It’s true I’m a TEDhead and if we’ve met it would be unusual if I didn’t mention the TED conference videos at some point.

One of the incredible delights of the today is that even though we read less; if we can find time to watch an 18 minute video – paradoxically we have even greater access to some of the best minds in the world  via TED and sites like it.

In my house we call it Teducation and personally I just love being able to get an idea of what the best subject matter experts in the work are thinking about their chosen topics and what they actually care about.

Even better when they have only 18 minutes to express their passion (which is the standard TED format) that is short enough to be useful but not too long if the presentation sucks.

This week TED announced A TED Fellows programme for this year and buried away in the detail was the name Sean Gourley described as  Physicist/military theorist; Rhodes Scholar. New Zealand

Sean has been away in the UK on a Rhodes Scholarship for the past few years but his background from Canterbury University is

Bachelor of Science with Honours and Master of Science in Physics
Sean researched nano-scale blue light lasers for his first-class BSc(Hons) degree in Physics and self-assembled quantum nano-wires, for his MSc before enrolling for a DPhil at Oxford University, researching complex adaptive systems and collective intelligent systems.

Over on younoodle it says that Sean is a

“New Zealander, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, PhD in Physics specializing in ‘networks and complexity’, just finished a research fellowship at Oxford in the quantitative analysis of war and terrorism. “

So what is the Ted Fellow award and how can we be involved?

I think we can all be involved in scouting for the unusual suspects. Anyone can become a member of TED. As at today’s date there are apparently 908 NZ linked members on the network. My TED profile is here but anyone can join – check the joining TED blurb here.

Getting into a conference and paying the $US6k in fees plus the travel and other costs of getting there and back each time takes some serious effort for most of us so it is fantastic that there is a TED fellows sponsorship programme.

Go Sean Gourley @ TED .  For more detail download the TED fellows PDF and check page 21 of 45. Some of the other Fellows like Patrick Awuah we have seen in action before and I have also spent time on Jennifers Brea‘s blogs in the past as well. Her work on Africabeat is worth reading.

If you read this Sean – make sure all of those guests know that NZ is not just a rock in the Pacific or Fiji with snow – but a really vibrant community of creativity and world class thinking.

Update:4th Feb We are following Sean via his twitter feed in the top right sidebar / see comments.

Sean says

• Talk to me about – Politics, Venture Capital and innovation, Mathematics, Physics, running, single malt scotch, the latest book I have to read or movie I should go see.

For background on the Fellowship programme:

Ted Fellows

“Introducing TED Fellows, our new international program that will bring 50 eclectic, up-and-coming world-changers to our Long Beach and Oxford conferences each year….

All TED Fellows will receive special benefits including pre-conference programs, training from world-class communications professionals, the opportunity to give short TEDTalks at TED University, the opportunity to spread their ideas on TED.com, a private social network and more. Of course, TED will cover their conference fees, travel and lodging.

We’re targeting individuals aged 21-40 from all of TED’s many disciplines, including of course, technology, entertainment and design but also science, humanities and the arts, entrepreneurs, NGOs and political and community leaders. We’re focusing on candidates from five regions of the world: Africa, Asia/Pacific, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East. However, anyone 18 and over is welcome to apply. The first application cycle begins February 23rd, 2009.

These men and women were selected for their achievement but especially for their promise. Each of them shows real potential to create positive change in their field — whether it’s technology, entertainment, design, music, art, science, business or the NGO community — in their country, and even around the world.”

However ;  I can’t help thinking that some of our brightest TED prospects are now outside the university systems especially in the creative sectors.

What do you think -?  Who would you nominate as a representative of your sector, company, organisation or country. Who are the unusual suspects?

Here is hoping that Sean enjoys his time at TED and reports back.

TED 2009 Conference starts 3 Feb (today – depending on your timezone.)

If I was at the conference I’d be keen to see Daniel Lebskind, Oliver Sacks, Herbie Hancock, Dan Ariely and Liz Coleman for starters. Jacek Utko thinks good design can save the newspaper? He will be presenting on that — and good luck with that one from me.

