The Casablanca Weblog

Promises made, promises kept

2012-02-01T06:43:00.000Z

It's been fascinating learning about the Sydney agency landscape since arriving here in December. There aren't too many large digital agencies here compared with back in London, and advertising agencies tend to dominate the scene, both in terms of revenue and client contact. However, as elsewhere, advertising revenue is falling, and marketers are united in seeing digital as an important part of the solution.

There's agreement on the 'what', but mixed consensus on the 'how'.

Some advertising agencies see digital simply as another way to advertise, albeit with a few interactive features. They treat digital disciplines as subservient to the advertising process, led by creatives and planners who don't necessarily have a digital heritage. Digital may even be treated simply as a production activity, where those who truly understand digital may be isolated from the planning process altogether.

Fortunately, others recognise that this is an unsustainable approach, which misses the huge potential that customers now expect from their vendors, and that vendors, in turn, look for from their agencies. For a while now we've been living in a world where the customer calls the shots. If you don't deliver what customers expect, they'll tell everyone they know on Twitter or Facebook right there and then. Providing an exemplar service to customers is not only more complicated than it used to be, but more important as well - and that's where the focus and budgets are switching.

The role of advertising has to evolve in this changing marketing landscape. To stay effective, it requires meaningful integration between promises made and promises kept. Digital solutions fit in both camps (sometimes, as with social media, at the same time). Thinking has to be integrated across the full spectrum of communications through the line and across the board, from advertising to social media activity, from websites to interactive displays, from open data to call centres, from mobile to content strategy, and more. An integrated strategic approach has never been more important.

For some companies and agencies, this will be difficult or maybe even impossible. But for those vendors who recognise the relationship with their customer has already changed, and have the nerve to restructure and prioritise accordingly, the future is theirs to own.

Joining DTDigital

2012-02-01T06:30:00.001Z

I'm pleased to announce that I've joined DTDigital as General Manager of their Sydney office!

DTDigital has become established as the premier digital agency in Melbourne, combining several of my passions including user experience design, creative services, technology and strategy. They're partnered with Badjar Ogilvy in Melbourne, and the plan is to do the same with Ogilvy & Mather in Sydney.

Looking forward to it!

2012 - The year of humility

2012-01-16T03:58:00.000Z

I've been away from work for a little while (hopefully not much longer!), which is always a good way to get some perspective on things. As our industry continues to evolve and emerge, I thought I'd make a (non-Mayan) prediction on one of the main ways the digital world will change in 2012.

The web offers bountiful opportunities for companies when seen as a service medium. And it's staggering how many companies out there still don't understand this - or at least, don't reflect this in their service levels. And this is at a time when the near ubiquitous presence of social media amplifies and accelerates the pace at which customers' expectations rise, and their inclination to share experiences - good and bad, in real time - has become second nature.

Providing an excellent service over the web is both hard and expensive. Even still, I believe that 2012 will mark the inflection point where a majority of those companies who haven't got their act together finally accept that they have to improve their service levels anyway, just to remain competitive. Customers are increasingly better informed to make a commitment with those who do.

While movements such as VRM signal the direction of travel, I doubt most large companies are anything like ready enough to implement the wide scale change in organisation and culture required to serve customers in this way in 2012. This will come later, piecemeal. The improved service I'm talking about today is more within reach; a recognition that customers have more control over the fiscal relationship than ever before, the humility which comes from this recognition, and the activity which springs from this realisation. I'm expecting internal disruption within organisations, which will manifest itself as improved service levels outside.

Here's hoping, anyway!

The Open Road

2011-12-02T02:30:00.001Z

It's now four weeks since we left the UK, and it's been every bit as brilliant as we'd hoped. It's been quite interesting comparing our trip to Ivanka's, which in turn is a bit like the trip we took in 2003-04. While those trips allow(ed) plenty of room for serendipity and adventure, ours is a bit more regimented. Such is life when travelling with small children, especially one with a few minor health issues - knowing well in advance where we'll be staying each night allows us to find things the kids'll like to do, and ensure they get a good night's sleep, making it a more fun and relaxing trip for everyone. And I'd like to think I've learned a lesson or two from The Griswald Family.

That said, we've still had some lovely surprises while we've been en route. Broadly speaking, our trip has had three legs (links are to maps, names for kids in brackets):

Orlando to New Orleans ("Southern Swing")
Denver to Los Angeles ("Western Deserts")
Oahu and The Big Island, Hawaii ("Lava Lands" - where you'll find us now)

The highlight from the first leg was definitely New Orleans. The rest of the Deep South was lovely - the people were friendly and the food was *amazing*, especially in The Brick Pit - but New Orleans itself is something special. We love the music and the mood, so nicely epitomised in David Simon's Treme, and it's something that can't really be captured in photos. The closest we got was when we discovered and joined a Second Line en route from the French Quarter to Frenchmen Street. It was to celebrate a Jewish wedding - hopefully this snap will give you an idea of how vibrant and exciting this can be:

The other highlight of Louisiana was the food. Oh my God, the food! We had plenty of good nosh in New Orleans, but the best meal of all was in a town called Breaux Bridge, a few hours West of New Orleans in Cajun Country. There, we discovered the delights of Crawfish Étouffée, which is making me drool just thinking about it...

Add New Orleans to your bucket list now, if you haven't already!

As for the second leg, it was all about National Parks. We managed to hit six of these in the space of 11 days (Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, Grand Canyon), plus not-National-Parks Monument Valley and Antelope Canyon for good measure.

They were all incredible, but we were surprised to find that Grand Canyon was probably the least engaging of the six - once you've got over the initial wow factor of that view (and to fair, it is a blockbuster view), you find that it's very similar from all the viewpoints, as are the viewpoints from the trails along and inside the rim, and there are way more people there than at the other parks.

Definitely still worth a visit, though.

In contrast, the other parks have a huge amount of variety, both within each park and compared to each other. Zion Canyon is stunning, Bryce Canyon simply bizarre, Canyonlands epic and Arches novel. The National Park Service does a terrific job looking after these treasures, and the Junior Park Ranger programmes they run helped us look after ours. Here's a snap of Zion:

And Mesa Arch in Canyonlands was another highlight:

Anyway, where was I? I was talking about surprises, wasn't I? Well, Route 66 (at least, the 100 mile section we rode on) served up an interesting treat or two. A few stops along the way were littered with Americana (and I'm a fan of Americana), but what made it special was listening to KZKE en route - brilliant!

And now here we are in Hawaii. I knew it was famous for Turtles, but I honestly didn't expect them to pose for me...!

And as for the sunsets...

Anyway, the end of our trip is in sight (arriving in Sydney on 10th December), so our thoughts are turning to the long list of administration awaiting our arrival - not least of which is finding a job. And go on a diet. Maybe after Christmas?

I'm glad to say we've found somewhere to live in Sydney for the first six months (in Cammeray), but we don't move in there until 19th December - we'll bridge the gap in a campervan, first staying at a campsite in the city, and then in one an hour North of the city. It'll be nice to finally empty our bags...! :-)

In the meantime, a full set of photos and few little videos can be found in this Flickr collection.

A lasting legacy

2011-10-06T14:31:00.002Z

A few days ago, there was an interesting article in The American comparing Steve Jobs to Thomas Edison. The gist is that Jobs' legacy doesn't measure up to Edison's - mainly because people are generally unaware of how much Edison achieved in his lifetime (it was a lot).

Putting to one side the fact we're not comparing apples with apples, if you'll pardon the pun, I think we're still a long way from realising the extent of Jobs' impact. You can see it far, far beyond Apple's product line. By setting the bar so high, he's forced the entire technology market to change the way they design their products over the past 10 years. I see Jobs' legacy in every phone, every computer, every tablet - anything technological which has an interface. Products formally seen as 'good' are now mercilessly mocked, and don't last long.

Our expectations have gone up. Through the roof.

But the true legacy reaches much further than the technology market. It can be seen in the way we design everything - from physical products, to services, to transport systems, to web sites. We want everything to work better, no exceptions, no excuses.

Of course there have always been companies with a strong customer service record. But given how technology in general, and the web in particular, weaves its way through every aspect of our lives, having such a fantastic cheerleader in the technology world for putting the user experience first - and actually showing how it should be done - has benefitted everyone and everything.

Our ambition for every project, both here at The Team and at previous employers too, reflects this march of progress. We're always thinking about the end user, whether it's a company employee, citizen, customer or student. Whether we're designing services, products, websites, posters, or anything else. All good companies and agencies do this now. And I think Steve Jobs and his colleagues can take some of the credit for this.

Thanks Steve!

(Thanks also to Jonathan Mak for the Apple / Jobs logo)

Leaving on a jet plane

2011-08-26T15:08:00.003Z

When my wife and I were doing a round-the-world trip in 2003/04, we lived in Sydney for 10 months - and fell in love with the place. So much so that we've decided to move back and spend some more time there; we've spent the last two years trying to get a visa, and I'm happy to say they're letting us in!

We'll be leaving on 15th October all being well, doing some travelling en route, and we'll arrive down under mid-December. We'll start off living in a borough called Cammeray, nicely located between the main harbour and middle harbour (map). No jobs lined up yet, but the intention is to start asking around in September.

Hope to see some of you there!

Prototyping in code

2011-07-27T14:47:00.005Z

I've just written a post for The Team blog on this subject, but given that my personal blog has a more web design-savvy audience I'll do an abridged version here. If this version doesn't make sense, you know where to look!

We hosted the inaugural UX Bootcamp last week, organised by Leisa Reichelt. The subject was ‘Prototyping in Code’. I'll assume for sake of brevity that readers know what prototyping is and why it's important.

But why use working code for prototypes? There are a few potential reasons:

With experience, and a set of good templates, it's possible to create and amend a prototype really quickly

It allows you to include and test complex interactions, such as click events or fancy form elements. You can also test for different browser widths / screen sizes, including mobile, especially if you have an understanding of media queries

By improving our understanding of web site architecture, it strengthens our ability to describe intentions to web developers

By designing sites in this way, you don't have to spend money on other tools such as OmniGraffle or Photoshop

The UX Bootcamp was, first and foremost, a crash course in creating basic code. We learned how to mark up content correctly, how to style it using CSS and how to introduce funky interactions using JavaScript (predominantly JQuery, but also Chosen for forms). We learned where to find useful grid templates, for large screens and mobile. There were kittens. We also learned how to use an app to streamline the workflow (I used Espresso, others used Coda). The course material was fantastic, and the facilitators (Anna, Peter and Alex) were incredibly patient and really knew their stuff. We definitely finished the course with a great foundation to build on.

But would we use code for prototyping? That's a harder question to answer. To my mind, if you're starting from a point where you know this stuff, and have a set of familiar templates from which to draw, it might well make sense to use thesetools for creating prototypes. However my feeling was that this wouldn't work as well for designers learning to code for the first time. We depend on these designers to give deep thought to the layout and flow through a website, considering the user's goals at all times - and hacking code could be a big distraction from this. It's far easier to draw a box in OmniGraffle, which is better for subsequent annotation as well.

That said, there's no doubt in my mind that all designers would benefit from a working knowledge of the tools that power the web, and I'm well chuffed with the course. Nice one, Leisa!

ZZAP!!

2011-07-25T20:32:00.005Z

When I was growing up, I had what my parents might call an unhealthy obsession with computer games. My brother had a ZX81, my best mate had a Spectrum 48k (with a ram pack!), and I had a Vic 20. And then one birthday, I was lucky enough to get a Commodore 64 - and my life changed forever.

I used to spend countless hours in my room playing computer games. For some reason, the one which always comes to mind now (25 years later) is Gauntlet - but there were dozens more.

So anyway, I recently picked up a couple of copies of ZZAP!! 64, the industry mag for the Commodore 64, and boy did the memories come flooding back!! Ghosts'N Goblins! Paperboy! Rambo! Yie Ar Kung Fu! Green Beret! Out Run! And oh so many more!

I remember owning these issues. Odd what your brain remembers and decides to forget - but then, I was completely obsessed. Clearly a lot of love went into these mags. It wasn't just about game reviews, but hints and tips, game maps, top charts, kick-ass joysticks, 8-bit art, and so much more. Sometimes we got tapes, containing 8 Bit music from our favorite games! Even the adverts were brilliant, showing screen shots and cover art hinting at an altogether more innocent time.

Anyway, seeing as I was enjoying these magazines so much I figured you might too. Here's a gallery on Flickr for y'all:

A share of the blame

2011-07-13T09:02:00.004Z

Like a lot of other people, I'm enjoying the furore around the News International phone hackings scandal. It isn't just schadenfreude; we've tolerated the gutter press for so long that it seemed like an inescapable and unfortunate part of the fabric of Britain. Now, with a fair wind, the Murdoch empire could come crashing down. Bring popcorn.

But one important fact seems to be widely overlooked. Surely the people who used to read the News of the World, and who still read The Sun, the Sunday Sport, The Mirror, not to mention the colourful cheap women's magazines, and other publications like it, are equally to blame? It's their insatiable appetite for gossip that underpins the entire sordid affair. In the same way that kerb-crawlers are considered law-breakers, creating the demand that fuels the supply, shouldn't the same apply to customers of these newspapers? You might even say that kerb-crawlers have a lot less to be ashamed of - at least there are usually consenting adults involved. No-one consented to having their phones hacked.

Of course, all this shines a light on the British psyche. All countries have their equivalent of the red-tops, but ours seems painfully successful by comparison. It really doesn't bear close inspection. It'll be interesting to see whether the demand for (and supply of) salacious gossip declines once the dust settles on this current debacle. Only good can come of this.

Why Google+ has already failed

2011-07-11T15:14:00.003Z

It's now a week or so since Google launched their new social networking product, Google+, so here are some early thoughts.

I wanted this to be a Facebook killer, for obvious reasons (Blimey, that blog post is four years old!). There was a glimmer of hope shortly after Google+ launched that it might even meet these high expectations - the essential early adopter geeks were arriving en masse, and reporting that it was a great user experience. And sure enough, adding people to 'circles' - creating groups to target your messages - is pretty compelling.

But then what? Unfortunately, first time user experience isn't a good reflection of how well it'll fit into your existing daily activity. This is where Twitter in particular has been so successful - you can dip in as frequently or rarely as you like, wherever you are (especially in a mobile environment, where you might just want to kill a few minutes).

But there are some fundamental shortcomings with the new Google+ product. I should say that, being a Twitter advocate, I consider the lack of features to be a strength. And to be fair the user interface is pretty and functional. But put simply, "the same, but better" isn't going to be enough to bring a critical mass of users over to a new platform - or especially away from existing ones. It worked for Twitter and Facebook because they were sufficiently novel. For Google+, a high enough percentage of new users needs to arrive at the same time to have a chance of success. This is one area where beta testing will not work. By limiting the initial roll-out in the way that they did, and by not having a strong enough mobile story from the get go, I think they've lost the opportunity to launch a winning platform.

Yes, I know there's an Android app. But there's no iPhone app, and the web app doesn't cut it. Say what you like about closed platforms - this will seriously hamper adoption. And there isn't a public API either, which means no desktop apps, making it difficult to integrate Google+ into my working day. I basically have to remember to keep going to the website. The far more attractive alternative is that I keep using my desktop Twitter app and iPhone twitter app, both of which critically already contain the friends and colleagues I care about.

Of course the API and native iPhone app will come, but that's too little too late. The chance has gone for me and, I suspect, for many others. And I can't help but notice that none of the people I'm connected to on Facebook that I'm not connected to on Twitter have joined. And why would they?

I'm sure Google will continue to invest in Google+, just as they seem to continue supporting Buzz (no idea why!). But it'll take more than group video chat and some interesting Feedback tools to persuade people back en masse. Even the commendable 'liberate data' feature won't be enough.

Some bonus links:

1. What Google learned from Google Buzz and Wave

2. Dave Winer's excellent blog post on why large companies struggle with innovation

3. Good point, well made by Tom Coates

Knowledge Management

2011-05-16T08:24:00.006Z

Late last year, I was interviewed by Business Link on the subject of Knowledge Management. And just like everyone else, I hate seeing myself talk on camera. So when the video was made available earlier this year, I deliberately kept my head down.

But then I read a complementary article about the video by Luis Suarez, and figured what the hell. So here's the video in all it's glory. Feel free to bring me back down to earth in the comments!

PS Obviously it's not "my" business, I didn't have editorial control over that bit..!

Agile is broken

2011-03-13T20:07:00.007Z

I've been managing web development teams for 15 years, and it's always interesting to learn how other teams deal with the same challenges we face.

Strong opinions abound as to the extent to which agile should be implemented in a team which builds websites. I used to work at BT where agile development practices were so deeply ingrained that anyone not fully agile was viewed with derision - no doubt arising from bad experiences (Update 19/3: there's plenty of non-agile behaviour in BT, and the previous link was aimed at them. See Kerry's response below). But, coming as I do from a design-led background, this never sat entirely comfortably with me. In my experience, websites (and other products) not considering design from the outset are pretty awful to use. There are of course exceptions, but I haven't worked on them, and I think they're pretty rare. Maybe the project team had a developer with strong design sensitivities? A rare beast indeed.

The shortcomings of a waterfall approach are well documented - and learned first hand I should add. By doing all the graphical design (and too much documentation) up front, it restricts the chance to iterate during build and learn from testing. The process takes much, much longer and you end up with a poorer product which is difficult to fix. Unhappy customers claim this isn't what they asked for. All this is well known.

But the shortcomings of agile aren't often aired in public. When you implement one feature at a time, and build out from there, strategic vision often gets overlooked, as does design integrity. User experience and overall aesthetic tends to take a back seat. There's little consensus up front on the final solution, which means there's a level of uncertainty about how current work will fit into the solution down the road. The larger the team, the more these effects are amplified. And from an agency perspective, clients usually tender out work based on functionality agreed up front - if you're unwilling to commit to this, they'll go elsewhere.

There are several options that try to blend the best of both worlds, outlined in a session here at SXSW by Karl Nieberding (eBay) and Kris Corzine (Wells Fargo). These include "Mini-waterfall", where you put developers and designers in every sprint. The problem is that you get the same problems as full on waterfall (though less pronounced). There's also "Just in time", where designers work two sprints ahead of development, making sure design work is available when developers need it - and there's a sort of interim design vision to work towards. But then you lose agility and flexibility. You can find yourself working on three sprints at once - next, current and last (for testing). There would be too many complex interactions and versions to track - a huge loss of focus.

The system that works well for us at The Team, endorsed by the speakers here, is a system of partnership between designers and developers throughout the life of the project. There are steps you can take to reduce the waterfall risks, getting developers involved in the design process. We test (at best) or peer review (at worst) throughout the project based on whatever assets are available (sketches, wireframes, early designs, prototypes). Most of our projects are fairly short anyway (1-3 months), reducing the risk / impact of upfront design. And when it comes to build, we adopt standard agile development techniques, using e.g. kanban charts, scrum meetings, and other agile practices.

We've found this works best when we put a lot of emphasis on effective kick off meetings. This is the chance for everyone to contribute towards the vision of the project, and for all to understand what it is that's motivating the customer. A good kick off meeting is critical.

It also places a lot of emphasis on the sketching phase of the project. By kicking around the various approaches in sketch form together, designers and developers can explore the best way to solve problems. Then during design the developer can be thinking (possibly subconsciously) about how the solution might be built.

The proof of the pudding, of course, is in results. As well as defining KPIs at the start, we get a sense of success from whether our customer is happy and if users are satisfied. I'm pleased to say that we've had a lot of success implementing this approach, although the fact we improve with every project shows that we have a lot more to learn.

