Innovate By Focusing In On What Makes You Great

Always innovating is a tough game. RIM more then anyone has had a tough go of it recently. Jon Evans has a piece in Techcrunch today that I really relate to. If you are from Canada, it's hard not to want to see RIM turn themselves around. There are a tonne of smart people at that company and they simply transformed the technology market place here at home.

But evans isn't optimistic. He talks about the inevitable demise of RIM. He thinks it's one of ability. They don't have the product development prowess of a Google or Apple in his mind and never will.

I just don't buy that.

I have friends who have gone to work for Google - they'd probably come and work for RIM. I know a huge amount of smart product people working in startups all over Canada -- they'd go work for RIM. Facebook bought Parakey -- many people say only to get Blake Ross as part of their team.

Ironically i wrote about RIM in the context of a post back in 2009, reinvent or die. Might be good to read that one again.

But reinvention won't happen by focusing on the competition. There is no light at the end of the "trying to be like Apple or Google tunnel".

Moreover, RIM definitely shouldn't waste its time focussing on why people AREN'T buying their products -- they need to start reframing their challenge by looking towards how to unlock their incredible potential just like Hermes did.

So my advice?

Innovate by focusing in on your amazing strengths and what has made you great.

And if this helps at all, just remember you still have an army of brand advocates sitting here waiting for you to succeed.

Boxed In By Google+ Circles

Google+ is like a book that everyone tells you me is awesome, but I can't get seem to get passed page 5 no matter how hard I try. People keep asking me why and I've been thinking about it and I think it comes down to one simple yet fundamental matter:

The circle sort.

They make me SORT my social network. They want me to LABEL people. I have to think about the relationships I have with people, determine a hierarchy of sorts and decide what i'd like to share within that.

I tried. I swear i did. But I couldn't do it. More importantly, I didn't AND DON"T want to!

Why?

Think of someone new who followed you on Twitter and you follow back. What is your relationship? Well, nothing really. See and that's the problem I have.

ln healthy ecosystems, relationships aren't prescribed they emerge. If i put people into circles, how is that suppose to happen? All of a sudden I will be filtering my content, editing what i say to whom and conversations and relationships won't emerge over time.

I hate that idea. It's counter to every reason and every thing I love about my weak tie networks.

So I haven't done it. I'm open to changing my mind. Feel free to explain the whole circle thing to me. I'm open to the conversation but or now those damn circles just make me feel boxed in.

The Robot Army Doesn't "Get" The Youth

Shitharperdid released a great little video today talking about the Robot Army Vs. Young Voters.



They make the point that these pollsters rely heavily on calling land lines.

Guy 1: Landlines? You mean people unaware of the sea or sailing?
Guy 2: No. Those are land lovers.
Guy 3: Right. So...What's a landline?

It's hard to argue their logic. And it begs the question, are we in the middle of a complete revolution when it comes to assessing the pulse of citizens?

At the same time, we know that only a small majority of people are the ones actually posting. Listening can have it's own issues because the most vocal do not necessarily represent the mass majority. Case and point, if you only took your assessment of the last Toronto Mayoral election based on my Twitter feed you would have been shocked when Rob Ford won.

For the next time around i can think of a bunch of monitoring and research solutions but for now, the one thing i'm pretty sure of and can agree with our video friends with on, those polls we are seeing in traditional media channels are not representing the scary votes and opinions of Canada's Youth.

The Feedreader Continuum

When the New York Times implied that blogging was dead, Mathew disagreed. He instead rightly pointed out that it has evolved to a continuum of publishing. In his words:

What’s really happening, as Toni Schneider of Automattic — the corporate parent of the WordPress publishing platform (see disclosure below) — noted in the NYT piece, is that what blogging represented even four or five years ago has evolved into much more of a continuum of publishing.

It was interesting because Scott asked me yesterday if i had any new blogs that I love for creative brain food. My reply to him was that I've started to use Paper.li as my content aggregator. I subscribe to many Twitter key word Paper.li's as well as a few nicely curated newspapers on subject matters that I find interesting.

The challenge of sifting through the gazillions of links, blogs and general smart user generated content is only becoming a harder daily mountain to climb and I'm always looking for newer better ways to solve that particular problem.

So would i say that the feedreader is dead? Well if we consider a feedreader as Bloglines or Google Reader then it kinda is from my perspective. But if we see feedreaders as a "continuum of aggregation" models then I say we've only just begun.

