Ed Batista

Brazil and the World of Ends

I caught the first half of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (an old favorite) last night and was struck by what a great metaphor this film is for Doc Searls' recent piece on Saving the Net (which I excerpted a few days ago, if you're pressed for time.)

Gilliam's dystopic vision makes a powerful argument in favor of the dumb, decentralized (and therefore innovative and user-centric) Internet as described by Searls and David Weinberger in World of Ends, and against the "smart," centralized networks beloved by telcos, bureaucrats, and governments everywhere.

From a "Central Services" view of the world, user-driven innovation is sabotage, and the Harry Tuttles of the world (read: entrepreneurs who can't take the paperwork) are terrorists.  The company (or agency or ministry or bureau, ad infinitum) knows best.  They know what you need, they even know what you want...and they're never wrong.

It's time to pick a side, and who do you think's on your side: Harry Tuttle...or Spoor?

Dancing in Elevators

Back in May I wrote a post about writing online entitled When Did You Become an Exhibitionist?  (It's interesting how much of my traffic results from the word exhibitionist in the title of a single post.)  It was essentially about the trade-off between anonymity and visibility:

It does feel naked to write online, and you will worry about being uncomfortably exposed.  I did--and do.

But whether you're an individual worried about looking foolish, or an organizational leader worried about staff members airing dirty laundry in public, you're still facing the same challenge--you have to weigh the risks of exposure against the risks of invisibility.

I've been thinking recently about this trade-off because of Esther Dyson's Release 1.0 piece on anonymity and the responses it engendered, so I wasn't surprised when it came to mind while reading Grant McCracken's latest.  His post as a whole touches on a broad range of topics, as usual, but there was one specific passage that grabbed me:

[T]his was the trip in which I discovered that I dance in elevators (and absolutely no place else). The elevators in the Imperial hotel in Tokyo have little video cameras in the corner. This was enough to prompt me to think about what I was doing, and to discover, to my astonishment, that I was dancing. I am not a good dancer. By which I mean I'm a Canadian, but there is something about being in those suspended little cubicles that brings out the disco artist within.

His protests to the contrary, Grant apparently enjoys having an audience.  He dances in elevators not despite the security cameras but because of them.  This is not an insignificant distinction, and it's correlated with other success factors in today's, ah, exhibitionistic online environment.  (I couldn't help myself.  Let's see who that drags in.)

We now put a very high value on the ability to think, to write, to perform in plain view and in real time.  Don't run off to your garret.  Do it here, now.

I suspect that sort of pressure makes most of us break out in a cold sweat.  Or maybe it's just me.  But I--and perhaps you, too--need to get over it.  We've grown up with this idea of the Writer working in pristine isolation, handing down stone tablets at some unknown point in the future.  And I hope at least a few Geniuses stay true to themselves, follow that model, and Bring Forth some New Ideas.  But now that we're ALL writers, in one way or another, and we're ALL participating in this world-wide colloquy, we need to let go, lighten up, feel more comfortable in the spotlight (however dim), and start dancing in elevators (security cameras be damned.)

Peter Drucker on Managing Oneself

Update: I revised and expanded upon this post in March, 2010.

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I never met Peter Drucker, never even heard him speak, but I'm truly going to miss him.  He made a big difference in my life, at least over the last six years.  In the March-April 1999 issue of the Harvard Business Review, Drucker published an article entitled "Managing Oneself" (reprinted in January 2005) that I've read at least once a year ever since.  It's only 10 pages or so, and I encourage  you to buy a copy and read the whole thing--best $7 and 15 minutes you'll ever spend--but here are the passages that have had the greatest impact on me:

On Excellence

One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence.  It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.  And yet most people--especially most teachers and most organizations--concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones.  Energy, resources, and time should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.

On Careers

[M]ost people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.  By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths?  How do I perform?  and, What are my values?  And then they can and should decide where they belong.

Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong...