I'll leave you with the 7 rules of engagement as provided by the above-mentioned SXSW presenters:

1. Shared vision - defined clearly at the outset

2. Engage team - ask for input from everyone, but make it clear it isn't necessarily a democracy

3. Stakeholder buy-in - risk involved, but also reward

4. Excite with prototypes

5. Sit together

6. Communicate - build empathy

7. Get out of the way - once you've established working patterns, support rather than dictate

I can't emphasise No.5 enough - in my experience, all of this falls apart if you're not in constant communication. I don't just mean meetings (which we try and limit), I mean the awareness of activity across the team and involvement of people at a time convenient to the project.

And there's one more thing missing from this - I think the team can form around clearly articulated and prioritised software requirements. This helps drive assumptions out of the system, bringing crucial alignment to the thinking going on in the group.

A game which is broken

2011-03-13T02:06:00.003Z

Seth Priebatsch (of TED talk fame) gave a keynote here at SXSW which focused on game mechanics, touching on the areas where he feels there is huge potential for application. These include loyalty, customer acquisition and global warming - but his most useful comments (I thought) were about education.

He sees school as "a game which is broken". Schools are near perfect game ecosystems, containing motivated players, challengers, awards, rules, allies, enemies, levels, appointment dynamics, incentives and disincentives and yet we've based education on the wrong rewards. We've replaced the real reward (learning) with a fake reward (test and exam results).

He unpacked the game analogy further; grades are simply levels, and based on that analogy you should never be able to level down. There's currently too large a focus on failing - it should be based on progressions instead. We should start with e.g. zero experience points, so we can then focus on the positive progression through the system.

He had some interesting views on cheating, too - the current disincentive isn't on cheating, it's on getting caught. People learn how to play the game based on how you've designed it. He was educated at Princeton, where he says cheating has been greatly reduced there (from 400 examples per year down to 2), by getting students to write the honour system themselves and sharing the burden of reporting cheating - complicity is treated as much a crime as cheating itself. So, when they take a test, there is no teacher, no admin of any kind. The mentality has changed so the "enemy" is no longer the teacher - it's the test, and you get there together.

At The Team we've got several projects on the go that focus on education, for both children and adults, at school and in the workplace, and it set me thinking about whether the mechanics in those systems can be improved. How effective would it be to influence educational systems via the IT systems which are supposed to help? What are the moral implications? Other than using the Princeton anecdote, what other information do we have to justify a modified design approach?

This also needs to be considered alongside something called the Hierarchy of Cognitive skills. It's one thing to repeat something learned by rote, but the real goal is to progress through the levels through understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating. My gut feel is that the focus on the appropriate rewards would help move more students through this process.

Lots of food for thought!

The message is the medium

2011-03-12T16:42:00.005Z

I'm attending the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, and will be posting notes from the best sessions here. All of them obviously written in a hurry, and some of which may even make sense!

First up is an excellent presentation from Josh Clark (@globalmoxie), who talked about iPad design headaches. All examples listed here are iPad apps (Update 14/03/11, his slides can be found here).

iPad users have a low resting heart rate...sitting, reclining, a device of leisure and recreation - and this should drive a lot of the design decisions.

Avoid "greedy pixel syndrome" - continue to recognize the value of white space. Don't just jam in the information. Let me ask for it when I need it. Create an environment of "ask and answer". Make each tap satisfying. Think: tap quality is more important than tap quantity.

Media hypertrophy / overkill - it's tempting to focus on first time use, but more important to consider people using them every day. Example: ABC news website has an awful globe thing showing all the videos - good for demos (perhaps), but a bad presentation of news, much of which can't be seen - and therefore poor for repeat usage.

Supress the urge to show off. Focus on the content more than the form. Example: Solar walk. Sophisticated interface, but it falls away so you can focus on the content. Example: Marvel comics, great example of how to get past the interface, get to the content. Example: New York Times - familiar isn't always bad.Example: Flipboard - comfort and familiarity. And people love it. We have centuries of know-how when it comes to presenting text - lean on it.

But don't be too tied to analogue - are page flips necessary? Feedback is good, but speed and feeling are critical. Don't distract.

Side note: iBooks enables page flips, but on iPad calendar / contacts, even though the information is shown in a book form, swipe to turn page doesn't work. Actually deletes contacts!

Ask: Is different actually better?

Avoid metaphor clutter. Choose one and make it work. If it looks like a physical object, people will try to interact with it. Example: App called "Manage" uses several real world metaphors that make you want to interact - but you can't.

Avoid popover pox. Example: Twitterific is great, but should just use popovers for quick peeks - not for extended exploration.

iPad elbow. "I hate the iPad's back button with the heat of a million suns" - too small, too high. Example: Twitter app does a great job getting rid of the back button. Think: Where do your fingers naturally come to rest?

We're so used to mouse pointers, but using fingers to touch changes things Psychologically, Ergonomically and Emotionally. "Big screens invite big gestures"

The old adage of the medium being the message is now turned on it's head. Now, "the message is the medium". "Buttons are a hack". 2 year olds have a fresh perspective on this.

Explore multitouch gestures. Example: Uzi draws you into experimentation. (From a chat I had with him afterwards: What affordances can you give to show multitouch gestures are available or enabled? For more conventional apps, you obviously need to avoid presenting multitouch options up front, as this would probably confuse the user as they're getting started. Maybe consider hiding them under 'help' settings, or showing a couple of circles flicking across the screen to hint at the functionality. Another option is waiting until say fifth time of use before being more explicit. And then perhaps repressing the hint when you'e detected that the function has actually been used - although remember that iPads, unlike iPhones, are often used by more than one person)

The Future of Intranets

2011-01-12T09:14:00.002Z

Seeing as it’s the new year, I figured its time for a prediction or two!

I believe that 2011 is going to see a significant change in the way we look at intranets. To try and figure out what these changes might be, let’s have a look at two big trends we’re seeing.

1. External tools empowering the workforce

People everywhere have embraced not only online services such as Facebook and Twitter (500m+ and 175m+ registered users, respectively), but also consumer tools such as the latest smartphones (50m iPhones sold up to April 2010 alone). These aren’t just the tools your employees want to use, but also the ones your customers enjoy using. Many of them are using these tools to develop and maintain relationships, solve problems, or build communities - the latest big thing, Quora, being a great example.

Is this a drain on time and resources? Maybe for some, but in this ultra-competitive age companies can’t afford to ignore the benefits. Making internal services and information more broadly available on more devices means:

- your customers can make direct contact with the right people in your organisation more quickly, leading to greater customer and employee satisfaction and reduced call centre costs
- your staff become aware of customer needs more quickly and in the right context, allowing them to adapt your business more quickly
- your staff can spot emerging trends and demands more quickly, and this information can be used to support appropriate strategic responses, as well as generate new sales opportunities
- the company will be seen as tech savvy, increasing the prospects of new clients doing business with you.
- this company profile helps with attracting and retaining talent - giving staff this freedom is liberating and exciting!
- time wasted trying to locate important information is greatly reduced
- time and money spent trying to protect non-sensitive information can instead be focused on protecting that which is of genuine strategic importance
- internal projects which might benefit from input from external sources are more likely to be successful

The highly motivated employees most likely to make a difference to your business - especially the emerging generation - will depend on these tools to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. Indeed, we need to learn from digital natives as they join the workforce taking all this for granted.

2. Continued emergence of open source

While we did our fair share of intranet design work in 2010 using large intranet tools, such as Microsoft Sharepoint and SiteCore, we’re also noticing an increasing reluctance to use these tools. Whether this is because the licences are so expensive, or the tools are painful to configure, it doesn’t really matter - companies are becoming more receptive to alternatives. And this comes at a time when open source has come of age, with powerful open platforms such as Drupal and Django being used for just about everything else. Why not intranets?

There are many reasons - poor interoperability with other existing systems comes to mind - but one of the main ones is inertia. Many companies have invested a huge amount of money in the existing solutions, and change is slow, painful and expensive. But for those on a more limited budget - or those starting with a clean sheet of paper - the options are starting to open up. We’re certainly investing effort in this direction in 2011.

So, what does all this mean?

It’s time to reassess the purpose and nature of the intranet. It used to be that intranets were all about internal communications, and making sure secrets were kept that way. Certainly both of these factors remain mission critical.

But now the monolithic approach to intranets is holding many businesses back. As demonstrated above, if your company isn’t taking advantage of the benefits of appropriate transparency and connectedness, your competitors will be. Intranet projects going forward will be less about creating a single internal system, and more about managing and supporting several systems - only some of which will be under your direct control, and the remainder will need to take external access into account.

The good news is that there is already an established process for designing these new systems. User Centred Design has always started from the position of enquiry; of trying to find out what communication patterns are needed or currently exist and then seeking to improve them - not start from the technology and work backwards from there. If we start by abandoning assumptions, especially those around conventional intranet design, it will have a massive effect on the fitness of your business going forwards.

Learn later

2010-09-22T15:04:00.003Z

There's been a fair amount of talk recently about how the internet is affecting our intelligence and cognitive ability. It's been a while since Nick Carr wrote his seminal piece "Is Google Making us Stupid?", and the recent flurry of interest arises because he's since followed up with a book called The Shallows. The general premise is that the way we use information on the web is less immersive than traditional long form writing, and this is affecting our ability to learn and use information in general. Meantime, JP has weighed in with a three part blog post exploring whether the web makes experts dumb. All good reading.

It's a fascinating subject, because while most of us can agree the impact will be profound, it's still very much early days, and fun to predict how we'll evolve. Our brains are getting used to processing information in different ways, scanning text of different length, following or ignoring hyperlinks, learning where things can be found rather than actually finding them and learning them by rote. It could very well have an impact on us at a species level, at a physiological level, over a period of generations, even if we ignore the societal and technological leaps that will also take place in the meantime.

This blog post is about my own personal, recent experience of how the web is helping me to learn. There's a terrific iPhone application called Instapaper, which allows you to save web pages from your computer for reading offline later on your phone, simply by clicking a link marked "read later". It's much the same as opening new tabs in a browser, except saving it for a time and a place when you're not distracted by work. This improves the chances of actually reading it (or sometimes not).

But here's the interesting thing. If you're reading an article in Instapaper on your iPhone, and you click on a link, you can 'read later' there too. There's no cognitive dissonance as you follow link after link, a'la the web. I'm getting to finish the article safe in the knowledge that the distraction is saved for me to look at when I'm ready. All in the context of having no distractions - the time when I'm commuting, mostly. It's the ultimate way to read Wikipedia - for me, anyway.

And in this fashion I've filled gaps in my knowledge, as well as learning about loads of cool stuff too. The Lewis and Clark Expedition. The Mason-Dixon Line. The Louisiana Purchase. The Manhatten Project. Space Fountains. The Interplanetary Transport Network. Dyson Spheres. Human experimentation in the United States (macabre but fascinating). Unit 731. Boltzmann brains. The life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. And so on. Wonderful stuff.

Personally, I think that the internet can only improve our ability to learn from each other. Sure, we'll need to adapt to process information (and maybe information overload) in increasingly sophisticated ways, but we're an adaptable species. Furthermore, maybe one way of looking at things is that the internet has reduced the real barriers to learning, whereas tools such as Instapaper reduce the perceived barriers? The Wikipedia / Instapaper combination has been potent for me, I wonder what works well for others?

Spending the BBC licence fee

2010-07-23T13:50:00.005Z

There's an interesting discussion doing the rounds on Twitter today (kicked off by James Governor) around whether the BBC should be spending licence fee money building tools for the iPhone and iPad. The argument goes that public money should not be spent investing in technologies which require the public to use products only available from a single supplier.

It's an interest debate because, under normal circumstances, I'd support this line of thinking. Public money should be invested in open technologies, because the information and services should be available to all, and open technologies is the way to do it. Seems obvious.

However, there are some important points to make here:

- Even with the creation of iPhone and iPad apps, the BBC and the public don't have to depend on proprietary hardware or software to get at the information. The exact same information is available over many other channels and services, including their website.

- There are at least 2 million iPhones in the UK, and Lord knows how many iPads. Surely we shouldn't ask the BBC to ignore this size of group, many of whom also pay their licence fee? Aren't they entitled to access the service in the way that they want? That last bit is important, by the way. Convenience and user experience are part of the service.

- If the BBC is to deliver on the promise of "delivering to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services", then this shouldn't exclude proprietary platforms. No one can deny that the iPhone is one of the most influential, innovative and popular platforms around. To exclude it for idealistic reasons would be petty, not to mention uncompetitive.

Essentially, I think it comes down to this. The BBC is about connecting users and information / services. It should remain agnostic about the technology required to do this.

Berlin

2010-07-22T10:51:00.003Z

I went to Berlin recently - and it was fab. But the main point of this post is to see what the Flickr slideshow looks like when embedded in a blog. We're building a site for some kids called Events Academy, about which more later, but in the meantime here are some photos of Berlin:

Publishing on the iPad

2010-05-31T13:13:00.019Z

There's little debate now that the iPad will be a roaring success, and customers will be demanding content via this format very soon, if they're not already. It's tempting to think that the design process can be inherited from traditional web design, or iPhone design, or both. There's some truth in this, but there are also some new considerations to take into account. Publishing on the iPad is more complex than it seems, so I thought I'd share some early thoughts on how to approach this challenge.

Range of options

There are numerous ways to get written content onto an iPad, ranging from the cheap and cheerful through to expensive and sophisticated. The right option will depend on several factors, not least of which are budget, audience and business model. Let's start with the low cost options first:

PDF: The iPad opens PDF files in Mail or Safari, whether emailed or downloaded from a website, and they look pretty good there. Pinch to zoom in and out works, although it's worth testing the specific file before release because there are some rendering issues.

ePub: the free iBooks application can open any document in the ePub format. Users can download the file from your website, drop the file into iTunes, and sync the file to the iPad in much the same way as music. However, getting the document into the ePub format in the first place can be a bit tricky. You can use a tool such as Calibre to convert a file from pdf into ePub, but in my limited experience you end up with a messy document (lots of irrelevant content, gaps in words, that kind of thing), and it's far better to create the ePub document using the original software used to create the pdf. There's a handy list of supporting software here, from which it looks as though Adobe InDesign users are in luck.

If you need to charge for publications, but these publications will be rare or ad hoc, you might consider using a service like Lulu, which charges users to download your file and they take a cut.

Improve your website: If you already publish content over a website, have a quick look to see how it renders using Safari, the iPad browser. This does a pretty good job helping users view content, and your site might look just fine. Simply being mindful of how it looks could inform the publishing process, leaving you safe in the knowledge that the content looks good on all platforms.

Applications

Depending on budget, readership, business model, the competitive landscape and other factors, there may well be justification for creating a bespoke iPad application driven by a Content Management System. Even if competitors aren't yet publishing on the iPad, there's a good chance they will be soon - and there's a lot to be said for first mover advantage.

The cost and effort for creating and maintaining such an application is comparable to creating a web site - and in some cases can be even higher. So the decision making process at the start is critical to success.

One of the first considerations will be the business model. Do you charge for the application and / or each issue? What about advertising revenue (Apple have created a bespoke platform called iAd for serving adverts via applications)? What about subscriptions? What about sponsored publications? What about downloading offline versions (done to great effect in the FT app)? Again, this is an area where there will be much experimentation. As Popular Science editor-in-chief Mark Jannot says "we'll see what the market can bear".

This business model will inform the level of investment and, as we've seen, there's a range of solutions available depending on budget. As with iPhone apps, there will be several agencies offering cheap iPad applications - but it's essential for the savvy publisher to understand why cheap might not be best. The design process for new iPad applications requires deep thought, and it will be easy to overlook many of these key issues.

Gestures

The iPad is truly the first of a kind. While finger based gesturing has been around for a while on the iPhone and Mac laptop trackpads, the size and responsiveness of the screen invite the user to explore with touch. And the early iPad application developers have jumped at the opportunity to explore the potential of this new paradigm.

I've played with a few apps (Financial Times, Wired, Popular Science, The New York Times, Epicurious, Marvel) to form these views. What I've found that various gestural paradigms have been explored, and the variety - the lack of consistency - across multiple apps is difficult for a user to process.

For example, the Wired app is pretty intuitive - single finger swipe to turn page - while the Popular Science app (while beautiful to look at, and lovely to interact with when you get the hang of it), has several lessons to learn before you can navigate without thinking.

Bear in mind that the previous page said "Move across for the next article >>", and only needed one finger. So, what's a "section"? How will I get back? It also takes 1-2 seconds for the images to turn hi-res, during which time swipes don't work. But they're stored up, and activate all at once when the page loads. That's bad design. I'd love to know how they populate the Popular Science app, because from the outside it looks as though it will require a large amount of bespoke tailoring each issue.

It was interesting to read that Wired use the same software that publishes their paper version to publish their iPad version. This could prove a very interesting route for publishers when the relevant functionality in InDesign is made public later this year. I'm wondering whether the necessary simplicity of publishing the Wired app to the iPad encouraged them to keep innovative gestures to a minimum? I'd also like to know how they go about embedding video content into the application, whether this is added after the event or during the design stage. Either way, by the looks of things, Wired and Adobe have created a much simpler mechanism, and a much simpler experience as well.

On the balance of things, I'd recommend all designers to get a solid understanding of the iPad library elements provided by Apple. While various publishers are experimenting with different gestures, the ones most likely to gain traction with users are those which are most familiar - and those provided by Apple will prevail in the long term. Innovation should, of course, be encouraged but great care should be taken to introduce new paradigms with respect to the user.

Orientation

Orientation change on the iPad is much more of a problem than with the iPhone. The smaller screen on the latter means that the width is simply increased or decreased when the screen is rotated. However, the iPad screen size allows for a more complex screen architecture meaning that it's easier to lose where you were after orientation change. This is called 'context shift'.

Indeed, if you've got screen assets that go full width in both orientations (this includes menu bars), then you have a less space for other (main) content. As you can see on the New York Times app, you'll lose content when you switch from portrait to landscape:

In this case it's a photo missing (see bottom right on portrait version), but I've seen text missing in the past.

You need to give some thought to the various states the user context may be in when they switch orientation. If, say, someone is half way through a task when they switch orientation, they should be able to resume their task without breaking stride - and this is very hard to design for. One way this can be helped is via the transition. If the exact same assets are on the screen in both orientations, and the assets don't change size, then you can simply move each element. I expect (but don't know) that Apple include this feature in their developer libraries - it's not unlike the 'Magic Move' feature in Keynote (which is demonstrated here). Of course this is a problem if you're losing content between orientations, but the New York Times have handled this quite nicely by sliding all the panels out and then all the remaining ones back in, very quickly. It creates the impression of content being rotated, but actually replaces it. Still, the context switch is unnerving, especially if you're reading text missing after an orientation change...

A case in point is the polished iStudiez Pro app, which is beautifully designed, but I found a problem within minutes of playing with it. When writing a lesson note, I changed orientation and the bottom of the note - where I was writing - was hidden by the keyboard.

Oddly enough, I haven't been able to repeat the error. It goes to show that designing for two orientations, and allowing for multiple context changes between the two, creates a much larger burden on the testing programme. There might even be an argument for testing every single release of content, if the app is for Publishing. Bugs such as the one I found on iStudiez Pro will be hard to find without a rigourous test programme - and at £1.79 for the app it's going to be financially hard to justify for smaller software houses.

Conclusions

While it's fun to write criticism of the early iPad applications, the fact remains that these pioneers are doing a great job showcasing the potential of this new device. The public will vote with their feet, and it will take some time for the results to come in - time will tell whether the early front runners will retain their readership, or whether the price points will need to change.

In the meantime, it's essential for all those considering publishing on the iPad to spend some time experimenting with existing options and applications, and just as critical that designers become mindful of the vagaries of the iPad. Let's push the boundaries without making it difficult for users. The UX guidelines produced by Apple - while excellent and compulsory - only take you so far. That said, I'm just thrilled that we get to be the generation that designs all this stuff! And the onus is on us to make sure that users get the same amount of pleasure out of using the device as we get sharing our content and design with the world.

