Noreena Hertz’ TED Talk on How to Use Experts

Posted on 22 February 2011 | Leave a comment

This is a great new TED talk from Noreena Hertz on how we can use experts in our modern world. She discusses how fMRIs show that listeners’ critical thinking regions of the brain shut down when they hear experts speak. She makes a compelling case about how we all (including experts) must maintain our skepticism and engage in managed dissent. I especially appreciate her points towards the end about the import of nuance, uncertainty and doubt. Think of all of the messes we as individuals and as a society would not find ourselves in if we followed this advice.

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Why Wikileaks Doesn’t Matter

Posted on 21 February 2011 | 3 Comments

Wikileaks doesn’t matter in the manner that many of our leaders in government and the corporate world seem to believe. Since the release of several hundred thousand classified documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan there have been a number of efforts to shut the site down or punish those involved:

Activities have come to light recently about “Team Themis” proposing a set of activities to discredit Wikileaks and its supporters to executives at Bank of America. It is believed that Julian Assange has a cache of secret documents and e-mails from a major US bank, generally believed to be Bank of America, that he may release in the event of his arrest or extradition. Team Themis was led by HBGary Federal, an information security firm and also included Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies. This incident has been covered well by other bloggers, and I will not re-hash the incidents here. If you want more information you can read this excellent summary from CI Law blogger Anne Lee Gibson. Kirby Pleassas of Plessas Expert Networks wrote a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the specific legal and ethical issues related to the Team Themis proposal. Kirby’s post is what got me off the couch to finally write this post.

All of this activity suggests that our corporate and government leaders believe that silencing Wikileaks will bring about an end to the problems and challenges that the organization generates. Quite the contrary, Wikileaks is only relevant of an example of broader trends. The first trend is increasing transparency with which we must all become accustomed. The second is the continuing disintermediation of traditional media as a source of authoritative information and means to disseminate information widely.

Mister Universe

You can't stop the signal.

Radical Transparency: We’re All Naked Now

One would need to be truly oblivious to not have noticed that since the advent of the Internet we are all sharing more about ourselves, whether or not we deliberately choose to do so. We’re all likely aware of how much more we’re sharing with a wider circle on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Sometimes we share more than we know or would consciously choose, and there are consequences both positive and negative that come from this sharing.

Companies and government agencies are more transparent today as well:

  • Individual employees are sharing information about their work experience via social networks. In some rare instances this information will be very sensitive. Sometimes this information, placed in the appropriate analytical context, can be far more revealing than anyone would expect. For example, a high-level employee with a lot of Foursquare check-ins at a Starbucks in the distant headquarters city of an industry rival might suggest a possible merger or acquisition.
  • Search engines are making ever-improving search functionality available that reveals information hidden on servers inadvertently connected to the public Internet. We use the “site:” operator on Google to find all kinds of Excel, Powerpoint and PDF documents companies often don’t know they’ve effectively made public.
  • Companies and government agencies continue to increase their reliance on partners, supplies, consultants and contractors. Each one of these interactions moves some corporate information to a more vulnerable environment. Traditionally CI professionals have known to watch the activities of partners and suppliers to predict corporate actions. For example, you might use information from an employee of a strategic parts supplier to estimate the unit production potential of a competitor.
  • It is becoming easier for people without Ph.Ds to perform in-depth analysis of large data sets using readily available tools. Analysis of these data sets reveals activities that might otherwise be considered extremely sensitive. Groups like the Sunlight Foundation are applying this sort of analysis to government data to reveal specific details about government activities.

Everybody Has A Printing Press, Too

It’s self-evident that blogs, Twitter, social networks and the web give each of us a platform to publish information we might not have had otherwise. If you’re not yet convinced of this you can take a look back at my summary of Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody. Better yet, read this fantastic book right now.

There have been a number of corporate and government efforts to shut down Wikileaks and prevent individuals from accessing the information revealed on the site. This has resulted in something of a cat and mouse game of the content being mirrored to multiple sites available from different countries and unique domain name addresses. In this case the mouse has beaten the cat. Wikileaks illustrates just how difficult it can be for government and corporate entities to silence a determined group of technically-savvy users on the global network.

Government and corporate leaders have relied on the ethics and self-interest of traditional journalists to keep some information from seeing an audience. Even the muckiest muckraker might be bribed or threatened with a loss of access presented to the journalist, her editor or publisher.

  • Non-journalists may not be aware of nor feel confined by traditional journalistic standards or ethics. These standards are nebulous enough in professional journalism as it is.
  • Individuals and groups may prioritize resolution of grievances over on-going access. They’re not here to be journalists– they just want the damn potholes fixed.
  • Parties may disseminate information anonymously. While it may be harder than most people think to remain truly anonymous on the Internet it can be done with a little care and application of minimal technical skill.
  • Some groups have outright malicious and destructive intent.
  • Criminal organization could begin to use the publishing of sensitive or classified information for their own ends.

Implications and What To Do

We cannot silence Wikileaks, that much is certain. There are too many mirrors and multiple technical workarounds to keep the information available. Even if we could silence Wikileaks it would not matter in the long run. Already alternative organizations are standing up to continue the mission of increasing transparency. These organizations and sites are only the tip of the spear of the broader trends towards transparency.

