The Family our most reliable employment agency, banker, insurance company and pension fund

October 7, 2008 at 3:38 pm · Filed under credit

This is the second of 5 posts on how relationships will have to trump transactions if we are to make it through the next decade. The premise being that it is our social networks that have the best chance of sustaining us and that social software in the end will have a huge role to play.

How do I know my “New Credit Rating”? What do I have to do to improve it?

Let’s now look at how I might map my own “Credit Community” and see if there are some rules that emerge that will show you how you might map your own.

The first thing that I see is that I don’t just have one of these networks. I have several. Some overlap but some don’t. In this post I am going to talk about family and show how the family connects to work. I will focus on work in the next post.

A really important Network is my Blood Family. In the centre of my family map is my marriage.

I think many of us forgot the eternal truth that the key to getting through the bumps of life is a great partner. Here is the opening line of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen:

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

Sounds sooo old fashioned! But lets look back at the past. Imagine you are an immigrant to America in the 1880’s. You are planning to take a wagon train to the west. What kind of spouse are you looking for? Good looking. Fun. Sexy. Well those would be nice. But wouldn’t you look for more? Dependable. Hard working. Self sufficient. Skilled. Imagine you are farming or run a small business. Could you cope on your own?

So it’s all different today - right? The one easy way to get poor today is to get divorced. Another easy way to stay poor is for a man to remain single. A bad way to enter old age as man is to be on your own.

I think that Jane Austen was right and remains right. The single most important investment we can all make in our Family Network is the choice we make for spouse and the value that we place on that bond.

For everything reverberates out from that. Do we have kids who are prepared for life or are they not going to be able to cope? Are the kids going to be able to help you as you get old or are they always going to be kids?

Does the rest of the extended family admire your spouse or are they indifferent or worse? For when things get bad will your family want to help?

When my grandparents lost all their money - their sisters got their husbands to help. When my Dad died aged 55, my sister and I looked after her - she has been an invalid for many years.

Shit happens to us all. We can’t manage on our own or with a very limited family network. Family is the Real Insurance and the Real Pension Scheme. We have to pay into this Insurance and Pension Scheme just as we pay premiums into the transactional equivalent.

To get the support that we might need, we have to contribute. You have to freely help others in the family. But what is weird about this system is that the payments are not direct exchanges. The story of our aunts helping their brother reverberates through our family. They did not get back directly. Their grandchildren will repay them. Their act created a story and it is the story of what it means to be a sibling in our family that guides us all.

My sister and I have looked after our mother for more than 25 years. We do it because it is the right thing to do - but also because this too reverberates through our family. These stories will affect how others in this family will react when they are called. The “Insurance” in our family is that you will not be abandoned. You may never have to claim, but the “Insurance” is there.

So how does this network work?

At the centre is the marriage or partnership. The power of that centre is the health of that relationship and the ongoing contribution that each makes to each other and to the marriage. It’s not about what you get - it is what you give that counts. The getting is a product of the giving not the other way around.

It seems that attached to the marriage are the stories. The myths of who we are. But to have power, these myths have to be known and told. All traditional families know their stories. Meals are when they are retold. They tend to be told by the older members, so there has to be opportunities to cross the generational lines in the network.

It is clear that the key Nodes of Trust that connect the system together all all dimensions tend to be the women in the family. Though I have a male cousin who is a massive affiliater. It tends to be the women who do the day to day work of keeping the connections tight. They call, they write, they invite. They remember birthdays and anniversaries. They organize the celebrations.

So if you are a man and have no woman that is loved and trusted by the group, you will find yourself moved to the periphery. The serious matriarchs gain power over time and move to the centre and take their man with them. This is even true in the most patriarchal families. The power lines move to the matriarch.

Piss of the matriarchs and you lose.

What other than the women act as connectors? In our family, we set up opportunities for the young cousins of each generation to spend a lot of time with each other. We spend a lot of our money to do this. We have found that connecting our children across the branches of the family is one of the best investments we make.

The ideal time is summer but sometimes it is Christmas. For many generations, the cousins have become all but siblings as a result. There are two network benefits. There is great love and trust across a wide part of the network and again the habit of repeating this process for the next generation. It means that not only are the kids connected across the same generation but that they also know their aunts and uncles almost as well as their parents. The bonds work up and across.

Now we come to where the work piece starts to affect the family piece. I got my first job because my uncle got me an interview. In the real world folks it is always who you know. He could spend his political capital because he knew I would die rather than let him down and so did Jack Cole at Wood Gundy.

I came back to Canada leaving my immediate family behind in the UK. I was embraced by my extended family. It was my great aunt, the one who lent my grandfather the money, who was my real estate agent. My granny furnished my place, I had her late husband, my maternal grandfathers bed.

I was introduced all around town. I had the full force of this huge family behind me.

Today my nephew has made the same journey to Canada. He is staying at my son’s place. He too is being shown the ropes in Montreal. The story continues. The payback is not direct. It is enfolded in the story - so all in the family can call upon the story to support them. The bonds work up and across.

So what if you don’t have such a family? Here Dickens comes to the rescue.

For all the experimentation, of course, Dickens’s novels eventually wind their way back to some kind of nuclear family. And with this “rightful” restoring of the family unit comes another restoration, this one financial.

Dickens had the kind of family that took energy from you. In his life and in his novels, we see his answer. If you don’t have the kind of Blood Family that can support you, create a “Heart Family” of your own. Look out for the people who can and will establish these same bonds with you without the ties of blood. Create your Tribe. For there is no secure life lived in isolation.

So how do so many of us live today? Has what I have been saying seem normal or weird?

I am saddened by how we have fallen for giving up on family - family as a tribe not mum and dad.

