Evolving Web

Context is the root of Value

Markets and business are not as rational as some economics courses would have you believe.  Human beings value some things more than others.  We need water to survive, yet a bottle of water is much less expensive than a bottle of scotch.  When figured for usefulness and scarcity, water has been shown to be more valuable than diamonds - yet we pay minimal taxes, turn the tap, and we have water.

Context is the root of value.  Business makes money by discovering and manipulating context.

Business imbues,identifies and enables objects with context and then finds some way to make money from those activities.  In the Internet world, we call this "Monetization", a word that makes most spell checkers gag.

The key here is to recognize that context drives value.  To the creator of an Internet service - like Facebook - the value of that object (Facebook) is over a billion dollars.  Now, let's say for easy math it's a billion dollars and there are ten million facebook users.

Some people wanting to monetize the Internet would want to charge each 1,000 dollars to use the system.

That might not work very well, because the context of Facebook from a user perspective is that it is free.  And if it stops, something else will be free.

So, we have two contexts - Facebooks' valuation of itself (Facebook context) and then the User's valuation (User Context).  We can add to this Microsoft Context, Market Context, Competitive Context... and we have a soup that allows users free access to a service that has value with payment provided by outside parties (sponsors).

Bringing This Home

The average business is ripe with untapped value because its context within the organization doesn't express value.  However, there are contexts that businesses don't take into account.

Companies create vast amounts of Intellectual Property as a byproduct of daily activities that are squandered because of context myopia.

Say, for example, you are a consulting engineering firm and you are doing a series of transportation planning projects.  As your team works, it creates byproducts of value that are not directly related to your final planning document.

In consulting engineering, the deliverable - as defined by the client - is the focal point for the project.  When projects end, often all information gathered for the project is turned over to the client and the consultant moves on to the next project.

There is little institutional memory that came from the project. Thus, opportunities for capitalization on by-products are completely overlooked.

These may come from process improvement, trend data between projects, or the capture of accidental benefits that could be gained from variations in team communication or working style.

By and large, any capture of post-project value in consulting engineering is anecdotal.

Where Might These Gems Be Stored?

This takes us back to the concept map above.  This information has historically been overlooked because it was never saved.  Increasingly it is accidentally saved as an artifact of modern business tools (Social Media). 

E-mails, wiki, shared documentation, CRM, all store the remnants of these relationships and can allow correlation with project data like schedule / budget adherence, team membership, throughput, and work flow.  Hence, process improvement.

The surprise for most companies is: They have accidentally installed social media already.  Information that previously evaporated after a project was complete is now being stored - awaiting value analysis and realization through internal use or commercialization.

In industries like consulting engineering - where the product is highly commoditized and margins are unspeakably thin (very often less than 10%) - social media tools can create objects of value that can provide large value to both the firm and its clients.

Over the next month, I will be presenting a series of posts that demonstrate the existing role of social media in business and daylight how simple analysis of this data can create value for the organization.

Technorati Tags: value needs, social media, business, business cooperation, business analysis, management

Concept Maps vs. Powerpoint

This week I was the closing keynote speaker at the Nlab Social Networks conference in Leicester.  My talk was entirely based on preconceived and spontaneous concept maps created with IHMC's Cmap Tools.

While my talking was marginally popular, people were genuinely impressed with concept maps as a basis for storytelling. 

Regular readers of this blog have seen dozens of posts that directly use concept maps along side the posts. Like here and here.

I was very happy with how speaking directly from a concept map kept the audience engaged, the presentation flowing and  broke away from powerpoints.

And, no, it's not that I hate powerpoint.  I make pretty good PPTs, if you ask me.

What I noticed was the concept map created a flow for the conversation that was even and had no breaks.  With powerpoint, every new slide is an abrupt transition.  It also creates an unhealthy distraction of "What's coming next?" as opposed to an easy anticipation that you are already in the flow of the logic and the next thing, while unknown, will be natural. (Which does not preclude being surprising).

When I showed my wife my presentation she became quite animated.  "YOU SHOULD USE THIS EVERY DAY!!" She shouted.  She, as a clinician, really liked the logical flow of the concept map and how it helped a "big picture" guy like myself organize thought.

The issue here is, I have so many things running around in my head that powerpoints don't provide the structure I apparently need to remind me to say details.  Or, if powerpoint does do this - it's because of tedious bullet points.

CMaps create transit networks of thought.  So each bit of an overall concept is like a station.  You move along through the network and stop and each station to see the sites.  The photo above shows that my concept map has a main-line and a few branches.  And in the end, they are a coherent system.

And, for god's sakes, don't write your whole presentation as a massive concept map.

Technorati Tags: cmap, ihmc, concept maps, powerpoint, nlabnetworks, nlab

Dude, Your Highlighter is, Like, Totally Awesome

Little crazy applications just show up from time to time.  One such is Awesome Highlighter.  Which doesn't do much and doesn't have to do much.  It does four things:

1. Lets you highlight stuff on a web page
2. Lets you annotate the web page
3. Gives you a permanent URL to share / store your notes
4. Accesses the data later in a way that lets the page owner know it has happened.

