chatroom.

[I]t doesn’t help that the formfactors and UI of the devices we have still make us dive through the screen. Our devices compete with the world for our attention. [But our] services are starting to complement the world and our attention… at least they are taking the first baby-steps. The UIs aren’t there yet in most cases. But now we have service designers creating things that give timely amplification to our knowledge, decision making capabilities, sense of the world around us. I’m pretty hopeful actually. I posted something to my blog a little while back about this in terms of UIs that allow us to scamper up and down the attention scale. You can see hints of them in little disconnected piles right now.

[L]ast year at SxSWi I was talking about the mobile as a stub-maker / iceberg-tickler:
- Stub-maker - create a small mark that I like this thing, I need to do this later, I want to remember this.
- Iceberg-tickler - give me just the right cupful of the iceberg right now. And those are the sorts of services that are emerging for mobile.

And its happening much faster now that iphone fever has swept the valley.
[So here, with the iPhone, have we got one of Warren Ellis’ “genuine outbreaks of the future”?] Possibly.
[... the danger of “lost futures,” based on the success of a given device. ... other, more interesting ways of looking at the problem get cast aside… or at least ignored ...] [T]he gravity well of the iPhone is going to be hard for anyone developing innovative UIs to escape for the next few years. In hardware, you’re subject to the determinism of sourcing components

Exactly - the gravity well of the iPhone is going to be hard for anyone developing innovative UIs to escape for the next few years. In hardware, you’re subject to the determinism of sourcing components. UIs will not be so diverse in the next few years… inside a BigDeviceCo you’re going to find it hard to justify the investment in the out-there stuff (as always). But there’s still innovation a plenty to come, its just that for the next few years it’ll be all 16:9 touchscreens, I guess. And then… hopefully someone will Wii on their parade and breakthrough with something as different as the iPhone was to the existing crop of smartphones. That’s my hope anyway. And I think it might be in the area of physical/gestural interfaces, matched with ambient/visualisation tech to give us more natural ‘Everyware‘. I think there are already some awesome things being developed by people like Julian Bleeker for instance in this realm of possibility - he’s making reference designs for physical/digital/personal ‘toys’ and devices.

These are the things that interest me greatly - ‘personal informatics’. Imagine RescueTime extending off the desktop. Scary perhaps… I remember BodyMedia from a few years back and people being terrified of it. I wonder if they are more accepting now? “We’re all policemen now” as Mr. Morrison said. Self-sousveillance for all. We find data about ourselves - these patterns, somehow affirming.

[RF: It's about perfect self-knowledge. All of this data is hidden from us, and we’re the one’s generating it… we aren’t equipped, cognitively, to learn anything more than impressions from our own actions. In attempting to gather more complete pictures of our behaviors.]

... coming back to the social aspect. The overlays of these patterns with those of others are a new kind of feedback we haven’t had at any scale before. And we do flock well. So perhaps that’s how we will learn and change our behaviours… in a “supercontext” if you will… [wink]
[ed note, RF: In his groundbreaking comic book series, The Invisibles, Grant Morrison posited the "supercontext" as a sort of existence/construct that humanity is evolving toward. Within it, the bounds of ego and identity loosen up (we merge into one another) and time becomes something we can traverse like distance, dipping into and out of any moment in our lives at will.]

RF: Given your presentations on spacetime, Morrison’s supercontext (and time travel in general) seem pertinent to Dopplr. Morrison had a variety of means by which his characters moved through time ... With Dopplr, are you building your very own timetravel device ...

[As interaction designers, ] We’d like to increase joy, ideally. But we’ve a long way to go with air travel there… “Commodity, firmness and delight” - as Vitruvius said. In that order.

[Design methods as] singularities that just form from everything and nothing. ... You can pretend you have a process and sometimes process is the magic, the invocation you need to get those points to appear. But sometimes they will just come out of the foam. I think the weird thing is that process is seen as something for reducing risk and increasing the reproduction of predictable results. Whereas I’m more inspired by process that creates something unexpected.

