Information makes Communication Redundant
It’s funny how, despite change being the only constant, some people don’t believe it happens. The prime minister visited the Hub Westminster last week. This visit percolated all the way to Abergavenny, where my Mum read about it in the Daily Telegraph. She relayed the inverted comma scorn poured on people who were “creative” indulging in “blue sky thinking”.
I guess having the papers taking the piss out of you is a sign of having arrived. However, it’s precisely this kind of self satisfied mindset that makes it so hard to believe that things ever can change. The thing is, when they do, it happens in the blink of an eye.
jQuery is the de-facto library for the web, installed on 85% of websites. There are calls for the last few major release versions to be shipped in all major browsers. Then look what just came along: two way data binding in the form of <angular />, Ember.js and friends. Suddenly the very thing that jQuery is so good at, DOM manipulation, is abstracted out of the picture.
The lesson, which we all know, is that change comes not from beating the incumbent at their own game but from focusing on what’s going to make their strength irrelevant. Youngme Moon’s book Different is a short masterclass in disruptive thinking. It includes this classic diagramme of a young woman and an elderly lady, which can only be seen in one way at a time (you either see the young woman or you see the elderly lady). The power of this illusion is that it demonstrates seeing the same world with different eyes.
Disruptive thinking gives you disruptive eyesight. This moment, at the very beginning of the Internet revolution is particularly ripe for its focus. So far, the main impact has been to change communication: hello email, hello tweet. However, the real shift is towards a pervasive web where information is implicit: tending towards availability.
Just as <angular /> abstracts out DOM manipulation, implicit information abstracts out whole tranches of activity. Communication, for so long the core skill of successful brands, people and organisations, switches, in the blink of an eye, from being the young woman to the elderly lady. The strengths of vast swathes of incumbent are as useful as delivering a pizza to someone who’s already eaten a double helping of chilli and cheese.
It may be tempting to view a future of no communication as a land of the blind where the one eyed man is king. In a world with no marketing, surely the business that buys ads will thrive? However, this misses the pivotal cultural shift. As HG Wells illustrated so well, people’s behaviour is governed by the culture they operate in.
Communication is now just a sign of your own impotence. Communicators are either in the tiny percentile working for information retrieval or delivering pizzas that are only going to get cold.
Getting Things Done with Google Apps and Do.com
I was chatting with @h4rrydog a couple of days ago about the best tools to collaborate “internally”, i.e.: between ourselves and with ad hoc teams of other people. Every man and his dog has their preferred workflow but I just setup one that’s so delightful I can’t help but share it.
The setup is to use a Google Apps email address (n.b.: #) with Do.com. The workflow is to use the little gadget Do.com installs into your gmail interface to turn emails into tasks. The task title is autocompleted with the email subject. There’s a small link to populate the task description with the email body and autocomplete widgets to assign the task to a person, a project and a due date.
It’s zen. Try it a couple of times. Headspace zero.
Released pyramid_assetgen package.
I’ve released a Python package called pyramid_assetgen that helps integrate Tav’s Assetgen static build tool with the Pyramid web application development framework. As the docs say:
Using it allows you to code in languages (like CoffeeScript and SASS) that compile to JavaScript and CSS, swapping between a refresh-the-page-to-see-changes development environment and an optimal HTTP caching production setup — without ever having to change any of the code in your Pyramid application.
The Dominatrix and the Case of the Missing Tools
When I first heard about the BBC’s Sherlock, my heart sank. Talk about flogging a dead horse.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s adventures in 21st Century London. A thrilling, funny, fast-paced contemporary remake of the Arthur Conan Doyle classic.
Last night, I watched it for the first time. It was exceptionally good. Bursting with character and rapier dialogue. The problem was that no matter how engrossing the drama, I kept being jolted out of my suspension of disbelief by the tenuous clips dropped in to reiterate the plot.
There is a scene where Sherlock cracks the code to a particularly alluring dominatrix’s safe. The code we see him entering immediately explains how he does it (spoiler alert: it’s her vital measurements). However, just to make sure that every viewer gets it, the dialogue has to lapse from rapier into journeyman so the dominatrix can laboriously explain this to Dr Watson. Later on, they parachute in a remarkably artificial clip where Sherlock summarises the entire plot, for no reason whatsoever, to two henchmen driving him to the airport.
I mention this because it illustrates the difference between mass media and the web. (As with most years) it’s widely predicted that in 2012, TV and the Internet will really converge. We’ll have Dropbox logos on our flat screens and our iPad alongside the remote. TV that puts the user in control of what they watch and how they watch it. The joy of which is that viewers who get the plot first time round needn’t suffer the tedium of its reiteration.
Interesting stuff over Xmas
Back this morning after a break in Croatia and Prague. While I deliberately left my computer at home, my information addiction was strong enough to have me peeking regularly at my phone.
