Continuing the conceptual thinking around a “personal API”…

John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison, Defining Common Collaboration Tensions:

Loosely versus Tightly Coupled: One objection you might reasonably raise relative to the collaboration curve is the n-squared problem, in which the expense and effort required for participants to interact in a given environment rises exponentially with the number of participants. In a pull-based creation space, loose coupling provides a way around the n-squared problem by modularizing (and standardizing the interfaces between) resources so they can be flexibly combined and recombined. This sharply contrasts with more hardwired approaches in which the activities people do and the connections between them must be redefined each time the activity or connection changes. Said differently, loosely coupled collaboration scales; tightly coupled collaboration does not.

Sound like a “personal API”?

As I explained the concept of a personal API last month,

…when I talk about “personal APIs” I’m not only talking about accessing or receiving content, I’m also talking about delivering content and context to people; using the term API is a conceptual approach to thinking about how we can “scale” our time, thoughts and value stored inside ourselves to deliver more (quantity) and deeper (quality) interactions to other people; how can we reduce inter-personal transaction costs of interactions to deliver more value?

Right now my websites and my template financial model are the only “personal APIs” I have, but in their current unorganized, unpersonalized, untargeted and “noisy” state they are only a glimmer of a way to “scale me”.

Even worse, my efforts to create signals merely adds to the noise; the web of duplicative content aggregators and republishers hinders our collective ROI on attention and increases our collaboration transaction costs; by trying to help I’m helping make it worse.

Solving this paradox by moving the idea of a “personal API” from conceptual to actual is going to be fun…

—

(Thanks to Nicolas Gabard [@NicolasGabard] for the link.)

Continuing the recap on the “Drive-By” road trip and following up from my Thanks! from Austin and SXSW and Thanks! from Knoxville, Richmond, Washington DC and Philadelphia, I want to continue to thank the people who have shared their time, knowledge, wisdom and help along the way…

Toronto, Ontario and environs

• Michael Lewkowitz (@igniter): thanks for the warm invitation, the welcoming heart and the open mind. Solidifying online relationships and making loose ties strong are always fun…
• Chris Golda (@golda): thanks for taking the time to meet again; every time we meet I become a bigger believer in Backtype.
• Joseph Dee (@Josephdee), Ryan Coleman (@ryancoleman), Peter Flaschner (@flashlight), Tim Scollick (@timsco): thanks for sharing so much of your time and thoughts; a broad range of skills, areas of interests and insights; looking forward to continuing the conversations…
• Patrick Keenan (@interfaced): your vision and forward-thinking around creating systems to organize collaboration and engagement are amazing; small things can lead to big, and I’m looking forward to seeing The Movement in action.
• David Crow (@davidcrow): thanks for sharing your time, deep thoughts and pragmatic point of view about fostering entrepreneurship and Toronto’s opportunity to become a “startup hub”. Looking forward to seeing Toronto take the next step forward…
• Jay Goldman (@jaygoldman): thank you for a wonderful afternoon conversation about demand generation, the use of data in design decisions, the opportunity of open data and the role of mystery and magic in marketing. Looking forward to another wandering conversation in the future… (and thanks to Mark MacLeod (@startupCFO) for “introducing” Jay and I, in a way, through his network for Startup CFOs).
• Andre Gaulin (@fuzzz): great running into you again after SXSW, and congrats for your new-found joy.
• Allyson Hewitt: thanks for sharing your deep knowledge about social entrepreneurship; helping people solve issues and tackle ideals is an admirable and important component to reframing capitalism, I’m interested to see what the social innovation group at MaRS will be able to do in the future.
• Leila Boujnane (@leilaboujnane): thank you for your honest, frank, deeply insightful viewpoints on creating and running companies, risk, creating experiences, and taking control of one’s future; if I could only remember and act on all the advice you gave me…

New York, NY

• Jeremy Yuricek (@jyuricek) and Ana Yuricek (@ayuricek): for keeping me offline and focusing on reality, as always.

Catch up on all the stories, photographs and details of the “Drive-By” road trip.

