Evolving Web

My Last Hong Kong Post for 2006

It is 4 40 am in Hong Kong.   For me, it will be the last time that FireFox opens to this

for a while.  The family was strongly lobbying for another visit next year at this time for the same duration.  ... We'll see.

More than previous visits, this trip was a whirlwind.  Previously there were sick people to visit in hospital, which took the appropriate large amount of time.  With no one to care for this time, we were treated by everyone to food almost constantly.

It was like going to a Disneyland of food 24 hours a day, every day, for 17 days straight.  At one point, my stomach rebelled and I spent about 12 hours in the hotel room being ill.  It ended up not being food poisoning as much as exhaustion and the price of massive gluttony.

I have taken 1600 photos on the trip (I love Gig cards in digital cameras).  So I will be writing more.  I've also amassed more survival tips for Gwei Lo.  So I'll post those as well on the flight home.

At 8 45 on Monday I take off from HK, at 8 15 on Monday I land in SeaTac.  Then, likely, I sleep and act funny for a day or so.

My last blog post from The Marco Polo Gateway Hotel, Kowloon, Hong Kong Using Windows Live Writer

Sino-age: Signage and Wayfinding in Hong Kong

I have said it is hard to get lost in Hong Kong, but I can say that it is very easy to become disoriented in Hong Kong.   One is constantly using a variety of visual clues to locate themselves in the urban maze.  Watching my brothers-in-law drive around town was enlightening, Hong Kong is very easy to move around on foot and awful in a car.

I humbly suggest you avoid driving while here.

Hong Kong has gone out of its way to be easy to walk.  Yes, it is crowded in places and at times. The mash of humanity in such a small space can make wayfinding a challenge.  But, thankfully, the HK government has decided to help with that.

In order to show the detail, I'm leaving the images large in this post.  Sorry if that makes the post really long.

Wayfinding Posts

Nearly every major corner in Hong Kong has wayfinding posts.  Here you can see that this post shows us how to get to attractions (in pink) and facilities (in blue).  In this case, this corner in Diamond Hill is near Buses, the MTR station, washrooms, the Nan Lian Garden and the Chi Lin Buddhist Nunnery.

These posts are vital.  Most tell you the nearest MTR station which, for me, is the backbone of wayfinding in Hong Kong.

Next you'll notice that there aren't a lot of major streets in Hong Kong.   This aerial shows that the coffee shop I'm in is on Canton Road.  Then there's a park (that green thing at the top) and then another major road - Nathan Road.  Street signs are everywhere.  Even if you wander down a thin or curvy street, you should find your way out again merely by coming back up against one of the major roads.

The MTR Subway

The MTR is the backbone of Hong Kong.  It adds so much coherence to the city.  Without it, there would be no wayfinding.

Once you find your way to a station, maps are provided that make life easy. 

Here is an MTR system map that shows the entire subway system as it really runs.  As a visitor, both this map and the schematic shown in the next section are vital.  This map shows each station and - most importantly whether that station is in Kowloon, Hong Kong or Lantau.  There's a big difference and the schematic glosses over them.

This map shows the station area.  You see the physical station layout (in pink) over the road network.  Each area within the road network also shows major destinations, office buildings and transfers to other types of transportation.  This one in Central shows the central station, admiralty station, ferries to the outer islands and transfer to the fast train to the airport.  This is complete with pictures for people who are unfamiliar with their destination.

Each exit in turn has major destinations printed just before the stairs or escalators out.  This gives you one last bit of reassurance that you are, indeed, going the right way.

Each station also provides a station layout map.  This map shows the platforms, the directions of the trains, the lifts or escalators or stairs, shops in the station, exits, washrooms and other amenities.  This allows for in-station wayfinding.  

Wayfinding isn't all about physical movement.  Movement requires actions.  In this case, the actions have different fares associated with them.  This map shows your current location, the stops on all the other MTR lines, the major destinations at those stops and the fares to get to each stop.  This table doesn't force you to cross reference with other maps.  Just look for the stop and the destination and you know your fare.

