Where are the Web Work tools?

I’m writing this on Friday afternoon. Through the magic of social networking I know that several friends of mine have “checked in” at local pubs and are already imbibing Portland’s finest. I also know that a former colleague now living in Denver is stuck at JFK. I know that one of my favorite VCs returned to San Francisco this morning from North Carolina via PHL and ORD. He shopped at Whole Foods for what I assume are ingredients for a dinner that I am sorry to be missing. Plus, a friend pointed me to the latest thinking on the possibility of parallel universes.

What I don’t know right now is whether my Web designer has picked up the latest copy I posted to our shared server. I don’t know if our dev team has decided to push the latest changes over the weekend. Tomorrow I plan to prepare our financials, but I don’t know if our accountant has made the updates to the chart of accounts. I have no email from him; I should have called him before he left for his beach house.

Like most people, at any given time I focus on three or four objectives. Why can’t I know as much about those as I know about the drinking habits of my friends? Why don’t I have activity streaming, location updates, automated availability, ubiquitous micro updates, and integral ratings and feedback from my colleagues and business partners working with me on my priority objectives?

I need something that will allow me to identify the group of people with whom I share objectives. We need to self identify the tasks we are contributing to and identify our dependencies. When I need something from someone in the group I should be able to request a task/deliverable from them. They should be able to accept or reject the request with feedback. My ideal tool would let me see the availability, location and status of everyone in the group. I should receive real-time updates for all activity related to tasks that I depend upon. Everything I do related to our shared objective should be available to the group and streamed proactively to those dependent on me.

Technology to do all of this exists today, but no one has yet packaged it into a useful tool. Microsoft’s lame attempt at collaboration services requires a bizarre collection of servers that can only be assembled by a certified SharePoint integrator. The result is overly rigid and can’t accommodate free-form workflows or easily accommodate participants outside the organization. Collaboration and unified messaging from IBM, Cisco, and Avaya are no better. So where’s the Zukerberg who will fulfill this 400 million user opportunity?

Today, while waiting for new tools, I’ll send out a couple of emails requesting updates from my web designer; I will leave a voice message for my accountant; and I will send a text to the head of our dev team. I’ve checked our project management dashboard: the last updates were posted Wed. The shared server shows the latest version of the Web copy is the one I posted yesterday; I have no idea if anyone looked at it. On IM, most of our folks are unavailable and two have status notes clearly posted during the Mesozoic era.

I know with the right tools I could have gotten so much more done before heading out for a beer.

The Need For A New Work Web

It is time we came up with a new set of web and mobile tools that transform the way we work. User-generated content and Web 2.0 technology has completely changed the way we relate to each other, but it’s done nothing for work. A recent Harris Poll confirms the workplace is still mired in Web 1.0 tools. And, while social networking technology is entering the workplace it hasn’t transformed anything.

We know how completely social networking has transformed the way we interact outside of work – Michael Andrew at Media Metrics Insider points out:

“…there are now over a trillion known Web pages, more than 500,000 Facebook apps, 140,000 iPhone apps, billions of videos on Youtube -- and more have been created since you started to read this sentence. “

Everyday we post pictures, videos and updates on Facebook, tweet on twitter and check-in on foursquare as our primary way to communicate and share with family and friends.

But at work we still use technology developed two decades ago.

Harris’ findings on frequency of use:

91% email

66% shared spaces

66% voice calls

66% teleconferencing

55% web-conferencing

Social tools have entered work (with 17% of workers using them) but they’re not transformative. These tools merely allow us to find coworkers and more easily identify individuals with related interests and projects. At best this facilitates additional collaboration and potentially innovation. But as Forrester finds our day-to-day interactions are still mired in slow replies, redundant meetings, and irrelevant conference calls that take too long to arrange in the first place.

What we need are tools that support the real work we do – the dynamic interactions between us and our co-workers. Providing management of deliverables - the output - like that of SharePoint, Notes/Domino and OpenText, is important and necessary. But we need to accompany these platforms with something to support the actual work as it unfolds.

I’m not talking about shared white boards or avatars hopping around some virtual world. This new tool will be organized around the shared objective and tasks of a group of participants.

To be productive I need to know:

• what am I working on?
• who am I working with?
• what is my role and responsibility?
• what are everyone else’s roles and responsibilities?

