November 2008 Archives

In 1996, when I left the world of corporate employment to do my own thing, I soon realized that not only do you not have anyone organizing a Christmas party for you, you may have no-one or very few people to party with.

So together with some of my self-employed and entrepreneurial friends, we decided to have our Christmas party together. This year is the 10th anniversary of the self-employed and entrepreneurs Xmas drinks.

It just seems like a really obvious thing to do, and every year it’s been a fabulous event, with a stack of great people turning up and celebrating. It’s primarily intended for the self-employed, entrepreneurs, and those working for micro-businesses, but absolutely everyone is welcome to turn up and join the festivities. Open to all.

Date: 16 December
Time: From 6pm
Where: Centennial Hotel (front bar), 88 Oxford Street, Woollahra
Drinks and food available for purchase at the bar.

You can RSVP on the Facebook site for the party (and see photos of who’s coming), or just see you there!

Every year I say that next year I’ll do something bigger, and maybe get sponsors to provide some food and drinks, but I always get busy. Hopefully next year I’ll get my act together on this…

I’m delighted to announce that registrations are open for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009 on 24 February - full details on the website.

To help you make up your mind early, there are significant discounts for registrations before Christmas, and the first 25 registrations get a free copy of my book Living Networks.

Click here to download flyer for Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009

The inaugural Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum was in February 2008, attracting a sell-out audience of senior executives and extensive media coverage, including Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, Computerworld, NineMSN, MIS The Scoop, Smartcompany, The Financial Standard and many others.

This year will be bigger and better, building on an additional year of experience from Australian and global enterprise experience in successfully implementing Web 2.0 and mobile technologies to transform their organizations.

Major announcements soon on a fantastic speaker line-up.

The existing logo for Advanced Human Technologies was designed in 1997. Not only has the world changed a lot since then, it is now becoming a very different company. It is time for a complete rebranding, starting with the logo, and including a complete redesign of the website, which is also sorely out of date. More on all the updates later – in brief Advanced Human Technologies will go far beyond being a consulting company to also being a publisher and supporting several new start-up ventures.

I have chosen to use 99designs to get the logo done. I have long written about and explored online service exchanges such as elance, Guru, and rentacoder. In fact the subject of my next book is about the global talent economy. As such I’m keen to try new models, and since 99designs seems very interesting, I’m giving it a go.

The way it works is first you put up your brief for a design such as a logo and you set a budget for what you’re prepared to pay. The interesting part is that all of the designers’ submissions are visible to all, and you rate them and give feedback on them until there is a winner. See How it Works.

This iteration process with multiple designers promises to give better results than the process on the other service exchanges, where you have to go through that process with one designer. In one case I selected a bid on elance to design a flyer, and it quickly became apparent that no amount of feedback would create a worthwhile result, so I paid the bidder half the bid amount to close out the arrangement.

SO: If you are a designer, please submit your ideas. Or if you know designers who would be interested, please let them know.

Click here to see our logo brief and submit your designs.

Last week I gave a keynote speech on The Future of Technology in Aged Care at the Aged Care Association Annual Congress. In this case I wanted to take the audience on a big-picture journey into where aged care is going, which went down very well between the many high-detail presentations at the conference.

I was invited as a general futurist, though I have in fact written and being interviewed on the topic of aged care frequently before, particularly on the role of robots in aged care, including in a feature article in Newsday.

Below is a brief snapshot of five key facets of how technology will transform aged care.

1. Telemedicine

Health care is being transformed by connectivity. This ranges from simple applications such as monitoring medical data through to remote surgery, bringing the skills of the best doctors anywhere in the world. Accenture's Online Medicine Cabinet is an example of how patients and the elderly can have their health monitored from home, and their medications managed effectively. Now robots such as the one in the video above can visit patients or do rounds in the ward, linking them directly by video to doctors or nurses.

Nick Gall of Gartner writes about our Extinction Timeline, saying (in jest I presume), referring to Gartner's famed hype cycle:

I think we should enter negotiations with the author, Ross Dawson, for adding extinction analysis to hype cycles immediately!