So in our pursuit of “freedom” we become slaves who rely on the state, our health plan, our investments, our line of credit, our pension. None of these things are in our control!

In reality, we have swapped the family for institutions! We have then become so busy in getting the money for the transactions that don’t know how important relationships are. We have become incapable of knowing how to be in family so that it can support us.

Well my dear readers. In the next few years, we are going to relearn a lot of things we have forgotten. None of the institutions that we have given our allegiance too will be worth anything. You and I will find our way home or we will perish.

Next - Our Work Community and then how your organization can map its community

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Mapping out your access to the real credit system

October 7, 2008 at 7:03 am · Filed under credit

Thanks to Ross Mayfield for this model that looks like the work also of Valdis Krebs.

In this post I am going to do my best to show you what the observed reality of this “Credit” system is, make the case that social software will be a wonderful tool that will enable us to use this natural system and finally to make the point that we may have no choice but to try this because, the other source of “Credit” will not the available.

In my first post on Credit - I made the point that “Credit” is an ancient process where resources are leveraged not by a direct exchange of money (I lend directly to you and you owe me directly) but by a social process whereby my contribution to the community (which becomes my reputation and my character) allows me access to the wider resources of the group.

In the ancient system, the exchange is indirect. I contribute to an individual and this gives me an option of being helped by the larger group. If another doesn’t not know me well, my close friends stand surety for me. Leverage in this system is the “Six degrees of Separation”.

This system was the basis of all credit systems until quite recently. Even banking itself relied more on the lender’s knowledge of the borrower. 40 years ago, your banker lived in your community. He (was always a man then) knew you and of you not by a credit rating agency but by his own use of the social model shown above. Your banker’s work was to put himself at the centre of this social system. This was true even in the heady realms of Government Finance. The Fugger Bank had lifetime reps at the courts of all the rulers.

But post WWII, this idea of banking being based on relationships died away. It died because, we got to busy to have relationships. Many don’t even manage to have them with their partners or worse their kids!

Something “Inhuman” happened. We replaced community and relationships which is our real wealth with money and things that are only symbols. The more we strove for money and things, the more we lost our connections and hence access to real wealth and real resources. We substituted transactions for relationships. Maybe later I will explore why this happened but not today.

The crisis of our time is going to take us back. There will be little transactional credit available. So if you need resources, you are going to have to put yourself back into the traditional resource model. You are going to have to find a community and you are going to have to do the work to establish yourself as a worthy person or group in that community.

The good news is that those of us that have been immigrants in the live web have paved the way.

This ancient system is being re-created in the Blogosphere and the Twittersphere. So here we see the old system at work. Need technical help as I did the other day when my Typepad site died - ask from my Twitter friends - within minutes I was connected to Mena Trott, the founder of Twitter. Need places to stay and guides for a trip, Jon asked his community in Europe and Ton his community in Canada.

Here is a simpler way of seeing this Resource Map. It is really a solar system or a galaxy. The natural system of organizing power. Hurricanes have the same structure.

This is how I see the elements.

I think at the centre in the human system is an idea and or a great binding inviting mission. Some thing that calls to the hearts on humans. In St Louis where we are working at KETC on the Mortgage Crisis it is the idea that if the city gets together we can help each other get through this. On PEI, it will be how we can help each other get through our energy crisis. Embedded into this Mission or Call, is a very small group who host. In Wikipedia it is 7 people. The research is telling us that tiny resources, the 1% Rule, are all that is required to initiate such a system.

Along the circular boundaries of the system, each mediated to enable the six degrees of separation and each having its own fractal system (for as in the universe itself - each one of us is at the centre of our own universe) energy flows aback and forth via the connectors.

Here is how Col David Kilcullen sees terror groups.

The work we all have to do now is to chart this out for ourselves. Each of us has such a world. Each organization has such a world. By charting it out, we will start to see what we have to do and who we have to know to bring back the power of this system to help us.

More later

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The Credit Crisis and Social Software - Part 1 - Why we need a return to credit based on social relationships

October 5, 2008 at 9:03 am · Filed under credit

I have been quiet recently because events are so terrible that I wanted to be ready to offer some thoughts that might really help. Here is the first of a series that will, I hope, help you see why we are in such a jam now and why social software may offer us a a healthy and sustainable way out.

Am I qualified to speak about such things. I think so. I was an investment banker for 23 years and was responsible for a major banks strategy for some time. In a way I was partly to blame for the mess that we find ourselves in. I also walked away from that life and rebuilt a new life largely based on the principles that I will offer in the hope that they may give us hope.

Part 1 is a description about what is credit. The core idea is that the natural reality of sound credit is that it is not transactional but social. If sound credit is indeed as I say social in nature, then there will be a way to deploy social software to create a better alternative.

There are two credit ratings that we have - both offer us the opportunity of having resources that we don’t have right now. One leads to serfdom and slavery and the other leads to freedom.

Hugh’s cartoon above gives us a hint here as to what choice leads to freedom.

Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they. How did this change come about? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? That question I think I can answer. (J J Rousseau - The Social Contract)

In the world that is dying around us, a credit rating was a statistical score that enabled a transactional system to lend us money. In the world to come - which is also the world that was before the modern credit system, credit was the product of how much you contributed to your community. Your credit rating was your reputation, based on your actions, as understood by your peers in the context of your bounded community. In this older system, credit was not transactional but social. Wealth was not money but the health and extent of your relationships.

So what does this mean in practice? What is wrong with a transactional credit system? What is a a social system?

We are suffering the normal bust/boom today of a reliance on a transactional system. The system that lent us the money made money on the transaction, so the system was skewed to lend us a much as possible. So, at its extreme, students were lent $20 - 50K, people with no real cash flow were given mortgages that they could not repay or even service, investors bought securities such as CBO’s taking the rating as a given and not thinking about the underlying issues that might prejudice their investment.

