Asking the big questions

This blog is all about Future Business.  My latest consulting gig is in the education space and it is a whole lot of “future”.  Recently, I agreed to serve as Product Manager turning a concept into a repeatable/scalable product for School of One.  It is an ambitious project that gives each student their own custom daily schedule to match their educational needs and learning preferences.

The project is quite a ride.  The people are smart, the goal is ridiculously large, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  We are working on problems that not only haven’t been solved yet, but haven’t even been considered and are only now possible given the advancement of technology.

I will keep you tuned via this blog.  If changing the way US public schools work is important to you, feel free to connect and I will be happy to collaborate on anything that is shareable.

Other big questions that I am working on

• Can an online community be consistently energized by a Twitter Chat? KMers
• Can online events be made more collaborative by combining video streams with Twitter Chats? twebevent
• Can the speaker bureau industry be vastly improved?  TBA

Knowledge in the stream

The classic knowledge management effort has to do with building or improving a knowledge repository.  That includes collecting information as well as making it simple to find/use once collected.

With blogs on the rise and Twitter blowing up in a matter of a few years, information has begun to be consumed not from repositories or web pages, but from streams and communities.  End user focus has turned to finding the right streams and the right communities that meet our needs at any given point in time.

Once established, we can sit back and let the content come to us.  We monitor streams that are more important to us more closely.  While we are not paying attention, the stream continues to flow by and that is OK.  If we really want to, we can search later.  But, looking back will likely only be necessary/warranted when the  information we are seeking is extremely niche.  New information is constantly flowing.

This shift in approach can be somewhat alarming to people at first (see “Evolution of Twitter Use“).  It shouldn’t be.  We have been consuming TV in this way our whole lives.  TV streams are still going by even when we are not watching.  DVR’s help us capture parts of the stream and repeats give us second chances (like RT’s in Twitter).  How many magazine subscriptions do you have?  How many of issues do you read?  Same thing.

There are two main reasons the shift to streams is taking place:

1. technology – RSS is not the easiest thing to use.  Twitter apps and other stream readers (eg. Google Reader) are making it easier for even the most novice to watch information streams.  This will continue to improve.
2. volume – there is so much information streaming now that we can easily find a set of streams on ANY topic.  The trick is whittling it down to the few that we have time to read and interact with.

I have recently been fascinated by Twitter’s ability to form communities of people.  I believe the next iteration in this knowledge management revolution will be communities forming around certain streams on a large scale.  Hopefully those communities will be open and hyper-connected to other similar communities.

Public Waves

A few posts ago I talked about “Wave Chats“.  Today I experienced my first wave used as a substitute for a real time Twitter chat.

It came about because the Twitter Search API was being finicky.  This happens way too often and when it does, it takes out all the Twitter applications that rely on it: TweetDeck, TweetGrid, TweetChat, etc….  The only thing that will work in that situation is Twitter’s own search page.  For some reason, they don’t use their own Search API for their searches.   Hmmmm, I wonder why.  Maybe because it is not stable. 

Back to our story…… I was on a chat earlier in the day that was also having trouble so I thought about Wave as a backup plan.  In order to make that work, I needed:

Step 1: a wave that anyone could get to.  The way you accomplish that is by inviting public@a.gwave.com to your Wave.  I created it as a contact in my Google Contacts and then invited to the Wave.

Step 2: A way to tell people how to find my wave.  If you tag your wave with something relatively unique, you can have people search for “tag:<your tag>” or you can give them a URL. This one is for “tag:#eventprofs” https://wave.google.com/wave/#restored:search:tag%253A%2523eventprofs Note: tagging can be done at the bottom of the Wave interface.

Once we were in the wave, we very quickly found that some of the Google features are not necessarily strengths for real time chats.  Allowing for threads to pop-up anywhere makes it impossible to follow the multi-threads that naturally occur in a real time Chat without scrolling all over the place to find what you are missing.  So, we created a guideline that we would only comment at the bottom of the wave thereby making it a single one dimensional stream of information (just like Twitter).