Bonus link: Well worth checking out Jacob Neilsen's comments on the iPad as well. Although given that their website looks likes it came from the 90s, you can take their design critique with a pinch of salt...

UPDATE 2 June 2010

More information on how the app was created (the use of images cut to 1024x768 explains why text can't be selected, but also why each page looks so darn good), plus the official press release from Adobe.

Spotlight Weirdness

2010-04-28T02:00:00.004Z

I'm having a problem with Spotlight, and was wondering if anyone who reads this has had a similar problem.

I've just had a clean install on my laptop, and when I do a Spotlight search I get this:

Note that the problem isn't that the search query isn't included in the index, or that the indexing process isn't complete yet, it's that the index isn't even being interrogated. Nothing ever appears below the search request box.

I've tried removing com.apple.spotlight from my Preferences folder, and also tried adding my hard drive to the Privacy section of Spotlight Preferences before adding it again (to force a re-index), but it makes no difference. Tried Google, but there's a similar problem which takes up the first few pages of the results, so I can't find a solution.

Help?!

An open letter to o2

2010-04-14T14:37:00.002Z

Dear o2 (cc Apple),

I've just read your announcement that you'll have dedicated tariffs for the iPad when it launches in the UK at the end of May, but I was hoping you would go one step further.

I already have an iPhone, and pay a premium for the 3G connection. It seems wasteful having a second 3G connection when I already have one in my pocket and, I would've thought, would also reduce the burden on your infrastructure if I only had one connection.

So, I was wondering whether you'd be willing to find a way to tether my iPhone to my iPad? It would mean I only need to buy the wi-fi iPad, saving me about £70, and would get you a more loyal customer. Although the hardware and software are made by Apple, I'm sure you could pull some strings.

You may be worried that my combined iPhone and iPad bandwidth will be much higher than just the iPhone. But I won't be using both devices at the same time. Any increase in usage because the iPad is more pleasant to view the web will be offset by a reduction in page changes, because I'll be more likely to read a whole page rather than just the small bits my eyes can tolerate at the small text size.

Waddayasay?

All the best,

Phil

In response to Cory Doctorow (or "Why I won't not be buying an iPad")

2010-04-03T09:22:00.006Z

Having just read Cory Doctorow's piece on why he's not going to buy an iPad, I'd like to offer a counterpoint. It's rare for me to disagree with Cory (I've got huge admiration for him and his writings), but it's worth challenging his views on this one because they're fairly one sided.

He asserts that the iPad locks its users into the whims and fancies of Apple and the content providers, while at the same time resisting the efforts of hackers wishing to take it apart to learn how it works and try to improve it. The implication is that this somehow represents a trend leading towards some kind of dystopian future where most content, hardware and software looks this way.

There are several areas I area with, strongly. Content providers must not be put in a position where they can limit our choices. And the hacker culture is one which should be cherished and nurtured - it's a critical part of how our industry evolves.

However, I would argue that, on the balance of things, the iPad will do more good than harm.

I can't help wondering whether, because Cory has invested so much time explaining why the old publishing business models have collapsed, he's lost sight of what was good about these models. So long as our rights aren't affected, why shouldn't the publishing industry look for (legal) ways to make money out of their content? It's their content, and they've got just as much right to try and monetize this as I have not to pay for it. There's also still a lot to say for investigative journalism still being funded - sometimes the big stories need money behind them. Not to mention all the careers at stake. So long as we can still access a huge breadth of alternative content elsewhere on the web, where's the harm?

I was perfectly happy to buy the Guardian app for the iPhone at £2.39, because it's one of the best ways to read news *on that device*. It in no way threatens the other ways the same content is shared elsewhere. As we collectively explore the new frontier of user interfaces on mobile devices, I'm tempted to thank the Guardian simply for advancing this cause. This benefits all content providers for all mobile devices, not just the Guardian on the iPhone, by demonstrating - extending - the art of the possible. Proprietary software has often served as a source of inspiration for open source developers looking to achieve similar aims.

And iPad users can still view content via the web browser (which promotes open standards, natch). The iPad user has full choice in this matter. No harm done.

As for hacker culture, this will continue to prosper because hackers still have other devices to take apart. This is an unstoppable force. Dedicated hackers will still find a way to hack the iPad, as evidenced by the community which has grown around hacking the iPhone [Update 5 April 2010: already jailbroken. And dismantled]. And, besides, just because something can't be hacked, it doesn't necessarily indicate a trend.

At the end of the day, the iPad is just a utility which, admittedly, sits atop the web. I would argue that the iPad extends the reach of the web further than it presently goes. It makes browsing the web more comfortable and convenient in certain scenarios (bed, train, sofa, others), and in doing so it will reach new people and increase usage for others (as a second or third device) - some of whom may become hackers as a result. Just as happened on the iPhone, we can look forward to innovative apps and websites that make the most of the new paradigms. And these will feed back into the various cycles of innovation happening elsewhere. In the long run, I would speculate that the web will benefit from the iPad, just as much - if not more - than the iPad benefits from the web.

As for the way in which comics used to be shared, and no longer can be, well that's a shame. But it isn't the iPad's fault - that's simple a side effect of digital content in general. Where you can still share URLs if you want to point at something. The web doesn't stop you buying a physical comic and sharing it, and in fact provides a wealth of social mechanisms and tools to augment real friendships. In fact the iPad is bringing comic reading to a new audience, who may become interested in the culture of sharing physical comics as a result. Cory should be thanking the iPad for this, not chastising it for the nature of web content in general!

I will be buying an iPad.

Cleaning the Apple Mighty Mouse

2010-03-29T09:35:00.003Z

This post is just to help people with a similar problem - hence the search term friendly title.

There's a problem with the design of the Apple Mighty Mouse, in that it tends to gather in dirt under the track ball. This means it doesn't scroll, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in more. It's impossible to get under the track ball without dismantling the mouse, and then dismantling the track ball carriage - and then it's almost impossible to put it all together again. Needless to say, this will void your warranty.

There are a few HOWTOs out there explaining how to perform the above process, but as my mouse was under still under warranty I gave Apple support a call. They advised me to dab the track ball with a wet finger, turn the mouse upside down, and then roll the mouse / track ball around on a clean, white piece of paper. It worked! My mouse trackball now scrolls in all directions.

So I recommend you try that before getting out your screwdriver...

Adventures in Python

2010-03-28T13:30:00.010Z

I've decided to spend some time learning how to program, and as I encounter problems (and, hopefully, solve them!) I'll drop notes here on my blog in case they help others. Plus this has the added benefit of giving my developer friends a steady stream of entertainment....! And finally, in the style of Julie Starr's TiddlerToddler, it may even provide an interesting beginner's insight for those who are creating or updating documentation.

Why learn to program? Well, because it looks like fun. I've enjoyed working with developers for years now, and while I've dabbled in HTML from time to time, I haven't taken it any further than that. In terms of choosing a language to program in, I really wanted to get building things quickly, so I've plumped for Python, as a route towards using Django. I often hear Python and Django being referred to as a fun and quick route to build quality apps. So let's see how we go.

My starting point has been Alan Gould's Learning to Program guide. I should pause here and say, from my experience working with the TiddlyWiki community, that creating this kind of guide is incredibly time consuming and rarely gets the appreciation it deserves - and its free! So I'd like to start by putting my thanks and appreciation firmly on the record. Thanks, Alan!

It's been a great guide so far, but I came across two problems which I'd like to document here. I'm using Mac OS X (toggling between Leopard on my iMac and Snow Leopard on my Macbook Air), which has Python installed by default, but this isn't the most up to date version. I wanted the most recent version so that my new skills would be as relevant as possible, and the most stable release is v3.1.2 - so I went ahead and downloaded this (it's just a .dmg file, containing an .mpkg file - simple to install).

But for the life of me when I went back to the terminal, and typed "python", the old version kept coming up like this:

It launches Python 2.5.1. I even tried explicitly ticking the "Shell Profile Updater" option during installation - it made no difference. I even tried Google, but had little luck. At this stage I was getting hugely frustrated that I couldn't get over this first hurdle, so I sent out a message on Twitter and was amazed to get help within seconds from Victor Miclovich:

Victor, you are a legend - thank you! And you've inadvertently proved out my assumptions about how helpful the Python community is!

(Incidentally, I've found you don't need the dollar sign - just typing python3 works too)

I also encountered a second problem. Alan's tutorial presents the option between using the terminal (which my colleagues generally favour) or IDLE - an integrated developer environment, which came with Python. Well, the terminal wasn't really working out for me at that point, so I tried IDLE, and followed a link from Alan's tutorial to this IDLE help page.

But when I tried the "Hello world" example, I kept getting a syntax error as follows:

Fortunately, this one was easier to solve. It turns out that Python 3 requires a different syntax from Python 2. Instead of:

print "Hello world"

I needed to type:

print ("Hello world")

Success! (this shows the terminal again, though it worked in IDLE too)

OK....I'm easily pleased, I know!

So..this could be the start of an interesting journey. I can't help thinking about Nicole Lazarro's game theory talks at SXSW and Supernova last year. She talks about "hard fun" - the notion that people are willing to spend a certain amount of time being frustrated in return for the elation of a breakthrough (this applies to games such as Halo, too). So, let's see how long I can keep this up...

From Entourage to Mail.app and iCal

2010-03-17T09:17:00.001Z

I've recently made the jump from Leopard to Snow Leopard and, with it, have been able to move from Microsoft Entourage to Mail.app / iCal (Snow Leopard provides better Exchange support, which means iCal should now allow things like viewing other people's schedules). After the initial jubilation, it turns out that things aren't quite that rosy after all. So I thought I'd capture what the down points are in case anyone is considering a similar move.

I've actually found Mail and iCal to be a bit clunky.

- Messages that have been sent have still been saved in draft, and sometimes didn't appear in the sent folder. This led to me sending messages a second time, causing confusion. Sometimes these messages were incomplete, because the draft had been saved before the message was completed.

- There's been at least one occasion where I sent a (very important) message but all evidence of it has disappeared, even when I use Webmail to look directly on the server.

- Sometimes i've tried to delete a message from drafts but Mail.app wouldn't let me, claiming that it couldn't connect to the server. Yet I was able to carry on sending and receiving other emails with no problems. The only way to remove it was to send it!

- In iCal, when changing a meeting, it seems to struggle when looking for certain invitees using auto-complete, even when the recipients are all on the same domain

- Entourage used to give frequent recipients in my address book priority over those I never email (who just happen to be in my domain). Annoying because for Stephen Waller (with whom I share a project), I have to type "Stephen Wal", because there is something else in the org whose name starts with "Stephen Wad".

- When changing / removing an event in iCal, you have to inform all participants / the meeting organiser - you don't have an option not to send a message. Annoying as I sometimes want to remove or change something in my calendar without sending the organiser an email.

These are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. There are others.

Anyway, I never thought I'd say this, but I'm seriously considering moving back to E-Rage - sorry, Entourage. Not cool.

Thoughts on the Nexus One

2010-01-06T13:51:00.003Z

In case you've been in a cave, you will have noticed that Google have released their own branded Android phone, the Nexus One (in the States, at least).

I can't help smiling at the responses saying it's some kind of 'iPhone killer' - it falls a long way short in so many important areas - seamless syncing with iTunes, a high quality app store and the user experience to name but three (emphasis mine; I know it's possible to sync with iTunes and there is an Android app store, but there's a gulf in quality at the moment).

A designer friend of mine maintains that Google are making a mistake targetting developers, rather than users. Obviously the user experience is one of the key reasons for the iPhone's success, but I think other factors (functions and features) will come into play as well. You can help users through helping developers, so long as you pay very close attention to the user experience as well.

So, what can Android / Nexus One offer that the iPhone can't? Freedom. You can install whatever you like on the Nexus One, whether it's on the (currently unappealing) official Android App Store, one of the other Android app repositories, or handed to you directly by the developer (I haven't seen the Android App Store as seen on the phone itself, but Tim O'Reilly claims its pretty good).

My prediction is that, over time, we'll start to see more and more benefits available on Android phones that are unavailable on the iPhone. I think we can expect the UI to improve somewhat - Google have money to spend on design. While it's unlikely it'll ever catch up with Apple in this department (a very subjective debate), perhaps it doesn't have to. The additional functionality will, for many, outweigh the less effective user interface.

What can we expect in terms of additional features? Some obvious ones spring to mind. Tethering the phone to a laptop so you can access the web over 3G (without a costly bolt-on) is very worthwhile. Making calls using your favorite VOIP client is another. Pornography apps is a third category - snigger all you like, it's popular! Have a look at all these apps that get rejected, thanks mainly to Apple's restrictive app store policy. Tasty.

The presence of another big name smartphone on the market will increase the size of the market overall, and the competition will do the iPhone no harm at all. And there will always be enough differences between the two offerings to appeal to different customer types. Bring on the competition!

Incidently, articles such as this one in Ars Technica claiming that the option to buy the phone free of a carrier is a game changer are off the mark. You can buy unlocked iPhones in France for an extra cost, but only 5% of early iPhone customers chose to do so. The vast majority of phones would need to be sold unlocked before quality of service would become the key differentiator between carriers - at least to the point needed to justify the huge expense of bolstering their networks (recommended: Fake Steve takes AT&T to task, hilarity ensues).

The year in review

2009-12-21T13:03:00.003Z

2009 has been something of a roller-coaster for me, career wise, and now's as good a time as any to take stock. And as I've been lax of late in tending to my blog, I thought I'd do it here...

It's been a real challenge trying to grow the agency in this recession. I'm talking about maturation rather than financial growth - our team has changed a lot over the year. As well as losing a couple of people to redundancy in September, we also lost our Managing Director in October and I was promoted into the role alongside our Creative Director, Will Bloor. It's been difficult to bed in processes as a result.

But the Digital team have really risen to the challenge, and we're already starting to reap the benefits of improved processes and standards. The number of moles which need whacking is going down all the time, and the moles themselves tend to be less vicious and spiteful...

We've got an amazing team of people here, with more on the way, and some really terrific clients who appreciate our work - and who could ask for more than that?

My poor blogging record is probably a fair reflection of efforts directed elsewhere. I was very fortunate in my previous job to have the luxury of time in which to learn and pontificate about open source, and I certainly miss that time and space here. While I attended quite a few conferences this year, work back in the office was never far from my mind. The open source landscape (and technology market in general) will continue to evolve apace, and I'm anxious to keep up. This is something I'm keen to fix in 2010.

So my ambition for 2010 is to redress the balance between thinking and practising. There is some truly amazing stuff going on around the world, and when I see videos like this one (Salim Ismail talking about the Singularity University), it reminds me what I love about this industry of ours.

Seriously cool stuff.

And with that, I'd like to wish anyone reading this a terrific Christmas and a really happy new year!

++
Thanks to Kenneth B.Moore for the use of his Whack-a-mole photo.

Collaboration in a networked world

2009-12-03T15:56:00.005Z

I'm currently at Supernova, where I attended a panel on 'Frontiers of Real Time Collaboration' (videos are the last two on this page, and there's a public Google Wave for the session). It gave me food for thought, not so much because of what was said - enough about Twitter, already! - but rather because of what wasn't said.

Finding effective ways to collaborate is a really interesting subject, and its one of those where I suspect everyone has a different view on what collaboration means. For me, collaboration is an umbrella term for a host of different activities, modes, relationships and states.

I find it helpful to think of collaboration as a pathway, starting with Discovery (realisation that there is a problem, finding people who want to solve it with you), then Coordination (identification and assignment of activities) and then Creation (of assets that are needed to do the job e.g. written documents).

But it gets much more complex when you consider the different modes of interaction between participants on this path. This might be defined by relationship (e.g. student / teacher), access (e.g. inside / outside firewall) or current mode (active / passive). By active and passive, I'm talking about the level of involvement at that moment - I might be having an IM chat with a fellow collaborator, or at the other end of the spectrum I might be out having a meal at a restaurant, safe in the knowledge that everything is being gathered in one place. I might not even be involved on the project yet - but when I join, I need to navigate the work done up to that point.

Incidentally, I think Google deserves a lot of credit for trying to address this active / passive challenge with Google Wave. Obviously, Wave has it's faults, predominantly in the user interface, but this is still real new frontier stuff, and I'm sorry that Anna-Christina Douglas of the Google Wave team didn't press home this major achievement in the panel yesterday.

Back to the collaboration pathway. There are literally hundreds of tools that address parts of this, from wikis to forums, from email to video chat, from Google Docs to instant messaging. They're generally free as in beer, and well established. By and large, I think most teams settle on the collection of tools that best fits whatever it is they're trying to achieve. So this raises a number of interesting questions:

- Isn't this enough? What could or should come next?
- Could technology be improved to support certain types of collaboration more effectively? Which areas need work?
- Does technology need to catch up with people, or do people need to catch up with technology?
- What about people who work for companies that restrict access to, or discourage participation using, free and public tools? Is it fair to ask them to rely on an intranet over which they have no control?
- How can technology augment and support activity that takes place in real life, face to face?

I'm starting to form the view that this is one frontier that doesn't need to move that quickly. A lot of the tools we have are more than adequate for our needs. Necessity is the mother of invention, which is probably why Google Wave is the first major innovation on this landscape for several years.

As for intranets, it's incumbant on large organisations to realise that they don't have a monopoly on necessary skills or good ideas. Those that succeed in the next decade will be those who can work just as effectively with those outside the firewall as those on inside - as well as providing effective tools for their staff to work together, of course!

I'm truly crap at articulating points such as those raised here in a public forum - for me, they take time to percolate - but one point I wish I'd made yesterday is that there is already an area where people have been collaborating very productively for over ten years - open source. I think that the tools these communities use (IRC, Forums, code versioning systems, IM) lend themselves nicely to the task at hand, but there is still plenty we can learn from these communities, particularly in the way that they self organise.

Yesterday's panel discussion focused quite heavily on Twitter, as being the 'real time' element in the discussion title. I like Twitter, but I think it can only play a small role in collaboration exercises - perhaps in the Discovery phase, but not in terms of Coordination and Creation. It's just not a tool with which you get things done, in a project collaboration sense.

Nice to get all of that out of my system!

On page folds and users

2009-10-08T08:10:00.004Z

There's an interesting article by CX Partners doing the rounds about the "myth of the page fold". Those of us who've been kicking around the industry for a while will have had this drummed into us: people don't like to scroll. But behaviours are changing as people become more familiar and comfortable with the web, and particularly as popular sites have more and more content below the fold, which has a snowball effect on behaviour and expectation.

It's a good article, but I think it simplifies things a little too much. From the article:

Over the last 6 years we’ve watched over 800 user testing sessions between us and on only 3 occasions have we seen the page fold as a barrier to users getting to the content they want.

Emphasis mine. Putting to one side our own personal views on the value of advertising to the user, the fact remains that many websites depend on advertising revenues for their business to succeed. Web sites should be designed primarily around the user requirements, but still need to be mindful of the business requirements - and adverts above the page fold perform much better than those below. So while the article is correct in pointing out that users are happy to scroll, businesses relying on advertising revenues can't afford to be cavalier with where they place their adverts.

And it's still incumbent on us web professionals to make sure that the user journeys are as straightforward as possible for the end user. This means making it easy to find the most popular content quickly, which implies less scrolling. In some circumstances, I agree with the sentiment expressed here...

Less content above the fold may encourage more exploration below the fold

...but it really does depend on several factors. There is a trade off between this notion and presenting a high percentage of users with the information or links they want without forcing them to scroll. As a gross generalisation, I suspect many users still look through most content on a page to see if what they need is there before they bother scrolling down.

