With the virtual/physical, online/offline worlds becoming so merged together, not only through the mobile, but through other home media devices, advertising, in store displays, and so on, there are new opportunities for your business to be at the water cooler – to be where conversations are taking place, capture and showcase those conversations and make something out of them, and actually provide your services to your customers when they are using these devices and be ‘the elbow of the deal’.

Where are People?

To do this, we need to answer the question, where are people? Not just “which social networks are they on?”, but where are people online, offline? For example, football fans at a game. People on the bus. In fact, where are they offline, like on the underground, where they can take what was gotten online, offline with them?

Where is not just a spatial term, it is a time term, an emotional term, a participatory term. We need to deeply understand our customer to really know where they are.

Once you know where they are, how can you get there? How can you socialise the channels that you use in order to get your content and service there?

A fine example is Absolute Radio, who take their Baddiel and Skinner radio show and turn it into a podcast, live stream, iPhone app, Nokia app, Sony Ericson app, etc. It’s a great move by them, because when someone can’t be online, the content has been put offline on their mobile device, which they use to listen to the podcasts in all those empty spaces throughout the day.

I consider their app-driven approach all the more pertinent as apps will take over browser use on mobile devices. When you’re using the iPad, you’ll quickly note how much nicer it is to use an app in many cases, than using the browser version, even on a desktop. (Full review of this here.)

Another way to be where people are is by having a platform that is trans-platform, i.e., it cross all other platforms. Absolute Radio touch on this above by having their content on multiple channels, however those channels are fixed. I’m really talking about the concept of a hashtag as a platform.

I was quoted in AdWeek last week, in a peice called ‘Learning to Speak on the Social Web‘ (penned by my friend Neal Rodriguez), where I described that the hashtag is a trans-platform platform, that means the platform exists where ever it is used. Ubquity comes through this, because we can tag anything that we say or do with “#likeminds”, and it becomes part of the platform.

What About Location Gaming?

There’s a big discussion to be had here (my fiend Carl Haggerty most recently adding some interesting thoughts), and many of the points are obvious: “people can check into your locations”, “people can see you exist when visiting your town”, etc etc.

Let’s answer the where question on this instead. Where are people? They are on their phones, when they go into any area that warrants a check in.

Do these people use it to find new places? No. They only use it to check into places.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. Let’s begin by asking ourselves the question: where are you?
2. What kind of services to you want to be ubiquitous? Do you want services to be with you, where ever you go?

Photo courtesy of ViaMoi

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Your Business, Ubiquitous

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mmnh3_aOVk

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

We talked yesterday about Innovation Over Tradition, but there is a danger is that in not understanding what the ‘traditions’ here are, and then moving away from anything that doesn’t seem ‘techie’ or ‘new’.

I believe that Social (the mindset before the media) is our default form of communication. Two ears, one mouth. Can’t follow a discussion of more than 10 people really. Some lead, some follow. The conversation changes as each person speaks. It’s fluid, dynamic, guided, adapting.

Then, we package the discussion up, put it on CD, ship it, and we have broadcast. It doesn’t change anymore.

Social is always changing, which is why I believe all innovation comes from social. Social innovation, broadcast duplication.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. Do you agree? Can you look at your own history and find agreement with this theory?
2. If so, what are the repercussions of this?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Social Innovation, Broadcast Duplication

Have you ever wondered how on earth moving your mouse makes a little pointer move across your screen? I actually don’t know, but I do know that the mouse, and the idea of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) were both controversial and criticised whilst they were being developed. Why? They changed the way things were in the name of moving towards something better, and both helped make computers accessible to the masses. In other words, they valued innovation over tradition.

Sometimes it’s easy for us to get lost in the hype of technology, especially in an age where talking about technology is made easier by the very technology we are talking about – it creates a perfect circular, the most pertinent example today being “I’m using social media to tell you how great social media is.” But as thinkers, we need to be able to step back from the buzz and think about the bigger picture – otherwise we run the risk of becoming clones and drones.

Clones and Drones

You know what I mean by clones and drones. The countless score of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ and ‘consultants’ out there, creating more noise than a batch of early 90′s servers. I’ll be honest with you – when I started out, I was one of these. I bought the myth of the digital personal brand and was trying to ‘create product’ to ‘ship’ to those who read my blog. I was using Twitter to ‘influence’ and ‘network’ in order to get exposure and sell my product, because someone else had done it successfully and now I was buying their 10 steps to do it myself.