[W]hatever you think of Ideo [Jen Learnard ], ‘Build to think’ is a pretty fantastic way of incapsulating that thought. And it’s cheaper than thinking now [nose wink] With mobile it’s essential, and yet hard to do.

[RF: As a Dopplr user, I’m creating trips, negotiating details - and then the ineffable march of time brings me to these social objects I’ve created and translates them into experience. ... The experience complete, I am left with a (massively valuable) trace of my movement in spacetime. ... I keep generating trips, and my context is forced to move forward, and so what I end up with is a constant forward to back stream of data to explore and optimize. If dopplr is the stream, there’s a missing piece, from my perspective. Something to navigate the stream with.]

I think if you look to some of the Glory-ous work of Stamen in things like Trulia Hindsight you get ideas about UI for poring over the past. Looking for patterns and instances. Interfaces for ‘poring-over’ is something I’m very interested in.

(6) Welche Methoden benutzen sie heute? Und warum?

2008-03-31T09:10:00.001-07:00

(1) Die Leute benützen eine Vielzahl von Tools, um Information zu bewältigen.

Typischer Weise sind das Office-Tools, die der Papier-Metapher der Information folgen, obwohl reales Papier (Ausdruck) immer weniger eine Rolle spielt. Der Austausch der "Objekte" funktioniert von Festplatte zu Festplatte: e-Mails, Word-Docs, Spreadsheets, Powerpoint-Slides ... Der typische Office-Workflow lässt sich beschreiben als Summe von bearbeiteten "Akten", die aus der "Inbox" entnommen werden und entweder
ins Archiv und/oder in die "Outbox" gehen.

Das Web ist in dieser Perspektive eine Ansammlung von "Seiten" in einem "Archiv" bzw. eine Ansammlung von Daten, die durch "Suche" "nachgeschlagen" werden können.

Zunehmend wird die tägliche Aufmerksamkeits-Kapazität aber beansprucht von web-spezifischen, flüchtigen Prozessen der Information/Kommunikation, die sich auch metaphorisch nicht mehr als Empfangen/Bearbeiten/Senden/Archivieren von relativ großen, dauerhaften "Papier-Objekten" begreifen lässt.

Das Zwischenstadium wäre das Getting Things Done-System, das selbst schon auf die Aufmerksamkeits-Krise reagiert und nicht mehr aus Dokumenten besteht, sondern aus Karteikarten und Post-Its, die "next actionable steps" beinhalten und physisch auf "Dokumente" und "Gespräche" nur noch verweisen.

Typisch ist das Nebenher der Nutzung von Makro-Methoden (korr. Desktop PC, Festnetz) und Mikro-Methoden (korr. Webtop, Handy).

(2) Die Leute benutzen daneben vage Methoden "geistiger Disziplin".

Das sind erstens äußerlich vorgegebene Routinen von arbeitsplatzspezifischer Disziplin, die vorschreiben, zu welcher Zeit man sich mit welchen Objekten wie lange und in welcher Folge beschäftigen soll. Das setzt einen tayloristischen Workflow voraus.

Das sind zweitens verinnerlichte, halb-intuitive Systeme von "Produktivität", die nahelegen, zu welcher Zeit man sich mit welchen Objekten wie lange und in welcher Folge beschäftigen soll, um möglichst "produktiv" zu sein.

Drittens spielen eine immer größere Rolle die medienspezifischen Muster von Aufmerksamkeit und Interaktion, deren Struktur nicht "im Kopf" ist, sondern durch das Medium bzw. das Device selbst vorgegeben. "Web-Worker" sind sprunghafter als Papier-Schreibtischarbeiter, weil sie nicht physische Objekte bearbeiten sondern digitalisierte "Ideen" und "Meme". Das ist erst einmal weder gut noch schlecht. Es ist.