First Summer, than election in Norway

It’s summer in Norway, and very nice weather these days. The media was occupied with the Iran election, and all of a sudden Michael Jackson died…

Next upcoming event will be the election in Norway. Not an important event in the world, and maybe not important in Norway either? But will it be an important event for social media in Norway?

One subject that’s bound to be discussed is the political parties in Norway’s usage of social media. What they did, what impact it had. One question that will be on everybody’s tongue will be; Did some, or any, learn and have a success like Obama?

It’s a boring question, because the answer is given; NO. The reason is as simple, The politics in Norway isn’t in a similar state as it was in the US. We do not have anything like a “Bush administration”.  We do not have any real need for change as the Americans felt in the population of Norway. Thirdly no political party in Norway are using anything close to the percentage of energy ( money, time, staff) in the area of social media.

But still it will be interesting to watch, for us Norwegians. We have a very high penetration of broadband, high percentages have a profile in e.g. facebook, and a lot of political parties do have (it seems) a strategy ready for using social media as one of their channels.

Does it seem like they have grasped some essence of what social media is about? I’m not sure. It looks like not. Mostly the various parties uses social media as a old fasioned Push channel. If that is their involvement, it’s likely that their effort will be worth little, or nothing at all.

As for the Obama campaign, social media didn’t play such an important role as we sometimes like to claim. Mostly it was an e mail campaign  – ergo more of a e- dialogue /e- marketing campaign, not so much a social media campaign. In addition the Obama campaign, took analytics very serious. What gives results? This is know- how from old fashioned Direct mailing. Maybe Political parties in Norway should spend more money on this ?

If political parties wants to get results in activities i social media, I believe it’s important to have the core goals in mind. And that is NOT winning the election. It’s providing the population with better public services! This is interesting, because I do believe that this is something social media and politics really have something in common! It seems like one still focus on sending the message, not listening to the messages coming back, and at all not giving a feedback of the dialog people are willing to invest.

Social media, as I see it seems to be very strong in some aspects;  
1 Spreading information wide and fast
2 Creating an arena for a producing and spreading knowledge
3 Creating an arena  where processes of mass creativity and innovation can take place in a very rapid cycle.

All of above seems to me t be a perfect environment for political activity. But I do wonder if the Norwegian political parties are able to handle this, during summer and fall in Norway.

Iran and Twitter or social media?

Just now, there are very important events in Iran. This isn’t a social media event going on , it’s real life. People are dying in Iran.That is also a fact in  Africa, Europe, Asia, the US and Australia without twitter peoples being occupied with it, people are dying daily due to various forms of injustice. What  this has to do with social media? could be a very arbitrary connection, only interesting for the very few in the world?

I cannot help myself but  thinking that  what the work of social entrepreneurs like Charles Leadbeater discuss  is very important in the discussion of what social media is about. In the subject of Iran these days, it’s just damn important to be awake.  That doesn’t make any other unjust topic in the world less. It’s just another example of how we people are, we are social, we interact. The ways in which we do so is irregular, it simply doesn’t make sense. Logically we should have been as concerned with any other conflict, deaths and problematic aspects in the world, but we don’t. The murders in Darfour didn’t get as much attentions as the Palestine / Israel conflict.

What does this has to do with my blog topic? Internet, innovations and so forth? Quite a lot. There’s no reason for having a industry, like internet, unless it’s connected to “the world” internet as itself have no value. Social media, has no value in itself.  It’s said that (just these recent days) Twitter has an impact on the Iranian news topic. And it just might have on the result but there is some “but’s” . I believe there will be written long white papers on the subject, and I might be one of them doing so. The social engagement is of importance, twitter itself  isn’t.  

This is not a blog posting on pro/con either the one , nor the other one topic, the examples above shows that very important topics find their way into “social media” a last example is terrifying, in Norway ;a young girl had  a horrifying traffic accident these  days, she might live after this, as we know from the media at this date. At facebook it emerge “hate groups”  that attack the drivers involved.(for now, no-one kan know the facts, nevertheless as “social individuals” we tend to “want” a conclution fast)  Social media can also be used to create a mob. Just mind you, yourself and what’s going on. Social media, seen from an innovation standpoint, and IT viewpoint isn’t  all that easy. It’s social, in all it’s effect, that means it also creates e-g- a mob.

In the topic of ongoing serious politics, Iran it’s great , some of ous are able to speak out – on (what ever) now shown by twitter ,  by the way, twitter didn’t know, nor wish for this effect, facebook didn’t expect their community used for creating a mob. The very reason for all of this is that the focus seems to have been on the “media” part of social media – not the “social” part of social media, such as facebook or twitter. Again i’de like all of you wanting to understand what sicial media is about to read the basics; Bordieu, Facault and so fort

Did I make myself clear or not? (knowing that there’s a pile of topics in this one posting…)

How to drive business in social media?

There’s an ongoing discussion about how to drive business in social medias. And as you might have guessed I have an opinion on the subject.

It’s like beginning with the end of a story to ask the question how to drive business in social medias. It’s better, I believe, to start asking what you sell. “How to” will  depend on what your business is all about. What is your business model? What is it you produce and sell? And foremost “social media” isn’t one thing, it’s a wide range of arenas. Did that sound complex? It is. Neither of the elements can be forced to function in contradiction to itself, so to try to force a non fitting business model into a social media where it doesn’t belong – won’t work.

Let’s forget about social media for a little. My thesis is that humans haven’t changed much lately(last mill years or so) , the new digital media enable communication between the masses, in a speed and spread we haven’t seen before, but little else have changed. (when I was a teenager it was a sport for the young boys to look thru the keyhole into the girl dressing room at school, now young boys can look it up on the internet, but it’s the same phenomena?)

Is there anything around that has been sold for a long time, where the social aspect is involved? Do I need to say more than the brand of Tupperware? The memberships of cooperative chains? Benefit programs as a member (car, travel clubs, airline mileage programs) and so forth. A VIP access to a nightclub contain the essence of a “social sale”. You get a certain treatment, because you belong to a certain group. To be able to sell something in a social media, you have to blend your business model into the group, code and motifs for the group we are speaking of. In other words it’s more of using the right (and fitted) sales strategy, and then find the channels and arenas to conduct you sales, than “forcing” any sale into a social media.

It’s even interesting to ask the question why? Why sell anything in a social media? Why not give something to the users? With the strategy to build a strong brand, and build a loyalty towards your brand?  Libresse is doing such a thing. Nike too. Or, why not do as 3M have done for years, using the customers complaints as their best innovational input, for producing better products, new products and customers support?  NextGenTel is using twitter actively to look for negative comments on their products, and reply them directly and offer them a solution, before the one complaining even got to make the phone call to them asking for support. That’s giving value to their customer, building loyalty and an ambassador for their brand and products.

In my opinion there are a big stack of available tools, techniques to sell, promote, build brand and get new ideas from your customers in the social media environment.

 

Obama Team @ Webforum2009 in Oslo

This was interesting. And people waiting for the “revolutionary new”, maybe got another aha experience. I did for sure!

 

If you’re trying to be an internet scout ( like probably the crowd of some hundreds felt listening to the staff around Obama today) you might discover than when you get back to the everyday life you see that what’s up front there – is much the same as what is here already. You won’t discover a brand new land, or planet for that part. You will discover a lot of what you already have seen before. Still the Obama Campaign did something that really made a difference. What might that be ?

