This blog has been through a couple of iterations in the last few days.  I've finally worked out how to FTP it to my site.  I could never mirror it.  I've also enabled the pictures function.  Better add your picture first otherwise it overwrites the text that is already there.  As usual the instructions and help listings from Radio are almost useless. Now my titles are missing!
5:56:18 PM  #  

The challenge of converting leaders.

Tom Munnecke comments on Dee Hock's letter to Joi, recalling his earlier work with Hock. He raises what I think is a very sensible idea: it is very difficult to turn people who have worked their way to leadership positions within the context of command-and-control systems into leader-followers. I presume the reason for this is that it amounts to effecting a huge personality/identity shift. Quoting Tom (emphasis mine):

About 200 folks were there, representing a wide range of stakeholders.  I soon realized that these were the very people we needed to disintermediate.  Asking them to "streamline" themselves and jumping off the gravy train was not going to happen.

And Hock himself hints that he recognizes this in his letter when he writes this optimistic (but inspiring) passage about routing around gravy trains:

I wonder if you realize that a dozen or two people like yourself with the right combination of communication, technological and organizational skills could design and implement a global government without the consent of any present form of organization and provide it with the neural network to insure its success.

Reading this helped me pin down precisely what makes me uneasy about David and Doc's World of Ends piece. They're trying to do exactly that, make current executives and the ilk streamline themselves, instead of targeting, giving hope to, and helping organize those who have little to lose. I suspect that the attitude shift that David and Doc are hoping for is only going to materialize once this groundwork alternative organization effort is well underway and pretty much everybody has woken up and smelled the coffee.

Look at the inertia of the music industry for an illustration.

[Seb's Open Research]
11:28:48 AM  #  

Who Loves Ya, Baby?. Great article on social network mapping by Steven Johnson. The main spotlight is on Valdis' work in visualization. Uncovering implicit social patterns is where it's at. [Seb's Open Research]
11:26:03 AM  #  

How Big Is Your Home Page?.

Web Page Analyzer

"Enter a URL below to calculate page size and download time. The script sizes each individual element and finds the total for each type of web page component. Based on these page characteristics the script then offers advice on how to improve your page download and display time." [via WebWord]

An excellent resource from the folks behind the recent Web Site Optimization book. You can catch a full interview with them on this topic courtesy of Sean McManus.

[The Shifted Librarian]
11:22:16 AM  #  

Wow! Intel invests in Jabber.

News.Com: "Instant messaging company Jabber on Monday said it secured a $7.2 million investment from Intel Capital." [Scripting News]

You heard it here 2nd.  How come Dave ALWAYS gets the best news first?  Is there something about him that just attracts hotness?

Anyway - this is big news folks.

Intel Capital talks to almost everyone in the valley - in fact almost everyone in the industry. The fact that they're doing this deal with the leading .org/.com company combo (Jabber) is significant beyond measure! 

Not only has Joi and Barak's job at Neoteny just gotten easier and more lucrative, but all sorts of other tier B & C players, who've only just followed Kleiner, Perkins and the other A tier VCs in the past, can now feel comfortable listening to whacky OSS plays now.

The combination of this deal, Mitch Kapor and the OSAF and on-going success of Linux - bodes well for us all!

[Marc's Voice]
10:36:36 AM  #  

Faces of the crowd.

 

I'll always remember my first PC Forum (I think it was 1986.) I was so excited about meeting all the famous people in our industry, especially Phillipe Kahn, Neil Colvin and Dan Bricklin.  But MOST of all I was really excited about meeting Mitch Kapor.  He was the most successful software of the day.  By far.

Everyone told me the scene was out in the hallway - that nobody sat and listened to all the boring presentations.  The theme was 'data' that year - I believe.  Everyone was out in the hallway, doing some serious schmoozing.  So on the first day, I mosey on downstairs and who do see - Mitch Kapor - wearing the SAME Hawaiian shirt that I'm wearing!

So we start talking and.....needless to say, he's still wearing Hawaiian shirts 17 years later.

Here's Nic Nyholm - the founder of Ascio - the folks who are gonna help us create OpenIdentity.org.  Nic flew in from Copenhagen for the conference.  He's with Esther and Simon.

[Marc's Voice]
10:32:27 AM  #  

The Magic Kingdom Down and Out

Doc has an enlightening article in Linux Journal about the annoyance of marketing as we know it and how hard it is to be a well-known customer rather than a cynically-pitched faceless consumer. The stimulus was an automated telemarketing call from Disney:

I hung up.

Right now, it's all up to Disney. Our relationship is entirely producer/consumer, which means we don't have a relationship at all. Disney sets all the terms and conditions. I can buy their goods, join their clubs and what not; but I can't initiate any kind of relationship that proceeds on my terms, even if that relationship might be good for them. The same goes for airlines, credit card companies, banks and various other entities whose relationships with me are manifest in the plastic cards that thicken my wallet. In fact, these asymmetrical producer/consumer relationships are so deeply embedded in our economy and culture that we hardly can imagine any kind of truly symmetrical power relationship with a large company--much less one in which we, as customers, are truly in charge.

(Doc's good at this presentation. When he does it in person, he fans his credit and club cards across the table like a Vegas dealer.)

