Joshua-Michéle Ross

In this interview Mike Mathieu, founder of Frontseat.org, discusses how he is helping to build “software for civic life”. Using publicly available data and web services (many of their applications use S3 and EC2) Frontseat creates simple, highly functional tools like Walkscore (rating neighborhood walkability) and Countmore (helping students in the recent elections decide which state to cast their vote in). Mike is also behind obamaCTO where you can add your opinion and cast your vote for what the new CTO of the USA’s priorities should be.

With the recent election there has been a lot of talk and enthusiasm for the possibility of a more open, modern government that operates with transparency and makes data available for remixing by it’s citizens. People have their eye on government to change…This is a worthy goal to push for but don’t hold your breath. The government of the United States is a behemoth that, all told, employs 12 million people and is preternaturally territorial and risk averse…

Pressing government to change is necessary but is not the only bet we should place. Mike makes the point in this video that we don’t need to wait for data that can improve civic life or increase transparency in government.

If you know of other examples of citizens improving civic life that deserve mention, please share them in the comments.

Part one of this interview is available here.

I am fascinated by what I see as Zappos' ongoing evolution from a simple, online retailer to a leading online innovator. A few months back I wrote about Zappos pioneering what I called “Experience Syndication" with their Powered by Zappos (PBZ) service. In brief, PBZ syndicates the end-to-end value of shopping with Zappos - from the online store experience to shipping, to returns, to the call center - everything. Clarks Shoes, Stuart Weitzman and many other online sites are providing a customer experience entirely syndicated by Zappos. Last night I saw CEO Tony Hsieh’s tweet about Zappos Insights - a paid membership site “that allows 'Fortune one million' companies to gain insights from the learnings of Zappos.com. The site will allow access to Zappos.com management and contacts and provide guidance and direct answers for user generated questions via video responses.” If PBZ syndicates the customer experience, Zappos Insights is syndicating the internal business experience; providing a window into the leadership and culture that has made Zappos such a successful business. What is so radical about this is the notion that Zappos is willing to let go of the very thing that makes them so exceptional. What other company would you like to see create a similar service?

Hat in hand the U.S. Auto Industry lined up for their slice of government aid and it appears as of this posting that they will get the money they are asking for. These titans spent years hiding behind the “free market” shibboleth when convenient (the market wants gas guzzling SUV’s) and when punished by that same market we hear that they are victims of factors outside their control and that they are “too big to fail.” It has become a hackneyed expression precisely because it summarizes the situation so well; this is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss.

The very concept of “Too Big To Fail” points to a deeper truth: the U.S.’s auto industry does not operate within the “free market” at all. Far from it. As their moniker suggests, the “Big Three” are an oligopoly with a long record of eschewing innovation (electric cars, hybrids etc.), killing off alternatives like mass transit and bullying public policy (lobbying against CAFÉ standards, environmental and tax policies [Hummer owners get a $34K tax credit!], the threat of relocating factories etc.) all in an effort to conform the not so “free market” to its lumbering non-strategies of pursuing short-term profit.

Now that their short-term thinking has met with long-term reality we are faced with bailing them out. Fair enough. There are millions of jobs connected to the automobile industry. But do we now trust these same institutions to deliver and execute the plan for a sustainable U.S. transportation industry?

If these are the flaws of the industry, consider their current leadership; The CEOs of these failing behemoths flew in on corporate jets, asked for $25 billion dollars, brought literally not one shred of documentation on what they intended to do differently and couldn’t explain how they arrived at the 25 billion dollar figure in the first place. When asked if they would accept a $1 dollar per year salary (Iacoca style) in exchange responses from GM and Ford ranged from non-committal to sarcastic (“I don’t have a position on that today” - Rick Wagoner of GM, “I think I am OK where I am today.” Ford’s Alan Mulally who earns $22m per year).

Oligopolies like The Big Three thrive on standardization, scale and market manipulation - not innovation. It is precisely their structure, size and leadership DNA that I believe precludes them from any chance of successful innovation. So there is the Catch 22. They may be too big to fail - but they are too big, bloated and corrupt to succeed. If we are the taxpayers funding the bailout, what are the alternatives?

Kevin Kelly doesn’t need much in the way of introduction to Radar readers. He is a big thinker looking at the intersection of biology, technology and culture.

Kevin gave a great High Order Bit at the Web 2.0 Summit and I caught up with him afterward. This interview covers:

• The impact of the web on our recent elections
• The rich new possibilities for interaction and collaboration afforded by the web
• The Wisdom of the Crowds vs. the Stupidity of the Mob
• Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life… looking into “what technology wants”

My favorite quote from the conversation: “We are the sexual organs of technology”
Indeed.