The Obama team implemented and made a system of knowledge we already have, but in an environment where it ‘s new to think like that. Data mining, segmentation, Direct mailing knowledge, Does this sound like Direct mail strategy?) combined with a great sense of what sociology is all about. The mix, in a political campaign, speaking directly to people, instead of  “from above” has the effect any social activity, well done, has. Dialogue, connected to the real world!

Dialogue craves for participation, influence, the possibility to make people re- think and possibly change their origin opinion. That is what the American people all of a sudden thought possible, and responded to – and  - not only the American people. The population of the world could all of a sudden e mail, comment on facebook and twitter – to the “maybe next President of the US America”.

All done by a large team all over America using well known techniques of e.g. a great car salesman, and a sociologist and storytellers, telling real stories from real people to real people. Just what we want politics to be all about.

Fun or real value?

Frequently I see in the discussions of web 2.0 that it’s enough to participate. That it’s amazing what’s going on. Networking, possibilities, a “brand new world” is out there and we all have to join in. Any one asked the question why?

What’s “new? ”Where are the differences between the old fashioned fan clubs, Amcar or sailing clubs? Beside that you now can be in touch via the web. Don’t get me wrong. I’m there, not all over the place, but as you can see I do blog. I do have a facebook profile. LinkedIn is a definite must for a professional as me. I’m at Slideshare and I do twitter. I comment on articles about stuff I have some knowledge, and things that pisses me off. (By the way “Twitter” – us not native English spoken, might not know – twitter means something like bird sounds/singing)

But why? Why am I there, what’s in it for me? I will avoid boring you all with my reasons, they are no different from yours. A real question is if it at all is an important question why we individuals are there – more important would it be to look at the possible effects. Heard of the “Obama effect”? Was that you and I that made him president?  - not me; I can’t vote – or? Did our participation in social media influence the opinion? Maybe it’s wrong questions – why did Obama focus on social media? Maybe it’s his campaign that got the benefits – and not you and I? I can imagine lots of arguments coming up here now – and you are very welcome to bring them on.  One thing is for sure. The owners of the virtual locations ( Facebook, my space, twitter and so on) They got huge benefits out of it, as they do every time one of us consultants praise web.2.0, social media, the “new and brave future” I don’t want to be a parrot marketing the owners of these places –without getting real value back.

Another , maybe the most important thing to understand is the shifts in how our societies act. Long ago we got “trained” in democracy and that we should join our “crowd” and by being many have the influence we wanted to achieve what we all wanted. We needed a party or a fix organization to fight for all of what we wanted. Now we act far more in a way that’s : “I want to make this XX matter change/ happen” – and then find someone around that are up to the same as me – when we made this “something happen” we don’t need to be a part of that group anymore – we find new groups for new topics we want to change.

This is why a lot of activities from businesses, organizations, individuals will not gain on being active in social media. The reasons why participating, and the level of how to act (and knowledge about it) in this environment is simply not developed by far too many companies OR their advisors. It’s just not enough to participate. You need to know where you are going to be, and why. You need to know what to do there, and have knowledge of how to do it.

The most simple way to put it: It’s like any other activity you involve in, you need to know your environment, and understand it’s rules. This goes for you and me as individuals – or companies or the public sector for that matter.

Competing about peoples time

It seems like the competiton in real time collaboration isn’t between the companies delivering solutions, but a competition of getting people to spend time with them, rather than somewhere else – like travelling.

I’m readig in the Norwegian IT section of DN that Gartner (Sydney conference) announced that their estimates for 2009 is a loss of 2,1 million business travels, and that those “seats” will be replaced with telepresence, video and webconferencing meetings instead. This is of course great news for companies delivering such solutions and bad news for airliners and travel agencies.

This should make Cisco, Polycom, Tandberg and the small Norwegian company meetcon happy friends. But Gartner continues: Something new is evolving rapidly: an example is – Immersive workspaces. This is integrated solutions that builds on top of communities like second life. Web based, and with the ability, not only to “meet” (Video & audio) but also share presentations, your desktop and so forth. Gartner advices companies to get rid of old ideas of video conferensing, and adapt to more flexible collaborative integrated ideas of how to conduct work via the web.  (BKK in Norway just did and bought a solution from meetcon.no by the way) This might not be the best of news for the larger enerprices mentioned above, but rather gives smaller and more flexible web based solutions a competitive benefit?

As you may kow I’ve been writing about this for quite a while (just scroll and see former postings) and it’s fun notising that Gartner predict such a rapid developement.

Using Buzz ords such as multichannel strategies

Lesson one: Do not use a buzz word unless you can explain what it means!
Lesson two: Listen to what has become a common meaning of a buzz word.
Lesson three: Be willing to learn more, and adjust what you state.

Multichannel what is it ? what does it mean ?
Multichannel is NOT only using several channels…  if it is  some message (advert, campaign, branding – or whatever) is used in some sort of inter- chained way it’s still NOT Multichannel – it might be, and could easily NOT be.

Mostly the term is used to describe  retail- or e-commerce strategies where several channels are put in effect to reach – and connect with their target groups.
The idea is to let the consumer be more in charge of the transaction process, than before, and to let the consumer be exposed to an opportunity to become aware, interact and finally buy a service or product via several channels. In order to make this happen the various channels has to be coordinated, influenced by each other and provide a flow (memory between them) so that the customer experience a seamless connection with the sender of the messages. It’s sort of a artificial intelligence experience for the customer, where one message is followed up toward the customer in other channels, that give an opportunity to act, start a process and finalize it via several channels used.

But these principles could also be put in use for other areas?  
Like delivering our tax declarations, – getting information of car registrations, depths owners registered on a specific car is only some examples.
It should involve several channels, interconnected in some sort, have interaction with the “customer” of some kind and give a desired result fo the end user – like a service provided, and so on.

Still – A commercial – or public campaign- or branding activites using several channels is not a multi- channel strategy – it’s still an old fashioned Channel mix.

What about facebook?

It seems like facebook has become everybodys public “phonebook” Being there is like having one of those old Phone sentrals, but now I operate it myself. Is that all we want to use Facebook for ?

 
Of course it isn’t. You can make a great impression of yourself on facebook, and you can flirt, You can act silly and come with fun remarks. You can throw sheep’s, answer hilarious quizzes and give friends a virtual plant to grow, but can you do what you would like to do on facebook? Is it useful and functional for you? Is it developing you yourself or/and our society?

The profile, and stating who we are is for sure one aspect. That’s very nice to do. Or is it? Well we might forget that we are different people in different situations. Amongst friends we might want to show some aspects of ourselves, we wouldn’t show our boss, or clients. But you can be sure that your future employer will search your digital tracks and try to find out. (maybe the photos from your last party wasn’t such a great idea that your so called friends (hurmpf) posted, showing you with your head far down into a – toilette. On the other side we can let people know what we love to do, private or work wise, and meet up with people who also love to do the same. Any one up for Tango tonight?

Finding our “tribe” is another. We all want to belong to, at least one group. The “better” the group, the “better” we feel. It’s great to connect – or should I say re-connect with old friends and schoolmates and former co-workers, and at the same time everyone else can see who you are, valued by your friends. Do you have some semi celebrities on your friend list – or not? You can make an interest or support group. Obama did, with success, and plenty of him, supporting everything you can imagine, literally.

Facebook is like a huge eves dropping arena. Like running the telephone central, make a call to someone when you like, and listen into others interesting conversations.

