Monthly Archives: July 2010
In my keynote speeches over the last couple of years I have often talked about how there is an increasing divergence in business performance. This theme was particularly pertinent at the height of the global financial crisis, when it was important to make people understand that there were still some companies and sectors that were
Continue reading The increasing divergence in business performance – if you’re not ahead you’re dead
Last week I interviewed my old friend Tom Stewart, formerly editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review, and currently Chief Marketing and Knowledge Officer of Booz and Co, for a piece in CPA Australia’s magazine InTheBlack. I’ll share the article, on the role of financial executives in business strategy, on this blog later in the year. Tom
Continue reading Getting perspective: Hand-held business computers are over 20 years old
Through the month of August I will be doing the keynote address at a five-city Australian roadshow run by Telstra Business. I will open the breakfast events by providing a big picture view of how driving forces in technology, business and society are moving the world towards cloud computing, cloud working, cloud thinking, and cloud
Continue reading Tapping the forces of change: Why cloud computing is the future
A few days ago I was interviewed by ABC’s Newsline program for a segment they did on Apple’s response to the iPhone4 ‘Antennagate’ problem. Here is the second part of the segment including my thoughts. To see the full piece go to the Newsline archives and click on ‘Bad Press’ dated 21/7. Despite the way
Some lovely research from Northeastern University uses sentiment analysis to show the changing moods of the United States through 24 hours. In the video below showing changes over the course of a day, colors indicate people’s moods from red (unhappy) to green (happy), while the size of the state shows how much Twitter activity there
Continue reading Twitter uncovers the real-time mood of the nation through the day
This delightful TV news clip from 1981 shows how people could access newspapers such as San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times on their computer using a dial-up line. It took 2 hours to download the text of a newspaper, with a $5 cost per hour. One user marvelled at how you could not
Continue reading What the future of newspapers looked like in 1981
I just caught up with my neighbor and fellow futurist Mark Pesce, who over a coffee at our local briefed me on his new project Plexus, which he publicly announced at his recent keynote at Pycon Australia, for Python developers. His excellent speech, titled How Not to be Seen, is below, and the transcript on
Continue reading Will the future of social networking be open and distributed? Here comes Plexus
I have just been requested permission by London School of Economics to use my Web 2.0 Framework in their Management and Innovation of eBusiness program for the next four years. The first part of the framework is below, and the industry landscape further down the page. Click on the image for the original description and
Continue reading Revisiting the Web 2.0 Framework for insights on the web landscape today
Of the many initiatives we have on, one of the most exciting is rolling out a series of websites/ forums – we have a few up now and many more coming. As we do so, we are looking for outside writers to complement our own content. One of our most popular new sites is CrowdsourcingResults.com,
Continue reading Looking for a great blog writer for Crowdsourcing Results site
We all know that processing power has for many years increased exponentially and continues to do so. This essentially means that any processing-intensive task you can imagine will eventually be possible. Facial recognition happens to be a task that humans are hard-wired to be exceptionally good at. While computers struggled at this for a long
Continue reading No more checking in: why public facial recognition may take off
My one-year old daughter Phoebe has woken up from her afternoon nap so I’m introducing her to YouTube. I spent a lot of time with her older sister Leda on my knee watching YouTube videos a couple of years ago – it’s time for Phoebe to explore the world of online video. I have a
Back when I wrote Living Networks in 2002 the idea that we were all part of a global brain was hardly mainstream, though a community of people were actively engaged with the idea. Today the idea of the global brain seems to be very much alive. I received a tremendous response when I recently resurrected
Big news: Australian enterprise software company Atlassian, creators of popular wiki Confluence, project tracking platform Jira and other innovative software, has just raised $60 million from Accel Partners in what Wall Street Journal reports as a ‘growth equity’ round. Atlassian has been entirely bootstrapped with no external funding to date, making it one of the
At our Future of Influence Summit conference last year Sharyn Smith of Australian word of mouth agency Soup was one of the key local experts to speak. Given that Australian companies have been a fair bit slower than the US to take up broad word of mouth initiatives, it’s good to see what Soup are
Continue reading Word of mouth in Australia vs US – Apple is a stronger brand Down Under
We are big believers in the power of visual frameworks to help people understand complex landscapes and build effective strategies. One of the domains we have been applying these frameworks to is the future of media. For those who haven’t been following our work through the years, here is a collection of five frameworks we’ve
Continue reading Five frameworks to build strategies for the future of media