The best post I read was Everything is a Service, on the shift to a service oriented economy. I also enjoyed this clearly written reminder on the different ways to go viral.
Cory Doctorow’s keynote on The Coming War on General Computation, in tandem with the whole SOPA drama, seems to have re-energised the fight for freedom on the Internet. I don’t know about you but I did enjoy witnessing GoDaddy’s karmic reward for the appalling UX they’ve inflicted on us for all these years.
Now we’re officially in the year of the Dropbox clone, Insync landed with Google Docs integration. Gitdocs kicked off the open source alternative beauty parade. Sit back and enjoy.
Other open source projects I liked the look of were TouchDB and this Node.js JavaScript sandbox. Schedulables seemed like a good idea and Quicksand looked like a company worth keeping an eye on.
Beyond that I mainly got myself irrevocably confused by reading The Time-traveller’s Guide to Medieval England whilst exploring Prague with a Lonely Planet guide. Czech culture and that of fourteenth century England will now, for me, be forever hazily intertwined.
Filter by Proximity, Sort by Most Recent
This post is about a user interface pattern, a common use case for it and an example implementation. The pattern is adding an extra dimension to a timeline. The use case is showing results that are both recent and nearby. The example implementation uses a slider widget and an adequate-result-volume algorithm.
When you have 1000 messages and you want to prioritise the best 50 to display, sort is the most common pattern. If the user is interested in the latest messages, sort by most recent. If they want to see the messages other users found interesting, sort by a metric like views or rating. However, the web is increasingly about real time data. Developers are processing streams and modelling tubes instead of tables. It rarely makes sense to display real time data in any order apart from most recent. So, what do you do when you want to prioritise by another dimension, like proximity or rating?
Togethr as Earthquake Smoothing System
Togethr is an app platform and social marketplace with aspirations to become a social economy. Why, you might ask, do we need a new social economy? Because to treat an illness you go to the cause.
Ever since Keynes, governments have borrowed money to stimulate growth in order to protect jobs. The cause of the economic crisis is not debt but instead the need for job security. Job changes are like earthquakes, they can shatter a life. If job losses were not so shattering, we would not need to borrow to ensure they don’t happen. (Nor would we need to be so nervous about the day of reckoning when the credit runs out).
We smooth quakes by inducing small shifts. When vocational shifts are on the scale of project or task there is no need for job security. Togethr provides a means to earn a crust without having to have a job, a contract or, for that matter, permission. Social security without the tax burden or disincentive to work.
From WikiHouse to #Manyfacturing
I’ve been part of the team behind WikiHouse. It’s a fascinating project that points to a future where the Internet disrupts manufacturing.
WikiHouse is an open source construction set. A standard for designing houses that can be made using CNC milling technology. On one level you can download, print and assemble ready-designed houses. On the other you can tweak, share and combine componentised designs.
Micro-processing technology moved computing from the university to the pocket. CNC milling and 3D printing are digital fabrication technologies moving manufacturing from the factory to the garage.
As access to the hardware opens up, the number of people experimenting will increase. We’ve seen in software that, with the right infrastructure, open source will rapidly outstrip proprietary design. Architecture and product design is currently done in silos, without the serendipity of the pull request.
Those sectors will inevitably be disrupted. As The Guardian said about WikiHouse:
“Such open platforms, using the creative commons, are one of the major forces that will change our conception of design in the near future.”
If you’re interested in getting involved, 00:/ are organising a series of community events.
View from the Hub Westminster
Absolutely knocked for six at the view from the Hub Westminster boardroom.
Talk about the Format
A few weeks ago, I hosted a lunch at the Sheffield Doc Fest. It was billed as being about how documentary makers can make effective use of the web. The vast majority of documentary makers were asking the wrong question:
how can I use the web to fund and distribute my documentary?
Let’s pretend for a moment that the web for documentary makers is YouTube. YouTube provides publishing, not distribution. You can get your content up and out there but you don’t get a ready made audience for it.
For distribution (an audience) on the web, you need pull. You need to be a content publisher that people seek out, subscribe to, share and respond to. As Seth Godin has been saying for a long time, it’s about tribes, about leading a movement.
The opportunity the web affords documentary makers is to build pull through the format. As we seen everywhere from the Camp Nou to the X-Factor, fans love to feel that they’ve co-created the narrative. The activity and sense of co-creation breeds advocates.
Providing opportunities for profound co-creation, be it through trans-media, non-linear or interactive documentary making, builds pull. Documentary makers and digital thinkers need to talk together about the format, not how to distribute it.
Safety in Numbers
Yes, the media need the book thrown at them (and, as HUGE says it’s not just one tabloid but all of them). But how on earth were the voicemails accessed in the first place?
The phone companies left the back door open, effectively issuing everyone with a default password of 1234. If I did that as a web developer, I’d be hung out to dry. There’s no question that it was calculated incompetence: the sales team shouted down the head of security.