This provides the context for all the tasks we are working on:

• what am I doing and who is dependent on it?
• which of my coworkers tasks am I dependent on?

It needs to support the dynamic nature of the work we are doing:

• It must support organic spawning of new tasks by each member of the team and dynamically identify new dependencies
• It must let me prompt my coworkers for things I need from them as they prompt me for things they need from me.
• I want to know in real time about the activity on which I depend
• I want to provide continual updates on my activity to those that depend on me

The big misconception - this is project management. Many think it’s just a matter of getting PM capability in the right form online. There are now scores of online project managers from AgileTrack to XPlanner. But these tools fundamentally miss the mark. They manage resources when what is needed is something that lets groups track and manage their interactions. What I’m looking for is more akin to World of Warcraft's support of a guild on an epic raid, than a PM tool’s reports and dashboards on action items.

In future blog posts, I will explore these concepts further. For now I just throw out the challenge: how do we use web/mobile technology to radically transform work? Orders of magnitude productivity increases and a profound increase in job satisfaction await.

What amazes me is how little development is going on in this regard. Cisco talks the best game, but they still are just selling repackaged versions of stuff we saw from Lotus and Microsoft in 1995. No one should waste money on something labeled “unified messaging” or “collaboration.”

The only company I have seen that even seems to be building is something interesting is Asana. We will see if they can actually move the needle when they release something later this year.

Someone with a far better marketing mind than mine will come up with the new terminology – “interaction tools” clearly doesn’t cut it. But, I will know it when I see it. And the companies that adopt it will gain an advantage over all others.

The Next Big Thing: Newspapers

In a parallel universe, one with all our technical expertise but none of our publishing, a business plan is presented. Its title: News Company – All The News That’s Fit To Print.

Entrepreneur: We plan to marshal all the best journalists and band them together to create a comprehensive news source; one that will cover local news, regional news, national news and international news. We plan to develop and staff bureaus throughout the world, so we can originate all our own news. To fill any holes in our coverage, we will purchase the best reporting from other agencies and freelance journalists. We'll include community features, event reviews and lifestyle pieces. We will become the voice of the communities we serve. We will bundle all this together on a daily basis and call it a “Newspaper”.

VC: How will you ensure the quality of your news coverage?

Entrepreneur: We will have experienced editorial staff to guide, select and edit the stories we present to our customers. We will combine broad coverage with “best of bread” expertise.

VC: And who’s your target market?

Entrepreneur: Every household in the areas we serve.

VC: Really; and how will you present this "newspaper" to them?

Entrepreneur: We plan to print it. But the daily volume will require a process completely different than any physical printing done before. We intend to create newsprint – a thin paper produced in broad rolls from which we can print and cut pages. We will mine our forests, pulp the wood, and produce the paper. We plan to print the news on this paper with dies derived from vegetables.

VC: Very interesting. So this newspaper will be a semi-permanent product. But why go to such lengths to render your newspaper onto an enduring product? Do you really think your customers will want to keep it for future reference?

Entrepreneur: Not at all. We expect each edition of our newspaper will only be of interest to our customers for 24 hours. This is critical to our business model; we need them to buy a new one everyday. We have established a way for the newspapers to be recycled into cardboard and other paper products. We are working with municipalities to force our customers to separate these newspapers from the rest of their trash and have the trash collectors handle them as a separate waste stream. If any of our customers do wish to look at old editions, we plan to make them available in community centers. There we intend to capture the images of our newspapers on a special film that when magnified let’s you see an image of original newspaper.

VC: So, to really be of interest to your customers it will have to be presented in an extremely timely fashion. It seems that by the time you collect, edit, print and distribute these stories the newspaper will be anything but new.

Entrepreneur: We intend to create a culture that presses our journalists for stories by a daily deadline. The editors will turn and mix the stories quickly each evening. We will run our presses through the night. By diverting some of the local shipping capacity, we will move the final newspaper from the printers to distribution locations throughout each of the metro areas we are targeting. And then, this is the really cool part; we have worked out the legal requirements to employ child labor in the early hours of every morning before school to deliver the newspapers the final mile on their bicycles to each person’s home.

VC: And what exactly is the monetization model?

Entrepreneur: We intend to combine subscriptions and advertising.