Our problems today are all rooted in the fact that credit became transactional and so masked the risk both the the lenders and to the borrowers.

The underlying issue about lending money has always been universal. The most important parts of lending money are these:

The crucial “Credit” decision is not whether the borrower can repay you - it is do you have a high expectation that he WILL REPAY you. The key to credit is a knowledge not of cash flows but of character.

In 1933, my two great aunts both went to their husbands and demanded that they lend a pool of working capital to their brother, my grandfather. Their husbands, who were both in construction, and so had funds, did so. But they lent the money as much because they knew that Alec would rather die than not repay them under these circumstances. They also had the power of their wives to ensure that Alec would protect their decision. At the time of lending the money, Alec had no way of repaying it. Only his real credit rating, his honor, stood assurance. The social capital of his sisters was the guarantee. This is how the Grameen Bank works or how Social Credit (Micro Credit) works.

The lenders and investors of today all missed this. They relied not on the character of the borrower and a profound understanding of what was going on - but on a score. They relied on a formula based on statistics based on transactions that left out the heart of credit - relationships and emotion.

The whole idea of a pool of mortgages breaks this key rule. Derivatives and swaps break this key rule. The direct relationship between the borrower and the lender had been dissolved.  Imagine that you have a sweater with some good and some bad threads in it. How do you get at the good threads? It can’t be done. You can’t extract the good from the bad if they are co-mingled like this. All that is left is the letter of the law. And the law is not enough. There has to be the will to repay and in a transaction, there can be no such will. In Canada a mortgage  rests upon the person of the borrower with the house as collateral. In the US it is the house alone. So the central  relationship is weakened by design.

Because credit really relies of deep personal knowledge and personal commitment. It can’t easily be scaled. So sound credit cannot be naturally abundant.

But in a transactional universe, scale is everything. So an economy based on easy to get credit which is based on a transactional context, must fail. Now that we have introduced pooled securities and derivatives, failure is not only guaranteed but will have a huge impact because we have leverage on leverage.

You don’t believe me? In the US the banking system has failed in 1857, 1907, 1933, 1986 and 2008.Stop and think about this for a minute.

The US banking system has failed in 1857, 1907, 1933, 1986 and now in 2008. What does that tell us? That we keep repeating the same design flaw. Each time the impact of the failure has been greater. We keep the assumption that we can scale credit based on a score and not on a real relationship. The product of the 2008 failure is what? Huge mega banks that can only take a transactional view. What is the inevitable result going to be? Sooner rather than later we will have a Krakatoa type of failure, if we don’t have one now.

So, please - please do not fool yourself that things are going to be OK soon.

The second aspect of being a creditor is the issue of power. Why is it always a bad thing to lend to a friend or a family member? Because it affects the relationship. Being such a borrower broke my granny’s  spirit and my grandfather’s. After he had repaid the loan, he killed himself. You can see now why my own family story has so informed my own view of credit. For as a creditor, you are in the power of the lender. The more you borrow, the less freedom you have. At some point you become a serf.

You graduate with a BA and $30,000 in debt - what choices do you have in a career? You have to choose the money. You have to accept work that may not fit you. The promise was that if you get into debt to get a degree that you will earn more. In reality you have become a serf.

You are told that home ownership is a good thing. But if the bank has 100% of the equity of your home, who owns the home? You are a serf. You think that if you have a lot of stuff that you look successful. But if you have a lot of consumer debt to pay for all this stuff, you are only a serf. So now with all this debt, you have to work for “The Man”. You think you are free but you dare not question your employer. You are a serf. You are indentured.

This is not just about the low income folks. Many who have had huge incomes are just as much slaves as the rest. Worse. Their identity is tied to their image of success as my granny’s was. Their fall will be even more terrible because they thought they were free when in fact they too were slaves. Rousseau was right then and now. Many think themselves free but are in reality slaves.

Rubbish you say. I am not a serf. So let’s take a test. Are you free or are you a serf?

In the Middle Ages, Serfs were tied to the estate of the Lord. They could not move. They had an income but had to pay taxes to the Lord. Who himself did not pay much tax. They had housing, but the houses really belonged to the Lord. Their children were born serfs. They had no social mobility. In fact, as the system grew, what few middle class yeomen got pulled down into serfdom. The full power of the law was behind the system. If you tried to escape, the full force of the law enforced serfdom back upon you.

So how are you doing? Is your life any more free as a major borrower today? The full power of the law is also on the side of the lender. How are your kids doing too?

So what to do? Is there a healthier system than our transactional credit system? For I am not saying we should not use credit. I am saying that credit positioned in a transactional context is guaranteed to give us this boom and collapse cycle and in the end make most people not only poor but slaves.

First of all we need a better context for credit. “Better” being a context based on the observable reality of nature rather than a fantasy based on beliefs of men. We have to have a credit system based on observable truth if we are to have any chance of avoiding this boom/bust serfdom system repeating.

In the Middle Ages, the overarching belief was that the Earth was the centre of the universe. But observers such as Galileo proved that the observed reality was different. he was able to prove that the Sun was the centre. I bring this up because what I am going to say will sound as heretical as Galileo did at the time.

Our great belief is that Money is wealth. Being itself neutral, this belief has enabled us to accept and then to believe that the end in life to get as much money as possible is to be wealthy and free. Worse, because money in itself is neutral, a means of exchange, it has lead us to believe that all exchanges in life are, and should be, transactional. In so doing, we have set up our credit system to fail.

For all of time credit has been in reality social.