And fortunately we have a way of proving whether this is true in each case; test, iterate and test again.

The web is not a channel

2009-09-08T10:37:00.009Z

Here in agency land, people often refer to the web as a channel. And coming from a background where I was surrounded by developers, this has never sounded right to me.

So when I was invited to present at an internal Loewy-wide event to pimp our Digital wares, I decided to try and describe a better way to think about the web. I'm giving the talk today, and my slides with notes can be seen on Slideshare or below:

View more documents from Phil Whitehouse.

ie6 isn't going anywhere

2009-08-07T14:49:00.005Z

It's well understood in the web community that Internet Explorer 6 is an atrocious browser to code for. I'm Not A Developer (IANAD), but I've spent plenty of time hearing them complain about how badly it renders code which performs properly in more standards-compliant browsers. For those of us building websites, it's a terrific (and expensive) bore having to find ways to get code lookin' good in ie6.

While I applaud the general intention of initiatives such as ie6nomore , which aims to persuade people to switch to more modern browsers, I don't think their latest idea is particularly helpful. They've provided code which developers can add to their websites that invites visitors to upgrade to a modern browser, which is only seen if they're using ie6.

This prompts the question: of those people who are using ie6, how many of them actually have the option to upgrade? I'd think not many. I'd wager that most people using ie6 are working for large corporates, and have a locked-down PC with ie6 installed, without admin access. This is the browser of choice for the IT department, whose complex IT systems (such as the intranet, timesheet system, finance systems, etc.) need to be tested and probably fixed before a company wide browser upgrade can take place.

Until the benefits of modern browsers outweigh the cost of testing and upgrading internal systems - and this could easily run into the millions for large companies - IT departments will naturally resist upgrades. So adding these code snippets won't make much difference, and will just frustrate and irritate the people who visit your site who'd dearly love to upgrade.

If people want to put this code on their personal or project websites, then I think this is fine. Your personal website is a form of self expression, and wanting the world to upgrade to standards compliant browsers is a worthy cause - one I very much support myself. But I wouldn't recommend this path to clients, or anyone for whom the general public are the likely audience.

Social networks supporting innovation

2009-08-05T14:11:00.004Z

The New Scientist has an article claiming that social networking stymies innovation:

...certain patterns of social interaction make radical innovation more likely. Bold ideas are typically incompletely formed when first conceived and easily shot down by criticism. Hence, they emerge more readily in communities in which individuals work mostly in small and relatively isolated groups, giving their ideas time and space to mature.

I'm not sure I agree with that. Radical innovation can flourish in a small, isolated group, but there are plenty of examples where radical innovation flourishes in a larger, well connected group - pretty much every successful open source project contains some element of radical innovation. And survivorship bias suggests we should consider the myriad of unseen examples where innovation failed in small, isolated groups.

The article continues:

The problem, says social scientist Viktor Mayer-Schönberger of the National University of Singapore, is that today's software developers work in social networks in which everyone is closely linked to everyone else. "The over-abundance of connections through which information travels reduces diversity and keeps radical ideas from taking hold," he suggests.

We ought to make a distinction here between the activity of finding suitable collaborators and the process of developing the idea to maturation. Just because someone has a well established network on a social networking platform, it doesn't necessarily follow that they'll share their ideas with all their contacts there. It's far more likely that they'll cherry pick the individuals with whom they wish to collaborate - and the social networking tool will have allowed them to connect with a more diverse pool of talent, improving their ability to identify the best partners.

As for incomplete yet bold ideas being "easily shot down by criticism", I don't see much evidence of this. On the contrary I think the act of preparing an idea for public review helps the author tighten the idea considerably, to a point where - if it has merit - your audience is more likely to debate the finer points rather than shoot it down completely.

Flash vs Javascript

2009-07-27T13:22:00.005Z

I know what you're thinking. There's a gazillion blog posts on the web arguing about Flash and Javascript. So why write another one?

This one is slightly different. I work in a commercial, competitive environment where there is strong opinion both sides of the aisle. And a mix of clients (doing good work) actively seeking to use both technologies. And strangely enough, a sort of consensus is starting to form. So I'm going to try and capture that consensus and share it here. No doubt colleagues past and present will put me right!

The consensus is that we're going to use open web standards (html, css and javascript) wherever possible and practical, for the following reasons:

Easy to optimise for accessibility
Easy to link to specific content (each page has it's own URL)
Easy to copy particular text for pasting elsewhere
Easy to optimise for search engines
Easy to subsequently change and maintain code
Works on all devices, all browsers (unlike, say, Flash on an iPhone or Wii)
No need to download plugin or application
No dependance on an external vendor
Ability to view source (supporting the education of development communities)

Html, css and javascript are the building blocks of the web, and we want to contribute to the ongoing improvement of the web wherever we can. Some of the above is possible when using Flash, but rarely used (especially where budgets and resources are limited) and difficult to implement.

BUT! The challenge comes when we want to do something that isn't practical or possible using open web standards.

I think it's OK to use Flash when:

We're streaming videos or music. This is the only way to get this stuff out to a wide audience (at the moment)
We're creating complex, interactive, immersive (maybe 3D) environments. These could include animations. To some extent, this is possible using web standards, but only with a greatly increased build time. This is the key: persuading someone to pay for this is a different prospect to a lone developer dabbling with the technology in his or her own time. Depends on how much more expensive it is, of course - but we've got to be practical. If we go down this route, we MUST still make the information accessibility compliant, linkable and available for search engines to spider.
We want to create effects that can't be created using open web standards. In this instance, it's still essential that the experience degrades gracefully. We're talking about design-led flourishes that enhance the mood of the page - but leave the content untouched. If someone visits the page who hasn't got flash installed, they'll be none the wiser - the same information will be accessible in the same way. Our home page is a good example - for those who have Flash installed, the characters at the bottom move around. For those who don't, they're static hyperlinks. There's something to be said for beauty on the web, and sometimes that beauty will be animated.

The open web standards crowd (including many friends) may gag on these points. But I think the above is a practical compromise. It is inclusive and recognises the fact that cutting edge front end development is time consuming. If something takes much longer to design and build using web standards, then we'll be pushing work away if we don't compromise. We work in a highly competitive industry, and it's easy to be idealistic when you don't have to worry about commercial considerations.

All that said, we actively seek opportunities to innovate using javascript libraries and emerging technologies - within those commercial limitations.

In a large team, working with a complex client, there may also be political issues at play. Does the client have the expertise to maintain complex code? Are the people crafting the user experience sufficiently skilled to understand what javascript can offer? In the real world, these are all factors that will will inform the decision.

What about when clients ask us to build something in Flash? We will inform them of the risks. We won't turn down work if they insist on using Flash - the alternative is that they'll go elsewhere, and we won't be able to work on converting them! And, yes, if we do the work, we'll get paid. Without our customers, we'll go out of business.

I'd love to hear views on this, particularly where there are other situations where one would make an argument for using Flash. Further arguments in favour of open web standards are also welcome - but do bare in mind those commercial considerations!

Open Tech 2009

2009-07-05T18:19:00.004Z

The excellent Open Tech conference took place yesterday and, once again, it proved itself to be one of the very best events in the calendar. The high quality of speakers and intelligent, engaged attendees made it feel more like a Barcamp than a commercial venture (although clearly at £5 entry fee making money was not the main objective).

Which is why I was more nervous than usual when preparing my talk, 'How to build developer communities'. I'd bounced quite a few of my ideas off the Osmosoft crew when I worked there, so was confident that they held water, but holding opinions and communicating them to a naturally skeptical crowd are two very different things. And being up against Bill Thompson on the other stage meant I had to make it worth the audience's while.

In any event, it seemed to go OK and hopefully I escaped without too much egg on my face. If you're interested you can see the slides on Slideshare, and they're also embedded below for your ultra-convenience:

Building Developer Communities

View more presentations from Phil Whitehouse.

Highlights from the event included getting to know Jeni Tennison and other OPSI folks; chatting with MP Tom Morris (who went to University with my missus). And of course Paul Downey gave a memorable talk, this time on the creation of standards. I filmed it and I put it on the internet. I did the same with some photos.

So, thanks very much UKUUG for putting together another brill event. Good work folks!

@stupid

2009-06-24T16:01:00.006Z

BBC News today reports that Habitat have got into hot water by mis-using a hashtag on Twitter. By adding #iranelections to their tweets, it meant that anyone searching for #iranelections saw their promotional message. At least, that's what it meant if someone searched for #iranelections in the fraction of a second after the message was posted - given the sheer volume of tweets currently using this tag, it would've been lost in the fog immediately. Net result: miniscule chance of benefit, but high likelihood that someone actually following the account would be offended.

All of which immediately puts me in mind of Hanlon's Razor:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Chances are, someone relatively new to Twitter, and presumably quite junior, figured they'd found a way to game the system, and hadn't thought through the consequences. Maybe they read one of the vile guides explaining how to game Twitter? If Habitat are criticized for anything, it should be that they (or their agency) are using people for this task who don't understand the social web. You need only look at the list of people they follow - currently 4 people - to see this was the case.

We've reached the stage now where job descriptions need to include a requirement for people to demonstrate they've participated in social networks for long enough to understand the social nuances at play. I think Habitat will recover quickly from this unfortunate incident, but we can anticipate similar transgressions elsewhere.

Make this the last tube strike

2009-06-11T10:07:00.004Z

London's tube drivers are on strike (again), holding the entire city to ransom (again). The answer seems obvious to me:

1) Fire them all
2) Offer to re-hire on near identical terms, minus any union affiliation
3) High profile training scheme to make up the shortfall

Actually there wouldn't be much of a shortfall. Very few tube drivers could afford not to accept the offer to re-hire, not in this economy. And there'd be no shortage of people willing to accept the offer of training and work. In fact it's precisely because of the state of the economy that makes the timing of this scheme perfect.

As a Londoner, I'd be happy to put up with a few months with the service at 80-90%, if it means we get no more strikes in the long term.

I imagine there'd be financial repercussions for firing people en masse. Maybe problems with pension schemes, etc. But it would actually be a very small group you'd have to worry about (those who didn't re-hire). And there are no shortage of articles shouting about how much money the city loses each time there's a strike.

And this could revitalise Gordon Brown's career. Could give Boris Johnson a lot of support. I don't support either politician, I'm just saying there is political capital to be gained. The tube drivers have little or no support outside their union.

So, what am I missing?

Privacy

2009-05-18T17:04:00.008Z

I'm working my way through Jonathan Zittrain's excellent book, The Future of the Internet And How To Stop It.

The book itself makes some excellent points. The heart of the book concerns the web, and how it became the hotbed of innovation it is today. Essentially it boils down to two factors; experimentation is possible on the endpoints - everyone is free to use their computers how they like - and, secondly, the web doesn't discriminate between different types of traffic.

These factors are under threat. People are increasingly relying on devices that are locked down (think iPhone and Tivo), where users rely on benevolent vendors to allow changes on their behalf. What's more, these devices are tethered to a vendor's remote system, and it's therefore possible for those vendors - or more likely, an over-bearing government or court - to force changes on those devices without the consent of the user.

And where the network is concerned, at the moment, your traffic is treated with the same level of prioritisation as everyone else's. But ISPs (and others) are keen to re-prioritise this traffic for their own benefit (usually under the auspice of network optimisation). Most ISPs provide a browser with the home page defaulting to their portal, and it isn't difficult to give this content priority over that offered by competitors. I'm relieved to say that good folks like the EFF are doing a stand-up job resisting these changes.

Nevertheless, the generative nature of the web is under threat. These are the foundations on which the internet was built and it has flourished as a result. But this post isn't about that! Oh no. I'm not in the habit of writing look-what-I've-found posts, but....look what I've found!

While reading the book, I discovered that the USA PATRIOT Act allows their government to order a service provider to turn over the contents of their server without probable cause. That includes your emails, attachments, your online documents, everything you've saved online. Not only is the company not allowed to appeal this, they're not even allowed to tell anyone they've received the order! A court has to approve the order, but out of about 8,000 requests made between 2003 and 2006, only 15 rejections were made. That's 0.2%.

Like Zittrain, I would argue strongly in favour of a sensible balance between the rights of government and the rights of the individual. Checks need to be put in place to keep governments honest. I'm just astonished to learn that such a flagrant abuse of the legal system has been allowed to take place, tipping this balance and eroding a huge chunk of liberty and freedom from under the noses of the average American.

Unfortunately, Zittrain's excellent (funny! entertaining!) presentation at SXSW hasn't made its way onto their youtube channel, but a similar presentation can be seen here. It comes as "highly recommended".

Introduction to Open Source

2009-04-30T13:30:00.003Z

I gave a presentation to my colleagues, giving a general introduction to Open Source. It was filmed, and the results can be seen here:

Introduction to Open Source from Phil Whitehouse on Vimeo.

And the slides can be seen here:

Introduction To Open Source

View more presentations from Phil Whitehouse.

Can we stop talking about Twitter now?

2009-04-21T11:36:00.001Z

Whenever an emerging product or service hits the mainstream, it's inevitably followed by a flurry of online and newspaper articles educating the uninitiated. The recent explosion of repetitive articles about how to use Twitter - particularly from a business perspective - is perhaps reflective of not just the novelty value of this 'new' service, but also the constraints that are leading to innovative uses of the medium (full disclaimer: I wrote one using Twitter itself back in January 2008).

However, it's important to note that it is just a medium and actually most of the opportunities and challenges of using this medium effectively are not new. It's simply the latest step change in the democratisation of the web - Yet Another Online Tool which puts individuals on an equal footing with those who previously had all the power - corporations, governments and religious bodies. These tools, that allow grassroots networks to self organise, and exclude those deemed unworthy or without merit, have been around for a long time. Blogging tools (and RSS) have performed this function admirably for about ten years and more recent tools such as Facebook and Twitter have led the charge into the mainstream.

I'd therefore argue that the challenge isn't 'how to use twitter effectively', it's 'how to use the web effectively'. And the answer to this question starts with a basic understanding of the fact that the broadcast models of old simply aren't working in the way they used to.

Before the mid-90s, large companies could depend on broadcasting their information through a variety of channels - whether through press releases, events, adverts and other communications channels. These relatively subversive channels provided little in the way of discussion or debate and any word of mouth discussion about the quality of a given product or service was usually limited to those within earshot.

Not so anymore. As an individual I have access to global online networks of friends, colleagues and industry experts, all of whom are only too willing to share their views on the world - and listen in return. Given that people naturally gravitate towards those who share their views, it's fair to say that someone in one of my online networks has either made, or is considering, the same purchase decision that I'm making. I hold a healthy, cynical view about adverts and press releases, which are obviously biased and therefore held in much lower regard than the views of people in my network.

If you're a large organisation, and you want to engage effectively in these networks, it may first be necessary to undergo sociological and organisational change. The organisations that behave as though they are the ones in control - that simply bestow information on their audience without listening - will fail in this space. The audience has tools to filter out any messages they choose, and messages that aren't conversational or social will be obvious candidates for the chop.

It follows that those which succeed need to join the conversation at the same level as those they want to engage with. Those companies that are genuinely friendly, personable, helpful, and offer good value are the ones which will succeed - word will get out! The organisational re-structuring I'm referring to will need to support these processes and communication channels. Creating effective feedback loops that can respond quickly and honestly to problems becomes the key to doing good business. Rather than relying on an overstretched marketing department, the key is unlocking the genuine enthusiasm of your people. They have more credibility in this space than anyone who has their own CRM system.

So my advice is: stop worrying about how to 'monetise twitter'. It's as much a waste of time as trying to monetise a dinner party. Read the Cluetrain Manifesto to understand how conversation leads to relationships, and relationships leads to transactions. Those who try to use the social web to get straight to the transaction will do more damage than good.

in which I discover a planet sized gap in my knowledge of geeky pop culture

2009-04-14T15:24:00.002Z

Can't quite believe that I hadn't heard of Jonathan Coulton until recently, but now I have I can't stop listening to him. Funny, geeky, talented and well worth checking out.

Here's his official site where you can try his music for free. But if you like it, please pay the man. I recommend "Tom Cruise Crazy", "Re: Your Brains", "The Future Soon" and "That Spells DNA" (DM me if you want more recommendations).

And here is a handy video of "Tom Cruise Crazy":

Wish I could go on about this, but I'm super busy. Sorry.

BBC Interview

2009-04-06T15:31:00.003Z

As those who have met me will testify, I have a face for radio. And as it happens I was interviewed by BBC London at the weekend in connection with the Mrs Sew&Sew campaign. If you'd like to hear it, here's a link to the mp3 file (just under 5 minutes long).

I'm surprised they wanted to talk to me though - they weren't interested in the social media aspect the campaign - they only wanted to talk about thrift, especially during WWII. A historian from the Imperial War Museum would've been far more appropriate! So given the historical nature of the interview I'm pretty pleased I avoided embarrassing myself in public. And I got a public mention of my employer The Team in as well - result!

Comparison of aTV Flash and Boxee

2009-04-06T10:14:00.003Z

If you've got an Apple TV, or you're considering buying one, then this post is for you.

I bought my Apple TV to watch content that I've downloaded over BitTorrent on another Mac - quite a specific use case. I've been using aTV Flash for about 9 months. It's been pretty good, and improving, but it cost $50 and there's a free alternative called Boxee which I checked out over the weekend. Here's a brief comparison (v3.5.1 of aTV Flash, 0.97 for Boxee).

Installation: Both solutions were pretty easy to install. Maybe Boxee was slightly easier, because there were a few areas where the process was simplified. But not much to choose between them.

Streamed content: Boxee won this round too - in fact I think Boxee is mostly designed with streamed content in mind (much bigger in the States than here in the UK - see Hulu). But not much good for me as I don't watch much streamed content.

Interface: aTV Flash just extends the existing Apple TV menu, Boxee creates a completely different interface (which you still reach from the Apple TV menu, existing functionality is protected). Personally I prefer simplicity, and this is quicker too, so aTV Flash wins this round.

File transfer: This is where the big difference was for me. Using aTV Flash, I could FTP content across at speeds of 430kb/s (12 minutes to transfer a 45 minute show). But Boxee doesn't enable FTP. Unless you have sys admin skills, you HAVE to use SFTP - with speeds of 80kb/s (60 minutes to transfer a 45 minute show).

I have heaps of content that just sits on the Apple TV box, and it was obvious this would take weeks to get on there over SFTP. So after playing with Boxee for a while, and researching the FTP issue, I gave up and rolled back to aTV Flash. Obviously the $50 price difference wasn't an issue in June last year when I paid for it (there were no user friendly alternatives), and I got a year's worth of updates and support, but it may be an issue for you.

Obviously this is all the case as of 6 April 2009. The SFTP issue may have been resolved by the time you read this - but if this is a deal breaker for you too, maybe see if the Boxee community have responded to my suggestion on their discussion boards when making your decision.

Company blogging

2009-03-25T12:40:00.002Z

As part of The Team's new website - which has a long way to go, believe me! - we'll be surfacing opinion via a company blog. I've cobbled together some guidelines which are shared here in case they're of value to anyone else.

The important thing here is that companies shouldn't look to create guidelines that are too restrictive or lengthy - they won't get read, and will probably put people off. Rather the best thing to do (IMHO) is create a light framework and a system of support. That's what I've tried to do here.

I reckon this is also a lot better than nothing. It can be intimidating writing in a public forum for the first time, and not knowing whether there are any rules of the games can be off putting by itself.

Obviously this is written from an agency perspective but most of the guidelines apply in any corporate context.

Company Blogging

View more presentations from Phil Whitehouse.