It’s web 2.0. It’s community. And then I remembered what I learned (and believe to be right) what Valery Maltoni said: “Collaboration leads to Community, and Community needs Contribution.” To me it seems like we most likely will see the triangle coming together soon. I wonder what facebook are capable of as a brand – can they adapt, or will we see new players on the scene soon ?

Collaboration, Community and Contribution are interconnected

I read a blog article today that made me think (again). Valeria Maltoni’s blog article about “Real collaboration” address something very important happening right now. She formulated something I wrote about earlier, but she put it so neatly and short: – Collaboration leads to Community, and Community needs Contribution.

Well this is a concrete example of what mass creativity might lead to, new thoughts, that might create better ideas as the interactions flows.

We have seen communities on the internet growing, like facebook, myspace, dating services and so forth, not at all dull, but still many have thought – Community, So?

As we are speaking we see communities with a  new twist emerging. Addidas , using community to build and develop their brand and offer products that has evolved via their own community. Even more interesting is the growing communities of politicians (just think of Barack Obama’s support group on facebook) and  nongovernmental organizations, like Amnesty international.

This starts to look like somethings that makes a difference in the world and have serious impact worldwide. Social engagement! I can’t imagine how many postings politicians have gotten on their community based internet activities the last days from people all over the world being concerned of all the civilians killed or hurt in the ongoing Gaza conflict. This is real change!

As Valery Maltoni point out : Collaboration, Community and Contribution are interconnected and works together. I think that there is great hope for our near future, where the collective consciousness gets connected very effectively. I think I like it!

Great collaboration ideas

Do you know why so few organizations have started using digital collaboration as a basic way to conduct their business? We really know everything that is needed – Or do we?

 

I wonder what your thought might be on the subject. Or even better, what are great ideas for start using digital collaboration in your environment, work or otherwise? Do you at all use any digital collaboration of some sort? What arguments do you believe would be the best ones at your company, and towards whom?

I’ll let the question hang there- for a while.

Digital collaboration in three steps

To get where you want, you need to know where you are heading

The three most important steps are,  to define your needs, what is it you want to achieve? and how to implement it? Does this sound easy? Well it is – sort of, then again this is where most organizations fail.  If you want to get a deeper understanding of my viewpoint you can look at my presentation at Slideshare : Here

The main point in my presentation is that we have collaborated as long as we have been around, but now more than ever. There have been collaborative tools around for a long time, but now we have new possibillities as the web have developed, the introduction of broadband, web 2.0 and so forth.

Integrating what we know already will make digital collaboration more effective, and very soon a commen way of conducting any work tasks as we know them.  There are three levels of digital collaboration:

1 - Digital collaboration fitted to meet internal challenges is an improvement from the situation today
2 - Digital collaboration that involve the organization with partners and customers is an even better idea.
3 - Integrated digital collaboration with social media enables organizations to achieve an optimal environment where you, your organization and the market itself are so woven together that you might not be sure about who came up with an idea, innovation, service or product you can put in effect. Was it you, or your market?

What did Barack Obama do on the internet?

I haven’t had the time to dive into it so if you wish, fill me in! But the phenomena’s  are there in all directions. And beside everything that’s outside what I’m writing about – it seems like he gets credit for a lot and have a lot to live up to.

My topic on the other hand is internet an innovations that make sense. Did he? I don’t know. He – or what he stands for just might have. In the sense of being (becoming) an icon of possibilities, he was active on the web, no need to discuss that, and I reckon that there will be many studies to come from what happened, so I’ll let that rest here.

But having a public sector that can look at the possibilities of making a difference in a real way is fascinating. Opening up, politics and democratic processes are real options. We do have a time in history where we (yet again) can make a difference. The phenomena Web 2.0 have to me at times seemed meaningless and just another “buzz” word – until it’s given a meaning.  In the private sector it’s seems to go slow, but not at all everything is meaningless. In the private sector the most benefitual for people could be claimed to be virtual dating services. That provides opportunities for love. Something that is not to be overlooked!

In the public sector this might be a little too personal?  What could the public service do, and why? If we start with the latter, the public service has a purpose – which is to serve the population. What does that mean in terms of the internet, and digital opportunities? In my opinion, it means that services should be provided as needed for a cost as low as it can – but with a quality as high as it can at the same time. Internet services are perfect for that! We have tools at hand to measure what people use. We are able to make solutions that are making things easier, and we can, by internet solutions sort out, and find out, how to produce functionalities that are providing public services that has a real impact on people’s lives and make it easier. All at a cost that is far lower than how we do things today. Isn’t that great in a time with economic recession?

I didn’t forget the “what” part. What can the public sector do? Both politicians and administrations can do a lot! A self service solution in all areas is one angle. Digital collaboration is another one, gathering input, and open up for discussions and idea creation is a third one.   The amount of idea creation and benefit from these three options alone is amazing.

So if you’re in politics, what are you waiting for? By opening up, by embracing your community (what gives you all your votes) you will win! By working in the administration, saving cost (or better put; gaining more from the budgets you have) you will win. By being simply a citizen you win. I cannot see anyone not winning – and that is what Barack Obama also saw, and this made him win the election!

NOTE: all material on this blog is written by and belong to Geir Stene http://gstene.wordpress.com the http://davinciguy.wholinkswho.com has unlawfully copied my material, and will be stopped.

Change is painful

It seems like we all try the best to avoid change. Change demands to face the uncertain and very few of us like that. Nevertheless, however hopeless, to dare to face change also represent the option to come out stronger. This is very much true in the Internet business at the time we are in.
But now there is no way to avoid it, change is here.

Times are difficult in so many parts of the world these days, for so many people, and are so in most areas of work. What did happen is one question. Another possible question is: What will happen? Both are important to gain knowledge to get out of the state we are in, but still the most important question we all have to ask is what do we want to happen next? and start work towards that goal.

In my line of business I want to use my skills and creativity to improve things. Things in my life and things for the customers I work for. Since change is something happening for all of us as we speak, it’s easier to get change to happen. How can I help others to improve things is the focus of what I want to do at the time. Businesses nowadays have serious topics to solve: How to avoid going bankrupt? How to not have to let people go from their work?

In the public sector there’s a lot to be done, that will ease the workload, and thereby provide more resources available to get more done. Public service need to get most out of the budgets in order to do what the public services are there to do: provide services needed to the public. In the private sector it’s not much different, besides providing a profit for the owners; companies in the end of the value chain are doing that: delivering valuable services and products for people. My part of all this is to contribute as well as I can to provide solutions for customers, to find their best way to contribute to make change happen as fast as possible so we can get back on track again. What’s your best way to contribute? What do you want to happen next?

Innovative digital collaboration?

Being innovative doesn’t mean that you have to invent something totally new. Innovation is being creative and make it happen! Most innovations that works is by connecting some known factors together in a creative way and make use  of it in a new way, and very very few new ideas came frome solitude and a vacum, its almost allways made by groups.

I came across this Blog article at Tech Pulse 360 about collaboration today. Have to say there is very little new in it. The news is that people now start getting it. Collaboration is useful in order to get whatever you do, done!

Cisco have gotten this and are prepared to offer large solutions to large enterprises to a high premium price. Great for Cisco! They have seen what people in the business have seen for a long time. It’s a huge market, and the demand is rising fast. Cisco estimates a 34 billion dollar market, yearly! But they are sticking to “telepresence, and webex conferences, not taking full advantages of collaborative possibilities, both synchrone, and a- synchrone. For most of us, it will be unneededly expensive. Connecting what we see is happening in the “Web 2.0″ area, with various collaborative applications can be far more efficient for most of us in all kind of collaborative tasks. The applications are there, security and broadband challenges are solved. The global ressicion is a driver to speed up this developement as well, due to the need to look at cost/benefits and reductions on costs.

