At some stage most people try to affect change in their lives; whether it be diet, exercise or getting to inbox zero daily; successful implementation of change is a consequence of discipline.
Training to improve strength and self-control is a learned skill; with the major objective to adopt a certain pattern of behavior over a long period of time- or forever.
For most people; bringing about change is relatively simple; the first three to five days is often even classified as exciting and fun. Urban legend tells us that it takes twenty-one days to form a habit. Discipline is more than simply habit forming; it’s a sustained lifestyle choice - the biggest challenge; sticking to it.
The rarity of symbiosis in relationships has often driven me to view relationships with cynicism.
Symbiosis is best defined in its facultative sense, where interdependence is beneficial but not essential for survival.
Given its rarity and our ability to survive without it, we continually asses risk and give only part of ourselves; keeping the balance as insurance. Ironically; trust, honesty and transparency hide behind insurance; it’s our inability to take risk that creates a barrier to a symbiotic state.
The in-authenticity of non-symbiotic relationships is conditioned with an unsustainable social lubricant- in order to survive, truth is diluted and confrontation avoided; over-time social lubricant fades and in-authenticity becomes exposed.
Symbiotic relationships are low maintenance; they are unconditional. Paulo Coelho’s, The Alchemist famously teaches that in order to gain something we must lose something; symbiotic relationships lose insurance and gain trust, honesty and transparency.
The two traditional constructs- (1) bad things happen in groups of three;
and (2) when it rains it pours- are demonstrations of our intuitive knowledge that the universe delivers things in clusters.
Much like the law of attraction suggests; there is a universal energy that has the ability to violate specific scientific principles.
A useful visualisation of this universal energy is motor vehicle traffic through an intersection or juncture. When the traffic light is green, motor vehicles flow freely through the intersection; as it turns amber the flow slows, eventually stopping at red.
Resistance to this universal energy causes friction- affecting the flow of the cluster- similar to how a rock in a stream influences the flow of water to run around it.
Leveraging the delivery of universal clusters enables the ability to gain momentum and support from the surrounding environment; without flow even the first car in a line of traffic is stopped when the lights go red.
Recently I have noticed terminology I have developed from the internet transcend into other dimensions of my life.
Micro-blogging platforms such as twitter place limitations on the way we communicate; the most obvious being twitter’s 140 character limit.
Detailed and descriptive conversation thread has evolved to become direct and succinct; focus is on the definition of words and the context in which they are used.
Hash tags are a saved search mentality; a mutually understood set of references that continually expand and iterate over time via collective user-generated input.
A recent email to a client was about 590 characters long, given my engagement with them is largely related to the internet I closed the email with an internet translation that read: “#educationspace #coffeeevolution #crushit”
Consider the offline application of this style of communication; plugging into another person’s stream of consciousness and downloading the relevant information; in only a few words a huge amount of data is transferred.
There is not enough bandwidth in voice for the complexity of what we would like to communicate; our environment is such that we need to look beyond voice to transrational methods of communication that tap into streams of consciousness and energy flow.
The technology is not important- that will come and go- it’s the direction it nudges us in that matters.
This week I was listening to an interview with Salvatore Malatesta, owner of ST. ALi, he was talking about evolution in coffee; first wave, second wave and now third wave coffee.
There is evolution in everything.
Really obvious evolution can be seen in things like transport, communication and technology, what about less obvious evolution? Like skill and world issues.
Evolution is organic innovation; it occurs as environments become more complex. Evolution looks like a bell curve; there are early adaptors, innovators and futurepreneurs who live at the edge pushing the boundary and leading the way; the status quo is where the masses are and- like anything- there are laggards. Willam Gibson- author of Neuromancer- famously quoted, ”The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed”.
In western countries we see a large amount of professional services where in less-developed countries we see other industries dominate; manufacturing for example. Is that because less-developed countries haven’t yet evolved through the levels of complexity that western countries have?
Consider this model of evolution applied to word issues. As our environment becomes more complex world issues become more complex; climate change and water shortage compared to street crime and theft.