Extinction Timeline: what will disappear from our lives before 2050

As it happens, in the wake of the enormous success of the Extinction Timeline, including being featured on Slashdot, Slate, Boston Globe, and other publications across the globe, I've been thinking about doing a series of features on the death and subsequent rebirth of some what we have pegged for extinction - there is sometimes life beyond extinction! Thus the cycle may get extended several phases further...

The Future of Media Strategic Framework is still getting plenty of attention 2 1/2 years since it was created - we're up to around 150,000 downloads and it is still used extensively by companies and consultants in strategy development. I regularly hear new stories of how it's been used, and I continue to use it in my strategy projects for media clients, along with other strategy tools.

The latest use of the framework is an adaptation into Portuguese in the interdisciplinary information management journal Liinc em Revista, as below.

To see the article and original image, go to Liinc em Revista Vol. 4, No 2 (2008), and download the pdf of the article:

Fontes de informação como valor agregado ao sistema eletrônico de revistas da Universidade Federal do Paraná (OJS/SER-UFPR) - Patrícia Zeni Marchiori, Andre L Appel

As it happens I speak reasonable Portuguese, as I spent some time there in the 1990s visiting friends, going to Carnaval, and touring the country. I haven't been back to Brazil since I gave a keynote at a knowledge management conference in Sao Paolo in 2002, but I'm hoping to get back again before long.

The article looks at the document management systems of the Parana Federal University, and uses a framework for the quality dimensions of information sources, based on the structure of the Future of Media Strategic Framework, though using different content.

Oof! Well hopefully my last 13 blog posts as I chaired ONSBCW over the last two days have been useful to people, and not annoyed any faithful readers. Between Jenny Williams on Twitter, myself blogging, and various other people twittering and blogging, we had the event pretty well covered :-). It would have been nice to take a break from the constant note-taking, but once I started I thought I might as well continue.

Quick thoughts on the event:
* There is clearly a very strong appetite for the topic of social networks not just from business, but also from government.
* While this now not a new topic, most organisations are still struggling to really get traction, not least because of senior executive reluctance.
* There is strong diversity not just in the consumer social network space, but also in the many tools and platforms available to enable social networks in and beyond organizations.
* Twitter is solidly established in a core community which is rapidly extending. Those who can't find the time or energy to blog are dabbling in Twitter. The attendees' experience of Twitter at the event was a convincer for many to try it out, as happened at the Future of Media Summit.
* Few people really have their heads around the different spaces in which social networks and Web 2.0 tools can be applied and how these relate to each other - creating greater clarity on this will be very useful.
* Over the next years 'social networking' in the broadest sense is going to become central how business, government and society function - we really are on the cusp of something massive here.

So now onto other projects. Of course top of the agenda is our Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum 2009 on 24 February, which will delve into far more detail on how these issues impact the enterprise, and provide highly practical insights on governance, policies, implementation, and creating short-term value.

We are also creating an Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report, which will provide a clear roadmap to organizations on this path. This will be included in the registration cost of the Executive Forum, and we will be actively marketing the report beyond that.

Lots more on all this over the next few months!

I'm at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

The Law meets Web 2.0

I'm at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Government stream - Part 2

I'm at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Government stream - Part 1

I'm at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Paul Marshall, CEO, Lasoo.com.au

I'm at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategy - World Communities

Great presentation - a good chunk of it was what her Twitter community had suggested she speak about in her presentation when she asked them a few days ago.

I'm at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Ross Ackland - Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium

We are living in an exponential world, and have been for the last two decades. Many areas of our lives are following Moore’s Law.

Your homework is to watch Shift Happens:

I'm at Day One of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

I'm at Day One of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Enterprise stream - Part 1

I'm at Day One of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Paul Slakey, Google

I'm at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

CEO panel

I'm at Day One of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Francisco Cordero, Bebo

I'm at Day One of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Rebekah Horne, Fox Interactive Media

I'm at Day One of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I'm chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:
Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation
Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation
CEO panel
Paul Slakey, Google
Enterprise stream - Part 1
Enterprise stream - Part 2
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
Government stream - part 1
Government stream - Part 2
The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

First up is Richard Kimber, who until recently was Managing Director - South Asia for Google, and very interestingly moved over to become CEO of Friendster a few months ago. Below are some notes from his presentation. Particularly interesting were his broad perspectives on the space from very deep experience, and what's happening with Friendster in Asia.