So what are we to do? These trends require some fundamental changes in how several corporate functions operate. Here are some specifics I’ve considered. If you have additional examples please feel free to share in the comments.

Human Resources should recognize the need to give employees reasons not to leak. HR along with corporate counsel should strengthen policies to protect and support internal whistleblowers. The bureaucratic imperative has too often been to silence and punish the person who brings problems to senior management’s attention. These are the people who are trying to make positive change inside of the organization– the “good guys” in any sober analysis. If whistleblowers are protected, listened to and their grievances addressed they will be less likely to leak information externally. The first step is to provide the technical means for anonymous reporting of issues and wrong-doings. Managers should be taught how to appropriately handle this kind of information from their direct reports.

Information Security needs to develop a true hierarchy of information protection and increasingly protective means to store and distribute sensitive information. Governments and corporations have erred too far towards trying to protect absolutely everything for the sake of simplicity. The problem with this approach is that operationally critical yet non-sensitive information is treated as top secret. Even low-level employees have to be allowed into the inner sanctum just to do their jobs. Once they’re in there they have access to all kinds of information. Extremely sensitive information needs to have distribution very controlled and be protected through strong measures.

Public Relations may need to move closer to senior management to offer advice on the consequences of the disclosure of certain corporate strategies, policies or plans. PR can be the voice of public perception and skepticism. Organizations will do well to understand that they are judged not by their intentions but by public perception. Many senior officials clearly forget their fallibility in the public eyes. Dennis Kozlowski, anyone?

Greater Transparency and the Competitive Intelligence Professional

Competitive Intelligence professionals are once again faced with a set of trends that will give everyone broader access to the corporate secrets the uncovering of which was once our bread and butter. There was a time when getting your competitor’s annual report made you some kind of CI ninja. This sort of information is now less than a commodity. The secrets and details that once might have only been able to be estimated from considerable primary research and analysis are likely to become more freely available. Once again we will need to move in the direction of excellent analysis and interpretation on the galaxy of information available about our competitors, our industries and the business environment.

Ethics will remain a key concern of the profession, and we must have a conversation about the ethics of using leaked information. We’ve seen examples such as the case of Coke employees trying to sell sensitive documents to Pepsi, where the ethics are very clear. We would all like to believe that in those circumstances we would make the same ethical choice. What are the ethical considerations when a competitor’s information is leaked publicly on a social network or a site such as Wikileaks?

Finally, competitive intelligence can play an educational role in the firm. We should describe our methods and practices to information security to let them know how we can use information that is published and leaked from our competitors to develop our insights. This will help them develop methods and policies to protect the firm’s information. They will not be able to prevent all leaks, so it will be important to minimize the least damaging ones. Some CI groups are already doing something similar to this. As these trends towards transparency progress this may become an important value add of the CI function.

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The Competitive Intelligence – IT Interplay

Posted on 16 January 2011 | Leave a comment

I am currently taking part in a survey of Competitive Intelligence (CI) practitioners by a UK graduate student.  I’ll share more about the survey results once that is complete.  This week the survey included a back-and-forth on the impact of Information Technology (IT) on the effectiveness of the CI team.  While I am a strong proponent of the importance of IT for organizational effectiveness, I was surprised upon reflection that I hadn’t thought about the importance of IT for the effectiveness of CI.  It only makes sense that IT, with its multiplier effect on productivity and communications reach, would contribute (or detract) from the effectiveness of a CI function.  The key attributes that determine this interplay, I believe, are the technical savvy of the CI team (especially the manager) and the enablement mindset of the IT group.

Here is the original survey question that motivated this line of thinking: There could be so much information (data) out there that you have to use technology to filter and aggregate data to help internal clients sort through what they need to read. Also, my thoughts are that technology should be used to capture internal knowledge and disseminate analysis to internal clients. Therefore from your perspective do you believe that leveraging CI as a competitive weapon is dependent on the technology infrastructure that an organisation have? Do you believe the notion that without a technology infrastructure CI data is wasted; thus impacting scenario analysis and competitive advantage?

This was a very interesting question, and this is what motivated my reflection on the topic of the interplay between IT and CI.  Rather than simply conclude that the determining factor is availability of IT, it seems that the CI manager’s ability to get the maximum value from IT was also a critical element.

I’ll apologize in advance that my answer, as written, can be read to reflect the stereotype that tends to equate age inversely with technology savvy.  This is a relationship that is not as simple as generational stereotypes would lead us to believe.  Likewise the tendency to rely or defer to the corporate IT group’s authority on all technology issues is not really directly correlated to the CI manager’s age.

Here is the complete text of my answer on the subject:

An important role for the CI professional to add value is to function as a combination of a human filter and aggregator that also provides historical and industry context for the information that does make it through that filter.  Particularly in circumstances when there is a large volume of data and information, technology can play an important role in the successful execution of this role by the CI professional.

