Blogs + webfeeds + podcasting + iPod Shuffle = Business Solution

by

The guys at Infosential, a UK-based technology consultancy, have developed a great way to piece together some simple technologies (blogs, RSS, MP3, iPod Shuffle) in order to create a seamless competitive intelligence solution for a globe-trotting client.
Here’s the problem:

Our client is the classic Type-A personality, time-poor, stressed executive with too much to do and too little time to do it – he spends most of his life on planes in transit between meetings. He needs to keep up with the key developments in competitor intelligence, but gets very little opportunity to sit in front of a screen to browse through reports. Neither does he want to drag a large pile of paper around with him.

The solution, according to Tim Ducketts, starts by monitoring a variety of web-based information sources and recording the ones that may be of interest for their client. These recordings are made available as an RSS feed and the client can access these 3-4 minute recordings from anywhere in the world and then easily transfer them to an iPod Shuffle. The Shuffle measures 8.4 x 2.5 x 0.84 cm, which makes it pretty darned small.

This kind of a practical solution to a real-world problem validates the many hours of my monitoring and testing of new technologies, often without knowing where it will lead. In the end, I try to offer similar solutions that link a few of the right technologies with some innovative process and a little bit of insight in order to help somebody out. Well done Tim & Wayne.

Small Businesses, Loosely Joined

by

Following on the last post that business is about networks, is this article from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle about three individual business operators (craftsman, interior designer & architect) who team up in different ways for different projects:


When they come together, the way that they work is as diverse as a buffet. Sometimes they recommend each other to their respective clients. Sometimes they work together as a team, while other times one will work for the other two. At times they unite and bid on larger commercial projects that they would not have been able to have on their own.

I have talked about the Organization of the Future and Natural Enterprises and am using some of these ideas in my own practice. When you work alone, you can max out pretty quickly on a project, so you always need a good list of partners. Like the three businessmen in the article, I don’t see any reason yet to create a corporate body or a defined partnership, and am content with this constantly morphing business model – just the right size for the job at hand. This self-styled "Dream Team", flies in the face of traditional business management consulting:

But the three have never crafted a business plan, named a board, taken titles or even set formal fee structures. They also maintain their separate companies.

Via Small Business Trends

Business 101

by

I guess that everything you really wanted to know about business you already learned in kindergarten, or maybe even earlier. I was talking about some of my projects last night and summed up the same business process at work with each organisation. Basically, business is about connecting someone with a need to someone with a solution, usually through some kind of referral system.

For instance if I need to get my roof fixed, I ask some friends and neighbours to recommend a good contactor. I take this information and filter it by who recommended whom and what my needs are. I then contact my first choice, engage the contractor, and then become another referrer (positive or negative) of these services.

In the corporate world it’s the same. An executive sees a problem, goes through his or her network and comes up with some recommendations. If you can provide a solution, and have some kind of relationship with one of that corporation’s networks, then you have a chance of doing business with them (I know, RFP’s are different, but networks still have an influence).

Therefore, doing business is – the act of connecting a problem with a solution though a reputation-based referral system (network).

This underscores the importance of understanding how networks work. You are only as good as the reputation that you have within the referral networks of your prospective clients. This is temporary and requires constant work and a slip can lead to ruin (e.g. Vioxx, WorldCom, Kryptonite Locks, etc).

So don’t think "markets", think "networks".

Taking back the Web

by

So how powerful is the blog as a marketing tool?

One year ago I had about 50 visitors per month on this site. Today, I have more than 30,000. I just did a search for "harold" on Google, and of over 11 million articles, I am now on the first page; the last entry, but still page one. I know that this is a bit of vanity and I don’t believe that this position will last [I may have been kicked to page two already], but the lesson here is that I have spent no money on advertising nor marketing.

I write 3-10 short articles per week and I participate in conversations that interest me. I have not paid for search engine optimization and I have not hired any marketing specialists. I’m just doing on the web what previously I was doing face-to-face. This is the power of blogs; to extend our reach while retrieving our sense of community.

Now this great honour of being on Google page one does not equate to market share nor additional revenue, but it shows how some guy in a small town in Atlantic Canada can be part of the global village. This is the power of networks, as discussed in The Cluetrain and recently evidenced by the over 25 million downloads of the free, open source web browser – Firefox.

Yes, Virginia, we can take back the Web.

ePortfolios

by

If you’re wondering about the value of ePortfolios in high school, then read Helen Barrett’s article in response to a student’s question, "I am a student in high school. Why is it manditory for me to make a proficient on my portfolio for me to graduate? I have all of my credits to graduate, but if I make lower than an proficient I don’t get to graduate."

Would you rather spend a day taking a series of tests that just make you nervous, don’t help you learn and only assess how well you can remember a lot of facts or solve a lot of problems, most of which are irrelevant to your life? And if you don’t pass those tests, you have to keep taking them until you do pass? Isn’t it much better to carefully and reflectively develop a portfolio that showcases your strengths and your growth over time?

For those interested in ePortfolios at the university level, take a look at ePortfolio@York

* You can also go to the Open Source Portfolio Initiative and see what this community initiative is doing around ePortfolios in general.

