Interesting two-word experiment
February 26, 2008
This post by Sam Lawrence is fascinating. He says:
I thought it might be pretty cool to copy an entire blog and then check out what someone’s actual tag cloud was. That way, I could see the weighted topics most important to that person. So, I randomly chose a number of blogs I read and meticulously cut and pasted post after post. In some cases there were so many posts that I gave up after a month’s worth. In other cases, I went further back.
It’s sort of funny to boil people down to just few words. Once I generated each person’s cloud, I’d note their top ten words, and place them next to their picture. Those words became a sort of micro vcard. I definitely learned a little more about each person.
In the same post, Sam says this about me:
No surprise that the word “enterprise” emerged for Dennis. Though in his two-word view, it was all about the “enterprise irregulars.” Interestingly, so did the word “customer base.”
I can’t imagine the amount of work that went into extracting all this data but it is interesting to see yourself ‘boiled down’ in this way. As Rabbie Burns (I think) said:
I wish the Laird the gift he gee’us
To see oorsel’s as ithers see us
…or some such. It’s a saying my parents instilled into me and yet it is something at which so many of us are woefully endowed.
Sam’s on a roll. He’s working out how to engage certain people and provoke certain thoughts as part of a subtle brand building exercise. At least that’s what I’m seeing as I peer ‘between the lines.’ It’s a very smart move on his part because it gets attention, and for all the right reasons. Heck, he’s appealed enough to my ego to get em to devote an entire post to this rather smart visualisation. The previous day, he Tweeted me to say I would feature on his blog. That’s always a worrying prospect, especially when you’ve no idea what the other person might say or do.
At the same time it provides Sam with insights into what is of interest to particular individuals over time. Of course that emphasis might change but as a rule of thumb, it works nicely. Think about this when you’re next meeting someone. What might they discern from what you are saying?
PS - I’m looking forward to meeting Sam in a few weeks. It will be fascinating to see how the man lives up to the blog. I’m rarely disappointed.
John, Steve, Rob et al: time to up your game
February 26, 2008
I just noticed that Alex Hawkes at AccountancyAge is publishing a full feed. At last, one of the mainstream media people gets it about information consumption convenience in RSS readers. Over to you folks at AccountingWEB. When are you folks going to join the party instead of keep forcing readers into opening up pages?
Aaaah - don’t know how to monetize it? Heh.
Google Talk chatback - worth a punt
February 26, 2008
Courtesy of Garrett Rogers, I see Google has got into the chat box game but with a wee twist. Instead of requiring the respondent to sign over their digital soul to Google, they can start by simply typing away. This according to GoogleTalkAbout:
To use chatback, you must have a Google Talk account … but your visitors don’t have to! They don’t even need to have an email address, or to have ever used instant messaging.
When they visit your site, they’ll see a badge like the one on the right showing your online status (available, busy, offline) and, if you’re available, they can just click and start chatting. Chatback uses the web-based Google Talk Gadget so your visitors don’t need to download anything. It opens in a new window so they can keep chatting with you even if they browse to other pages.
I’ve popped it onto my sidebar - let’s see if anyone turns up. More important, let’s see if I can remember to turn it off! Now just think about how your clients might use this?
UPDATE: Any chat is private as between the participants. I found that out this morning when a reader in Silicon Valley popped in for a chat. Nice.
Mind the generation (and technology) gap
February 26, 2008
Wayne Turmel tells a fascinating story about the technology gap in his home. At the grand ol’ age of 46, he feels old, especially when seeing how his daughter tackles problems the Generation M (or is it Y, Z…I’ve lost track) way:
My 14 year old daughter and her cheerleader friends were in my living room working on a routine. They had very short time to get everyone up to speed but there was only a third of the team present. What did they do?
Well, one downloaded and edited the music on her laptop while the others worked on the moves. As they invented new moves, one recorded it on her cell phone. Then they downloaded it to YouTube and text messaged their friends and told them to check it out before practice tomorrowI stared at them like they’d just invented fire and angered the gods.
Wayne then goes on to describe how is wife is, by comparison, barely on nodding terms with technology. The story speaks as much to changes in the social landscape of America as it does to the current generation of teenagers. the same could be true in the UK. It’s fascinating to see how an entire cadre of children are growing up who are just technology and networking savvy.
I remember experiencing this first hand a couple of years ago when my (then) 15 year old son came to visit. Flitting between MySpace, multiple instant messaging instances, music sites while barely touching email and yet talking to friends in SMS speak, I was amazed at the way he’d taken the power of opposable thumbs and turned the computer into a dazzling light show. At least it seemed that way from four feet distance.
As these children move through the education system and into business training, I wonder how much of this kind of behaviour will be knocked out of them. I sense very little, at least before the end of higher education. Why?
I received an email today from Shani Lee on behalf of Toby Moores who runs CreativeCoffeeClub. It is about a two day conference announcing the NLab Social Network Conference at De Montford University being held 19-20th June. This is a conference aimed at small business and includes both academics and business people. The line up is certainly impressive and is one of an increasing number of similar events I see springing up at UK universities.
The big question is what happens when students graduate and move on to professional training. So far i’ve seen very little understanding of what the real impact of these technologies is likely to be in the workplace. I absolutely don’t buy the blanket and ultimately narrow marketing emphasis put on by people like Jeremiah Owyang. Social computing is a lot more than that and if anything, I see the marketing ’schtick’ as a minor part of where this goes.
The whole notion of social computing is about re-forming the relationships that govern the way we interact with our peers, staff, business partners and customers. It’s a big topic area with many nuances but with the ultimate goal of tapping into the collective knowledge that is shared among those ecosystems of people and processes. Sadly, I don’t see it being addressed in anything like a coherent manner by the professional institutions. I see ‘bits’ being chewed off, which is a start. What I don’t see is a vision for the future.
If our professional institutions don’t address this issue soon, they will find it very difficult to attract the kind of people needed to make social computing a reality. They will in fact be sidelined by others who do ‘get it.’ We can argue that professionals will always be needed to keep the transactional lights on, but that will count for nothing as human intervention is squeezed out of transactional process steps.
