If this works as intended, there’s a lot to like. From the end-user point of view, it’s almost nothing but upside: being able to check online for spot availability, having an increased likelihood of finding free spots on every block, and saving money by parking in less-popular areas. All of this is made possible by using technology to add a market function seamlessly into something that people are already doing; just by going about their business and parking, they’re generating information that makes the system better for everyone–themselves included.

While it remains to be seen if an approach like this will be profitable for the city, some tweaks could be made to their market algorithm so that the average price of a parking spot remains what it is now, keeping revenue where it is. Even if the program doesn’t generate money hand over fist, though, it still benefits the city and community as a whole, with reduced street congestion and pollution as mentioned by the video.

I especially like solutions like this one, as they enjoy the benefits of mass collaboration without actually requiring any additional effort on the part of the mass collaborators, and ample data is generated that can be further studied to try push the parking system to be that much more efficient. Everyone wins.

Bureaucrats of Toronto, take note!

These approaches give us new data, but require that we change how we go about doing things, usually making everything transaction based–where the transaction is constructed in such a way that a computer or sensor can understand what’s going on. This doesn’t really need to be the case anymore–computers are getting to the point where they’re smart enough to start understanding what we’re doing without being with us all the time.

Some of the big technologies that I’ve been looking into are video content analysis (VCA), facial recognition, and emotion detection–with the latter two arguably being under the umbrella of  VCA. If you walk down the street it’s hard to go a block or two without seeing a video camera keeping tabs on the ebbs and flows of people, and the camera density skyrockets when you head into a store or mall or most any private venue. If we let computers tap into the raw information generated by these surveillance infrastructures, some pretty cool/scary stuff can happen.

Consider walking into a retail store: if you’re in the field of view of multiple cameras, your position in 3D space can be tracked (PDF) and a map of where you walk around the store can be plotted. If you look at a display kiosk and smile or frown, a relatively low-resolution camera can understand your emotional reaction, and add it to the “profile” of you that seem to like or dislike. Finally, when checking out at the cash register, you’re in a prime position for facial recognition software to grab and understand a snapshot of your face (so that you can be recognized more easily next time), and link your purchasing behavior/history (and your credit/debit number) to your customer file.

When all this information is aggregated, simply going to the store to buy some milk turns into an activity that can be broken down and understood. By linking together technologies, companies with retail locations will soon be able to understand the exact paths that customers take through their stores, how often those customers come back, and whether or not they seem to be enjoying the trip–all without changing the customer-facing experience at all.

The scenario above is, so far as I know, currently hypothetical–but based on current, existing technology. You can let your imagination run wild coming up with ways to generate and link data about what people are doing, where they’re going, and what they’re saying. As consumers, we’re going to be seeing a shift where our identity is used to identify, segment, and target us like never before–and is done so as a byproduct of just leaving the house. There’s great promise for the enterprise, but great cause for concern (but also arguably great benefit) for the customer.

1. The state of the world is not good.

The theme of Davos was Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild, which may sound a bit grandiose to some people. I doubt many attendees think this now. The world clearly needs fixing.

Figures cited at the Forum show we’re a long way from being out of the woods on the global recession. Jobs are and will continue to be a huge issue. It is estimated the unemployment in the word jumped by 50 million during the recession, and the working poor increased by 200 million.

But the financial meltdown and recession are arguably symptoms of a bigger systemic crises and deep institutional failures. There is growing recognition that many of the organizations and institutions that have served us well for decades, even centuries, are no longer able. Many of the pillars of economic and social life have come to the end of their life cycle. In 2009, the American auto industry — the epitome of the industrial economy — collapsed. The upheaval is now spreading to other sectors — from the universities and science, to entertainment and media, to government and democracy. The continuing collapse of many newspapers in the United States is a storm warning.

Many other serious problems loom. Lack of access to fresh water is a catastrophe for humanity, as 2.8 billion (or 44%) of the world’s population already live in high water stress areas, increasing to 3.9 billion by 2030. In a world of growing capacity, global poverty is getting worse. Ten children die of hunger every minute and a third of the world’s population fester in slums. Almost everyone, especially the scientists at Davos is deeply troubled by climate change. We need to reinvent out energy grids, transportation systems and reindustrialize the planet. And we’re running out of time.

As Bill Clinton said to a few of us at a cocktail party, “The world is too unequal, unstable, and unsustainable.”

2. Everywhere there are new collaborative models emerging to solve global problems

Our systems of global cooperation are not rising to the many challenges we face. The global warming conference in Copenhagen has become a metaphor for failure.

I believe the Forum itself is an example of the global multi-stakeholder cooperation that is picking up where nation states and formal institutions left off.

The global humanitarian response to the Haitian earthquake is showing us what is possible. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake not being just a Caribbean island crisis, but a world crisis. Millions of people and thousands of institutions have responded in non-traditional ways. They are donating their time, money, goods and services. Charitable organizations such as the Red Cross received donation of tens of millions of dollars within days by using new technologies such as texting, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Social media has become the pre-eminent tool to connect people around the world, and help empower people become active participants in relief efforts.

There are 100 million people on Facebook Causes – the biggest application on Facebook. These are not just people talking to each other. They are now organizing activities in the physical world. I heard of dozens of examples at Davos.

3. There is a profound rethinking of the financial services industry and its role in society.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy put it well: “The banker’s job is not to speculate, it is to analyse credit risk, assess the capacity of borrowers to repay their loans and finance growth of the economy. If financial capitalism went so wrong, it was, first and foremost, because many banks were no longer doing their job. Why take the risk of lending to entrepreneurs when it is so easy to earn money by speculating on the markets? Why lend only to those who can repay the loan when it is so easy to shift the risks off the balance sheet?”

The mood at Davos was widespread: Banks need to be reined in, the sooner the better. US banking executives used to be the stars of Davos. Now they are a low-key, humble and dour looking group. Last year at Davos everyone was in a degree of shock. This year, a better term would be “fed up.” Fed up with banks that are “too big to fail,” with government bailouts, with the human costs of this crisis and with an industry that basically got out of control. For some CEOs the crisis warrants a critical re-evaluation of market capitalism.

4. Executive pay, especially for bankers, needs fixing.

There was a very strong sentiment that the issue of exorbitant executive compensation needs to be corrected. The biggest targets of discussions were bankers and other architects of the financial crisis. Many heavily damaged their own firms, some to the point of bankruptcy, paralyzed the commercial credit market for tens of thousands of companies, and today are not able or willing to loan money to entrepreneurs. To set aside $billions for bonuses just after they had been bailed out by the government was viewed by almost everyone as unconscionable. Even those banks that didn’t need a bailout cannot justify 8 digit compensation packages.

5. Sustainability is an idea whose time has come. Business is moving from talk to action.

As one executive put it: “It’s no longer about the Green Economy; it’s about the Economy.” Sustainability is the central issue many businesses face.

A few short years ago, sustainability was buried in a company’s PR department and it was primarily a matter of spin. But then governments began forcing certain reporting and behaviors, and the corporate issue became compliance. Then sustainability became a matter of competitiveness and cost reduction, by capturing efficiencies such as reducing waste and energy use. CEOs everywhere at Davos said we’ve now arrived at the point where sustainability must be integrated into the business strategy — what is a business, and how it does it operate and relate to the rest of the world.

