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…)

Foresight Identities – a journey of transformation

Just like we are different people to different people Foresight Identities are different approaches for different needs…

I gave a talk on Foresight Identities and my journey through them at the ‘Futures Hot House’ at AMP building in Sydney last week, thank you Janine and thank you audience for the wonderful questions.

The NINE different ‘Foresight Identities’ respond to different foresight needs. Their drivers are different and so are the ways in which the foresight pulls us in, transforms us or the groups or societies where the foresight is applied.

I will start with Intuited Foresight.

Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink” eloquently describes how intuition works and how we use it all the time.

The need to measure and the idea that better decisions are ‘rational’ decisions have led to decision-making being equated to 1/ load me with facts 2/ show the many research studies to prove it 3/ show me where it worked before.

All of these are fine qualities for those who make decisions based what others do. As we have to make decisions with less historical facts, then we need to go with what it is that our gut is telling us about the situation. Is it aligned with what and who we are or want to be? Does it feel right? Does it look right? Can we hear the cheers? Is this what we want our future to be?

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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?

The unbearable lightness of ‘saying’

Judging young net companies by their current state and making that an immutable

“It is not the social network sites that are interesting — it is the social network itself”

This is just one of the sorts of quips I have read lately on the state of affairs on the net.

On the positive side is a basic importance of the social graph. It would seem somehow we have rediscovered the meaning of our connections in our lives [the number of research, articles and blogs on it]. We’re addicted to the activity that tells us we matter. Social networking provides the means to count our value in other ways than money and show it like peacocks to all and sundry.

Yes I would agree that most, if not all of the social network sites are rather mundane today and do not offer much value nor focus to make them part of the lives of the members, beyond counting the said ‘I matter’ points.

I read some research on the percentages of social network member revisits over the last 12 months [looking for the research]. The numbers were surprising – around 60-70% of the members had NOT been back to facebook as an example. Do we read about large unique visitor numbers as there are new people joining, or? Within the top ten Yahoo and MSN tended to have better revisitation numbers. Even adding all kinds of applications onto these sites at a rapid pace does not really solve the problem, perhaps it just adds to it.

The quote, taken as it is, suggests that social networking sites are without merit or purpose and it is only what the social graph(s) make of it. Comments which seem to suggest that innovation ended about a few years ago get to me.

A survey on plaxo education group showed results from a survey asking how many social networking sites might survive beyond 2012 and the results are an interesting mixture of views on where social networking is going. Out of 521 votes 1 says 1 and 1 says 2, 92 say 2-6, 73 say 6-10, 83 say 10-100, 62 say 100-1000, 98 say 1000+, 15 say none, 96 people believe social networks will be transformed into something else. I found this today and it pretty well sums it up.

Social networking is old for humanity and it is young on the net and there is plenty of work to do before the dust settles on social networking sites.

I would be interested in finding out more from the social network owners on their actual numbers. When I find the research on revisits I’ll post a link to that.