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Managing the rabbit burrows

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I had an interesting session with the collaboration group meeting of Brentnall’s accountants this week. They are a loose collaboration of accounting firms that meet twice a year to share approaches and think about what they might do differently. The first part of our session was practical future thinking and the second on new business models for accountancy firms.

As part of the conversation we discussed the issue of environmental scanning and how to manage it as it can suck away huge amounts of time. One attendee asked me over lunch how I manage it and my response was only half jokingly “badly”. I love what I do – thinking about interesting things and interacting with smart people on what it all means and how they can make a difference in their organisations and communities. The downside is that it is easy to disappear down rabbit holes of interesting “stuff”

We have a very simple set of rules that we look to apply as a series of questions:

What is your level of need for scanning for future change?

This is largely determined by the sort of organisation and sector you are involved in. If you are in a fast moving and connected area then your need is higher than those that are in slower moving sectors (although we now have more of the former and less of the latter).

 

What is your current level of activity?

A quick benchmark inventory of what an organisation is doing formally and informally.

 

What is the value from your scanning activities and should it be adjusted upwards or downwards?

This looks both at value adding and risk management and comes down to execution. Environmental scanning should be treated like any other resource allocation process in an organisation. If you are doing lots of it and not acting on it you are actually worse off than if you are not doing it. If you are not doing very much how exposed are you? You should seek to align the value from the activity with the amount of time and resources spent on it.

 

Then you need to design a process which takes into account how wide you should scan, and your own organisation blind spots, group think, etc.

 

In our own business I spend 2-3 hours every day on scanning and thinking process, largely fuelled by social media sources. It is my view that this is aligned to our value creating process because:

  • It feeds into my presentation preparation process. I often have 10-15 presentations in preparation on the go at one time with varying time frames. each of them has a basic narrative structure in them and as I scan I clip ideas, images, etc into each of them in our Evernote database for presentation preparation later on.
  • It feeds into our communication channels of Tumblr, Twitter, Newsletter, website, etc.
  • As part of our value offers to clients we often provide twice weekly updates from our scanning post presentation or workshop.
  • Our attitude is that we should be improving the skill levels of clients and therefore we always need to be thinking about what the next thing might be and creating new approaches and frameworks to work with them at the next level.

 

In terms of controlling my time and my own blind spots a few things I do are:

  • Try and have a routine in the early morning that is time limited. Similar to the process I use for email – primarily trying to process email for 30 minutes at a time for example.
  • Using Evernote as a “read it later service” by clipping interesting stuff into a new clippings notebook that I review later in a specific time.
  • Using a limited Twitter list as a major source of information and views from a range of interesting people. You can see this list at https://twitter.com/futuristpaul/my-perspectives-list. The list has 43 members and I almost religiously scan it every day twice a day. I have a rule that if I want to add someone to it then someone else has to drop off so the time it takes to review the tweets and links is limited.
  • I have a similar list on Tumblr and try to include a few people that I disagree with and/or make me feel uncomfortable to keep challenging myself on my rule of “strong views weakly held”.
  • I try and allocate a quiet reading time/contemplation period every day as I feel that my habits like many people in this modern world are to have screens open, earphones in, etc at all times. I think that the quite time where we can make connections and not have our minds full is an absolute requirements for innovation and creativity. I find that drawing and writing out helps this and love having a  whole wall of my office covered in clear whiteboard paint for that purpose. Swimming and bike riding for triathlon training helps with the “clear space” as well.
  • For serendipity I try and dip into the Twitter stream of all the people I follow for 5 minutes twice a day. I follow 1006 people on Twitter and clearly cannot see all that is going on there. I have it arranged on TweetDeck and sometimes it rolls past like a  poker machine but I value those “chance encounters”

 

Of course these are a loose set of principles and good intentions and are disrupted often. For example in the next 7 working days I have 5 presentations, 8 flights and 3 other clients engagements.  Modern technology limits the disruption during those sorts of periods but I need to get better with going with the flow. 

In a fast changing, connected modern world the challenges of managing our information flow are huge. Hopefully sharing some of my attitudes and habits might help some of you and I would be interested in your methods.