Credit is based in a relationship and it drives a relationship. Credit can only be a transaction when it is based on a fantasy. As we have seen, all the brilliant risk management models of Wall Street failed. Credit is not a commodity. It is a social object. Credit is not based on models but on emotion.

So what does a social credit system look like?

Imagine that you are a tin trader. It is 100 BC. Your home is in what is now Acre. You sail to Britain with object of buying Tin. How are you going to do the deal? Just turn up and give the tribal leader a check? Think about this for a minute. You are going to have to spend maybe a year in building trust. You may have to do a small deal and return in a year to establish more trust. Over time, you may marry the Chief’s daughter or leave a son behind as surety. Both sides work hard to establish a relationship that facilitates a healthy trade. Both profit mutually. Neither is subservient to the other. But it is not an easy process. It is not a transaction.

This type of credit is not lost in the mysts of history.

You are of Italian descent. You daughter is getting married next week. What happens at the wedding? The guests know that one of their jobs is to pitch in to ensure that the couple can buy a house with either a very small mortgage or none at all. Each guest gives a meaningful sum. Why? Because when when it is your turn, you know that your community will help your daughter do the same. The point is to give the couple a real home. A home that they own and not the bank!

The Italian community in St Louis does not restrict itself to weddings. All of its members know that the more that they give into the system, the more free and self reliant they all become. All pay attention to the impact of their social actions. Over time, the flywheel effect picks up and more and more resources become available to the members. The entire system is governed not by law but by social custom.

At the heart of the natural credit system are two things. Your personal reputation and your community.

On PEI, until recently, there was a code in your file that if you had it opened the doors. There would be a comment on your file that said this “Known to the bank”. This was the equivalent of a AAA rating. Island Bankers could do this safely because, it was a product of the community that we have here.

On PEI, we are small enough for your full character and hence reputation would be known to many. This did not mean that mistakes were not made. But on the whole, a lender could have a judgment on whether you passed the first test of real credit - would you pay the loan back. PEI also had a strong position in the second test. Being a small place where there are no secrets, the community itself, like my great aunts, could play a role in the borrowers good behaviour.

This has been too long a post already. In the next post I will offer some thoughts about what we can do now to return to a more healthy relationship with what wealth is and what a better credit system might be.

But as a teaser, here are a few thoughts.

• Wealth is not your bank balance or your portfolio - as we may all find out soon as these may disappear. Wealth is the health of our social network. My son James is “broke but not poor”.

• When we give into our social network, we are making deposits into a real credit system

• In a social credit system - it is a system of peers - there is less risk of there being a power imbalance

• In a social credit system there is much less risk of a default

This system has existed for all human time and has its modern examples that we can build on.In my next post I intend to expand on what we can do ourselves to get outside the transactional system. For the powers that be will do their best to restore it. Only we can elect to live outside it.

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Enterprise 2.0 - Now a necessity in a low/no capital world - The Death of the Dinos

September 18, 2008 at 6:20 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, capital, credit

Easy to get capital and easy to get credit is vanishing and enterprises that rely on this will not make it.

A deep undercurrent of this blog has been how difficult it is for a conventional organization to adopt a 2.0 world. The entrenched habits of control, centralization and top down could not be shifted. No amount of appeals, about the power of a 2.0 world, more speed, better infomation, better conection inside and outside the enterprise, landed with the change.

I think we all underestimated the height and the steepness of the slope of the “landscape” that had to be crossed to go into the next “valley” of the 2.0 world.

Systems remain stable for a long time - so long as the key environment to support them exists. For real change to occur, you have to get out of the “valley”, over the mountain and into the next valley. So the dinosaurs ruled for millions of years, while the more adaptive mammals lurked in the shadows waiting the moment when the environment would change and set them free.

So until last week, it was still possible for organizations to chug along with a 1.0 perspective. For its key environmental factor, cheap and easy credit and access to capital was still in place.

Well dear readers - this is no longer the case. The asteroid has hit the worlds financial markets and the dinosaurs will die.Large cumbersome beings that need a lot of capital and credit and who cannot adapt quickly will die.

Credit and assets based on cheap credit are simply evaporating. So is the “photosynthesis” process of capital and credit creation. Investment banking and conventional banking is in the process of losing its own capital base. Even the credit of the US itself will be tested to the limit in the ensuing months.

What we are experiencing is not a normal correction but the equivalent of an asteroid strike.

It will get worse. For another key environmental factor for the 1.0 model was cheap and easily availble energy. As the new reality of Peak Oil becomes clear, then all business models also based on moving goods long distances and from huge central hubs fail. Of course this model is also based on massive usage of financial capital.

So how does this play out and who wins?

Mammals won for 2 reasons. They were small and because they raised their young they could extend their offspring’s ability to adapt by adding cultural learning to their natural instinct.

We cannot know in any detail what the future will now bring.

All we can know is that the nimble and the smart will do better than the clumsy and the unthinking. All we know is that any model based on large amounts of capital will not make it - so forget nuclear as an option for energy.

The new of course exists in proto form today as it did when the dinosaurs roamed. The new will be based on network models. It will use the network effect and it will use social capital to do big things. It will use its distributed intelligence to “see” what to do and to undersatdn the chaos that we will be living in.

The time for a world based on a model that is itself based on nature itself rather than a machine is dawning.

Understanding the “natural economy” , the “natural organization” and social capital will be the key to your survival. Not just in business but in every part of our lives.

For we as citizens of the “machine world” gave up all control to the “System”. We became isolated and helpless. We lived in the Matrix. We did not even know what we had given up.

2.0 is I think really short hand for using technology to help us go home to a world based on a community rather than one based on being cogs in a machine.

Until now many of us were merely playing with the idea of taking the Red Pill. Now its life or death. Life or death for organizations, life or death for us as people.

