Paul Saffo - Mapping the Cone of Uncertainty

I started this week attending a small event at the Institute for the Future (IFTF) where Dr.Bob Johansen presented the themes from his just released book Get There Early(1)

And today John Maloney of Colabria emailed a post on Johansen's colleague Paul Saffo's HBR article(2) which provides this map of The Cone of Uncertainty that the FTF folks use to provide foresight and gain insight as the basis for their strategy consulting practice. Here's Paul's map:
Reading Bob Johansen's book and seeing Paul's map led me to thinking about the 3rd element of the IFTF mantra of Foresight-Insight-Action, and about the significant role innovators and venture investors play in Crossing the Chasm from early adoption of innovations to the promised land of mainstream markets.( The Action step)

So I mashed up the Chasm map by Geoff Moore's Chasm Group (below)

with the Cone of Uncertainty by shifting the Chasm on the Time baseline to start where the Cone begins to open up and where the process of early adoption shifts gears and launches itself across the chasm.


Shifting the Chasm further to the right or widening the chasm as the timeline progresses signals danger for the innovator trying to move his concept from idea to mass market adoption. Many innovations fail to cross the chasm - and thus bring the certainty of failure to the forecaster's cone of uncertainty. Forecasting the adoption of innovations depends significantly on what happens as the innovator and venture investors try to bring innovative products across the chasm from early adoption to mainstream markets. The Action Step!

(1)Amazon.com: Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Co

(2) Six Rules for Effective Forecasting.

Death and Taxes - a visual guide to the Federal Budget

Edward Tufte would be proud. From a link at Death and Taxes 2008 Poster - $24.95 : Zen Cart!, The Art of E-commerce

Probably worth the price to get this poster - but the interactive version is much more valuable as a spatial data management map.

got this from Pistachio on twitter. Maybe i can begin to see the value of this weirdo IM flow after all.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid713271701/bclid713073346/bctid709364416

Logic+Emotion: Lifestreaming - a way to manage CPA

David Armano really "gets" the flow of social networking. Lifestreaming is his vision of the way to "manage" the dilemma of continuous partial attention (CPA). Lifestreaming Consultants? take a look......


Logic Emotion: Lifestreams

Topic Map presentation

Go to slide 125.

Twitter ROA? a continuing inquiry into the value of Social Networking tools

Introductory comment: I find that posting links within my writing interrupts the flow of the post. If readers are interested in the link references they will be footnoted at the end of the post.


I have recently been nagged by my colleagues to sign up for Twitter - a microblogging sensation that is sweeping the social network world. You will see a boring segment of my recent twitters on the sidebar of this blog.

In a conversation with Adam Green of Grazr, I asked the question : "what is the Return on Attention(ROA) on the use of twitter?". He hasn't yet given me a sufficient answer.

This led me to inquire of Jerry Michalski whether Twitter could be filtered and connected to his now famous online Brain. (1). where I found this blog post on Breakthrough by Terry Frazer (2) describing the work of Lisa Haneberg. This 2x2 is Lisa's, and provides a good way to think about ROA.

Here is Lisa's comment on Breakthrough:

"My point it that breakthroughs generally happen in conversation.

To generate breakthroughs, introverts - or extroverts - or anyone needs to be in conversation about their goals and ideas.

Even if we look at science, the individual work we do is important, but it is the sharing and collaboration that usually catalyzes bigger advancements.

I am a proud introvert myself. I have learned that to generate more breakthroughs, I need to engage others in my work, listen more, and share more."

Here is how I position Twitter on Lisa's chart:


I currently position Twitter in the "unfocused" side of the chart. A peak performer ( upper right hand corner of the chart) generates a high ROA from his or her activities in social networking and I have not yet found the ROA in Twitter. It may be a useful "engagement" tool, but for me, I need some way to manage the Twitter flow in order to move it toward the upper right hand corner of the chart where peak performers can integrate into their daily practice. Until that occurs - I won't be happy with Twitter.

(1) Welcome to Sociate - Jerry Michalski's home on the Web .

(2) Breakthroughs Happen in a Social Context:

Slidshare + Audio - Now you're talking!