Older professionals tend to be more completely dependent upon the corporate IT function to provide all of the technology tools they will use in the process of doing their job.  These are the CI managers that purchase proprietary CI-specific software packages that purport to simplify the process of information aggregation, analysis, product creation and dissemination.  Often these professionals will rely very heavily on their corporate IT function to install, maintain and train on these custom tools.  The IT staff will not necessarily step up to these expectations,  and often these tools and the support needed to implement and maintain them come at considerable capital and operational expense.  Often technology will be a large part of a CI professionals budget, and these budgets are very often modest.  To the extent that this CI manager sees technology as adding value their ability to leverage that value will be dependent upon the corporate IT function.  Some managers in this situation may decide that technology is not an option that can realistically add value to what they are trying to do.

By comparison, technologically savvy and generally younger CI professionals come to the job with a clear understanding of the functionality that is available from standard tools e.g. Microsoft Office and inexpensive or freely-available hosted solutions e.g. Google Reader.  These professionals will often devote much effort to working around the limitations imposed by the business IT function.   In this paradigm IT’s role can either be an enabler or an obstacle.  In the instances where IT staff is an obstacle, the CI professional must expend effort and budget to work around barriers to use cloud-based services, purchase software or hardware.  In instances where IT is an enabler, technology savvy CI professionals can deliver maximum value for money of technology by leveraging free and low cost solutions as well as engaging with the IT staff for custom or proprietary solutions that will deliver additional value.

As I answered this question a two-by-two matrix became obvious to me based on the technical savvy of the CI professional and also the enablement mindset of the IT staff.  There are really four scenarios for the interplay of CI and IT, and they are as follows:

High Tech Savvy of the CI Professional, High Enablement Mindset of IT Staff

The best of all worlds.  The CI professional is able to leverage the best free and low-cost technologies, and guidance from IT makes sure that this is done in a manner that protects corporate information.  The IT team is also available to support software implementation or custom projects that will deliver additional CI value.  These higher-cost solutions will only be implemented (and hence the costs incurred) when the tech-savvy CI professional can envision and execute to deliver value from these solutions.

High Tech Savvy of the CI Professional, Low Enablement Mindset of IT Staff

In this model the CI professional is able to take advantage of free and low-cost solutions, but incurs risk for themselves and the organization in doing so.  Many of the steps that the CI professional will take to work around obstacles (such as web filters, blocking access to resources, locking down company-owned hardware, etc.) will result in sensitive corporate information placed on key drives, employee-owned equipment and in an unsafe manner in cloud applications.  The CI team will not have any leeway to implement value-added, premium technology solutions.

Low Tech Savvy of the CI Professional, High Enablement Mindset of IT Staff

This is perhaps the scenario that delivers the lowest value for money.  The CI manager will tend to rely on expensive software tools without considering inexpensive means to achieve the same ends.  The IT organization will be able to support these efforts, and often the IT team will be asked to support non-standard applications and actually support the CI team in a highly operational manner.  This comes with great opportunity costs because of the other IT projects that cannot be undertaken or the CI resources that cannot be purchased because of the high-touch support the CI team requires.


Low Tech Savvy of the CI Professional, Low Enablement Mindset of IT Staff

In this scenario the CI team is very limited in their ability to deliver value through manual means only.  In any industry that is even remotely dynamic this scenario cannot stand for long.

Those thoughts are based on quick reflection and some minimal analysis.  I’m interested in hearing what the broader CI community thinks.  A couple of questions bubble to the top for me:

  1. How can CI professionals that might recognize they lack technology savvy address this gap?
  2. What are the most important knowledge and skills of “technology savvy?”
  3. What is the relationship between business risk (usually related to to information security) and cost in IT support for Competitive Intelligence.

I’m interested in reading what you think.  Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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My Top Personal Productivity Technologies of 2010

Posted on 1 January 2011 | 11 Comments

As we welcome Baby New Year 2011 we are deluged with lists of the bests and worsts of 2010 and the trends to look forward to for 2011.  I didn’t want to be completely left out of the fun.

One trend we saw gain traction in 2010 was the consumerization of IT.  Tools that are available to individuals make creativity and productivity possible that cannot or has not yet been duplicated by our corporate IT departments.  I felt the benefits  of this trend in 2010.  So I’ve decided to do a list of my top personal productivity technology of 2010.

Hardware

I’m beginning this survey with hardware because there was a new entry into the world of hardware that makes new, unimagined kinds of productivity possible: the iPad.

Apple iPad: My status as an Apple fanboy remains intact.  I was able to resist buying an iPad for all of about two days.  I found myself in the Apple Store and was unable to resist.  The functionality completely blew me away.  An iPad is so much more than a big iPhone or touch computer.

For starters, the iPad has liberated me from my laptop in situations where a digital device would be useful but a laptop would be unwieldy.  I am a lean, mean tweeting machine now at conferences.  I can actually get work done on a plane with no worry that the guy in the seat in front of me is going to snap my laptop in two!  I watch many more video podcasts, TV shows and movies.  The iPad has replaced both physical books (everywhere possible) and my Amazon Kindle.  As you read my other 2010 tech picks you’ll see that the iPad played a central role in my 2010 productivity improvements.

Fujitsu ScanSnap Pro: 2010 was the year of the home office upgrade project.  Starting from mid-year I took on a project that lasted until last week to upgrade my home office.  While this is the sort of project that I never really finish, I was very successful in one area: eliminating excess paper.