So let's imagine one . . . What this requires is something we don't have right now: a new identity infrastructure--one provided by open APIs, protocols and other standards that serve no agenda other than to enable useful dealings between buyers and sellers of products and services. Like the Web and e-mail infrastructure that are already part of the Net, this new infrastructure would be a full-fledged service on the Net. And it won't become that unless it's something nobody owns, everybody can use and anybody can improve. Again, like the Web, e-mail and the Net itself.

Since this infrastructure won't be built around any corporation's agenda (though it will prove quite handy to corporations wishing to do business with free-range customers in a real marketplace), it necessarily will be centered around customers. After all, we're the  ones with the money, right?. . .

. . . Let's say I have engaged a new category of business--a relationship registrar called MyID--to certify, authenticate and otherwise substantiate the preferences, permissions and other variables that might be involved in mydentity-based relationships with participating companies and other organizations (including federal, state and local public ones). When I'm not using this mydentity, I still default to anonymity or to the relationships provided by current systems. . .

. . . When I spoke at Digital ID World last Fall, I said I didn't believe any of this would begin to happen in a meaningful way until we had an invention that mothered some necessity--a dirt-simple killer application or killer protocol that would spread like wildfire and carry its own default infrastructure to ubiquity. I'm not sure Liberty supports that, but I don't know. It kind of depends, I guess.

Right now there are other moves afoot, too premature to talk about, all intended to build out a mydentity-based infrastructure. I may hear more about these over the next four days, when I attend PC Forum, which combines big company CEOs and presentations with disruptive subjects. . .

. . . One concern I have is the need for simplicity, for the Principle of Good Enough that accounts not only for the success of the Net, the Web, e-mail and their founding protocols but for infrastructural building materials like Linux as well. To me, Liberty looks too complicated for that.

The Emerging Mitch-based SMI Protocol

Mitch climbs on Doc's giant shoulders and exposes an idea he's been baking for a while, the Strip Mall Infomediary (SMI), to implement Doc's proposed Relationship Registrar business category. Since Xpertweb has a role to play in the market space, his idea must be good. And it plays a utilitarian background role, which is even better.

Mitch has seen what all of us will eventually get: carbon, not silicon, is the key element for the future of networked business. Messrs. Gates, Jobs, McNealy et. al. are required by their shareholders to imagine a world of complex rules and pipes and code intermediating our futures, but Mitch suggests that, for our most important needs, only a plugged-in human will do:

We cannot take time to manage access to our interests all the time, just as most people rely on money managers to help with their finances, doctors to keep track of their health, and so forth. The infrastructure that Doc describes, that Andre Durand has described here and here and Eric Norlin talks about when suggesting we "hijack" the Liberty Alliance protocol is necessary, but not sufficient. We also need people who are motivated to begin collecting the information that revolves around each of us and to organize that information for exploitation on behalf of the individual.

His non-obvious point is crucial. Our needs will always transcend our machines' abilities to serve us. When they catch up to our current needs, we'll have moved on to richer, more subtle requirements. Mitch describes how his infomediaries would arrange Doc's ideal Disney vacation, but it extends to less obvious excursions. How soon will an automated travel agent like Expedia design the fulfilling trip to Florence and Venice that David Weinberg wants this week, for which he seeks pointers from his readers? Obviously there's no current satisfaction index, or David would be using it.

When will code-based travel routers match the subtlety of the carbon-based Parker Company, renting seductive Italian villas only to clients they speak with on the phone? Why even ask? Check out Parker's gorgeous, evocative site for a hint of the rich future of human-centric services—it'll inspire you to break out that neglected pasta maker.
Mitch's SMIs will know how to find villas like this one, 30 minutes from Florence, as easily as the downtown Marriott, but less dear at $90/night. Either one may be stocked with the wine and flowers you prefer. This is how the infomediaries of the Very Rich work already, so it's just another digital divide for us to cross. But we netizens are on the wrong side of this one. Is that OK with you?

Citing the proliferation of financial services companies like Edward Jones in retail Generica, Mitch suggests that the relationship registrar will build on whatever Digital ID infrastructure emerges, selectively shielding and exposing the client's presence, generally deflecting the intrusive, opportunistic side of sellers, while narrowly engaging the responsive service sides of the same sellers (without that proven responsiveness, they don't even get a shot).

The second part of the supporting infrastructure is what Flemming calls "SMTP for reputation"—Xpertweb. For the strip mall infomediary, Xpertweb is just a background utility, tracking clients' satisfaction as thoroughly as their portfolios reflect financial satisfaction. As rhapsodic as I may get about a Peer Economy, we need to remember that the Xpertweb protocols are just a black box to aggregate and depict quality with incorruptible integrity. What you do with the protocol is your business. Literally.

Mitch then describes the icing. A ready, willing and able buyer is the most precious resource in the economy and he's worth a lot to sellers. The quality of the infomediary's clients is proven to the sellers he works with, so, like the rug merchant at the bazaar, they're ready to deal. Whether it's a discount or extras, the infomediary's client will be way ahead of the unassisted customer:

The infomediary is incented not only to protect the client's information, but also to develop new ways to make money for the client using that information -- just as Wall Street has created a thousand derivatives to create more value it can extract.

We've never considered Mitch's idea so it couldn't work, could it? But the infrastructure is imminent and free. Digital ID will be free. Xpertweb will be free. Web space might as well be free. You can rent furniture cheap and often get strip mall space for six month's free rent to start, which I found out when I built one...;-). There's no Cost Of Goods Sold and no SABRE terminal to lease.

Probably the only expensive part is Mitch.
[Escapable Logic]
10:15:39 AM  #