Continuing the recap on the “Drive-By” road trip and following up from Thanks! from Austin and SXSW, I want to continue to thank the people who have shared their time, knowledge, wisdom and help along the way…

Knoxville, TN

• Alex Lavidge (@alexlavidge): thank you for really expanding my mind about the the nature of community design and triple-bottom-line economic, political and social policies; I’m excited to see you and Knoxville Overground (@overground) continue to build an entrepreneurial community in Knoxville.

  Thanks to Sean Tario (@eurotario) for introducing us; I’m looking forward to seeing how both achieve great things in Knoxville and Santa Cruz.

Richmond, VA

• Hank Heyming (@hankheyming): thanks for sharing of bit of your deep knowledge of the law behind venture capital and private equity with me and educating me on a couple key points; lawyers that also advise on business strategy, travel the world and help run companies are far too scarce…

Washington, DC / Northern VA

• Matt Jacobson: thank you for taking the time to meet and share your thoughts on the early-stage investing industry; I’m looking forward to seeing Launchbox Digital’s next class of startups.

Philadelphia, PA

• Valeria Maltoni (@conversationage): thanks for sharing your time and extensive thoughts and knowledge about marketing, PR and communications; you truly are a “conversation agent”.

  Also, thanks for introducing me to Skip Shuda and Chris Guillebeau (@chrisguillebeau); Chris’s passion for living “an unconventional life” and for helping people create their own lives is seriously worth digging into.

• Skip Shuda (@skipshoe): thanks for a great conversation; similar to Alex, you really stretched my mind on some foundational structures for understanding change, thinking and humanity; oddly we never even discussed integrated marketing or the lessons you’ve learned as an entrepreneur: another day, hopefully.
• Steve Barsh (@sbarsh): thank you for taking part of your busy day to talk about current trends in entrepreneurship and venture capital and to share some of the lessons you have learned over the years.

  I’m looking forward to seeing DreamIt Ventures’s (@DreamitVentures) next class of entrepreneurs create some great companies this summer. With your help, I’m sure they will take the right steps toward success.

• Jim and Beth Lutz: thanks for helping bring a little bit of normality to my life…

More thanks to come from Toronto and NYC in the near future…

Attention | SXSW, Austin, Texas | Mar 2009

Continuing the recap on the “Drive-By” road trip: I know it’s been awhile since I last posted an update on my travels other than how frugally I’ve lived, so I wanted to take the time to thank the people who have shared their time, knowledge, wisdom and help along the way.

Yes, it’s been over a month since SXSW and the rest of that world has moved on from the SXSW fishbowl to the next meme, and while I won’t spend much time talking about the event itself, I did want to thank a couple people for making the experience great; events come and go but people endure.

Therefore, I want to give thanks to:

• Chris Schultz (@cschultz): for thoughts, encouragement and help; and for leading a great Tribe and throwing a really great, sincere, fun party…
• Jessica Rohloff (@jessNOLA), Matt Tritico (@tritico), Andrew Larimer (@andrewlarimer), Tiffany Starnes (@TiffanyStarnes), Adele Tiblier (@adeletiblier), Damian LaManna (@dalamanna), AJ Robert (@ajrobert), Gerard Ramos (@gerardramos), Josh Ellzey (@JoshLZ) and the rest of the Net2No crew (@Net2No): thanks for sharing your spirit, soul and your house with me, I’m already looking forward to my next trip to New Orleans…
• Nicholas Tolson (@jtnt): for always pushing me to create (and for bailing me out)…
• Jay Cuthrell (@qthrul): for being the ever-present voice of reason…
• Clint Schaff (@clintschaff): for bringing a great, positive spirit and realness to the biz and for sharing a truly great week…
• Mike Bonifer (@bonifer): for bringing interesting, unexpected experiences and joy everytime we meet…
• Alan Patrick (@freecloud): for the deep conversations and great introductions to Alexander Grunsteidl and Benjamin Ellis (@benjaminellis) and the Digital Mission; I’m looking forward to making it to London soon…
• Kyra Reed (@kyrareed): for being a great guide through SXSW Music and letting me be a part of your whirlwind for a week, and also for introducing me to Marjorie Kase (@marjoriekase) and re-introducing me to Ryan Swagar (@ryanswagar).
• Will Dearman (@wtd): for reaching out and starting a very interesting discussion on financial markets; looking forward to continuing to share ideas….
• Kristian Andersen (@kristianindy), Andrew Donoho and David Bailey (@dbailey): for engaging during the core conversation I led and really raising the level of the discussion.