Recently I spoke with Francois Gossieaux of Beeline Labs about the role of online communities in the enterprise. Francois has been evangelizing the learning gained from his recent study “The Tribalization of Business” (see here for the Slideshare presentation).

The interview is broken into three parts. Francois is a great storyteller, bringing case studies in to support nearly every point. Here are a few insights I took away from our conversation:

Community for community’s sake: most businesses begin planning a community with traditional objectives (lower support costs, drive innovation, increase customer loyalty etc.). On the Social Web this is the equivalent of entering a personal relationship with an ulterior motive (which never works out quite right). Businesses should begin with the question, “how can I satisfy the needs of this community?”- and then follow the community’s lead. Be open to the unexpected.

In my experience this is one of the hardest things for companies to get behind and relegates this kind of "enlightened" community effort to either top-level leadership or skunk works development. Middle management is typically the most reluctant to deviate from standard practice and place a bet on community for the community’s sake.

Communities require a social framework to thrive - most companies have a mindset that reflects the legal, contractual and hierarchical underpinnings of their business and carry these behaviors with them into the community. This informs their planning, measurement and how they encourage contribution. These incentives have little sway on the Social Web where the mindset is social and trust, reputation and relationship are big drivers of contribution. As Francois says, “The most successful communities occur when you tap into that social framework”

Consider stories as a success metric: While there is a fair amount in this interview about measurement - this was my favorite: A great anectdote about how one company views the stories that emerge from their community as a key metric of success. Great stories are inherently viral and can have a profound impact on decision making in an organization.

Think Bigger: Most large companies are satisfied to have small communities; basically bringing a focus group online. Doing so misses the potential of the online community to transform your business. Consider how Intuit is now embedding live community directly into their application - allowing users to seek help and get questions answered directly.

Transformative communities blur the lines between company and customer and portend a future where retail ecommerce sites go well beyond ratings and reviews and provide problem solving, shopping mentors, product development and other services directly from the community. Where internet sites are co-evolved (from interface to feature-sets to codebase) in cooperation with community, where complex applications (desktop and cloud-based) meld standard functions with community functions. Communities are certainly helpful in providing feedback on customer behavior but that is just one small part of the story.

These videos (there are three total) are timely in light of the staggering September figures from the Obama campaign:

• 630,000 new donors (bringing total donors to 3.1 million)
• 150 million dollars raised
• Average contribution: $86

Here are a few observations I took away from our conversation:

Online U.S. political communities will morph from a campaign fundraising role to a governing role. Regardless of whether Obama or McCain wins in November, every 2012 political campaign, even the laggards, will be as sophisticated as Obama is today- and any campaign with that much momentum won’t be able to stop community participation at the White House door or the Capitol steps (“thanks for all the money and support, I‘ll see you in four years”). Online communities will follow politicians into their governing roles. This summer when MyBarackObama experienced the FISA revolt within his own community this became clear. This has far more transformative potential than the fundraising juggernaut we are seeing now. Powerful communities may come to dominate the agenda of incumbent politicians providing feedback, direction and policy input.

Microcampaigns and Swarm Politics: Rather than one centrally governed behemoth, MyBO is enabling a thousand small campaigns to flourish. MyBO puts the tools into the hands of anyone that wants to get active; from having your own blog, downloading voter lists to make calls with “Neighbor to Neighbor” or having your own fundraising dashboard to mark your progress. This kind of swarm politics has generated enormous amounts of energy (and money) from ordinary citizens. Jascha sums it up best “We are helping them run thousands and thousands of little local campaigns that roll up to a central set of issues or candidate or goal” That is unbelievably powerful.

Technology (infrastructure and know-how) will become a necessary core competence in all U.S. political campaigns. Jascha points out that campaigns traditionally mirror movie productions, with all of the resources, technology and logistics brought together for a short burst of activity and then disappearing once the final scene is shot; this results in an enormous loss of knowledge and skills that need to be relearned once the next campaign begins. Campaigns that maintain or are able to tap into a continuity of software, infrastructure and human capital will have serious advantage. Blue State Digital was conceived to fill that gap on the Democratic side of the aisle…

Open Data and transparent government. Part Three of the video series digs into the value of open data in government to allow citizens to hack and remix at will. When lobbyist data, earmark data etc. is available in standard formats it will be a great leap forward for more transparency in government. Great stuff.

Thanks to Brady for putting me in touch with B.S.D. and thanks to Jascha for taking the time to talk.

Now here comes “Wikitecture”; applying these precepts to the very complex process of designing buildings. I want to dig into some of the details of Wikitecture and summarize what I think it has to teach us about collaboration.

My friend Jon Brouchoud is the co-founder of Studio Wikitecture, a group dedicated to bringing collaboration into the architectural process. He and Ryan Schultz have been pioneering "Wikitecture" for the past two years using Second Life as a proving ground.