For more on the TED Conference 09  speakers

Really I’d love to be at TED one day but the next best thing is helping a smart New Zealander make it there. Lets nominate some more TED fellows for next year and trust that Sean will have a great time this trip.

The third best thing to being at TED are the T shirts. Premo purveyor of T’s to the thoughtful REMO Generalstore is the TED T-shirt supplier so Australia are already doing their bit for TED.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Founder Remo Giuffré is at TED – Remo on twitter

Footnote: As always if you are at TED 09 – feel free to add a comment here or contact me via TED or LinkedIn.

We really enjoyed David Cowan‘s posts from TED last year (Check the Dave Eggers post) and Brian Sweeney’s notes before that.

The TED prize is webcast live at Thursday 5th Feb at 5 pm US Pacific Time. LA time is currently

For NZ – this makes local time of 2 pm Friday 6th or Friday Feb 6 12 noon for Sydney, NSW readers. For your location you may want to double check the meeting planner.

TED prize winners this conference are deep ocean explorer Sylvia Earle, astronomer Jill Cornell Tarter, maestro José Antonio Abreu.   I’m sure they are all great but I especially like the sound of :

Jose Abreu, a retired economist, trained musician, and social reformer founded El Sistema (“the system”) in 1975 based on the conviction that what poor Venezuelan kids needed was classical music. After 30 years and 10 different political administrations, El Sistema is now a nationwide organization of 102 youth orchestras, 55 children’s orchestras and 270 music centers.

Update: Some of this post have also been added to Idealog Blog

Lately I’ve been to some funerals and also lots of births in the form of kids birthday parties. At both ends of the curve there are a number of recurring questions but today really looking at just two.

One of the best questions ever is “What are you going to do when you grow up?”

I especially like it when its’ a kid asking me the question and I always take that as a compliment. The honest answer is always made up on the spot and and is usually along the lines of I’m still working that out-depending on who is asking.

After nearly 50 years I have a pretty good idea of where to focus but I still adore the exploration and rediscovery of old and new ideas and their application to the present.

(By way of background I’m ENFP or ENFJ and fit the Grey Lynn tribe profile – test yourself.)

I feel very lucky to still have an open end on most of my work/life and to be able to re-imagine the future. It seems really obvious but there is a huge difference between conscious knowledge and intelligence.

Some of this comes with age, learning style and a desire to want to keep learning and growing which sadly we all sometimes neglect. In my world view boxes are for things not people, and so while it is good to be able to see some connections it is always better to be able to really think outside the cube and even go really fractal when you need to.

Forget the box and the cube, everyday is a tesseract of opportunities. If we stay awake, and take some notes like keeping a journal for example, we will continue to discover new and exciting ways and means to develop. The life as a mystery box idea appeals to me and I was interested to hear JJ Abrams talk about this on a TED video which you can view over here.

The other question people always ask in various ways is “What do you do for a Job?”

My usual answer for the past few years has been “whatever I want to do” and yes I do have the experience and skills to do a wide range of activities quite well. However there is always a reality checklist close by especially when the car breaks down or some other bill looms large. So the dream always remains but sometimes often there are work projects we all need to do a) pay for the groceries and b) pay for the dreams.

But I really like the in between time/s when I can work on thinking and planning for a cornucopia of projects and my natural inclination is to gravitate towards the creative end of the spectrum even though much of my “education” was designed to minimize those abilities.

BTW I’ve found a new word to partly describe my general learning style and also explains why I can seemingly link a series of invisible dots – “all this stuff is connected” as Chris Anderson mentions in his 2002 Vision for TED video. Multi disciplinary views of space and time just suit me because I’m poly-chronic.

“Plans: from Time Management Basics

The polychronic person will use plans but is quite happy to be flexible in their approach to achieve the desired goal. They may flit from project to project as the mood takes them gaining inspiration from one project to utilise on the other.

Flexibility is a useful trait of the polychronic person”.

