Radar Interview with Clay Shirky

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 3

Clay Shirky is one of the most incisive thinkers on technology and its effects on business and society. I had the pleasure to sit down with him after his keynote at the FASTForward '09 conference last week in Las Vegas.
In this interview Clay talks about

• The effects of low cost coordination and group action.
• Where to find the next layer of value when many professions are being disrupted by the Internet
• The necessary role of low cost experimentation in finding new business models

A big thanks to the FASTForward Blog team for hosting me there.

Stimuluswatch.org; The Falling Cost and Accelerated Speed of Group Action

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 31

Stimuluswatch.org is a great example of how easy it is today for people to, as Clay Shirky says, “organize without organizations.” Stimuluswatch.org began after Jerry Brito attended a mayor’s Conference and posted this request:

"Let’s help President-Elect Obama do what he is promising. Let’s help him “prioritize” so the projects so that we “get the most bang for the buck” and identify those that are old school “pork coming out of Congress”. We can do this through good clean fun crowdsourcing. Who can help me take the database on the Conference of Mayors site and turn each project into a wiki-page or other mechanism where local citizens can comment on whether the project is actually needed or whether it’s a boondoggle? How can we create an app that will let citizens separate the wheat from the pork and then sort for Congress and the new administration the project in descending order or relevancy?

Several developers read the post and got to work.  Stimuluswatch went live on February 2nd with all the features Brito had requested. Last Friday alone there were 20,000 unique hits to the site. Total time to complete, seven weeks including holidays. Total cost - about $40 in monthly hosting fees.

I caught up with two of the developers behind the effort, Peter Snyder (via phone) and Kevin Dwyer (via email). The story they told me exemplifies how the web enables some remarkably fast group action. Here is how Kevin tells it - and pay attention to how many references there are to some form of open source, web service, or plug-and-play functionality that the team used to get this done.

“After reading Jerry's original blog post about the US Conference of Mayors report, I quickly wrote some python code to grab (screen scrape) all of the projects from their web site and put them into a sqlite database. The lxml module was awesome for this. Brian Mount took it and remastered the database into a MySQL database. Peter Snyder then popped up and offered to build the web site using a PHP based system called CodeIgniter. It lives up to its name (and Pete is awesome) because he had a fairly complex site up in no time. Now that we had a great base for the site, Jerry wrote copy and worked up some CSS/HTML which gives the site a great look and feel. Jerry also helped us integrate disqus and tumblr, which definitely helped reduce the number of wheels we had to reinvent. I experimented with several wiki backends and settled on MediaWiki. Using a perl module, I created wiki stubs for each of the projects to give users a bit of a framework for recording any facts they researched about each project, as well as listing points in favor and against. The whole thing now runs on an Amazon EC2 image.

Peter also pointed out that in the short time since launch, users themselves have helped cleanse errors in the data that was pulled from the mayor’s database and already begun filling out details on these local projects; including showering great disdain on the “doorbells” project.

None of these people knew each other previously. They were brought together by blog post into a common effort. They used open source tools in rapid development. They plugged in off the shelf online social technologies (disqus, tumblr and mediawiki) to create a forum to discuss these local projects. They achieved this in seven weeks. In fact, according to Peter, “the real effort here was more like two weeks”.

It will be interesting to see how stimuluswatch.org performs as a place to allow transparency and citizen involvement in civic projects.  As we the public wait for www.recovery.gov to launch, perhaps we should just be asking them to give us the data. We can do the rest.

Security and Data Risk in the Age of Social Networks

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 2

Subscribe to this video podcast via iTunes. Or, you may download the file.

Over the past four years we have seen an explosion in the volume of personally identifiable information (PII) online as social software and user generated content have allowed millions of people to create, manage and share their data in the cloud. While the rewards have been pretty clear (lower barriers to participation and collaboration) the risks have not been understood so clearly.

But where there is risk, insurance is sure to follow…

Drew Bartkiewicz of The Hartford has been considering these trends and has helped create the first security product around online data risk, “CyberChoice 2.0.” Drew sums up much of his thinking when he says, “Credit is to the financial markets what privacy and trust are to Web 2.0” (you can’t have one without the other). Fittingly, we spoke in New York City the morning after Lehman Brothers went under.

Part two of this interview is available here.

What Does It Mean To Be An Internet President?

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 11

FDR was our radio president, JFK was our television president and Barack Obama will be our Internet President.

Quietly at noon yesterday, as the world was fixated on the televised inauguration of Barack Obama, some obscure IT managers flipped a switch (metaphorically) and transferred Change.gov to Whitehouse.gov... While the inauguration spectacle was inspiring and the speech lived up to its promise, Whitehouse.gov is the herald of bigger changes. Government is entering the Internet age and Barack Obama is our first Internet president.

What does that mean?