In closing I don’t think that this will be all bad. Here is a passage that has affected me deeply for decades. When I first read it, I could not imagine the circumstances that would make it come true. Now I can.

There will come a time when humanity will choose to go against nature, to exploit her bounteous gifts, causing a sickness across the planet. People will forget the ecstasies of communion, and life will become drab and colorless.

In these coming dark ages, though, a deep sense of loss will cause the beginnings of a Great Return. They will look at the landscape and the old temples, built to withstand the cataclysms of millennia and understand once again the sacred laws of Existence.

When this day comes, humanity will have come of age. It will consciously acknowledge its role in the creative impulse that comes from the Sun, fertilizes the Earth, and calls forth the flame in the hearts of men and women to worship Life and the miraculous forces behind Creation.

Miller, Hamish & Broadhurst, Paul. The Sun and the Serpent: An Investigation into Earth Energies

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World events - Hurricanes - Financial Crises and Politics - Twitter!

September 15, 2008 at 9:21 am · Filed under TweetDeck, Twitter

What a few weeks this has been. Twitter has become my primary news source.

I have been able to get way ahead of the curve as Hanna and Ike developed. A huge number of news and personal feeds aggregated into a very complete view of what was happening. Many news organizations are now twittering as are of course us as individuals. The combination is excellent.

As the financial crisis took hold - I have been days ahead of what is happening. It was almost like being in the room with Hank Paulson this weekend. Now there are tweets from staff too.

I would say with breaking news a Twitter perspective is at least a day ahead and is much more complete.

The Conventions were very well covered. All the key media outlets joined the Twittersphere - some better than others. The best ones did more than retweet items - they provided color on the Tweets. There is a richness, immediacy and personality in the political coverage that is missing in conventional converage

So if you wish to experience this - try Tweetdeck that allows you to set up specific groups to follow. I have Fannie Mae group, an Ike Group, A Lehman group. I did have conference groups. You can follow any topic really.

Twitter has become my first port of call for news.

Most news organizations are going there too - Now Citizen Journalism is I think being defined. For instance Huffington Post has a bunch of “Stringers” such as Dave Winer and Jay Rosen tweeting. The News Hour has its own Tweet.

More immediacy is being delivered - here is the NYT blogging in real time about the day on Wall Street today Sept 15 2008

It’s like being there - so different from a headline

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Social Media - Gustav - Emergencies

August 31, 2008 at 9:02 am · Filed under Andy Carvin, Emergency, Gustav, Network Effect, News, Ning, Public Media, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter, User Revolution, Video, Videos, Web 2.0, Wikis, mashups

Social Media came of age after the Tsunami. It showed its power to provide vital information very quickly when the official channels could not.

With Gustav a day away from landfall many of the most experienced people in the field are coalescing on a Ning site that will aggregate as much information as possible in one place. Wiki, Twets, RSS feeds from Blogs, Video - everything.

Here is the address of the site

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Denver - Twitter as a News Service - TweetDeck a major help?

August 25, 2008 at 7:13 am · Filed under Democratic Convention, Denver, Fast, TweetDeck, Twitter

Many of the conventional news services will be going all out in Denver this week at the Democratic Convention. Many Bloggers are there too. But I think that this may be the Twitter Convention too.

Here are just a few from the PBS system:

Laura Hertzfeld, Vote 2008 producer: http://twitter.com/Laura_PBS
PBS Vote 2008: http://twitter.com/pbsvote2008
NewsHour: http://twitter.com/NewsHour
Tavis Smiley: http://twitter.com/tavissmiley

My Twitter feed has many more and all the breaking news services. But what I want is for those Twittering to give me a feel. To be like a composite eye whose many perspectives ad up up to a collective.

The “headlines” will be covered by the regular news channels. The feel of the floor and the deep background can be offered by a Twitter “Collective”. In time a station need not send its own staff at their own cost. It can use local volunteers to Twitter for them - creating a new kind of “Wire Service”.

But how to make sense of all these Twitter inputs? I already have nearly 400 feeds - how can I see the patterns from the noise? How could a station with say hundreds of volunteers Twittering the worlds news or simply using search to find the coverage separate the news from the noise?

I think that an answer may be TweetDeck

I have been using TweetDeck for a few days now and I am really impressed. I can easily create groups of meaning - beats for news - and I can easily use the search capability to extract content that has a focus. As Twitter users breach the 150 Dunbar number of followers and chaos and noise build, they can use TweetDeck to recreate meaning again.

I restrict my “Friends” group to my real friends. I have set up a Beat to cover media - all my pub TV and radio and Media folks go in here. I have set up a news channel.  To learn more bout Joe Biden, I did a serach for Biden and have a column there. It could have been any topic of course.

Is not the real value of social media in Convening or Meaning Making?

Assuming Twitter can solve its stability issues, the risk will always be noise. Success for twitter will bring too much noise for most people to handle.

A tool like TweetDeck starts to address this noise issue and starts to help us use Twitter to find more meaning and hence value.

Update: Jon Husband asked me to look at monitter - a tool that enables you to set 3 search variables and have access to everything that is happening in the Twitterverse. I have set it to Denver, NPR and Obama - I am really there!

Is there room for a “retail” Fast Search Tool that will enable me to “Parse the Web” for other content that fits my profile? A tool that would have a Dashboard that would feed back by my self selected groups things that I would like based on my prior actions and the actions of say a group of selected friends?

What would my web world be like then? What would be the value of such a tool?

Disclaimer - I have no connection to TweetDeck other than I have just donated some money to them!