 

Paul Higgins

 

 

 

 

The Middle Aged White Men Give Way

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Digital Book World (via ebookporn) published their eBook publisher rankings in 2013 a few days ago with the surprise to them that self-published books had made 22 appearances in the top seller list, 25% of the appearances of the leader Hatchette:

1. Hachette: 88 appearances
2. Random House: 87 appearances
3. Penguin: 42 appearances
4. Self-published: 22 appearances
5. Macmillan: 18 appearances

This is not really that much of a surprise to me. Putting aside that it is possible to fake your way on to some of these lists ( see: How Are Some Authors Landing On Best-Seller Lists? They’re Buying Their Way in the Wall Street Journal) we are seeing an ongoing and fundamental shift in power of the producer of content being able to connect and sell to the consumer.

Another example of this is shown in a recent New York Times article: Web Helps Musicians Sell Shares of Royalties :

“As a songwriter and producer for stars like Natalie Cole, Aretha Franklin and Whitney Houston, Preston Glass receives a comfortable stream of music royalties. But when he needed to make a substantial investment to embark on the next phase of his career — as a performing artist in his own right — he had few options to raise the money, he said…….So Mr. Glass turned to the Royalty Exchange, a Web site where musicians can sell parts of their royalty income to investors. He put 15 of his songs on the block — including “Miss You Like Crazy,” a Top 10 hit for Ms. Cole in 1989, of which Mr. Glass was a co-writer — and raised $158,000. Mr. Glass retains most of his rights to those songs, but will now share part of the income with an investor whenever they are played on the radio or streamed online.”

Now not all of us have the reputation of Mr Glass or the cachet of an existing published book list but the new tools that the web provides for us are enabling more and more of us to avoid the gatekeeper in our industries.

I like to think of that gatekeeper as a group of middle aged overweight white men in suits deciding who will get access to what. More and more of these gatekeepers are being blown out of the water. Early shining examples have been in music sales and book sales but now it is moving into many other areas including the availability of capital through crowd funding sites and the aptly named Upstart which just received high profile backing of US$5.9 million. Upstart allows people to raise money by giving away a portion of their income for the next 10 years.

These are just the beginning of changes we are likely to see. Recently I have been giving presentation on the future of advisers in the agricultural and food supply chains, Tools that will be available to everyone in these fields mean that  these systems will change to an advisory role to the facilitation of self organising networks where the means to produce value will be distributed throughout the system rather than being held by a few.

It is a brave new world and I for one am loving it.

Paul Higgins

Music Industry Whinges or Music Industry Whinges?

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An interesting article at the New York Times entitled As Music Streaming Grows, Royalties Slow to a Trickle talks about streaming services and their income payments to artists including:

“Late last year, Zoe Keating (pictured) , an independent musician from Northern California, provided an unusually detailed case in point. In voluminous spreadsheets posted to her Tumblr blog, she revealed the royalties she gets from various services, down to the ten-thousandth of a cent.

Even for an under-the-radar artist like Ms. Keating, who describes her style as “avant cello,” the numbers painted a stark picture of what it is like to be a working musician these days. After her songs had been played more than 1.5 million times on Pandora over six months, she earned $1,652.74. On Spotify, 131,000 plays last year netted just $547.71, or an average of 0.42 cent a play.”

The article raises a number of important issues but also seems to speak from a sense of the music companies protecting their turf and musicians being entitled to a living.

One of the constant themes in my conference presentations and my talk to University students on the disruptive effects of web technologies has been the removal of the gatekeeper. I commonly describe this gatekeeper as a bunch of middle aged white men making decisions about what the consumer will get to listen to or get to see.

I see this removal of the gatekeeper as one of the great things of the 21st century and the ability of the any creator of “stuff” being able to connect to anyone in the planet as a fantastic development. There is a lot of hand wringing in the music industry about these issues but I see them as mainly a self protection mechanism rather than any real concern about the musicians.