Well this is the ‘basics’. Another driver for digital collaboration that becomes innovative is You & I. Yes it is. Open innovation, in collective groups will drive forward a combination of innovation itself, and collaborative solutions as a result motivated by each other. Further reading on this ideas is a great idea. Charles Leadbeater book “We think” is a great start, but if you are as lazy as I am, a link to his blog would maybe be of help? Well just click on his name or the name of the book. In any event thinking alone hasen’t gotten anyone anywhere, action and results are needed in order to get innovation, so what are you waiting for? 

We are all ready, We have the knowledge, the overview of products and services to set up concepts and solutions that are innovative, and we have the fun mix of providing a quick ROI, being quickly adjustable to meet changing needs, easy to produce and most important easy to use. Anyone guessing its not Cisco’s solutions Im thinking of ? It’s more in the line of integrated software/applications, or this clever thing calles SaaS, that enables modern, innovative digital collaboration. All for a cost you earn back fast enough to dare to get started! Not convinsed yet? Well you now have the tools to get independent by large corporations, and can choose between social groups of your choice to get inspired, to get new knowledge and to balance risk between providors of all kinds.

“DIY” Innovation by real people

One of the largest industries on the internet are meeting new challenges. People aren’t buying porn on the web anymore, they are making it themselves and share it for free. Finally some innovation from us, the people, Wow!

This is interessting, just read what Sergio Messina says. Another interessting book on the subject is “The Porn report” from Australia. The names for the innovative engagement of real people is “DIY” ( Do it yourself) and “Realcore”. Got this knowledge from the newspaper Dagbladet. Well, the porn industry used to be innovative (just remember the struggle of home video format), maybe not so anymore. The positive side of ordinary people taking power of the internet porn is that it’s free, it’s democratic, it present real humans with normal bodies, in all ages and shapes, with “normal” actons and/or more kinky stuff presented, and the audiens find this more interessting than the “pro versions of porn” It’s also an interessting phenomen because this helps “destroying” a lucreative and cynical business that has exploited far to many people. Its like the burning of bra’s in the seventies, but with a modern twist, or is it?
It’s not only a shunshine story; we’ve all heard about private videos and images, that was never ment to be published, and tragic stories of people that got their most intimate parts of their lives exposed on the net. Well, everybody knew that Sex and Porn are two of the most seached words on the internet, or didn’t everybody know this ? For the qurious of you I have placed a free video clip on my Miscellaneous page. Was that evil of me ?

Google vs. Microsoft

Who to believe? Does Microsoft want to serve the market with great products or services, or do they want to survive? What about google, are they here to let multitude grow ?

 

To much power hasn’t done anything good for anyone. It seems like it’s a human pattern, that also goes for companies and organizations. Microsoft has been said to be the “bad” due to the market power it has. But is google the “hero”, that take power away from the big powerful MS? Maybe google has come to the point where they just have to much power to handle it?

I’m not thinking of the introduction of their browser, or the gadgets they spread, nor the income from adds alone or the search algorythm or the buy ups, I’m thinking of the sum of it all, the size, the presence all over the plaze, the hunger for growth. And i’m thinking of the ignorance and carelessness of all of us users. google have done one amazing thing, the have become a verb in our languages, that’s something! But is it good for us ?  The answers i have on my lips aren’t to difficult to guess, is it? there are a huge amount of articles, blogs out there about this subject like this article in “Dagens næringsliv” my point is that we as consumers, as companies should be aware of consequences for us and  ou clients!

Why is the web flat?

I’ve been wondering for more than ten years now; why does web sites on internet seems so “flat”? It’s like transferring paper to the screen. 

Updated comments below article

 

When I ask this question to designers, they often get very defensive. Its like we all believe that a web shall have a global menu, sub menus, a logo on top, a lot of informative text and if creative some great images to follow. Isn’t that recipy like a soup in a bag? Just add water…. But do not misinterpret me, there is a lot going on and internet and the web is still only in the early phase of evolving into what we will see in the future. There are a lot of interesting blogs out there discussing and talking (writing?) about this kind of topics, one interesting is this one: 360

Inventions, phenomena’s and ideas tend to keep a pattern we have to accept; they all tend to be loyal to the origin they came from. “The world is flat” we all know this postulate, and it took centuries to evolve from this idea to the one we have now (what ever that is these days..), even after the fact was stated people continued wanting to believe that the world is flat for decades. Web sites (pages!) has a lot of it’s idea created around the idea of print. I always found this interesting, since the computer screen is digital, and factually resembles the TV set more.

Even designers used to defend the fact that designing web pages frequently seems like a “forced electronic paper version” instead of a medium of visual communication with  another fact:  ”3D is to expensive in most cases” or “live images can’t get quality due to lack of broadband capacity” This statements are now less true than before, and designers are working hard to evolve the web.

The idea of (and knowledge to) create a perspective in an image was developed during the Renaissance , you don’t need 3D technology to draw diagonal lines to a center point! You need knowledge, and you need a basis for your idea world. Lot’s of interesting things are happening, but far to much of it seems to me to be “experimental”…. And I don’t get it. Experimental?? what is so experimental by implementing what art, cinema and, radio/TV has done for years? What’s so experimental by doing what PR and commercials have been for years? There is less experimenting on the web, than in most new media the last centuries!

Since the “history” of the web is, in my opinion, based upon an “electronic paper”, and the idea has been to provide knowledge and information spread, it’s hard to get out of the thinking patterns that we have to use a lot of text, mainly a form of one way communication, we will still have that as a major direction of how a web page will look, and function. Even web 2.0, social media, interactive solutions keep producing “flat web sites” If one wants’ to get out of this, one will need to take the bull by its horns, and questioning the basic of the idea of what a web site really is, for whom and to do what.

• It came to my mind that Itera group uses the term “the world is flat” from the book: “The World Is Flat – The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman
  There are two major points in my opinion on this use of term. First, using such terminology; To me it sounds typical American (excuse me my US friends) to simplify a phenomena by the wording that much so that the complexity disappear, it’s in fact a dangerous rhetoric trick of (amongst others)politicians to do so, and thereby avoid that the public focus is at more troublesome sides of the case.
  Thomas L Friedman’s book, tries to speak of a “flatter” (read less hierarchic world) but argue in fact of new business models, new technologies and how to achieve this – but, in my opinion naively overlook that it’s not very likely that e.g. poor / common people in the world (so called third world) are the one to enable this. Maybe the commercial corporation Itera group didn’t overlook this and see possibilities for profit in this term ?
  I would rather have a far more Holistic world, than a “flatter” one. 
  

Police dep. wake up!

It maybe sound unbelievable, but NTB in Norway report that the police data systems are outdated and should have been replaced years ago, in order to be up to date.

Security threats and network stability is at risk. The Norwegian Police data Dep. even state that ordinary police work is at risk at all times due to the old data systems.

The saddest part is that this is not only a fact for the police dep. but for a lot of official authorities. Health dep. social dep. and so forth are frequently reported to have outdated technical systems, or/and outdated solutions when it comes to take advantage of information and communication systems as a whole. (IKT)

There is an old saying that you can “save yourself into poverty”. This is very much true for the news article mentioned above. Police work suffer, cost per hour rise, results comes slower or doesn’t come at all. The result is an inefective police core, which gets de-motivated as their competence is not put in effective use.