• Sam Huleatt (@squasher98) and Marc Vermut (@mvermut): to each for showing up and making the time to meet in person after previously meeting online; I apologize to both for not having more time at SXSW but looking forward to continuing the conversations…
• Jay Goldman (@jaygoldman) and Peter Flaschner (@flashlight): for always popping up in the right places…
• Phil Coffman (@philcoffman): thanks for being open to reconnections and giving me some good tips on SXSW; a passing tweet between Phil and Andrew Shepherd (@andrewshepherd) made me wonder if it was the same Phil I used to know from high school in London; another example of the beauty of serendipity.
• Nate DiNiro (@unclenate) and Lyell Petersen (@93octane) for creating the #notatsxsw and #sxsworphan “communities” to keep people honest about the existence of a greater world outside of SXSW. Lyell is one of the first people to really teach me about using Twitter for fun, and for that, he’s one of the biggest reasons I’m still on Twitter. Hmm.
• Jack Hollingsworth (@photojack): thanks for taking the time to meet a nobody; Jack reached out to me after reading a couple of posts I wrote about the changing business models in the photography industry; Jack is hosting Photographer Makeover in Austin, June 1-4, if you’re interested in getting deep advice on the future of the photography industry from a range of progressive professional photographers and industry veterans.

  And lastly,

• Ethan Bauley (@ethanbauley): because it all comes back to you in one way or another…

More thanks to come from Knoxville, Richmond, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Toronto and NYC in the near future…

In October 2007 I wrote a short bit about how using Twitter detracts from one’s “real” life. In short, I was wrong; at the time I had barely tried Twitter, I knew nobody using the service and I drew artificial line between my online and offline lives; but by now I use the tool daily to access and connect with people and information online and offline.

The continued convergence of our online and offline lives into one single “real” life points out an enormous opportunity; web-enabled tools can help us capture and structure the data we created through our offline lives to help us understand and change our behavior. Realtime data about our “real lives” will shape real decisions.

October 2007, me, On Twitter: How using Twitter detracts from being social:

I tested twitter this past weekend in SF. Having been staunchly against using it, and without any of my friends using it, there never seemed to be the need to use it.

But since I love to test things out, I decided to give it a whirl.

In short, I still don’t care for it.

How I was wrong.

Why? Using Twitter, shooting short notes into the void, detracts from just enjoying the moment, from enjoying the face-to-face interaction, to enjoying the world in front of your eyes. Why do we feel the need to always connect to the network? Can we exist offline anymore? Am I just hopelessly out-of-touch?

… Perhaps my negative viewpoint is caused by the low utility the service offers to me: since none of my friends use it, I only contribute to the cacophony of ideas chucked into the void, without getting any feedback.

Suffice it to say, times have changed. I was wrong; I hadn’t learn how to use Twitter, I hadn’t engaged with other people using Twitter, I hadn’t paid attention to the community and modes of conversation.

But my main contention to using Twitter is that it detracts from being social. Instead of just enjoying it in the moment, we are thinking of what we saw and how we can interpret it in a 140-character note.

… A bit of our mind is thinking about the void, and less of it is focusing on the moment, the people in front of us, and it just shows a bit of disrespect to who we are with to be distracted by the void.

This thinking reflects a shortsighted focus on just one use case; I was only considering using Twitter as a status update (to a faceless, non-existent audience, talking to “nobody and everybody”) rather than a communication tool; granted many of the applications and interfaces to Twitter were not available, but the basic ability to find, follow and communicate with people was right there, and I missed it by not paying attention, failing to explore and rushing to judgement.

Why I was right.

By constantly sharing little thoughts with others, we are taken out of the moment, and fail to piece together these micro-chunks of thought into cohesive, weighty ruminations that span multiple experiences.

… technology is changing the way we converse, share, even think, and not all for the better. Only by working to understand how it is changing how we interact can we truly leverage the new potential. I still have hope. We’re still in the beginning.

A year-and-a-half later, and we’re still just beginning.

Our conversations have indeed become more fractured, our communications shorter, our thoughts scattered, our minds challenged by multi-tasking, our attention challenged by the incessant beeps, vibrations, blinking lights and pop-up reminders of our multiplicative communication tools; our asynchronous tools and processes are being challenged by the increasing availability and use of realtime data.