I think that we are likely to see the following:

  • More and more musicians connecting to their fans in a number of ways including streaming services.
  • Streaming services beating the ownership model in most cases.
  • An increase in the total spend on music as more and more people are connected.
  • The average income per musician/band falling because people will be exposed to far more music than the gatekeepers let people listen to. Total number of bands and musicians available will grow faster than total income.
  • Breakout bands and hits still commanding good money.
  • Innovative approaches and musicians finding ways to make all this work – a la Amanda Palmer on Kickstarter.

I am confident that market mechanisms will sort out the issues and that if streaming services try to pay little in the long term then other services will spring up to take the space.

I would like to end with the Hunter S Thompson quote on the music industry:

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

The new way has to be better than that

Paul Higgins

Where to be born or how to live?

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The good folks over at WOND published the infographic below based on calculations done by the Economic Intelligence Unit and published by The Economist 

Image

Apart from the obvious questions and discussions around what is measured in these sorts of analysis and the fact that the criteria in the 1988 results were different than the 2013 criteria it does pose some interesting questions.

The first is time frames. If you read the background material presented on the report then it seems that they have chosen forecasts (economic at least) for 2030 when someone born in 2013 would be 17 (or an adult in their view). While it cannot be doubted that being in the right place at the right time when you are 17 and having access to job or education opportunities is important the world has changed. Issues of people changing careers 4 or 5 times in a lifetime or indeed not really having a career as such any more means that longer term views on opportunities need more examination.

The second is that are opportunities and prospects still rooted in geographical location as much as they were, and what will be the case in 20 or 50 years time? With the rise of digital nomads, and global connections and opportunities the map of opportunity is much more complex than geographical location. Of course access to money and technology will influence those opportunities as well but with the innovation occurring in Africa in mobile payment systems and cheap smartphone technology, and the leapfrogging of wired data systems I think we overestimate the advantages of that access as defined by a developed country.

The third is the value of longer term forecasts. If we are talking about opportunities that include economic ones but are far exceeded by a whole range of other issues, and will matter across nine decades then we must question forecasts used to think about these things. In a faster moving, more connected, and more complex world the value of forecasts is falling an therefore the validity of making decisions on them is being sorely tested.

Back in 1955 when my father met my mother he told her that no matter what happened he was emigrating to Australia or Canada. My mother thought “get him settled down with some kids and that won’t happen”. Three kids later and after returning to University and getting a PhD at 30 he moved us all to Australia. I am very glad he did (and not based on Australia being No 2 in the report). Being here has given us a life and opportunities that I think have far exceeded those we would have had in England.

That move was based on my father’s view of where England and Australia were heading at the time and I think have been proven correct. If I was sitting down to do the same assessment and making such a huge life changing decision now I think I would be less certain but less worried about that uncertainty. How we choose to live will be far more important than where we live in the future (with the obvious caveat that living in a slum in a developing country will not provide the opportunities that being well off in an affluent country will bring).

I might bring this up as a topic at our annual Australia Day family barbecue on Sunday and see what my parents think.

Paul Higgins

Investing via the Advice of Cats

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Over at the Observer they have just concluded a year long investment competition where a cat was pitted against some investment professionals and some students:

Investments: Orlando is the cat’s whiskers of stock picking

Image

Aside from the obvious criticisms of such competitions and the role of chance in one quarter of investment this raises an important issue which is wider than the question of investment strategies.

There has been plenty of evidence over the years that it is hard to impossible to maintain a consistent track record year in year out in picking stocks and in forecasting. If you start with enough players then some of them will do well over a number of years just by chance. However despite this evidence lots of people continue to pay fees to investment firms rather than purchasing investments that mirror the market as a whole at a lower fee cost.

In our work we can extrapolate this to strategy and forecasting in organisations, despite considerable evidence that forecasting and long term planning do not really work.

Most of this comes form two sources:

  1. The first is the change management principle that people will continue to do what does not work rather than try something new because they are more comfortable doing the wrong thing well than doing a new thing badly.
  2. The second is that we are naturally uncomfortable with uncertainty and seek to replace that uncertainty with the opium of certainty even if that certainty is an illusion. 