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The Human Voice - Leroy Sievers

August 18, 2008 at 6:00 am · Filed under Blogging, Cancer, Community, Death and Dying, Leroy Sievers, NPR, Public Media, Public radio, Relationships, Web 2.0

Leroy Sievers died this weekend. This picture is one of him blogging for NPR on his cancer. His column on the NP Blog is called “My Cancer“.

I post about Leroy today not just to honor a great journalist and a courageous man but to make a point about voice. The human voice that is central to the relationship world that is struggling to emerge from the transactional world that we mainly inhabit today.

Leroy’s column at NPR was unusual in two ways. First of all it was based on a journalist telling a story about himself - what it was like to to live with and die from a disease that had condemned him. Death in our society is itself one of the great taboos. We can talk of almost anything but this. Secondly Leroy did not allow any distance between his public voice and himself. So he could and did talk of his fears and uncertainties, of the days when he despaired and felt too weak to go on, of the joys of little things and the vital importance of friends and lovers.

For those of us in the “club”, his column was an immense comfort. For we too feel all these things. By bringing his voice to the ’sphere, he gave us ours.

And that my friends is the point. Here is the announcement of his death on the blog. Please have a look at the comments - there are hundreds and hundreds already - to see what I mean by him giving us a voice.

For when it all is stripped away, the great power of the 2.0 world is not to sell us more stuff but to help us regain our humanity.

If you would like to know more about Leroy Sievers and what he meant to many people - NPR have a wonderful tribute page here

I find this photo album especially moving as Leroy unlocks the unpspoken words in others and they alo offer a glimpse of themselves - the face tells so much

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Dick Fosbury - Why the 2.0 Organization will have to wait for the Kids

August 12, 2008 at 2:32 pm · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Change, Fosbury Flop

It’s fitting during the 2008 Olympics that we recall Dick Fosbury who in 1968 revolutionized the high jump by doing something amazing - he went over backwards. Until then all top rated high jumpers used the straddle.

As you read the story of the Flop and how the establishment reacted, think about organizations today and how they push back at a 2.0 culture. My hope is that, as with the Flop, as the kids come up who only know the “Flop” or 2.0, then the establishment will have to cave.

You would have thought that all would have followed him. But they didn’t. All the elite athletes and the elite coaches were too invested in the straddle. They could not undo the years of repetition and muscle memory if they were an athlete. If they were an elite coach, what did they know of the new?

So of course all the establishment had to attack the Flop:

Here is how Dick Fosbury saw the challenge.

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Culture - The Secret to a 2.0 Organization

August 11, 2008 at 9:12 am · Filed under 2.0 Design Thinking, Barriers, Blogging, Business Model, CPB, Community, Control, Culture, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, Enterprise Software, KETC, Measurement, Mortage Crisis, Network Effect, Public Media, Public TV, Public radio, Relationships, Social Media, Social Networking, interaction

What is the secret of a 2.0 organization? Is it merely the mastery of the tools?

If your organization is all about control and top down - it is unlikely that having a Wordpress site will take you to the new world of networks. To make a 2.0 world work for those you serve means that you have to have such a world working inside your organization.

So what do you do to get this? It is clear to me that we have made this shift at KETC in St Louis.

The context of this story is a project that KETC is working on to find ways of activating the community in St Louis to help reduce the pain of the mortgage crisis.

In so doing we are testing the big idea that Public Media can do more than bring Jane Austen to your TV screen. The CPB is testing this idea in St Louis and if we have enough progress - will expand the test to many other cities and stations.

So an important task that we have to fulfill will be to help the system replicate what we have done.

The easy part of this task will be the “Whats”. The Content we created, what we did on air, on the web, in meetings with the community etc. But I don’t think that only talking of the “what” will be very helpful. I think that it will be the “how” that is the real secret. The “how” will be about the new culture - the new set of work and social norms that are behind becoming a convener.

We surely have to become a Convener inside the station before we can have much a of a chance of being the Trusted Convener outside. That is the really hard work. I know that KETC has pulled this off. But how can I tell you about the how. How do you tell another about a new way of being?

This weekend while watching the Olympics I had an aha about the “How” that I would like to try here with you.

Here is a picture of the Canadian men’s 8 at the Olympics yesterday.

When all the 8 in the boat and the cox are aligned - something magic happens. All the effort is applied to the work. When this happens, you feel it. It is almost a spiritual feeling. It’s a form of magic. The boat just flies. You dissolve into a field that is the boat, the 8 and the cox. You are ONE. All friction and resistance is gone.

With a big race and your reputation on the line - the pressure to get aligned is huge - you can feel if one person is not there with you.

This is what it feels like in our KETC project meetings now. It feels like the boat is flying - it feels so good to be with the other members of the boat.

The pressure is there. As the guinea pig for Public Media we feel the eyes of thousands upon us. Upping the pressure to perform seems to help with transformation. Like heat applied to water creates steam or heat applied to iron with other things creates steel.

So creating pressure about results, time and scale is a first step. You don’t go gradually into this - you have to go full tilt.

We had no time. the project is only 3 months long. So there was no time to be incompetent. In the early days we had to re-arrange the boat a bit to get the team that could do the work and do it with the others. We could not tolerate anyone in the boat who could not pull their weight. We acted immediately when it was clear that the mission was being threatened. This is not the pub media way but it is the real community way. Real communities see everything and expect a lot. Real communities are not soft.

But after this initial shift - we know we have the right team. With the right team we build energy and confidence over time. There is a trust and a confidence in each other that has been developed by publicly and transparently experiencing the abilities of the others.

To get this transparency - we have a process that is built around all involved making public commitments.

It has developed by a simple part of the Project Management process - the day starts with asking each other for help. Every day we meet for 30 minutes to talk about what is going on and all the cards are face up on the table. We have learned to be explicit. Not rude but very clear. A very different norm from the past or most organizations. Accountability is fully visible.

