Category Archives: What I think

What I think

VRM => we all have our own loyalty card

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250320091143I was just reading David Weinberger’s excellent notes of Doc Searls’s Berkman lunch and realised what I was talking about at the VRM thing last November I’m sorry it’s taken so long.

What happened was I went through my wallet looking at all the different loyalty cards and coffee shop stamp cards I have and I said I want to be able to manage all of this better and from my own perspective. Maybe the people listening understood better than I did.

What I realised this implies is that we all have our own loyalty card (which somehow gets automagically updated from the cloud) which is accepted by and useful to every “vendor” that we choose to allow access, no matter what the service.

And, most importantly, I can also view, aggregate and filter all my data on there in various visualisations whether it’s how much I spent on coffee altogether this month or which coffee shops I frequented most or maybe it’s my medical record and the prescriptions I’ve had filled recently.

I was at Demos today listening to Richard Thaler talk about his book Nudge and he used just the same thing as an example – full disclosure of information from credit card companies about the penalties and extra costs on your bill which you could then feed into some analytic site on the web to understand better how to cut your costs.

I don’t know if I’ve said anything new here but it feels like *I* understand myself a little better…

There’s another opportunity to join in the fun and games defining and evolving VRM at the Open Space that I’m facilitating for VRMHub on Monday. Come & play.

What I think

Ada Lovelace Day

When I signed up to the pledge to write something about women in technology for the first Ada Lovelace Day, it seemed simple enough: to write about a woman in tech that I admire.

When my mother left school after a secondary modern education, she had little choice other than being a cook at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and then an assistant in Rackhams. Women of my generation had more offered to them, although girls in my sixth-form doing sciences were considered a little weird and going on to do an engineering degree was rare and remarkable. I’m very glad to say that my daughter doesn’t see such barriers. As she approaches 16, I believe she really could do anything she chose to do.

It’s been a lovely exercise, if only because it’s reminded me of how many talented women I know. I’m glad that there are so many to choose from although, as I said when I did the panel in Berlin with Suw, Steph & Janet, I’m not altogether convinced that women are invisible in tech, I understand that that’s how they feel. I also believe that the future in tech is even closer to gender equality. We’re moving into a period where archetypical feminine assets: creativity, nurturing, conversation are dominant in the most exciting areas of technological development.

The person I’d like to draw attention to is Helen Keegan – a friend for longer than she’d thank me for pointing out, she’s a marketer primarily, but it’s the combination of understanding how people buy stuff, how mobile technology is used and the cultural issues around technological progress that I think make her most admirable.

She is also determined, clear about her own opinions and unafraid to express sometimes unconventional or unpopular angles on her subject. Only today I observed her speaking at Wealth of Networks II and dealing persuasively with someone who held a very different view to hers about shoppers at Lakeside. Helen has also been my most honest and motivating supporter in the work that I’ve done on the Tuttle Club.

When I was first experimenting with podcast conversations, Helen was a natural choice. Here’s a podcast I made with her in 2005 (sitting in Grosvenor Square of all places!) which displays some of that knowledge and determination.

PS I have to mention one to watch for ADL2010 – Hermione Way from Techfluff TV – trying new stuff, learning quickly, producing quality content and building a solid business while having lots of fun.

Photo: by-nc-sa Bowbrick

What I think

Triangles

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School of Temporary ThoughtAt Amplified we had an interesting series of exchanges around relationships.

I asserted my belief that in a 3-way relationship, say Alice, Bob & Carol, then Alice is responsible for her relationship with Bob and also responsible for her relationship with Carol, but that Bob and Carol’s relationship is none of Alice’s business.

That’s my belief. It’s what I try to practice in life, although when you do start to try to practice it, you see how entrenched in our social dynamics is the belief that we can tell two other people how to run their lives or believe that in some way we are looking after either of them by trying to make their relationship “work” or “better” or maybe “work better”.

“What about gossip?” I was asked. Yes, good question. Again, I try, I really try not to indulge in gossip anymore, it doesn’t do either of us any good, although I don’t deny that it can be absolutely delicious.

None of this is to say that I think myself any better than anyone because of this belief, it’s just what works for me.

There was an interesting point where we were talking about it and there was some disagreement. Someone asked for a show of hands as to who agreed with me. Funny. I think maybe one or two hands went up. Did I change my mind? Nope. Did I suddenly think, maybe I should start interfering in other people’s relationships? Nope. Forty years of llife has taught me not to stick my nose in. Peer pressure isn’t going to swing it.

What I think

Do as I say…

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07012009799How do you change the world without telling people what to do? Forget changing the world even, how about getting anything done or created at all? I guess that’s one of my big life questions.

Because telling people what’s good for them and what’s best for all of us and what they should do that I’m not already doing – isn’t that the only way it’s going to work? Isn’t that what marketing and politics is all about? Don’t people need to be told how to live better lives, what things they need and what they don’t need, what they really ought to stop doing straight away? Otherwise, then what would happen?