It took some getting used to the fact that you could see all the simultaneous typing.  If one was able to avoid distraction, the speed was actually much faster than Twitter Chatting due to no delay between post and appearance and also getting the gist of a post even before it was finished.

At the end of the wave period, several of us felt that it was an interesting experiment and there were definitely some nice elements to Wave chating, but that Twitter Chats’ ability to inherently promote the chat outside of the participants and to cross-post to other community hashtags was superior to Wave.

Anybody else experienced Wave in real time and want to compare it to a Twitter Chat?

Writing to Figure Out

Bloggers write for a number of different reasons.  One of the most popular reasons and the primary reason that I blog is to work out ideas.  I find that I don’t truly understand my views until I have put them down in print.  Writing also forces me to do some research into the topic to make sure I am well-informed and to figure out how my ideas fit into those of others.

At the beginning of a podcast interview with Jeff De Cagna, Dan Pink brings this concept to life in the way that only a professional speaker can.  Dan’s latest book, Drive, just came out this week.  I have yet to give it a read, but if it is anything like Dan in person or his previous books: Free Agent Nation, Whole New Mind, Adventures of Johnny Bunko; it will expand your views and possibly even take you in a whole new direction.

The true power of our age is how easy it is to connect with ideas and people.  Use this advantage to spark new ideas and build on the ones that you have.  If writing is not your thing then make sure that you are heavily collaborating with others to develop those ideas.  So many people are willing to help as long as you return the favor.

If you have not already checked out Twitter Chats as a way to connect with a knowledge community, there is a whole schedule of them listed here.  One of those chats is even about best practices for knowledge sharing: http://KMers.org

Wave Chats

Today on #smchat one of the chatters, who always has great ideas (@hacool), chimed in that she had been on a Wave that included a chat gadget.  For those who are not as experienced with Wave, a gadget is just a mini app that runs inside the wave.  It is similar to the way you can watch a video which is embedded within a blog.

It got me thinking (as tools like Wave have a way of doing to people)….why couldn’t I embed a Tweetchat right into a Wave?  Brooks Bennett, the founder of tweetchat, was good enough to upgrade recently so that it is 100% embeddable. eg.  KMers.org

I tried it and it worked!!  Theoretically, what this will give you is the ability to get the best of both apps:

Twitter

• Linear ie. just one spot to watch (the top of the chat), yet multi-threaded within that linear stream
• Each tweet goes out to all that person’s followers acting as an announcement mechanism for the chat
• Many different applications can be used to join the chat.

Wave

• Better threading
• Ability to group edit
• Ability to go back and edit what was previously written

It seems to me that some combination of the two could be a dynamite package.  Who wants to do a trial run with me?

Collaborating in a Fishbowl

I am a huge fan of progressive in-person session formats, especially when they are participatory rather than passive. This blog has covered High-Impact Storytelling (by Nancy Dixon) and Buzz Sessions (by yours truly).  Fishbowls are the latest format to peak my interest.  In her blog post titled “Unpredictable by Nature“, @kikilitalien links to a wikipedia entry on fishbowls.

There are a few variations, but the gist is that there is both an inner circle of chairs and an outer circle.  The outer circle is listening to the inner circle’s discussion.  The best way to make it participatory is to leave one of the inner circle chairs open so that a member of the outer circle can take it periodically.  When this happens, some member of the inner circle must move to the outer circle so that one chair remains open.

There are several things that I love about this format

• It allows for shy passive learners to remain in the outer circle and just listen
• It allows for selected experts to set the tone for the inner circle
• Inner circle “experts” are likely to ask each other different, deeper, more-probing questions, than an audience would ask of a panel
• The “open” inner circle where a seat is left open allows for outer circle members with a particularly relevant expertise to jump in and provide fresh perspectives

I plan to promote this format at events where I have some influence and will keep everyone posted as to my thoughts after actually experiencing one.  If you have tried it, please share your thoughts.