This does not seem like the typical meeting that many of us have. It is very operational - what has to get done today and this week. But it is also very social. As trust has built there is also a lot of laughter and banter. The walls of the silos are coming down. We are finding that people who we did not know or trust much can be very helpful and that they can work miracles. Especially when the chips are down.

We have set major milestones and we have surpassed them all. Everyone has been tested in public. By being open - by being demanding in public - we are closer. Nothing is not unsaid anymore. You don’t have to whinge in the washroom. This is more than transparency - this is “clarity”.

So how does this happen? Well we are set up as I now see like an 8. The engine room is of course the department heads - they do the rowing. But it is the project management structure and discipline that makes the 8 go so well. So let’s look at this because all can replicate this.

First of all we have “Cox”. Not the project sponsor, not the President but the Cox (The Project Manager). In an 8, it is the cox - usually a very small person (Our PM is new and is very young but is an old soul) - who not only steers but who encourages and who works with the crew to respond to threats and opportunities as they happen on the water in the race. He is always pulling us back to the task. He is always asking the awkward question - he is always asking for more clarity. He uses humor and self-deprecation to get his way. But behind him is the power of the coach and the President. He can always use disappointment as power - “Do we really have to go to Jack about this?” usually settles most issues without escalation.

So the PM/Cox not only sets the process tone but also shows us how to use power as a convener. He uses personal power and almost never has to escalate because all the conversations are in the open - bad behavior - is obvious to all - social pressure ensures good behavior.

There is no doubt in my mind that Project Management is a key skill in the operation of a high performing organization. What it does is it keeps focus - it forces accountability - it manages the white space between the silos - for this is where the cooperation is demanded. For a while it all feels forced for this is new. But after 9 weeks it is our new normal.

Of course what is really happening is that the PM is “Convening”. He is holding the kind of open and trusted space that enables groups to work well with each other. The central process at KETC has become Convening.

We are also seeing that the project never ends. There is always complex work that is measured by outcomes to do. That raises another issue. Outcomes and measurement: in the old norm, we were soft on both. Now everything that we do has to have an objective and hence has to have a measure. This again was awkward at first but now is a new normal.

Which brings us to the “Coach”. The Coach in an 8 is not the cox. The coach’s work is all about ensuring that the goals are set and the capability is ready. We have such a role being played at KETC - the project Sponsor.

There is a lot of discipline in the role. The coach is not one of the guys. The coach pushes all the time. the coach has expectations.The coach sees the needs of the whole race/project. She sees how this race/project connects to others. She sees the development needs and she has an eagle eye on personnel. If someone is not working out, she has to deal with this.

Part of her power comes from her appointment. She has been selected by the “Club President”. She can escalate and does over personnel and budget issues. But she settles organizational issues from her position. But not all her power is delegated from the President. She has her own power based on her own achievements. For the coach is also rooted in their own talent. She has deep skills in a key area - Community Engagement. She has a track record of her own in getting tough jobs done well.

Finally we have the club president. He is responsible for the financial envelope - which provides the boat etc. This is a separate role to that of the Coach or the Cox. But in most organizations this person does all of this.

This is what I mean by Top Down organizations being political. They tend to be like medieval courts, where factions compete for influence and power. All the work happens in the corridors or in secret. Little is really visible. All in the end is decided by the King.

What is happening at KETC is that all the key work is now taking place in a process that is fully transparent. The President can look at the boat in the water and see all the workings. Accountability is clear.

• Each rower has his or her part and they have to be visibly working with the rest of the 8.
• The cox’s ability to get the boat running optimally in each race is clear to all - especially in the boat itself.
• The results of the boat belong to the coach - her role is clear.
• The resources for the club are the President’s role - and he is delivering and he also sets the tone.

The President in our case, asked the team for it all. He wants Gold in an Olympic setting and he asks for nothing less. In asking for all, he is getting it.

So that’s my metaphor. If you run your organization like a rowing team, if you set up the key roles as you find in a rowing team, you can make the shift inside from 1.0 to 2.0.

The irony is that the 2.0 world is more disciplined than the 1.0 world. But as you can see much of the discipline happens because of visibility and clarity. It’s like being in a small town. What you say and what you do can never be a secret. So your word and your actions define you. In a small town you also have to help each other.

In the 1.0 world of the huge city - there is little social pressure. All is anonimity. So there have to be rules and policemen and gaming the system.

Installing the kind of Project Management Process that we are using at KETC gives you a good shot at making this shift.

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Wired’s Wiki Guide to watching the Olympics on the Web

August 7, 2008 at 7:51 am · Filed under Olympic Web Coverage

Wired have a useful wiki here that will help you watch on the web - as a Canadian I seem to be blocked nearly everywhere - including NBC!!!

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How do you get more for less? - The Network effect!

July 30, 2008 at 12:06 pm · Filed under AP, Control, Culture, Michael Rosenblum, Network Effect, Twitter

I was talking with a client the other day and I scared and depressed her - she is already working at more than full stretch. I told here that she would have to find a way to get more for less. I did not know that this is corporate code for more layoffs and the survivors doing more.

What I meant was this.

Many papers and news outlets pay for AP membership. But as these stats from Twitter show - if you want to cover breaking news - Twitter can do it faster. They also do it better in that as a station builds its Twitter gang - as the BPP did - it builds a fanatic membership. Members who do not pay money and get a Coffee Cup - but are true members of the Station Tribe. They work for you but not for money - they work for you because they belong

Imagine your entire state covered in every area - imagine every state connected to every part of the world - now you have a news service. What does it cost? A lot less than AP.