It does seem as though there is no other way. Except, oh dear, we have a rather major blind spot. There is no other way as long as it’s me or my pals who are doing the telling, but the moment that you’re telling me what to do, you’re telling me how to live my life then I will resist – to put it mildly. Sometimes I will resist violently, sometimes more subtly, in fact sometimes so subtly that even I might not notice that I’m resisting, but nonetheless I will resist.

Oh yeah, and I’m quite good at recognising when you try to make me think it was my idea in the first place.

Aren’t I?

Bonus audio: Vinay Gupta’s lecture on Infrastructure for Anarchists (70MB) at the Temporary School yesterday

london, What I think

Silly Lists, Silly Games

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This evening, my attention was drawn to the fact that I wasn’t on the twitter grader “Twitter Elite in London” list.

Oh Noes! Wot a calamitee!

So I checked out my location setting and found it to be “London, UK” – it’s a free-form text box so you can, and I did, temporarily, change it to “Up My Own Arse” if you like, but there isn’t a list for “Twitter Elite Up My Own Arse”… yet.

Changing it to London, slipped me quickly into the list at #12 although since others have noticed the same thing and changed their locations, who knows where I’d be? Hey it gave me another opportunity for cheap sexual innuendo. I’ve now put it back to what it was, simply because I think it’s more accurate and useful. Take a look at the disambiguation page for just London.

These lists *are* silly, the games we play with them, once we’ve noticed them, are just games. Is there anything here other than vanity and the fleeting fun of gaming a system by tweaking it’s parameters? Well scroll down a bit and you’ll see that this list is just a way of grabbing attention in order to point people at the services of Hubspot and “inbound marketing”, ie SEO specialist. It’s us, our vanity, our envy, our play, being used for someone else’s marketing campaign. No thanks. Unfollowing @grader (though I understand that doesn’t stop me being included in the lists)

What I think

Wearing my social objects on my chest

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12112008546My most popular social objects at the moment are the badges on the lapel of my overcoat. Most of them were around last winter when I was wearing the coat, so I don’t know whether it’s the fact that I’ve added a couple more or something else that makes all sorts of people stop and smile and comment and ask questions.

Only today, for example, I happened to be riding in a lift with the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, as you do, and he (for they are one person) said “Oh what are those for?” and I said, “Oh they’re just things I’ve been to” and he said “Mmm… just brightening up your overcoat” “Yes” and so it was that my relationship with Jack Straw MP was everso slightly enriched.

I’ve put some notes on the photo on flickr to help people who want to know what each is about. I might as well spell out the detail here too. So from the top, the targetty looking one is from Platform for Art, the programme for putting art on the underground. The one next to it featuring Domo is a new one from my friend Claire who gave it to me to extend my collection. This exchange also gave us the opportunity to share this with one of our friends who’d never seen it before – yes there are such people! Below Domo is my flickr badge – I’m always surprised by the people who have been on flickr for ages, but who need to have that explained to them. Isn’t it obvious? And yes, I know it’s upside-down.

To the left in the picture but to my right is my Breakfast Club badge from the cafe in D’Arblay St of the same name, not because I belong to a club that involves eating sausage and bacon or because I carried a torch for Molly Ringwald (though the latter is true and if the former exists, I’d like to know about it) They have them in a basket on the counter, so they’re not as exclusive as you might think. Next down and not very clear is one that Katherine gave me. It depicts creature that is half whale and half training shoe. I have no idea what the picture means, if it means anything at all. Below that, the black one is from likemind. I can’t remember whether it was the lovely Amanda or the lovely Jamie who gave it to me (now that’s going to start a fight) and the one at the bottom is from the goodie bag at Interesting 2007. It says “Interesting 2007” So that’s the only one that wasn’t given to me by a girl then.

Each of them is a conversation starter, each has a little story attached, a little story that tells you a little bit more about me. And together, the fact that I wear them says something about me. Perhaps that I’m a nutter and to be avoided, but judging by experience, also that it’s OK to stare and OK to come up and ask me what they’re about. I don’t have to do anything more than wear them to get into interesting conversations with people.

If you haven’t a clue why I’m even talking about “social objects” go and read Hugh on the subject.

What I think

The long-tail of face-to-face

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The gentle end of the Tuttle ClubI don’t know where I’m going with this one, but I’m musing about some attitudes that I see popping up around face-to-face events.

One seems to be: Big is beautiful (or at least successful) ie in order for an event to be considered a success, you have to have loads of people there. I disagree. I look at Tuttle and shudder at the idea of there regularly being 100 people there. I find it’s pushing the format to have more than 50. New people seem to expect me to be disappointed if there are fewer people this week than last week. I keep telling them that it’s OK, I’ve experienced nobody turning up to something I’ve arranged, and it didn’t kill me. I think that I’m going to always represent an extreme of Tuttle attendee, if anyone’s going to make sure they meet everyone in the room then it’s going to be me. And meeting 40 people in 3 hours is a lot, fairly comfortable, but nearing the maximum.