What I like about this model is it provides a framework for us to see what the future looks like. Look for the complexities that will become hurdles only evolution will overcome.
An automatic consequence of most social technologies is data collection- tweeting, foursquare checkins, facebook status updates, delicious tagging and uploading photos to flickr- all contribute to data sets.
Developers continually create applications for us to use these data sets. A recent one that I have seen is Where do you go, by Steven Lehrburger. It allows users to use their foursquare checkin data and google maps to create a heat map displaying where they go.
Considering future applications of these types of data sets stretch creative boundaries. The amount of data collected is at scale that in statistical terms is a large enough sample size to interpret trends and patterns in mash ups of different data sets.
Using the example of Where do you go, imagine that rather than inputting a single users checkin data, the whole cities checkin data was used to create the heat map. Instantly, there would be a visual representation of the more popular places. Now throw some time data into that mix; as time passes movement in the heat patches would occur indicating places that are more and less popular based on what time of day it is.
It is not difficult to envisage this type of data becoming a currency in business. Having access to something like foursquare behaviour patterns creates an opportunity for venues to market directly to their target based on behaviour as well as demographic.
Consider the ability to automatically track the movement of patrons visiting a dinner venue before and after their visit; patterns would start to emerge; for example- the type of venue (if any) that patrons were at directly before visiting the dinner venue- analysis of the data would produce probability based information.
If a venue knew the exact probability of its patrons attending a bar directly before arriving at their venue, and the probability was high, they could very quickly plug that information into a financial model and develop very profitable campaigns.
Data collection is an automatic consequence of using social technology and there is massive amounts of value contained in the data sets that we contribute to daily.
Would you be surprised to see data become like a currency?
I started working for foursquare on November 24th right when I signed up and started playing.
Very quickly a whole new dimension- in the form of points, leaderboard and mayorship- was added to my everyday activities- drinking coffee, meeting friends for drinks, eating lunch and work meetings hosted at cafes. With foursquare still relatively new to Melbourne, there was definite advantage in travelling all over town visiting my favourite venues and checking in- bonus points rewarded for adding new data to the system- consequentially contributing foursquare’s index of venues.
The foursquare business model is unquestionably worth remark.
“Let’s create an index of venues for every major city in the world”; “In the index we will show popularity of each venue and recommendations for whilst you’re there.”
The logical next step of such a discussion would be to hire a data entry team to populate a database and to engage a market research company to provide data on what venues people like and why; instead foursquare developed a very clever points based incentive scheme- points not redeemable- allowing them to crowd source the entire responsibility.
A fortnight ago I was upgraded to a Superuser (Level 1) essentially allowing me to fix and edit incorrect or incomplete data. On the first day I spent close to two and half hours editing data- perhaps if I did it a lot of it I would be upgraded to Superuser (Level 2). Foursquare’s social aspect and incentive scheme have led them to recruit likely the largest data entry and market research team that has ever existed. Interestingly, even people I know who are not yet on twitter and other social media sites are starting to sign up. The leaderboard refreshes every week- avoiding longer-time users having an unfair advantage- giving every user an equal opportunity to win.
Outside of the brilliance of foursquare’s business model the application itself is difficult to fault; instantly engaging as soon as you sign up through its ability to connect users with their facebook, twitter & gmail contacts; the marketing application for venues through discounts and mayor specials and the self-organising rating system recording the popularity of venues based on the volume of people who check-in. Iterations to come are user lists- imagine ‘cheap-cbd-lunches’- and the ability to ping friends requesting their location.
Microfinance, micropatronage and now micro data entry; there is obvious potential in applying a micro-contribution model; impact is distributed amongst all contributors to achieve a massive result with seemingly little effort- Wikipedia, another great example.
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I have been thinking a lot recently about technology- the internet, iphones etc- and the role they play in our social connectivity to others.
Typically social connections are family, extended family and multiple tiers of friendships. Differing tiers of friendship is a concept sometimes challenging to reconcile; some relationships shift organically in and out of life; whilst others break down and disconnecting from them can seem involuntary and forced.