The iPad Will Only Be Good If [Fill In The Blank]

Sean got his ipad. You cannot imagine the hooplah in our office. It will like he was the second coming and it was the holy grail. Pictures posted on Facebook. Circles of people gathering to pray to the mighty Apple Gds.

So i was surprised to read people like Fred Wilson not being particularly impressed. He said:

"Over time it may turn into a mainstream computing platform but I don't think it is there yet and I don't think Apple has the kind of hit on its hands that it had with the iPhone."

And today he had a different post on a completely separate topic that quotes a Venture friend (that is my oxymoron of the day) of his on the future of the ipads success:

"iPad’s fate depends on entrepreneurs inventing new kinds of killer apps. (remember how desktop publishing saved Mac?)"

Moments later, Sean sends me this amazing video of a 2 year olds first experience with an ipad:



So yeah I agree with Fred and his friend and probably everyone else out there on the planet. The iPad will only be good if:

- you want to use it for Kids under 5
- you want to use it for kids over 5 and under 12
- you want to sue it for over 12 and under 19
- you want to use it for a book reader
- someone develops a killer app
- you want to blog while exercising
- you want to watch movies on the plane
- you have a document to work on and don't want to drag your laptop to the coffee shop
- [Fill In The Blank]


photo credit: The lovely photo of Sean courtesy of Marcia Brady Shapiro on FB

My Network Is My Search Engine

We are always looking for the next big thing in search. I myself have written a number of posts on the subject (socially connected search, tagging search system).

Something I've noticed lately however, is that more and more my network is actually becoming my search engine. I don't have time to go through my 350 feeds every day and let's face it...on a good day maybe only about 20% of the newest posts are really all that interesting. So what's a girl to do?

Use the network at the filter of course. How?

Well firstly there is delicious. For the most part I only bookmark stuff that I think is really great or something I can use later. As well, there are a few people's feeds that I follow on a regular basis as people who find stuff that I might find interesting.

There is Google Reader. I regularly go to Mathew's Google reader and let him spend the time to sift through his gazillion feeds to find the stuff that is the most interesting. I mean after all, it's part of his job so he can spend the time at work to do it when i can't.

Friendfeed can work - particularly the feature that allows the most talked about links to come up to the top of the list.

Twitter and Facebook both are becoming filters where my network are kind enough to only tweet and link to the most interesting content. And Twitter in particular has become a place where I can ask a question and in no time flat have my questions answered in the form of links, referrals and juicy bits of insight.

I can't think of any others of the top of my head, but I'm sure I'm missing a whole bunch of other services as well.

In our time starved world, where digital overload is starting to fry our brains, we need to remember that we can also use our network for good and let it become our own personal search engine.

Prediction For 2009 #2: Rise Of The Experiential Class

Last year I wrote a post "Have We Crossed The Chasm" that questioned whether or not we need to start redefining the 'early adopter'. With the speed of change and introduction of new digital services on almost a daily basis, capturing the first and often passionate users is crucial to your businesses success.

In a US today article from 2005 that studied the make up of the early adopter across the Globe Geoffrey Moore, the author who popularized the notion described them as a psycho-demographic:

"When offered a new tech device, this kind of consumer says, "Great, let me at it," Moore says. "They like to totally engage with the novelty of the device. They're the only ones who really care about how the thing works and the properties of the new object." This group includes the "boys with toys" types who buy almost anything new, no matter what.

Back in the day, these were mostly the tech geeks but that has all changed. We now have new segments of individuals all who are clammering to test, try and play with the newest gadget and/or service.

From what I"m seeing, there are some new classes of early adopter that are as if not, more important than the traditional early adopter tech geek of Moore's theory. Who are they? I'm calling them THE EXPERIENTIAL CLASS.

Years ago I conducted a future looking research study on the digital customer. One of the most interesting insights was the cultural shift in how this new generation learns. This new way of thinking is at the core, experiential, and IMO a foundation for this new experiential class. Think of it like this:

Pre Web:
Read, Write, Remember

Early Web:
Look, Link, Think, Try Again

Web 1.0:
Look, Link, Think, Experience, Try Again

Web 2.0:
Look, Link, Think, Experience, Participate, Try Again

See what I mean?

This group doesn't worry about failure the same way we did. They don't read manuals to find the right way to do something. Have a hive mentality and often will ping that hive with their latest finds and develop new learnings over time through collaboration with their network. They have little or no fear to jump in and try new things and most importantly, they don't have to be tech savvy to do it.

Understanding how to reach, communicate and interact with this new class may be one of the most important trends for those marketing new products and/or services in the coming year/s.