Madston Black, a top-tier leadership development consultancy, recently engaged me to do some executive briefings on the future of business as part of some of leadership programs they are running for major Australian organizations. For two of their major client leadership development programs, Madston Black also brought out Professor Ron Heifetz, Founder of the Center
Well hopefully this story is finally completely done – but perhaps not quite. I originally broke the news that Facebook had banned doll nipples, reviewed the saga of how they arbitrarily closed down the Save Ophelia protest group, and how, until today there had been major media coverage in 13 countries about this story, but
Continue reading Facebook tells CNET but not Victoria Buckley they have apologized for Nipplegate
Quick update on the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook doll censorship row: The latest news is here. In short: The ‘Save Ophelia from Facebook censorship‘ Facebook group was simply deleted by Facebook without a trace (AFTER they had deleted the offending doll images leaving only the discussion of Facebook censorship), and Victoria has had to take
Over the last six months, I suppose it is, I have been engaging a lot less online during weekends. Of course it isn’t a coincidence that our younger daughter Phoebe was born just over a year ago. However it is more recently that I’ve pulled back more. Most visibly I don’t Twitter (that) much on
Continue reading The digital intensity of weekends – a critical dimension of life we can choose
Apologies if you’re sick of this story – I am too. But the latest in this sordid saga needs to be reported. The background: On Saturday Facebook threatened closing down Victoria Buckley Jewellery’s Facebook page because it showed an unclothed doll (top image at left), prompting widespread media coverage and global discussion. Many mainstream media
On Saturday I first wrote about how Facebook was warning my wife Victoria Buckley that they may close down the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page , presumably because it showed a doll’s nipples. On Monday Sydney Morning Herald wrote the story up as Now Facebook bans doll nipples. The headline spent 12 hours at the
Tele-commuting has shifted from something that prognosticators talk about to an everyday work practice for many. More and more companies are happy for their staff to spend some or all of their time working from home, facilitated by a profusion of cloud software as well as familiarity with collaboration tools such as instant messaging, screen
Continue reading The rise of the cloud workplace: co-working facilities
The opening words of Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog in 1968 were: “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” Indeed, the late 1960s were a time of vast optimism for many, based not just on the belief that ancient social strictures could be thrown off, but also that by use
Continue reading We are as gods – the cycle swings back to techno-optimism and neo-psychedelia
Back in our Future of Media Framework we showed some of the dynamics in content creation, as in the image on the left, where both users and traditional media were engaged in creating and filtering content. User content creation, in the form of blogging, micro-blogging, sharing on social networks and more, has of course surged
Continue reading Better ways to help readers filter and edit the news
Hey, I was there first! On Saturday I wrote Breaking: Facebook bans doll nipples on profile images, about how my wife Victoria Buckley was told by Facebook she couldn’t show nude dolls on her Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page. Today the Sydney Morning Herald has featured this as its top story, with a headline Facebook
My wife Victoria Buckley just received a message from Facebook asking her to change the profile image on the Victoria Buckley Jewellery Facebook page, threatening to close the page as it did not conform to its ‘terms and conditions’. Presumably the were referring to condition3. 7. You will not post content that…contains nudity…. referring to
Continue reading Breaking: Facebook bans doll nipples on profile images
Micro-messaging processing company Semiocast has just released research showing that Asia has overtaken North America as the biggest user of Twitter, with 37% of total tweets. Source: Semiocast In June 2009 the US still accounted for 55% of tweets, in February 2010 statistics showed that half of tweets were in languages other than English, and
MyCustomer.com has just published a nice article based on an interview with me, titled Ross Dawson: Six tools to kickstart your crowdsourcing strategy. After beginning with some background on the topicality of crowdsourcing, the article goes on: But suddenly crowdsourcing seems to be reaching some kind of critical mass. From reports that Microsoft crowdsourced the
Continue reading Six platforms to get results from crowdsourcing
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About the Blog author
Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.
Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.
Books By Ross Dawson (Incl. Free Chapters)
Articles and Reports
Future of Media Report 2008
Future of Media Report 2007
Future of Media Report 2006
Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Network Strategy
Future of the Media Lifecycle
Future of Media: Strategy Tools
Executive Insights into Enterprise 2.0
Web 2.0 Framework
Trend map 2007+
Extinction Timeline
SAP White Paper: Service Delivery Innovation
White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services
CNET/ University of Virginia White Paper: How Technology Purchasing Decisions Are Really Made
PM Network magazine's lead article on virtual teamwork (440KB), featuring Ross Dawson on the cover
Microsoft Strategic White Paper: How To Lock-in Your Clients (1.1MB)
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