Dunbar’s number provides a rational explanation for movement of people in and out of our life; theorising a cognitive limit to the number of social relationships that can be maintained at once.
Social technology has transformed the way we connect with others; connectivity is abundant, people very easily flow into our life and less easily out; highlighted by the recent facebook iteration prompting reconnection with friends whom you’ve had no recent interaction.
As our use of social technology increases and we are fed more information- birthdays, mutual friend’s etc- we rely less on our cognitive ability to retain that information allowing us to maintain a larger number of social relationships. Where previously we have learned that some people come in and out of our lives for a reason; now technology acts as a safety net, people come into our lives for a reason- and stay, even once the reason has expired.
Perhaps Dunbar’s number relates more to the social relationships we retain in our consciousness and technology’s impact is the speed at which people move in and out of that; technical connectivity has made our consciousness become dynamic and real time, largely dictated by who is updating their status or engaging in other activity online.
There needs to be a balance between our technical connectivity and the natural flow of people in and out of lives; acknowledge that people move in and out of our lives like a pendulum and often the best thing for us to do is just to let it swing.
On the 31st of December; the iphone chipin widget that I set up on my blog reached its goal; the perfect amount of money for me to purchase an iphone.
It took me a few days to get through the paypal formalities and I finally purchased the iphone late Thursday afternoon. Thursaday night was spent mostly awake syncing contacts: from my Nokia to my laptop to Gmail to my iphone and exploring and discovering various iphone apps. With no discredit to the excitement of the actual iphone and it’s functionality, there is something massively more important to remark on; the micropatronage experience.
I first started my chipin widget in October, inspired by Ross Hill’s lighting talk at Trampoline. Admittedly, my micropatronage campaign began largely as a social experiment, that followed on from a series of jokes relating to me being one of few internet nerds yet to have an iphone.
Given this light hearted approach, and literally just chucking a chipin widget up on my blog, I hadn’t given a huge amount of thought to the actual concept; creating functionality for people to give me money for something I wanted.
As the first couple of contributions came in, a few heads started to turn; which very quickly sped up my thinking about the concept. Many people had concern about my application of micropatronage- for material gain was a common assumption- I felt a lot like I was going in to defend myself on multiple occasions- in face-to-face discussions, blog posts, comments on blog posts etc. However, whilst debate was going on; in the background contributions were slowly trickling in.
I was quite keen to tap into the drivers behind my patrons; what made them want to contribute? Without actually asking this question directly I’ve been able to identify a few different reasons. At the beginning there seemed to be a few people that followed a similar mind-set to me; social-experiment-so-why-not. I know of at least three people who contributed as acknowledgment for my assistance with their resume and providing job seeking advice. Others commented on me as a person and the positive impact I have on them, whilst one or two other people contributed as acknowledgment for the value they had obtained from the content I publish on my blog.
My commitment to the world, as acknowledgement of it bringing me an iphone, is that my impact be positive. The most obvious benefit I see in having an iphone is the connectivity to the internet; the information available on the web is hugely empowering, layering 2.0 on top of that pretty much means endless bounds of possibility.
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I have recently become very conscious of problem solving frameworks, conversations and analogies whereby the solution or analysis that is reached stands mutually exclusively from its alternatives.
Very often, situations are approached with an ‘or’ mindset; the answer is: this or this or this or this.
Rather than approach a situation from an ‘or’ mindset, an opportunity exists to transcend and include; to think about the wider situation and determine a solution that includes many alternatives, not just one.
A useful visual representation of this kind of mindset is a Venn diagram.
Recently, I have been encouraging myself to evolve into this mindset; initially I was surprised at the volume of things I was assuming to be black and white; I am now very conscious to look for the grey area, the centre of the Venn diagram, where there is layer on layer.
If only black and white solutions exist for problems that are multi-dimensional and complex; then problem solving becomes narrow and limited by its binary focus.
Transcend- consider the wider situation- and include- determine a solution made up of multiple alternatives, not just one.
*Use #bothand on twitter.