This copycat behaviour has created a flocking effect that has widened the gap between those who are what I call ‘digitall’ and those I call ‘digicool’ – something some aliens once noted about us. The digitall are those who use tech for ‘all’ – their iPhones and iPads are filled with apps, their blogs overflowing with widgets (well, hey, they actually have blogs), they check Twitter infinitely more than they do Facebook, and they know what Augmented Reality is. The digicool, on the other hand, are those who use technology solely based on how ‘cool’ it is – like my wife who has an iPhone because it’s cool, is on Facebook because it’s cool, but doesn’t use Twitter because, unfortunately, it isn’t cool.

At the head of the digitall are the digeratti – the princely likes of Scoble, Rubel, Gray and the rest, who akin to the developers of the mouse, are challenging us to think in new and innovative ways. In actual fact, Scoble et al are just the ones telling us about the innovations – like the early days of Techcrunch where every Web 2.0 site was listed and reviewed. These technologies have changed the way the internet works – Wikipedia, Skype, Facebook, eBay, WordPress, Google – and in doing so, they have changed tradition.

The thing is, it isn’t the digitall that helped change tradition. It was the masses of digicools – the general population, if you will – that helped Facebook spread, realised the worth of Wikiepedia, and used Google because they couldn’t remember URLs (unlike the digitalls, who did). And here lies the decision for us all: are we going to talk about innovation and tradition, or be the ones who actually help put innovation over tradition?

The former only requires us to tweet, like, comment, retweet, blog. The second requires us to think. To think how we can take the wonderful innovations that are being used by a comparative handful of digitalls, and present them in an easy to understand way the digicools.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the gap that needs filling, and the hands that fill it will not go unrecognised.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. First of all, confession time: which are you? Where are you? Are you talking, or innovating?
2. How, practically, can we fill this gap?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Innovation Over Tradition

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bZ3jM8pMl0

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch direct on YouTube.

I had a great chat with Ed Barrow from Idio recently, in which Ed talked about fashion as one of the most powerful devices we know for bringing about mass market adoption.

Watching this video, you’ll get some valuable insights into how fashion can drive adoption, which I believe are affecting not just big brands, but startups and even local businesses. The main example that Ed uses is mobile phones, but I believe it applies to a lot more.

Let’s be honest: even picking one local web design agency over another, for instance, can be a matter of allegiance to a tribe or mindset that is informed by popularity, and the sale that this web design agency makes can then also be based on fashion (what everyone else is doing online.)

Your Leading Thoughts

• Does Fashion play a role in why your customers are your customers? If so, describe this for us.
• Has Fashion played a bigger role in modern technology and trends than 10 or 20 years ago, or has it always been this way?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Video: Fashion and Technology Adoption

Let me say right from the start: I think the iPad is a revolutionary device. Not so much for the device, actually, as it really is the culmination of 10 years of exceptional innovation from Apple that has created the right ecosystem to deliver the iPad. Without the ecosystem, it wouldn’t work.

So, here are the 5 innovations of the iPad:

1. You’re already using the iPad, even if you don’t have one

Because we are all pretty much accustomed to using some form of app store for our mobile device, whether it’s the iPhone or not, means that we are already using the iPad. You’ll understand what I mean when you get to holding the device, and then realise that there is no learning curve here – you already know how to use it, and if you’re on the iPhone, you already have a bunch of apps that are iPad apps that you know how to use and have installed.

This shows the power of the ecosystem that Apple have created – something that I would argue is actually Apple’s Real Asset that they’ve built over the last 10 years. They have easily tied in a new device into their existing ecosystem with such barrier-free adoption. I wonder what else they could do it with…

The fact that you already have been taught how to use it makes me think of Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch, who say that it’s easier to start a journey that is already part of the way there, than start a shorter journey where you have to begin right at the beginning. With the iPad, it’s all the former. Once I installed the iPad from my iPhone backup, I had all my apps and settings in place, optimised for the new device. I’m already most of the way there.