The last bit of wayfinding is the payment type.  This is likely the least important, but these show the various types of octopus or other cards you can use on MTR to get around.

So, in Hong Kong there are many tools to use for wayfinding.  When compared to wayfinding in the typical American suburb, Hong Kong is clearly easier to get around.  When I compare clear signage and coherence - even with 12 million people around - to, say, Arvada Colorado, I'll take wayfinding in Hong Kong.

 

 

Technorati tags: wayfinding, hong Kong, arvada, colorado, signage, MTR, subways

Blogged at a Starbucks in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong, Using Windows Live Writer

Photos of Hong Kong v. 1

You would not believe how hard it is to get a few minutes away to blog.  Don't people here know what's important?  ;-)

Although I've been to HK many times, I've not really done an adequate photo shoot.  So, here we go.

These images are all stored on Flickr, so you can go get the larger versions should you desire.

Hong Kong - Random Glimpses

	We came to Hong Kong to celebrate the birth of my new niece Sophie.  She was the fifth IVF attempt for my brother-in-law Roy and his wife Judy.  They magazines came out for a whole photo shoot of the new family, calling her a Million Dollar Baby, as the five IVF's ran them about $1Million HK.
	While it's not too exciting, the completist in me wants to put shots of our hotel room, where the room and the bathroom are both equally large.  We are staying at the Marco Polo Gateway in Tsim Sha Tsui.
	Being an early riser, I am up and before 8 am.  In HK people wake up late and stay up very late. Here is 8 am in Tsim Sha Tsui and then 10 am. Hong Kong is very clockwork.  In the next set of pictures I'll show HK at 1 am.
	Just to show that HK isn't all the small, windy streets, HK has a very clear designation of street types.  In the US, you often can't tell the difference between an arterial and a local street because all our streets are so damn wide.  In HK, local streets are very thin while arterials, like this one, are appropriately sized.  (This was also at 8 am)
	Hong Kong has the cleanest, safest, smoothest, nicest subway on the planet.  The signage in here is gorgeous.  I'll have a separate post on signage in HK.  I'm also planning one on wayfinding in general.
	As you can see from these two photos, the HK subway (The MTR) is double doored.  This not only has the benefit of being safe, but also makes the stations quiet and cleaner. In addition, the station air quality is higher and you lose the stale "tunnel air" that you often find in subways.
	Every doorway on every train includes a status / subway map which shows the direction of the train, the upcoming stop, transfer points and the appropriate side of the train to exit from.
	This is a shot for my mother.  When we were kids, my mother used to belong to the Junior League - a do-gooder group of housewives of the upwardly mobile. One of their events was a charity bowling league thing.  Since housewives of the upwardly mobile had kids, they needed daycare and the Ponderosa Bowl in Omaha had daycare.  In there they'd give the kids toast and Coke. My mother thought this was ridiculous. "But the kids love it." the bowling alley daycare people said.  So here, in HK, I found this menu holder clearly showing the international love of toast and Coke.
	Here's a rare photo from my camera with me in it on the Peak Tram, which is a counterbalanced cable car that hauls people to and from the Peak - a neighborhood and destination high above Hong Kong
	At the peak, you can see down into Hong Kong and across the harbor to Kowloon.  On this day, there was a storm heading in, which trapped the air pollution against the mountains (sort of like it does in Denver) and you can see the result here.  It appears Hong Kong is on fire. The locals have confirmed that since we were last here, the air pollution has more than doubled.  Some people blame it on Mainland China, but it isn't hard to see HK's two coal burning power plants (with no air scrubbers) and multitude of unfiltered diesel engines as adding to the problem.  It's pretty much 1973 Los Angeles here at the moment.
	Here is the peak tram coming up to the station on the peak.