 

The reality is that we must learn to embrace uncertainty, and learn to benefit from it. This is a difficult process for individuals and even more difficult for organisations, especially those with public accountabilities.

 

I love working with uncertainty (and so am probably too far over the other swing of the pendulum) and look forward to again working with people on this fascinating journey into the future in 2013.

Those of you interested in more reading about this can explore some of these concepts in:

Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand by Nassim Taleb, which is great if you can get past some of the author’s personal obsessions.

The Antidote: Happiness for people who can’t stand positive thinking by Oliver Burkeman which is far more about thinking about the future and goal setting than anything else

Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting published at Harvard Business School

 

 

Paul Higgins

 

 

 

 

How to make Strategy SEXy

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When I tell people that I am a futurist the reactions fall into two broad categories.

  • “That is so cool” – to which my response is generally “can you go and tell my 15 yr old because he in no way thinks I am cool”.
  • What the ****** is a futurist. That happened to me yesterday when I was sitting in the audience for the launch of a new Horizon Scanning tool that we are working on with the Department of Premier and Cabinet here in Victoria. The group in the seats behind me were saying “what is a futurist, there is supposed to be one here?” My general response to that reaction is : we help people think differently about the future so they can shape their strategy.

I like to show people the Futurist Meme from http://www.wfs.org/content/what-people-think-i-do-meme-futurist

because it is largely true from a number of perspectives and I do like to think that what I do is about helping people get a few more pieces of the puzzle about what the future might hold.

Because the future is inherently unknowable we need to take the possibilities that we see and put them into a forward strategy because while the world is highly uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing we still need to do stuff.

To do that we use the acronym SEX for strategy. Partly because it is easy for people to remember  and partly because sex is sort of involved. Sex stand for Strategy, Experimentation, and eXploration.:

Strategy

Strategy is about what we know enough about to create a hard, detailed plan. This can be the case even in the face of considerable uncertainty. For example if we look at agricultural research in the face of climate change there is a huge amount of uncertainty. Even if we put aside the arguments between those that believe in climate change being largely man -made and those that do not there is still considerable uncertainty in the macro models. Beyond that once we drill down into specific geographical regions the uncertainty is much higher. In the face of that uncertainty research into improving the water utilsation of plants is still very useful. If climate change does not occur then those plants will still be useful in areas that were previously too dry to grow them. If the actual regional outcomes are far different that the median models then the plants will still be useful somewhere, even if it may be far away from what was envisaged when the research began. Strategy is about creating a detailed, defined plan that fits how the organisation actually works rather than fitting the organisation to the plan. It is also about finding things to do that are successful in multiple forward scenarios.

Experimentation

The reality is that we live in a complex, rapidly changing and uncertain world. Most people respond to that  by trying to create certainty through forecasts or spreadsheet models derived from MBA programs that give the aura of robustness. The reality is that in a complex, disruptive world there are many things that will blind side us. This is hard for many people to accept, and especially for the smartest people in the room who have a hard time accepting that they cannot know the answers, Or even if they do, they have a hard time admitting it to others. This is where sex comes in……

Species and ecosystems respond to inherent uncertainty in their environment by having diversity, and populations or ecosystems that do not have that diversity are very brittle in the face of change. That diversity is fueled in part by sex and the exchange of genetic material. The parallel in organisations is to have an exchange of ideas and perspectives that are driven into many small experiments and trials that we are continually putting in place at the edges. Then as the environment changes we have multiple, pre-made approaches and capabilities that can respond to the changes. This requires a cultural change that accepts and even rewards failure, and also accepts that we have to feel our way forward.

It is our strong view that this experimentation is best carried out via a group of organisations so that we get a variety of ideas and perspectives, and also share resources  and risks in trying out things.

eXploration

No matter how good our strategy is, and how well we are experimenting at the edge we also need to keep our eye out for what might happen. This allows us to change our detailed strategy as necessary but also inform our thinking and and design of experiments and trials. This exploration needs to be both lateral and vertical.