Via Jeremy Hiebert

Research on the Web

by

Will, at Weblogg-ed (an excellent resource for educators), discusses teachers, students and information literacy on the Web.

"I think it’s better for everyone if we just give them a list of sites they can use when they do their papers," the principal said, "and tell them they have to have a certain number of those resources in the final product."



Now, this is a loose transcript of the conversation, but the point is clear. Instead of teaching effective use of the tool, the easy way is to limit the reach of the tool, rein it in and limit its effect. If that is or will become the prevailing view, we are all in serious, serious trouble…

I see with my children (Grades 5 & 7) that research skills and media literacy are not developed at all in the New Brunswick school system. These are critical skills, especially since there are fewer resources in our school and public libraries. My own research has found two good online resources for students. The KVL Research Portal is easy to use and my son has found it quite helpful. The Big 6 Information Literacy site has some good information, but is not as dynamic as KVL’s. My perspective is that if the schools don’t teach information literacy, then it’s up to parents.

Any other recommendations would be appreciated. I put "Student Resources" sites on FURL for future reference.

Jay on Workflow

by

Jay Cross has posted his recent article, co-authored with Tony O’Driscoll, in Training Magazine – Workflow Learning Gets Real. Workflow learning is the next step in the transition from apprenticeship to instructor-led training and now to workflow learning, which incorporates many of the principles of performance-centred design, but now within a networked environment. If you’re in the business of training, consider this:

If the training organization in every company evaporated into thin air or disappeared through a wormhole to teaching heaven, individuals would continue to learn.

Incorporating the current reality, where anyone can be connected with almost everyone, at any time, Jay says:

As we enter an age of informal and workflow learning, authority is less centralized than ever before. "Learning is best understood as an interaction among practitioners, rather than a process in which a producer provides knowledge to a consumer," says Etienne Wenger, a social researcher and champion of communities of practice.

So if you’re still in the "training" business, you had better get focused on the "performance" business very quickly. The workflow approach incorporates learning directly into work, not as a separate activity. I see this as the intersection of process & system design, cognition and especially social behaviour. In other words, how people work, learn and interact – all at the same time and in a messy and very human way.

 

Portals – Lessons Learnt

by

In the paper, A False Dawn Over the Field of Dreams? [full-text no longer available], Stephen James Musgrave looks at the UK experience with community portals, including educational ones. He refers to a study of portals that divided them into a four-layer scale of interactivity:

  1. Promotional: sites providing information but little interaction.
  2. Content: sites providing more sophisticated information and some interaction.
  3. Content Plus: sites providing very useful content and more advanced on-line self-service features.
  4. Transactional: sites which are accessible, complete, thoughtful, and coherent; and with more than one type of on-line interaction (e.g. payment, application, consultation, bookings).

Only 2% of sites were considered Transactional – pity.

In concluding how to blend people and technology, Musgrave states:

The People and Technology improvements addressed in this narrative are required so as to enhance a portal based delivery of citizen-centric services through the adoption of common standards, and the development of common components. Technology improvement through systems integration is required to achieve the interactivity demanded by users; giving services that will be valued by users. The use of open source software – with vendor support – is likely to become a "middle way" that gives ownership of core elements to the portal developer community; minimising problems with vendor lock-in, whilst enabling industrial strength portal products to be deployed.

Though not a portal, Scott Wilson’s graphical description of a Virtual Learning Environment shows some of the same principles as those espoused by Musgrave. It is a series of smaller pieces (many open source) loosely joined, and focused on the needs of the individual, not the institution. This approach could avoid the hopelessly optimistic "if you build it, they will come" syndrome alluded to in the title.

Where the jobs are

by

As I said earlier this week:

I would infer that as cheap and easy Internet tools proliferate, those with specialised skills in coding, etc, may begin to lose their market worth – unless they also have the skills of inventiveness, empathy and meaning that Daniel Pink believes will be necessary for future employability.

It seems that this is already happening, according to this post from Daniel Lemire, on the lack of jobs for computer science graduates:

The message is quite clear, I believe. If you want to train yourself or students to produce software (programming or software engineering), you better be damn good because the job market is not there anymore. Will jobs come back? Automobile workers in North America are still waiting for the jobs sent to Mexico or elsewhere to come back. Now, programming or software engineering are not useless skills, far from it, but it might be a better strategy to aim for a business jobs where your programming or computer networking skills can be put to good use, for example. It seems that the job market is moving toward information technology (security, networking, using the right technology at the right time, understanding the implication of a given technology for business).


Action Research

by

Robert Paterson offers some good advice to federal Social Development Minister Ken Dryden, in the spirit of action research, to stop trying to be all things to all people and get on with creating an effective child care programme:

Instead of trying to do a deal with everyone – why not put out the DNA of what you want. Not just baby sitting but development. Development that most can access. Attach say 2 Billion to this and say that the first 3 provinces that agree will get the deal as offered. You will then monitor the deal for 3 years and we will all learn what works.

Often when we try to address complex problems that involve multiple parties and perspectives, we can get analysis paralysis, because we will never have all of the answers. Sometimes it’s best to just get on with it – by starting small, being open to learn from our experiences and adjusting as we go. Rob’s advice makes sense to me.