Mike Elgan wrote a peice a while ago on how Apple is training us for the future. When I touch the iPad, I understand what he meant.

A bit of help, admittedly, is needed for this who are entirely new to it all. The great thing for them, of course, is that they can book free lessons at the Apple store.

2. It’s does 80%, not 150%

I’d say you can do 80% of most of what you need a device (note the purposeful use of device, not computer here, because we’ve beyond that now – but we’ll get to that later.)

Email, admin, Word (Pages), browsing, Facebook, and then all the suff that we now love to do through apps are all a breeze on the iPad – and what’s more, they’ve cut out all the heavy features that you don’t use, so that this whole experience is not only mobile optimised, but also lite-user optimised. For years I wondered why Word had prominently placed features in the program that so few people use, and was frustrated that the program loaded slower because of it. This is why I use Pages on my MacBook Pro anyway, and now, I’m loving Pages for the iPad and find I need even less features.

This is the trouble with most PCs – that they provide 150% of the features you need. The Control Panel, for instance, is just waaaaay over the top. Macs are better at this, but still do have too much going on for the average user. The iPad hits a sweet point.

Because we have grown accustomed to apps, we are especially comfortable when using them on the iPad. Evernote, which I’ve used as a premium user for close on 2 years, is actually even better as an app on the iPad than the full blown client that they have on the Mac. I’ve found already I prefer using NewsRack, an RSS app, over Google reader – and there are other instances like this.

3. It’s a focus device, a productivity device and a social device

Perhaps the best use of the iPad is when I take it to a secluded location on a Sunday night, sit down, and plan my week. With my Mac, it’s so easy to loose focus – to open up Twitter as I plan, change tabs from Remember The Milk to BBC News, and so on. You know how it is.

What I love about the iPad is that you can’t do this. Even with multitasking, you can’t have Evernote on the left of the screen and Twitterific on the right – you focus on the app that is open – which makes this a productivity beast. Even with Twitterific, the Twitter client I’m using on the iPad, I’ve got a new degree of focus on Twitter (as well as it cutting out all the features in the heavy Twitter clients that I don’t use)

Or take email: you have a panel with the emails on the left, the panel to view each email on the right, and no where to escape to avoid dealing with it. This is where having email addresses for Evernote and Remember The Milk is critical, because you can email in a task or note and stay securely within Mail, without having to close the app and open up another one.

For meetings, the iPad also excels. First of all, I’ve never been a fan of laptops that cover all but someones face when they are at a desk. The iPad opens people up more, and also lets you know they aren’t just browsing behind that screen.

As for note taking in these meetings, I’ve found the keyboard in landscape mode very easy to use and remarkable close to using a standard keyboard. I can touch type on it. There does need to be better auto-correction though – I took about 2 hours typing up this post (whilst thinking about it too, of course.)

Not only is the iPad social because it removes the 17inch screen barrier between you and I at meetings, but the apps that I have tested are all overwhelmingly social when it comes to sharing. Almost any app that has got some kind of content has sharing built in, with Facebook and Twitter on every list, with further options like email / Delicious / Instapaper and others available.

This is why I like using NewsRack – because it shares and Tweets what I’m reading the way Google Reader should. If I want to tweet an item from Google reader, I have to open the original up in a separate window, copy and paste the URL (as well as modify it if it’s a Feedburner URL) and then shorten it before tweeting. Sure, I can create a ‘send to’ item but they are very clunky and don’t actual tweet the message, but just send me to Twitter with the un-shortened URL in the post box.

How do share in NewsRack? I just touch where I want it to go. Simples.

4. It makes other devices what they should be

When I first had my iPhone I remember trying to use Google Docs, because I wanted to harness the power of a mobile device to have all my documents with me. Of course, on a screen that size, you could do nothing to edit those files, no matter how hard you tried. The same can be said of the rush for the first file management app in the iPhone – we all paid £5 per app to find the best one, only to discover that we couldn’t think of any files we actually needed on our phone, save files that were already on the phone in custom built apps.

With the iPad, the iPhone can actually be what it is meant to be: a communications device. Calls, texts, emails on the go and tweets, plus the future video calling, and then pocket sized apps that help me day to day like Google Maps, Evernote for quick notes, and so on.