I had file cabinets bursting with old records and files.  I was able to scan these files quickly and eliminate a significant amount of clutter with the easy-to-use Fujistu ScanSnap Pro.  The hardware handles stacks of pages in short order.  The software was phenomenal.  After I eliminated the backlog of old files I can now scan new documents like bills, records and receipts as they come in.  I save up these files to do a clean-up once every week or so, and it takes literally minutes.

GeekDesk:  A few years ago I was experiencing some pain in my lower back.  For several weeks I worked at a standing workspace that I kludged together in the kitchen.  I felt like I had more energy and more concentration when I worked standing up.  I did like to take a load off a few times during the day for some relaxed reading, too.

GeekDesk is a large desk that I can raise and lower through the magic of hydraulics.  I generally lower the desk once a day for longer conference calls or webinars.  The desk itself is very attractive with room for my two laptops, monitor, speakers, iPad, iPhone, podcast microphone, lamps, etc.

Software

Another trend we saw garner a huge amount of attention in 2010 was “the cloud.” The software packages I found most valuable in 2010 either incorporate cloud elements or take advantage of the cloud in some way.

MindNode: Mind mapping has quickly become the way that I create my best work, project plans and outlines.  It’s also the most enjoyable approach to planning or mapping a complex project.  Much of what I created in 2010, including this and most other entries on this blog began as a mind map.

I really like the MindNode software because there is a version for my Macintosh, iPad and iPhone.  I can also export a mind maps in several formats, including an image of the mind map or an OPML file.  The latter is useful and beneficial because I can import OMPL files into OmniOutliner or OmniFocus on my Macintosh.  From OmniOutliner I can transform the mind map into an outline and finally into the finished written product or presentation.  In OmniFocus I can turn the outline into a full project plan, because OmniFocus is the software I use to track my projects and action items.  The integration is nearly seamless, and the mind map can move in my personal workflow from brainstorm to plan to action.

Notational Velocity and SimpleNote: For several years I’ve been using the simple TextEdit application to take notes on my Mac.  This year I installed a simple note-taking program on my Mac called Notational Velocity.  With it I can quickly create a new note.  It’s really easy to quickly search my notes library to find the notes from the specific meeting or on a topic.

Notational Velocity synchronizes my notes library with SimpleNote, a combination of a cloud service and iPhone/iPad app.  Thanks to synchronization I can access, edit or add notes on any of my devices.

1Password: For a long time I engaged in the bad security practice of using the same password for multiple sites, and often weak passwords at that.  Recently the password breach at Gawker Media put the fear of God in me about my password security.  I knew that I needed to do something, but I was very annoyed by the proliferation of sites and software that required log in credentials.

1Password was the answer that I’ve been waiting for all my life!   I had been hearing about 1Password on various podcasts for a long time.  With the Gawker breach I finally caved.  Not only does 1Password manage your log-in credentials, it can generate very strong passwords so that you can have insanely difficult, unique passwords for all of your accounts.  All of these are saved in an encrypted file that itself is password protected– you have to remember that one on your own, and you should make it a strong one.  1Password syncs among my Mac, iPad and iPhone, so the tough passwords are always with me.  There is a plug-in for all of the major web browsers (including my beloved Chrome) so that I can easily provide log-in credentials when I go to a web site.  This software is so great because it has both increased my level of security and made my life easier all at once.  Take that, TSA!

Cloud Service

DropBox: Having access to important files across all of my machines has always been a major challenge, particularly work files between my personal laptop and my work laptop.  DropBox helped save me a lot of time swapping files on key drives, and also helped me avoid version control problems.  DropBox also is a functional back-end for synchronizing files across devices for other software (such as 1Password).  DropBox is what Apple’s MobileMe iDisk should be.  It just works amazing well and plays so nicely with the other toys.

Back-ups

In addition to paranoia about passwords, I’ve taken some life lessons from friends who have lost valuable data due to hard drive failures and laptop theft to create a good back-up strategy.  I roughly follow the model of having multiple back-ups in multiple places, including off-site:

Carbonite: This is a very easy-to-use service to back-up my laptop to the cloud.  Carbonite is constantly adding my new and updated files to an encrypted cloud back-up.  Carbonite addresses the need for an off-site back-up that will save your data in the event of a major disaster at your home that destroys your hard drive.

Carbonite does not back-up any material on external hard drives but has the benefit of being so extremely easy to use.  Carbone recently rolled out an app for the iPhone and iPad that you can use to access your files that are stored in your back-up.

ChronoSync and my Drobo: ChronoSync is a software application that I used to create scheduled back-ups of specific folders on my laptop.  Deep in the cold, dark night it backs up my documents, iTunes media and iPhoto files to my Drobo each and every night.

The Drobo is an external hard drive enclosure that holds multiple hard drives in a RAID-like array for on-board data duplication.  You can add storage capacity with new or larger hard drives.  While the Drobo is more expensive than a traditional RAID it is easier to set up and maintain.

