A few more interesting links (January 2012)

A year ago I listed links to some interesting articles I had read. Others found them useful, so here are a few more:

Design
The golden age of design in startups – “Well, folks, your time has come. Not only do you have a seat at the table…you’ve got a starring role. There is no better time to be a designer than right now.”
10 designers who follow the muse of curiosity – Unusual collection of designers.

Startups
By royal appointment: why startups shouldn’t suck up – A look at the attitudes of startups, ending with the line “Don’t suck up to the establishment. Scare them.”
On not joining a run-of-the-mill corporation - From the founder of Ooga Labs. “A big company is not the safe career choice. It’s the risky choice. It risks your mind and your life.”
Tara Hunt on “The unclear path” at TEDxConcordia – Don’t give up.
Hiring rockstars - Good tips on Startup hiring strategies.
53 ways to become a better entrepreneur –  ”No matter how successful you are, you shouldn’t stop learning” and 52 other gems.
Why isn’t there a legitimate “critic” in Silicon Valley for early-stage startups? – Great answer by Robert Scoble.
The most effective habit for entrepreneurs –  Being proactive might be the only effective habit.

Tech
Why our National Curriculum is a National Joke and how teaching of IT in the UK needs an overhaul – Read the comments as well as the article itself- a good debate gets underway. This article is particularly interesting in the context of the recent news that IT lessons in the UK will be overhauled.
The great tech war of 2012 – A thorough look at Apple, Facebook, Google, and Amazon.
Wifi refugees shelter in West Virginia mountains -  At the opposite end of the spectrum: interviews with individuals who are deliberately removing themselves from wifi zones as they believe it makes them physically ill.
China’s strange fixation with IE6 –  Microsoft is pushing to end IE6 (as this indicates). Articles like this show that in reality the end is still a long way off.

Useful
10 completely free wireframe and mockup applications – I’ve been using Balsamiq which is very easy and quick to use but I’m not too keen on the Comic Sans-esq end result. Now I’ve seen this article again I’ll give a few different applications a go.
You are solving the wrong problem - Aza Ruskin (son of Jef Raskin who started the Macintosh project at Apple) has had an unusual life, giving his first talk on user interfaces at age 10. In this article he looks at the way we address problems.

Random
The 45 most powerful images of 2011 – Just amazing.
TEDxKids in Sunderland –  Heartwarming videos from a group of children doing their own TEDx. This video is of Christopher talking about Pokemon, but the other TEDxKids videos are equally excellent.
Time to end the war on drugs – A measured, well written article by Richard Branson.
One girl tackles child-centred marketing head on – “Why do all the girls have to buy pink stuff?”
Kindness boomberang – Just because.

One company- getting customer service very wrong and very right

Experienced a good example of a company getting customer service totally wrong and totally right (through different channels) today. The company was British Airways, and this afternoon I needed to change my flight with them. I tried the following:

1. Changing it through the website.
Result: no can do.

Me: “Ok sure, I’ll try using the telephone.”

2. Telephoning
Result: no can do (on hold for a Long Time, with no indication of how long much longer I would be waiting. And the BA on hold music is terrible).

Me: “Grrrrr British Airways customer service is terrible!” (p.s. this isn’t an actual picture of me)

3. Twitter
I don’t usually vent on Twitter, but in this case I wanted to make British Airways aware of how annoying the situation was and I had no other way of getting in touch with them today. So:

@British_Airways did follow me, and within 15 minutes they had taken my flight details and arranged for someone to call me. After a further 5 minutes an individual (with all the relevant details to hand) had called me and was able to resolve my query.

Me: “British Airways have redeemed themselves. Maybe I will stick with the airline for future flights now.”

So, making frustration public is sometimes very effective (though not with all companies- @jackgavigan mentioned that O2 are particularly rubbish, for example- which is odd given that their email and phone service is usually very good).

“Reality is Broken”- teasers

I recently finished Jane McGonigal’s “Reality is Broken”- a book which discusses game design, improving lives, and changing the world. Sound grand? Yes, but McGonigal presents a strong argument. Far from being the downfall of a generation, the writer argues that video games are enabling collaboration on a scale previously unseen, and that through this form epic (to use the book’s terminology) worldwide positive change will be enabled. Though at times lingering too long on games designed by the author (I think the book would have benefited from more variety), overall it was certainly a gripping (and I don’t use that word very often) and insightful read that I would highly recommend.