Since virtual worlds commenced, the promise of using virtual worlds in corporate settings has been evident. The first wave of business involvement in virtual worlds was primarily about marketing and customer engagement – I have written about marketing in virtual worlds and was interviewed on ABC TV about virtual advertising.

From here, a key focus will be how to use virtual worlds for meetings. I have no doubt that in the next decade it will be extremely common to hold meetings in virtual worlds. However those virtual worlds will be a world ahead of what we have experienced so far, being closer to merging high-bandwidth telepresence conferencing with the experience of immersion in a room of people from different locations.

Second Life essentially hasn’t gained ground for eighteen months, maintaining a dedicated core of users, but gaining few new users. The latest news is that Reuters is pulling out its Second Life reporter. Eric Kangel, who used to play that role as Eric Reuters, has some solid advice for Linden Labs on how to grow, including the interesting suggestion to ‘abandon the idea that Second Life is a business app,’ mainly because Second Life is not robust enough for enterprise use.

Since Second Life has been experiencing it’s well-known challenges, I have expected that new companies would emerge to take the vanguard of corporate virtual worlds. This is not to write off Second Life quite yet, which recently launched a corporate meeting offering, but the odds are in favor of new participants taking the lead in this space.

Some of the emerging companies that are looking promising include:

The Age has just published an article titled Social networking can help business, based on our Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Network Strategy report, released yesterday.

Much of the article describes the report, and takes some of the executive quotes used in the report. Then at the end, taken from a follow-up interview with me, it says:

Chairman of company Future Exploration Network Ross Dawson said there had been a transformation in the corporate attitude towards social networking over the past year.

"An initial scepticism and caution from executives has now shifted dramatically where they recognise that these can be extremely valuable for helping organisations perform more effectively," Mr Dawson told AAP.

Some Australian companies were not so positive about using social networking technology in the workplace, Mr Dawson said.

"There's a lot of diversity in the opinions of senior executives, some are still both extremely sceptical and extremely cautious."

That's the state of the nation. There absolutely has been a dramatic shift in attitude by senior executives towards social networks and similar tools in the enterprise over just the last year. However within many organizations there is a strong divide in perceptions, often meaning that relatively little happens.

The pace of change in how executives view social networks certainly suggests that this is not far from becoming truly mainstream in the enterprise.

Today we are releasing our next major report, which distils - through unattributed verbatim quotes - what senior executives REALLY think about social networks inside organizations.

Future Exploration Network created the report for IBM, hosting a select group of top executives at a Roundtable discussion, and capturing the key talking points from the conversations.

Download the Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Networking Strategy report.

I usually don’t put press releases on my blog, but the one we released this morning gives a good summary of the report:

For immediate release: 20 November 2008

Australian senior executives say social networking has “real power” to change business

The majority of large Australian companies are trialing social networks within their organisations and senior executives believe that, rather than being a waste of employee time, there is substantial value to be harvested from connecting with Web 2.0, a report released today says.

Last week I dropped in to the Gartner Symposium in Sydney, and managed to catch the session by David Cearley talking about the distributed social web, one of my favorite topics.

Overall it was a very good presentation, swiftly moving from the basics to a quite detailed view of the distributed social web, including pertinent views on the challenges of data portability. The presentation was entirely from a corporate perspective, looking at how companies should be thinking about integrating open social networks into their websites and customer interactions.

This issue is only now getting onto the radars of consumer marketing companies, and it will be a while before we see significant corporate initiatives in the space, with the social networking platforms themselves still working out where the space is going. However the open social web will become an increasingly prominent topic for consumer-oriented companies over the next few years. David’s conclusion - that the biggest risk is to fail to engage - is absolutely correct.

