Evolving Web

Depiction 1.0 Launches!

Depiction’s what-if mapping software has launched.

Much like a "serious game" Depiction is easy-to-use software that runs on standard laptop and desktop PCs. Depiction's powerful mapping technology allows users to quickly depict scenarios that answer "What if" questions. For example: "What if this levy broke? What would flood? What areas would be cut off from rescuers?" In an emergency, Depiction provides such rapid and intuitive scenario mapping integrated with live reports transmitted from other locations.

Patrick Meier at the iRevolution blog says:

I really like the ideas that this platform brings together: crisis mapping, simulation and decision support. Being able to play out what-if scenarios is key to making more informed decisions. For example, this interactive component allows users to identify the best route for an evacuation or the delivery of relief supplies should the primary route become inaccessible.  The platform can also receive live reports via email and have them mapped in real time.  I hope the developers will add an SMS component.

The Depiction press release can be found here.

Technorati Tags: depiction,patrick meier,what-if mapping,gis

Powerpoints Don't Kill People - People Kill People

"It's not you I hate <Powerpoint>, it's what you made me become."  - Miles O'Brien (more or less)

So, I don't hate Powerpoint, but recently I wrote a piece about how concept maps make excellent presentation engines.  That caused a few people to defend Powerpoint.  I don't hate Powerpoint. 

I do feel that concept maps are better for organizing your presentation and even delivering it.  However, I will say that you could even use  a concept map to organize your presentation - THEN make Powerpoints if you so choose.

Why are concept maps more powerful? 

It has to do with the structure of the tool and patterns of human communication.

Starting with Powerpoint provides the presenter with little structure.  What ends up happening is we create Powerpoint presentations in a compartmentalized way - dealing specifically with topics.  Topics are not narratives.

Narratives have inherent sequencing and flow that draws the audience along in an elegant and enjoyable fashion.  We've all seen good Powerpoints that have excellent narrative flow, so I'm not saying they don't exist.  I am, however, saying they are very rare.

In the hands of a skilled story teller, Powerpoint can be an amazing tool.  For most people, however, it becomes an endless whiteboard of hastily gathered and over-supported notes.  Powerpoint rewards this behavior, Concept maps reward narrative flow and sequencing.

When creating a presentation, writers tend to focus more on the detail than the flow.  This is understandable - they are excited about the detail!

However, the detail quickly becomes the focus of the presentation.  Detail over story.  Detail over flow.  Detail over narrative.

They tend to over-bullet, meaning they include all their detail in the slides.  This encourages them to read bullets.  But, the bullets aren't a story, they are detail.  The detail lacks the context of a good narrative.   Therefore, in order for their detail to have context, they construct narratives on the fly, which forces the presenter to meander and jump ahead. 

What does that mean?  When you reach slide 22 in the 60 slide presentation, the presenter says "well, I've already covered this," and skips the slide.

It also means that the timeline of the presentation inevitably gets derailed because meandering and jumping ahead lengthened the time at each slide in the earlier parts of the presentation.

No narrative = no presentation structure = no sequencing of messages = reduced coherence.

What does this mean for the viewer in the audience?

 "May you live <through> interesting <powerpoints>." 
-  Chinese curse (more or less)

The audience gets an exciting presentation, and I don't mean that in a good way.  The presenter is jumping ahead, meandering, and reading her over-bulleted slides. Therefore, the audience is forced to construct context on their own. 

This causes the audience to be distracted by reading the whole slide the moment it is presented - completely ignoring the presenter.  (Come on, tell me you haven't done this).  They are often shocked when seemingly random slides follow one another.  They search for flow.  The longer they don't receive it, the more they tune out.

Over-detailed slides also tend to put so much focus on the detail, that the audience believes the detail is the true source of value for the presentation.  They do what is logical - they try to capture that value by transcribing everything on the Powerpoint slide.

Short Case for Concept Maps

Concept maps, on the other hand provide flow and keywords to trigger anecdotes and supporting information from the presenter at appropriate times.  This puts audience focus on the presenter and not the slides.  It puts the presenter's focus on the message and not the detail.

For me, concept maps are the most powerful tool I've found for quickly capturing, analyzing and organizing thoughts.  For presentations, concept maps have proven to be an excellent way to sync audience and speaker into a common rhythm and flow.

