Once I got caught…..@ TED2009

This is my TED2009 story [TED = technology, entertainment and design]. It aims to give you a sense of what it feels like to be there. Some of this may seem like an insider’s story and I apologise for that.

For 3.5 days we watched, heard, tasted [those who got the bread in Long Beach and all of us with the Vosges chocolates] as well as felt many wonderful performances. That chocolate with beer was such a novel taste!

As is now becoming a tradition @TED satellite event we started, carried on and finished on a funny note – thanks to Rives and Kelly and a team of comedians. TEDsters – us community members in attendance – were invited in the beginning to get on stage to get the interactive thing happening. The deal was that we had 30 seconds to tell the audience a story around “Once I got caught….”. (more…)

TED@Aspen 2008

What is it when your mind is whirling with ideas from many gorgeous passionate performances on stage, you meet wonderful people at every turn, you are in a beautiful location, the sun is shining and your heart says thank you – It’s TED in Aspen Colorado, end of February early March 2008.

As you see it has taken me a while to write about my experience and my take aways. There are many reasons for that, some rather mundane and others emotional and then just that nagging feeling that I would not do it justice unless I processed it a bit. I am not sure I can anyway cause hey these are just flat language signs and what we experienced was a multi-sensory fiesta. This is an account of how I felt, things I knew would fit in my world mental models and conceptual mapping of what goes on, hence enabling me to add my extensions and experiences from other areas of my life. The piece is long!

First I’d like to say thank you Chris [ Anderson , curator of TED]. I found your approach on stage a key to the tone of the conference. Everything came across as a ‘as I feel right now’ and ‘if I can find the right words great’, heartfelt and honest, and yet clearly deeply woven into the lives and pursuits of those on the stage.

You told us that the gang over in Aspen was strangely good looking. We thank you for that too, we think . For those who weren’t there. There were 300 people in Aspen sharing the Monterey conference as it was happening. We got to sleep a bit longer, thank goodness. It was rather amusing as we clapped, cheered, gave standing ovations, sang ‘Ode to Joy’ from the top of our lungs all that to the large number of screens surrounding us at the home of the Aspen Institute, the Doerr-Hosier Center. Of course we were getting each other into a mood of sharing our views by doing that. Imagine 300 people not reacting in any way for 3.5 days. That would have been really strange. We did have the pleasure of having our ‘host’ Walter Isaacson and some of the key artists, sharing their views on the trials and tribulations of humanity on stage in Aspen, like for example the Raspyni brothers, one of whom was not shy with language and the other was not shy about the bare human, thanks guys I finally know what it was….

The stage darkened….a severe man appeared….and gently reminded us of the mortal coil.

….and we were rolling. Not down the inviting powdery hills of Aspen but up and down our own emotions. Awe, fear, disgust, horror, love, romance, passion, joy, sadness, compassion, care, delight, wonder…… (more…)

Ageism on the net

I have been wondering whether I was the only one getting annoyed by some of the ageism on the net…

Today I found out at the Enterprise 2.0 Future Exploration that no I am not the only one getting tired of this simplistic cop-out or even worse, ageism by hiring only those under 45, cause those above have some sort of genetic mutation which makes it impossible for them to a/ get it and b/ add value.

We heard from the final panel, four people who were baby boomers or gen xers and who have Twitter streams, blog, use wikis and work and play enthusiastically in the evolving Enterprise 2.0 space.

Peter Evans-Greenwood from Capgemini said it well. He is tired of the tendency to lump enormous masses of people into “age based horizontal categories” and then think that it is somehow a useful be all and end all for any particular decision agenda.

Just because there are loads of people out there who don’t get a kick out of how it works in detail does not make them ‘to-be-ignored’ consumers of the technologies and services – it still has to be said – or poor decision makers in companies who create the technologies and services.

It is in the attitude, willingness to engage and adapt previous knowledge with the new. Us humans are very adaptable, we have to.

So next time a baby boomer CEO of any top net company launches into a “the over xx year olds just don’t get it” – I think it would be good to contextualize that answer with the individual speaking.

Yes I am a baby boomer too, just …….and in my head – say what?

Enterprise 2.0 is about changing behaviours

At the Enterprise 2.0 Future Exploration…..

One fundamental change will be in the day to day way in which people in the company work.

Euan Semple a former leader in BBC on knowledge management spoke of the difficulty to counter some of the arguments against leveraging the social networking and collaboration tools like wikis, blogs and RSS in the Enterprise. The fear is that people will be wasting time roaming around other people’s blogs or reading feeds or taking part in meandering conversations.

One approach Euan took was examining the old ways if the new ways were so frightening.

One of my favorite quotes by a systems scientist Marilyn Ferguson, a system theorist, is around change and the difficulty with it…..”it is not so much that we’re so in love with the old ways but change is like being in between trapezes…..”. Part of the solution is taking those for whom letting go is too hard by the hand and giving them a sample of the experience.

Those who are already in flat and less hierarchical organisations are likely to have embraced these technologies as they fit neatly to the behaviours already. The transparency and level setting technologies bring about visibility to the dead wood and the meetings which do not advance the organisations agendas.

It is fundamentally about how we all change our behaviours and our role in the organisation. Us vulnerable people need to deal with our fears.

What gets nettified?

Previously I asked whether your business was being nettified. Now I’d like to ponder on what does get nettified or is being nettified.

Nettify and nettification

I found no dictionary results and only two other references to the word being used for this meaning.

v. Nettified

v.tr

1. To make web friendly

2. To intertwine/entangle with the web

v.intr

To become nettified

noun

Nettification

There is another sort of meaning it seems to the word nettified [found only one reference to that], which is something like homogenized/ net effect.

Often words like digitized, web-enabled, standardization, connectedness and openness are linked with nettification.

OK, now that we’ve sorted that one out… What does get or is being nettified?

1. Business models

- Advertising and its future pleasing variants [one hopes] are becoming a means to fund many kinds of businesses

2. Processes

- Sales, client relationship management, operations, supply chain, financial and legal advice, consulting, development, human resources, marketing, IT services, administration, E2E and B2C and B2B communication and collaboration, product and service creation…..

3. Employee models

- Loosely coupled, tightly coupled models and anything in between

4. Corporate and other communications

- Brand, PR, marketing, shareholder, customer, partner, employee

Many examples exist in every category mentioned here. No one organization has taken nettification to every aspect, as far as I know. For in-house I think the US military might be approaching something along these lines. Companies like Lego, Pfizer and others are doing interesting things in engaging with their audiences.

Interesting times ahead.