Device is the right word. A device is a thing you use to do something. A computer is often an end in itself, but I find my mobile device, pad device and desk device all hook me to my synchronised files and help me get the job done, so I can spend more time with people.

Does that then make the iPad a content device? A lot of innovators are asking, and people immediately ask me the question too: can the iPad be used for content creation?

Firstly, lets consider the majority of people who don’t use the jargon that we do and blog like we do. Can the iPad create the content that, say, my wife spends the majority of her time creating? Yes.

Secondly, can the iPad create the content that bloggers want to create? Until WordPress create a better iPad app, then the answer is 80% yes. It’s links and images that can’t be done well, unless you want to do HTML, which most don’t.

The main caveat here, however, is the time factor. Almost every task with regards to content creation is still faster on my Mac, because I’m more used to it, and be use it is made for multitasking and all that jazz.

5. The iPad OS is how computing should be

For my final point, I want to paint a picture: Someone buys a PC, gets home, and after setting all the hardware up (hoping that they have it right), they start up. In a menu bar full of bundled apps that they don’t understand (and with many of them running in the tray, with the user unsure of how to stop them running when the computer starts), they procedure to install their software.

Each program asks where it should be installed (the user unsure of why they are even asked this, as they certainly don’t know), and then adds itself to the desktop and menu bar as he program decides it should. In a few weeks, the user wants to uninstall the program, but has no idea how, so they leave it as it blots the computer.

In the end, the family tech expert tries to make sense of the computer, but it’s such a mess. Files are everywhere, nothing is standardized, and you cant blame the user because they don’t have a clue because there is nowhere free to go for training.

You know this scene – and you also know the scene that is set with the iPad. You get apps from the app store (which just install, all the same), and you click the cross to remove them. You watch the video tutorials for help or get free help at the Apple Store.

When I switched to Mac in 2003 for video editing purposes, I also found lots of my time was freed up from having to fix PC problems. The phrase is, ‘it just works.’

With the iPad, I think this OS and this eco system is just what the majority of people need and how computing should really be. It removes all the information and feature overload, whilst enabling anyone to take pretty much complete control of their device, with all the education that they need for free.

So how about you?

• What are the top innovations you’ve found in the iPad?
• And more importantly, do you see this as a game changer?

Cute cat photo courtesy of Veronica Belmont.

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

The 5 Innovations of the iPad

The Dream Team – hanging out with some of the people at the Like Minds Summit 2010 at Bovey Castle.

Around the end of the last year I wrote a series of posts on ‘free from the factory‘, in which we talked about the shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy, and the change in business and society that followed.

The main point is that in a knowledge economy you don’t manage people like parts in a machine – you lead them and guide them, because unlike parts in a machine, they have the ability to develop and grow, rather than rust and break. It’s this difference in mindset, between managing production and leading people, that is the reason why most companies don’t get it.

The organisations that will thrive and are thriving are people-to-people. They value people, not parts. The news yesterday was that YouTube now has 2 billion views a day. Facebook is about to hit 500 million users. What causes their success? Factories that churn out products faster and cheaper (the way we compete in an industrial age), or are they teams of very skilled, highly motivated people whose synergy and vision creates communities and platforms with depth that better provide customised experiences that meet the emotional needs of other people (the way we compete in a knowledge age.)

What Separates People From Parts?

• Parts need replacing to be better. People can learn new skills and develop themselves to become better.
• Parts are designed to do one function. People can multi-task and have multiple facets.
• Parts can’t create people. People can create parts.
• Parts can do reproduction of tasks. People can create new tasks for parts to reproduce.
• Parts clone. People customise.
• Parts create volume. People create value.

Practically Investing In People

When we talk about innovation, people-to-people is perhaps one of the biggest fronts that it is happening on. Not because people haven’t always been important – but never before have people been this important. To compete on industrial differences - availability / cost / quality – is a hard game to dominate, especially if you are starting out. Costs have been driven so low that products and services are mostly commoditised.

Everything rises or falls on the leadership of your team. The way to differentiate is in your people. How?