Everyone in the Public sector should examine their systems and organizational procedure and invest and reorganize in order to become more effective, and work smarter. It’s not only the equipment and technical investments that solve problems and give smarter solutions. It’s very much an human challenge to use IKT systems effectively.

When it comes to the systems of the police force in Norway, there is only one thing to say to those who provide the budgets; Stop it!

Analyze your needs, and get what you need to enable you to do your job! Look at cost/benefit and look after that the investments, increases effectivity, provides increased motivation for the police so they can make full use of their competence in their daily work. The goal should be that the police force doesn’t save money on their budget; but that crime rate drops!

Open standards and collaboration

Well, why not apply the “KISS” (Keep It Simple Stupid) model? Microsoft says they are focusing on open standards and pinpoint the great benefits of collaboration and interoperationality. In Digi.no there is an interessting article today.

That’s great news, even though I doubt Microsoft has what it takes to give the market just that. But one never knows. Microsoft has to change, they know it, what remains to see if they are just talking the talk, or walking the walk.

Collaboration is a huge area of business models, concepts, technologies and organizational implementing systems. Intermobility is as well. The offers on the market is large, and not very easy to  have a clear view of. Why not simplify the task at hand, and use the web as the front end? Not Microsoft, not SAP, not Polycom or Tandberg, but simply the web. The web is an open standard; the web is simple and familiar for all users. The web is accessible from where ever. The broadband capacity is increasing as we speak mobile networks as well. So why not? The answer is in the business models created a long time ago. This goes for Microsoft, Tandberg, Telenor and the lot. They are all reluctant to change, that’s one of the main reasons the KISS model aren’t implemented already. They are afraid to loose market shares, and want to lock their customers into their own proprietary hardware/ software. This is old fashioned, and can in the most simple way be described as a mild form of bondage, and who want to be that submissive in business?

But there is hope! There are alternatives for web based solutions that are open for all ( this includes software from e.g. Microsoft, like Sharpeoint) where one can integrate web meeting solutions (like meetcon in scandinavia/ Wiredred in Europe and the US), project management solutions and so forth into a complete, simple web based interface tailor-made for your organization and business. It can easily be scaled for small businesses, and for large cooperatives. Safety is not a topic, it can all be managed. 

For a while yet, the large companies, like the ones mentioned above will keep argue that it’s not true that the web can solve the collaboration and intermobility challenge. At the same time the very same corps. are the already working very hard to try to change, before google snap the market shares in front of their eyes.

PS: Latest news: Speculations on Tandberg being in a a possible buy up situation Read more here (in Norwegian)

Scared of recession?

World economics are falling into recession. There is no need to discuss if this is what is happening. Everything is “falling”: The stock exchange, The Dollar, Banking, Real estate, and so forth. The cost of a oil barrel isn’t though..

What does this tell us in the digital communication business? Normally that revenue will drop. Both private enterprise and the public sector tends to stop investments and sit put, till someone shout out; the danger is over – go spend money again! Is this a wise strategy?

What is important when economics slows down? In my opinion it’s important to look at new opportunities, to look at means to become more efficient, to get more value out of the same or less input; in short to be clever. Good times seem to, at all times, favor laziness! “Harder times” seems to split organizations and businesses into two major groups. The scared ones –  and the creative ones. The digital business and internet companies has a lot to offer to the market in this situation. Producing new business models that are cost saving, increase efficiency , build stabile and secure solutions that avoid high cost rescue actions, and provide the public with internet services that are easy to use, that gives them correct information and empower people to take the best actions in the society and in their personal lives. 

It’s kind of obvious, in times of recession all things tend to get cheaper. That’s when it’s clever to buy stuff, to invest - simply because one get more value for the  money! That’s when people tends to get more creative, in order to find solutions they can afford, this gives the market effect that providers of goods and services have to adapt and have to become attractive by getting better, more creative and keep being competitive.

There is no need for a genius mind to figure this out, still, why do so many get scared and run down in their caves and hide, hoping for everything to vanish, to not be this way anymore? And why is the media so in love with crisis? Just look at the media, in Norway; Dagens næringsliv, Dagbladet, VG, and Aftenposten, and also in the internet media like Digi.no, to name some examples. They are all shouting out headlines like bankrupcy, crisis, regression, in any business segment you can imagine. Worldwide media is no better. There is nothing that sell better than fear! Media knows this and do their best to make use of it.

The interesting part to watch in the coming months and year will not be the ones that sit put and wait; it will be the one that start acting now. That’s the winners of tomorrow. For private enterprises, my hope is that environmental solutions for energy, transport, fair trade, ecological production of food, seafood and so forth is the ones investors now will put their eyes on and give finanical support  to grow and be even more inventive and strong in the marketplace for the best of us all, including the return of investments and branding value for the investors. I hope for the best for us all that we will have a lot of clever, creative, innovative leaders especially in the public sector, because that will give the effect that the living standard will not suffer for the poorest, instead we will have the opportunity to make far better solutions and services for the general public that will save a lot on budgets to spend on the ones in our societies that doesn’t have the economic strength to live thru the “harder times” ahead.

Hacker’s in power

Didn’t most of us, at one point, naively believe that a hacker is some dodgy pale guy, living of coca cola and pizza, playing around on his computer24/7, testing just how “clever” he could be, and that’s it, a pain in the ass for those that became his victim?

Why is it so that none of us like the idea that our governments and military around the world use every method available and useful also on the internet and also have skilled hackers on their payroll?
Cryptology, God damn, is invented by power structures like the church, the Greeks, the Roman Empire, the Persians, the Chinese in ancient times used systems of hiding and protecting information, and to mislead enemies and the population with disinformation when suited. Why should this change?

The internet is an excellent place for any authority to spread information in a manner that fits them best, it’s also a perfect environment to collect as much knowledge of opponents as possible. The amount of information, the scale of shared information and communication and the speed it’s delivered by is obviously interesting and time saving for any structure that have motifs for altering a fact, or deny some from getting a fact brought into public. Georgia just experienced this, and I’m just amazed that people react with surprise and “shock”.
Of course nations do this; they use any legal (and sometimes illegal) mean to get hold of information and knowledge. This is also true for information that is not meant to be shared. But it’s incredibility naive to believe that their own systems are not as vulnerable as others! It’s not only Georgia’s governmental web that is easy to lock down, most countries in the west have far too many weaknesses, and some are even without any crisis strategy in case of an attack. Why is it so hard to believe that a hostile party could do such a thing (or worse), if they have a strong motif for it?

It is indeed a fascinating paradox that Governments have knowledge to make use of gathering information, or being active in preventing or misleading others actively, but they seem to neglect that this fact goes for other Governments as well and they easily can become a victim of far worse scenarios that the Georgian example.

What are the damages, you might ask, if our country’s official web pages where shut down, it will only take a few hours or a day to get online again. Well, what if they didn’t put the pages down? What if they slightly change some of the information instead? What if they directed the public interaction to their own servers instead? There are so many ways of developing the simple attack “someone” did with the governmental site of Georgia, which could become very dangerous for individuals, groups of people in a society, or the whole nation. And even this simple action of “someone” proves that Georgia showed them very vulnerable and weak. What did that do to the Georgian public’s opinion of their leaders? I think the “someone” knew exactly what they could gain of this action and used the simplest means to achieve it.