Reputation, Racism & The Reality Of Search Results

Louis Gray twittered asking the question as to why Techmeme didn't post anything about the ongoing racism conversation that is happening in the Blogosphere and places like friend feed. (To have a look link here to the friendfeed debate).

Techmemer, Gabe Rivera made his comment saying:

"So, what's the story here? Some anonymous losers said nasty racist things in some chat area (which happens all the time), and then Louis Gray noted how bad that is? Hmm...if you're going to suggest that an omission on Techmeme is wrong, you're gonna need to find something more uncontestably newsworthy than that."

What I found interesting was that I was sure I had seen a number of discussions tracing the original debate that started this all (Complaints about techvideo comedienne/commentator Loren Feldman's Verizon deal due to a parady he created a year called TechNigga - read Mathew Ingram's post here)
So rather than searching by subject, I typed in Loren Feldman's name and what I got was this below (and a bunch of posts on the entire puppet debacle)...



Now I've got a pretty balanced view when it comes to this type of stuff. I personally don't think Feldman is a racist although I do think the video was stupid, insensitive and not particularly funny. But the truth is, regardless of his intent, when you so grossly cross a line (that he had to have known he was crossing unless he's lived under a rock for the last ten years), you have to be prepared for the consequences.

In the technologically networked world that we live in, the repercussions are that the majority of the network will end up discussing their opinion of you and what you've done. You can certainly comment if you want on friendfeed or on your own blog. But search engines aren't built to tell two sides of the story and at some point you have to look at the power of technology over reputation and concede that what you meant to do and what Google says about you are two different things.

Mea Culpa in such situations, may not only be the RIGHT thing to do but it's also the smart thing to do and something that Feldman finally did yesterday. Corporate brands are learning the need for speed and vigor with which they have to respond to these type of PR disasters a while ago and it's something that personal blogging micro-brands might like to pay some attention to as well.

Top Internet Trend: Digital World Becomes Filled With Big Bunch Of Know-It-Alls

Gartner came out with a list of top 10 technologies. What struck me most about the list was the comments. Every other comment was "duh no kidding" "In other news fire is hot"

Are people not excited anymore? Does everyone know everything? Are we all going to be forced to hang out with the "it" crowd at a conferences who "get it" and sit and whine about how no one else does?

One of the things on the list of Gartner's list was Virtualization and fabric computing. So these peeps can all tell me how this is going to change the Web? Vanessa (who is usually on the bleeding technology edge) started talking to me about it about 8 months ago and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it and its possible future affects.

So here's my prediction for the next few years. Top internet trend: Digital world becomes filled with a bunch of know-it-alls who miss the forest for the trees. They then realize we are only beginning to understand how any of these technologies are impacting our lives on a daily basis and eventually get over themselves and start having fun again.

As for me, I'll just continue to be one of the 'don't get it' crowd, scratch my head, talk to everyone I can, and try to get as many perspectives on stuff that continues to blows my mind.

David vs. Googleith

While Facebook gets slammed for being:

"irredeemably evil. It's hell-bent not on changing the world, but on dominating it: on playing the cheesy, lame, thoroughly obsolete games of competitive strategy."

Google's brand continues to allow it to play Google the good. Google of the people. Google that doesn't do evil. Google doesn't play evil games of old like blocking out its competitors in order to maintain sustainable competitive advantage.

Or does it?

Let's go back to the Map Asia conference August 2007 and the talk given by Michael Jones Chief Technologist of Google's Earth, Maps, and Local Search efforts.

After his keynote, my brother Jeffrey who owns a mapping company in Cambodia called Aruna Technology that does work with Government agencies in Cambodia, Laos and China on poverty reduction and natural resource management programs, had the following exchange with Mr. Jones (paraphrased below):

Jeffrey Q: "We all know Google’s motto do no evil - how do you reconcile this with exclusive agreements with SPOTImage that prevent other people from using spot imagery as part of their web mapping. I work with Gov't agencies to do poverty reduction programs and it would be helpful if we could use this satellite imagery instead of derived or vector maps"

Mr Jones answered by saying that it was not the intention of Google's exclusive agreement. Rather their intention was to CIRCUMVENT the one company which he said he wouldn't name but which he also said everyone would know (duh - and no it wasn't facebook), who had vowed to destroy them.

He went on to say that he was sure for the type of applications Jeff was referring to there could be an exception, and he would be speak directly to SPOTImage to see what he could do. He invited Jeffrey to discuss it with him after the keynote, at which time he promised to look into it and passed on his card.