We’ll see if they walk the talk.

I’ll post themes 6 – 10 tomorrow.

A couple of years ago the Forum’s founder, Klaus Schwab, launched, to say the least, a rather bold undertaking to use the Internet to turn Davos into a 365-day experience.  Not unthinkable I say.  After all hundreds of millions of people collaborate on social networks, wikis, blogs and brainstorms to do everything from making friends to creating encyclopedias, writing disruptive software projects and helping a devastated Caribbean island recover from a horrific earthquake.  So why couldn’t such tools be used to fix what’s wrong with the world on a year round basis?

Call it a Digital Davos.

But WELCOM (stands for World Electronic Community) got off to a slow start.

There were numerous technical challenges in getting the right companies assembled to  do the work: there was no integration between WELCOM and the system of information kiosks at that Davos attendees use to sign up for sessions and communicate with each other;  the project was viewed by some as elitist – restricted to the few thousand world leaders that might attend Davos; and there were enormous challenges getting CEOs, politicians and leaders of the civil society to actually use the platform and change their behavior to solve problems on networks.

But it looks like this year these issues have been addressed and WELCOM might actually be ready for prime time.

To begin, the technology is now first rate.  After a false start, WELCOM now has a group of partners, companies like Accenture (ACN), Adobe Systems (ADBE), BT Group (BT) and TIBCO that are putting some real muscle into the work, primarily on a pro bono basis.  The platform has good basic functionality and The Forum has a good team figuring out how the system should evolve and improve.  It’s not just another Facebook. Users can videoconference, exchange documents and video and audio files, store material online, co-edit documents, brainstorm and more.

Second, Accenture has fully integrated WELCOM and the onsite Kiosks, so you can sign up for sessions from laptop or Blackberry, reducing the Kiosk lineups.  There is a wealth of material online about the topic being discussed and the delegates in attendance.

Third, one charge frequently made against the Forum is that it is elitist, but the Forum has made great strides in making its work and proceeding open to the public. Linked to WELCOM is a Social Media Outreach designed to engage the broader world.  For example, one of the sessions I’m helping to lead deals with social networks.

But check out the description and the twist:

The World Economic Forum will explore the growing influence of social networks in a workshop at the start of the Annual Meeting 2010 in Davos. The discussion is moderated by Loïc Le Meur, Founder of Seesmic and will include, among others Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning, George Colony, CEO, Forrester Research, Don Tapscott, NGenera, Reid Hoffman, Founder, LinkedIn, Owen Van Natta CEO, MySpace.com and Evan Williams, CEO, Twitter.

Given the topic of the workshop it was natural to open it to input from the different social networks. We want to hear from you:

1.   “How are social networks changing society?” 2.   “What are the most important implications and risks for society?” 3.   “What should individuals and institutions do to leverage the power of social networks and improve society?”

 You can join the discussion on a number of social networks and platforms.

1) Leave a comment on the Forum blog

2) Become a Fan of the Forum on Facebook

3) Join the Forum group on LinkedIn

4) Befriend the Forum on MySpace

5) Join the Forum network on Ning

6) Reply to @Davos on Twitter

7) Record and upload a video on YouTube

With initiatives like this, the 2010 meeting promises to be the most broadly inclusive ever.

Finally, The Forum has a sophisticated user engagement plan. Rather than trying to convince Barack Obama to be on WELCOM chatting up a storm with Nicolas Sarkozy and Ban Ki-moon they are beginning with the participants most likely to use networks to solve problems.  First up are wonks like me – members of the  Global Agenda Council’s that I wrote about in my last post.  This includes constituencies such as academics, scientists, journalists and other who love to discuss and communicate ideas.

They also appear to be focusing on young people who are more likely to turn to networks to collaborate.  In 2005 the Forum has established the community of Young Global Leaders, consisting of hundreds of leaders under the age of 40 from around the world and myriad occupations and sectors.   These young adults are recognized for their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world.  With many of them being part of the Net Generation, they understandably will fully exploit the tremendous potential a system such as WELCOM has to offer.

The Kiosk integration is also a nifty way of drawing attendees into WELCOM.  Everyone at Davos needs the Kiosks to sign up for activities and communicate.  Now they need WELCOM.

I’ve been using WELCOM for the past year and it’s a solid step forward.  But the Forum is still in the early days of curating the behavioral changes needed for the collaboration at Davos to be extended all year long.

But enough of this, I’ve got to get signing up for some sessions.

Instead of resolving to do more this year, I’m aiming to do less. To slow down….Not to slack off at work, mind you…This mindset–to fight information overload and to focus–is quite prevalent right now.

Patricia also mentions a colleague who has gone on a technology diet and made a resolution to stay offline from 8pm to 8am every day. WOW! To my colleagues and friends that send emails at midnight, could you do that? Even just a few days a week?

This reformed behavior helps her digest her information overload, she says. “It’s the difference between snacking on information and sitting down to a meal.”

Personally, I love this idea! At a time where many believe, myself included, that we need to know everything the second it happens, and respond to messages as soon as they hit our Blackberry, would the world really fall apart if we waited just a bit? I understand that certain people can argue that their positions require this, President Obama would fall into this group, however for most professionals I think it is entirely reasonable to give yourself a break from screen time. Being available 24/7 is for convenience stores not people!

The good news is that the responsibility to change this falls to the individual. Of course, the bad news is also that the responsibility to change this falls to the individual. I know that I am guilty of setting quick response expectations.  I have often been praised for my rapid turnaround time and “efficient” work style, but does that have to mean answering messages at all hours of the night? I specifically remember turning around a brief research study overnight for a VP’s 8am client meeting. I was just coming off maternity leave, was up every couple hours anyway, so why not check email at 11pm? Wrong! The urgent request was there, I answered. It made me a hero for the day, but that needs to be the exception rather than the rule. The only way to make it so is for me and others like me, I know you’re out there, to shut down and reboot on a consistent basis.

Interestingly during a conversation with my Manager yesterday he congratulated me for staying offline during the holiday. While I did still check email, I did not respond to anything until I returned, actually following what I had written in my Out of Office message. Go figure! I started this resolution before the New Year even began!

Speaking of rebooting, another interesting note that Patricia brings up is Ariana Huffington and editor in chief of Glamour , Cindi Leive’s Sleep Challenge 2010. They have suggested that woman vow to sleep more this year. We all know the health consequences from lack of sleep, but woman still tend to be the most sleep-deprived individuals, specifically working single women and working moms.

…in order for women to get ahead in this country, we’re all going to have to lie down and take a nap….Rob yourself of sleep, and you’ll find you never function at your personal best. Work decisions, relationship challenges, any life situation that requires you to know your own mind — they all require the judgment, problem-solving and creativity that only a rested brain is capable of and are all handled best when you bring to them the creativity and judgment that are enhanced by sleep.

OK, if these super-busy and powerful women can do it, so can I. So, 2010, I am putting it in writing. This year I will aim for less screen time, more sleep time, hopefully leading to a  more productive and balanced life. Oh, and I’d like to lose those last 10 lbs too.