Here is a test presentation of a new slideshare feature I have been waiting for. Combine your slideshare presentations with an audio track and Voila! an audiographic presentation. Voice over PPT - Very effective for rehearsal or for cleaning up and redubbing a previous audio recording of your presentations. Also useful as soundbite creator for selected segments of a presentation. And, all nicely microformatted by Slideshare to support remixing. Could be a new style of podcasting.

Click on the central Listen button to the embedded slideshow below to hear and see the audiographic demo - I can't wait to test it on some of my Slideshare presentations.

Thanks for the Test to Garr Reynolds - otherwise found at Presentation Zen

Social Media Design Concepts

Here from David Armanos blog are some great diagrams depicting how to design impactful blog-websites You can watch the whole show, but Slides 40 to 45 are the most important for those interested in social media design.

The Creative Tension of CPA

In February I posted this in response to the increasing notice of Linda Stone's meme "Continuous Partial Attention".

Thoughts Illustrated: Who is Linda Stone and why should we listen to her?

Today I will meet with Stowe Boyd who argues with Stone that the Social Presence tools like Twitter and Pownce, and to some degree, Facebook, offer a "flow" experience that we need to accept as a "gift" from our AORTA technologies.

Perhaps Stowe can enlighten me on how he manages his "flow"

Although this is from an article in InfoWeek last February it restates the key issue in designing tools for collaboration for enterprise.

"For the Enterprise 2.0 strategy to work, it's essential that Web collaboration tools be used to streamline communications. If they just add another channel, they'll only make the communication and collaboration problem worse."

Business Tech Pros Wary About Web 2.0 Tools In Business -- InformationWeek Daily --
InformationWeek:

As we consider integrating a social presence tool in our collaboration suite, we need a way to "manage" the multiple channels competing for our attention. I think the solution will be to provide meta-level visualization of the flow so we can comprehend its meaning. David Brin's Holocene vision?

Congratulations to my son Scott - in the current issue of Wired

Not just because Scott, who is pictured above, is my son and the President of Raydiance, the story is a great multimedia read about the innovative technology of ultrashort pulse lasers and the software platform that Scott and Barry Schuler, Chairman of Raydiance are building.

Barry likens the opening of the Raydiance development platform to the way Microsoft Windows platform developers helped build Microsoft's huge ecosystem and a world dominant information industry leader.

Knowing both Barry and Scott, I have a firm belief that they are creating something truly revolutionary - at the intersection of software and nanotechnology. Raydiance may just be the Next Big Thing!

Although Raydiance was previously featured in a recent Business Week article, this WIRED piece shows how pictures help to tell the story more powerfully. The writer, Danny Dumas provides an expert insight into company and its technology and WIRED's use of visuals and great web design makes this one of my all-time favorite TI stories.

It also helps when you can tell family and friends people what your son does at work.

The Ultrashort Pulse Laser in Action

Trust Metrics for Social Networks

Sam Rose on the Facebook for Business group suggested that trust metrics would be needed to assure that FB social networks in business could be measured providing management or social network members themselves a way to visualize the "strength" of Trust, Reputation and Security in making decisions about how to apply the key principles of Wikinomics in business settings.



In my several eLearning presentations on Wikinomics I used the diagram above to present the key themes of the book and to use it as a template(map) for audience interaction. Audience reactions to the map elicited comments from several in the audience such as the one from the Director of Worldwide Education for Genentech in which he said that at least for his firm issues of legal liability, risk of sharing trade secrets or other IP required a mechanism to control the amount of Open, Peering and Sharing and how broadly Global such a process could be.

This led me to consider the red circle in the diagram as a feedback system in which the visual of the circle would expand or contract( thus add or subtract value from collaboration) through the key elements of successful collaborations shown on the diagram.


For many years I used the Bell-Mason spider diagram ( example below) to visualize the vital signs of startup businesses, and developed an ontology of key elements of business to "populate" the diagram. What this does is to provide a Vital Signs chart similar to the way medical diagnostics pictures key health metrics. This charting approach offers a neat way to map from qualitative, subjective judgments to a quantitative metric that drives the spider on the chart. It can be used for snapshot assessments, or in time series to show trends.



I used these charts as a dashboard approach to venture portfolio project management as a VC and later as an Angel investor, and keeping in mind Korzybbski's dictum "the map is not the territory" I found metrics at this level of abstraction to be very helpful in gettting a quick diagnostic about startup progress, and to make investment or intervention decisions.

