Power to the people!

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/364444/missingdescription.html
 

No surprising news here (for me anyway), social networking communities are helping to push consumers to online retails (etailers). Why? Well because Social networks have magical powers that enable people to create new friendship; amend old ones; sustain current ones and finally but importantly bring like-minded people together. On top of this, sites such as bebo and facebook provide additional features through mash-ups with other sites such as
iTunes, tripadvisor, LastFM etc (that web2.0 stuff) that showcases people’s likes/interest, what they have been up to, the latest trends and so on, which helps push services and products. Add to this the fact that the best recommendations comes from friends or someone you know and trust, makes social network sites a new channel for companies to increase their revenues.

So long second floor

Bye-bye!

I had a great time and I’ll see you around and who knows maybe after I’m finished travelling around eco-systems I’ll end up back up here.

Your avatar will soon be a mall rat

This is an interesting article about IBM’s plans for taking virtually world to the next step.

“Just wait. Within five years, you may be able to send in a digitized alter ego to kick the tires, ask questions and do your shopping in a virtual world.”

 http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/money/story.html?id=e1c8a25b-47a0-45c2-83aa-79bd5fae3057&k=18832&p=1  

This is good news for people who have difficulty ‘getting out and about’ due to disabilities, time constraints, commitments, living in remote places, etc. They will be able to have a similar (or perhaps better?) experience without leaving the comfort of their own homes. 

But I can’t help but ask “is this really good news for society as a whole??”…..

Thank you Slam

Have you ever been to a poetry slam? It’s great. People stand up and receite poems of their choice in form of a competition but what it’s really about is not ‘just about poems’. The poets make their stuff come real, they live it. They rap, sing, skat, laugh, dance. It’s personal and passionate. The whole audience was blown away. I had goosebumps. Learned loads without intending to.

I’m asking myself what can we as industry learn from slam?

The closest I’ve seen to poetry slam in our industry is the idea of barcamp. A big room with people and every person stands up at some point and talks about something they are passionate about. Never been to one but hearsay has it it’s pretty powerful, fun and insightful. Choatic and random way of knowledge sharing I suppose but one that sticks as it is personal and passionate. Like to try it out.

There is also this internal idea around of having an ideas farm as concept to foster innovation. The concept is: Create innovative ideas for the company, pitch for them in 6 minute long pecha kucha style and let the audience decide which ones to persue (or not). Here we have the competition we’ve seen in slam. The ideas farm follows the purpose of integrating innovation into our worklife and make it happen. Is is passionate and personal? Not necessarily as we have the issues of ownership of ideas and the problem of who’s taking the idea further and in which frame. How can you be personal and passionate if ownership isn’t clear and success equals the gain of an unknown amount of additinional work to fit into a busy schedule? Does personal and passionate not belong to innovation?

Home-Based Contact Center Agents Rapidly Becoming Mainstream

Wow a printer that can print out 3D objects using lasers. “erm I need to buy a base ball bat, I know I will just print one out” From a UEA point of view this would be a nice feature to have when designing a prototype such has a hand held device for testing, look and feel etc. When and if it ever comes out I imagine that this machine will cost the same price of a house.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070925081418.htm 

FOWA conference blog: Insight #2

Another great quote from FOWA by http://www.thatcanadiangirl.co.uk/blog/2007/10/03/creating-a-community/

Matthew Haughey, MetaFilter says…

“Be the third place; people have home, work and a third community or social attachment. This can be a car enthusiast club, a WoW guild or a website community. Make something they’ll want to spend time on everyday.”

FOWA conference blog: Interesting speach summary #1

We’ve Got This Community: Now What? (Heather Champ & Derek Powazek)

Stories from flickr and others on what they learned from their community

http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/10/03/fowa-weve-got-this-community-now-what-heather-champ-derek-powazek/

FOWA conference blog: Insight #1

You just don’t know what’s going to happen next when you launch a startup.

http://www.taptu.com/blog/2007/10/03/fowa-were-not-divinating-the-future/

The main running thread of all talks so far is quite clear: Nobody knew what would happen next after launching their app. And in fact, few ended up where they expected to go. Someone this morning said that the real work on a web app really begins after you launch (see, I was listening, but didn’t take note so not sure who said this…) You need to listen intently, watch your users and see what they make of it. Odds are you’ll notice that they’ve hacked your app and use it in ways you would never have imagined. That’s your cue to harness their creativity and evolve accordingly.