But that’s nothing new, of course; we’re just continuing to slide down the scale in the same way since we first learned to communicate and exchange information.

Our strategies have yet to catch up to our tools; even as we spend an inordinate amount of time “talking about talking”, we’ve spent little time thinking about how the tools change our lives, online and offline.

Why this is important.
The one recurring theme: all of our tools and for communicating and organizing people have changed over time. To think that how we use Twitter right now is how we will always use Twitter is to neglect the lessons of history, the Internet, the shifting nature of communication and basic, fundamental human needs.

Instead of focusing on what technology does, let’s focus on how it can be used; how will technology change our behavior? What incentives do new technologies create, reinforce or eliminate? What’s the biggest user needs? Yes, we spend more of our time online, but we still exist in a physical offline environment; how can we use online tools to improve our offline lives?

The real opportunity: structuring the offline data created through our online and offline lives by capturing, storing, aggregating, filtering, threading, analyzing, sharing, promoting and getting relevant, personalized feedback.

Realtime data about our “real lives” will shape real decisions.

That is something I can get excited about.

—

Unrelated: How would you explain the web to Thomas Jefferson?

Enjoying a rich offline life, continuing a couple thoughts about online conversations; in short, instead of creating new tools to publish knowledge, we need to focus on better tools for creating wisdom…

Michael Lewkowitz, Dead of Alive – the future of hashtags:

A couple of weeks ago, Scoble had a epiphany that ‘hashtags are dead…’. That epiphany was really more about realtime search than the future of hashtags. If anything, inline tags (hashtags) are going to be an increasingly important aspect of the realtime web.

… Hashtags are just the beginning of in-line tagging in public micro-messages. They will enable explicit threading and permissionless participation in the realtime web in a natural and extensible way. Chris Messina’s original post had some great details, some of which which I believe will be part of the core infrastructure of the realtime web. And as public micro-messaging services proliferate, inline tags will help enable cross-platform threading with the potential to weave the web and even our offline data.

My comment:

I wouldn’t really call Scoble’s proclamation an “epiphany”; I don’t think we’ve ever used #hashtags terribly well.

The openness of hashtags is its greatest strength and its greatest weakness; I believe using #hashtags will only be popular and well-understood when it makes economic sense for a person to use it; i.e. only when using a hashtags helps someone (promote themselves, be understood better, quicker, easier, help participate in a conversation) will people use them regularly with any rigor.

Meaning:
1) Given that the ability to understand the context of messages (micro- and macro-) through natural language search and contextual analysis (or through semantic web-type architecture) is difficult…
2) … we depend on users to use hashtags to self-identify important parts of messages….
3) … but there isn’t any real meaningful need for people to use hashtags until people can privately capture the externalities behind free public metadata.

Until threads are meaningful (e.g. public, searchable, indexed, promotable), #hashtags are useless.

What is the point of using tags to supply metadata around a conversation until we can use them to improve the conversation? The real value in data isn’t the data itself but in structuring it to help us understand and improve our lives.

Meaning: hashtags are a start, but what we really need are threads.

Information and “knowledge” is easy to find, but where is the wisdom?

—

Of course, these aren’t new topics of mine; digging into the archives to highlight a couple related thoughts:

• Splintering Conversations, May 2008:

  Instead of helping to solve the natural problem of communication that is called “being human”, online communication tools have only added to the complexity. Discontinuous. Fractured. Lack of context. Asynchronous communications scatter across our various inboxes, comments litter the web, incomplete conversations are lost amid the noise. Group conversations evolve, devolve, tune people out as the meanings and topics change, change from private to public to private.

  … Social media has provided us a plethora of tools, devices, methods and new standards for communicating. We know these tools: they have infiltrated our personal and professional lives, changed the ways we live and interact. But we are still at the very early stages of learning how to use them.

• Are “Online Conversations really conversations”, Dec 2008:
  

  Where is the tool that extracts meaning and not just knowledge?

  … We’re a knowledge culture; in our race to create and acquire knowledge we’ve forgotten the meaning and power of wisdom.