Price Waterhouse adopted Bell-Mason diagrams for a number of years to portray "paths to value" in the venture capital arena and I think they can be applied to measuring the vital signs of collaborative ecologies.

The key point here is ranking subjective, qualitative information into numbers-driven quantitative displays for decision-making. I plan to "crowdsource" the development of a vital signs diagnostic for social networks in business with Sam Rose and others in the Business group, and to encourage them to investigate the use of Wikinomics principles in their work.

The Art of the Start -

This beautiful drawing by David Armano should be mashed up with Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start handbook for startups. Although David drew it to illustrate his design agencies ecosystem, it also pictures the system elements of new product and early stage company development.

A Thoughts Illustrated favorite!

Logic Emotion: Agency Ecosystems

Facebook Gets Help From Its Friends - WSJ.com

Thanks to my Facebook friend Rodney Rumford and his post on FaceReviews FaceReviews.com :: Facebook Application Reviews, Facebook Widgets and Facebook News. Sharing the Facebook Blog love.

Facebook Gets Help From Its Friends - WSJ.com: "Facebook is actually borrowing a tactic pioneered by Microsoft: Rather than building every piece of technology yourself, let others build on your 'platform,' much the way Adobe Systems Inc., Intuit Inc. and others built software for Microsoft's Windows operating system in the 1980s. Using this strategy, Facebook can nurture an ecosystem of developers who can create services far faster than Facebook could build them on its own."

The Facebook ecosystem now has over 50,000 application developers working to increase the user value of the Facebook platform - a number that is growing by almost 10% per day - and Rodney's Facebookreviews is providing a needed service by scanning this huge source of new applications to locate the "good stuff" for you.

If he can keep up with the rapid growth of Facebook applications to recommend the ones you can use to power your social networks , he will be in the catbird seat - with a 50,000 foot view of this amazing ecosystem, and a significant player in building brand value for Facebook and the applications it selects to review from the burgeoning developer network.

IMHO the launch of the Facebook Platform will be a watershed event in the history of the Web as it grows to become THE social network "for the rest of us". All that's needed to accelerate Facebook into sustainable orbit velocity is to become the user's choice on their mobile devices. Think Facebook on iPhones - social networking on steroids!

Kim Polese and Spike Source - another Wikinomics story

In preparing for a presentation on Wikinomics I wanted to feature SpikeSource and its "rockstar" CEO Kim Polese as a sterling example of Wikinomics principles in action. Kim has been featuring podcasts with Don Tapscott and Wikinomics in her marketing website,sort of closing the loop.

These BW slide shows are really great shortcuts to learning about featured topics and the format for presentation on the web site is the best I have seen.

Thanks to google images, and Business Week I have the content I need for my presentation - which, incidentally will be available for free download from the eLearningForum, my sponsor for my gig this Friday.

The New Wave in Open Source | BusinessWeek

Ning to Facebook in one click.

Ning is a social networking site started by Mark Andreeson of Netscape fame whose comments on Facebook were in my previous post Thoughts Illustrated: The importance of the Facebook Platform Explained

After realizing the importance of Facebook as a platform it only took Mark 5 days to enable Ning's 65,000 ( his claim) social networking sites to port over to Facebook with one click.

blog.pmarca.com: How to effortlessly inject your content into Facebook, using Ning

Who Needs College? The Triumph of Young Web Founders

Who Needs College? The Triumph of Young Web Founders

Who Participates And What People are Doing Online

A nice chart of data from Forrester Research . This is just a small clip from a larger comprehensive chart which accompanies the full story.

read more | digg story

Mass Collaboration Designs and Builds for Boeing

SuiteTwo - Spikenet integration

Click on the podcast of Kim Polese interview with Don Tapscott relating another Wikinomics story of mass collaboration.

The importance of the Facebook Platform Explained

Two great articles on the importance of the Facebook Platform

Here from David SacksThe New Portals: It’s the Bread, Not the Peanut Butter

Courtesy of Mark Andreeson blog.pmarca.com: Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in

from a Facebook msg from Robert Scoble.Facebook | Message: facebook addiction

Notemark - Clip, save, share from your browser

A new tool for clipping from the web - also a WebEx partner. I think I can use this app, and also see it as a utility for ConversationBase.