2007 June

The World is Awakening…

June 15, 2007 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

What happens when everyone becomes awake? I don’t mean from sleep, but rather have fully developed a level of consciousness that ensures they’re aware of human connection, ideas and possibilities in new and radical ways?

If you’re a C-level executive, strategist, marketer, in product development, sales, are a teacher or small businessperson (or frankly anyone), the accelerating shifts in consciousness will impact what you do or deliver…and probably already is whether you’re aware of it or not.

My work in Web/Enterprise 2.0, community and communications through the Internet-as-a-platform means that I am seeing and experiencing this awakening on a daily basis. Simple things like watching people come together in a collaborative space and discovering how important it is to have everyone see the same vision of a product so they’re in sync; understanding the importance of ritual in a virtual meeting (e.g., how to lead a session and ensure everyone has a voice); deepening their understanding of markets and the people within them; and the inner drive people are exhibiting to move toward a vision for humanity that they live by. Businesses ignore this at their own peril.

This article in Fast Company (a publication I’m respecting more than ever as they push against the membrane of the future with articles like this one) is kinda, sorta a mashup about new concepts in ‘green’, activist capitalism, and open source and is one of the most fascinating examples I’ve seen for some time about strategies and concepts tapping into this awakening world and an ever-expanding human consciousness.

It starts out, “Somewhere between the Oscar for Al Gore’s planetary-disaster epic, An Inconvenient Truth, and the canonization of Angelina Jolie by the United Nations (in association with People (NYSE:TWX) magazine), the message started sinking in: The cultural conversation around the environment, social change, and human rights is approaching maximum velocity. What is arguably urgent has become inarguably hip.” To me, the operative words are “cultural conversation”, “maximum velocity” and “inarguably hip” in that paragraph and it is blatantly obvious to me that the company discussed in this feature couldn’t have happened until now.

As I read I realized that all that I’ve been seeing and experiencing recently — both on and offline — is but a tip-of-the-iceberg of this global awakening.

PUSH: Day Two of Two

June 12, 2007 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

As you read today’s post, I need to lay out my initial perspective and, perhaps, my personal bias on conferences before I leap into an ongoing recap of today’s events.

The concept of unconferences is one I embrace as well as its central premise: there is more intelligence collectively in the audience than any given set of presenters. The exceptions yesterday were the global perspectives of several of the presenters on geopolitics, macroeconomics and the core science behind energy and I found these quite valuable. As a consequence to the way this conference is delivered, there are less opportunities to interact with folks than others I’ve attended and/or methods to allow people to cluster around specific topic areas (e.g., tracks of topics, etc.).

That said, many of the side conversations I’ve been having are remarkably prescient about the future and have been probing about things that are *not* being covered at PUSH…like the Internet as a platform; the massive inefficiency and cycle times being reduced in virtually every industry and NGO because of it; and the biggest impact of what is occurring right now: the acceleration in human connection and what that means to the future of everything occurring here.

Perhaps it’s the luxury I have of attending numerous cutting edge conferences in a host of areas as well as being married to a trend forecaster. Combine that with the volume of thought leaders I follow daily and books I read (specifically on the future) and I’m probably somewhat atypical as an audience member — though I’ve gravitated to six other people whose perspective is exactly the same as mine.

One thing I will mention, however, about their positioning this as an unconference. What is atypical is that all sessions are in the theater and all attendees see every presenter. Therefore all the participants have a synchronous experience which doesn’t do what I experience at all other conferences: I get bummed that I can’t attend every single session and feel like I’m missing something at other ones.

Come back periodically today as I’ll be publishing after the morning and afternoon sessions.

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Filed Under: Innovation

PUSH: Day One

June 11, 2007 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Here in the auditorium at the PUSH Conference. Last evening’s kickoff was a nice introduction for people to ease into the essence of what I’m expecting this conference to deliver.

I’ve already met people from major corporations (General Mills, Best Buy), the CTO of Dow Jones, a serial entrepreneur and key local technology leader (Dan Grigsby), a researcher from O’Reilly & Associates, Eric Utne (started the Utne Reader and now Earth Corps), folks from Minnesota Public Radio and many more.