SuperDuper: I use this application to copy my entire laptop hard drive to an external hard drive.  This is a complete, bootable duplication.  I run this a couple of times a month and stash the hard drive in a secure place.  If ever something happens to my laptop I can boot a Macintosh directly from this back-up and pick up right where I left off.

iPad Software

Worthy of special mention are the many apps that I have found indispensable on my iPad.  Some of these are translations of software for the Macintosh that I’ve already mentioned: MindNode, 1Password and SimpleNote.  Others are worth a bit more background:

OmniFocus: I love the software that the Omni Group creates, and OmniFocus is my favorite.  I’m an adherent to David Allen’s Getting Things Done
framework for personal productivity, and OmniFocus is a project and task tracker created from the ground-up with GTD in mind.

OmniFocus on the iPad is a thing of beauty and a joy to use.  It’s strange but true that the form factor actually makes it easier to plan out my projects and tasks.  The software synchronizes with OmniFocus on my Mac and my iPhone.  I’ve already mentioned how I can bring my mind maps from mind node into OmniFocus for the Mac.  This application ecosystem has enabled me to create a terrific workflow.

Reeder:  This is a great RSS reader application that synchronizes with my Google Reader account.  I can quickly look through all of the new items from my RSS feeds, share items of interest or send articles I want to read in-depth the Instapaper.

Instapaper: This is a great combination of a service and application that lets me take web pages I want to read in detail and read them offline.  The app pulls out the text for a clean, easy to read view of news articles, blog posts and the like.  I can download articles to my iPad and read them even when I do not have an Internet connection.  I save up articles of deep interest and set aside some time to read them when I can give them the appropriate level of attention.  I save up some long-form articles for when I’m going to be on a plane.

Looking Forward to 2011 and Some Remaining Honorable Mentions from 2009

2010 was a great year for technology enabling personal productivity, mostly because of some of the tools that the cloud and iPad make possible.  Some older tools from 2009 remain favorites, e.g. Google Apps, Google Voice and my Verizon Wireless MiFi.

There are technology tools that I’m aware of and want to add to my toolbox for even greater productivity in 2011:

Diigo: Social bookmarking that takes where Delicious started and builds from there.

TextExpander: I’ve owned the application on my Mac and iOS devices but have yet to make the best use of it.  TextExpander lets you create shortcuts for text snippets to save you from typing them again and again.

Hazel: File management automation for the Macintosh.  Specifically Hazel would help me streamline some of my paperless office workflows.

OmniPlan: Also from the Omni Group, this is what Microsoft Project should be.  I’ve used it a bit in the past and always found it useful.  In 2011 I expect I’ll need to add this to my traditional workflows for more complex projects that require coordination with large groups of people and stakeholders.  I also have several repeatable project workflows that I want to “standardize.”

GoToMeeting: I have to say that Citrix designs some great projects.  I like the simplicity and functionality of GoToMeeting compared to some of the other packages out there.  I’m looking forward to using GoToMeeting for some personal projects that require virtual collaboration.

Verizon Wireless iPhone: I don’t know that it’s coming, and would definitely NOT be blogging about it if I did know.  We all expect it, though.  I for one can’t wait for the best device on the best mobile network in the US.  Insert standard Verizon employee disclaimer here.

What was your favorite tech tool of 2010 and what were you able to do with it?  What tools are you adding to your toolbox for 2011?

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Use Twitter and Other Social Media to Add Value to Your Event

Posted on 12 December 2010 | 1 Comment

I attend a fair number of seminars, conferences and workshops in a given year.  I’ve put on my share of meetings and conferences myself.  I’ve observed attributes of the events that successfully leverage social media.  Social media offer opportunities to expand the impact and scope of an event beyond its finite spot in space and time.

The two most important things you can do to get the most from social media at your event are as follows and in order of priority:

  1. Define a Twitter hash tag for your event and communicate it often during your conference.  Make sure the opening speaker or organizer mentions it in her opening remarks.  Display it prominently on any collateral you hand out at the event.  Include it in the footer of your presentation template if you have one.
  2. Have wi-fi available for attendees.  While most attendees at a tech-oriented event are going to have smart phones with 3G or even 4G connectivity, having wi-fi available democratizes this connectivity and makes it easier for people who prefer to use their laptop or, increasingly, tablets such as the iPad.  Laptops and tablets may not have their own wireless connections.

The Twitter Effect (or is it “The Twitter Affect?”  Probably Both.)

At some events I’ve attended I’ve been happy to see back-channel conversations taking place on Twitter.  Sometimes these conversations have turned in to real-world connections.  These new connections are of tremendous value.

Creating a Good Event Hash Tag

A good conference planner will create a unique hash tag for her event and communicate it clearly and often.  The hash tag should be unique enough to be clear with what event the hash tag is associated.  It should also be short enough to be re-tweet-able.  Twitter messages have a limit of 140 characters, and your event’s tweets will have to fit into that space.  Subtract from 140 characters for the originating Twitter ID (mine is @8of12, most are longer), the characters “RT” to designate that it is a re-tweet, the “#” and then your hash tag itself.  That gives you the total number of characters available for any given tweet to be re-tweet-able.  For the 2010 SCIP conference we chose “#scip2010.”  We could have also gone with “#scip10″ for greater brevity.  Both of thee are more re-tweet-able than #strategyandompetitiveintelligenceprofessionals2010conferenceinwashingtondc.

