Manage To Change

Xfinity Remote

This morning PaidContent led with a story about the new Xfinity Remote app. 

Aside from having a clean and intuitive interface, it:

1. Does something useful: It's a remote for your cable box.
2. Solves a problem: Everyone knows you can't search for shows on Comcast onDemand which is incredibly frustrating.
3. Extends current capability: Allows you to share with others.

That’s what an app should do!

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When the Edge Becomes the Middle

Image by Gare and Kitty via Flickr

Ever seem to bump into a phrase repeatedly?

For the past three years I keep hearing about "the edge becoming the middle" and every time I do it's in a new context, with a similar yet different meaning.

The first time I heard this phrase was in a client meeting.  The client, a true innovator, was reflecting on how their needs, which were leading edge at the time, would ultimately become mainstream (the middle).

The same concept came up a year later in a product development conversation with a software company.  In their world successful experiments (at the edge) become core software functions.

I never thought about this phrase applying to relationships or events until lunch at O'Reilly Tools of Change this week.

Looking around the table, three of the four people that were with me are "at the edge" of my normal routine.  They're people with whom I don't usually interact on a daily or even weekly basis. 

Yet during the conference they were at the middle of my experience.  We sat together in several sessions, compared notes, tweeted back and forth, and discussed what we were hearing.

At conferences the edge becomes the middle.

Perhaps that's one reason we should still go to conferences - even though we operate in such a well connected world online.

It's also an interesting property of social networking.  Again, three of the four people at lunch were people I may never have met had we not first established a relationship online (through blogs,Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook). 

On social networks the edge becomes the middle.

The only difference seems to be, when we're thinking about relationships and events, the edge doesn't necessarily become the middle and stay there. They mostly go back to the edge again until the next time. 

reBlog from Kent Anderson under: The Scholarly Kitchen

Kent Anderson reviewed Jaron Lanier's book over on the Scholarly Kitchen:

I started Jaron Lanier’s recent book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” skeptical of his initial opinions. His complaints about standardization and today’s limiting philosophy of information technology didn’t impress me at first — after all, we had to embrace standards around electricity, electromagnetic spectrum deployment, and the like to have things like electric lights, radio, and television. Sure, these choices were limiting, but they ultimately liberated larger phenomena.Kent Anderson under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Feb 2010

Not only was the post insightful, the comments were great too.  Go check it out!

Michael Hansen SIIA Keynote: What I Learned from Galileo Galilei

  Image via Wikipedia

Michael Hansen, CEO Elsevier Health Sciences opened the Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) Annual Information Industry Summit by reintroducing the audience to Galileo. His lessons from Galileo:

In a time of change, remember your roots. Galileo reminded Hansen of Elsevier's core strength to: "bring insights to the world and have those insights as a basis for better decisions." Elsevier published Galileo's controversial work in 1632.

In keeping with those roots, how can Elsevier, or any medical publisher, provide a valuable resource to a physician who only gets to spend approximately six minutes with a patient (generally considered a reliable statistic for primary care doctors)?  What can a publisher deliver in a fraction of that time that could benefit the physician and patient?

To address this need, Elsevier created a Clinical Decision Support business unit.  And, leading into the next Galileo lesson, this unit is not charged with simply delivering information at the point of care.  They are charged with "making information more to the point and more specific, as a recommendation."

In times of pressure and crisis, explore the counter intuitive.  Don't just follow conventional wisdom.

Those not familiar with medical publishing, may not realize that Hansen's example above, providing more specific recommendations to physicians, is very unconventional thinking. For many reasons, not the least of which is legal liability, this isn't often done.

In fact, I would argue it's the most unconventional idea he raised today. 

Below are two additional examples, that while interesting, are not uncommon practices in many organizations:

Hansen offered a sales example to highlight unconventional thinking, with a major client, the sales team took a more collaborative approach.  They analyzed the client's information assets and identified redundancies, resulting in a decrease in content costs of 10%.  His takeaway? "Forge new partnerships, relationships, and collaborations."

Of course, the revised content holdings included several Elsevier assets. 

Hansen's second example was related to people. Many companies say that people are their greatest resource, yet they don't communicate with them and are often reluctant to share bad news.