I don’t want to give too much of the book away, but will wet your appetite with some of the intriguing facts discussed in the book and finish with an overview from the author herself (from a TED talk):

Did you know…

Lydians: The inhabitants of Lydia, who spent 18 years playing dice games to get through a famine (they would only eat every other day, and occupy themselves with games when not eating).

Fiero: The name for the emotion expressed when you throw your arms up in the air in celebration- usually when winning a game. (An Italian word, but we don’t really have a word for it in English.)

Bringing games to school: There is a school in New York whose entire setup (including the curriculum and extracurricular activities) is game-based. It’s called “Quest to Learn” and it sounds awesome.

Hacking: The term has its origins in the 1950s, when MIT students defined it as ‘creatively tinkering with technology.’

Crowdsourcing: Coined by the technology journalist Jeff Howe in 2006. It amazes me that it was as late as 2006 given its huge prominence (as a word) today.

Duck island: The Guardian’s Investigate Your MP’s Expenses was the world’s first massively multiplayer investigative journalism project. According to the website there are still 234,344 documents to review…

Gadgetry: Africans are ingenious in using what they have to create gadgets- or “hacks.” A selection of them can be seen here http://www.afrigadget.com/.

Wikipedia: it’s estimated that Wikipedia represents the accumulation of 100 million hours of human thought, which is the equivalent of persuading 10,000 people to dedicate five full-time work years to the project.
- On Wikia, there are more than a million articles on ten thousand distinct wikis- each wiki for a different game.

Epic Win: Defined (on Urban Dictionary) as:
1. An unexpected victory from an underdog
2. Something fantastic that has worked out unbelievably well
3. The greatest possible way for man to succeed at anything
interjection
4. An expression of happiness and/ or awe at a highly favourable (and often improbable) event that has taken place: “Alright! Epic win!”

Misspent youth: By the age of 21, the average young American has spent somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand hours reading books- and more than 10,000 hours playing computer and video games.

… or Superstar experts? By the age of 20 the top performers in any given field (from violin maestros to hockey players to Bill Gates) had each accumulated at least 10,000 hours of practice at the one thing that eventually made them superstars. What have you spent 10,000 hours doing? (There’s more on this in the TED presentation below.)

Magic number: 1000 players seems to be a critical threshold to allow for an online game to get interesting- to ensure enough diversity among players, to have enough participants to tackle missions on an epic scale, and to produce enough chaotic interaction to generate complex and surprising results.

And now, that TED talk…

A Letter to the Twitter Sceptics

Barely a week goes by without someone saying this to me:

Dear Whoever-Will-Listen,

What is this Twitter fad? I have no interest in finding out what people had for breakfast or when they walked their dog. I find it ridiculous when a friend mentions they “tweet”, and annoying when a television programme suggests people “follow” it. It’s a waste of time and I can’t imagine how 140-characters could be of any use to anyone.

Yours,
Twitter Sceptic

So, I thought I would respond:

Dear Sceptic,

I used to be one of you. I also thought the enthusiasm for Twitter would fade and didn’t see any benefit or usefulness that could be gained from it. In August 2009 I signed up though- mostly to see what all the fuss was about. I certainly wasn’t hooked immediately, but I now regularly use the tool to find thought-provoking articles, meet people interested in the same topics as me, and keep in touch with contacts who aren’t friends (Facebook) or business associates (LinkedIn). Over time I have come to see Twitter as a valuable news source, a great networking tool, and a frequent source of surprises.

First, let me dispel three of your most commonly believed myths:

1. “I don’t want to read about what people had for breakfast.”
You should view Twitter as a personalised news feed. Or a friend feed. Or a gossip feed. Or even all three (and more) if you want. And it’s not just feeds from your friends; it’s from whoever you want (you want to hear what Lady Gaga, or Stephen Fry, or Jon Snow has to say? Hear from them directly)- and, likewise, it’s not from anyone you don’t want. Is someone telling you about how tasty their toast was? Then stop following them (unless you want to hear about toast, of course). You are in complete control. If you are reading about someone’s fried eggs then it’s your fault.

2. “I don’t want to tell people about what I’m doing.”
You don’t have to. Many people on Twitter just use it as a news source and don’t share their own news. This is fine. No one else will care.

3. “It’s a fad.”
If Twitter’s a fad then it’s a pretty big one; the site currently has over 200 million registered users, and 1 billion tweets are sent a week. It’s taken a bit of time to get here (the first billion tweets took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day) but you can’t deny it’s now growing very rapidly.