VC: This sounds even crazier than the guy who was in here yesterday claiming that the world wanted it’s stories delivered in printed tomes; he called them "books". He was going to fill buildings with these books as monuments to our intellectual brilliance and creativity. I just don’t understand why we would want to so encumber our stories and news. Everyone gets anything they want today instantly on their electronic tablets. I think we’ll pass.

Augmenting Our Reality

We have transformed our world by automating our everyday tasks with computers. We replaced calculators, accounting ledgers, and typewriters. Computers help us consume, create and deliver information. Letters, memos and reference books are a thing of the past. Increasingly we have crawled into our computer screen to work, play and communicate.

Last year I wrote about wearing our computers and embedding computing in ourselves. I firmly believe the next big thing is computer augmented reality -- bringing us out of the screen and putting the screen on the world around us. A future where rather than doing things on the computer, the computer does things on us.



Pranav Mistry demonstrates this future. It is worth a few minutes to check it out.

Changing the IC'y mind set

Last year we took our family to China for spring break. People asked, hell our kids asked, “why go to China for Spring Break? Hawaii is cheaper and warmer.”





My wife and I felt it was important that in this time unprecedented change, we prepare ourselves to understand what is happening. If we think of China as peasants in rice fields, or hordes of poor in the streets of urban centers, we are ill-equipped to adapt to the change that is sweeping over us. In ten days we only scratched the surface, but I think it helped each of us get a better feel for what is happening in China.

The trip gave us the opportunity to experience what Hans Rosling teaches – we need to change our mind set to match the current data set.

TED Hans Rosling from Pedro Andrade on Vimeo.

India promises to have a similar impact to China.



There has been lots of talk of the BRIC countries; although it doesn’t work well phonetically, I think we need to focus on the IC countries. Perhaps they are better thought of as CHI.

Cooking - A Genetically Encoded Evolutionary Adaptation

Always a Michael Pollan fan, I jumped to his New York Times Magazine cover article on “decline and fall of everyday home cooking.” It without a doubt struck a nerve in our collective consciousness. Since it appeared, I’ve herd multiple interviews of Pollan motivated by the article. Even today’s NYT Magazine two weeks later has Pollan as the lead subject in the Letters section.

I love cooking: partaking probably 4 times a week. There is something profoundly satisfying about it. And, apparently with good reason. In Pollan’s NPR interview last week he reference research by Richard Wrangham at Harvard. Wrangham conjectures that cooking is what allowed us to redirect our biological energies from digestion to thought. Not needing the extensive digestive system required to process raw meat and grasses, we evolved a simpler gastrointestinal track and diverted the nutrients and oxygen to our now expanded brains.

Wrangham goes as far to posit that cooking is what separates us from primates and all other animals: Not thumbs, language, tools, or social organization. Without cooking, he argues, we don’t biologically achieve human intelligence. His theories and research are summarized in his book, Catching Fire.

Intuitively this makes a lot of sense to me. Memories from my childhood of the family crowded in the kitchen with my mother cooking dinner are indelibly burned in my brain: the mere whiff of browned butter brings them rushing back. And today I find no greater pleasure than hanging with friends around the BBQ, wine in one hand, and tongs in the other. Cooking connects in our psyche at a very deep level. It is easy for me to accept that this is genetically encoded evolutionary adaptation.

So I wonder what it means culturally if we stop cooking. Is it, as Pollan implies, evolutionarily regressive--a step toward Armageddon? Or is it further adaptation – replacing expensive (biologically and materially) individual cooking with collective food preparation? With a population of 7 billion (heading to 9.5 billion), a strong argument can be made that factory farms and processed food are critical to our next evolutionary steps. Even if true, I am happy to revel in my relatively Neanderthal ways, getting profound pleasure in searing meat on an open flame in my own back yard. Here’s to our frontal lobes.

Cheers

All the news that's fit to print

Yesterday, I returned from 10 days in the mountains – fresh air, sailing, long hikes, lazy mornings. Nestled in the forest on a high mountain lake, our cabin has no cell coverage, and only dial up Internet. For my family summer vacation has come to mean forced withdrawal from electronic communication. But what I miss most when cloistered in our mountain retreat is the daily newspaper.

Friends joined us mid-week and parlayed the goings on of the outside world – the Obamas went to Russia, Billy Mays died, GM came out of bankruptcy, and Goldman Sacks was making more money than ever. Nothing earth shattering, but I still felt out of the loop not knowing.