Elsevier found that in sharing concerns with their employees, they were able to identify savings offered up by people who were much better suited to identify savings opportunities than an isolated group of people in a conference room.  For example, staff were able to suggest cuts in travel that totaled almost 20% across the board.

While the second two examples might not be considered counter intuitive in many circles, that's irrelevant.  They were counter intuitive to Elsevier and, in pursuing them, Elsevier stepped out of their comfort zone.

Unconventional is in the eye of the beholder.

What are we doing to explore the counter intuitive, the unconventional, in a way that is consistent with our strengths (roots)?

Have our objectives changed? Should they have?

Have the methods by which we achieve our objectives changed? Should they have?

Hansen pointed out that the recession is bad but not as bad as the inquisition.  If Galileo could be unconventional, why can't we?

Perception, Reality, & Rory Sutherland

My husband recently pointed me to an interview with Rory Sutherland and the following video of his TED Talk.

Similar to Predictably Irrational and Nudge, Sutherland's view is that people don't make decisions on pure economic value alone.  Intangible value plays a large role, although many are loathe to admit it.

"There is a basic view that real value involves making things, involves labor.  It involves engineering.  It involves limited raw materials.  And that what we add on top is kind of false.  It's a fake version and there is a reason for some suspicion and uncertainty about it." [Quote transcribed from the video.]

Sutherland believes that 1) all value is relative, subjective, and 2) persuasion is better than compulsion.

"...how many problems of life can be solved by actually tinkering with perception rather than that tedious, hardworking, and messy business of actually trying to change reality."

While his extreme (and tongue-in-cheek) example of "placebo education" may seem dangerous and General Mill's approach to selling Shreddies (a cereal sold in Canada) may seem ridiculous, there is an element of value here - and some plain common sense.

"It's not that marketing-driven or advertising-led solutions can solve everything. That's absolutely not true. What seems strange to me, though, is that people don't at least try them first. Instead, governments try to solve their problems by compulsion. My view is that we should try and solve the problem by persuasion, and if that fails we can try compulsion or harder-level nudging."

It's worth the 16+ minutes to watch the video.  His examples are both brilliant and incredibly entertaining.

(Kent Anderson, from the Scholarly Kitchen, also wrote about this in his post Can the Creativity of Social Persuasion Cure "Corporate Asperger's Syndrome"?)

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Google Wave: When More is Too Much

We're talking about Google Wave over on the Scholarly Kitchen.

Google Wave was built to answer the question, “How would email look if it were invented today?”  But Wave goes far beyond email-like functionality and tries to get to the heart of communication in all the forms that we’ve come to know.  Wave is part email, part IM, part Wiki, and part document management, to name a few.Ann Michael under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Oct 2009

Come join us!

Movin' on Out

Through the years I’ve been fortunate to meet lots of smart people in publishing, media, and technology.  It’s been an amazing experience working with both organizations “going digital” and others that have been there for some time but are continuously refining their approach to content and publishing. 

It’s an exciting place to be (scary, but exciting).

It seemed to me that the best way to ensure a spot in the middle of the changing tide was to start consulting on my own again.  So that’s what I did!

Please stay tuned as I revive this blog and keep posting on Twitter.

Sci Foo Camp 2009: Nature Video

After Michael Clarke's coverage of Sci Foo Camp on the Scholarly Kitchen, I thought there was nothing left to say.

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

I was wrong.

NatureVideo just posted a Science Foo Camp 2009 video on YouTube.  From DNA, to skulls, to puzzles, it seems like Sci Foo had it all.

It was interesting to see how most of those interviewed contrasted the open and informal nature of Sci Foo with traditional science research and discovery.

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reBlog from Ann Michael under: The Scholarly Kitchen

Attending SSP IN!  Here's a post I wrote on the Scholarly Kitchen:

Fifteen years ago would anyone have imagined that Apple, a dying computer company, would come back to life by gaining control of the music business?Ann Michael under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Sep 2009

Read all the coverage of the Society for Scholarly Publishing IN Meeting on the Scholarly Kitchen.

Google Buys reCAPTCHA

Aside from the topic, which is interesting, I love the idea that Silicon Alley Insider is facilitating the proliferation of their content.

Embedding text.  Why wasn't this done years ago?

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