Before Search: Creation
So, before we as ourselves “what does search change?†I think we have to really talk about “how will search be changed?â€
Under the Radar at the end of March
Firestoker is confirmed to present at Under The Radar.
We are honored to be in great company for our track, with Blogtronix, System One and BrainKeeper all presenting. This is a great lineup because, as far as I can see, we are all in the same space, but have very complimentary approaches and tools. I can see Firestoker integrating each of these tools in different ways.
We will most certainly be the newest startup presenting, and we have truly been “under the radar” with our development, but we relish the opportunity to show off the tool we have been using for our closed beta, and I expect some constructive feedback from the audience and judges.
I get in to SFO on Wednesday morning, but am pretty tied up with meetings in the SJC/PA/Menlo Park area mostly it seems on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. Evenings are free, ping me!
Happens in Italy: threatened for supporting a BarCamp at Chaos’nCoffee
“Hey, there’s a smell of bloggers being assfucked in the air, about Italia.it. Beware of badmouthing the powers that be. You can quickly loose your nice University seat this way†— Make sure you Digg This
Hamilton Spectator - News
“Only two provinces, Quebec (28 per cent) and Prince Edward Island (26 per cent), have higher percentages. Savoline, elected in a byelection Feb. 8, became the 26th woman in the 103-seat Queen’s Park.” - Via RukNation
Modelling the New Enterprise
How will the New Enterprise look?
How about a real world example?
Here is a normalized and downscaled (1/100, some roles weighted) view of how democratizing tools and platforms can remove friction from an organization and allow relationships to build on an ad hoc basis.
Pre-Firestoker
After Firestoker (Newly acquired relationships in bold)
New relationships represent some form of work accomplished together, old relationships represent reporting structures.
As you can see, clusters of individuals have formed based on large amounts of work getting done together and some individuals who were previously forced to report to a single individual have now become hyper-connected.
This was done completely unscientifically, but through some simple queries of the database, we were able to get a sense of how this particular set of individuals has adapted to having open access across their organization. While it is inherently more chaotic and formal reporting becomes less obvious, most reporting structures for operational items remain in place.
I have to run this by the client and reaffirm that their perception of these new relationships is the same as what we attempted to measure (sharing, creating or altering together). We might find that some of these new relationships are actually: idle (consuming time/resources with little benefit) or destructive, but I suspect that is not the case.
While we identified some loose relationships in the original chart, it is possible that there were far more of these loose relationships as well, which would bring the original org chart effectively closer to the second one.
Some thoughts:
What are the risks to the incumbents?
* As the system becomes effective at distributing positive outcomes and low cost, it also becomes vulnerable for some period of time to possible disruption.
* Past power-structures get dismantled
* Poor performance is harder to hide. You can see some individuals in the second chart who have become extremely isolated and who’s relationships have all become fragile.
What are the benefits?
* Efficiencies get pushed into the system with dramatic speed.
* New leaders emerge who form many strong relationships based on results or thought leadership.
* Nurturing personality types provide a strong benefit to the network
25 startups to watch
No offence, I think Slide is great, but one of the top 25 startups to watch? WTF am I missing?
Public Radio and the return to a flat world
Rob is bursting with energy at the Public Radio conference in Boston this week. It is absolutly killing to be missing it. I will be watching as many sessions as they can stream.
When Rob first started to work for Public Radio through NPR, I got to come in and do some early work with him, what we saw was an incredible fragmented system that was in need of some big emotional and structural repair.
The biggest problem is that you have to start with the emotional healing before you can start to “fix” other problems in the system. It’s been a long, hard, year of emotions for many people in Public Radio, and I think we are starting to see some of the healing now.
Last May we brought as many Public Radio people together as we possibly could in Washington, DC and opened the space for everyone to talk. Like brother who have not spoken in years, there was much to reminice about, but much thinking to do about the future as well.
Get on with it, Now!
Talking about something, and not executing, seems to be a cultural quirk of the Public Radio world (as aggregate). There are many stations out there doing things, and doing them well, but put two stations together, let alone 200, and little gets done.
This is the key problem because of a lack of leadership.
Great leaders seem to be, in general terms, great doers. No fuss, just get it done. Rome was not built in a day, but it did get built.
Who can lead Public Radio?
How to get on with it personally?
Only you have the answer, here is what I try when in a rut.
- * First of all, drop what you are doing. Chances are pretty good that most of what you are doing in your day-to-day job is not at all as helpful, or as critical, as you probably think it is.
- * Go for a long drive, or take a walk, and imagine, even if just for 10 minutes, what it would be like to change America again. (no small thing, but it is the plan — I think about Canada, sometimes the world!)
- * Lose the agenda and start to listen to people for real. It’s hard work, and I do a terrible job much of the time myself, but it is something we must learn to do. We have to unlearn the art of the selfish conversation.
What does the System need to do?
- * No more boards, councils or commitees. Groups of people are now action based.
- * Do not reward ideas, reward solutions, and demand solutions, no ideas. Solutions and action can have all, or more, of the creativity of a good idea and the inception is just as artistic.
- * Flatten the world: NPR must not go to stations and other networks with plans, or even intentions. Organizations like CPB, NPR and APR among others must go to the edges of public radio to seek wisdom, advice and direction.
- * Stop Planning.
- * Stop looking for answers.
Cheap solar power poised to undercut oil and gas by half
“Within five years, solar power will be cheap enough to compete with carbon-generated electricity, even in Britain, Scandinavia or upper Siberia. In a decade, the cost may have fallen so dramatically that solar cells could undercut oil, gas, coal and nuclear power by up to half.”
ER BAGHDAD, A DOCTOR’S STORY
Last night I watched ER BAGHDAD, A DOCTOR’S STORY and was completely floored. What a story.
Our filters have determined that you are an asshole
What do you do when you don’t trust your employees or the people they choose to give their email addresses to? In the case of WatsonWyatt, you tell them they are bad people, who use unacceptable language.
I used to run web-based forums 7-8 years ago, and we originally tried to filter swear words, but in the funny way that humans do, people were smart about getting around those filters. We eventually gave up and when the game went away, people didn’t really swear all that much, and when they did, we realized it didn’t really matter.
It turns out, people swear even in real life!