I'm gathering specific food, transit, wayfinding, nighttime and other photo groups, which I will blog in due course.

Now I'm off to talk to some dharma masters at a local Buddhist temple.  Then I am having dim sum.  Later this week, I meet with some people at the HK government to discuss some Intelligent Transportation Systems projects that are coming up.

Technorati tags: hong Kong, urban planning, babies, IVF, junior league, omaha, MTR, subways

Blogged at A Starbucks in Tsim Sha Tsui Hong Kong  Using Windows Live Writer and my newly installed flickr, text template and table plug-ins.

Gwei Lo Hong Kong Survival Guide Part II

I have some to add to my Hong Kong survival post yesterday.  And will add still more later after I get the proper USB cable for my camera.

But a few other things.

1. Air Conditioning and the Out of doors

In HK there are many air conditioners running all the time.  Most are stuck on the sides of buildings, which means the are overhead and dripping water.  Usually it helps to walk under awnings.  If there are no awnings, watch for wetness on the ground and walk around it.  It may not be much water to walk over, but you are walking under too.

2. Feeling tired of the air pollution?

As I mentioned yesterday, the air pollution here has gotten much worse lately.  Popping through one on Hong Kong's many several block long indoor shopping malls or walking through the subway is a great way to breathe filtered air.

3. ... but I never saw it coming....

Gwei Los are famous for getting run over by cars.  Don't do that.  HK has one way streets that are marked at their entrances but you may not be crossing at an entrance.  Always look both ways, even if the street is hardly narrow enough for a car. 

I'll get those pictures up in a few hours.

Blogged using TypePad at the Marco Polo Gateway Hotel, Hong Kong.

Gwei Lo Hong Kong Survival Guide

Hong Kong is like my second home, after Vancouver BC.  So second and half, maybe.  The moment I arrive here, I feel like I've never left.

I realized this when I arrived this time and, at 1 am we were in a taxi after taking the train in from the Airport.  I was all ready to drop my bags and head out for something to eat.  I was instantly energized after my nearly 16 hours of travel time.

We got to our hotel, checked in, got on the net and I checked in with the office and then went to get some food.   I quickly did what I always do - orient myself to necessities and realized that I had some survival techniques that might be shared to my fellow Gwei Lo who may come over and have no idea what to do.

So, first a little Hong Kong 101

Hong Kong wants to give you some food, put a shirt on your back, and take your money.  You can rank order these any way you want - and take your money should probably be at the top.  But you can eat here non-stop and people generally do enjoy it if you enjoy it. 

Hongers can be brusque, hurried, stressed people.  However, I've found that if I look relaxed and like I'm enjoying myself, they quickly follow suit.  Hongers communicate through and with food.  It de-escalates tension and provides neutral space for enjoyment.  This elevates its importance way higher than one would expect and results in the best restaurants you'll find anywhere.  If you serve bad food, people quickly stop coming.

If you are buying anything, electronics, clothes, whatever, keep an octet calculator in your head.  Divide the cost (for Americans) by 8 and that's its cost in the US dollars.  If you don't think it's a good price, make a face and say, "Really?" 

If they want to bargain, they'll offer something else.  If not, just leave and look elsewhere.  True bargaining I leave to Hongers.  Also, it doesn't matter if a Honger can get it for 20% less, bargains are relative - if you think it is a good deal, buy it.

Oh, and you're in freaking Hong Kong, okay?  Don't come here and buy a bunch of crap you can get at your local mall in the states.  Make the most of Hong Kong. 

As you can tell, I like Hong Kong a lot.  It's an all night city, I'll have pictures of no one out in the morning and everyone out at night.    There is no shortage of things to do and therefore I'll list none in this post.  Look under Hong Kong in my topics for individual things I did.  But my list would be a skimming.

I would never say that Hong Kong, as much as I love it, doesn't suck horribly.  I swear, the official songbird of Hong Kong is the jackhammer.  There are people and cars and even the walk / don't walk signs blare at you to tell you when it is okay to cross. 