Where is TV heading?

It’s often said that no media has ever died. The book, art painting, photography, the movie, the radio all have survived new media and technology arriving. But that was before YouTube!

 

Internet and broadcasting is merging and at some point I believe that TV becomes seamlessly integrated with next generation of home media systems in a scale that changes everything within broadcasting as we know it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that broadcast corporations will die. But I do believe that broadcasters should look closely at how they brand themselves. In my opinion a broadcaster that uses its brand and transform from a large channel enterprise more toward a knowledge and competence brand will survive into the future. Maybe its time for broadcasters to get far more serious about their websites and how to use them in their core business, instead of being very protective and separate broadcasts and Internet activities as much as they do at the moment. Is that a clever policy?

If we look at it: What is the business of broadcasting? For Public service broadcasters it’s like the morning paper you get on your door every morning, core business is to deliver as interesting content as you can to an as large amount of subscribers as possible. For a commercial broadcaster it’s to gather as many viewers as possible, and sell them to advertisers. Is there anyone that can see the similarities to the core of Internet business? Content and a large amount of people gathered around a specific subject. I believe that broadcasting and Internet has a lot in common of what they can offer, and with business models that is very suited for at close cooperation. The best of TV and the best of Internet is a hit in my opinion. While waiting for the broadband development, I believe that conceptual connection between the TV programs, and Internet e.g. communities is very interesting aspects of how to create a win-win situation. Internet has the options to interact far better with the audience and to connect the knowledge of the user and take advantages of that both in a commercial way, and in an editorial way also for the content creation of TV programs.

Digital collaboration is for everyone

It seems like when people start talking about collaboration and digital solutions, one start thinking; That’s for large organizations, It’s complicated or it’s expensive and not for my office/company. This is not true anymore.

 
Everything we do at work is to collaborate. We work in teams, we exchange information, share knowledge, solve problems, discuss, attend to a lot of meetings, run projects, develop and sell products, offer a wide range of services and we interact in almost every activity we do. This is absolutely valid for both public and private sector. The concepts for digital solutions for collaboration are developing rapidly. Main drivers for this is the broadband capacities that are increasing world wide, and also everything that goes on in social media, Web 2.0 and so forth. It’s a common prediction that these markets will be one of the top five growth markets the next coming years.

Flexibility and integration are two important key words for the concepts that will become the standard for collaboration services. The benefits is as we know them on beforehand is; faster production / development cycles, cost savings, closer relations with team members and customers, better public services and so on. New aspects are that the web interface, the kind of functionalities that are included and better integrations of them is improving a lot. Another aspect is that getting started is easy, also for very small companies and units in an organization. “Out of the box” is just fine, as a start. At the other end of the scale, highly complex systems that seamless integrate all kind of back end systems and present it in a single interface – or, as in the image in this article, virtual workspaces on a wall that enables multitasking collaboration tasks where e.g. time frame is of extreme importance. (e.g. solutions for handling crisis and emergencies, or industrial processes) now is available technologies for a cost one wouldn’t dream of just a few years ago

Still the most important is of course not ‘collaboration’ in it self, but what you need to do, and how to do that most effective. The best solutions for digital collaboration will be those where the user don’t even think of it as digital collaboration, but just the way we work!

Commercial options as “Co- Martial Arts”

I’m playing with words, but still; I just thought of it. Commercials, isn’t really something people want, is it?
Still as consumers we do want and need things, when we want and need them, and most of us would love to get a great offer, just at the right time and place.

 

If my toaster broke down – or car. I’d be happy to get a solution to my problem. But it’s annoying to be bombarded with toaster or car repair ads when everything is just fine. As we have seen, advertisers have discovered this idea, like we can observe it at e.g. Amazon.com.
What’s the clue? Amazon knows something about you! (and more than you might like to know) and Amazon guess what else they can offer you. At times we think of this as great, and at other times we think it sucks. It all depend on our needs and motivations when we are exposed to the suggestions they make. But all what they really do is to make a qualified guess.

This is getting far better/worse (depending on perspective) in the web 2.0 development as we speak about it. But no doubt, connecting user Profiles to Content and Ads. is increasing rapidly. This triangle has enormous possibilities. Up till now web communities have been able to get “filthy rich”, selling their “flat” databases with a very simple concept; ‘Set up a community – get loads of users – sell – Success!’ And the revenue stream is basically made out of very traditional wide spread advertisements – Throw adds over people! No segmentation, no thought what so ever – if this is something that pleases users or pisses them off. The buyer of the community doesn’t really care, if he has 1(or 10) mill. daily users in his database to sell to advertisers he’s happy chap. This trend will not last for long!

But what if ? What if we can create concepts that take full advantages over the holistic paradigm of Content, Adds and user Profiles and make use of the input/output from that? And we can ! Then we can provide a “Martial Art advertisement concept” for the user (and also for the advertisers BTW): The concept is to take the force from the opponent and use that energy to achieve our goal – or defend us towards unwanted attacks. We are able to give users a community where they have common interests in content and social networking,to give them control over what ads they want to be exposed to and by that increase the likeliness of being able to provide individuals with accurate advertisement, based upon the Content they choose, and their user profile on that site. Any one that doesn’t think this looks wonderful ? It also works the reversed way, where advertisers can segment perfectly, and know the user pattern and interessts of a user, and usergroups in detail, and automatically provide the correct ad at the correct time and place on the site.  – Oh, did I just give away a great business idea? *grin* I don’t think so. It’s like Martial Art, you need quite a lot of talent, knowledge and training to get it right !

Did knowledge exist before The Internet?

Not all comes from “The Matrix”,“The Da Vinci code”or Microsoft corp! Some seems to believe that knowledge about Communication, Interactivity, Social networks and Semantics came with the invention of the Internet?!?

It seems like far too many people in our business act like they know all the theories and wide range of buzz words flying around, and that it in fact knowledge “arrived” with the invention of the Internet! . Don’t buy into it. System developers, Business consultants, Key account managers and so forth, all to often seems to have never even read Emanuel Kant, or know what the H*** the old Greeks were up to ( NO, I didn’t miss spell ‘Geek’ !)

The ‘fun’ part is when you look at Communication theories the “modern” origin is not all that far from the binary system used as a basis for computer technology per see. Most modern communication theory seems to accept and often adapt the Shannon and Weaver’s theories (1949) that was developed to understand how telegraphy, telephone, and radio wave signals could be sent, and received without disturbances. From this very physical viewpoint we got the vocabulary extendend in the communication theories: ‘Information source’, ‘Message’. ‘Transmitter’, ‘Encode’ ‘Signals’, ‘Channel’, ‘Receiver’, ‘Decode’ (reconstruct) and the element of ‘Noise’, that makes effective transmission of communication dysfunctional. Shannon & Weaver were aware that his model didn’t address ‘meaning’ and stated: “These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem”(1948). But this limitation seems to have been forgotten by many of the ones working with communication theories later on. Still this model is widely accepted as one of the main seeds out of which communication studies has grown. The terminology in semantics and semiotics make use of the terms and emphasizes the ‘code’ and ‘decode’ elements of communication, to try to pinpoint the challenge of ‘meaning’.