I urge you again to go download the Cmap software from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida.

Technorati Tags: concept maps, powerpoint, ihmc, presentations, communication, communication technology

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

LinkedIn is Utilitarian

Okay, I get it now.

LinkedIn will never do anything innovative, but they will incrementally add obviously useful features methodically.

Today, LinkedIn launched Corporate Pages.

According to Techcrunch, they use some internal and some third party information, as well as bots, to populate pages.

They say:

LinkedIn uses this knowledge to display recent hires, related companies, recent promotions, top locations for employees, and so-called “headliners” (people who get lots of profile views and mentions in the press). The data has also been used for company comparison purposes. You can see which companies employees usually come from and leave for, as well as which companies the current employees are most connected to.

Incredibly useful? Yes - when combined with the other LinkedIn features.  People group or tribal coherence is greatly enhanced by having pages of professional focus. 

The innovator in me sees this as a boring and obvious move.  I've criticized LinkedIn in the past for not innovating.  What I am seeing now is that LinkedIn has little interest in innovating - but does have a desire to constantly improve.

So, I'm respecting LinkedIn's conservative business model today.

Technorati Tags: linkedin, innovation, social networking, business cooperation

People Don't Enjoy Being Force Fed

Do you have an app you are really proud of?  One this might be of negligible value to your customers?  Don't force feed it to people.  I just wanted to install this HP Deskjet we had lying around and it forced me to spend about 10 minutes and 200 meg to install a piece of software I will never use but, I guarantee you, will pop up automatically from time to time and annoy the hell out of me.  Essential indeed.

To just complete the rant, when the app was done, the hourglass did not go away:

And, the final application has a wonderful design where all options are designed to look grayed out.

These are actually valid selections. They just look gray.

In addition, I know already from the other users in my office that I will have to go through significant hoop jumping to stop the auto-loading and unnecessary HP printer software from auto-loading every time I boot.  Why is this necessary?  Because the software will always look for the printer and tell me it's not there repeatedly ... even when I'm away from the office.

HP apparently doesn't know about laptops which move around a lot.

But, overall, my major question is this:  Why does software that comes bundled with hardware always suck?  And, since this software is mostly unnecessary, why bother having it at all?  All I really need is a printer driver.

Technorati Tags: HP, bundled software, HP printers, HP Deskjet

Laptops are not for the Timid

I buy a new laptop every 18 months, fairly religiously.  This is not because I want the latest gadgets, but because that usually is their optimal running time for someone who uses their as often and hard as I do.

It's usually the hard drives that fail.  In an 18 month period, you can count on one hard drive failure.  If you push it to 24 months it is guaranteed.

This has been true for Dell, HP, Compaq and Toshiba laptops for me.  I am on my fourth Dell.  Not because they are bad, but because they've been reliable and have good customer service (after you suffer through the long obligatory troubleshooting call).

My next laptop will be a Mac (Vista Avoidance), so we'll see how it goes. 

I feel its necessary to say this because people who have always had desktops are asking me which laptop to buy.

Laptops take a massively higher number of jolts than your desktop computer could ever dream of.  They are rugged and strong.  And their reliability has improved dramatically.  But you won't be using it for five years. 

Also, you probably aren't like me, where you are traveling 3 weeks out of four and are only using your laptop 10 hours a day.  I have no desktop.  My laptop is my only machine.

I also wanted to say ... I really appreciate the dialog box that appeared for me today on my Dell D820.  I actually think the battery is still in warranty, but the fact that the dialog came up, very clearly stated the problem, AND gave me a single-click opportunity to cure!  That is wonderful! 

Thanks Dell! Good on ya!

Technorati Tags: Dell, Latitude D820, Battery, Customer service, laptop

On Service Stickiness Or Service Sickening

Several years ago, my business partner and I picked up T-mobile Hot Spot subscriptions as part of our corporate cell phone accounts.  They were incredibly useful at first - any Starbucks I could see was a home away from home.  Plus, it was in both the San Jose and (in a very poorly implemented way) Orange County airports - where I spend a whole lot of time.