So, here's an example of my highlighting an annotating a page on my blog:

Is it too flashy?  No!  It just lets you highlight things and annotate.  Easy, elegant, and no added annoying features.  It's thinness is what makes it awesome.

Even awesomer is that it tells you that someone is accessing your site via awesomehighlighter.  It's not perfect, but it is close.  The first one indicates that someone came to the site, the second is the highlighted page.

The only downside here is that you can only find a highlighted or annotated page if someone has actually used the URL.

I think Awesome Highlighter is going to come in handy quickly when working with my peers and through Twitter. The fact that it comes with a fairly short URL and lets you annotate is undeniably useful.

Social Networks are Like Urban Networks

Social Networks and Urban Networks have definite similarities, at Nlab Roland Harwood from Britain's National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) introduced the topic and I'd like to expand it a bit here.

This relates back to my previous work in context, social / built environments and human understanding.

In essence, as people gather, the number of contexts in which they can gather increases.  The number of people involved make long-tail groups workable.

These groups allow people to explore their individuality, oddly enough.  You can experiment with, investigate, join, and remove yourself from the group.  The larger the community, generally, the larger the choice and the lower the penalty for withdrawal.

Groups thus allow opportunities for growth in thought, economics, and innovation.

Previously, the idea was you had to go to a place and do a bit of living before you could join these groups.  This required clustering and migration to places that represented the group you wished to join. 

Mormons in Salt Lake City, film in Los Angeles, Chocolate in Brussels, International Finance in Hong Kong.

Thomas Friedman gave us the argument that the world is now flat - meaning that the Internet removes the requirement for physical proximity.  With the Internet, I can now join communities on-line and no longer have to move to a place to be part of a scene.

Sort of.

The barriers to joining a community that discusses your topics are remarkably low now.  However, there is no substitute for face to face interaction.

We are, at heart, social animals and face to face communication comes with a great deal of visual, physical and psychological cues that provide vital interactive information. 

In addition, physical proximity throughout history has given rise to rapid innovation by providing immediate feedback to people within a community.  Meetings in coffee houses have shown to be tremendous agents for change.

Therefore, even in this digital age, we still have our silicon valleys, our Sohos, and so forth.  There is still a market for physical proximity - otherwise people wouldn't be paying $800,000 for a crackerbox house in the bay area in the middle of a housing bust.  They'd be picking up great deals in Madison, Wisconsin.

But we also have great bits of innovation in Salt Lake, Omaha and Nashville.

Why? Because the Internet allows for the rapid distribution of innovation and that is important.  The world is spiky because we are social and we want to see each other.  That used to be required, now it is optional.

Both the Internet and Cities are networks, they are highly coordinate.  They foster basic human needs and support human growth.  As a species, the Internet will greatly impact our intellectual and social evolution. 

The flow of information, the flow of traffic, and the flow of blood through are bodies all follow very similar basic laws.  Movement with purpose, movement that provides nutrition, entropic systems.

Technorati Tags: nlabnetworks, lab, roland harwood, nesta, urban planning, context, thomas friedman

Your Small Business is Seeing Other People

What is the context of business?  Is it as detached and mechanistic as people make it out to be?  "It's only business." or "I'm just taking a business-like approach." or "Don't you understand that this is a business decision?" Are phrases people use to depersonalize responses and remove them from the personal context to the business context.

This is smoke & mirrors.  Think of any small business owner and you'll know that they are their business.  When the business is happy - they are happy.  When the business is stress - they are stressed.

Personality

Many small businesses are defined by the personality of the owner.  In Seattle, Salumi is defined by Armando Batali chatting people up in the dining area.  When people speak of Salumi, they speak of the wonderful meats and Armando in the same sentence.

So anything you do with your business should reflect your personality and that of your business.  People don't make their buying decisions based on cold facts, they base it on fact + impressions.  If Armando's business is pushing his personal commitments to both quality food and human interaction, people are more likely to pay for his cured meats.

If your social media presence does not communicate your company's personality, it is merely an empty shell.

Familiarity

Familiarity, for small businesses, is vital.  When we call Salumi for meats, they know us.  They sell us strange amounts they usually try to avoid and know exactly how we like it cut. 

Familiarity now reaches beyond the brick and mortar.  Other restaurants we frequent, like Szmania and Palisade will email us regularly with new menu items and special offers for being familiar to them.

These reciprocal relationships are rewarding for both parties. When we go to Mondello, they greet us as family.  Make us feel welcome.  And it is genuine. 

How much extra would you pay for genuine?  Nothing.  But .. would you visit genuine more often?  Absolutely.

You aren't going to charge a premium for familiarity - you don't buy Restaurant Plus subscriptions.  But familiarity engenders repeat business.  For us, Mondello is like eating at home without being at home.