Twitter Chat Driven Communities

Online communities of practice (CoP’s) are VERY challenging to keep vibrant over a long period of time.  The ones with staying power always have active management and multiple channels for members to collaborate.

Many personal and professional associations have learned this.  They send out information and invite people to collaborate online throughout the year.  Then they run one or more in-person events/conferences that help keep everyone connected to the group.  Not many of these associations are using Twitter Chats.

You don’t have to have an in-person element in order to remain successful with an online community.  Stan Garfield runs a fantastic community for KM professionals called SIKMleaders.  He runs it through a Yahoo Group, but it is energized monthly by a phone call that anyone can join.

In my opinion Twitter Chats are currently the best method for online community invigoration.  Here are a few reasons why.

1. If there are 10 or more people on a chat, the experience is very fast/furious and therefore invigorating.  The experience will keep people coming back.
2. Every time anyone tweets during your chat, the existence of your community is being pushed out to all the chatters’ followers.  This brings in fresh members
3. The ability for chatters to cross-post with other related hashtags helps related communities connect to each other sharing ideas/members/etc…
4. The chat hashtag can be used between chat events for people to interact asynchronously.
5. Even non-Twitter users can watch and learn from the chat just by going to the right web page

Some examples of Twitter driven chat communities are

• #SMchat on Ning
• #eventprofs on PBWorks
• #Cmtychat on FriendFeed
• #KMers on custom site

Each platform has its pros and cons for supporting a Twitter Chat driven community.  To my knowledge, the only chat supported by a site built from the ground-up is KMers.  It is custom-built using the Drupal framework and can be modified to fit unique needs of a Twitter driven community.

If you are part of a community that you believe could use a platform like KMers.org has, contact me via one of the channels available in the top right of the blog page.  We can help you (free) with a version that works for your community.

If you would like to join a Twitter Chat community, try any of the over 80 on the Twitter Chat Schedule.

Customer Development

I am in the early stages of a new start-up idea so I am poking my head up to look around for the latest best practices before getting underway.   I was referred by some friends to Steve Blank’s  idea he calls Customer Development. It’s not brand new, but it is certainly far from mainstream yet.

Not only do I feel that Steve’s framework is right for my start-up, but I was also compelled to write a blog post.  During my research I found a post so well written that I knew it was better to link out rather than write a new one myself.  Therefore, I highly recommend Jussi Laakkonen’s post called “Customer Development or why 9/10 startups fail“

Please note: just talking to your customers (focus groups) about their needs is NOT customer development.  You need to actually try selling to them and see what happens.  Steve suggests that selling should be brought as far forward as possible in the process.

I have begun forming my customer hypotheses.

1. I will test my hypotheses by talking to a variety of customers (not too many)
2. Building simple iterations and seeing if early adopters will use/buy
3. updating my hypotheses and iterations based on what is learned from early adoption
4. Developing a larger marketing push once adoption/return is clearly good enough.

#KMers Chat Launch

The KMers.org site was ready for beta launch last week in time for the KMWorld09 conference.  Today we launched the weekly #KMers twitter chat.   I would guesstimate that we had about 15-20 people contributing to the Twitter Chat which means we probably had that number again of lurkers.   Lots of quality information was shared and I believe that it was considered a success by all.

For many on the chat it was their first ever.  Yet, despite a few small hiccups, everyone seemed to get the hang of it very quickly.

The topic (Best Ideas from KMWorld09) was not ideal for a Twitter Chat because it is more about sharing knowledge nuggets than having a conversation.  Also, we had far more people who hadn’t gone to the conference and were looking for info than we had people who had gone to the conference and were sharing it.  Future chats will be much more of a deeper dive into one facet of KM per chat.