Each medium has a unique signature (McCluhan would say it’s “message”); a set of characteristics that have a more profound influence on society than the content that flows through it. Television, for example is a capital-intensive broadcast medium requiring a passive viewer. These “pacifying” characteristics are one reason why Al Gore spent time during the Web 2.0 Summit to decry television’s corrosive effect on the democratic process.

Our democracy was constructed well before television (much less the Internet) in an era when the dominant technologies were the printing press and the horse-drawn carriage (Placement of district courts was based on a half-day’s horse and buggy ride to provide each citizen access to court services and the interregnum between presidential transitions took months in order to allow distant presidents to prepare and make the journey to Washington). These technologies invested themselves into every construct of our government.

So how do we re-imagine democracy in the age of networks, where the dominant metaphor is the hyperlink, and the printing press has yielded to the blog; where productivity (open source and crowdsourcing) and decision-making (idea exchanges, prediction markets, online voting etc.) has marked a shift in power from the core to the edge? We are at least a decade away from the answers. Here are a few general principles for democratic government to better serve us in the age of networks.

Listening beats Talking In the network - listening is a prerequisite to learning. It is the critical precursor of everything we do - the beginning of joining conversations, building trust, learning and developing relationships. In a networked democracy, good government (at every level) will need to find avenues available to listen and respond to its citizens. We saw some of this evidenced at Change.gov (where prosecution of torture was the foremost concern on peoples' mind) and in Tim Kaine’s video response to questions on the future of the Democratic party.

Open beats Closed There is more untapped talent outside any organization than inside (government included). Open beats closed points towards two fundamentals: (1) getting beyond a paternal sense of government (what government does for me) and towards a participatory model of government embodied by Mybarackobama.com and subsequent incarnations, and (2) open, standardized data that enable citizens to remix and add their creative energies. Washington D.C. is doing a great job in this arena. The other side of the coin are operations like MySociety and Frontseat.org that are looking to work with data that is already available to improve civic life.

Leadership Counts More Than Ever Although power has shifted from core to edge, vision and leadership counts more than ever before. Our generation’s notion of leadership will differ from the past (“Chainsaw” Al Dunlop anyone?). Consistent with the medium, leadership does not emanate from one highly leveraged point. It is a call to leadership at all levels of society. It is an open call to participation. In this regard, Obama has been a powerful model for a new generation of leaders ….

What do you think it means to be an Internet President? What do you think are other implications of the Internet and technology on Government and democracy?

Work On Stuff That Matters: Video Interview with Tim O'Reilly

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 8

Over the past few months I have been interviewing various people that are "on our Radar" so to speak. It recently occurred to me that we had never done a video with Tim. So last week Kirk Walter (bless him!) grabbed his camera and Tim and I took a walk behind the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol. We had a wide-ranging discussion (from Government to Cloud Computing) but started off with the theme that ran through many of Tim's talks last year; "Work on Stuff that Matters" These videos are a companion piece to Tim's recent blog post, of the same name.

We will be releasing the other segments over the next few weeks. They will also live on at www.thefutureatwork.com (where the video series has a home).

Part One:

Part Two:

Seeing New Possibilities in Existing Technologies: An Interview with April Allderdice of MicroEnergy Credits

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 17

This interview is with April Allderdice, CEO and cofounder of MicroEnergy Credits. MicroEnergy Credits has developed a mechanism using microfinance institutions and GPS cell phones to allow carbon credits to reach small households in the developing world. Until now the relatively high transaction costs involved in set up and verification of a carbon trade has made the market available only to large companies.

During our interview I was reminded of another fantastic idea with similar characteristics. Simon Berry, CEO of ruralnet UK, proposes “that Coca-Cola use their distribution channels (which are amazing in developing countries) to distribute oral rehydration salts. Maybe by dedicating one compartment in every 10 crates as 'the life saving' compartment.” (join the Facebook group here to pressure Coca Cola) Once you plug into Coca Cola’s already-existing distribution channels the cost of delivering small amounts of vital medicines to remote parts of the world drops precipitously.

The genius of both of these ideas is that they are using something “old” to do something very new.

If you know any other examples of innovations that use existing technology to get things done - please put them in the comments.

Software for Civic Life: An Interview with Mike Mathieu of Frontseat.org

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 3

In this interview Mike Mathieu, founder of Frontseat.org, discusses how he is helping to build “software for civic life”. Using publicly available data and web services (many of their applications use S3 and EC2) Frontseat creates simple, highly functional tools like Walkscore (rating neighborhood walkability) and Countmore (helping students in the recent elections decide which state to cast their vote in). Mike is also behind obamaCTO where you can add your opinion and cast your vote for what the new CTO of the USA’s priorities should be.

With the recent election there has been a lot of talk and enthusiasm for the possibility of a more open, modern government that operates with transparency and makes data available for remixing by it’s citizens. People have their eye on government to change…This is a worthy goal to push for but don’t hold your breath. The government of the United States is a behemoth that, all told, employs 12 million people and is preternaturally territorial and risk averse…

Pressing government to change is necessary but is not the only bet we should place. Mike makes the point in this video that we don’t need to wait for data that can improve civic life or increase transparency in government.