Ada Lovelace Day

2009-03-24T11:10:00.002Z

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, which is a day when we celebrate women in tech. I'd personally like to see more women in tech, particularly in programming, predominantly because I believe in the power of diversity in general. I believe that the best way to solve problems is to bring as many different viewpoints and backgrounds into the equation. It combats what I see as the natural human tendency to seek out those who agree with you, to seek the comfort of the echo-chamber, which is often a path to mediocrity. And diversity tends towards a more interesting workplace.

So, I have a conundrum. There are two women in particular that I find incredibly inspiring. Which do I pick? No problem - I pick both!

Kathy Sierra is one of the most inspirational speakers I've ever seen, and ran a fantastic blog until 2007 (still worth looking back through it - all very relevant). She worked for Sun - obviously a male dominated organisation - for several years, and took on the tremendous challenge of making technology accessible to, and understandable by, everyone. She participated in one of this year's most interesting panels at SXSW, about presentation techniques. It hasn't been uploaded to the SXSW youtube channel yet, but it's well worth watching out for. She doesn't have her blog anymore (long story), but you can follow her on Twitter.

The other woman up there with Kathy is danah boyd (her choice not to capitalise). She's done a lot of research about how teenagers use the web, and represents the voice of reason and clarity in a world where people make far too many sweeping generalisations. She also participated in one of the best panels at SXSW ("Everything I Needed to Know About the Web I Learned from Feminism"). Her recent dissertation (Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics) is required reading if you'd like to engage with this important audience. Her blog is awesome, and she's also on twitter.

Yay, ladies!

Mrs Sew&Sew

2009-03-23T16:43:00.005Z

I've been a project manager for a loooooong time now, almost 13 years if you include my marine insurance days. And while it's been a lot of fun - no, really! - I've often wondered what it might be like to be a creative on a web project.

Well, now I know! We were recently approached by a client - the Imperial War Museum - to apply some social media foo to encourage families to visit the museum over the Easter Holidays. They're currently running an exhibition on Children in Wartime, so we thought it might be fun to have someone tweeting and blogging from that era, to tie into the real life exhibition.

They've got an astonishing range of material in their archive, including some from a campaign from during WWII called 'Make Do And Mend'. So we've managed to get our hands on loads of videos, posters, knitting patterns, photos and some pretty amazing books. The campaign will roll out over the next four weeks, up to the end of the holidays. Should be fun!

Here are some links to her Twitter page, her Blog and the museum's Youtube channel (srsly there are some fab videos on there, well worth checking out).

As for who's actually doing the writing...well, we've got to retain some sense of mystery, haven't we? ;-)

Open source show and tell

2009-03-23T15:49:00.004Z

I'd just like to announce an event that's being jointly hosted by my previous employers, Osmosoft, and my current company, The Team. It's an open source show and tell, and I'm thrilled to confirm several high calibre presenters will be in attendance. So if you're interested in what's happening in projects such as Drupal, Ubuntu, TiddlyWiki and oh so much more, come along!

You can sign up on the Upcoming page if you like; attendance is free, and there will be beers afterwards (maybe even during!).

VRM: Collectively immense

2009-03-04T09:34:00.003Z

After last week's VRM meeting, I've been pondering the merit of my Personal RFP model. Again, the notion of a broker (especially a powerful one, such as Google) was unpopular, but no-one suggested a better way of getting to a point where a network of individuals can support the model.

So I've been mulling over a variation on the theme. Could we create a social network which replaces the broker?

I think we could. I've looked at the roles the broker would've played and tried to figure out if the abstract notion of a social network could play these roles instead;

- access to large volume of vendors
- filtering RFPs on the way TO vendors
- filtering RFPs on the way FROM vendors back to potential customers
- aggregating recommendations and ratings

I believe that a social network could manage all of these roles using the same mechanisms as wikis (with their low cost of repair, and therefore low level of vandalism), combined with Amazon's model of recommendation (where recommendations planted by those with vested interests are lost in the collective voice of genuine feedback). And a crowd sourced system of classification.

Neither wikis nor Amazon's recommendation system are perfect. But they have all proven to be Good Enough.

Let's look at those roles, starting with accessing large numbers of vendors. We all have our favorite vendors, but without an immediate incentive I can't see customers alone getting enough vendor data into a system to get sufficient critical mass. But perhaps we could reach that point by scraping data from somewhere? Could be a variety of sources, starting with the Open Directory (which is somewhat out of date, but hey you've got to start somewhere). This, combined with a way of allowing vendors to edit their own details (with a system of take down and lock down in place, a'la Wikipedia), could work.

Filtering on the way in and out of the system could be handled algorythmically. They could be based on location (given radius), keyword (e.g. carpenter) and rating (minimum that the customer is interested in). Perhaps some level of semantic analysis if we're feeling clever. My suggestion here is that we start with something basic and open source-it, so that we can constantly improve results based on what we've learned, as well as drawing in talented people.

Actually I envision that this whole project would need to be open sourced. No security-by-obscurity here!

For the recommendation engine, I've already highlighted Amazon's model as being the most effective. And I think customers would be far more likely to contribute back their reviews and ratings to a system which is neutral than to one which is commercial.

Which leads us to a business model. Hey, it's 2009, we don't need no stinkin' business model! Only (half) joking. But seriously, I believe a platform like this could attract advertisers. I'd prefer to avoid charging customers and vendors for using the system, certainly at the beginning. Customers will never be charged of course, but I think vendors would need to see the value in the system before accepting a small charge towards upkeep of the project. I'd prefer to keep investors out of it, if possible.

So the final stage in this very rough analysis of using a social network as a broker is to rationalise it against the evolving VRM principles. Does it tick all the boxes?

Relationships are voluntary.
Customers are born free and independent of vendors.
Customers control their own data. They can share data selectively and control the terms of its use.
Customers are points of integration and origination for their own data.
Customers can assert their own terms of engagement and service.
Customers are free to express their demands and intentions outside any company’s control.

Boxes 1, 2, 5 and 6 are ticked.

Re: 3, if a customer shares their data with a system, and allows that system to share the data with multiple vendors based on a publicly available algorythm, does this count as still being in "control"? What if the terms of this use are defined by the network of customers, rather than just by the individual? Could we evolve the system further down the line so the customer can define their own algorythym? I like to think so.

Point 4 is a little tricky. Customers would obviously be the point of origin, but given that the filtering and forwarding is happening on a distant server, is the customer still a "point of integration"? My feeling is that this obeys the spirit of the principle, if not the letter. Again, it would be an open system and subject to the same scrutiny as the best open source project - which I think would give the customer the transparency they need to decide whether to trust the system in the first place.

Lots to mull over.

Foot massage

2009-02-20T11:58:00.002Z

Since I saw Fergal Sharkey talking at the Mandrake a few weeks ago, I've been pondering how the music business is changing. The trailblazers like Radiohead and Prince provide interesting case studies, as they try out new business models. But I don't think anyone saw this coming - Josh Freese, the drummer for NIN, is selling foot massages with his latest CD, and that's just the start of it. Brilliant!

Micro-experiment

2009-02-12T14:03:00.003Z

Thanks partly to frequent mention of Twitter in the Red Tops, as well as a few high profile celebs joining the network, usage is rising steeply. Newcomers are trying to understand how to use it. Several will fall into the trap of treating it as a broadcast channel, others will be too commercial, and others will fail to recognise the kind of behaviour that inspires trust. And some will get annoyed at the supposed mis-use of the system.

Which is why this quote from Rands is pertinent:

Twitter spam. Really? Are you even paying attention? I’ll say it again, you choose who you follow. If you’re following a newsbot, you’re going to get news spam. If you follow a good friend who can’t stop RTing, you’re going to to get retweet spam, but complaining about it is like standing the middle of a freeway asking, “Why do these cars keep hitting me?”

Whole, really rather good article is here. Pub-sub, baby, it's the future and it works! And it's this mentality that's meant my experience of twitter hasn't changed for the worse during this growth period.

It doesn't come as a huge surprise that the traffic increase is reflected in more corporate accounts. I've mentioned in the past that social media stops being social when it adopts a commercial tone of voice. And one-on-one engagements count for more. I kind of ran the company twitter feed at my last place, which I'm convinced helped us to engage with a savvy audience (176 followers, which ain't bad), and we're going to explore how it can work at The Team.

Letting anyone post whenever they want hasn't really worked, so we're setting up a simple twitter experiment. There are many people at The Team who are on Twitter, and they have a wildly diverse portfolio of work. Only 1/4 of our staff are in the Digital team, the rest being involved in Brand, Marketing and Employee Engagement. So we're going to take it in turns guest tweeting from week to week, to use Twitter as a social tool for sharing our varied outlook on life.

If you want to see whether this experiment works, you can follow us here.

The Dark Ages of Football

2009-02-10T11:33:00.002Z

There are plenty of businesses that should be pulled kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Airports is one. Government is another. But within the entertainment industry, there can't be many organisations as backwards as that which runs our very own national sport.

Turns out Sky Sports has won more of the rights to show live football. As far as I can figure out, this gives the average consumer very little to cheer about. The government needs to take a look at an industry which forces consumers down a duopolistic, narrow broadcast channel when the web offers so many greater possibilities - and these possibilities could well be more lucrative for distributors and football clubs alike.

Let's just say that I wanted to watch this match live. My choices would've been to either go to the ground or, ironically, go abroad and watch it on TV. Or watch a poor quality live stream through a dodgy website.

Let's just say that I want to only watch live matches involving my favorite club. There are no packages that let me do that, I have to pay for all the other games too. I won't even get this on the club's dedicated TV channel!

Let's just say that I want to watch a specific goal from the weekend. I've got to look on Youtube, and keep trying until a clip appears, then watch it quickly before it's taken down. The fact this happens is sufficient proof of demand, surely? Fortunately it's still possible to see the best goal ever scored...but we all have our own favorites, and they're not always easy to find or see.

Long Tail economics assert that infinite supply leads to unlimited demand. There is such a vast quantity of footage out there (including off the field of play) that it's surely just a question of how you serve it up and what you charge.

Dear Football Association: We will look back on this time as the dark ages of football. The above demands aren't unusual, and there's a ready made distribution network out there waiting to be harnessed. Time to suit up!

/rant

FOSDEM 2009

2009-02-10T10:35:00.005Z

I've just spent the weekend at FOSD EM (Free and Open Source Developer's European Meeting) in Brussels, and it was every bit as invigorating as last year. There's something very special about such a well attended event where the vast majority of people are contributing their time and considerable expertise free of charge out of love. It can't help but rub off, even on non-developers like me.

However the most interesting thing I found is that several open source projects are now making special efforts to engage with non-developers. Whether it's in the fields of design, usability or marketing, several projects are now realising that their product can benefit from a more diverse skill set. I've written about Ubuntu in the past, and now Drupal has hired not one but two usability gurus and MediaWiki is hiring for a Usability Initiative.

Furthermore, Mozilla are starting a new design initiative called the "Creative Collective". What sets this apart from the other projects is that creatives are expected to contribute for free. And they've done it in the past, e.g. for t-shirt design projects. How did Mozilla drum up so much support from designers? Through branding and marketing. Many designers embrace Firefox to such an extent that designing Firefox t-shirts is a form of self expression. And the results are terrific.

Anyway, back to FOSDEM itself! I was mostly interesting in the Mozilla and Drupal tracks, and both projects are making great strides.

Mozilla in fact is now imagining what life might be like in 2060! Obviously no-one can predict what the web or world will look like then, but they're going to follow a "clear conceptual map" to get there, based on helping users to study, copy, modify and share. Incidentally, it's worth pausing for a moment to see how far they've come already. In 2003, Internet Explorer had ~99% of the market share. In 2008 that figure has dropped to ~68%, with Firefox taking ~21% of the share. And that's even with most standard PC builds coming with Internet Explorer pre-installed. Amazing, really!

As for Drupal, it was useful hearing about the progress they're making towards Drupal 7. But the best session for me was one by Emma Jane Hogbin, who lives some 200 miles North of Toronto. She operates a sort of Drupal club, for small businesses within 100 mile radius, for whom she runs several web sites based on near-identical principles. Economies of scale (think: bulk security updates) means she can provide a valuable service at bargain prices, and she brings all these business owners together for a Drupal night once a month or so, to see each other's websites and form friendships. Inspirational. She's uploaded session notes and answers to questions here.

Anyway, that's FOSDEM over for another year. I'm going to miss the quirky, geeky humour:

...not to mention the crazy beers...

..and Brussels was gorgeous as always!

Finally I can't end the post without thanking the organisers and staff. As ever they did an amazing job, didn't ask for any money, and every single one of them deserves a huge amount of credit for a job well done. Thanks guys!

++

UPDATE 9/2/09: Oops, forgot to mention that there's an album of photos up on Flickr.

VRM in 2009

2009-01-09T15:08:00.003Z

I'm willing to wager that 2009 will be a watershed year for VRM. But then I suspect the same will apply for the next 5-10 years too; we're only at the beginning of the journey. So what activity can we anticipate from the VRM community over the course of the year?

From where I'm standing, VRM seems to be gathering significant momentum in terms of mindshare. Folks are frequently joining the VRM mailing list, and offering valuable, constructive input. And a few hardy vendors are starting to take notice (as evidenced by their attendance at November's meeting). It all goes towards improving the definition and objectives of the VRM project, and there's some fantastic work going on at http://projectvrm.org/ as a result.

So in 2009 I think we can expect two things.

On the positive side, actual VRM tools will move from conception and production into launch. Having these tools in the wild will help many to understand what is, up to now, a fairly conceptual notion. This will help determine the future direction of the project and, naturally, improved tools will follow.

Unfortunately, on the negative side, I suspect VRM will become a misused buzzphrase. It'll be interpreted (whether accidentally or maliciously) as simply giving customers a bit more control over their data, without strictly adhering to the actual principles of VRM. Companies will proudly sign up for their faulty interpretation of VRM. Course correction will become an important job for the project team.

Looking beyond these, I imagine that one or more VRM tools are on the horizon that will be embraced by customers and vendors alike. I still believe that there'll be room for a broker in this arrangement - at least to get things off the ground - with a strict provision for direct-to-vendor relationships as well.

And I believe with passion that 2009 will be a huge net positive for the VRM project. The quality of the discussions taking place on the mailing lists (join!) is consistently high and thought provoking. Some of the best minds on the planet are coming together for the greater good. VRM has implications that go far beyond mere trade...this is truly groundbreaking stuff and I'd urge anyone who hasn't yet taken an interest to get involved!

Christmas in Hong Kong

2009-01-09T13:21:00.003Z

We decided to stop in Hong Kong on the way back from Australia, which happened to include Christmas Day. I didn't know what to expect, and a few have asked what it was like, so here goes...

(Quick link to photos)

Christmas is still a public holiday, from the days of British rule, and with the weather being ~20°C plenty of people were out and about. The overwhelming impression - skewed as it may be - was that everyone hit the shops. They were heaving!

We had Dim Sum for our main Christmas meal, as the amazing Luk Yu Tea House in Lan Kwai Fong. Best. Dumplings. Ever. And the kids got to use chopsticks for the first time.

But the most interesting thing by far was that the parks were packed with people holding Christmas parties. In Kowloon Park we spent some time with some people from Indonesia, who'd bought their instruments to rock out to:

Meanwhile the locals were trying to concentrate...

And at the end of Christmas Day, there was the usual 8pm lightshow. Crowds gather on Kowloon to look over the harbour at Hong Kong island, where several buildings have coordinated a lights and lasers show to music:

It's obviously impossible to get a clear picture of a city like Hong Kong in the short time we had. But I will say it was one of the more interesting Christmas Days I've had...!

Australia 2008

2009-01-08T14:57:00.008Z

Happy New Year!

This is the first of a few catch-up posts. I spent most of December travelling around Australia, catching up with friends in Melbourne and Sydney, and driving along the coast inbetween.

It was a great trip, and we got to see a corner of Australia we missed out on last time. Highlights along the coast were Wilson's Prom (a lovely national park at the Southern-most point of mainland Australia)....

With heaps of animals...

...some more friendly than others...

...we stayed in some cool cabins along the coast (this one was only A$95 a night!)...

...and had a few jellyfish encounters...

...but Sydney (with apologies to Melbournites) was the real jewel in the crown. It was great to visit old haunts, as well as catching up with old friends. And the harbour...oh, the harbour....

In short, well worth the effort! Several have asked how we managed this with two very small children in tow, I'll post about that separately. In the meantime, here's to 2009 and saying goodbye to George!

Web Dev TV

2008-11-21T12:45:00.004Z

I'm going to be out of the country from 24 November to 26 December, so I guess I've attended my last conference of 2008. I'd like to give some link love to Jon Hicks, who gave what turned out to be one of the most entertaining and useful presentations of the year - his talk at FOWD ("From Design to Deployment") was brilliant. It was filmed, but tragically the film didn't include the slides - they were published separately. So for the benefit of any aspiring web developer, or even old hands who want to brush up their coding skillz, here's the video and the slides in one place.

Jon Hicks - FOWD London 2008 from Future of Web Design on Vimeo.

Design To Deployment Jon Hicks

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: fowd08 fowdlondon)

Jon wrote a thoughtful blog post including all of the assets referenced in his talk (including the film at the end) - you can find it here.

Nice work, Jon!

Serendipitous discovery

2008-11-18T10:55:00.002Z

We're planning an "intranet lunch" at The Team (I'm not scared to link there now, but watch this space), where we'll be inviting a few customers in to float some ideas we've had. I'll be able to share these ideas once they've been shared with the customers, but in the meantime I've been thinking about the ways in which intranets could be used.

For me, the most interesting function of an intranet is to serve as a medium for serendipitous discovery. In medium to large size companies, especially those which are growing (and yes this applies to The Team, too) information flow becomes an important problem to solve. Not only are more levels of management inserted between senior decision makers and those at the coal face, but it becomes harder for customer facing people to share knowledge between themselves as well.

In addition, as layers of management increase, it becomes even more important for customer facing people to be empowered to innovate, to respond to market conditions and customer demands rapidly and effectively. The chances of this happening increase rapidly when staff are aware of each others skills, problems, experience...and availability.

Senior management has to put tools in place to help this information flow around, and the humble intranet has an important role to play in this. It ain't just about recording information for reference (such as a directory), nor is it just about nourishing existing connections (such as the broadcasting of rules and regulations). It's an opportunity to evolve the way that people collaborate, innovate and succeed.

There are now dozens of existing social tools that can support this objective, and these tools are designed in such a way that they can be integrated into an intranet with virtually no effort. And they're free! Almost every company has people who blog, tweet and tag - they're already sharing stuff, and it's a valuable and quick win to integrate this activity into an intranet. In turn it makes the intranet a more interesting place to visit, increasing traffic, contributions and serendipitous discovery. It's like an un-vicious circle.

On first impression, Twitter in particular looks like a frivilous waste of time. I'd argue strongly against that...I've found it hugely valuable in my past and present jobs knowing what's going through the minds of my colleagues. An individual tweet might have very little value. But when you overlay the twitter streams of a select group of people, serendipitous discovery abounds!

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

2008-11-14T11:55:00.001Z

Who said nothing good comes from a recession?

Good boy!

2008-11-06T17:32:00.005Z

Hmm, blogging has definitely suffered while I get up to speed at the new place. But in the meantime, there's this:

He's saying the word "Obama". No, really.

TiddlyTiller - Wikified Project Reporting

2008-10-25T19:30:00.005Z

So as mentioned in a tweet or two, I've been spending some of my time creating a project reporting tool using TiddlyWiki.

We started with a main objective, and things kind of spiralled out from there. First, I wanted to share a weekly report with the client (simple list of things like budget, status, etc.) and have all these archived and searchable. Then I figured if we were using TiddlyWiki, we could add the minutes in there too. Group them using tags. Auto-generate some templates when needed. And what about maybe using some task management tools?