Now that’s not to say that I don’t think big events are any good. I enjoyed Web2.0 and I’m sure I’ll enjoy LeWeb08 which is going to be huge. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t think size is a sign of success, it’s just a sign of, well, how big something is…

Another side of this is the feeling that everyone’s got to go to everything. OK, so it’s not that bad, but I do see people feeling like they are seriously missing out by not getting to go to things. And I know that’s how I’ve felt as well. We tell ourselves that we know that no-one can go to everything and surely no-one can be that interested in everything, and if you spent all your time going to things, you wouldn’t get anything done. But still, it would be just my luck that it will be this event that I’m not going to where something brilliant and amazing and paradigm-shifting will happen, something that the attendees will remember for ever and tell their grandchildren about, and level of awesome that will never be repeated in our lifetimes.

I think we’re going to be doing more and more of these meetups, scaling from 4 or 5 right up to the thousands and recognising that we don’t need to go to everything just because it’s there, any more than we can buy, listen to and enjoy every CD available on Amazon.

In fact I’m personally going to be choosing to attend things that are the 4 or 5 right people to talk about a very niche, specific subject – I still love 40 people on a Friday, but next I want to add in some smaller, more focused things. Note, that the “right” people doesn’t necessarily imply the best, brightest, coolest, sexiest, funniest or any of those things. It just means, if anything at all, the most appropriate.

What I think

Steam

Interesting that a third of the way through the month, I seem to be finding it more difficult to write something every day than find a piece of video to post.

It’s great exercise though, and it feels kind of like a promise to go to the gym every day for a month. Much easier than you thought at the beginning, and then… 10 days in…

I have no more to say than that. Well I have some big things to say, on the dangers of us lacking consciousness… and the long tail of face-to-face events… and about the stuff I’m doing in the daytime, but can’t quite blog about just yet…oh yes and I’d really like to do something retrospective on how the way we talk about this stuff has changed since the summer of 2005 when we suddenly seemed to get a bit of confidence… and there’s a little movie I’m putting together telling my version of the genesis of tuttle… Maybe if I started it a bit earlier than 10pm every night I might find it easier.

What I think

Work Places

05112008518This is a photograph of what’s left of the car park that used to be on the corner of Rochester Row and Greycoat Place. In the top left-hand corner, you can see the windows of the offices of 33 Greycoat Street, now occupied by the Commission for Social Care Inspection. In 1999, the Audit Commission took on that building as part of it’s growth in preparation for inspecting Best Value (wha’ that?) and one of those first floor offices later became the place where my manager took residence and I’d sit with her, trying to avoid conversations about how well I was doing, what I wanted to do next and how the Commission “could help in my development”. I mainly stared out of the window, at that car park and wondered how long she would wait to change the subject.

I love these holes in the city. Demolition sites that, once flattened, last only too briefly. The chance to see through further than you could before, see the backs of places only imagined, see a bit more of the sky, regain a sense of scale. Maybe some of them will hang around for longer if redevelopment money is short. Mind you, there still seems to be plenty of activity of some sites, although those may be ones where the mentality is “we’ve started so we’ll finish”.

Which also reminds me of conversations we had early on about Tuttle that included a kind of office-in-a-box a travelling co-working space that could be set up anywhere we could find a space. I’m becoming attracted to that again. Perhaps Amplified08 might be a place to specify what’s needed.

What I think

Berlin

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17 Juni, Brandenburger, FernsehturmI still have Berlin on my mind – you can see why people stick around there. It does seem as though life is a whole lot simpler. I was struck immediately on my return to London by how loudly people speak on their mobiles and how our press is truly dominated by celebrity. Both these things were missing in Berlin, but I didn’t miss them.

I was glad that I got the chance between barcamp and the Web2.0 Expo to have a walk around the city and to meet up with some friends of friends who were nothing to do with the geek scene. You can’t get away from the fact that this is a city that had a pretty shit time through the 20th Century. Revolution, world war, hyper-inflation, fascism, another world war, occupation, division, cold-war shenanigans on both sides of the wall, reunification. Many parts do feel beaten-up, like why would you bother? But everywhere, the contrasts hit you. Sure there’s steel and glass McRegeneration including the Bundestag and all around Potsdamer Platz, but even within a few blocks you’re back in the middle of faceless, brooding, old grey stone and then suddenly an empty bomb-site or two and shiny post-war cubes for the glorious proletariat.

I heard lots of Germans at both events say that they’d live in Berlin, if they could make any money there. Yes, me too, I think. I’ll be back.

By the way, coincidentally but aptly, as well as seeing The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas just before going, I got to see a preview of Imagine This at the New London this week. It’s about the Warsaw Ghetto and manages to avoid being as crass as “Sophie’s Choice: The Musical” – in fact it’s very powerful and moving with a great central performance from Peter Polycarpou and some very hummable themes.