Of course what I am talking about is The Network Effect. This is what I mean by more for less.

I think that this idea can work in every part of a station’s world. Look at me or Mike Rosenblum. Few papers or stations could afford to have Mike or me full time. I can’t speak for mike but I would never be able to restrict myself to one employer anyway - I would learn to little.

But stations can Time Share people like me. This is not transactional consulting. I want to be involved - even when I am not being paid. I worked for NPR for a full year after my contract ended and visited them on my own dime. I still am very attached. There are people with all sorts of skills who want to be attached to you. They want to do more than send a check. They want to be able to say “I work for Public radio and TV” and mean it. These people have tons of skills in all fields.

I am thinking “Tribe” more and more. In your tribe will be people who merely Twitter - they are your news wire and immediate feedback loop. There are regulars who make local content for you - video, audio, call in whtever. There are regulars who find content for you.  There are regulars who help with development.

There are experts in required fields such as media, accounting, legal, and maybe local politics.

I know all of this to be true. So what is in the way?

I think it is organization and culture - oh that again!

I see w new job in media - the Tribal Connector - do you have anyone who hosts the space for the larger Tribe - who looks out and after them? I bet you don’t. In fact many in full time parts of the organization fear the outsider who may know more than them and feel shown up.

In my ancient past I was SVP Marketing for the Investment Bank at CIBC, then the 10th largest bank in North America.  What did I know about marketing? Squat. So I did not build an empire and run it from my pinnacle of ignorance. Instead I hired a person who knew everyone in the field in Toronto. She and our secretary were the only full time people. We attracted and kept a wonderful tribe of the best people in the business. We could turn around anything in any time. All the infrastructure was outsourced but the key members of the tribe were very close. All our budget went on the deliverables.

This worked because we acknowledged that the best people in a creative field would never work full time for a bank. Our job was to get the brief right and to connect to the best people. We did this by creating trust with the inner circle.

No one knows it all. Even less can you know it all when all you do is one thing in one place.

So the way forward I think is to accept that the best people will not work for you full time but that you can get a bit of the best people - if you are nice and if you are straight.

I think that stations can get much more for much less if they were to explore this. Why not try a Twitter Breaking News Tribe First? No risk and you learn how to do this

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Life after Death - BPP Diner?

July 29, 2008 at 12:24 pm · Filed under BPP Diner, Bryant Park Project, NPR, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Objects

The show Bryant Park Project has been off the air for 2 show days and what is happening?

There are nearly 300 members of the BPP Diner that are assembling at a NIng site that is there to catch the fall out from the show.

This is twice the norms of the Dunbar number of 150 that will assure a healthy self-regulated site. My sense if that the site will grow much larger.

In only a few days I am seeing a number of patterns:

• Grieving - so important to tell the stories of the deceased many are humorous - just like we do after a person has died. In fact part of the site reminds me so much of being with friends and family grieving a loved one. This is so much more than a show being canceled
• Anger - I have set one rule for the site - Just be nice - this is a hard line but most are there but there is a lot of anger
• Relief - one of the parts of BPP that was not there except on Twitter was the ability of the members to interact with each other - many are so happy to be able to do this
• Global - many come from all over the world - we are all a bit stunned by the geography - Russia, France, Israel - so is Public Media really just American anymore?
• Struggle - to learn how the software really works - Ning is very intuitive but now there are a lot of people using it with varied experience - it could be easier - many cant see the Music link and the forum is constrained
• Getting lost - with so many people doing stuff - I can’t keep up any more and I am wondering how we are going to make sense of it all - I am hoping that Groups of interest will form
• It’s a world - the site is so big, so dynamic and so varied already that you can disappear into it for hours - redefines content for me

But I think one of things that we all miss is more structure - a hard core centre of content. I suspect that if we cannot repalce this - the site will die for nostalgia can only supply so much energy

My bottom lne is that the site is a very important experiment - can a community site with only a handful of volunteer admins create enough energy from content to keep us all coming back and to expand the site?

If we can find the answer, then we will have found the holy grail I think

So my friends - what to do - how do we put a sun into the centre of this system that will act as both the gravity pull and the energy push?

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Content in a world where it is infinite - Dr Horrible

July 19, 2008 at 7:08 am · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, Dr Horrible, Hulu.com, Movie Making, iTunes

We are all struggling to find a way of making content valuable again. When it was scarce and you could only see it on a big screen or on your TV on a certain channel in a certain place at a certain time - the content had the value of scarcity. But now….? With as much content being posted on the web in a week that was on the air in a year back on the TV times of the 1970’s, where is the value?

Dr Horrible may be showing us one way.

This amazing film was launched this week for free in the 3 installments on the web. Come next week it will no longer be available - at least for free.

In the few days it has been available, it has caused a firestorm. First of all - it is very well done indeed. So there is the essential quality.

The makers are using all the rules of the 2.0 world.

• The have not negotiated with the 1.0 world for distribution
• They are using Hulu to show the web version
• They will be using iTunes to distribute the paid version
• And marketing? Of course they are using me and you - the early adopters who have some influence - I had to see this because of Laura at BPP - you might see it because of me - a friend of your might see it because of you and so on.
• They have used another form of scarcity - a very limited time of “free”
• They have used another form of scarcity - 3 installments built expectations and hope for the resolution.

And how does it end - Does Dr Horrible get the Girl? Does he deal with his Nemisis, Captain Hammer? Is he accepted into the A List of Evil Doers? Does it end happily? - Well you will have to watch it to find out.

Is it well made? Yes - very tight, great cast, great plotting and ideas, the music is exceptional - it kept me rapt all along and the end….. brilliant.

Will Dr Horrible do well? What do you think? Is this a model - yes

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