The science fiction writer William Gibson is famous for saying “the future is already here it is just unevenly distributed”. There are lots of new and different things happening in different industries, different cultures, different areas of expertise and different countries. I am also fond of the saying that “good artists copy, great artists steal” Get out and have a look at what you can bring back into your organisation or industry and change how things work. That is the lateral approach.

The vertical approach is about deeper understanding. It is about getting below the surface of trends or ideas and understanding what is really driving them. It is about looking at the drivers from the point of view of behavioural economics, metaphors, philosophy, etc and getting a deeper understanding. It is about dropping the stuff you see into thinking frameworks and models so you can understand more deeply than anyone else and design approaches and strategy that others have not thought about. It is at the heart of business model innovation.

If you work out a way to put all this together in a way that suits how your organisation really works then you can create an organisation that can strategise and feel its way to the future more successfully.

Paul Higgins

p.s. – next month we are starting a collaboration process on experimentation with a number of organisations, and yesterdays launch with Dpt of Premier and Cabinet is about a formal scanning model for exploration. If you are interested in either of those approaches contact me at paul@emergentfutures.com

On Demand Printing – Too Little too Late – The Broadcast TV Conundrum

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Publishers Weekly has published a post describing a new on demand printing initiative:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/53932-on-demand-to-roll-out-more-than-100-000-book-machines-through-kodak-and-readerlink.html

“Kodak is working with On Demand to integrate the Espresso Book Machine, currently available in only a handful of bookstores and libraries, with the KODAK Picture Kiosk at 105,000 locations worldwide. The integrated kiosks, which will begin to go live late this year in the U.S., will have more than 7 million books available through On Demand. The kiosks will also have the capability to handle self-published books…..”

The problem with this announcement is that it is solving yesterday’s problems which were:

  1. Buyers only being able to purchase what was on the bookshelves at their local store or waiting weeks for an order.
  2. The high capital costs for booksellers from holding inventory and high return rates for books.

The advent of eBooks and the ability to read them on readers and in applications in other tablets has solved most of these problems. Years ago I would have said this could have been a short term runaway success but now it faces the broadcast TV conundrum. In order to support the costs of creating high quality TV (or paying for sporting content) under the current models you need a massive audience. Once the attention of that audience is fractured and the audience starts to disintegrate then your income falls and cost cutting on the production side alienates more viewers.

I have only purchased couple of non fiction books in the last 18 months. Please note this is a slight change on my post:

Why Would You Publish a Book About the Future Without a Kindle Version? (or another e-book version)

because on a recent US trip I saw two books I really wanted to read on multiple plane trips and I hate not being able to do that on taking off and landing.

Lots of people I talk to say they still like the feel of books and bookstores and are aghast when I predict the future is eBooks. All of these people are over 30 and most of them are over 50. So if you couple a dying demographic with the advantages of purchasing anywhere and being able to share and access extra content through a tablet or e-reader the likely volumes of print on demand books are much smaller than they might have been 5 years ago. That means the business model for return on the capital investment is under great threat.

For instance I met author Dave Gray in Providence Rhode Island last week and he was able to email me a copy of his new book Connected Company to read on my iPad and I immediately purchased his previous book Gamestorming via Amazon. That model totally kills going to an on demand book store for me – and I would have been a big user 5 years ago.

Addendum: The ABC Gruen Planet did a pitch contest last night for ad agencies to create an ad pushing us back to printed books and away from e-books – a must watch:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruenplanet/pages/s3598460.htm

Paul Higgins

Reflections from being at the Business Innovation Factory Conference – in a word WOW

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For the last 3 days of last week it was my absolute pleasure and honour to be part of the Business Innovation Factory Conference (www.businessinnovationfactory.com/) in Providence, Rhode Island. BIF8 as it was called was a fantastic collection of storytellers and innovator participants.