If you know of other examples of citizens improving civic life that deserve mention, please share them in the comments.

Part one of this interview is available here.

Zappos: If You Are Great at Something - Let It Go...
(Or Resell It)

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 6

I am fascinated by what I see as Zappos' ongoing evolution from a simple, online retailer to a leading online innovator. A few months back I wrote about Zappos pioneering what I called “Experience Syndication" with their Powered by Zappos (PBZ) service. In brief, PBZ syndicates the end-to-end value of shopping with Zappos - from the online store experience to shipping, to returns, to the call center - everything. Clarks Shoes, Stuart Weitzman and many other online sites are providing a customer experience entirely syndicated by Zappos.

Last night I saw CEO Tony Hsieh’s tweet about Zappos Insights - a paid membership site “that allows 'Fortune one million' companies to gain insights from the learnings of Zappos.com. The site will allow access to Zappos.com management and contacts and provide guidance and direct answers for user generated questions via video responses.”

If PBZ syndicates the customer experience, Zappos Insights is syndicating the internal business experience; providing a window into the leadership and culture that has made Zappos such a successful business. What is so radical about this is the notion that Zappos is willing to let go of the very thing that makes them so exceptional.

What other company would you like to see create a similar service?

Catch 22: Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Succeed

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 18

Hat in hand the U.S. Auto Industry lined up for their slice of government aid and it appears as of this posting that they will get the money they are asking for. These titans spent years hiding behind the “free market” shibboleth when convenient (the market wants gas guzzling SUV’s) and when punished by that same market we hear that they are victims of factors outside their control and that they are “too big to fail.” It has become a hackneyed expression precisely because it summarizes the situation so well; this is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss.

The very concept of “Too Big To Fail” points to a deeper truth: the U.S.’s auto industry does not operate within the “free market” at all. Far from it. As their moniker suggests, the “Big Three” are an oligopoly with a long record of eschewing innovation (electric cars, hybrids etc.), killing off alternatives like mass transit and bullying public policy (lobbying against CAFÉ standards, environmental and tax policies [Hummer owners get a $34K tax credit!], the threat of relocating factories etc.) all in an effort to conform the not so “free market” to its lumbering non-strategies of pursuing short-term profit.

Now that their short-term thinking has met with long-term reality we are faced with bailing them out. Fair enough. There are millions of jobs connected to the automobile industry. But do we now trust these same institutions to deliver and execute the plan for a sustainable U.S. transportation industry?

If these are the flaws of the industry, consider their current leadership; The CEOs of these failing behemoths flew in on corporate jets, asked for $25 billion dollars, brought literally not one shred of documentation on what they intended to do differently and couldn’t explain how they arrived at the 25 billion dollar figure in the first place. When asked if they would accept a $1 dollar per year salary (Iacoca style) in exchange responses from GM and Ford ranged from non-committal to sarcastic (“I don’t have a position on that today” - Rick Wagoner of GM, “I think I am OK where I am today.” Ford’s Alan Mulally who earns $22m per year).

Oligopolies like The Big Three thrive on standardization, scale and market manipulation - not innovation. It is precisely their structure, size and leadership DNA that I believe precludes them from any chance of successful innovation. So there is the Catch 22. They may be too big to fail - but they are too big, bloated and corrupt to succeed. If we are the taxpayers funding the bailout, what are the alternatives?

“Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life” - A conversation with Kevin Kelly

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | comments: 7

Or, you may download the file.



Kevin Kelly doesn’t need much in the way of introduction to Radar readers. He is a big thinker looking at the intersection of biology, technology and culture.

Kevin gave a great High Order Bit at the Web 2.0 Summit and I caught up with him afterward. This interview covers:

• The impact of the web on our recent elections
• The rich new possibilities for interaction and collaboration afforded by the web
• The Wisdom of the Crowds vs. the Stupidity of the Mob
• Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life… looking into “what technology wants”

This last section (at 7mins 30 secs) is the deepest and most provocative. Kevin assumes the point of view of technology to assess its needs and wants. This line of inquiry leads to some surprising conclusions. My favorite quote from the conversation: “We are the sexual organs of technology”
Indeed.

Recent Posts

• Online Communities: The Tribalization of Business on November 12, 2008
• Technology, Politics and Democracy on October 20, 2008
• Wikitecture - Radical Collaboration in Architecture on October 16, 2008
• A Star is Born? NY Times syndicates outside blogs but that's not enough on October 7, 2008
• Customer Service is the New Marketing: Interview with Lane Becker on October 1, 2008
• Getting Web 2.0 right: The hard stuff vs. the harder stuff… on September 30, 2008
• Open beats Closed: Best Buy’s new APIs on September 23, 2008
• Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle discuss the upcoming Web 2.0 Summit on September 12, 2008
• Experience Syndication: Powered by Zappos on September 12, 2008