Okay, this is not really about tracking snacks in the cloud. It’s about tracking snack sales in vending machines in the cloud.

Forbes magazine interviewed Mandeep Arora and Anant Agarwal, the founders of Cantaloupe Systems, Inc., a Berkeley, CA, based company whose product, seed, enables wireless transfer of sales data, machine operation, and inventory to vending company operators.

CEO Arora and CMO Agarwal, who met as undergraduates at UCLA, say when they first started looking for ways to improve the operations of vending machine companies, they found the best systems cost around $1,000 per machine. “We got lucky. Cloud computing and cellular networks were being stressed when we were in school [in the early part of this decade].” The ability to transmit data via cell networks and enable access to data online helped to dramatically cut the costs of this kind of system.

On the Cantaloupe Systems web site, the service is described as a four-step process:

• A seed wireless device is placed into vending machines, where it “harvests data from the DEX serial port of the machine.” The seeds also send and receive DEX data between vending machines, “creating a virtual cloud of data.”
• Once acquired, the data are relayed to a cell-phone enabled hub seed via an antenna. The hub relays all the information it receives from the machines to Cantaloupe Systems home base via cellular signals.
• At Cantaloupe headquarters, the information is encrypted, sorted, and stored in “robust SQL databases,” where current or historical information can be accessed online by the vending machine owners and the landlords who host the machines.
• Sales, rebate, and inventory tracking is possible. Malfunctions or even break-ins are instantly identified. Drivers who service machines can bring exactly the products they need to various sites.

The seed device enables vending machine owners to grab information in real time from every machine, and using the seed website (see below) to see business activity in real time.

Source: Cantaloupe Systems, Inc., Marketing Packet

Cantaloupe customers can receive alerts about sellouts and machine malfunctions; track cash from each machine; see real-time inventory by machine; create custom sales reports; and export data to industry-standard formats.

Cantaloupe’s web site has detailed profiles of some of its customers. Prominently displayed over their photos is evidence of the benefit the service has generated. Examples include Camelback Vending, Phoenix, AZ, which realized an 85% reduction in service calls, and P&J’s Vending, Hopkinton, MA, which placed 25% more machines per route.

Cantaloupe’s seed device costs $300 per machine and the monthly service costs $6. Cantaloupe’s devices are in 35,000 machines, generating $8.5 million in annual revenue. In 2010, Arora and Agarwal say they plan to integrate credit card readers into their system.

In 2007, Cantaloupe Systems received the Gold Value Chain Award for innovative adaptation of M2M (machine-to-machine) technology in the retail / hospitality category; that was the second time in three years the company won the award.

Desktop Applications

Students should know the basics of applications like Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. While there are other options out there, like some of the collaborative apps that Google offers, the MS Office applications are still the most popular. In many companies they don’t even ask about desktop applications knowledge anymore, proficiency is assumed.

Internet Browsing

I know that it is second nature to those of us that work online for a living, however, there are still a lot of students that cannot find their way around the Internet. Being able to search for ideas and answers online is not only a great skill to have, but a way to be a more efficient and productive employee. What are the basics of searching, bookmarking, sharing (del.i.cio.us, Digg)? Do students know why and how to source and acknowledge materials they find and use?

Social Networking

This one can get tricky. I know many High School students that already have profiles on MySpace and/or Facebook to connect with their friends. The education that students need around use of these type of tools is less about “how you do it” and more about privacy. Students need to be aware that recruiters (professional and college) will review any online profiles or information on applicants; a recent CIO Insight poll found that 45% of hiring managers use social networking sites to research candidates. Students need to assume that every post, picture and tag associated with them can be found. Awareness may be growing: Recent research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that 60% of adults and 66% of teens restrict access to their personal profiles on online. While restricting access to profiles is one security measure, students should also be aware of what anyone in their ecosystem is saying or tagging about them. We’ve already seen stories of individuals loosing out on opportunities because of inappropriate photos their friends posted and tagged online.

Written Communication

As social media tools evolve and we see more options arise, the written word becomes more and more important. This means that language skills, especially written skills, need to be stressed. It does not matter how brilliant you are, if your memos or posts have major spelling and grammar issues, those will greatly detract from good content. I know that there is a new vernacular that goes along with many of the new technologies; however the majority of the workforce is still made up of professionals who rely on standard English for business interaction.

Mobile Applications

Yes, many students have cell phones and know how to text but do they know how to use email online? Do they know NOT to use Twitter and IM acronyms, slang and shorthand when talking professionally? This is another area where protocol needs to be addressed.

So, what technology skills do you look for in an intern or a new hire? If you were talking to a group of High School students what advice would you give them regarding learning and using technology? I look forward to hearing your thoughts and will keep you posted on feedback I get from the MACC group and the student population that they serve.

Going around the twitter feeds this week is news about the first American rehab center for Internet addiction. My friend Anastasia at YPulse wrote an excellent article about the tragic death at the center. From her post:

But is teenagers’ desire to text their friends 24/7, check their Facebook messages or even play a new game for several hours an addiction? I remember speaking on a panel where someone made the analogy of kids who were so excited about the new Harry Potter book, they literally holed themselves up in their room for hours reading. Were these kids reading “addicts”? Teenagers’ heavy use of technology certainly might be irritating, especially to parents who would prefer to see their kids engaged in more physical, offline activities. But we also have to remember that the desire to stay connected to friends at all times is a natural part of adolescence and tapers off as we grow older, get jobs, start our own families, etc.

The problem is that once we begin using this label, even casually, it carries the social stigma of being labeled an “addict” as well as potential treatment models that may be highly inappropriate (China’s being the most extreme). Can you imagine teen texters sitting in a 12-step group being forced to talk about being powerless over their desire to respond to their BFF’s messages? I’m not denying that too much tech may be an issue for some teens (hurting grades, impacting their physical and mental health) that parents and mental health professionals should be addressing. But can we do it without using the label of addiction?

There are, of course, conflicting opinions about whether Internet Addiction Disorder is an actual true affliction or simply a manifestation of existing conditions. For example, if a youth was predisposed to addictive behavior, video games can offer an outlet. Similarly, I doubt there were any gambling addicts in my peer group when I was a teenager. Whereas today, the immediate and constant availability of online poker offers an opportunity that simply wasn’t there before (any tech-savvy teenager can get around age controls). See this article for a deeply personal story about poker addiction. The availability of online pornography has had lasting effects on the sexual landscape of today’s youth (See Ariel Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs for a deep analysis on the issue). Thoughtful parenting strategies can help here of course, but technology just makes the job more complicated.

CoTweet is a platform designed specifically to help businesses use Twitter. It lets multiple individuals at one company send tweets on up to six corporate Twitter accounts and keeps the messages in sync across all of the accounts. Per its website, CoTweet is “How Business Does Twitter”. I spoke with the Co-Founder and CEO of CoTweet, Jesse Engle, @jesseengle earlier this week. Per Engle, “CoTweet’s underlying value proposition is to help companies engage in authentic two-way communication and to focus on that engagement.” Illustrating that point, CoTweet offers the ability to view conversation histories allowing you to view your team’s responses in context so you can see which tweets have been responded to and know who’s said what to whom. Engle feels that this is one of the most useful features and is part of what makes CoTweet unique. I personally like the assignment feature which allows you to delegate a task/tweet to someone on your team for follow-up. There are too many other features to include here, but the model is intriguing and already creating a buzz among enterprise customers including @Ford, @Pepsi, @JetBlue and @MSWindows, yep, that’s the Microsoft Windows team. The Twitter API team, @twitterapi even uses CoTweet to manage user requests, and uses CoTweet’s CoTags, a convention for using signatures when tweeting from a company’s brand account.