Use TwapperKeeper to Archive Tweets

Twitter does not make all of the messages shared by their platform available permanently.  If you run a Twitter search you’ll only see results from the last three months (or less).  You’ll want to create a permanent record of the tweets from your conference, both for your own reference and for your attendees.  Create an archive for your hashtag at the site TwapperKeeper.  This will create a permanent record of the tweets sent with your event’s hash tag.  You can also download those tweets to an Excel spreadsheet.  As a complete aside, TwapperKeeper is created by my MBA classmate John O’Brien.

Promote Your Event and Hash Tag In Advance

Before your event you will want to send some promotional tweets that include your hash tag.  Make sure that your promotional messages include key vernacular terms related to your topic.  This will make your tweets more likely to show up in search RSS feeds and alerts that those interested in your topic may have created to monitor chatter on Twitter.  For example, if you include “competitive intelligence” in your tweet it will show up on my RSS feed that I have created specifically to show me all tweets that use that term.

At the conference itself its likely that your attendees who are actively tweeting will also tweet those keywords, increasing the likelihood that awareness of your conference will permeate the virtual world.  Ideally leading authorities on your topic will re-tweet a message for their own audience.  Thus begins a growing awareness of your event within the broader community of interest.  This creates connections for your attendees and gives you a broad base to which you can market your next event.

Other Social Media Tools

So far this blog entry has focused on Twitter.  That’s because the platform lends itself to the real time communication that can create an active back channel for an event.  You may have goals that go beyond the back-channel, including establishing a platform for on-going conversation and connection.  Here are a couple choices:

Create a blog: It’s easier than ever to put up a quick blog on WordPress.com (my platform of choice), Blogger, SquareSpace or another platform.  These do not require advanced technical skill.  Here you and other authors can add posts of interest to your community.  Make sure to open up comments so your attendees can provide feedback and add on to your postings.  A blog is particularly useful if you want to expand the community around your concept or idea and if your community is willing to share their thoughts in the open.

Create a group on LinkedIn: It is the rare professional who is not on LinkedIn.  You can create your own open or closed group on LinkedIn.  A closed group will create an administrative overhead for you to approve people for access to your group.  This overhead may be worth it if you want to engage in a more focused or limited discussion around your topic, create some level of exclusivity or your participants will want to keep their opinions less public.

Create a dedicated social network on Ning: This is a very involved option and will require considerable effort on your part.  There are also fees associated with creating a Ning community.  This should be considered a viable option if you expect there to be a particularly large and dedicated community around your concept that will need to connect with one another and communicate in multiple modes.  The social network can be as open or closed as the administrator chooses.

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The Level(3) – Comcast Spat is not About Net Neutrality

Posted on 4 December 2010 | 2 Comments

Recently there has been a lot of coverage about a disagreement between Comcast and Level(3) related to carriage of streaming video from Netflix.  On November 29 Level(3) issued a press release that claimed “Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network, enabling it to unilaterally decide how much to charge for content which competes with its own cable TV and Xfinity delivered content.”  These claims confuse peering with network neutrality.  This is also an interesting clash of two competitors’ distinct strategies.

Netflix Picks Level(3) for their Content Delivery Network

In  November Level(3) won a contract to become the primary Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider for Netflix (Reuters Canada Report).  Previously Akamai was Netflix’s primary CDN.  The switch to Level(3) is a BIG deal because Netflix streaming content can represent up to 20% of all downstream Internet traffic during primetime television watching hours.  That estimation comes from this report from network policy solutions provider Sandvine issued in October.

The FCC and pundits took much interest in Level(3)’s claims.  This attention comes at a sensitive time for broadband providers in general and Comcast specifically:

Comcast sent a letter to the FCC (pdf) explaining their perspective on the disagreement.  Comcast counterclaims “Level 3 is trying to game the process of peering – one that has worked well and consensually, without government interference, for over a decade – in order to gain a unique and unfair advantage for its own expanding CDN service.”

Everything You Could Ever Possibly Want to Know about CDNs

CDNs like Akamai, Level(3), Amazon, AT&T and Limewire deliver high-volume, delay intolerant Internet traffic faster than can be provided over a general purpose Internet backbone.  Your Netflix streaming movie, your YouTube video, your friends’ photos on Facebook and your iTunes download all rely on CDNs.  Generally CDNs consist of the following 3 components:

  1. CDN-owned Internetworking Protocol (IP)-based backbones that employ traffic prioritization technologies such as MPLS and DiffServ.  These technologies are used in corporate Internet backbones to differentiate the performance and priority of various types of traffic.
  2. Distributed servers that duplicate content with high-volumes of downloads  by end users.  When you click on today’s most-read article from the New York Times or “The History of Dance” on YouTube the content is being served up by a CDN server instead of the New York Times or YouTube servers.
  3. Interconnection with broadband providers.  The closer these interconnects are to the user requesting the content the faster and more efficiently the content can be served.  These interconnects are commercial arrangements between the CDNs and broadband providers.  The more interconnects a CDN has the more reliable the content delivery.  These interconnects are based on standard peering agreements (see more about peering below).

CDNs Improve the End User ExperienceThe purpose behind CDNs is to distribute infrastructure to achieve efficiency and improve end users’ experience.  Building a CDN is a capital expense, and there is a direct relationship between the capital deployed, network efficiency and the end user experience.  The better CDNs charge more to cover the up-front capital costs of building their superior CDN and can demand a premium because of the end user experience they are able to deliver.