We are living in the dawn of the digital age, a modern renaissance, but the decline and death of the daily newspaper really bothers me. I like holding a paper in the morning. I just absorb more info in my groggy morning state looking at news print rather than staring at a screen.

But the bigger issue is the news itself. The online sources that are displacing newspapers are largely opining about the news and not reporting. Researchers at Cornell analyzed some 90 million online articles during the election cycle last year – Aug to Oct 08. Of all the discernable story lines only 3.5% originated from an online source before appearing in a traditional news outlet. So 96.5% of all stories originated with traditional reporting and were later picked up and discussed online.

The implications are obvious. We need to find ways to preserve and support real reporting, real journalism. We can’t let reporting die with newsprint. Blogging as it exists today is not professional journalism. This is the challenge of the modern information age – come up with a business model that can support broad professional, diverse, independent journalism. Until that emerges, I will happily pay the recession driven higher subscription rates for daily delivery of the New York Times.

Startup Now: The Oregon Opportunity

While we obsess over the impact of the economic downturn and the State’s unemployment, we risk missing the incredible opportunity Oregon has. Obama recognizes this crisis is a once in a life time opportunity. Marching to the tune of “never waste a crisis”, the nation is collectively spending $1 trillion on not just solving the credit crisis, but recreating our social economic landscape.

We are going after climate change; international instability and terrorism; energy scarcity; and the aging population in the developed world, just to name a few. This combined with the international economic downturn is driving unprecedented global change. Oregon has the opportunity to play a lead role in this change and drive job growth at the same time.

Oregon has the expertise and experience in the segments that matter right now:

• Alternative Energy
• Urban Design
• Medical Records
• Opensource Technology
• Mobile Technology
• Elderly Care
• Universal Health Coverage
  

Oregon has attracted young highly educated people who flock here for the quality of life and affordability. For instance Portland has among the highest percentages of college degrees, spending on book purchases, and broadband penetration.

Venture Capitalists invest in Team (the skills and drive of the individuals involved) and TAM (total addressable market – the size of the opportunity). Some smart funds like Voyager and Madrona see Oregon’s potential and have put people here. In the past Oregon has lacked the will to drive growth. Voyager and Madrona are here as not to miss a potential opportunity: they won’t drive anything. The initiative has to come from the Oregon community.

Local money has been shy and scarce. Worse, to date, the state shows little support for its own potential. Only trivial amounts of capital have made their way to Oregon startup ventures.
If we don’t invest in ourselves it is worse than just missing an opportunity. We marginalize our entrepreneurs and starve them to death. Why would anyone else invest in Oregon companies if we can’t even see fit to do so? It is like a mother not supporting their child, you start at less then zero.

Small businesses drive employment. Venture models have demonstrated the potential return of small growth companies. We have the opportunity to spawn high growth businesses that will deliver additional employment and high return on capital. These businesses will succeed because the crisis we face will economically reward new businesses the deliver solutions to our problems.

A proposal is a foot to direct $100 million of State controlled capital to Oregon startup ventures. This is the right move at the right time. This effort seems to have prodded our State Treasure Ben Westlund into action. He is now hosting an event on April 29 to catalyze Oregon investment.

The big question: will this result in putting Oregon’s talent and money to work? It is the right move at the right time and it deserves our support at every level, especially that of our elected representatives. Or will it just be an exercise by all parties involved to look like they are playing lip service to this grass roots push while fulfilling their fiduciary responsibility and maintaining the status quo.

Stimulate VCs

I am amused by the controversy caused by Tomas Friedman’s comments on stimulating venture capital. The discussion is missing the point. We shouldn’t be arguing if government money would help or hurt Venture Capital. Nor should we be arguing about whether funneling money through Venture Capital firms would create more or less jobs than giving it to GM or Ford. The discussion about venture capital is relevant because we should be discussing what kind of world we want to build.

The old world is dead. The one dominated by industrial giants. The ones listed on the Dow. Yesterday we sold that world and no one was buying. Today we are willing to pay less than we did more than 10 years ago. And all indication is we will discount it more.