Still a free service, how will they make money? CoTweet is planning to implement a SaaS model where subscribers pay per month to use the service. Pricing levels and timing are still up in the air, though it’s been reported that this model could be implemented by the end of the year. Also reported in The Wall Street Journal, “Scott Monty, Ford’s digital and multimedia communications manager says that he and a team of nearly a dozen others use CoTweet to manage Ford’s multiple Twitter accounts and would pay for the service when asked to.” A pretty nice endorsement that I’m sure the 6 CoTweet investors liked seeing. Did I mention that CoTweet secured $1.1M in funding last month? Not bad for a company that just launched its public beta site on July 9th.

Another company I came across is StockTwits. This company provides an idea and information sharing service for investors. It’s a very simple concept, you follow @StockTwits and watch or participate in real-time conversations about stocks. The service allows users to see trading activities, conversations about certain stocks as well as view activity about a particular company in one stream. Users tag tweets about specific companies with a $ and the stock sticker symbol. Tweets not about specific companies are tagged with $$. Yesterday I caught up with Co-Founder and CEO of StockTwits, Soren Macbeth, @sorenmacbeth. He mentioned that they have received many testimonials from users who value the opportunity to trade alongside thousands of other traders vs. trading alone. Macbeth believes, “The community is the real value. It’s like a global virtual trading floor for traders.”Given the clout of some of the active traders on StockTwits, companies have started to take notice. Bloomberg now takes some of StockTwit’s tweets and posts them in the Bloomberg Terminal. On August 3rd, StockTwits announced an initiative with NASDAQ called Data Junkies, @datajunkies. NASDAQ now posts real-time stock prices to specific streams on StockTwits, and will host StockTwits virtual lunches with inside tips to help traders take advantage of the different tools. StockTwits will also host StockCamp at the NASDAQ MarketSite, a physical gathering for traders to meet, exchange ideas, tips and generally collaborate. Just yesterday NASDAQ and Stocktwits announced a contest where 30 lucky Data Junkies will be picked to ring the NASDAQ closing bell on August 25th alongside the StockTwits team.

So what about the money? StockTwits has received $1.6M in total funding and is already producing revenue via 3 subscription-based, premium content blogs launched this spring – alphatrends.net, upsidetrader.com, and investingwithoptions.com. Per Macbeth, “Micro-blogging is great for real-time posts during the business day, but longer form content is needed for deeper research.” Macbeth also knows, “This is not new. Subscriptions to financial content has been around for a long time, we are just presenting it in a unique way.” And that unique way is what should help drive revenue for this popular start-up.

I also got the scoop on another revenue channel that StockTwits is planning to introduce this fall. On September 1st the company will launch a desktop application along with its own micro-blogging platform. Features will includes things that are currently not feasible on Twitter like vertical specific services, groups i.e. an option trader group, as well as watch lists so you can see posts related only to specific stocks you are interested in. The application and platform will remain free with premium subscription-based services eventually rolled out on top of the platform.

So where does this leave Twitter? There are many other Twitter-based tools out there doing lots of interesting things. Will Twitter end up acquiring some of these companies or are they already developing more unique capabilities in-house? There is even speculation that an online giant like Google should acquire Twitter.

Two things we know for sure – 1. Twitter’s ecosystem is huge and highly dependent on the platform’s success which should buy them ample time to figure out and implement a feasible revenue model 2. Twitter-based tools like CoTweet and StockTwits are for real, have real funding and are set up for real revenue. There are many options for Twitter and its ecosystem. What do you think Twitter should do? I’d love to hear from you here or of course, on Twitter, @lcarrillo.

The move from people to pigeons as carriers was important in that all the sudden there was a task performed over a distance that could now be automated. Nowadays, instantly sending a message to someone on the other side of the world is trivial — but that doesn’t mean that modern technology has yet been exhaustively used to solve older problems.

There’s plenty of old technology that still works — works well enough in fact that no one has bothered to replace it with a better, more efficient alternative. Here are a small list of examples:

• The Steam Engine. A.K.A. nuclear power. It’s pretty much the same principle, just instead of burning coal or wood to boil water and use the steam to move turbines, it’s nuclear fission. We’ve supplemented an old technology with new components, but the base principle hasn’t changed in 300 years.
• Physics. More accurately, Newtonian Physics. It’s easy to forget that just as things like steam engines and the internet are tools, so are ideas like laws of Physics. The set of tools for modeling the Physical world that Newton and his contemporaries invented were, and are, extremely useful and accurate. They’re also inaccurate and have been superceded by ones that take into account a larger picture of the universe.
• Government. The oldest governments of today were built for a different world, structured to address different issues, for people with different priorities. The election of representatives worked well for people whose lives were spent largely on farms and in factories, unable to travel the distances required to participate in the democratic process. The stability that has made governments reliable in the long run also makes them resistant to change, after all, you go with what you know. Governments are, to their credit, now adapting to involve citizens in the process of running their country, but it’s necessarily a slow-going process as this new technology is tested and accepted.

In the business space, the drive of competition should drive the constant reevaluation of all technological assumptions in favor of more efficient alternatives. But the same might not be true in other areas of society.

In the three examples above, all work well in their native context, especially Newtonian Physics. If you’re calculating how long it takes to fly between Toronto and New York, you don’t need to take into account relativity, so there’s an argument that, in that context, the older tool is just fine. This leads us to the question: should we be aggressively looking for ways to apply new technology to everything in our world, constantly re-evaluating old problems with modern eyes and modern problem solving skills? Or were some problems solved well-enough the first time, and we should focus our attention on other areas?

Similarly, when you look at your day to day life, how many of the tools and technologies that you use everyday seem like little more than sleeker versions of Historic designs — what items are missing from my list?

Don’s post yesterday, “Will universities stay relevant?”, sparked some interesting discussion around the idea that our education system is in crisis. Given Mike’s innovative perspective on teaching, I sent him the article and asked for his feedback. To be clear, Don addressed the university system and Mike’s perspective comes from teaching high school, but I still thought it would be interesting to hear what his experience has been like in the classroom.

With his permission, I’ve posted some of his email response here, which he also published on his blog “Teaching, Technology & More“:

“You must understand that students like yourself are not the norm in terms of being in touch with the digital world and having the passion to use the tools available to them in the pursuit of knowledge.  Most of these students head off to university (and our new inflated grading system is making it easier) with little self-initiative and passion for learning.  I have been using technology in the classroom for 3 years now but I still fall back to the lecture style often because most of my students are not mature enough to embrace student-directed project based learning.