Finally an answer as to why I’m happy reading 5 books at once as well as listening to and watching lots of videos on apparently unrelated topics. My brain still enjoys the buzz and it knows what a fractal of a fractal is even if it takes me a while to catch up and articulate that stimulus into a series of useful questions for a client.

So the new answer to the perennial “What do you do?” question is that I’m a polychronic creative generalist (and divergent thinking maven) so chances are good that if you have a great project I can help at some level.

For more on the creative generalist go to Steve Hardy’s wonderful blog which is a real treasure trove of ideas. For example this recent link gives some great examples of the creative generalist concept by Larry Borsato

“I am not trying to suggest that generalists are perfect. If you are building banking software or you are launching a space shuttle, where well-defined processes are essentially repeated over and over in the building of the software, then specialists may be preferred.

However, in the Web 2.0 world we live in, where new products and APIs are introduced seemingly every other week, specialization loses its allure. Six months of experience on a particular platform might turn a generalist into a de facto specialist.

At the same time, a generalist brings a variety of hard and soft skills to the task at hand. They often have the ability to quickly assimilate a new technology or skill, and may be able to quickly accomplish tasks in unfamiliar situations. And, from what I’ve seen in the past few years working with the Web, everything is an unfamiliar situation.” (see larryborsato.com)

Snap – dude…I am also an entreprenerial marketer, product developer, planning consultant, researcher and more. On any given day I can be writing a marketing plan, developing a website to go with the brand and talking with CEO’s about their industry strategies and / or enterprise level software to go with with their orders as well.

Great to hear from other creative generalists as like OddPodz who are building a community for optimistic creative thought leaders.

Equally I’m at home brainstorming with other mavens and turning the metaphorical map upside down with a sprinkle of physics, architecture and whatever other discipline I may be absorbing at that time. Lifelong learning is not just a bright idea, it’s a way of life.

Somehow it all works out because the challenges along the way help cross pollinate the answers on other projects present and future.

There is a wonderful story that Jim Collins tells about writing down observations on himself in a little notebook “about the bug called Jim.” You can listen to the bio story over here (11mins.) (Hear Jim talk about his path to becoming a self-employed professor.* )

His description of an entrepreneur as someone who is “congenetically coded with the defect that they can’t work for other people” …entrepreneurship is a life idea…starting with a blank canvas.. carving your own path and figuring out how to do that in a unique way…”

And overall the joy of the question is something that keeps me revisiting his website and books. I’ve also learned over many years that if I listen to audio that somehow works better for me personally -which is why I’ll sometimes listen to TED videos in the background while I’m working on something else entirely.

Finally part of the reason for this post is that I have been making the equivalent of mix tapes by combining and mashing /recombining some of the 80 video clips from my “creative commons” TED collection.

Despite ranging across the full spectrum of subjects from physics, architecture, design, neurology, photography, dance, business, technology, maths, education and so on – it is not differences that I see, rather – it is the connections between all those subjects that matter most.

Off to a conference tomorrow today and inevitably will be asked by many that work question.

I’d much rather they ask the first one about what am I going to do when I grow up—but then you’d expect a creative generalist to have that kind of an answer.

Other related posts here that you may enjoy.

• Uses, not innovations, drive technology
• Professors can’t dance—mind/body rocks
• Creativity & Innovation Linked
• Real change means more than a Heisenberg T-Shirt*
• Cultural Exploration via Art
• Rogue intellect & arts infrastructure

Update: 9th of May – a cross post over at Idealog and the beautiful tesseract at left to check out more in the magazine. “creative generalist”

One of the standard responses from Government and Oil companies when faced with the peak oil scenarios is to say that alternative energy sources will make up the gap and we shouldn’t worry. Wrong!

This is Part 2 in a series on Energy futures and this post looks more closely at Chapter 4 of The Last Oil Shock, where author David Strahan goes through many of the alternative supply solutions and checks the math and underlying assumptions. In each case the alternative is too little and too late to really help much at all.