So the question is: what's next? The die is cast; the government is the economic engine of the next several years. We the people get to decide what we put our collective capital and efforts into. We will invest in infrastructure and services. We will invest in bolstering manufacturing. We will remake the systems that deliver education, health care and social services. We get to reinvent and reprioritize how we produce and deliver food, water, transportation, and energy. And in our choices of what we build and how we employ, we will create a new world.

So I really don’t care if government money goes to any particular VCs. If Gurley can do better with just the private, pension, and endowment money, more power to him. What I do know is venture money a couple of decades ago funded people and ideas. Now it seems to go much more to companies with established revenue: companies that have little market risk. This use to be referred to as expansion capital. It was second round capital and came after development stage funding. Venture money use to focus on building great companies that create new emerging sectors. Now it goes increasingly to creation of products and services that may be attractive to large companies; essentially nothing more than off balance sheet R&D efforts.

I am all for stimulus dollars for VCs if it puts venture back in venture capital. Small growth companies have always been employment engines. There is perhaps no better way to create jobs than to invest in high growth companies. But the real win - new ventures will innovate and create the world we need. Saving jobs at GM won’t do that.

Like the New Deal and the Marshal Plan, this stimulus and recovery needs to be about building and recreating, not saving what was. So what kind of world do we wish to recreate. Let’s have that discussion.

The day Capitalism bought Socialism

Capitalism, Socialism and Communism have been pretty tired labels for some time. Our capitalism seems to be buying nothing but socialism today. Today the only investment anyone wanted to make in our capitalist system was the US Government. This would indicate that the global market believed that the most viable institution and the one that would provide the highest return on investment was our Federal Government. Perhaps a vote of confidence for the new CEO, Barrack Obama, but disconcerting that no one viewed any other investments as worthwhile. This surely isn’t Socialism—no one is voting with anything but money: neither a popular revolution nor even government policy is driving this apparent nationalization of the auto and banking industries.

We need new monikers and conceptual frameworks to discuss and understand a system that has more than current supply and demand at work. We need to be able to conceptualize a system that is driven by climate shifts, demographic shifts, technology shifts, social and religious realignment. Without the global flow of money resulting from transnational resource purchases there would not have been a market for the highly leveraged mortgage backed securities and disastrous derivatives. The dimensional flattening that a pure monetary view imposes doesn’t even provide the facility to discuss quality of life issues that Baby Boomer aging and health care concerns generate. The “externalities” of terrorism or carbon driven climate change can’t possibly be evaluated in a system that only accounts for tax revenues, military expenditures and rising costs of resources.

Many of you are far more creative than I – what do we call this new global reality? What models do we bring to bear to set priorities and make tradeoffs on where we put our collective efforts? The complete lack of interbank lending, zero interest on T-Bills and a negative yield curve tell me the one we have is inadequate.

We the Lobby

I just received and email from Barack Obama. It is my fourth from the President Elect’s transition team since he won the election. He invited me to track his progress at www.change.gov. I think government needs a lot of change, a lot of renewal, and I like that I am being asked to be a part of it. Our next president is keeping me up to date and has even promised to talk to me on Youtube every week.

We are reinventing participatory democracy. I was one of 1.5 million people that voluntarily financed Barak’s campaign. When 1,500,000 people write checks, that is public financing – that is participatory democracy. I followed the campaign on the Internet at my.barackobama.com and www.johnmccain.com, and on youtube and cnn.com and twitter and countless other sites that have seamlessly become part of my daily routine.

Critics may say that this “social networking” is just pandering to young; it is treating Internet users like a special interest. This is just flat wrong. 74% or the US population is on the Internet. My mother is on the Internet. (I wont mention her age but a demographer would not call her young.) More people use the Internet than have ever voted in a US election. Access is free to the public at every taxpayer funded local library. Orders of magnitude more people get information from the Internet every day than have ever ordered a publication from the government printing office. This is the new participatory democracy.

But an interested, active, informed public is only half the equation. Our representatives need to do their part. We need leadership that will similarly change, redefine and renew representative government. We have seen in the last 8 years the result of isolated and out-of-touch leadership: one that loses the popular vote and boasts of a mandate; one that blatantly practices cronyism and divides and disenfranchises the populous by claiming that dissent is unpatriotic and un-American.