That being said, the first two years of university (as I recall them) are designed to “weed out” those who really do not belong, so to speak.  Although most of my professors in the 80′s and early 90′s used the lecture style, their classrooms became more open to critical thought and discussion after second year.  From what I am told, this is still the case.

Right now, I have reached a point in my classroom where I cannot proceed any further with student-driven methods due to lack of technology and support.  We do not have the bandwidth nor the requisite hardware in place to allow students to develop their critical thinking skills using web based applications.

I sympathize with the universities somewhat.  Many of these professors grew up without technology and are now being pushed to adopt it.  The process will take time and embracing a digital pedagogy does not ensure critical thinking skills will be developed.  The passion for learning must come from the students and that passion is something that transcends generations.

What I mean to say is students, like yourself, who have a passion for learning always embrace the latest technology the world has to offer to enhance their critical thinking skills and understanding of concepts.  The fact that you are using Twitter, etc. to accomplish this is no different than a student in the early 1980′s using one of the first computers to be more productive or a student in the 1950′s using a slide rule to do the same.

We need to work on fueling the passion for learning if we want to produce a generation of critical thinkers.  I try to use technology to inspire students to become passionate about knowledge.  The technology on its own is merely a conduit to critical thinking.  The passion for learning must come from within.”

Unable to pinpoint all the barriers to widespread adoption of EMR, I got in touch with Dr. Nadine Gebara, Resident, currently at University of Toronto. I asked her why our health care institutions have been so slow in digitizing their info - something libraries started doing almost 20-years ago. I quickly learned that the barriers to EMR are greater and more deeply engrained than I had imagined.

Initially, I suspected that resistance on the part of physicians had something to do with hospitals’ slow move to EMR, but Dr. Gebara’s experience suggested otherwise: “I have seen very little resistance on the part of health care workers. There’s actually some frustration among physicians about not having adequate EMR systems. Overall, attitudes towards electronic records are overwhelmingly positive given the clear benefits to efficiency and ease of access to critical information.”

While EMR promises clear long-term benefits to efficiency and quality of care, government is reluctant to spend on the technology. The investment in EMR is seemingly a no-brainer. Sure, it’s expensive in the short-term, but soon enough we’ll see increased efficiency, more care to more people, and health care providers happy not to have to sift through piles of paper records to find critical information.

The “no-brainer” status I assigned to an investment in EMR was challenged as I continued to explore the issue with Dr. Gebara.

“There are a handful of companies offering EMR products and platforms [like this one and this one, or just look here for a comprehensive list]. Hospital A, for example, might use one platform, but Hospital B down the street uses a different one. It’s great that they are using EMR, but the problem we run into is that you generally cannot share data between the two systems,” she said. 

The fact that different platforms cannot be integrated creates uncertainty around what the outcome and ROI of any wide-scale (and expensive) EMR initiative might be. Inability to clearly estimate and articulate the benefits of EMR hampers efforts to secure government funding. And, quite simply, ”lack of funding is the greatest barrier to universal EMR.”

One (partial) solution would be for government and health institutions to select a single platform so that data can be shared in any hospital in any region.  But, if the government selects one service provider, do they not create an illegal monopoly in the industry?

Without government intervention, leaders in EMR technology will just have to emerge over time. With fewer players in the field and more hospitals adopting the same platforms, scalability and the ability to share data between hospitals will increase. In turn, the case for EMR funding will strengthen. Unfortunately, this implies simply waiting for the fittest platform to emerge. If that’s the case, then we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for universal EMR. 

Adoption of Wikinomics principles on the part of the health informatics industry (referring to companies building and providing EMR platforms and services), however, would speed the journey to easily integrateable platforms. My guess is that the first company from within the EMR space who breaks down silos and produces a platform that integrates with others will be dominating the field when EMR arrives in full force – sooner, rather than later.

When I was about 5 years old, my school library kept track of its books using little cue cards stashed by the hundreds in tiny drawers (you all know what I’m talking about). All of my book searches since kindergarten have involved a computer. Am I to believe that our libraries did, almost 20 years ago, what our health care system is starting to do now?

The CBC article tells us that, “Digital networks help to bridge staffing gaps at Canadian hospitals.” It is true – hospitals in Ontario (and the rest of  Canada) have only recently started the move towards EMR. If the digitization of, say, written communication made headlines, people would be wondering how they ended-up back in 1994. Imagine reading the following headline today: “Canadian companies use electronic mail to cut-out time spent waiting for letters to get to Europe.”

It seems unjustifiable that our health care system has not made better use of technology. I see little downside in using technology that we’ve been using for years in countless domains, to get care to people (eg Northern Ontarions in need of a radiologist) who have been waiting far too long.

My criticism is tempered by knowing that there are political, social, and financial barriers to the widespread digitization of medical records that don’t exist for libraries, for example. But do they justify the almost 20-year technology lag? It seems unforgivable, given that our health care system could have been benefitting from increased efficiency through EMR years ago.

What the barriers along the path to EMR are exactly, I’m not sure. I can only imagine that they are significant, as they have imposed a 20-year technology lag on our health care system. Part Two of my look at the state of electronic medical records in Ontario will seek to unveil these barriers. Watch for it next week and do chip-in with any insight you have on the barriers to EMR.

In the world of technology, 10 years is a significant span of time, and generally the ‘end-game’ ideas conceived now will interact with people and other pieces of technology in unknown future processes. This is because technology in its application must be seen as an evolving landscape of interconnected technologies, many of which don’t yet exist. It’s a spider web yet to be woven…

Perhaps this is why we traditionally go through what Gartner refers to as a technology hype cycle – we don’t yet understand know how to get from point A to B, but we’re excited about the idea of B. As a result, people’s expectations are inflated with dreams of a future technology, only to be disillusioned as the limitations become apparent. As time and scientific progress marches on, the actual technological application settles somewhere between the inflated and disillusioned expectations, but by then the world is a far different place then when the technology was thought up.

Now that said, Microsoft clearly has a good idea of how certain technologies are converging, and the applications  they would like to ultimately develop. People were impressed with the possibilities represented by Microsoft Surface, and this is clearly an extension of a specific thought process: how can we exchange and manipulate information in ways that are valuable and increase efficiency.

If you’re interested in ideas on how Government 2.0 might change in the future, head on over to a post Will, Ben and myself over the summer: 2018, A Vision of the Future

There’s a lot of cool technologies shown in the video. Which one excites you the most? A few years ago I remember doing some research on e-ink and thinking that it was only a matter of time before your morning newspaper was beamed to your digital reader (Kindle ‘version 4′) every morning. Or that it’d be great to have RFID enabled shopping carts that give directions to your groceries. Clearly these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Well, a colleague of mine just told me about a new Pacific Coast collaborative (called the Pacific Green Energy Initiative) that was set up to build, test and rapidly deploy clean and renewable energy systems. The collaborative consists of renewable energy industry leaders who hope to convince a coalition of state and provincial governments on the Pacific Coast (including California, Oregon, Washington State, Alaska and British Columbia) to develop a common market for green energy that would stretch from San Diego, California up to Anchorage, Alaska.