There are also some organisations concerned about climate change who believe the demise of big oil will somehow help reduce the damage from global warming. Oil accounts for less than 40% of total C02 emissions with the balance coming from coal and gas and so with a greater reliance on coal and gas it is extremely unlikely that the oil reduction will be that helpful.

As Strahan discusses most of these ideas are not well thought out and plain wrong.

For example 95% of oil uses are for transport where coal can’t help much and gas could help some (in transport) but gas supplies are highly linked to oil in most cases. Because we want the alternative sources to be “clean” this suggests that the two most feasible options would be hydrogen and biofuels.

Hydrogen – Not a Real Option
The most attractive idea from using hydrogen as an energy source for transport is that a hydrogen fuel cell is much more efficient than a conventional internal combustion engine. A figure of 18% is the useful energy to the wheels with a standard engine, whereas hydrogen offers the potential of 50% due to its much higher efficiency and the lower number of moving parts which reduces friction loss etc. however it is not that easy.

On the minus side the expense of hydrogen technology means it could be 10 years before cars could be below $100k in price which means that won’t help most of us. Safety and the need of plenty of storage space are also issues. Ultimately (fuller details in the book) Hydrogen needs to be super cooled as a gas at -240 ‘C however the trade off is that uses 30% of the energy value and this means that the energy efficiency is back down at 25% while a Toyota Prius is as high as 32%.

There are other ways of producing hydrogen but the short answer is hybrids* and even the new generation of diesels are better at the present time. We could use electricity to generate Hydrogen but the amount needed is prohibitive.

Strahan continues with the math and concludes that 81 gigawatts would be needed to replace current transport energy needs in the UK. As this is more than the current generating capacity in the U.K that is not an option.

Solar and Wind
Check pages 92 and 93 in the book for the math which includes calculations for wind, solar and nuclear with numbers that I haven’t personally checked but you are welcome to try. The short version is that using current technologies even if we could do it the amount of land area needed and the time it would take to get setup in measured in decades and we don’t have that long.

Strahan concludes

“hydrogen as a transport fuel seems to be utterly incapable of mitigating either global warming or the last oil shock…it might work in Iceland, where they have limitless hydro -electricity… but for the rest of the world its back to the drawing board”

Biofuels including Ethanol
We don’t eat enough fish and chips for this one to really help much. 300m litres of cooking oil is just too small compared to 25b litres of diesel needed in the U.K. The NZ numbers would be similar proportions but I’m all in favour of recycling that used frying oil. Alternative versions of biofuel such as biodiesel or bioethanol both generally require large amounts of land at the expense of food production.

A feature at Worldchanging suggests that bio-diesel from algae might be the best bet

“A single acre of algae ponds can produce 15,000gallons of biodiesel — in comparison, an acre of soybeans produces up to 50 gallons of biodiesel per acre, an acre of jatropha produces up to 200 gallons per acre, coconuts produce just under 300 gallons per acre, and palm oil — currently the best non-algal source — produces up to 650 gallons of biodiesel per acre. That is to say, algae is 25 times better a source for biodiesel than palm oil, and 300 times better than soy.”

Cellulosic ethanol might be the bright hope here as it is based on using waste byproducts and not so land hungry. However the amount of “waste” product is not as great as needed. Elsewhere in the book the Fischer-Tropsch process is discounted as a method of supply as well.

In New Zealand bio-ethanol blended petrol just launched comes as a byproduct of milk production from Fonterra via Gullso while it is not cellulosic ethanol it might succeed to some extent in delaying the full shock of oil prices at the pump.

See here for Consumer information from Energywise for NZ motorists.

Note from Dr David Haywood(Thanks David) – It seems likely that NZ *is* one of the few countries where biofuels for transport could be economical, thanks to our massive resource of dodgy-quality wood. See: here for more.

Brazil and Ethanol
The availability of sugar cane and 30 years of experience means that it has been a great success in Brazil but hard to scale up much further although the theoretical numbers are surprisingly high. After 30 years Brazil has replaced up to 30% of its transport needs from Ethanol which show how difficult a goal this is.