Leadership in the Internet age communicates on the Web and through email. It restricts the role and influence on corporate lobbyists while soliciting continual input from the people. I want a representative government: I don’t want to vote on legislation directly. Abdication of legislative authority, like that seen in the ballot initiative process in states like California, is a travesty of democracy. I want strong political leaders that will listen to the voices of the people and represent our interests. So I will post my comments, write my blog and respond when Barack or any of his team send me an email. We the lobby: for the people, of the people, by the people.

It Matters

It is hard to imagine what it will feel like if next Wednesday morning we wake to McCain/Palin as Pres/VP elect. Like most of you, I have seen savings and 401K disappear over the last year. Every aspect of work has gotten harder. Every aspect of life is more expensive. I am someone who bought a house in the last two years and have the queasy feeling of being upside-down. And, I still have a hard time defending our countries actions to my overseas friends.

These are challenging times. We are in a deep hole and we need to climb out. More than effort, that takes motivation. How we feel, how we work together, how much energy we put into it matters a lot. In all the character assassination, name calling, petty distractions and false controversy that dominate the end of this campaign, it is easy to lose sight of what is needed. It may be sappy, but it is time to return to what lit this campaign up in the beginning.



I hope you will vote for Obama. I hope to wake up Wednesday excited and energized. It matters.

Been on this ride before

It is always the same and it is totally different. It is when you feel that you have seen it before that you know you’re getting old. In 2000, we couldn’t get our road show done. In 1987, I watched from the trading room as our book lost $100,000 a minute. Each time it signaled an end of the cycle: the start of a prolonged down market.

I love looking at the 100 year charts of the economy. We cycle through growth and decline – expansion and recession – bull markets and bear markets. When you throw a ball straight up in the air its acceleration is constant but it is most dramatic when it stops going up and starts coming down. In each economic cycle I hear the rules have changed, everything is different this time. And each time economic growth surges and wanes.

Each time everything is different and everything stays the same. From cycle to cycle the key engines of growth change. One cycle it is steal, the next it is white goods, the next it is consumer products, the next aerospace, and the next technology. I was told today to buy GM because it has always been part of the foundation of our economic growth. I think they said the same thing about Bethlehem Steel.

In the last cycle the emphasis went from page views to revenue per user. The time before that, it went from revenue enhancement to cost savings. Each time it is the same: in expansion, value is in growing a business; and in contraction, value is in making the business more efficient.

What is happening economically is breathtaking and unprecedented. It is time to add circuit breakers, reforms, oversight. It is also the same as it has always been. In a down market: cash is king, value is in cost savings, and a good business is still a good business.

Hope vs Fear; Change vs Reform

To me this election is a dramatic comparison of aspiration vs. fear. Never have I felt there was so much to gain and so much to lose. The Bush presidency has shown that leaders mater. I know in my gut that what we do in the coming months will in large part dictate my son’s standard of living and quality of life. We get to choose our motivation: aspiration or fear.

The language of this election reveals all. The Democratic convention was dominated by language including: Change, Economy, Energy, and Jobs. In contrast the Republicans spoke of: Reform, Character, God and Taxes. It’s like the Republicans want a first class seat on the Titanic. I would rather find a better way to cross the ocean.

Passing The Torch

“The next generation”, “passing the torch,” it has seemed that we have heard it all before. But this week I embraced the contextual filter of generational shift and everything has become clearer.

I am not a Gen X’er or a Gen Y’er, or a “tweener”; technically I am a boomer born in the diminishing tail of that curve. I have watched “slackers,” and “grungers” and seen MTV repeatedly “rock the vote.” It is easy to be a little jaded toward “the rise of the next generation”.

Now the generational shift is for real. Don Tapscott calls them the Net-Gen and there are as many of them as baby boomers. The shift is as profound as that to the “greatest generation” which was shaped by the great depression, WWII and the Marshal plan; and the “baby boomers” who were molded by civil rights, Viet Nam and the Cold War.

This generation gets to deal with the energy transition, climate change, the rise of a global middle class, the decline of US global dominance, etc. Looking at the election, government, policy, and global economics through this filter is very valuable.

Alan's World

I am more than ever struck by the ubiquity of the iPod. Walking the streets of San Francisco, I am assaulted by Billboards pushing the device as a fashion accessory. The Olympics were dominated by images of Michael Phelps stretching on the pool deck with buds in his ears. What I have noticed most lately is how we no longer notice.