Equally important, knowing the answers to these questions enables a person to say to an opportunity, an offer, or an assignment, "Yes, I will do that.  But this is the way I should be doing it.  This is the way it should be structured.  This is the way the relationships should be.  These are the kind of results you should expect from me, and in this time frame, because this is who I am."

Successful careers are not planned.  They develop when people are prepared for opportunities because they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values.

On Planning

A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific.  So the question in most cases should be, Where and how can I achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half?  The answer must balance several things.  First, the results should be hard to achieve--they should require "stretching," to use the current buzzword.  But also, they should be within reach.  To aim at results that cannot be achieved--or that can be only under the most unlikely circumstances--is not being ambitious, it is being foolish.  Second, the results should be meaningful.  They should make a difference.  Finally, results should be visible and, if at all possible, measurable.  From this will come a course of action: what to do, where and how to start, and what goals and deadlines to set.

On Second Careers

We hear a great deal of talk about the midlife crisis of the executive.  It is mostly boredom.  At 45, most executives have reached the peak of their business careers, and they know it.  After 20 years of doing very much the same kind of work, they are very good at their jobs.  But they are not learning or contributing or deriving challenge and satisfaction from the job... That is why managing oneself increasingly leads one to begin a second career [typically by moving from one kind of organization to another; by developing a parellel career, often in a nonprofit; or by starting a new venture, again often a nonprofit]...

No one can expect to live very long without experiencing a serious setback in his or her life or work... At such times, a second major interest--not just a hobby--may make all the difference...

In a knowledge society...we expect everybody to be a success.  This is clearly an impossibility.  For a great many people, there is at best an absence of failure.  Wherever there is success, there has to be failure.  And then it is vitally important for the individual, and equally for the individual's family, to have an area in which he or she can contribute, make a difference, and be somebody.  That means finding a second area--whether in a second career, a parallel career, or a social venture--that offers an opportunity for being a leader, for being respected, for being a success.

Aggregator Roundup

Last winter I was whining about Bloglines (and aggregators in general).  The need to keep up with more and more good writing has overcome my initial dislike of the stripped-down, homogenized reading experience offered by aggregators (although there are still some sites I prefer to visit "in person"), so I've spent some time recently comparing Bloglines with Rojo and Google Reader.  The bottom line?  Bloglines is still my favorite, but they're going to have to keep improving to stay on top.  A few comments on each:

Bloglines

• Reading: The best feed-reading experience, hands down.  Their folder view gives me the best perspective on who's posted recently, and allows me to drop into an individual feed while keeping an eye on the overall list.  Navigation is easy and intuitive.  Outstanding mobile access, which is more and more important to me.  The times I'm away from my laptop are the times when an aggregator is most useful to me.
• Sharing: Very good subscription list sharing options.  Easy to create, manage and customize your blogroll, and users can view your public subscriptions right in their browser or directly import your OMPL file.  And AFAIK it's a unique feature to be able to distinguish between public and private subscriptions, something that will probably become more important.
• Management: However, they have the worst feed-management experience.  Lots of clicks and refreshes involved every step of the way, clunky menus and commands--it's quite annoying and feels very old-fashioned.

Rojo

• Reading: So-so reading experience.  It gives me a useful view of my subscription list but to scroll down the list on the left, I need to mouse all the way over to the right--there's no separate scroll bar for the list itself--a UI quibble, but an irritation nontheless.  Rojo's also slooooooow--way too slow to enable me to zip through my subscription list, and that's a deal breaker.  And terrible mobile access--not even comprehensible on my Treo.
• Sharing: Rather than enable list-sharing via links to your overall list or your OPML file, Rojo has you enter individual contacts with whom you can opt to share specific posts.  OTOH, this is a cool social networking feature, very similar to OutFoxed, and it bears a close relationship to my work with AttentionTrust (knowing which specific stories your contacts are paying attention to is much more efficient than knowing which feeds they're subscribed to).  But OTOH, I haven't bothered to enter any contacts--the network effect hasn't kicked in yet.
• Management: Better than Bloglines, with some significant innovations.  One is the ability to tag posts and feeds and sort by tag--yours and other peoples'--and this aggregator+seach+social network capability feels like it has great potential, but it hasn't been compelling enough yet to get to to actually tag anything.