That is what the conference is all about…just like other conferences I attend. The conference itself is useful and is most interesting as the focus of the event, but it’s the hallway and break conversations where the sparks fly. It’s the people. The perspectives. The energy of the people who are seeking to know more about what’s just beyond that membrane of the future.

I’ll be adding to this "Day One" post throughout the day so any of you RSS readers may want to come to this post page itself later today if you’d like to know more about what occurred.

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Filed Under: Innovation

PUSH the Future

June 9, 2007 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Starting tomorrow evening I’m enthused, intrigued and delighted to be covering the PUSH Conference right here in my backyard in Minneapolis. I’ve known of it for its life thus far, but circumstances have never aligned so attending it hasn’t been an option in the past. The stars aligned now so I’ll be there.

"The PUSH Conference is designed for business leaders, policymakers, brand and R&D executives as well as venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, artists and others charged with shaping the future and leading the marketplace of ideas. Founder Cecily Sommers notes â€œThe PUSH conference brings together leading thinkers from across many multi-cultural and global disciplines to dissect and analyze change. PUSH offers a first-look at the people, ideas and technology transforming our world.â€

If you read my blog frequently you may have come across one of my favorite phrases: pushing against the membrane of the future (like in this post which describes what I mean fully). My hope is to be surrounded by audience members pushing against that membrane in their own way and listening to conversation starters who’ve been pushing at it for some time in a given spot…and all indications are that this is precisely what I’ll find.

Howard Rheingold, the author, tech visionary and speaker at last year’s conference said, "PUSH
is absolutely the best conference ever! l speak at a lot of these
things, and there’s a heart and soul at PUSH that is rare and special,
and really stands out." Big praise from someone who is all over the world at thought leading events.

So stay tuned and I’ll be bringing you recaps and perspectives of this conference as I attempt to capture the zeitgeist of these two and a half days.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

See the Dirty Little Secret for Yourself

June 7, 2007 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

The Associated Press had this article about a new, free service offered by the content delivery network provider, Akamai.

As you can see from the screengrab, I took a peek at the closest hub to me in Minneapolis (the Chicago one) and the end point in Sydney, Australia since I’m working with this guy on delivering live streaming video content from there to here.

In the article was this quote, "We originally built this feature as a tool for our customers, but once it was built it seemed like a fun thing to put out there to the public," said Tom Leighton, Akamai’s chief scientist." A fun thing? I don’t think so. More like, "We are delivering this to graphically demonstrate the latency on the Internet and the incredible performance boost we can provide you with the Akamai service." I’m enamored with what Akamai is delivering and particularly intrigued with their announcement of a Flash streaming service combined with their other media offerings (more here).

Performance with video streaming, webinars, application performance, content delivery and anything else that travels over the Internet is becoming increasingly dependent upon how much latency (i.e., the time it takes for packets to travel over the Internet and be re-assembled at their destination) is introduced. Of course, it isn’t just the latency from one hub to another…it’s also from that hub to its ultimate destination (including from the Internet Service Provider you have to your desktop).

Composite applications or "mashups" of discrete chunks of functionality (think widgets and gadgets) assembled together to deliver an end application is a real problem if there isn’t any thought to how much time it will take for all that data to be grabbed and a Web page to be built.

I know I’m a broken record on the topic of the "dirty little secret" — that Internetwork latency is already affecting mashups, Web/Enterprise 2.0 applications, video delivery and essentially everything we do over the Internet — but dealing with this latency is something that should be baked into every Internet companies business plan as well as your business case if you’re delivering anything over the ‘net and/or relying on applications and data up there in that Internet cloud.

Filed Under: Technology

Live TV on the Internet

June 5, 2007 By Steve Borsch Leave a Comment

Searching for innovation in live, streaming video brought me to Mogulus last night. I’ve been enamored with uStream, Stickam and BlogTV but realize how limited and “Webcam-centric” they are currently.

Since Mogulus is in beta right now, I’ve not yet had a chance to put it through its paces. Viewing the video, going through this online presentation (that had too many people in it which caused a hiccup on Adobe’s servers), looking at the screenshots absolutely blew me away.