Being Judged by a Jury of Your Internet Backbone Peers

Most people know that the Internet is a network of networks that use the Internetworking Protocol.  These include public nets, private nets, long-haul nets, metropolitan nets, local nets, fat nets, skinny nets, nets that climb on rocks…

Two nodes on the Internet do not have to be connected to the same network to exchange traffic.  As users access Google, Netflix, Facebook or any other sources of content available via the Internet the traffic to and from those sources traverses multiple networks.  Each “hop” comes with a (usually very minor) delay.

Networks are constantly trading traffic back and forth with one another.  Networks that exchange a lot of traffic with establish private peering interconnections to facilitate those exchanges.  The idea is that peers Network Provider A and Network Provider B will move roughly equivalent amounts of traffic over one another’s network.  If Network Provider B puts a lot of traffic onto Network Provider A’s network and carries a much smaller amount of traffic for Network Provider A, then Network Provider B will compensate Network Provider A.  Network Provider A incurs real and opportunity costs to deploy and manage additional Internet backbone capacity to carry Network Provider B’s traffic.

Peering is an industry-led balance of payments regime formulated to ensure fairness in an interconnected network infrastructure.  A balance of payments for terminating international telephone calls serves as a decades-old precedent and model for this approach.

Level(3) Needs More Interconnects to Serve Netflix Content to Comcast’s Customers

Prior to their winning the Comcast traffic, Level(3) was not a leading CDN, having only acquired the relatively small CDN business from Savvis in 2006 to augment their own wholesale Internet offerings.  Level(3) have not made major capital investments to their CDN by building the large number of interconnects with other Internet providers to provide a high-quality CDN.  Level(3)’s Internet backbone business was so much larger than their CDN business that peer Internet providers, including Comcast, usually compensated Level(3) because of the deficit in traffic they carried for Level(3) compared to the Internet traffic Level(3) carried for them.  Level(3)’s CDN was not putting anywhere near as much traffic onto Comcast’s networks as Comcast’s customers were putting on Level(3)’s backbone.

Akamai is far and away the leading CDN with network assets deployed very close to end users to minimize the number of network hops any of its customers’ content must make to reach end users.  CDN is Akamai’s core business.  In strategic terms, Akamai differentiate themselves by focus and differentiation based quality, while Level(3) pursue a cost leadership strategy.

When Netflix sought bids for a new CDN, Level(3) offered a low-cost alternative to Akamai.  No doubt the Netflix RFP specified service level agreement (SLA) including metrics of end users’ experience.  I am a Netflix customer, and often after I watch streaming content I receive an e-mail from Netflix asking me about the quality of the experience.  I can only imagine that one of the metrics to which Netflix CDN partners must abide is a percentage of customer respondents confirming an excellent or acceptable viewing experience.

I do not know whether or not the Level(3) team realized the capital investment that would be required to deliver those SLAs.  According to Ars Technica, Level(3) asked Comcast to eat the cost of nearly 30 additional CDN interconnects.  The Comcast team agreed that 6 new interconnects would address their peering traffic deficit with Level(3).  Additional interconnects and traffic would turn Comcast’s traffic deficit with Level(3) into a surplus and thus require Level(3) to compensate Comcast accordingly.  It was in response to this point that Level(3) issued their press release and sought relief from the FCC by claiming that Comcast was seeking to block its customers from accessing Netflix’s streaming media services.  Netflix is the lead in cutting edge services that are challenging traditional television program models such as Comcast’s cable television business.  Level(3) were suggesting that Comcast was using its market power in their broadband business to protect their cable television business.

Conclusion and What’s Next

What did Level(3) hope to achieve with their complaint?  I cannot say for certain.  Based on the long-standing peering regime I cannot imagine that the leadership at Level(3) assumed that there was any legitimacy to their claims.  There is no FCC action warranted in this circumstance, and no consideration of Level(3)’s complaint should be considered in the FCC and DoJ’s review of the Comcast merger with NBC Universal.

As I was considering this blog entry I wrote a series of tweets that outlined my arguments.  Fellow Titterer Pranav Desai commented that it’s perhaps time to re-examine the peering regime and that we will see more cases like the Level(3) – Comcast conflict as “over the top” television services compete with the television services offered by cable and telecommunications providers.  These are great points, and I really appreciate the discussion.

On the point of re-examining peering I can offer a definitive “maybe.”  It is not for Level(3) to unilaterally re-define a decade-old industry self-governing regime.  Level(3) undercut a competitor and then sought to offload the cost of delivering on their Netflix contract onto Comcast.  That’s not right.

What dimensions of competition will come to play as over-the-top media services such as Netflix, Hulu, iTunes and others eat into traditional television programming offered by Comcast, Verizon (my employer) and others who provide both television programming and broadband Internet connectivity?  The Netflix-Level(3)-Comcast dust-up is an example of the conflicts we might see in the coming years.

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Giving Meaning to Data with Ontology

Posted on 22 November 2010 | Leave a comment

Last week my colleague Mitesh Patel and I were priviledged to deliver a presentation to the Taxonomy Bootcamp that was part of the KM World conference held in Washington, DC.  In this presentation we discussed the work we did during our time at Evidence Based Research developing custom knowledge management systems for our clients.