Since that time, Jeff has attempted to be in touch at least ten times, through multiple channels of communications (email, vm, web-forms) all with no reply. No comment. No nothing.

So while we are all screaming at the evil of Facebook and the terrible things they do to the People's company, we might well remind ourselves of this small David vs. Googaleith story and try to wade through all the technology blog media hype.


ps. thanks to Peter for the post title

Update: Jeff noted in the comments that he has been contacted by Mr. Jones via email (I was kindly cc:d). I'll update the post again once they have come to a resolution on the issue at hand.

Have We Crossed The Chasm?

Geoffrey Moore wrote Crossing the Chasm over 15 years ago and it's still probably the foremost framework used for launching new technology products. Wikipedia gives a nice summary to the theories basic premise:

"Moore's key insight is that the groups adopt innovations for different reasons. Early adopters are technology enthusiasts looking for a radical shift, where the early majority want a "productivity improvement". The latter group want a whole product, where the earlier group only needs the core product, and has the technical competence, and financial resources to make the rest themselves."

However, it struck me as I see more and more Agencies using this framework as their basis for go to market planning, that some significant things have changed since '91 that haven't been accounted for in Moore's original model.

One of the key foundations of the model is how they define usage by groups which brings a key question to the forefront of our current marketing reality. Has the definition of an early adopter changed? "Early adopters" are classically considered those who are willing to try virtually any new technology versus the "mainstream customers" that are much bigger in number but more cautious in adopting new technologies. But in that generation that grew up with the network and doesn't even 'SEE' technology per say (the notion that technology has become biology), is this great divide still relevant?

And that leaves me wondering one important and looming question. When it comes to technology, have we crossed the chasm? And if so does that mean the entire model of influence needs to be rethought?

update: Couple points of clarification

1. A few people have made the comment that my usage of the term technology is pretty vague and noted that there are still new technologies that fit under Moore's model. I should have been more specific that I was referring to many of the new launches of products and services on the Web (social networking, micro-blogging, SaaS, wireless handsets etc.) that are being marketed as "new" technologies in a revolutionary vs. evolutionary form. I still content that for Gen Y they don't see these services as technology the way my generation and older has. They don't go on the network - the network is ubiquitous connected and pervasively proximate (UCaPP) as my friend Mark Federman would say

2. To ladder on that point above, my other main point wasn't questioning the entire model, but suggesting that we may want to relook at how an early adopter is defined now that there has been a blurring between them and the mass. Anyone can be an influencer and our traditional (if i can say traditional) notions of the "geek" as driving market adoption may be flawed

Is Technology The Villan?

An interesting discussion with Rex Murphy on CBC radio last night had a National Post columnist questioning whether or not technology was the villain and not in fact, Robert Latimer.

For those of you not familiar with the case, Latimer is the farmer father who killed his severely disabled daughter. Many people called the case out and out murder, others a mercy killing.

What I found interesting however, last night, was the discussion around technology in the case. The truth is that in any other day and age, Robert Latimer’s daughter would not have survived childbirth. She was however, resuscitated five times. The end result was a child with little quality of life and a tragic circumstance that eventually rightly or wrongly, ended in her death by her own father’s hands.

In my mind, I agree with the Post columnist, that the real questions in this debate that are being ignored have to do with ethics and technology. Just because we can, does that mean we should? And what does that mean both legally and morally?

The questions around guilt or innocence are one thing. But looking in the rear view mirror at those choices that were made in the operating room – those are potentially the place where we truly need to start and look to figure out who the real villain is. And in fact, in this case it might just be the technology, speed of change and our lack of ability to keep pace with the ethical and social questions that come as a result of it.

Tech Bloggers Strive To Be Mean Girls?

Recently, I have been using Techmeme more and deleting echo chamber like blogs from my feed reader.

Why? Reading my feeds takes time. And more and more I am noticing that people are simply taking headline stories and reiterating the same facts in a similar way. Mark Evans posted on this subject and I have complained about it in my long titled post A Friend Read A Blog Of A Friend And Then Wrote A Post And Linked To The Friend And Then A Friend Read That Post ...And Then I Fell Asleep.

The advantage of Techmeme IMHO is that it shows me the co relationship between postings in a way that Bloglines, which is linearly alphabetically ordered, simply can't.

But many are concerned that this is just making people echo even more (really, is that even possible?) And besides, do i care if people try to spoof Techmeme and get on some leader board which seems to be causing such a kerfuffle between so many tech bloggers?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The tech bloggers who are all ranting at each other seem to me to want to be grade 7 girls. Being all being mean and fighting with each other spitting evilness back and forth - talking in front and behind each other's backs.