I would like to reflect on some people and presentations that left a lasting impression on me:
Carne Ross
 
Carne is an ex British Diplomat who is now an independent diplomat which is an interesting concept I had never thought about before (www.independentdiplomat.org). Carne was open and generous in his presentation by talking about how what looked like a brilliantly planned strategy was a series of stumbles and educated guesses. Besides that he described how in a world of networks and globalised connections an alternate approach to politics and diplomacy was both required and possible.
Tony Hsieh
Tony is the CEO of Zappos (www.zappos.com) the online apparel and footwear company but what he talked about was different. Tony and others are investing $350m into downtown Las Vegas in order to build a better community. The purpose is twofold. Firstly based on Edward Glaesner’s work and book “Triumph of the City”, Tony believes cties can be redesigned to be more innovative than they already are. Secondly this is all based on a belief that this needs an approach where people are happy in their community. The presentation made me feel a bit foolish as I have been presenting on cities growing more innovative as they grow for a while. However I had never thought about how this was by accident and therefore we could apply intelligent design to make the effects better.
Jeffrey Sparr
Jeffrey is the founder of PeaceLove (www.peacelovestudios.com) and gave a heartfelt presentation on mental health. Jeffrey suffers from from OCD and he put it all out there on stage and spoke with true passion about his efforts to help others suffering from mental illness through artistic methods. Jeffrey struggles every day with his illness and puts the rest of us to shame. I will be thinking of him the next time I let little things get in the way of doing stuff.
Nichlas Lowinger
Nicholas is 14 years old but has achieved more than most adults. He is the founder of Gotta Have Sole (www.gottahavesole.org) which has raised over $250,000 in financial and footwear donations to give kids in homeless shelters new shoes. His poised and professional presentation made me really think about the emotional difference between those kids getting new shoes or old donated ones.
Teny Gross
Teny is an ex Israeli soldier who is now the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence (www.nonviolenceinstitute.org). Teny gave a Bill Clinton like speech full of stories, emotion and numbers. The facts that 75% of the deaths are caused by 0.3% of the population and that each murder costs the system $8.3m put the whole problem into perspective from a number of points of view. It is a massive problem that astounds lots of people from outside of the USA. I left with some hope for the future.
Darrell Hammond
Darrell is the CEO and Founder of KaBOOM (www.kaboom.org). Kaboom has helped build over 2,000 playgrounds and playplaces in places where kids don’t have them. Darrell is a big believer in kids being able to get to play and how showing communities they can make a difference can empower those communities. A truly inspiring story.
Jeffrey Heimans
 
Jeffrey is a fellow Australian, and the founder of Purpose (www.purpose.com). Apart from showing us video of him as an 8 year and 12 year old leading me to think of him as the scariest child I have ever seen he co-founded GetUp and now works on helping other movements start and sustain their efforts. I think of our mission being leveraging our skills to help others make a difference in their community. Jeffrey takes that up to a level that is many levels to the power of 10.
Jeff Lieberman
Jeff is a sculptor, musician, robotocist and host of the Discovery Channel’s Time Warp. He amazed us with a super slow video of a drop of water hitting the surface of a pool of water to demonstrate how we sometimes do not really know what is going on until we look at it a different way. He also talked about the nature of now and the future which I am going to steal for my presentations (don’t worry I told him)
David Mcaulay
David is the author and illustrator of The New Way Things Work. He just blew me away with a stream of consciousness presentation on the history of innovation. To hold that in your head and then create books that can explain that to kids while not dumbing it down is a stunning achievement.
Hilary Salmons
Hilary is the ED of the Providence After School Alliance (www.mypasa.org) which has transformed the after school program to such an extent that it is packing in the kids and teachers are asking for the methods to be brought back into the school program. Imagine if we could achieve that in every school?
Besides the absolute achievement of the presenters (sorry Saul – Storytellers) the other thing that was so powerful was the vulnerability and openness. We are used to politicians, leaders, and conference presenters telling us how successful they are but rarely see the struggles and failures and crises of confidence that come with the journey.Not at BIF
It was hard not to feel continually inadequate in this company but as someone else said late in the process, everybody was feeling the same way. The challenge was to take that feeling and go and do some stuff that makes a difference