Reading through some of its literature helped reinforce for me the sheer magnitude of the challenge:

The present complex web of businesses, institutions and regulations evolved to manage an energy economy based on oil and large scale electricity generation from coal and hydro power. These organizations are not designed or organized to effectively manage the emerging, new energy economy.

That’s challenge number one for Obama, and for all political leaders confronting the challenge of making their 20th century infrastructures fit for a new era of renewable energy. It’s not simply a matter of swapping out old technology for new while keeping the existing industry and regulatory structure intact:

This new energy economy is shaping to be a patchwork of regional supply portfolios with distributed energy systems (e.g. solar powered homes, geo-exchange systems, and district scale energy supply systems) playing a very large role. It involves a shift to electric transportation and creating huge new demands for green / clean electricity at competitive prices. It involves “smart” grid technologies and more efficient prime movers and appliances across the board.

The challenges get deeper as one considers the political and leadership challenges inherent in the need to break down organizational silos and align the agendas and activities of so many disparate players:

Although many organizations (public, private and non-profit) are engaged in a wide variety of activities relating to Climate Change and Sustainability that impinge on energy technology commercialization, they are also advancing their own independent agendas. These silo agendas have little to do with the acceleration of deployment of energy technologies and everything to do with existing corporate cultures and established ways of doing things. Too often this results in activities that are isolated and ineffective, in conflict or compromised, or diluted by duplication of effort.

The fragmentation of knowledge, capability and effort is an issue I encounter frequently. You could say that it characterizes many domains (international aid, disaster relief and poverty alleviation come to mind), but it is particularly true of climate change where the solutions entail so many deep changes across so many sectors and in so many aspects of our lives.

The Western States and BC have demonstrated leadership in setting ambitious Co2 reduction targets (much more ambitious than Canada or the US as a whole). But the renewable energy industry claims (evidently with some self-interest) that the scale of investment to accomplish the State/Province targets is orders of magnitude greater than current trends within the region would achieve.

The rhetoric coming out of both this initiative and inter-governmental collaboration is interesting. I will be more interested to see what they do in practice and how they set out to enable the cross-sectoral collaborations they envision. It is one thing to hold an annual conference as the inter-governmental coalition intends to do, starting this March. It is quite another to build-up and sustain the multi-dimensional collaborations required to underpin a common market for green energy. I wish them luck.

I like the idea, a lot. However, I think it’s a bit early to bet on one horse – so why not add more to the mix. I like twitter’s generally open approach, so why can’t they play in this space.

So, here’s a proposal on how anyone can use twitter as an open authentication scheme to log into their site:

The first step is a login page (screenshot below) which gives you a unique one-time authentication key that is used to identify your session. In this example the one-time code is “82kjx_OneTimeAccessCode_IeZh9els” and it is designed to be tweeted (probably best to DM) to the web site owner’s account (“SiteTwitterName”in this case). By DM’ing the one-time code to the site owner you link your session to a specific twitter account, and by DM’ing it, you provide proof that you own that twitter account. To make this easier to tweet, you could add a “copy to clipboard link”, or “tweet to login” button/link which would automatically prepopulate the tweet in a browser window (see next screenshot).

Below is a sample of what the page might look like after you click the “tweet this to login” button.  You can imagine the button creating a popup window like this (if the browser allows popup windows). On twitter, it’s easy to prepopulate a page with a ready-to-tweet message like this. Just open a page with the URL:

http://twitter.com/home/?status=d%20SiteTwitterName%2082kjx_OneTimeAccessCode_leZh9els

And that link should give you a page similar to the one below:

Then, once you send the DM through twitter. The website can use the twitter API to read the DM and then make a connection between your twitter ID and the unique session key in order to authenticate you. At that point, your original login page can be refreshed, logging you in automatically. Voila, you are logged into a website using your twitterID as the account name:

A login scheme like this would work with twitter, but equally well with any messaging or IM service that’s sufficiently quick and also has an API. One of the best things about it is that it doesn’t require any endorsement of the service provider in order to use it for authentication either. You can even imagine doing this via a mobile phone too (either through cameraphone image, QR code (discussed here and here), IVR, OCR, or even a “sound” produced by the website that you could hold your phone up to).

Any suggestions about holes or problems with this scheme that I may be missing? Or ideas for improvements?

If anyone would like to implement the first working demo of this scheme it would be a great contribution to the public good.  I’d love to credit you with it here. Happy to share any demo code for it too if you wish.

…please contact me via twitter @crasheral if you would like to help kickstart this.

Why not? They rely on an archaic and inefficient mode of teaching.

Prison education (personal development courses, GED, and post-secondary courses) rely on correspondence via travel (by educators to correctional facilities) and old-school postage. Computers are rare and the use of the Internet, or even Intranets, is prohibited.  

This story suggests that decreased funding for prison education in the United States makes it increasingly  difficult to successfully implement prison education via traditional correspondance. It explains that efficient, interactive prison classes – in which the students and professor interact through live video feeds – have the potential to vastly increase the odds that an inmate will start and complete courses or even an entire degree.

Open University (OU), a largely online-correspondence UK institution, has 1,400 student-inmates in 148 prisons. Officials from the school are calling for greater adoption of technology by prisons to facilitate the inmates’ learning. Anne Pike, Teaching Fellow in OU’s Offender Learning Program believes that, “If (inmates) are going to be rehabilitated into the modern world, offenders must access modern technologies. It is necessary for employment as well as coping with the fast pace of life. ” (Read the rest here).

If we wanted to use modern, common technology to provide enhanced education to prisoners we could (after cutting through all of the red tape). It could be done efficiently and at a high level of quality. The question is, do we want to?

For the inmate on Death Row guilty of the type of crime we try not to think about, the use of a computer or Internet is a priveledge lost, and deservedly so. But think of the marginalized 18 year-old serving a 3 year term for a robbery - a robbery that he committed, perhaps, to get cash to pay for food or health care bills. Assuming that this 18 year-old enrolls in some educational program in prison, should he receive an inefficient and expensive “snail mail education,” or should he have the opportunity to develop himself through an efficient and relevant education that harnesses the power of common computer technology?

I look foward to hearing your take on this issue.

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Messages your plant will send you include:

• “Water me, please.” when the soil gets too dry
• “URGENT! Water me!” if you choose to ignore the previous message
• “Thank you for watering me.” after you perform your duties as a responsible plant owner
• “You overwatered me.” when you go a little overboard

The device comes with a built-in internet jack and prongs you stick in the soil to monitor moisture levels. You then subscribe to your plant’s twitter feed (the username and login info. comes on the package) and it will update you when it needs some TLC. The kit comes unassembled, so you’ll get to break out your trusty soldering iron and build your own translation circuit.

This wonderful gizmo can be yours for only $99.99! A bit pricey if you ask me, but perhaps I’m not a dedicated plant-lover (although dedicated horticulturists probably wouldn’t need this gadget).

The Bilski patent involved a method to determine appropriate pricing and apportioning of commodity hedging instruments—a process by which companies can mitigate price risk in volatile markets. Hedging and risk management are on the tips of everyone’s tongues these days: Don has written thoroughly about it, and “risk managers” seem to be the only people on Bay and Wall Streets who still get calls from recruiters (not ones who worked for these guys, of course). But the fundamental question, as seen by the court, was “Is this ‘machine-or-transformation’ test satisfied?”