My point is that it’s needed to get deeper into the set of ideas that has evolved since Aristotle’s ‘Rhetoric’s’, via a wide range of theoretical developments. Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, the Norwegian Jostein Gripsrud are just a few clues of further reading, all of them important to read. In my opinion, so is more general studies in Sociology such as Theodore W. Adorno and Pierre Bourdieu to name two examples. Especially in these times where we speak of Social networks, Communities, web 2.0 and Semantic web, sociology and anthropology are important readings to get a grasp of what communication and communities really are. Wikipedia is a great starting point and this article gives a lot of clues to further readings: Communication theory. And when you’re done with that – it’s time to pick up Jurgen Habermas and Ludwig Wittgenstein !

Collaboration beyond knowledge management

We are familiar with the traditional collaboration and knowledge management software solutions and “heavy” solutions for the web. To gather, sort and make data available for groups. We have gotten familiar with some of the social network solutions like LinkedIn, facebook, MySpace and so forth. But we have a lot in front of us when these – and real time communication solutions melt into seamless web 2.0 and web 3.0 concepts.

The essence of collaboration is; by doing things together we get a better outcome, than the effort done by the same amount of individuals would alone. The essence of digital collaboration is to achieve this in a virtual environment where there is no boundaries of location for the participants. Hardware, Software, Portals, web applications, API’s, and not to forget broadband connections and so forth enables a totally new set of possibilities. We can rapidly move from old fashioned (and kind of “static”) Knowledge Management software and server solutions locked in to the company’s IT environment, and move toward open engines where you can both structure your input and collect your output, team based, and go far beyond that and increase work flow processes, speed up projects and make use of your time line far better. Just as we all knew on beforehand; the most interesting discussions and biggest “breakthrough’s” in problem solving happens at the coffee machine, or over a beer in the pub. The trick is to set up a digital environment that support common human behavior, where the technology becomes as invisible as possible. In order to achieve the optimal of all the possibilities the most important factor is may be not not the digital boundaries, but the organizational ability to change from an old fashioned work flow, towards new and improved processes. Defining accurate and flexible concepts for your organizational collaboration and how to implement this in your organization is maybe a bigger challenge than the actual Digital bit of it.

What is beyond traditional knowledge management, and project management systems? We see concepts that includes both a- syncrone and syncrone collaboration in one and the same solutions, we see an increased interests in integrated services instead of singular software. Services that add, and include e.g. instant messaging, presence management, predefined web based web conference solutions (instead of heavy duty videoconferencing hard/software ) like meetcon are emerging. We see that complete collaboration portals (tailor made) that make real sense to reaching goals like; cost savings, time saving, rapid product development (time to market) real time meetings and e learning, increased contact with customers and so forth . All this is a reality of combined and integrated services that takes collaboration to new levels. The best part is that all the technology is at hand right now, it’s not science fiction! Sharepoint from MS, IBM collaboration and a lot of other have improved solutions during the last couples of years. It’s also easy to make solutions that are totally web based without the traditional software solution and need for download of heavy clients. We are no longer dependent on one kind of system, but can “shop” from a lot of systems, services and integrate them into our own needs.

And it gets even more interesting when you start looking at combining this kind of collaboration concepts with communities and add “mash up” concepts. Can you imagine this kind of concepts in a “transparency” environment? How this can influence your work force? What kind of innovative organization you can build and grow? I’m looking forward to see some of the upcoming project that I bet is already in work several places around the world. This is the wonderful part of innovation, it often seem to be a “collective consciousness” worldwide. The next few years will surely be interesting in terms of re-newing the way we work in both a global and local sense. Mobility, cross country and cross culture workflow will increase, and with it – the level of innovation will rise.

Who’s the Internet project Boss?

Have you ever wondered who’s really in charge of an Internet project? Or who “should” be?

I’m really tired of the constant “struggle” where IT Dep’s have opinions like; they should be in charge of Internet projects and that if not for them the Internet wouldn’t even exist. But hang on; it doesn’t make anything better if was the Communication dep. either. Claiming “content is King”. Providers, crews, individuals that keep claiming this kind of arguements are doing nothing but being trapped in “the monkey trap.”

“There is no Internet project!” (to rephrase a line from The Matrix movie) Internet is a channel as any. (E.g. TV, publications, radio, Cell phones) There is most surely a desired outcome for a company in need for an Internet involvement. IT / communication/ PR or what is – companies tend to forget that for the customer it’s not a project -with a start, and an ending. For the customer Internet is a long lasting process using that channel for their purposes (Business, involvement, information tasks and so forth). All kinds of businesses have all of a sudden become their own publishers. – Thanx to Gutenberg, and a brand new world of technology!

Gartner recently stated (ITxpo in Barcelona) that the CIO’s have yet a paradigm shift ahead of them. I’d say that it’s not only the CIO’s that have this challenge – We all do, and the responsibility for making the right decitions of how to go about it is in the hands of top management both on the customer and provider side of the table.

I don’t really care who is to be the “Boss” in an Internet project! An Internet project is always a team effort. The one in charge should be the one that’s best to manage, and motivate, and make everyone in the team able to do better than they thought possible themselves. The manager that empower everybody in the team, make all involved focused on the task at hand – and make sure that all agrees on the idea; the best result comes from what is happening in the group dynamics, not the singular effort from each and one alone. This person could be from IT Dep, Comm. Dep or from the Consultant/strategy Dep. or what ever. The best motivator, best inspirator, with management skills and a broad set of knowledge of all competence needed for the task is my favorite candidate for the job.

Is content “King” or is connecting “King Kong”?

A big question is always, what to do on my page, what content do I need to have there? And it swings both ways. For me and the web masters; writing, and you visiting a site; reading or involving.

It’s the same in business life, or for organizations, and webmasters who do their very best. Often its just to unclear what the site is there for, or even worse; it’s unclear what the company’s vision really is.

On my site it’s sharing some of my thoughts, and hopefully once in a while I manage to tip some of you of the standard automatic thinking pattern, and from that you get a new idea. If so; you have the opportunity to do something that is more precise and to the point in your work. Not by my doing, but by the ideas you make for yourself while reading my stuff.

For Companies or organizations is being different maybe the reason other people or customers react up on what is done at their site, and not the next one( competitor). Isn’t that what we all want? A reaction? Isn’t that at the core of communication? To be seen, noticed and then get a feedback? (please feel free to comment on anything on my page, any comment or question will make me more happy than total silence *grin* )

Very often management doesn’t realize the importance of having a clear idea of just what the web site is supposed to do for them. And the website, however nice it looks, sucks. “Content is King” is an old statement, that I don’t always agree on. Communicating the core of the business in all you do, and making sure that the quality of the content is superb is of huge importance, and I mean not only the writing – but also the visual text. (semiotics states everything is Text). The new(ish) idea that “Connecting is King Kong” has the same challenge, connecting people is not always enough, you need to let people have an environment where there is a meaning in the connection that you provide for them. For Nokia, the cell phone is reason enough, the concept of calling someone, or being available is enough, maybe not all that easy for your business ? The answer will always be found in the very reason why you are in business, and keep to the core of that; The challenge is in every case to find a smart way to do so.

Interactiv or not

I’ve been involved in the Internet business since the beginning. Then, and surprisingly enough still, the word Interactive keep popping up in the most peculiar ways.

I’ll use another web 2.0 site to help out; Wikipedia. In short Interactivity; In the “contingency view” of interactivity, there are three levels:

Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages;
Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message;
Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them.

The Reactive communication is what I speak of as two way communication. Real interaction is when the one message in a flow of messages, gets altered because of the content of former messages. This Blog is not interactive. I write what I want, you can involve by giving comments, but that doesn’t alter my text.
If you would like to create an interactivity with me, we we could implement a chat, and discuss the subject, your opinions would alter my opinions and honestly, most likely would these postings become better.