I made some great connections with people that I hope will help me do that, but as I said to one email contact straight after the conference hope is not a strategy. So watch this space.
The whole experience was an interesting, stimulating and inspiring experience that was well worth the trip half way around the world. I intend to contribute to this amazing community of people and take what I have learnt into our work and our communities. I encourage you to have a look at some of the people I have briefly mentioned above. There are many others that I have left out in order to be be brief.
You can see videos from previous BIF summits at: http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/iss
You can see details of BIF 8 at http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/bif-8
and my friend Jess has published her fantastic sketch notes from the whole conference at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeschnotes/sets/72157631581051973/
Finally to the Piker, MFceo, SKbutt and my presentation coach. You know who you are and I would lke to thank you for taking a futurist a long way from home under your collective wing and making my trip far more enjoyable. I hope the friendship endures
Paul Higgins
Sept 24th 2012

Ruminations on Web Technologies from New York

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I’m sitting here after a day and a half in New York ruminating on a presentation I have to give on the future of web technologies when I return. In between long bouts of walking around the city tracing the notes of my favourite venture capitalist bloggers from New York I have been inhaling William Gibson’s “Distrust That Particular Flavour”. A particularly apt writer to be digesting when afflicted by jet lag from a 24 hr trip and a 14 hour time difference.

The challenge of the presentation is that I need to give it to a bunch of first year university students all of which will have not lived without the web. Two things have resonated with me from Gibson’s writing. The first is the concept of the book as a technology and the requisite learning requirements needed to enable the technology. One cannot imagine a new technology being adopted that requires years of learning in order to operate. Our modern web technologies are characterised by intuitive ease-of-use which both facilitate adoption and dispersion through the culture but also contribute to a shallowness in design and innovation. The second is the concept that changes in culture are technologically driven but that we cannot know the culture we live in by its very nature. The students to whom I’ll be talking are immersed in a web technology culture that they cannot truly know or comprehend because they live it. So the value that I can provide is one of providing a long-term contextual discussion of web technologies inside a concept of change and disruption. From that I intend to facilitate a discussion from the students to create something new rather than just lecture to them.

The core of what I currently intend is to stretch back over a longer period of time to look at the nature of disruption and change via technological change through the ages. Then I will challenge the group as to what this might mean for the future of web technologies. I am a long term believer in the concept that in order to understand something you should have to teach it to someone else. Along with that belief is another strong view that the group is way smarter than the individual. Having said that I am both excited and terrified (and those emotions are closely aligned) to be giving the talk.  The excitement is linked to what sort of possibilities might emerge, the terror is linked to that falling flat in a performance sense.

The subject matter is inextricably linked to a presentation that that I also have to prepare for the Department of Premier and Cabinet on future public policy challenges. From the concept of cultural change driven by technological change then the disruptive effects of web technologies have to be a large part of that vision of suggested possibilities. At their core web technologies are changing the nature of the power relationships between people and the organisations they deal with. That is a challenge for public policy.

If anyone has any suggestions on what I should present in either case then please feel free to comment here or email me at paul@emergentfutures.com

Paul Higgins

My Favourite Applications

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I was asked yesterday to do some guest lectures on the influence and future of web technologies to Digital Media, Education and Creative Arts university students. In some ways I  find that a bit daunting because they will have grown up with the web. It got me thinking about what to talk about and I guess a perspective from an old fogey who has lived through the changes is worthwhile. One of the things I get asked a lot after keynotes and workshops is what applications do I use and why?  I am getting a new laptop delivered today (maybe my last one ever because of tablet developments) and it got me focused on what were the first applications I would load on to it to get me going and to coordinate with my other devices and work colleagues. So here are my top web based cross platform technologies (after of course basics like a Chrome Web Browser)- in order of importance.

1/ Evernote

If I had to pick one application it would be Evernote as it has become the core of what I do.

We use it to store all of our environmental scanning material which then feeds into client work, keynote presentation preparation. For example we generally have a 3-6 month lead time for presentations so on top of our core scanning notebook I collect  cross links to the notes in our system under specific presentation titles to go back to once we start to put together a narrative

I use it to track project notes because I can record it on my desktop, my iPad and my android phone.