I upgraded my iPhone to the latest 3G model. It is an amazing device. With it, I text, tweet, buy, browse, blog, read, search, mail, mix, mash, locate, direct, calculate, and play. Unlike my lap top that I set up, this device is always with me--always on. It seamlessly extends my capability and constantly connects me to the people and the information I care about.

This is different than the Palm I use to carry. It is more about me than work communications. Back in the ‘70s I heard Alan Kay talk about wearable computers. He saw them as the true personal computer and that they would revolutionize the way we live and work.

At some point the automobile became more than a fast horse cart and led to a new industrial infrastructure. Similarly the desktop computer became more than a powerful typewriter and calculator and lead to the fundamental restructuring of the workplace. Each of these led to fundamental shifts in lifestyle, quality of life and commercial productivity.

We are in the midst of another such phase change. We are just beginning to understand the importance of what this device (and others like it) can do. We are beginning to weave it into our social fabric. Alan’s world is finally emerging.

Sound of Silence

Besides porn, music has been the biggest driver of technological advancement. Ever since the Victrola, the latest sound system has driven consumer electronic sales. All the while the world has gotten progressively noisier. Locomotion, automation, overpopulation, mechanization, urbanization and countless other “izations” have created a continual sonorous assault.

Rather than alleviating my auditory pain, today my technology amplifies it. Are ear buds really the best we can do? While exercising, I can barely hear my Market Place podcasts over the clamor of the treadmills. I know this may have something to do with my birth date and a million logged flight miles, but there must be something to help. Forget the jetpacks, where’s my bionic ear.

New gadgets hit the market daily that are meant to address the challenge of hearing our music, cell phones and neighbors over the ambient noise that envelops us. Proud technologists proclaim advances in adaptive noise compensation, advanced wind protection, noise navigation, voice capture, etc.

None of it does the job. Here is what I want--

• wireless, in-ear hearing extensions:
  
  + Mold them to fit comfortably all day in my ear canal. Make them no more unsightly than flaps of cartilage that already protrude from my head. Yes the model is hearing aids, not headphones.
  
  + Make them work intelligently with my ear. You can completely control what noise goes to my ear drums and inner ear: make it clean and ensure it is never a damaging volume.
  
  + Have them work wirelessly with my myriad devices: cell phone, computer, IPod, home theater, car navigation, and other people with inserted ear extensions, etc. This is not a technological problem but an implementation problem. I don’t care what is used, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 900 Mhz, or trained ants delivering little tiny mag tapes. Create an interface (user and network) that makes sense and get on with it.

That’s it. Doesn’t seem that hard. Nothing but hearing aids with wireless receivers combined with a voice recognition operating system in a miniaturized embedded system. I have a place for the charger on my bed stand. When they are announced I will stand in line like a Star Wars conventioneer in a Wookie costume. Look at how many IPods and cell phones are sold each year. This is a massive business opportunity and, given the rate of hearing loss, one potentially fueled by insurance reimbursements.

Ear implants are the most obvious technology to extend my physical capabilities. Steve Austin can keep his legs, but it is time I had his ears.

Gen Shift

My son is in California enjoying the summer: spending time in the Sierras, visiting friends, just goofing off. He barrows a phone every night and calls me to complain that his cell phone is broken. This is ruining his summer.

My son is a high school senior. He and his friends don’t just use computers and cell phones, they depend on them like they do their arms. To them their laptops and cell phones are not better typewriters, faster mail, and more extensive “ten keys”: they are communication, entertainment and social connection. They are extensions of themselves. With them they manage their various personas, chat with friends, hone their skills and show off their capabilities. These devices allow them to express themselves in ways otherwise impossible.

A few minutes in the twitter-verse, on Facebook or in World of Warcraft demonstrate this new social order. We are just beginning to see the profound shift taking place. Don Tapscott, calls this group who are now just entering the workforce the Net Gen. Clay Shirky documents the power of their dynamic social groupings. You should also check out Kevin Kelly who muses convincingly that the Internet in the coming years will by completely different than what we have today.

Attending tech events lately, it is clear I am one of the old guys. But I am an old guy that grew up with technology. I had an HP calculator in 1969. Unlike my friends at college who paid to have papers typed for them, I had an Apple II. I bought a Mac the first day it was available and founded DMUG (Davis Macintosh Users Group).

