Ok, i’m late to this one. My first blog post from an air plane - somewhere over Montreal on my way to speak at the The WorldBlu Forum. Have also helped WorldBlu create “The Grid” - a live interactive bloggy like site where you’ll be able to find transcripts, recordings, blogs, photos, etc.
Been following Jay Rosen’s coverage of the “MillerGate” at the New York Times and are really impressed. (read his last 8-10 posts - they’re long but wort the read).
It’s a showcase of what human conversationel hyperlinked investigative journalism is. When you can dig into the core of a story, link to sources and other people’s reporting, when a site becomes the hub for a story for a few weeks - just in time media.
That it then covers the same missing elements in traditionel journalism at the most well respected newspaper in the world is only ironic.
Scripting News: Like a BloggerCon
“Later this week Google will have their invite-only Zeitgeist conference. It’s as closed as a conference can be. And this is the company we lifted on our shoulders and held up as a shining example of the web at its best. We were wrong to do that, but forgive us for having hope. At some core level Google did understand the web, but there was also a lot about Google that was against the web, and now that’s most of what they are.”
Ahh, classic Dave Winer rant - so true, so true. Was worried for a moment that Dave was drinking the silicon valley web2.0 kool aid - but then he rants the web way. The web way is recognizing that the world is larger than your little site, your little organization, your needs and acting accordingly. Acting like you live in a world that’s larger than yourself and your little ecosystem (sounds obvious, but it’s difficult).
It’s creating common infrastructure - and open field for sharing, competition and conversations.
This is what’s working at the core infrastructure level of the internet, it’s whats working in terms of “the world wide web” and it’s whats working in the blogosphere.
And this is nowhere in the definitions of a meme that someone calls web2.0 (btw, i here by pledge never to use that word again on this blog).
Innovation is an amazing big buzzword/hype these days. Some of it is definitely valid since it focuses organizations towards change and development in a world of chaos - some of it is really bad since people keep creating industrial ways of doing innovation - of which most of them have no empirical evidence of working in the real world - but all the consultants needs to have them. (Don’t get me started on how the lack of creation stories distorts our view on how things start/happen). So my cheap shot at a definition of innovation which definitely has been made on the shoulders of giants and probably really isn’t new at all.
Innovation = People creating something that creates new meaning
People because it ultimately isn’t about processes, diversity or design, but about human individuals with empathy, cognition, ideas, values, goals, need for recognition, backgrounds and relationships. Creation because it isn’t about academic design processes or industrial product development, but about the type of creation everyone has in us from day one we enter this world, we can all create - we can all innovate. Meaning because value is to vague and minor, meaning because it’s new meaning in terms of how look at ourselves and how we perceive the world around us.
Trine-Maria Kristensen mailed a customer the other day saying that i would be coming along for a meeting because we needed some “no compromises attitude” for the meeting. However frank it was it kind of reasoned with me and my thinking these days. Not that i don’t understand compromises and make a lot of them my selves every day, but because compromises aren’t solutions to today’s major paradigm shifts. They worked as solutions for incremental change/evolution within a paradigm, but in paradigms shifts there’s no room for compromises.
Compromises occur when people don’t go all the way, go all in, dumb down the paradigm shifts to commercialize them quickly, when people adopt words and vocabulary for from a new paradigm and use it to sexy up the existing paradigms, when people don’t dare to do it, when people simplify/make light versions of the changes that are happening because they are unwilling to accept the paradigm shift fully - but want the fame and recognition from it - ultimately when people don’t respect the core the idea and treat it accordingly.
Compromises are the center of cycles. When a cycle of change opens up it’s about getting as much as possible of change and new core ideas into it - instead of making compromises and seeing the cycle of possibility for change close again with only small improvements. Maximizing change potentials of cycles is the core. And compromises are it’s enemy. And when i say maximizing i mean the maximizing the potential for change against the adaptability of people, models, beliefs and systems.
I’ve been seeing this happening in the real world for all my adult life. The internet in the early 90’s was an amazing opening for social, democratic and societal change - eventually it got dumbed down to companies having homepages and hardcore capitalists playing their old games. New openings are appearing every day again, new cycles are starting - and i’m seeing the usual patterns of compromises effectively for every day that goes by limiting the potential for change in the cycle. Mostly because of ignorance of the idea, unwillingness to really understand the idea, not giving recognition to the people behind the ideas or lack of respect for the idea.
So what could be the solution? First of all realizing the huge responsibility people with insights have not to compromise the ideas, especially people in trusted positions. Secondly being very frank and open about calling out the compromises that are happening - not playing nice for fitness or a quick buck. So the next time you see someone saying they have a blog when they really don’t call them out, when they say they’re innovating when they really aren’t call them out, when they say they’re so web2.0 - but really are playing by the old playbooks call them out. Call them out in a nice way and offer your humble constructive help. Encourage long term thinking all over instead of focusing on easy realities or a easy money.
Respect the idea, don’t compromise it. I think we’ll get to tomorrow much faster and efficient if you do.
Makes any sense?
How does it relate to the traditional adaption cycle of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, etc.?