If we learn one thing from phone hacking it’s that it’s no use being a dumb user: you can’t rely on the invisible hand to keep your data safe. It’s too busy making money.
It’s called a Pull Strategy
What should leaders think about? What’s the strategic conversation that cuts to the heart of the matter?
If you look at my last post, it’s all about web strategy and content strategy. We know that the web has disrupted and continues to disrupt everything, so it’s clear that organisations need a strategic approach to it. However, one of the fascinating things to learn from Jonathan Kahn was how he uses content strategy as a trojan horse: a conversation starter leading to something more fundamental.
Yesterday was my first board meeting as a Trustee of London Creative Labs. The two founders, Mamading and Sophia are setting out on a journey to demonstrate and refine how jobs can be created through local enterprise: skills camps to build confidence and capacity, labs to stimulate social enterprise startups and incubation to help those startups grow.
The conversation, largely steered by Gloria Charles, ranged across topics, including outreach and communication. Part of the challenge is to engage people on the ground and part is to show the world there is a better way to create work. To deliver on the second part, Mamading and Sophia need to develop pull.
They need to build a profile and following to benefit from the acceleration and serendipity provided by people, organisations, clients and funders seeking them out and - here’s the real point - so does everybody else. London Creative Labs is a great illustration of a general truth.
Web, content, communication and even business strategy are secondary to pull strategy. The web is a channel to build pull. Content is a means of building pull. You communicate to build pull. Business is a matter of pull.
Discussing pull is the most fundamental strategic conversation.
What Kind of Authority Does Web Strategy Need?
I was fortunate to meet Jonathan Kahn last week. The first time I came across his agency Together London, I was electrified by the copy. Finally! Someone articulating what I had been trying to say:
It’s not 1999 any more. The web is the primary channel. Get a web strategy.
One of Kahn’s insights is that getting the web right requires a shift in focus:
A typical web or communications initiative happens at 20,000 feet (areas of focus), but the problems we’re talking about are at 30,000 or 40,000 feet (goals, vision). We need to gain some height.
This reminded me of Lucy Kimbell’s definition of service design:
User-centred design asks how can we design a better toaster. Designing for service explores what meaning and what value toast-making has.
What we’re seeing in both content / web strategy and service design is the need to go to the heart of the matter. To ask what we are trying to achieve, rather than just how to achieve it. As Khan points out, this puts you in management space:
You know the project is unlikely to achieve its objectives because of problems with strategy, governance, execution, or measurement. But that higher-level stuff is outside your official scope. What can you do about it?
One answer he pointed me towards, by Lisa Welchman, is to define web strategy at the very top of an organisation:
Formalization of Authority is the emplacement of high-level authority for Web Governance and Web Execution … In order to have power, it is an action that is best performed from a very senior level of the organization.
Now, I need to delve a little more into governance but this immediately rings alarm bells. The lessons from service design show that top-down authority will not deliver value. Web strategy needs to enshrine freedom from command and control.
Upgrading Browser Support from Yahoo to Google
At Large Blue, we often deferred the question of which browsers a website should support to Yahoo’s list of A-Grade Browsers. Now though, it’s time to switch to mirror Google’s strategy of supporting the two most recent versions of every browser.
Deferring to Yahoo’s list of A-Grade Browsers made a lot of sense. It delegated the research to Yahoo and came with a stamp of authority. I can’t remember a single client querying the decision (once they knew what it meant).
However, it’s now time to move on. In today’s cross-platform web and mobile world, the number of browsers is ballooning. As jQuery Mobile’s docs put it:
In mobile development there are more engines, on more platforms, and with more active versions of the browsers.
(As Tav pointed out to me when discussing browser support for the Togethr platform), Google’s strategy is to track fewer versions:
Beginning August 1st [2011], we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.
For web developers, mirroring Google has all of the advantages of deferring to Yahoo and a significant advantage. You’re still validated by and deferring to a respected external authority. In addition, you’re also supporting fewer browser versions.
This allows you to support more browsers, which reflects the diversification of platforms across web and mobile.
Customer’s Point of View
Whenever I order a minicab, I have to sneak in the final question:
“How much is it going to cost?”
Whenever I order food to pick up, I have to say:
“Oops, sorry, how long is that going to take?”
In both these situations, it’s understandable that the minicab company and restaurant don’t want to volunteer the information. If the minicab company has to confirm the cost in advance, that limits the opportunity for the driver to ask for more. If the restaurant has to confirm the time, they have to make sure the food is ready by then.
I’ve learned, as a pretty basic life skill, to catch the conversation before its over and insist on asking the question. Yet I still slightly dread it and it costs me a little bit of emotional energy. I’m sure there are other, perhaps less confident, people who find it much harder, or just don’t ask.
They just book their food from the friendly restaurant who always repeat the order and confirm the cost without having to be asked.