So I've decided to use Phil Hawksworth's teamtasks as my starting point - which is why it bears a striking resemblance to said wonderful product - and, in the interests of sharing early and often, here's a link to my early modest effort (use right click, save as to your desktop, then open it from there. Or open this version if you just want a play without downloading anything).

In keeping with the practice of giving TiddlyWiki based products ridiculous names, I've decided to call my product TiddlyTiller. As in 'steady hand on the tiller'. I'll be working on a product website a little further down the line, and have agreement from my company to release it under an open source licence (I did the extra work on company time). To most of the people reading this blog, it's simply the right thing to do - but it's a new concept to some of my colleagues. So they deserve credit for that.

So, next steps...I'm going to start using this on one of my projects. Hopefully the client won't have any security constraints that prevent it being opened and read locally. We'll see how we go and probably make some tweaks to improve the core product.

On a parallel path, I'm going to try and corral our designers at The Team into designing a product website for me. Might take a while as they're busy, but we'll see!

Feedback, comments, suggestions....all welcome.

Some things that have happened to me since last time I wrote a blog post

2008-10-25T16:59:00.008Z

I haven't really had time to blog, what with the new job 'n' all. But to make up for it, here's a quick digest of things Casablanca.

I'm loving the new job! I'm working with a good bunch of people, and they've got some amazing clients - so far, I've just been working on the NHS Choices project. The NHS wants to up their game in terms of preventative medicine and treatment - not just reactive treament - and the website will play a central role in this initiative. So it's all about helping people lead healthy lifestyles. I'm starting off in a project management role, but will swap hats from time to time to lead innovation workshops, and that kind of thing. I'm currently trying to figure out what role VRM can play in all of this, and very much looking forward to the VRM workshops taking place in London on 3rd November.

I've also had fun trying to turn TiddlyWiki into a reporting tool for our project managers (for internal and external stakeholders). The subject of an imminent blog post...

I've resisted linking to our company website up to now as it's pretty awful. The good news is that it's going to be completely overhauled by Christmas, so I'll link to some design assets as soon as they're signed off internally. I can reveal that it's a considerable improvement...

And I've had great fun exploring the general area around my office too! We're based in London Bridge (11 Southwark Street), and I had no idea how interesting this area is away from the river. Apart from the luscious Borough Market, there's all sorts of interesting buildings and people, not to mention a brand of Monmouth Coffee Shop that's brimming with character. I've started taking photos which I'm sharing in a growing photo set on Flickr, but for now here's a couple of snaps from the weird and wonderful Cross Bones Graveyard just round the corner from our offices:

More photos here. And more details about the graveyard itself on the Wikipedia page.

In other news, I'm now the proud curator of a Macbook Air, courtesy of my new employers. I say proud; I wish for starters that I'd waited a day or two and picked up the new model with the larger hard drive. And I still think its a mistake building a laptop without an ethernet port. I have to walk around the building with the USB to ethernet dongle hanging out, and it swings like a tail. Still, apart from these minor concerns, it really is a smashing laptop and I'm one of the lucky few in the office to have a laptop at all.

What else? Oh, I've been watching True Blood. It's a new show from the ever dependable HBO, and the premise is that vampires have come 'out of the coffin' and are integrating into society in the US deep South. It's well worth the effort, although I should stress that those who don't like weird sex scenes should probably steer clear...

Last but not least, I've finally gotten around to finishing The Black Swan. I can put my hand on my heart and say that it's one of the most interesting, thought provoking and challenging books I've read in years. I'll never read or watch the news in the same way again. I'll be encouraging the project managers in my team to read it, no doubt.

Blog Action Day 08

2008-10-15T06:52:00.004Z

Today is Blog Action Day, the day when thousands of blogs around the globe agree to highlight a key issue. Last year it was the environment, this year it's poverty.

Unfortunately, what with the pressures of a new job n' all, I haven't had the time to give this post or topic the effort it deserves. But I do believe that we all have a responsibility to do something about poverty, both home and abroad. There are numerous charities that help make this easy - for instance, why not visit the Oxfam site and set up a monthly donation? It's as easy as buying a DVD from Amazon. £10 a month goes a long way.

Cash-strapped Technology Choices

2008-10-08T10:18:00.005Z

Nat Torkington has written an interesting piece on the effect that the financial crisis will have on the tech sector. Here's a paraphrased open source slice:

This recession will be great for free and open source because of the shortage of cash. Last recession saw the mainstream legitimisation of open source operating systems...because it was clear and away the most cost-effective choice. The saying I use is, "come for the price, stay for the quality". Perhaps this recession will legitimise many of the applications (CRM, finance, etc.) higher up the stack.

I think he's made a good point, but the impact won't be quite as high as he - or I - would like. The fact remains that the most important factor in a choice of technology is confidence in the technology. Large software vendors will continue to court the people making the decisions, giving them misplaced confidence about proprietary software, disarming any financial concerns through spreading FUD about TCO.

That said, I'm still optimistic that the financial crisis will mean open source software is at least considered more frequently where it wasn't before. Like I said, I agree open source makes even more sense during these cash-strapped times - my argument is one of impact.

I'm in complete agreement with Nat about open source / cloud services though:

Open source services and cloud computing will benefit from the tight financial situation where conditions will favour opex and not capex. It wil be nigh impossible to borrow to buy hardware or a major software license. An open source software product is free to get through the door, and services around it are delivered from opex not capex. Similarly, cloud computing lets a company pay a little to use someone else's enormous capital investment.

The comments are worth reading, too.

whitehouse.web

2008-10-07T13:40:00.005Z

I've been following Barack Obama's progress closely, and am thrilled to see his lead being extended in the polls. If he can do well in tonight's debate, then I believe he need only avoid an Arnie Vidick style disaster and he's almost home and dry.

Parenthetically, there are extraordinary parallels between Matt Santos' fictional campaign on The West Wing and Barack Obama's campaign in real life. Check this out to see what I mean.

Anyway, of particular interest now is the impact that Obama's digital campaign has had on his support base. To my mind, this has been one of the decisive factors in the establishment of Democratic support on the ground; I quote from the BBC Article:

The poll also showed that the Obama camp had a stronger organisation on the ground, with 43% of potential voters having been contacted by Democratic supporters, while only 33% had heard from McCain supporters.

We're watching a future case study as it unfolds. Some social software helps people make connections with people they've never met. And some helps people to establish and nourish relationships that exist in real life as well. Obama's focus on the latter is leading him to The White House. Lessons abound!

The Future of Branding

2008-10-07T12:29:00.005Z

It's no secret that the web changes the way that companies should market or brand themselves. But there's still some confusion as to how these changes manifest themselves. So I'm pinning some colours to the mast.

Nowadays, the actual values of company staff are becoming increasingly transparent because of the web. This is standard Cluetrain stuff, but the message bears repeating. It has become damaging for a company to say they have particular brand values if these differ from the ACTUAL values that their staff has. And as more people get involved in online social networking tools, and their activity subverts the hierarchies inside company walls, the more visible their actual values become.

So how is the role of branding changing? For me, it's just like branding cattle, where the brand much reflect the actual qualities of the animal. With companies, branding allows a company to understand and present a consistent, unified image - but it must be the truth, never a contrivance. All companies have staff that hold a variety of opinions and perspectives, and a company's brand nowadays has to be sufficiently flexible to not just reflect this, but support it too. It is unwise to retrofit a desired perception onto the unwilling (or unable).

This has a knock-on effect right the way through the company, particularly on HR. You can't hire people and then say "here are your new values"! It's now more important than ever that the actual values of the company drip through every element of the company, from the hiring process through to how staff are treated day to day. And of course this should permeate through to a consistent visual language that can be applied everywhere.

So as with advertising and PR, I think there is an opportunity opening up for those who can understand how the landscape is changing and adapt quickly. Branding still has a key role to play. And it turns out that the companies that have already behaved in the above fashion to begin with have stolen a march on their competitors. Companies like First Direct, Southwest Airlines and Virgin have adopted these policies all along, and frequently feature in best company and best employer lists. Their warm and friendly brands are reflected in their people (well, in most cases anyway). They're also well placed to get through the financial crisis as a result.

And on the other side of the coin we have companies like Microsoft. It doesn't matter how many times Microsoft re-badges itself - and they've really struggled with this - it's an obvious veneer, and I'll bet many people assume Microsoft's real values are reflected in their aggressive and anti-competitive behaviour. Microsoft has many smart and well intentioned people in their ranks, and if their values were reflected in their corporate brand it wouldn't do Microsoft any harm at all. Much as I like the Blue Monster, and everything it stands for, it didn't have much of an impact on their brand image - not from where I stand anyway.

Personal Attack Cow photo shared under a Creative Commons licence on Flickr by Repoort.

So long...sort of

2008-09-20T11:42:00.002Z

For those who haven't heard, I've resigned from Osmosoft and I'm off to pastures new! But I'm leaving the gate open behind me, so to speak, for mutual grazing purposes.

I've had an amazing time at Osmosoft. I feel privileged that I was able to spend so much time in the vicinity of so many smart people....such is the nature of the Osmosoft experiment. The idea was that we'd learn as much as possible so we could pass these learnings onto the BT mothership, and I hope I've done my bit via this blog and other channels.

I'm joining the digital arm of an agency called The Team, based in London (by Borough Market). They've got big ambitions, particularly in the open source space, and recently won a great contract with the NHS. I'm hoping that I can use my open source experience to help The Team's clients make informed technology choices, and I'll also be helping The Team to establish a project management framework that's ready for growth.

On a personal note, the NHS gave my family an amazing service when our two children were born, and I'm thrilled to have the chance to give something back!

As for the mutual grazing, I'm hoping to continue involvement in many of the projects and initiatives I've worked on while at Osmosoft (open source, TiddlyWiki, VRM, all-things-web), so I'll still be attending public events and workshops on these subjects, hopefully running into the aforementioned smart folks from time to time. We've made much of our 'porous membrane' at Osmosoft and I hope to continue in this vein at The Team. The blogging, twittering, flickring, upcominging (?!), vimeoing and dopplring won't stop here!

Making open source products usable

2008-09-11T17:05:00.011Z

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm intrigued by the idea that the involvement of user experience disciplines in open source projects could be a catalyst for improving mainstream adoption.

I'm most interested in those cases where the target market includes non-developers and where a proprietary offering commands market share right now (think: Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Pidgin, Gimp). Although developers on the whole dislike poor UI as much as the next man, developing usable complex systems for the common man is a far more interesting challenge, doubly so when it dovetails with the intrinsic benefits of grassroots development.

It's a really tough problem to crack. The open source world is ruled by developers, who are sometimes resistant to non-developers telling them how they could improve "their" product. Which is a shame, as not all developers have the knack of designing intuitive user interfaces on their own, never mind in concert. For more on that, read this.

This is why the projects most likely to integrate the different disciplines successfully will most likely have a financial sponsor. Someone with the financial clout and the vision that persuades multi-disciplined contributors (developers and non-developers) to collaborate.

This still leaves you with the problem of how, exactly, the (top down) user experience guidance can dovetail with the (grassroots) development process. To me, it feels as though appropriate talent pairing and knowledge sharing could help here. Get the UI designers working closely enough with key developers to pool their perspectives, and share their subsequent insights with other people in their disciplines.

Anyway, I was interested to see Mark Shuttleworth - leader of the Ubuntu project - also agreeing with this school of thought, and even offering a few insights about how he might go about achieving this. To my mind, Ubuntu is one of the few Linux desktop distributions that has the resource potential to challenge OS X in terms of user experience.

He's got his work cut out, mind. But I'm hopeful that he'll use his best asset: the Ubuntu community. When the first set of design assets are ready, I'd like to see him share them with the community and study their feedback carefully. Present multiple options. Hopefully this will focus the design effort in a direction that isn't going to cause too much disruption (eliminating unviable options).

I'm also hoping he'll be able to create and share working versions that can demonstrate how the design principles might manifest themselves. This is a chance to watch what people do (as opposed to what they say).

I love the analogy that our experience of the web so far is akin to three seconds after the Big Bang! Open source as a term is only ten years old, and here we are standing on the edge of solving one of the most significant problems open source faces. This will not only be interesting in the short term, but hugely rewarding to all of us in the long term. There's a huge amount of potential just waiting to be unlocked!

Photo shared under a Creative Commons licence on adewale_oshineye's photostream.

OSS del Milano

2008-09-11T11:00:00.003Z

I've spent the last couple of days at OSS 2008, one of Europe's premier open source conferences. It's my first experience of an academic type conference; all of the speakers (most of which were either students or professors) had submitted ~5,000 word essays in support of their talks, and these were bound into a book presented on arrival.

The conference was dryer than other events I've been too. Most of the sessions were based on empirical studies and it seemed to me that several speakers were treating their study as an end in itself, rather than as a discipline with practical value. For instance, one presenter went to great pains to show that open source is growing quickly, and wanted to use mathematical models to predict how this trend would develop. Ignoring for one moment the flaw in this approach (the open source world and software industry are vulnerable to external forces; mathematical models won't work here), what's the point of trying to predict this stuff? I mean, it's vaguely interesting to know what the current health of the market is like, backing up what most people already know (is healthy, yes!), but trying to extrapolate this data into the future is pointless at best.

Anyway, rant over! There were some interesting insights in some of the other sessions. Many of the talks focused on how communities were structured, how they operate and how they're likely to evolve:

We learned about a project (Project Laika) which had bloomed and then declined, so plenty of lessons learned there. The main one was that they tried to fix everything that users asked for, rather than encouraging the community to get involved in the fixing, and this didn't scale.
Walt Scacchi has observed that open source projects are changing as non-developers are getting involved, which obviously resonated with me. The folks who can mediate discussions between developers and non-developers become essential hubs in these new communities. Separately, Walt's also setting up a helpful repository for research papers.
There was also a useful session on how trust is formed in open source projects. The conclusions were that new users approaching a project for the first time undertake a quick assessment based on reputation, number of downloads, amount of activity and longevity of the project. And as they get more involved in a project they focus more on openness of the whole development process (e.g. availability of bug tracking tools, documentations, etc.), the way builds are tested and integrated, availability of intermediate milestones and implementation processes. Faith in the system leads to trust, which leads to contribution.

As for Milan itself, Milan is cool. I managed to avoid all the Mafia-infested avalanches, which was a relief. The weather was great, and we got the chance to wander around town. The architecture was amazing; this is Duomo church in the main square:

And you can clamber around on the roof!

There's also an epic covered arcade called Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II:

And the impressive Castello Sforzesco:

We found some unfortunate signs around the city...

We had lovely pasta and pizza for most main meals, in charming family run restaurants:

...but the desserts were the star of the show!

I missed out on eating Gelato, but you've got to leave something for next time, haven't you?

You can see the full set of photos on my Flickr page.

Fighting Wikinomics

2008-09-03T09:27:00.004Z

I'm noticing an alarming trend by Wikipedia editors. They seem to be holding articles to a much higher standard than they did before. Problem is, the glory of Wikipedia (and wikis in general) is that poor quality content is much, much better than none at all.

The first I heard of it was when Doc Searls complained that wikipedia were about to delete his entry. It would be bad form for him to edit his own entry, and fortunately there were plenty of people who were willing to make the required changes for him (unlike Tara Hunt, who no longer has an entry). His entry is now safe.

Fortunately, all the changes are visible. Let's have a quick look at Doc's entry: before and after the threats of deletion. There have been slight improvements. Were the threats of deletion really necessary? Couldn't Wikipedia have just pointed out the issues with the article in a colourful box at the top of the page?

And here's a current example. Someone has created an entry for "tiddler" (a component of the TiddlyWiki product). Unless we can prove that the entry is notable, this entry will be deleted. Anyone who wants to correct this would have to understand the modest notability guidelines and the extensive citation guidelines. This requires a lot of time and effort. So if this entry is deleted, will no entry at all be better than the current situation? Of course not.

I think Wikipedia is losing sight of what made them great in the first place, and what makes wikis good in general. Public edits, a low cost of repair and virtually unlimited storage allowed the project and the community to bloom. Driving up quality is an admirable objective, but this shouldn't be pursued at the expense of the broad value of information contained within.

Don't get me wrong. Having a clear set of guidelines is essential, and the NPOV guidelines in particular have been essential in resolving disputes and setting the tone of some of the more contentious topics. It's been fantastic that the Wikipedia administrators have drawn attention to e.g. lack of citation when it's missing, and helped to correct vandalism when it occurs. But these administrators are now changing their role from moderator to policeman, and this will harm what has become an essential resource. Our essential resource.

Listening to your community

2008-09-01T10:18:00.004Z

This discussion about the new JQuery website is pretty interesting. Just to recap, their old site looked like this (click these to big, if you want):

On Friday, they changed it to look like this:

...and their community went pretty wild. They particularly didn't like the use of the rock star image and metaphor. So they decided to change it to this:

For me, this all smacks of a badly thought through process, and they're still not thinking smartly.

I'm inclined to draw comparison with another recent failure to engage properly with a community - the unveiling of the London 2012 logo. In both cases, there was an opportunity to canvas opinion with the audience, and this option was ignored (or, worse, not even considered). In both cases it backfired badly.

JQuery has no excuse for not engaging with their community before going down this path. Their community lives on the web, where there are well established tools for seeking, gathering and processing feedback. Try and slip one past this crowd at your peril - just ask Kevin Rose after the encryption key debacle or Mark Zuckerberg after the Beacon mess.

And that isn't to say that the quick change was the best way forward either (although some members of the community appreciated it). For me, this merely repeats and compounds the error. At least the London 2012 guys didn't fall into this trap (although they shouldn't have just left things the way they were either!).

What I think both the JQuery team and the London 2012 team should have done is recognise that community engagement is difficult, messy, time consuming....and very worthwhile, especially if done during the discovery phase of a project. It's also a good way to reverse an error, if accompanied by a well-timed mea culpa. In today's highly connected world, the onus is on public leaders to demonstrate that they've thought things through, but still need the input and support of their community to make the big decisions.

For the JQuery case study, I believe the best path forward would be to outline the logic behind the redesign - what are the objectives of the website? How will they achieve these objectives? - and then present options for the community to consider. Then they need to demonstrate that they're listening, and not just say that they are. If they can do this, then those who don't like the final solution are far less likely to object than if a seemingly arbitrary solution is thrust upon them.

The Curation of Open Source Websites

2008-08-27T13:57:00.008Z

I've recently spent quite a lot of time trying to improve the TiddlyWiki website, and thought this made an interesting case study - so I'm sharing what I've learned here.

Two things made this particular case interesting;

The product (and, by extension, the website) is curated by an open source community. So there are no face to face meetings, no project team, and an intellectual group of people to persuade.
Where TiddlyWiki is concerned, the website IS the product - and a sophisticated product at that. This affects every element of the experience. So we have to mitigate the potential confusion that can arise from using the product in "website mode", to then downloading something that behaves differently to the site (e.g. allowing saving).

The best way to improve the website was to treat it as a community artifact, just like TiddlyWiki itself; the development process would be kept as open as possible, I would make sure there were opportunities for feedback, and that all of this feedback was given due consideration and response.

When considering how TiddlyWiki.com looked a few months ago, I first considered recommending a complete overhaul. But given the above complexities I was persuaded to identify some quick wins, and implement those first, as a path to later improvements.

This turned out to be an effective approach. The quick wins I focused on were search, navigation, download, installation and content. I tried to see the site through the eyes of a new user going through the process of evaluation, download, installation and experimentation, while also allowing for experienced users who might be returning for advanced requirements.

As the site was developed, I shared these improvements with the community, and those interested in giving support stepped up to the plate. The feedback was intelligent and very helpful. Together we've worked towards a version of the site that has just gone live (yay!).