The air pollution here is really nasty now, since China went crazy for industrialization and has almost zero environmental regulations.  So you get a lot of effluvia from China.  Also, much like New York City, Hong Kong can be very smelly.

Hong Kong is also geographically isolated, being an island and a hillside.  There's something like 12 million people here.  This means it has the development to sustain all night living and great restaurants.  But it also means you are jostled everywhere you go.  But when you break the 5'10 line, you can see over everyone.

When you arrive and get to your hotel or place of residence, locate your nearest Watson's.  You may think you never go to the drug store at home, but away you'll want to know exactly where it is.  Watson's is easy to spot a mile away, whether the sign is in English or Chinese, due to its consistent blue and green branding.

This is the only place in HK you'll find Maalox or Saline Solution or several other things you may be used to.  If you do not do this first, I will not be responsible.

I am quite used to talking dog syndrome, I will walk into a place and speak Cantonese to a person and they will be confused.  I know my diction is perfect, but they are surprised to hear a white guy speaking Cantonese. 

You might think this is a good reason not to bother learning any Cantonese.  After all Cantonese is less of an actual language and more of a torture device.  It is seriously the hardest to learn language I've ever encountered.  There are elements of it that I swear were developed by sadistic linguist bastards anxious to cause international incidents and embarrassment.

However, if you know what certain things are and can say things like "mincee gnau yoch jok, yut tiew yao tiew, mm goy" which means Minced Beef Jok and Chinese Donut, please, people think you walk on water.  You get great service, people are happy to see you the next day, and you quickly get adopted.  Simply for ordering breakfast.

That's a fairly low barrier of entry and I like to take it.  Again, food is the best, safest way to do that. 

And, whatever you do, Hong Kong isn't Tokyo.  And no matter how polite you want to be, don't pull out your Japanese and say "Hai Do Mo" here.  It means something very very crude in Cantonese.   So crude, in fact, it's what led me to the sadistic linguist theory.

The Octopus card is a stored value card sort of between a credit card and a card key to open an office door in thickness.  With it you can ride the subway and buses, but it's also accepted at most convenience stories (7-11, Welcome), grocery stores (City Supers), restaurants, stores, coffee shops.  If you want to avoid dealing with credits cards and cash, getting an Octopus Card and loading it was $3000 or so is a great way to get around town.

I tell people that it's impossible to get lost in HK, but I know that's not fair.  People can get lost in their own bathroom under the right conditions.  So here's what I would recommend:

1. Look for MTR exits.  They show up all the time.  Know your way from your MTR stop to your hotel.  Then, if you are ever anywhere and lost in Hong Kong or Kowloon, find a subway station, look at the map, and reorient yourself.

2. Watch the major streets.  HK and Kowloon aren't that big.  Unless you do some serious walking, major streets should be an excellent guide.

3. Parks.  Surprised?  Hong Kong has a lot of parks and they are generally easy to spot down view corridors.  They are also excellent wayfinding tools.  (click on this link to see a map of Tsim Sha Tsui, select map and satellite and note the parks)

4. Don't use shops.  You can walk five blocks and see four 7-11s, two Circle-Ks, three McDonalds ... so even if you use stateside multinationals as your guide, you will be screwed.

5. Ask someone.  I find I know my way around HK better than many people who actually live here.  They tend to just stop strangers and ask.

It's a lot easier to get on the net than it was when I started to come to HK.  But that's true globally.  For the most part, the Starbucks plague is just as virulent here as in the states.  You can usually find one. 

Simply boot up, sign in for Netvigator service.  And go.

Also, get Plazes.  You'll find many wifi locations mapped on plazes by myself and others.  I'm ourfounder on plazes.  Add me as a contact!