Here’s what excited me about this service:

a) The capability to deliver a live show with graphics, over-the-shoulder images like the news, crawls and more which look professional

b) Having multiple other people — all connected through their own webcams or cameras — allows a host or producer to switch between “feeds” instantly (“…and now let’s go to our correspondent live at the conference…”)

c) In advance of a live show, a storyboard can be created of assembled videos that can be in the queue and inserted into the live show at the click of a mouse

d) Assembled content can be delivered sequentially so a “channel” or “station” you create can broadcast programming 24/7. This meets the old broadcaster mantra of “no dead air” on a channel, but archived content needs to be available on-demand and I didn’t see how Mogulus could achieve that for viewers.

Just days ago I wrote in this post, “I’ve brought up scale over-n-over again on this blog and I know that streaming video is really hard and the bandwidth needed is expensive. What if a hot ‘show’ is streamed on Stickam or uStream and has even 1% of the disappearing network TV show audience (37.5 million viewers in the US in March for broadcast networks), there is NO way that any of these lower end solutions would be up to the task of streaming to an audience of 375,000 people…let alone millions.

When individuals, companies or organizations start down a path of choosing superior communication technologies, they are placing a bet. I view many solutions — Skype, Stickam, uStream, and many Web 2.0 solutions — are bleeding edge and not a safe bet.”

If you have a small audience, no problem. An important event that you need to have rock solid and guaranteed uptime? I wouldn’t use any service that wouldn’t provide me with an SLA (Service Level Agreement guaranteeing service parameters).

Mogulus will be one to watch as will similar live streaming offerings coming from Brightcove as well as the recently announced Flash streaming service from Akamai (more info here and a video with Akamai’s streaming product manager here).

Figure out right now how you’ll be delivering live TV over the Internet starting this Fall or expect that this time next year you’ll be kicking yourself you didn’t start sooner!

Filed Under: Innovation, IPTV, Vlogging

Fun with Video

June 3, 2007 By Steve Borsch 3 Comments

I’m not usually trolling for videos online and am typically fairly serious about my examinations of the technology and social moves on the Internet/Web, but this one just tickled me today.

Called "Lip Dub" (and already appearing on dozens of sites and blogs with almost 1M views as of this morning), it appears that it was shot at a young company and done during a Friday afternoon beer bash where the group obviously was inspired to orchestrate lip synching to song. It’s just delightful and goes far beyond a couple of people sitting in front of a webcam doing the same thing.

Examples like this are what fill me with unbounded optimism and joy that so-called "user generated content" and the Rise of the Participation Culture is going to change everything. Take a few minutes and watch…

Filed Under: Flash Mobs, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Unleashing the Collective

June 1, 2007 By Steve Borsch 2 Comments

Just returned to my office from this Thought Leader Gathering (TLG) put on by Heartland Circle and held this morning at Best Buy Company.

Being in a contemplative mood for the last few weeks, today’s gathering was interesting on many levels and also brought me back to one aspect of my work: unleashing the collective. The collective of Internet-connected humanity is my work, but I was sort of surprised by how something NOT directly in my strategic technology domain informed my thoughts in such a profound way today.

The event was about WoLF: The Women’s Leadership Forum at Best Buy. The leaders, Julie Gilbert and Mary Capozzi, led off with powerfully told personal stories that helped us understand what led each of them to the formation of this forum. WoLF’s essence is that it empowers women in the organization and is clearly unleashing their perspectives, their influence and engaging them. Apparently most women had been relatively excluded.

A key aspect to this forum (and the WoLF ‘packs’ which have formed) is that partnering with the men within Best Buy is critical to bringing women’s energy to bear for the good of them and, especially, the company. Read the link above to learn more but what you won’t take away was how powerful this has become and the ROI that Best Buy the business is achieving from it.

If you want to get all left brain and quantified and dismiss my relating this event to you as YAWM (Yet Another Women’s Movement) consider this: Best Buy is measuring the results of lower female turnover in an otherwise incredibly high turnover labor pool (i.e., retail). Another fact Ms. Gilbert articulated is that, “Women buy more technology products than men â€” spending $55 billion of the annual $96 billion in technology sales.” Hmmm…so engaging women could be good business and profitable…hmmm.