In my agency days, we'd always warn clients against the perils of designing by committee - a slow route to a messy solution...and one could say that an open source community is the ultimate committee! But the subtle dynamics and conventions at play within the community helped keep the usual problems in check. For instance, there was little or no posturing. And I received a lot of encouragement and support.

And it's interesting to consider the feedback from the community supplanting the kind of feedback one receives from focus groups and traditional user testing. Most people in the TiddlyWiki community have well-above-average technical skills. I remained cautious about developing a site for these users at the expense of less capable visitors, but still the quality of feedback was very high. I'm hoping I can persuade Julie Starr (of TiddlerToddler fame) to give the site her honest feedback....

If you'd like to deep dive into the artifacts:

Competitor analysis
Round one of changes (group discussion)
Round two of changes (group discussion)

So where are we now?

So far, we've only implemented a number of quick (but significant) wins on the website - as mentioned; search, navigation, content, download and installation are all much improved. The end result is much cleaner and, I believe, much less intimidating to the casual visitor. My hope is that we can now observe these improvements in the wild, and take further feedback into account moving forwards.

And talking about moving forward, some of the subjects coming onto the table will be pretty interesting, I think...we're talking about things like branding, the logo, creating a sandpit area, improved evaluation (playing with different verticals such as GTD), extended download options, and more. There's still heaps of room for improving the end-to-end experience, and some great suggestions from the community to consider. Watch this space...!

I couldn't have done all this by myself, and thanks are due to everyone in the community who provided feedback, plus my colleagues Phil, Martin, Jeremy and Fred who chipped in at key moments. Thanks, y'all!

CTO, Stars and Stripes Incorporated

2008-08-22T14:55:00.006Z

While all eyes are on who Obama will pick as his running mate, Robert Scoble's encouraging his readers to discuss who should be Obama's CTO. In case you missed it, Obama has said that, should he become prez, he'll appoint a Chief Technology Officer (CTO), who'll be responsible for setting the technology agenda in all areas of government. But it stands to reason that such a figurehead would have a highly public profile, and his or her influence would stretch beyond public office, and probably beyond American borders.

From the relative safety of my sofa in London, it's fun to speculate as to who might be good at this job. Scoble included a good suggestion (Larry Lessig) and a jaw-on-the-floor bad suggestion (Bill Gates) in his blog post. Vint Cerf came up in the comments, he'd get a vote from me. But then so did Michael Arrington *slaps forehead*. Some wag suggested RMS!

I was surprised that Doc Searls didn't get a mention. There can't be many web celebrities who are as well informed, well respected and persuasive as Doc. It would be nice if Bruce Schneier was involved in some capacity too; heck, that could have positive repurcussions on their foreign policy too.

The reality is that none of these guys would take a job as Obama's CTO; it really isn't their style. But we can hope that the person elected to the role will be well connected to this crowd, so they can keep abreast of the latest issues and developments (particularly regarding net neutrality and privacy), and not just be influenced by those with the deepest pockets. And fingers crossed we won't get another series of tubes style gaff from someone with more power than sense...

Olympic coverage on the BBC

2008-08-18T09:14:00.002Z

I knew that the BBC's olympic coverage was good, but I didn't appreciate quite how good until I read this. We shouldn't take the BBC's coverage for granted; they've put in a huge amount of effort and produced something really special, both online and over the air, and for free (if you're in the UK, anyway).

And this is over 5,000 miles away - just imagine what they'll be able to do when it's taking place in our own backyard!

Yay for Auntie!

Snout

2008-08-14T19:19:00.003Z

A Snout is one of those things that you know you need before figuring out where you'd put it.

Find out more here!

Very Public Relations

2008-08-13T15:16:00.003Z

Here's an interesting article by PR type Steve Rubel. Money quote:

It's my view that increasingly, bloggers (and maybe journos too) simply don't want our help. Many bloggers - particularly those who cover tech - love to discover new things and experience them on their own, unaided by PR.

Steve, it isn't so much that bloggers (or even the traditional media) want to find their own story. OK, maybe that's a small part of it, but mainly it's that we react badly to anything written in a commercial tone of voice. Look at this random press release.

This isn't intended as a dig at Nike; it's more the PR industry in general. I mean, this press release wouldn't even pass the Turing Test. It's obviously gone through several iterations to allow for the "right" structure, the "right" tone of voice and the "right" message. Almost all evidence of humanity has been left by the side of the road. And it's about the freakin' Olympics!! It's really no surprise that even Rubel throws most of his away.

Here's the thing. These days, we're used to reading articles online written by people who don't hold formal press credentials. Their articles are friendly, genuine, flawed and *much* more interesting to read.

From a company perspective, there's an obvious (albeit scary) way around this problem. Let your workforce talk online about their work. Let them choose the tools to use. The people will self-select. They'll be the ones who are most passionate about what they're doing, and the most knowledgeable. And it's this passion and knowledge that will attract the right audience that the outdated tools can't reach.

This needn't harm the PR industry too much, not in the short term at least. They can still send traditional communications down traditional channels (there are traditional journos out there, after all). But it does represent an opportunity for PR departments and agencies that are willing to evolve. Companies need help transitioning to this model, and there is still value in consistent communication of e.g. company values. And individuals may need support and encouragement.

This is the new face of Public Relations. You have a choice: adapt or fade away!

Building an Open Source Community

2008-08-13T09:14:00.005Z

Since joining Osmosoft, which is in orbit around a very large telco, I've been interested in the reasons why large enterprises don't integrate open source into their organisations as well as they could. After all, the benefits are well known now, and this is something that individuals can achieve with very little effort - so why not a collection of individuals?

Turns out the main reason (besides culture!) is that large companies are often stuck in a process rut. Systems and processes have evolved over decades to support an organisation which usually either builds software itself or buys it in. And these systems and processes don't lend themselves to the open source way of doing things. Procurement processes, for example, aren't set up to handle open source at all.

It's tempting to think that individuals in a large company don't need processes to adopt open source, but this isn't the case. One good reason why process and governance is needed is that open source software has licences just like proprietary software, and it's essential for a company like BT to make sure these licence terms are understood and applied. Plus sometimes code from two or more different open source projects and licences is merged, and someone has to identify and sort out the result licensing mess. And that's just scratching the surface!

Fortunately, help is available. There's an initiative called FOSSBazaar, which BT has just joined as a strategic partner. The idea is that companies that successfully create processes and tools to manage open source projects share their work and experiences with those who would like to follow suit. This can save everyone a huge amount of time and effort, as starting this stuff from scratch can be onerous. Large companies have a huge amount of resources that can be directed into open source projects, and helping them get started really helps build momentum behind the open source movement.

Anyway, on the suggestion of one of my colleagues, and in the finest tradition of reuse, I've re-hashed an article I wrote a while back ("Building a Developer Community") into a new article for the FOSSBazaar website called Building an Open Source Community. You can read the full article here.

Overriding emotions

2008-07-31T14:22:00.005Z

So I've been dwelling for several months on this tweet by my colleague Paul Downey.

Me: "the main role of advertising is to use emotion to override informed descisions"

I think it's a really interesting point, and as usual polarising an opinion sparks off the grey matter nicely. It really has been nagging me. But why?

I've done a fair chunk of work in advertising in the past, and so I suppose I felt vaguely put out by the assertion that I've been helping clients to subvert the public. Packaging, most microsites and to some extent the manifestation of brand values all fall into this category. And yet there is some substance to this accusation. Of course clients want to do whatever they can to improve sales.

But on reflection I guess what got my goat is that it points at the weakness of the human condition. As fallible emotional beings we're all susceptible to alluring advertising. And it's irritating that someone with an inferior product can secure market share through an effective ad campaign.

But the alternative is worse. Can you imagine a world where we have to make purely logical decisions about every single thing we bought? Imagine if we had to choose items in the supermarket based just on the facts? After hours in the store we'd return home with stuff we don't even know if we'll like! What about the Paradox of Choice? It's hard enough making decisions as it is; how would we narrow down our options to a more manageable selection, which we can investigate in more depth, without the aid of packaging and awareness of our options as a starting point?

The reality is that we're all emotional beings. And even though we're also guilty of trying to post-rationalise the choices we make, we're wired to get pleasure from these choices. The world would be a pretty dull place if we didn't allow our emotions to guide our choices to some degree.

Besides, much advertising contains information about the product (alongside, y'know, the emotional stuff) so who's to say it doesn't inform decisions, at least in part? Some people have gotten pretty good at separating fact from emotion and, for the others, well, more fool them.

So I've reached the conclusion that it's the human condition at the heart of the matter, and not advertising per se. And hey if your product doesn't live up to the advertising - whether in function or emotion - word gets around fast and you deserve what you get!

Bonus links: Excellent TED footage from Barry Schultz (of Paradox of Choice fame) and Malcolm Gladwell (of Tipping Point fame, but here talking about how more choice is better). Well worth watching.

Acquire and make friends

2008-07-31T11:58:00.006Z

Our parent company, BT, has just acquired Ribbit, a voice application company based in Silicon Valley - and I'm rather excited about it.

The acquisition makes sense for a number of reasons. First, BT have been changing their image as a telco to that of a software and services company. Ribbit provide a number of services that'll nicely augment those already offered by our SDK team. Also, it gives BT access to Silicon Valley, which is rich in entrepreneurial developer talent, as well as the headquarters of many large tech companies. I'm genuinely excited by BT's continued march into this physical and commercial space.

But this post isn't about that.

Mergers and acquisitions are often quite painful. I experienced two unpleasant mergers in my previous role, both of which involved integration in person. I learned that it's a BIG challenge to get two foreign companies working together. Which is why I've been impressed and surprised by the way social media has been used to develop the relationship between BT and Ribbit, separated by 8 time zones no less.

Ribbit has a Twitter feed, and many of my colleagues jumped on Twitter to wish Ribbit congratulations on the acquisition, and exchange banter ahead of meeting in person. We've challenged them to a table football contest (accepted), as well as threatening them with cocktails. Our own fair unit, Osmosoft, has offered to help them get their feet under the desk. They've been sending photos from the local coffee house, and we've browsed their photos on Flickr. I already feel closer to the Ribbit team than I did weeks after the previous acquisitions.

What can we learn from this? The very nature of mergers and acquisitions is confrontational. There's often the threat of competition, the possibility of redundancies, the territorial hostility, the commercial undercurrents. Social media helps us to neatly sidestep all of that, to develop relationships with human beings. To get a better idea of what makes us tick as human beings, laying the groundwork for the business to follow.

Sounds a lot like Cluetrain to me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are bumps in the road ahead, but I think we're much better equiped to handle these now we've become better acquainted.

25 words

2008-07-20T12:43:00.003Z

Thanks psd and JP for drawing my attention to the 25 words idea. Here's my modest effort:

Putting your priorities in the right order is much harder than it sounds. And it's even harder keeping them there. But it's worth the effort.

When I die

2008-07-18T08:15:00.003Z

It's an oft-repeated joke that, on their death bed, people never say they wished they'd spent more time in the office.

But I think this is going to change. Instead, I think people will be wishing they hadn't spent so much of their lives on the computer.

Think about it. Of the best experiences in your life, how many of them were spent online?

As responsible web professionals, we heap praise on web apps which are easier and more enjoyable to use. And this is laudable, to be sure. But maybe we're also focusing on the wrong ends. Maybe we should be praising the apps that help people finish their job, and get back to living their lives? Maybe we should be building them?

The obvious, kneejerk answer is that these sticky and social websites enrich our offline lives. There's truth in there of course. I'm really pointing the finger at myself; I love so much about the web that I have to remind myself that the best times of all are spent away from the keyboard.

These thoughts occured to me after reading this post written by the excellent Scott Berkun.

Battersea Power Station

2008-07-14T09:28:00.005Z

I've always been a big fan of Battersea Power Station, but have never been able to put my finger on the precise reason why. It's just such a formidable building, and somehow to me represents everything good about London - strong, imposing and resolute, yet stylish and practical.

I suppose I also like the fact that it's such an impressive building and yet it attracts almost no tourists, at least partly because you usually can't get close to it...

But all that might change soon. There are plans a-foot to redevelop Battersea Power Station and the surrounding area. Many others have tried and failed, usually because they underestimate the cost, effort and restrictions involved (it's a Grade II listed building). So it's no surprise that the latest owners need to get public opinion on their side with regard to their current plans. And when I heard that they were opening up the Power Station to the public to support these plans, I jumped at the chance to go for a wander round.

I wasn't disappointed! The building looks even more epic close up than from a distance. After seeing the power station on my daily commute since I moved to South West London in 1992, it was a boost to see it up close. I took a bunch of photos and you can see them here.

As for the planned changes...if it was up to me, I'd insist that the surrounding area be turned into a large park, and for the building itself to be restored to its original state. But we have to be practical. No-one's going to invest in the building or the area unless they can make money somehow. So my practical desire is that they don't build anything higher than the bottom of the chimneys. Also, give the building plenty of space around the outside, so it can be appreciated (there is a park planned, but it isn't big enough). Restore the exterior so it looks the same as it did when it closed in 1983 (no need for retail logos, or roof top gardens!). And, within this confine, do what you like with the inside.

If you're interested in finding out more, or having your say, check out the official regeneration website.

in which I draw attention to a sham study conducted by Futuresource on behalf of Macrovision

2008-07-09T15:32:00.010Z

Now this has got me pretty wound up. I picked up on this story in Ars Technica which claimed that one third of U.S. residents rip DVDs. Wait, what? Shurely shome mishtake?

So I followed the trail to this white paper (pdf) issued by Futuresource Consulting, a British PR company. The actual figures they've come up with are 32% in the United States and 36% in the United Kingdom admit to ripping DVDs.

I call bullshit. There's no way these figures are accurate. Most people wouldn't even know where to start. And my guess is that people who (a) know how and (b) can be bothered would be more likely to download their content straight from the web. Even a figure as high as 5% would raise an eyebrow. If you think a third of all people have ripped DVDs, then you haven't met people.

Turns out the research was sponsored by Macrovision, who proudly claim: "Macrovision provides copy protection, digital rights management, digital content licensing and asset management technologies to video, music, entertainment and business software markets". No conflict of interest there then!

But surely even if Macrovision had hired them, Futuresource would still try and demonstrate their integrity. At least they haven't tried to hide the sponsor's name. But where did they find the 5,331 respondents? Slashdot? Usenet? You can't tell from the report. And how were they incentivized to take part? The report doesn't say. You would think that most people smart enough to rip a DVD would also have seen the warnings and promotional films at the start of EVERY SINGLE FILM warning them about piracy. They'd hardly admit to the crime. And what were the specific questions asked? They're not stated in the report. From my experience doing user research, you've got to be very careful not to put words into people's mouths. It's dead easy to manipulate these surveys.

But even still, I doubt very much whether they'd get 1/3rd of respondents to admit to doing something they probably don't even understand. I cast aspersions on thee, Futuresource!!

So, here's a helpful summary:

Futuresource are puppets-for-hire, with no integrity
Macrovision are so desperate to prop up their broken business model that they'll pay someone to make stuff up
And at the very least, shame on Ars Technica for not at least reporting that the white paper was sponsored by Macrovision. You have a responsibility to your readers to do at least a little fact checking before running a piece like this.

TiddlyWest

2008-06-24T15:18:00.004Z

One of the things we're trying to figure out at Osmosoft is, generally, how a company should behave when engaging in an open source project. The answer is more complex and interesting than at first it might seem - it depends on many factors, such as the size and maturity of both the company and the project, how many community members are on the payroll, the personalities at work, and so on. Plus these things tend to change over time.

In our case, it's a monster sized Enterprise getting into bed with a young and attractive starlet of an open source project - all the more reason for us to tread carefully and act responsibly.

I've occasionally asked different people what role they would like us to play in the community. Some say they'd like us to put pressure on the core developers to keep the updates coming through. Others say we should clean the figurative toilet, and do the jobs that developers might not enjoy (such as writing unit tests and doing cross browser analysis). On the whole we've tried to behave as though we're unpaid members of the TiddlyWiki community - tinkering with TiddlyWiki and sharing our stuff as we go along - while perhaps doing a little more toilet cleaning and core committer-hassling than the average community member.

We're always striving to improve, by the way, so if you have a view on this do please respond in the comments.

In any event, one piece of feedback we received is that we can help organise events and bring members of the community together in real life. We've already done this twice, at TiddlyAnniversary in September and TiddlyYuletide in December, both of which took place in London, and so, continuing the tradition of ridiculous event names, we were thrilled to co-host the latest event - TiddlyWest - in San Francisco last week.

The most valuable aspect of the event for me was a chance to meet our co-host, Eric Shulman, for the first time. Eric is something of a TiddlyWiki legend, having created more TiddlyWiki plugins than anyone else, and I'm sure everyone present found his presentation fascinating. No-one cared that his ten minute presentation took 40 minutes!

We also had a few luminaries from Silicon Valley in the room; Salim Ismail (formerly CEO of Yahoo! Brickhouse, and now working with us to get TiddlyWiki working with his Confabb website), Greg Wolff (President of UnaMesa, which holds the TiddlyWiki code in trust) and Paul Hammant (ThoughtWorks Senior Technical Architect) were all in the house.

Open source fans tend to have a broad set of unusual ideas and interests, and this certainly applied to Rich Shumaker, who demonstrated Contact Juggling at the event:

So when all is said and done, I'm hopeful that we've forged some connections between local TiddlyWiki users and ourselves, as well as helping create a few new fans along the way. And I was thrilled to read the positive feedback in the TiddlyWiki discussion forums.

Thanks are due in no small part to Kevin Werbach and the team at Wharton West, who kindly donated their space and their sandwiches for the event.

There's a full set of minutes, videos, links and photos on the Osmosoft website. And my set of photos can be seen here.

Installing aTV Flash v3.0 on an Apple TV

2008-06-23T21:16:00.010Z

I've recently installed Apple Core's aTV Flash v3.0 on my Apple TV and, seeing as it's something of a hack, I thought I'd blog about the experience in case others are considering doing likewise.

The aTV Flash v3.0 adds specific functionality to the Apple TV, namely the ability to drag and drop files onto the device from my main computer (any common format), and then have them play via the Apple TV menu. This saves the hassle of converting files into a format that iTunes likes. So this is mainly for video content downloaded via BitTorrent (generally DivX or .avi file extension). It does a bunch of other stuff too, such as adding a browser, but I'm not really interested in the other aTV Flash features.

It all worked pretty well, except for a few minor issues. Here are the details (which I've also just posted to this thread on Mac Rumors: Forums):

Using aTV Flash v3.0, and a 1gb USB thumb drive, I managed to install everything OK. This was with a brand new 160gb Apple TV device.

However I've noticed the performance is a bit patchy. I download most of my content via BitTorrent (so, mostly .avi / DivX files), and so far everything has worked, EXCEPT each time I open a file, it's all a bit strange....the Apple logo comes and goes, and / or it says "please wait" while I can hear the audio has started in the background before it either freezes or the picture comes in, and / or it throws me back to the main menu. When I persevere, it works eventually, often on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th try. This problem still persists. Weird.

Another odd thing...I watched a TV episode where the picture quality was poor (as though it had been badly encoded). But it improved during the show, and then when I watched it again, it was greatly improved, almost as though it had learned how to decode the program better! Obviously this is irregular, I'm just trying to describe the behaviour as it seemed at the time. This only happened the first time I used it.

I used Fugu to SFTP my files over to the Apple TV, and it worked like a charm.

Anyway, on the whole, I'm happy with the aTV Flash v3.0, although I'm hopeful that a future patch will clean up these issues. I gather from the above-linked thread that some users have found they can't get their Apple TV to work at all after installation...it might be just due to it being an earlier version of the software, and in any event it's worth checking for more recent forum threads to see what the latest situation is if you're considering a purchase.

All other main Apple TV functionality (such as music and photos) remains unaffected, and I haven't played around with the other aTV Flash functionality as yet - such as the browser - as I don't really have a need.