I attended First Tuesday yesterday

Web 2.0 and social networks had the focus of the speakers. It’s not just another “buzz word” just as I thought. There is a lot of interesting things happening at the moment and the future looks bright.

I know one of the speakers, Kjetil Manheim, and yesterdays post became a “friendly race” from my side to get my post out before I had heard what he had so say about social networking. Lots of people came to network, and to discuss these, and other themes of the Internet business of today. I got to introduce a few new people of the company I own a part of, meetcon, and it just might develop into some interesting collaboration and web conference projects.

First Tuesday is always inspiring, and it’s always interesting to meet up with new people in the business and re- cap with people I know. You can read all about it at First Tuesday if you become a member !

From mass communication to communicaton between the masses.

The paradigm shift from mass communication to communication between the masses is just at its beginning. We have seen some examples of how to make this a profitable business, but I believe that we only have seen the top of an ice berg.

There are so many implications to this that you will find whole book stores trying to cover the subject. The shift within the Internet industry has gone from sending out information, like documents presented as HTML text, toward broader one way communications, like commercials, PR, campaigns and so forth, further on to enabling the options for giving feedback, comments, newsgroups, dating services, chat, web conferencing etc. etc. It’s a wide field with a lot of phenomena working in parallel.

There is confusion, and there is chaos. But as the Zen Buddhists’ say: From chaos comes order. In a business perspective companies have struggled to find business models that fit the demands to interact via the web and via other channels as well. This is now changing rapidly. I think it can be interesting to divide the two way communication area into three main arena; Consumer power solutions, Democracy increasing possibilities and Social networks.

The reason for me not to define this as interactivity is that there is a difference between two way communication and interactivity, (not all two way communication is interactive) which can lead to even more confusion, so let’s stick to the broader definition; two way communication.

Consumer power or it could also be defined as commercial exploration of individuals on the market. This is two sides of the coin. Is all about how the customer want to deal with the seller, how to get products and services easier, faster and cheaper. For the seller, its all about how to get enough knowledge about the customer to streamline the sales process, and enable a larger sale, added sales opportunities, build loyalty. Cross sales, cross channels, mixed business models can be implemented with a great result for both customer, and provider. One the one hand the customer can get more “power” – and so it is also for the provider. Interactive options, in voting, polling, response options, chat, customer web conferencing as support etc. is putting two way communication into real life on the web, TV, mobile phone and in the car. The collection of customer base, the knowledge and behavior patterns all create fundamentally increased possibilities for increased profit.

Democracy increasing possibilities is all about enable us all in stating our opinions on the one hand, and gathers groups that provide and produce content on the other hand. As we see it can be used for non-profit purposes, but also commercially. Blogs, discussion boards, magazines where everyone can publish, net meetings, adding comments of articles are examples of how to work with this kind of two way communication. For individuals this is great opportunities to participate in the public discourse in, or to get tailor made service from the commercial arena.

Social networks meet a fundamental human wish/need – to belong to a group. Via the Internet (or cell phone or other channels for that matter, social networks has a direct appeal for everyone that can find some sort of group they can identify and belong to. For the participants there are a lot of benefits and “things to do” either private “entertainment” or as a professional network building outcome. The value and possibilities at hand when you have such a group, or have made a system where those kinds of “groupings” can happen in a large scale, there are many business models that work. Adds is one, selling services is another, selling behavior patterns of your member base are a third, and there are a lot of options combining models.

What’s happening at the moment is that these ideas and concepts are refined, and gets more advanced as the months goes by. The business models as well as the services provided. There is a lot of creativity, and the best part is that a lot of it is driven by the participants, so there is an effect of a collective product development rarely seen before. The most interesting part of what is happening at the moment is when ideas gets mixed and new concepts arrive. Some of the mix is within the areas I have written about in this posting, and the former post “ About transparency”, even more interesting is the mixes that have started to arise, with other concepts, established long ago for other purposes, that’s when two plus two becomes more than five.

About transparency

Until recently we all have spoken about the Internet as a channel for the external communication, and the Intranet as the internal channel for communication.

More interesting is the development we see today, where the ideas of transparency and two way communication becomes the standard. Even TV is moving very quickly in that direction. What does this mean? Transparency? Two way communication? It’s to very different concepts, and adding them together creates a third. For now I’ll write a little about transparency.

 

The word “transparency” invites you to think of the idea that what is communicated is open for all to see. Who is the messenger and who is the receiver? Towards whom is the message meant for? and so forth. It’s by far a more horizontal form of communication, and can be a more honest kind of communication.

One example could be; “in our company all communication that is possible to be open and free, shall be open and free for all. Only information that has to be hidden for most will be opened towards groups or individuals. If you implement this idea, you get a combined inter- and intranet where there is a conceptual point in letting everyone outside and inside the organisation be exposed to the same communication flow. You give access for “added internal information/ communication flow” only to those who really needs it. It leads to less double communication, and allows the company / organisation to increase efficiency and reduce cost and double exposure of information elements. In addition everyone in the organization become well aware of how and what the company are communicating externally. The marketing and branding gets internalized in the organization. It’s great way of building a common culture in the company.

Another example of taking transparency into the real world and live by it could be if your company / org. decide to show directly what activities the employees are involved in, to show externally what the company really are doing, what they are spending time on. I discussed this with my friend Gavin Bargus today, as he asked me: “What do transpaerency really mean to management in companies?” My question is also: “Do managements really mean it if they state it ?” or does it just become some sort of “show of statement?” As a customer I would really like to know this, because it would show me where my money goes. Gavin asked : “If you connect every employee to the hour reporting system in a company, presented it as a bar/graph on the website, wouldn’t that be real transparency?” The result could be that every one could see that e.g. Geir(me), as a consultant (or the consultant group) spent e.g. 18% of his time in meetings with customers, 42% writing strategies for 2 customers. He also spent 5% to increase his knowledge and 12% administrational time. 13% of his time was spent in sales activities. A set of bars presenting the total of the whole company would show how efficient the company is as we speak. The question “Where did my money go?” would be answered at all times. That is transparency! It is an option to be in front of competition on the marketplace, to be honest and it would build an organisation that really works as a team to win on the marketplace.

But I can hear the CEO’s out there, shouting; “Is this man crazy?” We can never show this in real time, it’s madness!” It’s “illegal” “our staff would go wild and hang us!”

I would say: Nop, they wouldn’t – nor would the customers! It all depends on the intention, and the purpose and how it’s done. To be honest, to be open and transparent, has to involve the braveness to show what the reality is, to put integrity into ones actions, daringly and without the temptation to manipulate with facts. Not to do so, should at least give the consequence that one stop using the term transparency uncritically.

What do you know?

In danger of becoming a part of the blogging phenomen, where everyone is out on the web to communicate, and no one is left to read, I’m joining the club.

The reason for doing this is clear, and unclear at once, just to warn you all. It’s a way to let my network, colleagues, competitors, customers future employees and all other interested get a better understanding of my views on subjects in connection with my work, who I am and so forth. At the same time there is a serious risk that I’ll be twittering, getting into totally other topics as it fits my mood.

I’m to be found at Facebook if you want to know more about me, my profile and network. Since I joined two colleagues a couple of years back and started the company meetcon you will also see some of what I’m specialized in, work wise.