HK is very safe.  I've been out at all times of the day and night in most parts of the city.  There are pickpockets, those also come with density.  But, you get the difference between robbed at gunpoint in Los Angeles or someone lifting your wallet and disappearing ... I'll take the latter.

Anyway, I deal with this by wearing tightish jeans, carrying my wallet and ID in my front pocket and wearing my blackberry holster backward - with the blackberry basically pushing into my side.

Pickpockets in HK and elsewhere love to cut open your clothes to get at your wallet.  That makes the back pocket easy for them to get at.

I've never had the pleasure of someone picking my pocket here.  One guy tried once on the tram in Prague.  I merely had to acknowledge his existence and he stopped and went away.  Pickpockets generally are not violent, just thieves.

Don't get too big for your britches.  Thieves are also not lawful.  Your goal is to get rid of them with a glance, not teach them a lesson.

Boy, I sure can go on about food.  For a foodie, Hong Kong is a must visit.  Eating here is simply heaven. 

Like everywhere else, the best looking restaurant isn't always the best food.  My wife and I seem to have a sixth sense for good food and when we know a place will be good it generally is.  Even if it's about to fall over. 

In HK, there's a lot of shiny, new, pretty restaurants that are good but not great.  There are places located in a barely standing 1960s concrete building with chairs in the street where you can get the best food ever.  Of course, there are also nice looking good restaurants.

So what to do?  First, trust your instincts and allow yourself time to refine your instincts. 

Second, eat everything.  I don't care if it looks out of the ordinary - which for you there will be stuff that is. But, again, you paid money to come all the way to Hong Kong - eat the damn food.  If you don't like it, don't eat it again.  But give yourself a chance to find out what you actually do like.

And this isn't Mexico.  I've had no problem with drinking water.  Having said that, everyone likes bottled water everywhere.

I'll post pictures and discuss more of these things in detail later.  But now, I'm going to go eat and do things.

Technorati tags: Hong Kong, Cantonese, Chinese Food, China, MTR, octopus, urban planning, urban form, wayfinding

Written at the Star House Starbucks in Kowloon, Hong Kong with Windows Live Writer.

Monday Morning in Hong Kong

Well it's Monday morning here, but 5 PM in Seattle on Sunday.  So no real scrum for this morning (or late last night).  I have promised several some shots of urban planning / transit / community in Hong Kong.  I've been gathering pictures - but I didn't bring the proper USB cable and Fuji saw fit to have the most unused USB type on their camera.  So I bought a travel USB kit (very cool) still without the proper end.  I'll get the proper end today and start putting things up on Flickr.

My post yesterday on Yahoo!'s peanut butterism had some pretty nice legs - may have been one of my highest one-day reads.  I'm glad.  I noticed a lot of other people calling for change at the top, wanting to see the Yahoo! structure killed, etc.  I still feel that focus on one person is incorrect.  (Although, for some good reasons why Terry may want to step down, read Eric Jackson's post.)

Now, it may be that Terry Semel needs to go.  I'm not saying one way or the other.  What I'm saying is that this is systemic failure - as Katrina was systemic failure.  If Yahoo! focuses on changing just Semel, it's like letting "Brownie" go and thinking that fixes the problem.

As for the Vision and the CEO, Wall Street may think one thing, but the CEO does not SET the Vision, the CEO elucidates, communicates and perhaps extends the vision.  A CEO that sets a vision is a dictator.  The change required at Yahoo! cannot suffer a dictator. 

Change at the top, for a systemic problem like this, is like shoveling snow of the tip of an iceberg.

Having said this, the CEO can certainly be an impediment to conversation.  Bill Clinton used to have town hall meetings where people would ask him questions - sometimes these people disagreed with Clinton.  The result was images of disharmony and confrontation.  But they asked questions, they got answers and there was discussion. 

George Bush's town hall meetings are invite only for supporters.  The result is Orwellian agreement and staged harmony.  There is no discussion.