Over the years, the T-mobile hot spot account has become less and less useful. It's expensive and limiting.  For the same price, I can get a Verizon or Sprint data card and use my laptop anywhere.  Plus nearly any non-Starbucks coffee place has free wifi anyway.  So, I've been researching migrating away.

Today Starbucks announced that they'll be ditching T-mobile and moving to ... AT&T?  Now, I know that the Starbucks headquarters, while in high-tech Seattle, is actually located in a once-nearly-abandoned Sears store next to the railroad tracks.  But seriously, don't they know that wifi is free in every other coffee shop in Seattle?

Why bother charging for it?

What used to be a reason for me to go to a Starbucks has now become a reason to avoid them.  Before there was an open platform, I subscribed to a proprietary one.  But now there is a massive open platform in free wifi at other coffee shops.   There are also more open proprietary platform with ClearWire, Verizon or Sprint mobile broadband. 

Why would I ever go through the hassle of joining a location-locked system like AT&T's or continue using T-mobile's?

A sticky feature can therefore become a repellant one over time. 

One last note:

In the comments, Michael Lafferty notes that the T-Mobile service is available all over the place and that Starbucks has made a bad choice in switching to AT&T.  Maybe. But given that most other coffee shops have free wifi, it is now seen more as a standard feature than as a value-add.  Free wifi is now a cost of doing business for a coffee shop.

Technorati Tags: t-mobile, hotspots, wifi, coffee, starbucks, at&t, sticky

Things That You Take For Granted

Many self help books recommend that you say something nice to someone every day.  Doing this makes you appreciate some of the little things that people do for you that you might over look.  Today, I am saying something nice about Zoho CRM.

I got this mostly ignorable note the other day from Gopal at Zoho CRM:

Hello,

Wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2008!

My name is Gopal and I have been working with Zoho CRM since its inception.

I will be happy to share my experiences of Zoho CRM with you and assist you with the same.
I will neither interrupt you at anytime (lest you get disturbed) nor am I going to try and sell you the service.
If you want to get in touch with me in any regard, kindly do mail me at [email protected].
You can also reach me at the following numbers:-
Office: +1 925-965-6387
Mobile: +91 98407 08359
Toll Free: +1 888 900 9646
Regards,
Gopal
Blog:http://blogs.zoho.com
Wiki: http://zohocrm.wiki.zoho.com

This is a great e-mail.  It basically says, "Hi, if you have a problem, I will help you solve it.  But I'm not a pain in your backside.  Just helping you.  Thanks!"

I can bother Bopal when he is at home in the shower, when he is watching a cricket match or when he is at the office.  I can bother him on his cell, toll free, via email or on a wiki. 

That's pretty excellent all the way around.  Open, honest, and accessible.

Technorati Tags: zoho, zoho crm, crm, customer service, naked conversations, cluetrain

Early Adopters Fleeing Facebook

For me, Facebook is an interesting little toy and always has been.  It's fun to build up a list of people and do silly things with them.  But it isn't useful, it isn't an effective communication tool.  It isn't even a good social networking tool.

It is a killer Social Networking Toy.  Lego is fun.  I can build Lego houses.  I cannot build a real house out of Lego.  This is not a real Volkswagen.

But for some reason, people think that simply because Facebook is a social networking something, it is a social networking tool. 

This includes the people at Facebook, who seem to believe that the backend (The Facebook Platform and Facebook Markup Language) was all that was required to be a social networking tool.  So they had a big product launch and did a lot of puffery. In the end, the atrocious UI and major architectural limitations of the platform led to the social muck we see today.

Recently people have become concerned about trust.  Concurrent memes about Facebook not allowing you access to your data and Facebook not being a trustable steward of your data have led to many technology early adopters and influencers to ignore their Facebook account or to outright cancel it.

Right now it's a trickle, but it is noticeable. 

I don't understand one thing ... are people actually expecting Facebook to be of use?

To be fair, I do get utility out of Facebook.  I enjoy playing with Laurel Papworth (I believe we have poked each other 20 trillion times).  I like the fact that the lax rules for the meaning of "friend" have let me meet several people around the world.  Shel Israel said in Twitter the other day that he just hangs around Facebook to play Scrabulous. 

But it's all a toy.  So this is why I don't cancel my Facebook account.  I'm having fun with it and I don't put personal information in it for people to steal.