• Make self development part of the job. Create a culture of reflection and improvement.
• Remove the one-function wizards. Create opportunity and exposure for new experiences – so that your team can apply their real asset to more situations.
• Emphasise creativity. Expect people to create parts to replace what they used to do, so that they have time to innovate themselves.
• Review how you do things, and get your team to observe and feedback on daily lessons. Have weekly “what did we learn” meetings to report findings.
• Have your team figure out how to customise what you do to deeper levels. Let them write case studies.
• Emphasise value in your language – show they how create an asset they are.

Being a leader of many teams for many years, I can attest to these things working. I just wish I had done a lot of them sooner.

The Main Point

You need to have a strong team, not a faster machine.

Your Leading Thoughts

• What is the greatest thing you have done with a team of people? What is the lesson there?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

People, Not Parts

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpViu8kY3o

If you can’t see the video above, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

This video above is one of my favourites -- by Apple Fellow, AllTop Founder and experienced startup entreprenuer Guy Kawasaki. The presentation is called “The Art of Innovation”, which contains a number of steps that I have adhered to for years now, and found them all to not only be true, but to be foundational truths that have taken me further than I would’ve gone without them.

One of Guy’s points is “Polarise People” -- something I’ve talked about before. The idea is you want people to love you or hate you, but never to feel ambivalent about you. Jim Collins talks about this in From Good To Great (affiliate link) when he says that “good is the enemy of great” -- meaning in today’s competitive market, having something that is just “good” is your enemy -- you have to make it great.

My concern though, is that not all innovation polarises people. Let’s take bloggers like Chris Brogan, Amber Naslund, Olivier Blanchard and Trey Pennington. They are writing innovative content, doing innovative things, and Chris in particular has a massive following who retweet any and every thing thing that he says. But Chris and the rest I’ve listed here don’t polarise people so much.

In fact, if you look the blogs that top the AdAge Power150, you’ll see few there polarise people at all. These are very popular blogs with big audiences -- but I don’t see this polarising principle at play so much here.

The reason why I’m thinking about this is I received an email at the end of last week welcoming me to the Power150, which was a wonderful surprise only bettered by seeing a pingback to my blog from AllTop, where I’ve been added under the Innovation category. I’m really thrilled about this, and it’s really nice to have recognition from my peers and bodies like AdAge and AllTop that stive to bring the best together.

But will I succeed on those forums? Because I’m a polariser: any regular here knows I’ve got critics, have had criticism in the comments many, many times, and that I welcome it because I often write in a way that pushes people to love me or hate me. And I’m fine with that. But do I have to face the reality that this kind of behaviour means I will never top any of those lists and have those audiences?

Don’t get my wrong -- I’m not changing. But I am keen to test this truth against your experiences and really see if it stands.

Your Leading Thoughts

• When has polarising people worked for you?
• When has it not?

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Polarising People: How Far Is Too Far?

More often than not, the real asset is the thing that you can’t take away. Let’s consider some business types:

For Newspapers

If a newspaper thinks its asset is the delivery of news, then what happens when someone can deliver it that faster, sooner, more individualised and as it breaks? The newspaper can try and become more technologically aware or resist it like Murdoch, or it can understand that its real asset is the ability to gather to news.

Think about it – a local newspaper knows its local community like few others do. If it wanted to pull together and network local businesses, identify and rally around a cause, gather information about a happening, it could do so easily.

Anyone competing and winning on delivery of news just can’t bet the local newspaper’s gathering of the news. In fact, it doesn’t just gather it, it sources it. (BTW, for expert reading on publishing, read Andrew Davies on the Idio Platform blog.)

For Restaurants

How about this case study by Steffan Antonas on the now famed AJ Bombers burger joint? 161 people turn up and check in on Foursquare at the same time – not for the food – but to unlock a special Swarm Badge that is only available when over 50 people simultaneously check into the same location.

Was the asset for the restaurant food? Or is the asset a geographical location where people can connect in a place that now has international attention?

For Retailers

Online retailer Threadless sells limited crowd sourced designed T-shirts. Over $30 million later, is their asset T-shirts, or is it their ability to crowd source from their community whatever designs need or could be crowd sourced?

For Brands

This post by Garrick Schmitt at the beginning of the year cleverly shows how for many brands, the asset is the integration of their products experience in everyday life – more than the products themselves. What do I mean? Google is no longer just about search. Facebook is no longer just about keeping in touch with friends. Even Twitter is no longer about “what you are doing” – it is now a realtime engine for discovering opinion, sourcing information, identifying leads. It’s a funnel.