Still not convinced? Let me tell you about some of the more unexpected ways you can use Twitter:

The Twitter surprises

a.    Trying to find out about a breaking news story?
Twitter is quicker than any other site, and will bring you insights and photos directly from the source of the news within minutes- if not seconds. BBC news consistently lags at least a few hours behind Twitter.

b.    Want to help with a humanitarian crisis?
Along with helping to co-ordinate revolutions and riots (and their subsequent clean-ups), breaking celebrity scandals, and tracking where it’s snowed, when a humanitarian crisis arises Twitter is now one of the key sources of information- both for those stuck in the crisis and those trying to help them. You can read about this in the context of the recent Japan earthquake here, but similar situations are replicated across many other natural disasters and warzones.

c.    Want to complain about something?
As a Sceptic you probably enjoy complaining, so you’re in luck! There are few places better for getting a useful complaint reply than Twitter. Want to let the world know that a company’s service was sub-standard? Use Twitter. Want to connect with a customer service rep without sitting on the phone for hours? Use Twitter. If the company doesn’t answer then their poor service is there for the world to see.

d.    Need a job?
Whatever sector you’re in, and whatever your interests are, Twitter plugs you in to relevant stories and links you with others working in similar areas. For many areas I don’t think there’s a better way to network, and demonstrate your knowledge and interest, than through Twitter. I know lots of people (myself included) who have been offered jobs as a result of their participation in Twitter.

And there’s more; through Twitter you have the opportunity to talk to people you would never have access to outside of the tool (for example, I have had conversations with TV personalities, MPs and well known journalists), you can learn about other cultures and communities (I find people like @kenyanpundit particularly interesting), and you can even book a cab.

So, I recommend this: try Twitter. Not just for an hour, but try it for one month- and use it for a few minutes each day of that month. When one of your favourite radio or television shows talks about following them, do it; join the conversation that goes on between those who have similar interests to you. I’m sure a lot of people will ignore this advice and choose to spend their time in far more “fruitful” pursuits (checking Facebook no less) instead, but for those that do try it- prepare to be surprised.

Yours,
A Twitter Convert

Three tips on getting gamification right

Gamification is hot news- and getting hotter (as articles like this on the company Gigya suggest). The concept is far more complex than simply adding badges or virtual currency to a website, however. The brief tips below, from Daniel Debow of Rypple (in this article), are useful for those thinking about introducing game mechanics:

1. It’s not a panacea. As previously mentioned in this series, slapping badges, tokens and leader boards on product or site without purpose or thoughtful design won’t necessarily make for a more engaging experience. Just as IKEA optimizes each of its locations for flow, your design should have a similar direction and purpose.

2. Gamification is not a quick fix. You need to identify which behaviours you’re trying to augment, or which process you’re trying to improve, and why you’re trying to do it. It takes time to figure out. Iterate frequently, learn from your mistakes, and plan for the long term.

3. Don’t go it alone. If you want to have a big impact, this isn’t the sort of thing you can do in house or on the side. Platform providers, such as BunchBall, Badgeville or Rypple, have the long-term industry experience needed to build great games and mechanics – not you. A good gamification strategy is something you need to get right, and you don’t want to get it wrong.

Interested in finding out more about gamification? As a start, have a look at the articles mentioned by Stephanie Schwab under “More on gamification- Game mechanics and examples.” If you have an interest in the public sector the news articles “Gamification time: what if everything were just a game?,” “Gamification for the public good,” and “DotGovLabs opens to the public” describe very recent examples of game mechanics already at play in the UK government.

Amplify 2011: stimulating – challenging – echoing?

Far too many conferences continue to be very standard, with run-of-the-mill circuit speakers talking about uncontroversial topics and no effort to really stimulate attendees or make use of them being in the same place at the same time. Such events are often little more than marketing activities, and are at best talking-shops. The UK government’s ‘Civil Service Live’ is a prime example; this costly (in terms of money and time) event is the one point in the year that a lot of Civil Servants will be in the same place at the same time yet there is little or no effort to glean value from the group as a whole or to introduce thought-provoking topics or challenges that will have an impact that outstays the event itself. Unconferences (‘participant-driven meetings’)- the polar opposite of this stale format- are on the rise but they continue to be the domain of the edges; it is rare that a corporation will stray this far.

The ‘Amplify’ conference (a ‘festival of innovation and thought leadership’)- which I’ve recently returned from – therefore made a welcome change. This event certainly still had the familiarity of a conference (reassuring for some), but through unusual twists and integrated additions it challenged the accepted norm and brought internal value and global reach to the week.