It is much easier for people to govern if they are able to control perception.  If Semel goes along with my ideas, Semel will have to be ready to some disharmony, some nasty blogging, and some outright anger.  This is healthy and normal.

It's much like going to get a massage.  Your body stores up chemicals in your tissues when you are under stress and these chemicals are nasty.  So, you have a massage, and you drink a lot of water to flush those chemicals.  If you don't, it'll make you sick.  Yahoo! needs a massage.

Right now, if you look at my company as a dictatorship, there must be chaos.  There are no leaders.  Both William and I are out of the country in Paris and Hong Kong.  How can the company function? 

Well, it functions and will function because we have communication and we have trust.   Now that we've entered a major development, the upper managers are becoming less relevant.  The project direction is understood by all, the features and tasks are in our VersionOne, they don't have to wait for us to tell them a vision.

As we get further along into development, William and I should become almost inert.  Like the head of the senate.  We'll sit there and be tie-breaker votes, but the team will plan the iterations, develop the software, and expand the vision.

As we've seen recently, being a dictator doesn't pay.  It gets you executed, bad hair or at least low low approval ratings.   I'd like to avoid any of those three outcomes, I think Terry Semel would too.

Technorati tags: Yahoo!, version One, agile management, massage

When Life Gives You Peanut Butter, Make Peanut Butter Cookies

I woke up this morning and took a walk around Tsim Sha Tsui.  I took some pictures and got some exercise.  I'm trying to ward of a cold that is desperately trying to take over my Hong Kong trip.

I plopped myself down in a Starbucks and got ready to write about urban planning, walkability and Kowloon when ... no USB cable for the camera.

Lucky for me it's an historic day.  Today is the day of the Peanut Butter manifesto - when, willingly or not, Yahoo! open-sourced their business strategy.

I've written quite a bit about Yahoo! and how I thought it lacked coherence.  Bard Garlinghouse writes a small memo, which I choose to believe was intentionally leaked.  I choose to believe that because I want to believe that Yahoo! is smart.  Leaking this is smart.  They get tons of free advice from bloggers - many of whom have started companies, worked on problems like this, and have valuable input.

I humor myself by joining these ranks.

Brad says: 

We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything -- to everyone. We've known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. We are scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silos that far too frequently don't talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn't to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics.

The being frightened part is true.  Being a major player doesn't feel good enough when the other major players gang up on you.  Yahoo! needs to understand that they are already huge, already have brand recognition, already have great products.

Yahoo! seems to need to be taken out for a walk in the park, with a reassuring hug and "You're a good person, Yahoo!  Really you are."

As far as reactive, Google just bought YouTube for $1.65 billion precisely to stop Yahoo! from buying it.  It was an ill-advised purchase made by a company that is equally reactive, but currently loaded with Yahoo!'s previous hubris.  But that, to me, says Yahoo! is still perceived as a threat by Google and Google is willing to spend a whole lot of money to neutralize that threat.

This can make Yahoo! feel attacked, but I'd suggest they feel worthy of attack. 

Brad also says:

Equally problematic, at what point in the organization does someone really OWN the success of their product or service or feature? Product, marketing, engineering, corporate strategy, financial operations... there are so many people in charge (or believe that they are in charge) that it's not clear if anyone is in charge. This forces decisions to be pushed up - rather than down. It forces decisions by committee or consensus and discourages the innovators from breaking the mold... thinking outside the box.

I have no idea what he's talking about here.  He seems to be calling for centralization and decentralization simultaneously.  And, I'm sorry, people should be caned for saying "thinking outside the box."

Here would be my suggestion for enterprise-wide empowerment of Yahooligans:

1. Create an internal wiki or similar group decision making tool. 

2. Create a game wherein everyone in the company devises the perfect unifying vision of Yahoo

3. Let the game refine the vision

4. Be in awe at the resulting vision

5. Let the Vision become CEO

6. Ask the staff, "what do you want to work on?"

7. Balance time between what team members want to work on and some assigned tasks that no one wanted to work on.

8. Keep the vision fresh and in focus

9. Set an aggressive and slightly unreasonable schedule.

10. Almost make the schedule.

Ownership is bullshit.  Ownership is fleeting.  Ownership, centralized in one person, creates politics.