Hope this helps.

++UPDATE: 26 June 2008++

I've discovered that the above problems were caused by using the nitoTV plugin which appears on the main menu. To be fair, it's very new technology. But when I used the Sapphire plugin (also via the main menu), I experienced no problems whatsoever - the content loaded automatically every time, and even used the native UI for pausing, fast forwarding and rewinding content. Win!

++UPDATE: 7 July 2008++

Having used the box for a couple of weeks now, all seems to be well. The exception is that a couple of times the box has crashed when half way through a program, and it restarts automatically. When I restart the program using Sapphire, I can use the native Apple TV controls to fast forward to the right moment very quickly, back where I was about 60 seconds after the problem occured. I've got a feeling this is happening when a program is left as paused for too long before being resumed, and some resource is being used up while in this state.

Other than that, still very happy!

++UPDATE: 13 August 2008++

Have experienced a few minor issues over the past month, such as sudden crashes. Also for some reason, on Sapphire, shows which should have been shown as "viewed" simply dropped off the browser, so I couldn't watch something twice.

But I upgraded both the Apple TV firmware (v2.1) and the aTV Flash software (v3.2.2) at the weekend, and this seems to have resolved the problems. Sadly a full factory restore was needed. Have decided this time to just stream iTunes from my main Mac (rather than a full sync) and obviously this has saved me a large chunk of space - more room for TV and films. The performance seems to have improved slightly (no crashes yet). Oh, and in case you're wondering how to upgrade aTV Flash, you need to sign into the site to get at the link.

All in all, this formerly slightly flakey software is now, dare I say it, pretty much ready for primetime...
________________________
Apple TV version 2.0 (bought in the States, activated in the UK)
Connected to TV over HDMI
iMac G5 1.5gb RAM running Mac OS X 10.4.11
Connected to Apple TV over wireless
BT HomeHub

Supernova 2008

2008-06-23T10:24:00.003Z

I attended Supernova last week, which I have to say was one of the most interesting and challenging conferences I've attended. Kevin Werbach and his team at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) did a great job bringing in a plethora of interesting speakers and panels.

There was a fair chunk of admin for me though; BT were sponsoring the event, there were five of us attending, and so there were stalls and flights and hotels and couriers and all that malarky to arrange. Having gone to all the hassle of arranging a big stall on the first day, I got the impression it repelled rather than attracted this particularly savvy audience.

I guess people assume that Big Telco companies don't have much of interest to say. And I guess this is understandable, given that the disruptive projects in this space (Skype, Grand Central, Android, iPhone) have grabbed all the headlines in recent years. We didn't really get a chance to talk to many people, until we ventured out into the room away from the stall - and once we started talking to people, we got a much better reaction.

And it was great to see this perspective being challenged in the Open Flow track on the Tuesday. JP Rangaswami, the MD of BT Design, gave a talk on how important it is for large companies to adapt to these challenging times, and pointed at Osmosoft (for whom I work) as being an example of what BT is trying to do in this space.

We got a much better reaction on Tuesday night as a result. But I digress.

After JP's slot, there were some great panels in the remaining Open Flow track. Tantek Çelik did a great job moderating the 'Whose Social Graph?' panel, pushing Google, Facebook and Plaxo on how difficult it is to get data out of their platforms (particularly Facebook). What made the discussion even more interesting was that the screen behind the panel was used to show the audience's views on the discussion, via Twitter (using Summize). And then the screen was switched to show this blog post by David Recordon, who was in the audience, criticising Facebook for blocking Google's Friend Connect service. Unbeknownest to him, this was on the screen while Dave Morin of Facebook was talking about their supposedly open policy.

Things got pretty heated, and eventually Morin refused to comment further other than to say Google's people were talking to Facebook's people, leading to this great tweet from @psd! Dan Farber and Nic Cubrilovic covered the argument in more detail.

My view: Facebook's business model depends heavily on keeping their customer's eyeballs on their site. They can't afford to release social graph data because it threatens their business, but likewise they have to be seen doing something when it comes to sharing data. Like good politicians, they have a consistent response to criticism about data portability; they talk up their privacy concerns. This is bullshit. Up until now, this has been sufficient to maintain traffic to their site. My stance continues to be this; I will maintain a presence on Facebook because my job requires it, but I will not put data in until I know I can get it out again, and I will visit the site as infrequently as possible in the meantime. And I encourage others to do likewise. It hurts the web.

Phew, rant over!

Anyway, another great panel which followed later in the same track was the Bottom-up Distributed Openness panel, with the founders of Microformats, OpenID, OAuth and OEmbed. My takeaway from this session was how these guys and one gal had seen how painful it had been to invoke standards in the W3C, and had generally decided to restrict their initial efforts to a small, closed group to get their standards off the ground. With impressive results. Turns out selective closed-ness is the way forward in certain situations.

And Jeremy Keith kept did a good job keeping things light-hearted with buzzword bingo running in the background. Waddayaknow, when Leah Culver mentioned RSS and Wikis in the same sentence, we got a House!

There was plenty more going on during the event, much of it outside the sessions, and way too much to record here. But suffice to say it was one of the best conferences I've been too, and I hope very much to be involved next year.

You can see a full set of photos here.

San Francisco

2008-06-23T09:54:00.004Z

I've just returned from San Francisco, which I hadn't visited since 2000 (If you'd like a laugh, check out the California Journal I created back then...marvel at the background images! Gasp at the photos downgraded for dial-up! Cringe at the hand-coded html! Etc. etc.). It was a brilliant trip, mainly for work reasons - will post about that in a sec - but also I got the chance to soak up the city.

It's a lovely place, and I really wouldn't mind living there one day. The people are friendly, the weather is (mostly) agreeable, and there's plenty going on. Here are a few snaps from the walk around town.

The Farmer's Market by the Ferry Building was one of the nicest, friendliest markets I've ever visited...

We went for a great walk up to Coit Tower:

The Mission is a fab neighbourhood for photos, whether it's the Maracas:

...the epic burritos...

..or the sensational array of murals...

Everyone's seen the cable cars of course, but what's amazing is that they grab onto cables which are moving below the street. We saw the machinery that pulls them along:

Fans of Sean Connery might remember him meeting his daughter at the Palace of Fine Arts in The Rock:

And of course there's also the Golden Gate Bridge:

As if I hadn't put the camera through too much by then, I was also gifted an amazing view of the city on the flight home:

The all-too-brief visit was just brilliant. I've got a poor memory of anything prior to 2003. It's not a coincidence that this is when digital photography became practical and affordable. These photos will live with me a long time!

The full set of photos can be seen here.

How to make money from open source

2008-06-10T13:41:00.004Z

Every now and again, I poke my head out from the echo chamber that is the open source world, and get bombarded with one question. How do you make money from open source?

Many people have answered that question in the past, so consider this a re-heat of last night's dinner, as it were.

Of course, for some open source developers, the very question is offensive. They create open source software for reasons other than financial ones (as described in my previous post). But for others it's an important question, and I for one would like to finesse my response.

The often used answer is that one makes money because of open source, and not with it. Let's unpack this. There are many examples of this being done successfully, such as;

Google use open source software to run their servers, which in turn allows them to sell ads alongside their search engine
Mozilla makes money from Google paying huge amounts of money to display their search box in the Firefox browser.
Red Hat makes money by supporting the Enterprise users of Red Hat Linux.
BT makes money by selling their Home Hub, which uses Linux open source software.

All decent business models. And making money from open source is also possible at the level of the individual as well.

Doc Searls makes money talking about open source at conferences and through writing about open source in Linux Journal. He also gets paid for consultancy services. This is interesting from my perspective, as Doc doesn't write code (I am not a developer either).
Jeremy Ruston, my boss, made money selling his one-man open source company to BT. Note he didn't sell the code itself; that is held in trust by a not-for-profit outfit called UnaMesa. Even still, the amount exchanged was sufficient to make him happy.

I'm not sure how much this helps the average salesman, though. They're looking for direct ways to make money, not indirect ways. Open source is a hot topic right now, and its inevitable that those charged with bringing in money will ask how open source can help them do that. And these unfamiliar methods of making money might be unsatisfying for those who are new to the topic.

I think that the best answer is to say that there are two possible approaches.

The first is to use open source as an enabler. Rather than asking how you'd make money with an open source product, look at your existing and upcoming business opportunities and figure out whether open source can play a role in them. The benefits of reduced costs and improved flexibility might make all the difference.

The second is to put open source at the heart of your business model. To attempt this, you'd really need to get under the skin of open source; understand how the community works, understand the unique benefits of open source and how it's changing the world, and then try and identify new business models in the same vein as those listed above. It's not straightforward, but it could be lucrative.

In this day and age, where commoditized open source solutions are leading their respective fields, it's incumbent on the salesmen of large companies to get their heads around open source, so they can understand in turn where the opportunities lie. With their knowledge of the market and commercial acumen, they may just hold the key to the next wildly successful business built using open source.

Photo shared under a Creative Commons licence by WhatKnot.

Building a Developer Community

2008-06-04T10:13:00.007Z

Many companies say they want to build communities, but take completely the wrong approach. They say something like 'If You Build It They Will Come'. This might be true in certain rare instances, but for the rest of us there is much to do to improve the odds of success.

There are numerous books out there that explain how to build communities, but not so many explaining how to build a developer community. These communities are more sensitive and enigmatic than, say, Digg-like communities, and I think they're more interesting too. We're talking about a class of community that can conjure up something completely new from your tools, which represents an intriguing path to innovation.

So here are some guidelines to consider. There's no guarantee they'll work, but I can guarantee that, the better these are implemented, the higher the chance that the community will form with unforeseen benefits. There are several planets you have to push into alignment, and then you have to keep them there. So here goes:

1. Might seem obvious, but figure out why you're building the community in the first place. Is it just to improve adoption? Improve credibility? Improve quality? Develop an ecosystem of support? Whatever it is, figure this out and make sure everyone on your team knows and agrees. Try and hang some rudimentary metrics off the targets, so you can track progress and take course corrections.

2. Get ready to relinquish control of your product. The most successful communities form around things they can influence and help drive. The more control you hand over, the more chance your community will form, and the more chance someone will come up with an idea you haven't thought of. I'll say it again: Give away as much as your business can handle.

3. Consider the motivations of the community. Most developers are driven by some or all of the following: (a) a desire to be creative, (b) a desire to share, (c) a desire to make a living. Let's look at these in more detail.

3a. The desire to be creative. Consider the nature of what you're handing over. Is it obvious what it should be used for? Or has it been designed to be used in all sorts of interesting ways? If you were a creative type, would you rather have access to this:

Or this?

Try to design products that can be used in as many ways as possible. Make it interoperable and extendable, so it can be combined with other products. Open source and open standards are the way forward. Just having an api doesn't count on its own; the quality of the api itself and the supporting documentation can make the difference between success and failure. For webby projects, see REST.

3b. The desire to share. Software is abundant; easy to copy and reuse. In this environment, hoarding just doesn't make sense. The best way to get the respect of your peers is by demonstrating your prowess in your chosen profession. If you're creating a community, make it as easy as possible for developers (and potential users) to share their work and for others to find it. Help developers to find each, and work together, and then get the hell out of the way.

3c. The desire to make a living. By giving people a platform to demonstrate their creativity and skill, you improve their employment prospects. Also, there's the tantalising prospect of acquisition (see 6, below).

4. Learn humility. You need the community much more than they'll ever need you. Someday, if you behave the right way for a long period of time, they will start to trust you and treat you as their moral leader. Even then you'll still need them more than they need you. You are the servant of the community, and thinking this way will drive all sorts of appropriate behaviour. And if you're experiencing friction with the community further down the path, there's a good chance you've forgotten this guideline.

5. Choose your language carefully. Avoid using terminology such as 'managing', 'exploiting' or 'owning' the community. Chastise your colleagues for doing so. You don't 'own' anyone or anything, not even your product (if you've done it right), regardless of what the licence terms say. Respect needs to be ingrained in your corporate culture. Once you've established the community framework, the only thing you can manage is your relationship with the community. Use words like 'influence', 'support' and 'help'.

6. Feedback loops shouldn't just be bootstrapped onto your service or product, they must be built into the core. Resources should be allocated to this, and fiercely protected. They are your ambassadors. Your best people should be involved. It is your top priority, regardless of whether you've hit critical mass or not. If someone has a question, you'll need to be well positioned to immediately jump on the opportunity to give as much help as they'll take. Let your people develop personal relationships with community members. Let them meet in real life, and be ready to pay for the beer. Be ready to relinquish control over your staff as well as your product.

7. Be ready to change your product. The responsiveness outlined above is perhaps the most important responsibility when running a community, especially so in the early days. And if you're a large company, and like many large companies you're struggling to innovate, this relationship puts you in a unique position. From here, you can observe what people are doing with your tools, so you can improve them quickly in response. Build the products with this quick 'reconfigurability' in mind. And from this vaunted position, you can also identify innovative ideas that you can learn from, and possibly swoop in with an acquisition offer before your competitors get wind of it.

Does this sound predatory? Then consider the facts that developers (a) deserve to get paid like everyone else (b) might want to be acquired (c) might need the support to really get their idea off the ground and (d) have the option to turn down the offer. But don't be too surprised if the developer is offended by your overtures; for some developers, money isn't an incentive and their passion for the technology is more akin to a religion than a business.

8. Ship a quality product. If you think the developer community is going to finish your job for you, you're in for an unpleasant shock. Don't use a beta release as a reason to ship a product that's either incomplete or full of bugs. If you do this, you'll lose any credibility you may have with the developer community, and they won't come back a second time. In this day and age, there is no excuse for not building in quality as you go along.

9. Details *really* matter. If you're about to make a change to a product, service or community, no matter how small, make sure the community is cool with this. Without spamming forums, you still need to be sure the important people find out and can respond. If you're lucky, and you've done a good job creating the feedback loops, the community will tell you what they think. Lucky you.

10. When you've made a decision, explain it. Your explanation should stand on it's own; don't just point at a conversation - actually spell out the logic and the feedback that has led to your decision. Again, do so on the same forums as before. You owe the community that much.

11. Give some thought as to the most appropriate tools that the community is familiar with - don't force them to move the conversation over to your shiny new platform. You need to relinquish control over the conversation as well as the product itself. If you've followed the other points, there's nothing to be scared about. There are perfectly adequate tools out there such as getsatisfaction, Google Groups, Twitter, Facebook (which sucks, of course, but your audience might still be there), Soureforge, Trac, blogging software, simple mailing lists and so on. Anything that smells like BigCo might put off potential community members.

12. Be ready to provide financial support. Obviously, this depends on your budget and project, but it needn't be expensive. It could simply involve buying community contributor Bob the latest Nvidia card so he can write drivers, or paying for Manuela to attend a conference so she can talk about the project. Having the feedback loops mentioned above should help you spot these opportunities to develop ambassadors outside your organisation.

So all this should be considered nothing more than a general introduction; if you're charged with building your own community, I'd recommend you conduct some more in-depth studies to improve your chances. I can recommend reading the Cathedral and the Bazaar and Here Comes Everybody, and JP recommends reading Community Building on the Web. If you've got anything to add to this list of guidelines, or the list of the best books, please add them in the comments. Thanks!

Photos shared under a Creative Commons licence by Flickr users baboon and atomicShed.

Barcamp London 4

2008-06-01T01:01:00.004Z

So we're camped out here at Barcamp London 4, at GCap's offices overlooking Leicester Square, and it's just fab. So far, today, I have learned how to time travel, make the perfect cup of coffee, break the internet and make a Nabaztag swear.

My talk about the Ten Commandments of Twitter went down well. And, for the first time, I won a game of werewolf (playing as a werewolf, no less). I didn't do so well at Faceball, though.

You can see today's photos here.

The 80s called...

2008-05-28T08:15:00.004Z

...they'd like their AWESOME ADVERT back! (move the volume controller up for the full experience)

Microniche, Part Two

2008-05-21T22:58:00.007Z

Normal service will now resume.

Microniche

2008-05-21T09:00:00.005Z

"So, where is everyone watching the game tomorrow?"

An innocent enough question, but alas, none of my colleagues seemed to know that a big game was even taking place. Actually, there was one exception, and he's not even British...

And this is the problem with working with members of the geekhood. We're mostly pale, not the fittest people around, and many of us got picked last for the school football team. That kind of social rejection leaves a mark.

So I find myself in a niche group of Geeks Who Like Football. Very few people will get this 'joke'.

I'm not going to explain it.

So, tonight, I'm calling on my non-geek friends to watch the match. The big match. The HUGE match. The European Cup Final.

I can still remember the European Cup Final from 1999 like it was yesterday. The sensational end to an incredible season (this season can't be as good, even if we win tonight). Bayern Munich had dominated the final for 85 minutes, and then sat back to defend. When Teddy Sheringham equalised in the 89th minute, my head hit the ceiling and I ran round screaming like a banshee:

And when Ole Gunnar Solksjaer scored the winner three minutes into injury time...well, I was still shaking from the first goal. All I can remember is a sort of white noise. My friends assure me that I embarrassed myself.

So tonight, I will hand in my geek stripes for a couple of hours. Hopefully, I'll make just a big a fool of myself as I did back in 1999. You're welcome to come and watch; you'll find me in the Wellington Pub in Waterloo, and I'll be the one wearing the replica Manchester United shirt from the 1998-99 season.

COME ON UNITED!

Twittering for business

2008-05-16T12:07:00.007Z

This post is about how companies should use Twitter.

I recently used a tool called Tweetwheel to create a visualisation of the people I follow on Twitter, and how they're connected. You can see a rough visualisation below, or click through here to get all the interactive goodness if you want:

So, no great surprise, it looks like a web.

And then I looked closer. I thought it might be interesting to work out how I knew these 109 people - here are the results:

Current colleague or work contact * (43)
Former colleague (21)
Met at or through a conference (11)
Read their book or blog (9)
Humour / entertainment / News / Politics (18)
Celebrity (2)
Utilities (2)
Companies (2)
Family member (1)

Obviously some people fall into more than one category, so these are best fits in some cases.

But look. Two companies. That's it. I work for one and work closely with the second. There are several companies out there who are blogging and twittering; why aren't I following them?

Because it's like watching your Dad dancing at a wedding. When they do it, they get it wrong. It's embarrassing. As soon as a social activity has a profit motive, it stops being social.

And this just illustrates the pointlessness of companies having corporate twitter accounts (and this applies to corporate blogs too in most cases).

BUT....encouraging individuals in the companies to have blogs or twitter feeds; that's a different matter. I'm following lots of people who work for companies.

It's not just important; it's essential for large companies to encourage their employees to engage with customers and colleagues alike on public social networks. Its the only possible way to stay involved with the fast-moving, ever-changing social network landscape, especially across multiple countries, and demonstrate that you employ actual people behind the shiny facade of advertising.

So why maintain the Osmosoft twitter feed? Well, I think that small companies can just about get away with it. We have 71 people following this feed, about half of whom have a personal relationship with us. We have no branding guidelines, no tone of voice guidelines, no marketing plan, it's just one of us letting people know what's going on in a human voice. We don't have a company blog (choosing instead to point at our personal blogs) and this feed therefore acts as the main news outlet, which people can subscribe to or unsubscribe from as they wish.

So maybe we're the exception that proves the rule. Handy, eh? :-P

On a related note, I was surprised to note that there's only two people on the list that I knew before 2000! None of my friends from school, none of my friends from my flat-sharing and pub crawling days, none that I met while travelling, just one ex-colleague and my brother-in-law. In fact I've met all but five of my twitter contacts in the last four years. I wonder how common this is? I wonder what this says about me?

*includes members of the TiddlyWiki community not on BT's payroll (12 people)