Google Reader

• Reading: It has a very slick, fast AJAX-y interface--no surprise there--but the actual user design is horrible.  The apparent inability to look at my overall list and see how many recent posts are in a certain feed is a fatal flaw.  I don't just want a list of posts spewed out by date (too random) or sorted by "relevance."  I want to be able to zoom out and look at a list of feeds, decided where to focus my attention, zoom into a specific feed and check out the recent posts, zoom back out and decide where to go next.  Google Reader makes this very difficult.
• Sharing: No real options here at all.  A big disappointment.
• Management: Equivalent to Rojo.  You can tag feeds (although we all know Google calls tags "labels"), but I don't think you can tag posts--although you can "star" posts, a la Gmail.

So long, Google Reader--we won't meet again.  Stick around, Rojo--you have some real potential.  But at least for now, it's back to Bloglines.

(On a related note, I've enjoyed playing around with OPML Manager.  It's pretty bare bones, but it offers the ability to centralize your subscription management and separate that function from the other tasks your aggregator performs.  As someone who hates Bloglines' management capabilities but likes it in other ways, this could be very useful for me.)

bloglines rojo google+reader aggregators rss feeds opml opml+manager

Doc Searls on Saving the Net

When Doc Searls says its the longest and most important piece he's ever posted online, you should probably read it.  The bottom line?  The Internet as we know and love it (i.e. the scene of constant innovation because A) it's a dumb network with intelligence at the margins, not a smart network controlled from the center, and B) minimal government regulation) is in serious danger of being destroyed by those who view it as a transport mechanism and who are determined to extract their share of rents for carriage (i.e. the telcos and the cable companies, with strong support from "content providers" like the MPAA and Nanny-state regulators).  Some choice quotes:

[W]e acknowledge the necessity of the transport metaphor; but also its insufficiency.

Of course, at its base level the Net is a system of pipes and packets. But it's not only packets, or "content" or anything for that matter). Understanding the Net only in transport terms is like understanding civilization in terms of electrical service or human beings only in terms of atoms and molecules. We miss the larger context.

That context is best understood as a place. When we speak of the Net as a "place" or a "space" or a "world" or a "commons" or a "market" with "locations" and "addresses" and "sites" that we "build", we are framing the Net as a place.

Most significantly, the Net is a marketplace. In fact, the Net is the largest, most open, most free and most productive marketplace the world has ever known. The fact that it's not physical doesn't make it one bit less real. In fact, the virtuality of the Net is what makes it stretch to worldwide dimensions while remaining local to every desktop, every point-of-sale device, every ATM machine. It is in this world-wide marketplace that free people, free enterprise, free cultures and free societies are just beginning to flourish. It is here that democratic governance is finally connected, efficiently, to the governed.

As a place, the Net has always been independent of the carriage on which it relies, which is one reason it also encourages and rewards independence. The independence of the Net and its inhabitants is precisely what accounts for countless new businesses and improved old ones.

We need to stress the fact that the primary "end" in the Net's end-to-end architecture is the individual. The Net's success is due far more to the freedoms enjoyed by individuals than to the advantages enjoyed by large companies whose existence predates the Net.

We need to make clear that the Net is the best public place ever created for private enterprise, and that the success of the Net owes infinitely more to personal initiative than to the mesh of pipes in the ground beneath it.

Don't Believe the Links

A few months ago I tried to get a handle on the size of the blogosphere, and I came away somewhat dismayed by the difficulty of getting truly useful figures from the various blog ranking services.  They provided a decent sense of relative size, but not much in the way of absolute numbers.