For Professional Service Providers

Is the asset their flagship product? Or is it their deep expertise of their area that can be applied in a number of ways? Julian Summerhayes wrote some great thoughts about this recently. Especially when it comes to Twitter, first-mover advantage is still to be had – and the way to take it is by stepping up and becoming an Active Authority. If you ask anyone in Exeter what photographer to go with, what IT company to go with, what recruitment company to go with, what web design and online marketing company to go with, you’ll get unanimous answers.

One way that Professional Service Providers can be an Active Authority is to run events that reaffirm your expertise by just uniting people around a topic – much like the Charity Social Media events in Exeter. I don’t know who at this event is even involved in charity work, but that doesn’t matter – people perceive them to be so.

That type of first-mover advantage is proving really hard for others to compete against, especially when the real asset is understood.

For Like Minds

Is our asset a conference? Or is it a community? Long after the conference is over, there is a community and that is our asset that other conferences can’t compete on.

For Scott Gould

My asset isn’t really Like Minds, Aaron+Gould or this blog. My asset is the connections I’m making with all of you – that’s what gets great things done – which is why I keep on banging on about it. You can take away everything else, but that’s still there.

For You?

What I’d like to know from each of you is:

• What is your real asset? What is the thing that stays when everything else is taken away?

Exceptionally cool photo from Mike Bailey-Gates

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

What is the Real Asset?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbwRYg7OaI

If you can’t see the video, click here.

In this video (filmed by Andrew Davies, and full of The Office jokes), I stumble through attempting to explain the idea that Facebook’s new Social Plugins are a powerful step for our post modern epistemology -- in other words, the way that we get information.

In the Broadcast Age, based upon a modernist society, information came from one trusted source that informed our opinions and governed our understanding. In the Social Age, based upon a postmodern society, information is like a web, with multiple nodes that continually feeding and receiving information. You can read more about this in yesterday’s post.

In our Social Age, the webs of information with the most authority are those that are the most cohesive. Four scenarios to help explain what I mean:

1. Saying that your product is great is a Broadcast tactic -- you are saying it about yourself, offering a structured reason why, but it’s ultimately modernist.
2. If you have a web of information about you, drawn from various sources, but many of those sources conflict and are perhaps hard to find, you have a not so cohesive web.
3. If you have a web of information about you that is easy to find, but it’s all positive, it may be cohesive, but it is also not genuine, because you’re deciding what gets seen.
4. If you have a web of information that says your product is great, but you aren’t controlling it and instead showing what people say, then you are more authentic and genuine, and therefore more cohesive.

What I’ve always liked is ASOSReviews.com, which shows everything everyone is saying about ASOS on Twitter -- whether good or bad. This instills trust and confidence -- and the impressive high positive sentiment they have tells me that the people, the nodes, are pleased with ASOS therefore creating a more cohesive web of information.

What Facebook are doing, as I try to explain, is link the conversation and semantics -- the nodes -- from around the web to provide cohesive webs of information. This is what the internet is actually supposed to be. The internet is a not a medium for out data -- the internet is our data.

Robert Coaldini, by the way, has 6 weapons of influence that I think contribute to making a more cohesive web: Reciprocity, Commitment and Consistency, Social Proof, Authority, Liking, Scarcity. I’d certainly say Facebook’s Social Plugins are heavily based around these.

I’m sure there’s far more here that can be discussed, but I’m just really stoking the intellectual fires and hoping we can talk this through more. Let me know what you think.

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook’s Cohesive Web and Postmodern Epistemology

Changing gears from talk about politics and the UK General Election, I’ve been meaning some time to address a topic that I’ve been thinking on for about 6 months now - namely that of Virtual Participation. What I really want to do is get the conversation started before fleshing out these ideas, so here are my main threads of thought on this at the moment (which interestingly are all sparked from conversations with friends.)

Understanding Virtual via The Multiverse

My friend Joe Pine has a framework called the Multiverse in which he talks about the degrees between reality and virtuality (as per photo above). If reality is based in time, space and matter, and true virtuality is non-time, non-space and non-matter, then this means we have degrees in between. This means that augmented reality can be defined as being based in real time, in real matter, but with virtual space (this is the augmented bit.) There’s a 50 minute video where Joe talks about it that you can watch here if you are so inclined.