Don't take Facebook seriously, is my advice.  I've looked for ways to take it seriously and they just aren't there.

As adults, we are all waiting for a real, useful, social networking tool.  Obviously there isn't one out there yet.

If people out there are thinking that the social networking world is satisfied, it's not.  It is overpopulated with mediocre applications, but by no means is it satisfied.

Technorati Tags: facebook, social networking, social media, scrabulous

Rules of the 2.oad

Over the last few years there have been several rule sets written for Web 2.0, rules for social media, and rules for social networking.  Rules, rules, rules.  Yet, new web sites repeatedly make mistakes that are entirely borne of not paying attention to these rule sets.

It took me only about an hour this morning to overpopulate my del.icio.us archives with rules.  Dozens of them.

I started thinking about this today, after Ben Newman left a comment on my Evil Spock post.  Ben was responding to Andrey Golub's comment before his.  Andrey was making the case that Spock was pure web 2.0 and a search engine and therefore was exempt from the moral implications of data misuse.  (Which frankly shocked me so much, I never commented back.)

Ben said it better than I would have:

The problem isn't that 2.0 is evil, the problem is that the Spock platform seems to ignore one of the most critical aspects of any online community — the ability to know where information comes from.

When we look back over the various rules of [web2socialmedianetworking], we find several rules in agreement with Ben's interpretation.

The problem is there are about 100 rules now, splashed across the Internet.  If only to get a handle on them myself, I thought I'd make a distilled list of rules.

Here's the big huge map of ones by Jimmy Wales, Dion Hinchcliffe, David Chartier, Visionary Marketing and the 5-turned-17 started by Influential Marketing.  You'll have to click on this puppy to read it.

All together, these seem more like the Tax Code of Social Media than they do a set of design tenets.

Let's try to get them down to some good ol' Moses-style pithy.  You'd need an airlift to get these tablets of them mountain.

So here they are.  It's the web, feel free to turn these into 8 million rules again. :-)

I folded all of the previous ones into these families and gave them some categories.  But, just like there's apparently a lot of gray area around commandments like "Thou Shalt Not Kill", there are elements of these commandments as well.

So, the elements are:

Be Useful

Web 2 and social media applications need to build extensible, self-organizing tools.  Developers need to give the users the freedom to use the basic application.  Also APIs and feeds are standard practice for all sites, all pages and all searches.  In the end, listening to user needs and quickly responding to them in text or in action is vital.

Be Open

Users need to feel a connection with Web 2 and social media sites.  A lot of this is through "Being Real" - your site needs a personality of its own and personalities behind it.  I know that my personal use of sites like Platial and Yelp were greatly enhanced by their community advocates.  The cohort of friendliness is honesty.  Every list talked about transparency in one form or another.  Users need to feel that you are dealing straight with them.

Be Nice

Nice people are by nature respectful and ethical.  The Nice elements fall into ranges between the two.  You want to reward people for everything you can think of, you want to treat them well (talk nicely, don't forget them) and you want to give them gifts in the form of good services.  You want to share anything you have with them and always be respectful of their content and their identity.

Be Community

You are the creator of this microworld.  You need to participate, you need to facilitate.  You have to show up for your own party.  Communities grow, so you need to nourish them.  Don't let them grow too quickly, seed conversations and participate to keep them flowing, encourage real collaboration, reward good deeds, and allow users to edit nearly everything.  Help your content travel throughout the Internet, let ideas go and let them flow.

Here's the whole re-orged mind map.

To see the full run downs of all these line items, here's the source:

1. Rohit's original post that launched several more: he started with 5 rules that spread to 17.  This post has links to the other additions.

2. Visionary Marketing's 15 Golden Rules for Web 2.0.

3.Jimmy Wales' list on CNN

4. Dion Hinchcliffe's technically-oriented very detailed list.

5. David Chartier's rules - from Dec 2006!  Look, longevity on the internet!

Technorati Tags: Dion Hinchliffe, David chartier, Jimmy wales, visionary marketing, social media, social networking, Rohit Bhargava, Ben Newman, rules, edicts, mandates, commandments, golden rules, online communities, community indicators

Photo by Karuvelil Thomas.