I use it for check-lists for travel for the same reason

The web clipper allows me to clip interesting articles and reports for about 30 minutes in the morning which then syncs effortlessly so I can read them on my iPad when travelling

I photograph workshop worksheets and maps and share those with clients afterwards.

The system allows export of all the data so we can keep offline back ups and get our stuff out any time that we want to.

Bets of all it is free although we pay for the premium version

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I pray every day that they stay as a stand alone business and do not get taken over by Microsoft especially.

2/ Drop Box

For those not familiar with it Drop Box allows you to place a folder on your hard drive and anything that is saved in there is synchronised to the cloud and then synchronised to any device you have the application loaded on to.

I use drop box to:

Share a folder with my farm manager so I can see his reports and back up database files any time that I want to from wherever I am

Share a folder with Kim our office manager so I can see all our scanned documents (which is most things) at any time

Keep all the images that we use for presentations so I can access them from any device for preparation.

Save a copy of keynotes before I travel to present (I am paranoid about not having a presentation work so I save one on the hard drive, one on a USB stick, a separate portable version on a different USB stick which I put in a separate bag, upload one to Prezi (see below), and download one from Prezi to my iPad)

Share client documents for workshops and project work

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3/ Kindle 

I no longer buy any non fiction books it printed version (I still like a printed book for fiction reading in bed and on planes and one of the people that prompted this post told me the other day he buys eBooks and prints them!!!)

The convenience of being able to carry so many books with me that I have notes in and being able to access that on desktop, iPad and smartphone is fantastic for me ( I mainly use the iPad). The convenience of having a book delivered to me 1 minute after making a  decision to buy it, and to have access to a much wider range of publications than I ever could locally is great.

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4/ ABC iView

This is more an entertainment one and local to Australia than a work one but we use it a lot. I rarely watch TV when it is on these days, preferring to time shift my viewing habits. iView works seamlessly and we use it a lot on the iPad either stand alone or plugged into the TV. It allows you to create a watch list and to watch programs and remembers where you were if you only watch part of a show. That is useful because I am often up well before Jo and Miles and watch a bit on my iPad while having breakfast.Image

5/ TweetDeck

I use TweetDeck more on my computer than I do on my iPad because I am not that keen on the iPad app and find it hard to integrate my overall workflow with it on the iPad.

I use Tweetdeck to organise my Twitter stuff and have several columns set up inside it than I find useful:

A Follow column which is for all the people I follow. This is too large a group to look at all the time but I try and dip into “the stream” 2-3 times a day for serendipity.

A mentions column to track where I am being mentioned and re-tweeted

A direct message column which is set up with a pop up notice so I can respond to people

A “my perspectives list” which is a core group of people I follow assiduously on a daily basis for scanning and information purposes If you want to see this – it is a public list at https://twitter.com/#!/futuristpaul/my-perspectives-list)

A scheduled updates list because we tend to queue tweets to get a spread over different parts of peopel’s day in different parts of the world and to manage workflow on our side.

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6/ Skype

Which we use all the time for internal communication and for travel, both on the laptop and on the iPadImage

7/ Prezi and Prezi Viewer

We use Prezi for all our presentations and I love using the Prezi Viewer application on my iPad because I present without notes and like to do multiple run through and rehearse presentations. Having it in a format the looks just like my presentation on my iPad allows me to rehearse multiple times on planes and taxis and hotel rooms and get the flow down pat. I usually give it one more run through just before going on.Image

8/ Carbonite

Carbonite is an on-line back up system. Like most people I am variable when it comes to making back ups and also wanted an offsite solution so that if we had a fire or a burglary we would be able to recover all our important data. It is a set and forget system that works in the background and backs up all the files that you designate and can be accessed from other devices. Image

9/ Got to Meeting

We use Go to meeting all the time for on-line internal collaboration meetings, for practice run through of presentations and for draft presentation checks with clients that want them prior to workshops or keynotes

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So there you go and it certainly demonstrates how integrated web services are to how we work these days.

I would be interested in any suggestions from others on their favourite applications that I should try.

Paul Higgins