  Perhaps it’s impossible to create a web service to extract meaning and create wisdom; perhaps that’s why we need people and not just algorithms. Perhaps that’s why we still need to connect with individuals…

So, what do we do about it?

Continuing the discussion from “Developing “personal APIs” will be the key to scaling collaboration.”, “Filtering firehoses, embracing constraints and sparking creativity.” and Michael Lewkowitz’s “The real-time web. Game on!” …

Aaron Chua asked: “…filtering is always valuable but does it need to be real time? When does real time make a big difference in the value?”

Data frames future decisions; Realtime data shapes realtime decisions.

We live realtime online and offline lives; realtime data will ultimately drive use cases and business models in mobile, fixed, online and offline environments.

For example, powerful, timely, structured data available in realtime has been the long-lost key to many proposed mobile application products and business models. While the only successful mobile applications using realtime information exchange to date are a) voice and b) text/SMS, key changes in device user interfaces, upgrades in device processing power, faster data transmission speeds over mobile networks and the increasing availability of personalized structured data are starting to provide users and developers a taste of the possibility.

Continuing the thought: Jan Chipchase, The End of Form / The Beginning of Form:

The world around us contains many computationally easy-to-recognize, known-location, pre-defined shapes waiting to be augmented – street signs, street furniture, and yes, advertising hoardings – which is where the fun begins.

… Just as the battle for ‘control of the internet’ centered (for a while) on the consumer’s means of access – the web browser, so the battle for our ear-drums and eye-balls will hone in on the source. The company that provides the primary filter through which you view and experience the world will have incredible amount of power.

Mobile application developers have struggled with wireless telecom operators for years over operators’ tight control of the “deck” of applications on people’s phones; operators built “walled gardens” and controlled the presentation of applications on the limited screen and storage space on mobile devices to attempt to control and monetize a scarce resource. Application developers locked out of the prime deck real estate struggled to survive on “off-deck” mobile business models.

But that’s changing; while the various mobile app stores aren’t entirely open, their popularity is demonstrating that “open beats closed”.

Continuing with Jan:

… But is there sufficient pull for mainstream consumer’s to turn to some form of nearly-always-worn data glasses? Imagine knowing the tax-bracket of everyone around you – drawing on publicly available tax records and the means to identify an individual in near to real time. Imagine this from the point of view of a would-be lover, a salesman, a charity worker. Extrapolate with mash-ups with Facebook profile, knowledge about your last vacation; previous convictions. Now imagine the advantages you get from access or subscriptions to ‘premium channels’ – data only available to the select few: from the realtime cop feed; to the wolfpack view of the city; to real-time, real-space casual encounters.

A generation hooked on real-time data so compelling that heading out on a friday night just ain’t the same without the buzz of a good feed. It’ll never happen? How many times a day do you check your email? Facebook? Your phone? Your twitter stream? People addicted to data? Of course not – it’ll never happen.

How will this change our urban landscape? Advertising hoardings, entire buildings, indeed entire cities that are computationally more or less desirable to augment. It might be the end of form as we know it.

It might very well be the beginning.

As devices, networks, applications and structured data all continue to develop, the failure of current methods for filtering and processing realtime data will become more evident; but problems create opportunities…

@aaronchua, you’ve now been tagged…

Linking together a couple thoughts; since “we form ourselves more by the routes we take than the destinations we reach”, the realtime web will force us to redevelop our broken systems and change our routes throughout the web…

Michael Lewkowitz, The real-time web. Game on!:

The result [of public micro-messaging] is streams of succinct, interest-driven messages that create relevant, real-time context around every account, topic, and object they reference… which effectively means anything and everything. With that comes an increasing expectation that the web will orient itself around each person, topic, or object based on it’s history and real-time context.

… So now what? For me, there are 2 things. First, for the real-time web to reach its full potential we need a neutral, platform-independent application infrastructure and public dataset. Second, this will be the fastest evolution we’ve ever encountered and with that comes an unprecedented opportunity to seed a whole new wave game-changing ventures.

Continuing the conversation, my comment:

Creating a solution that cuts across platforms is critical.
The current slate of micro-messaging applications and platforms is just the start; many more websites and social networks will create micro-messaging applications. Combining information and conversations across silos will be critical to creating real context / relevance; creating ways to combine #hashtags from across the web is a tremendous opportunity.