In "Measuring the ACTUAL Blogosphere Part 1 - Technorati View," Christian Mayaud explains (in great detail) what some of the problems are with that particular service.  (He's promised to take a look at Google in Part 2.)  The bottom line:

[I]f we use Technorati’s current estimate of over 18 million blogs, 95% of the total number of blogs out there — HAVE NO LINKS LINKING BACK TO THEM.

Therefore, Technorati Link Analysis only works for the top 5% that actually have links and is rendered useless to measure 95% of the blogosphere.

Or, if you are just starting out and want your blog to move into the top 5% of the blogosphere (according to Technorati Rankings) — just go to blogger.com and create one “dummy” blog with one link to your blog and that single link is worth over 18 million in rank and drives you into the top 5% of all blogs. 

Pretty cool...but also pretty stupid...

In Summary, The Blogosphere According to Technorati

As of 10/7/05,the total number of blogs “measured” by Technorati = 18,900,000

• Less than 450 blogs have over 1000 blogs linking to them = 0.002 %
• Less than 15,000 blogs have over 100 blogs linking to them = 0.08 %
• Less than 180,000 blogs have over 10 blogs linking to them = 1 %
• Less than 800,000 blogs have at least 1 blog linking to them = 4 %
• Over 18,000,000 blogs have 0 blogs linking to them = 95%

In other words, using link analysis, Technorati can only “rank” among the top 5% of all blogs and — judging from their data — their methodology starts to fall apart pretty quickly after the top 0.1%. This makes sense since the relative value of a link depends on where you are in the curve. 

• For the Technorati 10, it takes thousands of links to move one place in rank.
• For the Technorati 100, it take hundreds of links to move one place in rank
• At 50,000, one link is worth over 2,000
• and your first link is worth over 18 million.

In summary, the link-driven ratings that are currently the backbone not only of Technorati but also of the entire Internet economy are imprecise, susceptible to gaming, and less useful the further we go down the long tail--which is precisely why we should all be paying more attention to...attention.

attention attentiontrust

Announcing Your Plans Is A Good Way To Hear God Laugh

25th Hour

Was reminded of this flick today, and how much it affected me.  Recommended viewing anytime you're questioning the choices you've made in life.

Just-In-Time Management

Stowe Boyd points to these words to live from Jason Fried at 37 Signals:

People often spend too much time up front trying to solve problems they don’t even have yet. Sometimes it’s better to wing it...

Don’t sweat stuff until you actually must. Don’t overbuild for scalability. Increase hardware and system software as necessary. If you’re slow for a week or two it’s not the end of the world. Just tell your customers you’re experiencing some growing pains. They’ll appreciate the candor.

Bottom Line: Make decisions just in time, when you have access to the real information you need. In the meanwhile, you’ll be able to lavish attention on the things that require immediate care and feeding.

Although these ideas grew out of 37 Signals' experience developing web services like Basecamp, I think they have relevance in any management context.  We constantly overplan and overprepare.  We waste crucial time and energy worrying about possible problems that may never materialize, and we pat ourselves on the back for our prudence when we should be kicking ourselves in the ass for not moving fast enough to solve the actual problems that are staring us in the face.

Jason's commenters take him to task for ignoring planning, but they're missing the point.  He's not saying never plan, never prepare.  He's saying put planning in its proper place.  Patton said, "A good plan violently executed today, is far and away better than a perfect plan next week."  And he would know.

I think Jason's point about candor is equally important.  We worry excessively about avoiding screwups so we won't look bad, which becomes a crippling fear.  Couple this with obsessive planning and you have a recipe for organizational (and personal) paralysis.  Candor breaks the logjam.  Candor allows us to try, fail, apologize, learn and then give it another (presumably better) shot.

I'm not just pointing fingers here; I need to take these lessons to heart myself.  But thinking about them and articulating them is part of the process of putting them into practice.

Think Fast

Gen. George Patton on decision-making:  "A good plan violently executed today, is far and away better than a perfect plan next week."  Words to live by.