For those not aware of Amplify, it:

• Is a 5 day conference organised by AMP for AMP (with a scattering of external attendees), but participated in and followed by people around the world through Twitter and live video streaming;
• Took place in three different Australian cities (Sydney, Parramatta, Melbourne);
• Featured talks by 35 world-class speakers including Andrew Mcafee and Mike Hawley (who worked with George Lucas to invent digital cinema) as well as numerous advisors to Obama and other world leaders;
• Used technology in creative ways (such as the “Amplify effect” used to visualise the festival’s impact across the world) to enable an increase in the reach and scope of the event;
• Included unusual events such as Tech on Tap (an open mic night for PhD students pitching for funding) and iDea iDo iPad (rapid ideation sessions on challenges facing AMP).

This conference- which happens every two years (partly due to the face that each one takes 18 months to organise)- is not only a great testament to those involved in organising it, but- importantly- it’s also an amazing reflection on AMP as an organisation. There are very few- if any- other corporations that invest so much time and effort in broadening the thinking and knowledge of employees.

As with any workshop, event or conference, however, the hard work didn’t stop when the final day came to a close (in this case- with a beach-themed Expo and a ‘spark’ cocktail party). AMP’s CIO has stated her aim to see the conference ideas ‘mould into real world benefits for AMP, our customers and our stakeholders’ so the desire to sustain (or ‘echo’) Amplify’s impact is certainly there; to really take advantage of the stimulated minds and renewed energy will not be simple, however. AMP will need to sustain the embrace of innovation, and continually assess the change in employees’ thinking, the direction of the company, and the reaction of customers. If successful, the AMP model of a ‘corporate compromise’ conference could be replicated within businesses across the world- with a potentially fantastic impact on collaboration, agility, and the culture of innovation.

Useful links

Recordings of all the Amplify talks.
Annalie Killian- ‘Catalyst for Magic’ and Amplify’s producer.
The blog of Amplify’s blogger-in-residence Ralf Lippold.

The Innovation Superstar

Many misconceptions abound about how to best enable innovation within the enterprise, with businesses and innovation functions (facing both external and internal pressure) often focusing on the short-term and the materialistic rather than long term change. From observing various companies- both public and private- attempt to embed a culture of innovation, it is clear that in many examples what distinguishes those that are successful is not bountiful funding, effective marketing, or involvement from every employee; it is frequently the drive of one individual. This ‘Innovation Superstar’ is not usually the CEO or even at Exec/ Board level, but is exceptionally focused, has a talent for inspiring and motivating, and can deliver on a day-to-day as well as a strategic level.

The Innovation Superstar is an individual who recognises the importance of focusing on the higher objectives of the innovation programme as a whole and does not get diverted by the intricacies or technicalities that other innovation teams will be distracted by (and which they will later use as reasons for their failure). He/ she understands, for example, that creativity will often be needed to overcome the funding hurdle and appreciates that support from the top may not be a given at first. Likewise, he/ she regards failures as an important part of innovation and something to be learned from (rather than give excuses for), and that resources are just tools to be worked with- they can be very useful and instrumental, but should not be the determining factor in the success of the initiative.

Being an Innovation Superstar doesn’t just involve running a project from the business side; a lot of people can deliver, but few are able to remain almost universally respected and well liked whilst doing so.  This talent- an unusual one in the corporate world- is often achieved through a mixture of business success (with a proven track record) and that oft hard-to-find characteristic “likability.” The prevalence of this virtue in Superstars isn’t a coincidence; it’s not easy to implement an innovation programme, and the individual understands that the most effective route to long term success is by making friends, asking favours and co-ordinating their Superstar team rather than burning bridges.

Companies will often not realise how instrumental this individual is, and fail to see that it is the individual rather than the tools that is the cause of any success (thereby assuming that the loss of a Superstar is not a problem as they can achieve the same effect whilst now saving money). If a Superstar is completely unsupported or leaves an organisation, however, it will not be long before the innovation programme is floundering and the excuses begin. Superstars are often amazing individuals but they can’t enact amazing change by themselves; for those companies that do recognise the importance of these individuals, trusting in the Superstar (understanding that some of their working practices will be unconventional, giving them time, and not expecting every venture to be a success), engaging with them (keeping an open communication channel and involving them in wider opportunities- both internal and external) and recognising what they’re trying to do (by both giving them space and highlighting their work when appropriate) can go a long way to help ensure the Innovation Superstar is able to continue doing great work.