What this does for me is clarify the plains on which virtual and physical participation can take place – time, space and matter. What I can now do is mix these with non-time, non-space and non-matter to create varying plains of participation. Consider today’s launch of the Like Minds Insights platform which is most importantly non-time – where as those people who were virtually participating in Like Minds Conference live were doing so in real time. Immediately, we see the use of both.

You’ll also notice that while he uses the term reality for being in real life, I’m more inclined to say physical participation than real life participation. Whether some engage physically or virtually, I consider it all to be real. When you’re on the phone to someone, you are really talking to them – and what’s more, there is a question of where you are present. Though physically you are present in the room, your mind is present in the call. Something I’m still trying to get my head around.

The Need for Virtual

My friend Robin Dickinson wrote some great words last year when he said that “room filling is the last thing a post internet leader does.” Robin says that in the light of all the innovation and social technology, there is often little innovation to found when event organisers pile people into the same hotel conference room as they normally do:

It just seems ironic that they use the ancient method of room-filling to share this leading-edge information. It’s like putting a horse and buggy on a brand new railway track and hollering “Giddy-up!”

Robin’s point ends with what my consultancies specialty is: using Social Media to enable, extend and enhance offline events, experiences and engagement. Peter Gorman echoes this sentiment in his recent article on ‘The Virtual State‘ (good title, Peter.)

The Edge of Virtual: Curation

In a post last month, myself and a virtual friend of mine, Kristi Colvin, got talking in the comments section about where we see virtual going and how it blends with the physical participation through the idea of shared real time.

Much of thought was coming from a very peice Robert Scoble wrote on The Seven Needs of Real Time Curators, in which he pretty much provides a roadmap of needs for anyone who is serious about developing in this virtual arena. I found each of Robert’s seven points directly applicable to what I’ve learnt through pushing the idea of virtual participation at Like Minds, something that Kristi and the guys at FreshId where instrumental in.

Robert’s points build upon each other, the first of which is the need for curated bundles. When we worked on the virtual participation platform for Like Minds, we were keenly aware that the #likeminds hashtag quickly becomes like a sawn off shotgun with all the content that goes through it – much it of duplicate, non-useful or heavily contextual. What we needed was to sift the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, for those virtually participating, otherwise they’d drown in all the data coming through. For this we looked to our Media Partners live blog feeds, as well as targeting content that was connected to real-time events (like the Twitter username of the current speaker.)

What also becomes apparent is that the community curates itself. I love this post about Jo Porritt who virtually attended Like Minds, and says this abotu the experience:

I could log into my Twitter account from the interface which enabled me to not only watch the event in real time, but converse with others on Twitter both at the event, and scattered around the globe in different timezones. An entirely connected audience. The advantage from this stance was being able to see the event, watch the inspiring panelists and speakers in action, but at the same time relay information to the online community. I found myself watching the stream from Olivier Blanchard who was tweeting some of the salient points as soon as the statements had been uttered by the speakers, and then immediately seeing the reactions from those on Twitter that weren’t there. I felt like a bridge between the two – which is social media in motion and at it’s very best!

There’s more to say here and I’ve got lots of ideas, but I’m keen to learn what people’s needs are of events from a virtual stand point – especially when we have video and slides in front of us. What is the information that we then need to know, or want to know in order to be more connected?
My friend Karima-Catherine relayed her experience of virtually participating in Like Minds, where she age points out that the strong point of virtual engagement is that it happens before, during and after. Someone else said the same here and here. The best write up is Krisit’s own on the FreshId site where she really gets into the nitty gritty and practicalities of this.

A Starting Point

I’ve thrown these points out really am hoping we can talk them through. Pick off one of the questions below to help us get started:

1. What matters to you if you are attending an event virtually? How could this be enriched?
2. How we begin to categorise and understand the idea of ‘presence’ with virtual and physical worlds?
3. How do you think curation can be better done than it is today? (Read Robert Scoble’s article)

This thought comes from Scott Gould's thinking blog for thinking people. Scott is also on Twitter and Facebook.

Virtually Present: Discussing The Digital Future