I know I am old because at my first corporate job in 1986, I was given an office, a Dictaphone and secretarial support. I was expected not to waste my time typing myself. Everywhere I work, I notice that people younger than me use PCs and people older tend to not. I was on the cusp of a generational shift that has helped fuel the greatest increase in productivity ever experienced. But it will pale in comparison to the next one.

We are only just beginning to see is how this generation is going to change the work place. They will get things done in ways the will make today’s meetings, emails, reports and annual budgeting cycles look like Dictaphones and typing pools. Adopting these new work styles, adapting our work environments and putting this new generation to work will be the competitive advantage for the foreseeable future.

The Urban Future

The Urban future has arrived. We entered this century with about 45% of the Global population in cities. The pace of migration from rural to urban is continuing unabated. We may already be at the 50% urban mark, if not we are approaching fast. This is likely a tipping point.

Why are people moving to the cities? Stewart Brand started looking and writing about this several years ago. He sums it up nicely – cities provide education, work (i.e. income) and services. The city provides a better quality of life and higher standard of living than any rural alternative.

The cities are also the planets salvation. A person in a city requires fewer resources to support a comparable quality of life. But most important cities, are population sinks. Birth rates in cities naturally drop from above 5 births woman on average globally in rural areas to less than 2 in developed urban areas. Today birth rates are only 2.1 in developing urban areas in Brazil and India.

Because of accelerating urbanization and an unprecedented change in birth and survival rates, standard population forecasting is proving unreliable. The sky-is-falling “population bomb” predictions of the past are yielding to a growing consensus that we are within a generation of reaching the maximum global population. Many now suggest that the maximum may be in the 8 billion range. Even the UN has declared it is not likely to exceed 9 billion.

Population is not a problem, it’s an indicator. More to the point, “overpopulation” takes care of itself. Our challenge and opportunity is developing new ways to provide productive employment for the high density urban workforce. What does it mean if your potential workforce is not limited to the suburbanites that live within 50 minutes drive of your tilt-up office park? How do you tap the increasingly educated, highly connected, highly motivated workforce in the vibrant urban centers of Shanghai or Dubai; or San Francisco or Portland for that matter?

The housing and education of Shanghai’s exploding population is remarkable. The new Shanghai is more connected and has greater availability of intellectual (and arguably creative) capital than any city in the US or Europe. Mumbai, Dubai, Rio and dozens of other developing urban centers represent the same potential. What could this mean for the business of the future? It changes all the rules. That is why Shanghai is so interesting.

Transformational times

Today in the Times, William Safire of all people brought clarity in my mind as to what this presidential election is about – Transformation. We need transformation right now. It needs to start at the White House and it needs to carry through every aspect of our social economic system – every level of government, every community. As we resist the changes that are taking place around us, we just make our lives and our society that much more difficult. This could not be clearer after 8 years of Bush: Iran, deficit spending, the falling dollar, declining education, diminished position in the world, weakened military, divided populous, increased dependence on foreign sourced petroleum, job losses, recession, etc, etc.

There are times for transformation and other times for steady management: this is a time for transformation. Like Roosevelt, Kennedy/Johnson, and Reagan, Obama is the right leader for our time and it is time for transformation.



It is Mar. 3 and perhaps I should have come out more forcefully earlier. I hope in a couple of days I will be able to join the legions of potential voters who can enthusiastically carry Obama to a victory against McCain.

I think Clinton and McCain are both good people. Either could make a good president. But either would be merely a caretaker while we bumble toward real transformation. Others have made the case better than I can for Obama. I just hope we can transcend issue and fear based politics that Clinton is predictably playing well. Just look at the summary of the last news cycle in the WSJ today –

Hillary Clinton told crowds in Ohio Sunday that her campaign is "about solutions," not feelings. Barack Obama said he is tired of questions about his religion and said he was a devout Christian.

Hillary sounds like an IBM salesman while her campaign has successfully forced Obama to respond to fear mongering.





I find it despicable and I wish Clinton and the Democratic party leadership would realize this is not about Hillary, it's about us, it's about the country, and it's about the world. I use to think that my vote, my voice, and a single person, even the president of the United States, mattered little in the scheme of things. But the election in 2000 and the thought of how things might be today if a few people in Florida or Ohio voted differently has changed my mind.