The realtime web will force us to change how to consume information.
We’re stretching 1) the technology behind the communication systems we created and 2) the human potential for processing and understanding information. Breaking points are powerful stimuli for innovation

Our ability to understand and experience has yet to catch up with our ability to create. I’m not kidding; developing better ways to experience and use the realtime web is key to developing “personal APIs”.

But that’s just theory and questions; looking forward to solutions and answers…

Continue the conversation over at Lewkowitz’s original post on the opportunity of the realtime web…

“Go big or go home? (a question, not a statement)…”

Given my travel plans, it’s less a rhetorical question and more of a practical question; yes, as Will Dearman rightly points out there is an upside bias in the responses, but sometimes we still need to hear people’s responses; “ambient intimacy” is a poor facsimile of the real interactions the web could create.

Even the inspired need inspiration.

Continuing the road trip…

• Toronto, Ontario: Apr 20 to Apr 23
• New York City, NY: Apr 24 to Apr 28
• Then on to Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire…

Drop me a line if you’re on my route…

Collaborating or Following? | Austin, Texas | Mar 2009

John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison, Introducing the Collaboration Curve:

… the more participants–and interactions between those participants–you add to a carefully designed and nurtured environment, the more the rate of performance improvement goes up.

Think about this for a minute. If what we’re seeing … is indicative of something broader, then we’re seeing the emergence of a new kind of learning curve as we scale connectivity and learning through pull, rather than scaling efficiency through push. We call it the “collaboration curve.”

Collaboration curves hold the potential to mobilize larger and more diverse groups of participants to innovate and create new value. In so doing they may also reverse the diminishing returns dynamics of the experience curve and deliver increasing returns to performance instead.

The evidence for the collaboration curve is, as yet, mostly anecdotal. But these curves may explain the rise of network-centric efforts ranging from open source software development to “crowdsourcing” to “networks of creation.” In nearly all of these group efforts, rapid leaps in performance improvement arise as participants get better faster by working with others. These leaps in performance describe the shape and power of the collaboration curve, a new force in our professional and personal lives that turns the experience curve on its side, and explains why the whole of us, working, playing, and, learning together, can often be greater than the sum of our parts.

Continuing the conversation, my comment:

The most important qualifier behind the emergence of collaboration curves: they require a “carefully designed and nurtured environment”.

While we are seeing increasing collaboration throughout the economy (increasing information sharing, increased communication, and increased packaging of economic value creation into individual actors structured in fluid work environments), much of the collaboration still hits the walls of our ability to process and structure information. We’re lost in a sea of information and knowledge created by increased “collaboration”; true collaboration is based on understanding and solving others’ problems, but much of today’s sharing collaboration is really publishing instead of a true “exchange” of value. Is this what you are seeing?

Are we stretching the boundaries of our systems, forcing us to create better environments and structures for collaboration? Where are the “best practice” collaboration environments emerging?

How do experience and collaboration curves differ for individuals, groups, companies and industries? Each have different incentives and structures for building, storing, using and sharing information and acquired knowledge: how do the curves “work” differently within these groups, and where are the biggest opportunities for change and progress?

How can we develop “personal APIs” into our lives to scale collaboration?

Returning to an old post, I wish I could copy me:

As Valeria [Maltoni] pointed out in the comments, the value is in “the experience of the execution”, which is created by one’s background, experience, knowledge, ideas and insights. The ability to apply those experiences to changing environments is what creates unique content, a style, a brand, all examples of sustainable competitive advantages.

However, packaging those experiences and acumen to deliver value requires me. It requires my time, research, understanding, indexing of other experiences, judgment, insights, and ability to structure, communicate and deliver valuable content and solutions.

Which means it requires me. And until it’s possible to copy and replicate me, it’s going to be pretty hard for me to scale.

The implication: how can I scale “me” from a one-to-one services model to a product-based model that still captures and delivers “me” and my insights?

Sharing, publishing and broadcasting information is easy, but listening, thinking and using our skills to develop customized solutions for people is hard. It’s easy to read anything I’ve written, it’s easy to download generic financial models I’ve created, but how will you make sense of it and use it?

“Scaling listening” * would be a start; how can we “scale doing”?

–

* Ethan Bauley, of course…