The test is simple in premise, but as are many legal concepts, is readily abstracted into realms unknown. The decision said it clearest:

“an applicant may show that a process claim satisfies §101 either by showing that his claim is tied to a particular machine, or by showing that his claim transforms an article.”

The Bilski patents were not seen as a transformation of the underlying “article” (in this case, obligations and concepts of risk), as these articles were considered ineligible: they were not “physical objects or substances, and are not representative of physical objects or substances.” (Emphasis added) The applicants hoped that their process, which produced “useful, concrete and tangible results” would be sufficient, but when considered in isolation, that wasn’t enough. An aside

But what does it all mean, Basil? What are the implications to future innovation, especially given the shift to knowledge work, where razor-thin profit margins are often a direct product of business processes (albeit, ones with more gravitas and specificity)? For that we go to one of the dissenting judge’s opinions, Judge Newman. She (and I agree) that the redefinition of the “process” to depend on machines or tangibility (or representation thereof) is imprudent:

“…thus excludes many of the kinds of inventions that apply today’s electronic and photonic technologies, as well as other processes that handle data and information in novel ways. Such processes have long been patent eligible, and contribute to the vigor and variety of today’s Information Age. This exclusion of process inventions is contrary to statute, contrary to precedent, and a negation of the constitutional mandate. Its impact on the future, as well as on the thousands of patents already granted, is unknown.”

The other two dissenters, Rader and Mayer, speak to the desirability of a more concise resolution and the devolution of the patent landscape:

• Rader argues that stressing process-machine relationship is outdated given the current state of science and technology.
  

• Mayer’s dissent is a little more vigorous, and disagrees with business method patents wholly as they stand now
  

• The argument is one that patent law is meant to spur innovation and science, not help financiers structure business arrangements.
  

So who is right? One potential school of thought is that since most technology process innovations are tied to machines so closely, that patenting shouldn’t be slowed by this decision, and Newman has nothing to fear.

My stance is this: Hedging, computer aided or not, is still a fundamental business principle: alone, it’s unpatentable. But the idea that something non-physical needs to be tied to a machine to make it patentable is a surprising (and unwise) decision. It seems like the decision failed to speak to the future, but instead seems to gain its only ammunition on the basis of the “transformation” argument. I agree with Rader that the patent could have been just as ably defeated by arguing its scope was too broad, effectively damaging antecedent work in the area.

My Wikinomics Angle: I’m decidedly Mayer-esque in his “Six Million Dollar Man” idea that we can rebuild the system. Why? Because “we have the technology” that necessitates it (apologies, but we needed some levity. This far it’s been Churchill martini-dry). Patents aren’t meant to replace a business model or prevent others from even doing business. Ideally, they’re meant as an avenue through which innovators can be compensated for their role in science and technological evolution. Instead we’re seeing companies set up defensive minefields as a competitive strategy. Weak. In 1995, Michel Robert wrote that innovation was considered to be the business “Fountain of Youth”, as it was the cornerstone to both success (a product of competitiveness) and longevity (a product of success). Jeff Roberts at McGill University in Montreal wrote a great blog post about how IP should mean innovation, not litigation. He’s a sharp cookie, and fear not, he’s not an anarchist. He just advocates that if IP policy is careless with what he calls the “rights-rewards balance”, innovation becomes an afterthought, not the goal.

Wikinomics in law isn’t about free (little joke), and it isn’t about ignoring property rights; that rigidity was born out of the old vanguard that created walled gardens. But the only way to see over those tall-walled enclaves is a return to a founding tenet of past science:

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” – Isaac Newton, 1676

[Aside: The whole "useful…" phrase sounds like something written by Teresa Amabile a researcher who studies creativity and innovation. The stickiest phrase I remember from one of her academic papers was criteria for judging something as creative was dependent on it being "novel and appropriate". I also felt that Jerome Bruner said it really well that true creativity would produce "a shock of recognition, following which there is no longer astonishment." Pretty neat reading for you academic folks.] Back to Post

Given Obama’s dominant use of Web 2.0 tools to power his campaign, it’s hard to imagine anything less but a significant shift towards openness and participation should we wake up tomorrow with him as President Elect. As for McCain, he’s admittedly less adept with the tools currently available, and is against Net Neutrality, but his taxation and trade policies might actually do more for innovation then we care to admit.

Either way, as a I wrote a few weeks ago in the Globe and Mail, whomever is elected will have a tremendous challenge and opportunity on their hands. As “Having grown up digital, they (young voters) will want to be involved in the act of governing — by contributing ideas before decisions are made. What’s more, they’ll insist on integrity from politicians; if politicians say one thing and do another, young Americans will use their digital tools to find out, and spread the news.” They want Government 2.0.

So how do the candidates match up?

Barack Obama would:

• Ensure an open Internet.
• Create a transparent and connected democracy.
• Encourage a modern communications infrastructure.
• Prepare all of our children for a 21st century economy.
• Improve America’s competitiveness.
• Employ science and technology to solve our nation’s most pressing problems.

John McCain would:

• Encourage investment in innovation
• Develop a skilled work force
• Champion open and fair trade
• Reform intellectual property protection
• Keep the Internet and entrepreneurs free of unnecessary regulation
• Ensure a fully connected citizenry

Based on both candidate’s proposed policies, it’s far from a cut and dry debate. But if at the heart of this issue, and at the heart of Government 2.0, is a commitment to transparency, participation and engagement then the fact that Obama’s campaign encourages the submission of ideas and insights regarding his campaign policies is a far clearer signal of future intentions and the future of government.

Central to this development is an increased sense of autonomy from human interactions (such as self-repair, stabilizing feedback loops, and self-directed traffic management) and “smartness,”  — something that already exists in an ever-increasing form in the computational clouds of Google and Amazon, which are constantly learning about how it is that we use language, and form an understanding about how collective human behavior can be used to anticipate the actions of an individual.

These two systems are able to “manufacture intelligence” and sell it to the humans that participate in the system (by adding raw usage-information that these clouds use to refine their understanding). This money is then invested by the curators of the cloud to expand its computational power and scope, and the organism grows. While it seems like there’s an intentional blurring of the line between the hardware/software itself, and the companies that use them to deliver the services, I think it’s fair to respond that a corporation is a fairly abstract entity, and if Google were able to do it’s job of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful with fewer employees and more computing power, its shareholders wouldn’t mind so long as the share price continued to rise. So such an organism could be viable as a company.

The final phase of the development towards something lifelike (or maybe even alive) would be self awareness, in which the Internet could map itselfs to determine whether the information it’s delivering comes form within or from without.

All of this, I suspect and hope, is still a few years away. So we don’t yet need upper-year university ethics courses on the proper and just treatment of packets and subroutines, but I find it gives a new perspective to my everyday internet-habits if I assume that each search I make, and every book I buy online, could be contributing, to an infinitessimal degree, to the creation and emergence of a new form of life; and that this process is happening in a surprisingly innocuous and organic way.

Perhaps troubling to employers is the extent to which the Net Generation says they use work technologies to complete non-work tasks . Half (50%) say they do so for two hours a day or more.