Here is the summary of the chat from my perspective:

Introductions:

• we discovered that most of the chatters had not been to KMWorld09 and many were new to Twitter Chatting

Thoughts about KMers.org

• @Elsua: Member section should link in a Twitter List
• @lehawes: pointed out that archiving of chats will be a plus
• several indicated that KMers.org login and TweetChat login (double) was confusing
• @andreamayer pointed out that we had a glitch with a post being wrongly attributed
• There were a few other small problems encountered by a few people during the chat

Goals for attending #KMW09

• @swanwick indicated he was there 1) to network 2) to launch KMers.org
• @StanGarfield said he was there to speak, serve on a panel, learn, and interact
• Tone of session: @swanwick indicated that it seemed hopeful.  Hopeful that e2.0 would be the opp for KM and SM to work together.

Sub-discussions throughout the chat

• value of life-narration: balance between inane tweets and over polished ones.
• value of and how to measure KM value
• video as a knowledge sharing channel
• Neats vs. Scruffies http://bit.ly/7jf1WC

Best sessions at #KMW09:

• the consensus was that @BillIves provided the best blogging coverage of the event
• @forgingthfuture found discussion of Personal KM fascinating
• @forgingthefutur felt that @StanGarfield had one of the best presentations http://bit.ly/5aSTeH
• there was general appreciation for 2nd half of @vanderwal presentation http://bit.ly/7G4XVo
• @swanwick liked @nancymdixon doing High Impact Storytelling: http://bit.ly/4FzUHO
• @StanGarfield favs McAfee, Dixon, Li, Lambe, Gilmour, VanderWal. O’Dell
• @StanGarfield enjoyed extracurricular dinner with 30 SIKM Leader CoP members – great discussions and personal interactions.

Ways to improve KMWorld

• @VMaryAbraham felt it was too expensive
• Several wished there was an online attendance package available for those who can’t travel
• @Swanwick shared an open letter to KMWorld organizers http://bit.ly/6aL73q

Future #KMers Topics

• @elsua: deeper dives on 1) Personal KM and 2) storytelling
• @SethHorwitz: mind/concept mapping (comparisons, strategies)
• @SourcePOV: review topic by topic here would be awesome; maybe even invite a few orig speakers?

2-5-1 Storytelling

Lucky enough to arrive at KMWorld the night before the main portion of the conference, I had the pleasure of catching a Nancy Dixon session that evening called “High Impact Storytelling“.   Although it was not a competition, there was one story in that session that rose above all the others.  Although I doubt I will do the story full justice, I will try to re-tell it here

The original storyteller, Lt Col Karuna Ramanathan, lives in Singapore and has a pretty heavy accent when speaking English.  Although accents often create a communication gap, in this case I believe it helped because one had to concentrate throughout to pick up all the words.

As you can imagine from his title, Karuna is part of the military in Singapore.  He starts out by setting the scene and explaining that military personnel in Singapore are very reluctant to share their opinions due to their culture.  This can make for a very quiet after-action-review (AAR).  In order to maximize the value of the program, they need to coax out the tacit knowledge.  So, his team developed a framework they call 2-5-1.  It goes like this:

• 2
  • Who you are
  • Summary of your experience
• 5 fingers
  • Little finger – what parts of the effort did not get enough attention
  • Ring finger – What relationships were formed, what you learned about relationship building
  • Middle finger – what you disliked, what/who made you frustrated
  • Pointer finger – what you would do better next time around, what you want to tell those who were “in charge” about what they could do better
  • Thumb (up) – what went well.  What was good.
• 1 – the most important takeaway from the effort

This is a framework that everyone can relate to.  It is also a framework that is easily remembered and easily walked through while standing up in front of a group.  Those who are uncomfortable speaking in front of a group can use one hand to grasp the corresponding finger on the other hand for each section…adding to their comfort level by giving them a prop.

If you have a good storytelling framework, tell us about it in the comments.