The style of David’s presentation, as for many research vendors, was to throw out a lot of detail, clearly to convince their clients that they can’t work it out for themselves and need consulting assistance. I suppose this is probably quite true in this particular space, where it’s extraordinary difficult for people even at the center of what’s happening to get their arms around it. However I will have a go myself over the next few months, in creating a successor to the Web 2.0 Framework that will look at the layers of social platforms and how to engage with them.

Below are the notes I took during David’s session:

In my blog post on financial transparency in start-ups a couple of days ago I referred to a blog post I wrote last year on how Path101 was becoming a 'naked start-up', blogging their Monday meetings and being fully open about their business. Nigel Burke pointed out in a comment that Path101 had soon discontinued this, and questioned how much of the supposed transparency was hype. Fair point.

I have put a comment on the Path101 blog to ask them about this - see below.

In short, certainly some of the shift to openness and transparency is rhetoric rather than reality (noteworthy being large companies that are nominally supporting initiatives such as dataportability but are in fact reluctant) . However there is still a very real ongoing trend to openness in business, including in start-ups. Balsamiq releasing its sales and Graham Dawson revealing his iPhone app revenue may be very small examples, but they are far from being alone in being willing to share. I absolutely believe that there are tangible advantages to what I call 'strategic openness', and this will be made clear by the leaders on this path.

Comment on Path 101 blog:

Hi guys,

I'm one of the people that blogged about Path101 as a 'naked start-up' back in October last year (http://bit.ly/aCeM).

I'd like to know, in what way are you a naked, transparent start-up now? Your blog is now just like any other start-up blog, sharing ideas and promoting yourself, but not giving any real insights into your journey as a company, or any details of your planning, fund-raising or anything else.

Blogging your Monday meetings was a very cool idea. So why did you stop doing that in December of last year?

Did you decide it was a bad idea, or did you just lose motivation to do it? I'm very interested to know.

There's nothing wrong with being like other start-ups, but it is disappointing to see your early rhetoric of transparency and sharing what you're learning on your entrepreneurial path quickly disappearing. Hopefully you'll resume on your original transparent path, or if not others will take the lead on this, demonstrating to others why it creates value to be open.

[UPDATE 1:] Nigel Burke of Rusden who pointed out that rhetoric is not always matched by reality says that he has decided make his start-up naked, at: http://rusdensupdates.tumblr.com/. He says:

Following on from my comments on Ross Dawson’s blog I am moving to becoming more “naked”

I’m hoping to post my objectives, stats etc here at least once a week. I am also opening up my project hub where I keep my to-do’s and milestones; email projecthub@rusdens.com if you’re interested in a log-in.

The aim of this site is to produce feedback and develop relationships with potential peers, suppliers and customers.

Would love to know what you think - email nigel@rusdens.com with your comments

Fantastic.

[UPDATE 2:] Charlie from Path101 has responded to my comment and I've replied again.

Following my post yesterday on financial transparency my brother Graham released complete sales and financial details for his OzWeather iPhone app. This should prove extremely useful to those who are developing iPhone apps or considering doing so.

Covered in his detailed post are daily revenue data since the app’s release, estimates of development costs, and comparison with advertising revenue from the initial web app.

The upshot is that Graham is currently earning around A$220 per day from the app, and if sales continue on current trends, he will get a pay-back on development costs of 2-3 months (though in this calculation he has used a per diem rate that is far less than a market rate for his skills).

Clearly the OzWeather app is a particularly high-quality app that meets a consumer need (though it has competitors).

Hopefully more iPhone and other software developers will release financial information, as Graham requests in his post. It makes it far easier for the entrepreneurial community to assess where they should be investing their energy, benefiting everyone.

The film Minority Report featured a user interface in which Tom Cruise's character controlled computer screens and information using gestures, while wearing special gloves.

This was at the time the best representation of what I have long thought was a natural and inevitable direction for user interfaces. I've written about the shift to richer computer interfaces extensively over the years, including featuring Interfaces as one of the three technologies that will bring the networks to life in Chapter 2 of my 2002 book Living Networks, describing New Interfaces as one of the Six Trends that are transforming Living Online, and looking at the future of interfaces in mobile and home environments in the Future of the Media Lifecycle framework.