We didn’t know it at the time, but we were doing some extremely innovative things at EBR.  On the subject matter expert/analyst side we were pushing the limits of what was then a very new framework to establish machine-understandable meaning: ontology.  Along with our Chief Scientist I created our first ontology that described the telecommunications and IT industries as well as frameworks for competitive and market intelligence.

On the technical side, Mitesh and EBR’s team of developers were using these ontologies to develop relational database schema and also to dynamically generate a user interface for our ultimate deliverable: a knowledge management database complete with structured information about the telecommunications and IT industries to facilitate predictive analysis about innovation trends in the industry.  The developers’ innovations enables us all to iterate very quickly– we were doing agile development before that was really a known concept (at least known to me).

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iPhone and iPad in the Enterprise

Posted on 13 November 2010 | Leave a comment

CIO.com’s Tom Kaneshige has an interesting article on some errors he believes Apple has made in their iOS Developer Enterprise Program.  There are clearly some issues that Apple is going to need to address in order to make iOS a viable platform for the enterprise outside of niche applications.

The  iOS Developer Enterprise Program enables enterprise application developers to:

  • Distribute applications in house.  An important limitation is that the applications can be deployed to employees and contractors only.  Not being able to extend distribution to suppliers, channel partners, franchisees or other partners is overly limiting for many enterprise applications.
  • Test applications under development on iOS devices.
  • Receive code-level technical support
  • Participation in the Apple Developer Program

Kaneshige makes soem great points about the issues enterprise customers are seeing using the consumer iOS App Store to purchase generic applications.   Some companies are having their employees purchase apps on the store and expense those purchases back.  The enterprise, unfortunately, misses out on the benefits of volume pricing or enterprise license agreements.  Likewise the firm incurs the cost of processing the employees expenses.

One of the major issues with which enterprise CIOs will need to struggle is Apple’s effective “kill switch” to deactivate all apps deployed on iOS devices.  As unlikely as this is likely to be, this strikes me as an unacceptable risk for enterprise customers.  Often Apple’s decisions with respect to applications in the consumer apps store have appeared capricious, and the decision-making is extremely opaque.  Beyond deliberate decisions to kill an apps there is always the possibility of mistakes or misunderstandings that lead Apple to pull an enterprise app down in error and then take hours, days or weeks to correct that error.  The notion of exposing a mission critical application to this sort of possibility is the sort of thing that will keep a CIO up at night.

Until Apple can address some of these critical issues we should expect iPhone and iPad use in large enterprises to be limited to niche, non-mission critical applications or basic productivity such as e-mail, instant messaging, video conferencing and the like.  Web-based apps that can be accessed securely on mobile devices are likely to be more widely deployed by enterprises.  Cross-platform functionality is another benefit of the web-based approach.

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Social Network Analysis for Competitive Intelligence

Posted on 12 September 2010 | 1 Comment

In recent months I’ve seen a growing interest in a topic I spoke on with my colleague Jim Richardson at the 2007 SCIP conference: applying methods of social network analysis to gain competitive intelligence insight. Part of this interest I attribute to all things “social” and part to a growing recognition of the real strategic foresight social network analysis can reveal. Last week Eric Garland of Competitive Futures interviewed me on the topic. You can find those interviews here: http://bit.ly/d4wIzd.   Here is the original 2007 presentation:

As an example of using SNA to develop strategic insight, I’ve always been particularly fond of the example included in the 2007 presentation, that the relationships between Google and Apple and their shared expertise in Internet television would result in interesting cooperation.  Days after I made this deck Apple and Google announced that the then still pending iPhone would include functionality to view videos on Google’s YouTube site.  Likewise access to YouTube was extended to AppleTV, Apple’s set-top box.

Had I updated the slide when Google announced their entry into the smart phone OS space with Android we would have easily foreseen the departure of Eric Schmidt from the Apple board and the growth in competition between the two companies.  In the telecom, IT, consumer electronics and technology industries we are seeing major players cross formerly sacred boundaries to compete with former partners.  In such converging markets social network analysis provides considerable predictive insight.  Using SNA organizations can see scenarios and competitor moves several steps in advance and develop their strategies accordingly.

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Words of Wisdom: Jacqueline Novogratz on Recognizing Indispensable People

Posted on 21 February 2010 | Leave a comment

Somewhere near the top of the pile of books I am slowly getting around to reading is Linchpin by Seth Godin.  The premise of the book, from what I hear in interviews with Seth and the interwebs chatter is how to be indispensable.  I’ve enjoyed several of Seth’s earlier books, and I’m intrigued by this topic.  When employment seems more fleeting than it has ever been in our collective life memories, creating a favorable differentiation for yourself can be critical to career success.

Several notable personalities have done their own brief interviews for Seth about how important it is to be a linchpin or how to be indispensable.  Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of the Acumen Fund, gives this short explanation of how she recognizes indispensable people.  This is a great short summary of individual and organizational leadership.  Jacqueline talks about some of the same concepts that other intelligence professionals and I have been discussing, namely the ability of organizations to recognize new realities, experiment, iterate, tolerate risk and mistakes with the appropriate accountability and capablity to learn from smart mistakes.

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