So just in case this is all really about grade 7 girl envy? Let me tell you all right now. I hated being a grade 7 girl. It sucked. Being a mean popular girl for a while sucked. Falling off the podium sucked. The psychological games and mental torture play time sucked. It all sucked. So really, don't be jealous. And maybe, also, stop being mean to each other.

The Reading On The Toilet Replacement: Daily Lit

Just bumped into DailyLit, a site that Fred Wilson mentioned in a posting on platforms.

What is it? A site that basically gives you snippets of books through email..

According to the site:

"1. Why read books by email?

Because if you are like us, you spend hours each day reading email but don't find the time to read books. DailyLit brings books right into your inbox in convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read."

I still remember complaining to my ridiculously well read older brother that I couldn't get through James Joyce’s Ulysses ...he suggested that I try reading it five minutes at a time on the toilet. I never did get to that (i know too much information) but I'm thinking maybe Daily Lit could be a good reading on the toilet replacement?

Women Who Risk: Questioning The Questioning

Tara Hunt had put a list together a while back about women founders of tech companies. Here she writes an article on the O'Reilly network questioning the consistent questioning of why there aren't more women in technology (and points out that there are many more than people realize or give credit). Have a read for yourself here.

I'll Never Trip Again....WiTricity

This is totally cool

The MIT researchers who developed the "WiTricity" wireless power technology haven't set their sights on global broadcast power just yet, but the team is already envisioning wirelessly transmitting power to laptops or cell phones across an office or inside a house. Because the power stream can be consistent, the devices would not even need batteries.

Assembly Line Vs. Couture Technology

I still have one foot in the agency world and one thing that amazes me is how many ad agencies are outsourcing their tech to countries outside of Canada (India, Columbia, China etc.).

I want to talk about how wrong I think this is and maybe not for the reasons that immediately come to mind.

Interactive communication is an art.

Let me use an analogy. If I were going to manufacture T-shirts that were all the same design and only really varied by size and colour, out sourcing that manufacturing based on price would make a lot of sense.

However, if i am making a one of a kind piece that would mean changes on the fly, a bunch of fittings with a model and having an intimate relationship with the sewers who were part of the creation team, i would have to work with people who i knew could solve problems.

And that is what great technologist do. They solve problems. Uniquely, elegantly and in a million different on the fly ways.

The amount of times that we have had a usability problem and our tech team and UX team get together only to find an amazing solution that no one had previously thought of, continues to astound me.

Innovation doesn’t happen on the assembly line.

My 2 cents? Be careful what you ask for, because in the end you just may get it. With digital becoming more and more important in clients marketing mix, it's not the cheap solution they are looking for, it's the right solution. And by not having the right technologists on your team, you will only ever have half of an answer.

Technology And My Aging Biology

My technology is becoming my memory.

I realized it today. I couldn't remember the url of a blog I go to all the time and had to go to my feed reader to find it. I do this with phone numbers too. I used to know all my friends numbers off by heart. Now my blackberry remembers them for me.

I used to trust my biology. And now, I am increasingly trusting my technology instead.

In Need Of A New Welcome Mat: Women & Technology

I got into a blog conversation with a fellow named Graham on the site a bag full of monkeys a while back on the question of why more women aren't in technology. He wanted to focus on girls getting involved early, and I suggested he was being a bit naive about the barriers that women face along the way.

It’s interesting because speaking to a couple women who slugged it out and are still in tech, both of them talked about the overwhelming feeling at their first number of jobs that maybe they just didn’t fit in. They felt like complete outsiders and had to develop very thick and lonely skins in order to remain in the industry.

Well, their anecdotes are now confirmed by a new study:

“For years, word has circulated of a significant gender gap in the technology workplace, where women are greatly outnumbered by men.

The blame is typically placed on low interest on the part of women to pursue computers and engineering, but the actual experience of women working in technology is rarely addressed. A report released May 14 stands to shift this perception by drawing attention to the fact that tech workplaces may not be the most favorable environments for women to work in.”

Sounds like time for a new welcome strategy boys....

Gender & Technology Stats: Google vs. Top 50

Interesting to see the top 50 (which is actually 65 if you count the individuals which is how I did the math) people who matter on the Web. The gender gap is still more like a gaping hole. I decided to compare the Google executives (four of whom were on the list) to the top 50 - Google beats them hands down, but honestly, can we not do better than 14% vs. the guys?