The film below shows the 'g-speak' technology in use. This is still transitional technology that will lead to broadly-used commercial applications, but definitely shows where things are heading.

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

Thanks to Engadget.

When solo developer Peldi Guilizzoni launched web design mock-up tool Balsamiq in July, he promised to disclose his revenues, reports ReadWriteWeb.

He has just announced he has hit $100,000 in revenue in the last five months, with revenue on a very significant uptrend.

I am a big believer in business transparency, absolutely for public companies, and also in many cases for private companies. Transparency is one of the Seven MegaTrends of professional services I described in 2005, one of the Six Facets of the future of PR, central to investor relations, while the naked start-up is becoming more common.

Clearly Guilizzoni is going to make a lot more money because of his financial transparency, given the attention it’s attracting.

Secrecy has its place in business, but it is highly over-rated. In most cases there is no valid reason not to share information, just a disinclination to give away things. We are going to see transparent models increasingly favored moving forward. Certainly I find the reporting and accounts of many public companies to be extraordinarily opaque, giving little insight into the real drivers of business performance (a case in point being most non-US media companies). The most significant result is that investors shy away and shareholder value is lost.

‘Open book management’ is not a new idea, but the majority of companies are slow to shift on this front. I’m toying with the idea of a business model which includes publishing all company accounts on the web – hopefully this will be becoming more common by the time I get to this.

The Australian event industry is quickly getting better from what was until recently a very low base. There are more quality events than ever.

A few months ago I was planning to run an Enterprise Social Network Strategy event in early December. Then I found out that a very similar high-quality event was already set for the week before. As such I cancelled my event and rolled what I was intending to cover into my next Enterprise 2.0 conference. I then spoke to the organizers of the November event, AC Events, to see if we could collaborate. We have worked out a great arrangement whereby we are together bringing two highly complementary events to the market.

Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World on 24-25 November 2008 is a two-day conference covering social media for marketing, enterprise and government, organized by AC Events. I will chair the plenary sessions and enterprise stream at this event.

Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009 is an intensive one-day executive summit organized by Future Exploration Network on how to create value with Web 2.0 tools inside organisations. It features leading international speakers, Australian case studies, and highly detailed insights into implementation.

My brother Graham Dawson moved to Sydney at the beginning of this year. It’s been great to have him around, not least to tap his tech expertise!

Graham launched his first iPhone app on Sunday, and it’s already selling extremely well. It’s aimed at the Australian market and provides weather forecasts, detailed current weather and daily extremes, and an extremely nifty rain radar that provides timed moving images and centers on your current location.

Graham's blog post Oz Weather goes live provides a full review of the app and Graham’s experience with the iPhone submission process - very interesting. He’ll have more up on his blog soon on what he’s learning as an iPhone app developer and marketer.

Also see the OzPDA site for info and access to the iTunes store for the app.

If you’re interested in the weather (including avoiding showers!), definitely download it.

See below for a video demo.

This Thursday November 5 at 11am US Pacific Time I’ll be doing the keynote for a webcast on Creating Business Value from Web 2.0, targeted to the manufacturing sector. Webcast viewing is free with registration. The description of my presentation is:

Creating Business Value from Web 2.0
Business technology is being transformed. Web 2.0-style technologies that have emerged in the consumer space such as blogs, wikis, presence, RSS, and mashups are being adapted to enterprise use, changing how IT platforms support business success. The Web 2.0 Framework gives clarity into the tools and processes of Web 2.0 and how it creates business value. Applying the Web 2.0 Framework helps organizations to tap fully the insights of their knowledge workers, build more efficient processes, and get products to market faster. Six key steps to creating business value from Web 2.0 help executives to plan the path forward.

Following my keynote Tim Teeter, Product Marketing Manager from Epicor, and Scott Smith, Director of Technology from Epicor, will present how manufacturing companies specifically can apply Web 2.0 capabilities.

I'll share some of my presentation here later.