Yahoo! staff, for the most part, want the company to succeed, they want a mission, and they want to play their part.

That is true ownership.

I could list what I think the vision for Yahoo! should be.  In fact, I have very strong feelings about it.  I also truly believe that if Yahoo! can do this, they will make Google look like a chaotic upstart and Microsoft look like a sluggish elitist. 

Yahoo! can do it.

But Greg is right when he notes:

We lack decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions are either not made or are made when it is already too late. Without a clear and focused vision, and without complete clarity of ownership, we lack a macro perspective to guide our decisions and visibility into who should make those decisions. We are repeatedly stymied by challenging and hairy decisions. We are held hostage by our analysis paralysis.

Yahoo!'s internal politics lead to apathy.  Obtaining a decision is much more cumbersome than going to get some coffee and ignoring the inspiration. 

The inclination of Yahoo! will be to get consultants to make a top-down approach to overhauling the organization.  Yahoo! has a great crowd from which to derive wisdom.  Yahoo! needs to live up to their "!" and make overhauling the company part of the game.

And, you know what Greg, you do that and you won't have to worry about this one:

3. Execute a radical reorganization

a) The current business unit structure must go away.

b) We must dramatically decentralize and eliminate as much of the matrix as possible.

c) We must reduce our headcount by 15-20%.

These problems will sort themselves out through the process.  If headcount is truly an issue, go with attrition.  But if you have a good vision and it is honestly owned by the membership, your productivity will increase, profitability will increase and the headcount will be necessary.

I must say, though, having that as a bullet point in the leaked manifesto sure is going to make a healthy process more challenging.

Lastly, some will notice that my suggested process is somewhat like the Google business model.  The main difference here is it's more democratized.  There should be no Brin/Page box at the top of the org chart. 

The org chart should be a perfect network which, when viewed from a distance, is the shape of the vision.

Hmm, is it any wonder that my solution would be to make Yahoo! a self-governing community?

Technorati tags: Yahoo, Peanut Butter Manifesto, Brad Garlinghouse, business school jargon fiesta, agile management, vision, community

Written at the Star House Starbucks in Kowloon, Hong Kong with Windows Live Writer.

The Map of a Informational Journey

Yesterday I posted about wanting to map mental journeys - map movements through information and cyberspace.  I'm not quite there yet.  But this is the first step.

Any map generally provides a set of wayfinding points - explicit or implicit and a set of instructions.  For example, here's how to get from the Pan Pacific Hotel to Seasons in the Park restaurant in Vancouver BC, via a story.

And here's a map

So, yesterday I told the (verbose) story of this map:

 As we can see, this map is sort of a hybrid.  If provides both the concepts and the context.  It isn't as strict a visualization as the mapquest map is.  The mapquest map however, does rely on non-visual cues for the reader.  The map has street names, park names and "Start / End". 

But what the maps allow one to do is quickly trace the flow of information from the start to the end of the story.  While the Concept Map relies heavily on words, it is not nearly as verbose.  You can very quickly trace the main concepts of the story in yesterday's post.

Now, the key to this cartography is that the geography is reliant on how I framed my own story or my argument.  This is the map through my journey beginning at the intersection of Kevin Lynch and Peter Morville.

Maps, even those of merely land formations, always are in dispute.  The map is not the terrain, as the quote goes.  The terrain will always be open to interpretation (there's that word again).  So all maps are visualizations and interpretations.

The concept map is not quite visual enough for me - but visualization techniques are complex and varied.  I would imagine that there will be no set way to create a map of this conceptual terrain.  Just as I can make you any number of maps of physical terrain (street maps, topographic maps, riparian maps).  