Proximity

Closeness.  The word conveys two meanings: how near I am to you physically and how strong the bond is between us emotionally. 

Your social media strategy needs both.  Mondello and Szmania are both within walking distance of my house.  They see me often because of my physical proximity.  Restaurants and similar businesses will obtain most of their clientele based on this physical proximity. 

Social closeness is vital for the reasons listed in the previous post.  Small businesses need advice, peers, services, etc. on a regular basis.  These are as vital to a small business as customers - yet they have traditionally been in much shorter supply.

We take this scarcity for granted. 

But social networking and social media is changing that.  If it takes me one week and several hundred dollars to obtain legal advice in the traditional way (find a lawyer), but only 20 minutes and zero dollars using Twitter - that is a tangible benefit. 

But it is only possible with a social network that cares enough about you to respond to you.  This means building relationships and that takes an investment of time.

Closing

The needs of business are the same as always, social tools only help grease the wheels a bit.  Are you communicating who you are effectively?  Are you rewarding your repeat clients with familiarity?  Are you close to them and your peers?

If you answered no to any of these, you might want to take the afternoon off, go for a walk, and do a little thinking.

Technorati Tags: nlabnetworks, nlab, leicester, social networking, social media, salumi, armando batali, mondello, szmania

A Chicken's Value Rests Not In Its Flight

FLY, YOU STUPID CHICKEN!!!

On Thursday of this week I spent the day at the NLab Social Networking Conference in Leicester, speaking, listening, learning, and networking.  I'll probably shoot through a few posts from it today.

The conference brought forth a wonderful mix of small business owners, representatives from large business and government, as well as practitioners of various social black arts.

A repeated theme (largely my fault) was the monetization of social networking.  People repeatedly asked "How can we make money from this? You know, not wishy-washy stuff, but real pound notes?"

What was interesting was that the question was entirely based in hard currency and was actually addressing how people could make money from social networks (the infrastructure) and not social networking (the activity). 

My main presentation was on the value of social networking.  That value is based on real needs of small business which extend well beyond the simple acquisition of dollars, sterling or gold.

The value of social networking comes from a net decrease in transaction costs and an increase in opportunities as a direct result of greater exposure to other human beings.

If social networking were merely an object of direct remuneration, it would be a business in and of itself - someone would be in that business, and it likely wouldn't be most people.

But most people do need social networking to build robust businesses in today's economy.  No, it's not necessarily to sell your goods in a village 2,000 miles away.  It's rather to find a group of people who can answer questions like, "I need to trademark a concept, where do I go?  What's the least cost way to do this that won't put my in jeopardy?" 

As a small business owner, I can tell you that good and timely advice is in very short supply.  Social networking has radically changed how I acquire it and the speed at which I receive it.

The value of this cannot be understated.  Opportunity costs and transaction costs are radically reduced - leaving both cash and time as a gain.

It is as if people were saying, Birds fly.  The value of birds are in their flight.  My chickens are worthless because they won't fly.  How can I make my chickens fly?

The value of chickens is not vested in flight, but rather their eggs and meat.  The value of social networks lies not in getting people to pay to join, but in the value you extract from the relationships.

Technorati Tags: nlabnetworks, nlab, demontfort university, leicester, social networking, social media, chickens, jim benson

Oksana Schubert Joins Modus Cooperandi

The last two months have been amazingly busy at Modus Cooperandi.  In addition to starting a new contract with a major European telecommunications company we also welcomed our new associate, Oksana Schubert, to the team.

She will be working with our training programs, as well as providing expertise on agile contracting and performance measurement.

Oksana is a former Visiting Scientist to the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University specializing in Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis (SEMA) and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).

Any further descriptions I would give of Oksana would turn into acronym soup.  She has a unique and impressive background and we're delighted to have her on the team.  Check out her bio on the Modus Cooperandi site to read all about her.

Technorati Tags: modus cooperandi, oksana schubert

The Passing of Shirley Bridge

As many of you know, I spent the better part of the 1990s as the co-chair of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt chapter in Seattle.  During that time I met literally thousands of people who were touched by AIDS and an equal number who were actively doing something about it.

One person whom I met only a precious few times was Shirley Bridge.  She was a much more focused and tireless worker than I, as the link above will attest.

Shirley passed away this morning and it would mean a lot to me if you'd read a bit about her and reflect, as I am doing, on how we can all make a difference.

It would also be wonderful if you could visit Shirley's legacy fund at Building Changes and, in her honor, support HIV / AIDS Housing.

UPDATE: For online donations go to http://buildingchanges.org/support/ and use the Give Direct button to pay online with a credit card. On the form please specify that it is for Shirley's Legacy Fund.

UPDATE2: Shirley's obituary from the Seattle Times.

Thank you.

Technorati Tags: Shirley Bridge, AIDS Housing, NAMES Project, NAMES Quilt, Building Changes, AIDS Housing of Washington