From one point of view, using work technologies for personal tasks is a distraction; from another point of view, it’s a way to enable employees to integrate their professional and personal lives and accomplish more in both. The study found that the youth generation is slightly more likely to integrate, rather than compartmentalize, their work and personal lives.

Perhaps, we should have asked the question differently and asked how many used it 2-4 hours per day, 4-8 and 8 or more….

Instead of the typical “here’s your company laptop – enjoy!“, Citrix is one of the few companies to have gone public with a Bring Your Own Computer policy and they are experimenting with giving employees a stipend with which to purchase their own machine. With a $2,100 allowance, employees can purchase a PC or Mac of their choice, so long as it comes with a three-year service plan and carries guaranteed next day on-site service.

There are obviously a number of challenges posed by the infinite number of options that come as a result of a customized computer program, but the program brings with it at least one important reward – and one that our research has shown to be particularly attractive to the tech-savvy Net Generation – Customization.

Much more than just a machine on which to complete work (and sometimes play), laptops, like many other tech devices have become an important means of self-expression (enter the Mac marketing strategy). The option to customize also goes far beyond the Mac vs. PC debate by allowing employees to purchase a machine that best suits their desired specs i.e. screen size and port availability vs. weight, speed vs. storage capacity etc.

While I appreciate the interoperability and flexibility provided by a standardized computing option, I can honestly say that I have found a personal machine much more valuable than the ability to swap power cords every once in a while, which is one of the greatest personal benefits I experienced with standardized machines.  And really, with the marked cutbacks of late, by which many employees have become their own peer IT support department, does it really matter anymore whether or not your system is “supported,” so long as it runs one of the operating systems.  Let alone the increasing shift towards cloud computing, software as a service and hosted computing, which have helped transfer the burden from “can you computer do this” to “is this a machine you’ll be happy and productive working on.”

Most organizations still seem to be view this customization as an unwelcome and unnecessary headache, but it appears that there may be a growing appetite for at least experimentation with a customized procurement model.

My take on the situation is that petty as it may seem to some, if this customization is a “reward” that is valued by an increasing number of employees, I think it is certainly an option worth serious consideration.

What’s your take? Is the potential reward of increased employee satisfaction worth the potential headache of dealing with countless systems?  Anyone else experienced (or wanting) the option to customize?

Of note as well is that Citrix has been able to decrease the average amount of upfront computer outlay from $2,500 to $2,100 (ownership lifecycle costs not factored in), which suggests that maybe some employees are willing to take a “lesser” machine in favor of customization and also that rewards don’t always have to “cost more.”

So why are they “worth” that much? Well, according to their CEO Dr. Lars Buttler (a former Electronic Arts executive who worked on Might and Magic and Heroes), the reason is two-fold:

• First, Trion’s goal is to design a MMOG that can truly operate cross-platform. This means that Trion’s games will work across devices ranging from your PC, your gaming console, and web-enabled mobile phones.
• Second, Buttler is convinced that Trion’s other ace is the premise that he calls “dynamic gaming”. This “dynamic gaming” seems to be a flavour of the traditional server-based MMOGs, but Trion exercises more control over the environment, aiming to give the user a “unique” experience. Here, the game can change overnight, at the behest of Trion’s designers.

Superficially, this “dynamic gaming” concept seems more like an attempt to create a new buzzword rather than provide some tangible, novel technology. But, of course, some very clever investors feel like Trion is a hundred-million-dollar-plus investment. Digging deeper, Bertelsmann, Peacock Equity (NBC’s VC arm edit: A JV between NBC Universal and GE Commercial Finance – Media, Communications & Entertainment. Thanks, Alex!), and Time Warner all have vested interests, and Trion has teamed up NBC to issue games that coincide with a yet-to-be-released TV show on the Sci-Fi Channel. This seems like a MMOG version of Andrea’s last article on LiveHive, a Waterloo, Ontario-based company. So that will definitely be a market-share battle to watch, but their markets are still pretty separate.

So the burning question is: Have those savvy investors misspent their $70MM? Kind of. It’s been two years in the making; HP has firmly backed the server side of Trion’s business for over a year. They have surplus cash, and Buttler has been poaching high-end talent from his former stomping grounds at EA. What’s the hold up?

I too feel that cloud-centric gaming is where the EAs and Blizzard Entertainments of the world will compete for market share. The cross-platform MMOG concept is compelling, but it’s highly unlikely that Trion will be allowed to easily branch out to other platforms given their relationship with Bertelsmann (who shares half of the control of Sony BMG). The PS3 is their first console they’re trying it on. That’s going to make it tough unseating the incumbents World of Warcraft or EVE Online. Am I missing the Killer-App part of the pitch? Maybe I’m not ready to be a VC.

I bring up this little anecdote because it is relevant to some research I’m contemplating about Asian business revolutionaries and, in particular, the mobile industry. The issue is that, despite our global business environment, the disparity between North American and Asian product innovation and consumer expectations of innovation is, honestly, quite shocking. The electronics industry in this continent is a great example of the “culture of legacy” that we North Americans complaisantly support.

Our diminished expectations extend to the technology we accept from service providers like cable and cell phone companies (anyone use on-demand cable lately – the interface is circa 1985), from our governments (still waiting on that electronic ballot, e-polling, and efficient online service delivery), and from our corporate work environments (still operating on the assumption that 3- to 5-year lifecycles for employee workstations are acceptable and that iPhones aren’t “enterprise technology”). We do not demand better technology, and so we do not get it. It’s simple supply-and-demand; Economics 101.

Three-year contracts for cell phones are standard – the assumption being that our current technology is ‘good enough’ for at least that long. Flat panel TV’s are “all the rage” right now, but if I were to poll my own group of friends, fewer than half of them have made the investment. In fact, we in Canada are, to a certain extent, proud of being luddites. We exalt our “retro” technologies and some even pine for the ‘good old days’ before the hum-drum of always-on BlackBerries, satellite TVs, laptops, and instant messaging.

When two of my colleagues decided to wait in line overnight to get the latest iPhone, the response was a mix of jealousy and incredulity – that anyone would want to pay a premium for the latest and greatest technology, and to demand it so early is still seen as somewhat geeky and eccentric.

The culture of legacy extends far beyond consumer electronics. It’s a deeply-routed cultural problem we as North Americans have. Our business assumptions are based on it. Take for example the Hype Cycle – now an industry standard technology lifecycle model. Nothing is more damaging to the psyche of the corporate technophile than Gartner’s Hype Cycle which makes it not only okay to be a technology laggard, but in certain circumstances, actually preferable. Gartner has made a business around mitigating the perceived risk of being on the leading edge of technology adoption.

But, it all starts at home. My TV is seven years old (and I still don’t have a PVR), my home computer is getting on four years old, the three-year contract on my cell phone is almost up but I probably won’t renew anytime soon, my CD player is a relic of the 90’s, and the newest electronic device I’ve purchased is an iPod. We perpetuate our own culture of legacy by refusing to update. We generally feel that, even if our technology is behind the rest of the world, it’s still good enough for now. In the end, whose fault is it that our technology in North America sucks? Clearly, it’s our own.