With GIS, I overlay stories on physical maps.  These can be heat maps, impact maps, movement maps, and so forth.  As information needs to be digested quickly, maps can be simplified and as they are simplified they are more interpretive.

Here's a map-based application we did to show real-time traffic for MTC in the Bay Area.  This is the traffic.511.org web site.

As you can see from this zoomed image, the map is somewhat simplified.  Not quite a schematic, but not entirely showing every curve in the Bay Area freeway system.  Our goal was to provide a highly readable map that didn't over-simplify and leave out visual cues for the locations of given congestion.

Another interesting thing here is the choice of symbology and colors to depict information.  Here at the evening rush hour, we can see that there are bad and good parts in the familiar red / yellow / green color bands we've been raised on.  Red = stop to yellow = slow to green = go is now an international color progression.

But what if you can't see the difference between red and green?  The system provides a variety of color schemes to compensate for color blindness of macular degeneration.

This map is immediately bizarre to most people, but to people with red/green color blindness it is vital.  And that's part of their story.  By looking at this map now, we are getting even the slightest, strangest glimpse into the world of color blindness - simply through this visualization tool.

So maps can provide insights that might otherwise elude us.  They provide alternate vocabularies with which to express ourselves.  Stories are vital but there is more than one way to tell them.  Here's an example:

STORY

There's a woman sitting.  She's slightly smiling and kinda attractive in a forlorn sort of way.  You're left wondering exactly what sort of mood she's in.  Somewhere between happy and sad.  Maybe feeling a touch of ennui.  She watches the horizon for something unspoken.

MAP

Now, granted, my prose could have been better.  And if the Mona Lisa had been written as a poem that may have been different.  But it wasn't. 

Next I will work on getting the CMap maps to be interactive.  I seem to be having some trouble getting on their servers.  I'd love to have a dialog with anyone who has ideas of interesting ways to visualize this.  I'd also like it if people would send me links to any visualization tools out there and I'll start mapping stories in them and compare.

Technorati tags: Cmap, mona lisa, peter morville, kevin lynch, visualization, storytelling, wayfinding

Written at the Star House Starbucks in Kowloon, Hong Kong with Windows Live Writer.

Waving Dead Chickens

I bought a T-Mobile Blackberry 7100t last year partially because it is Quad Band and I could use it around the world.  On my upcoming trip to Hong Kong, I decided that the time difference and the short three week trip meant that forwarding my calls to my Skype number and then unlocking the phone and getting a pre-paid SIM card from Orange in HK would be my best bet.

After a long chat with a representative from T-Mobile on Sunday, I made this determination and he processed my unlock request.  Bless his heart.

So today I received my unlock instructions:

WARNING: Make sure Wireless Mode is turned off before proceeding with the following steps. Failure to do so may result in the device being damaged.
To Unlock:
1. On the Home screen, click the Tools icon.
2. In the tools screen, select the Settings icon.
3. Scroll to SIM Card and select it. You should see the phone number and the SIM ID number.
4. Type 'meppd' to display the first five levels of SIM locking. T- Mobile uses network locking so the Network should display Active. All other states should display Disabled.
5. Type 'mepp2 'to display the dialog box asking for the unlock code.
Important: To type mepp2 in Step 5, the customer will need to ensure they are pressing the Alt key to get the 2 key to work (because the 2 is on the same key with letters T and Y, see image)
NOTE: You have 10 attempts to enter the correct code.
6. Press ENTER and reboot handheld.

I am completely at a loss as to why it is so difficult to use global devices globally.   Especially with devices like the Blackberry which are Internet capable.  Why wouldn't the Blackberry people send a message to my phone with the unlock code embedded in it and have me give permission for the code to do its magic?

Why do I have to do something potentially damaging to the phone?

Technorati tags: Blackberry, T-mobile, international roaming, unlock