Recently Studio Wikitecture won Architecture for Humanity’s Founders Award for their submission; a health facility in Nepal. There were over 500 entrants to the contest. Many of Studio Wikitecture’s contributors (roughly 40) were not architects but each brought specific, local knowledge that benefitted the project. A few examples:

• Adobe and gabion wall construction was suggested as among the most viable design material given the exact (and remote) location and the ability to utilize local labor. Other materials would not only cost more but could even be prohibitive in terms of shipping into the area.
• In Nepal an odd number of steps is considered inauspicious so all stair plans were designed for even numbers.

Jon told me that Wikitecture achieved a level of depth and detail in research that would be extraordinarily difficult and time consuming for one firm to manage alone. This gets to the first benefit of Wikitecture; it brings local knowledge into the design process. This video shows the building process:

As for how Wikitecture handles the more subjective task of reaching consensus on designs, Jon and Ryan developed a tool they call the "Wiki Tree," a 3D version control and voting system that uses a tree metaphor. As designers create submissions they are displayed as a new leaf on the tree that is then made available to the rest of the community to review. Positive votes on that design "green" the leaf, votes against the design turn the leaf red. Red leaves eventually fall off the tree as the tree prunes itself over time, leaving only the more popular design ideas as options for further development. The result is a visual display of design builds, enabling participants to assess, vote, comment and contribute toward the project's design evolution. This gets to the second benefit of Wikitecture; it uses a structured process to ensure quality collaboration. This video highlights some aspects of the Wiki Tree functionality:

Many businesses are wrestling with the notion of “collaboration” and its possible benefits. Wikitecture reinforces some important points:

• Nothing is off limits: Collaboration can successfully occur in the production of almost anything (if architects can do it anyone can…).
• Diversity adds value: The more people from differing backgrounds the better the information pool to draw from.
• Structure drives behavior: Collaboration benefits from a clear structure to facilitate results. The wiki tree works in much the same way that Wikipedia does in setting specific rules up front that drive a successful outcome and allow many people to contribute harmoniously.

Social technologies like blogs, social networks, ratings and reviews etc. allow customers to share experiences; good and bad to the 1.4 billion people on the Internet. Zappos exemplifies the positive benefits of extraordinary customer service while Comcast shines a light on the perils of getting it wrong.

Lane (co-founder of Get Satisfaction) speaks better than anyone about the power of building relationships via a strong customer service focus. During the Web 2.0 Expo New York we had a discussion that digs into
· What is meant by Customer Service is the New Marketing
· The challenges of moving to a customer-service-as-marketing model

The most insightful moment, in my opinion, comes when Lane talks about how even smaller companies, and companies not structured to provide superior customer service, can use new technology to get it right.

My favorite quote: "Historically, customer service has actually been customer avoidance" Remember that next time you need to schedule Comcast!

Lane agreed to answer some of the comments to this video post - so if you have questions - fire away.

(Disclaimer: OATV is an investor in Get Satisfaction)

Fast forward to 2008 and now they are one of the most extraordinary success stories in Europe - stock is over $28 a share, great profits, growing operations, well regarded in the business community etc. When you fly through a European airport they are everywhere.

I asked him how they were able to turn such a large, multinational ship around.

He told me most executives talk about “the hard stuff” vs. “the soft stuff”. Their focus for success in the organization is on the hard stuff - finance, technology, manufacturing, R&D, Sales - where the money is to be found, where costs savings are to be made. The soft stuff - leadership, culture, change and implementation - is there in rhetoric but not in reality (e.g., “people are our most important resource”). But the truth is that it is not the “hard stuff” vs. the “soft stuff”, but the hard stuff vs. the harder stuff. And it is this “harder stuff” that drives both revenues and profits by making or breaking a decision, leading a project to a successful conclusion - or not, and allowing for effective collaboration within a business unit or an organization - or not. He told me it was a consistent focus on the harder stuff that allowed them to turn their company around.

This is an apt description of the problems we face in bringing Web 2.0 into the enterprise. Web 2.0 is a game changer - it holds the potential to turbo-charge back office functions, foster collaboration and transform every business unit in the enterprise. Yet the resistance occurs when it comes down to implementing Web 2.0 because it represents a series of shifts that challenge traditional business culture and models of leadership. How often have I heard the knee-jerk reaction, “we can’t let our customers talk to each other” or “we don’t share our data” or “we are going to upgrade to a new platform - we are on a three year plan to get it done” (I keep a list of these reactions so please help me add to it). If developing a web 2.0 strategy is the hard stuff - moving that strategy forward is the harder stuff - and the bigger the company I work with - the harder the harder stuff is.