Strahan calculates would take 320m hectares to replace 2003 petrol consumption, which is more than 15 times the total area of land in cultivation for sugar cane in 2004. Given that petrol consumption is still growing and even if goals are more modest like a % of the total in countries like Brazil and where that makes sense it could help soothe the transition at least in part.

Consequently environmental, land use and social issues preclude sustainable ethanol production on a large scale for most countries. Bio-diesel from Jatropha is promising but the conclusion is similar. 359m hectares of land planted in that crop just isn’t feasible.

Ultimately with all of these alternatives we can’t come even close in the short term to replacing a significant level of energy for transport regardless of the methodology. We still need massive conservation to be part of any transition plan.

There is much more detail in the book , but you’ll need to buy it now. Hopefully you get a clearer idea of how rigorous the research has been and that arguments like hydrogen or bio-fuels saving the day are simply not correct.

However exploring alternative energy sources is good for business. This note is out of date now but even so the numbers are large and positive motivators for business.

Another Book Review
This comes from Mick Winter see here for more

“Strahan is first of all a superb journalist. He is objective in his facts, backs up his statements, and offers both breadth and depth in his account of Peak Oil. But Strahan also has a position; one which enhances, rather than obscures, his objectivity. His wry, even biting, sense of humor and his observation of the energy predicament’s ironies and, alas, frequent hypocrisies, come through in a manner that allows his facts to be enjoyable digested all the way through the book.

I highly recommend reading The Last Oil Shock.”

Mini Summary of the Books Key arguments
From this profile piece here is the shortest summary of the book I have found. Most of this post has just barely covered number 1.

1. Biofuels and hydrogen are utterly inadequate to make good the looming transport fuel deficit
2. How ‘running out’ of oil paradoxically will not help but worsen climate change
3. How traditional economics critically underestimates the importance of energy, and therefore the severity of the last oil shock.
4. Why governments, oil companies, and environmentalists oppose the idea, and why they are wrong
5. How the oil reserves of Middle East OPEC countries are almost certainly far smaller than claimed, meaning the global peak will come sooner rather than later
6. How the actions of oil companies belie their predicament, despite their publicly confident positions
7. How the invasion of Iraq was not ‘all about oil’, but all about peak oil.

*Note on Hybrids (Not in the book)
It seems to me that hybrids are great in theory but the cost differential is so high that in New Zealand at least you are still better to buy a much cheaper car and use the balance to pay for fuel. It may be different elsewhere but the going rate for a used hybrid like the Prius is around $25k. My calculations are very rough – in some places tax incentives make the deal better. See here for some more NZ background. To do the calculations properly you need to look at payments over 3-5 years and factor in fuel savings and price rises over that time. It may be for some people who commute larger distances that the payback from a hybrid would make sense.

A similar car could be obtained for $10k and even if/when fuel costs triple you can still buy a whole lot of petrol for the $15k difference. So although I would love a hybrid – suspect that the higher the price of petrol the higher the price (including resale value) of the hybrid goes.

Perhaps there are other technology advances like the pivotal engine which improves on two stroke technology for example. Now a 3 wheeledVespa equivalent with a pivotal engine – that could be something.

See also Why running out of oil could make climate change worse

This is Part 2 of a 4 part series. See these related posts in the series.

• (1) Green futures and the last oil shock
• (2) Why Alternative Energy Can’t Save Us from Peak Oil (this one)
• (3) How to Survive Peak Oil by Acting Locally – 7 ways
• (4) Some Conclusions on Peak Oil – Urgency Needed

See also

• NZ Energy Strategy
• and NZ Energy Strategy- Transport Summary

“last oil shock”, “David Strahan”, “peak oil theory”

At the recent New Yorker conference, called “2012: Stories from the near Future” was a piece by Malcolm Gladwell on two ideas of Genius. The video link is here - but check the size – it is 27 minutes long (and my HD version is 350mb! – HD Xml feed)

What is fascinating to me about the speech, is how Gladwell tells the story with his historians ear for detail and uses it as a learning observation on problem solving styles. Gladwell has a wonderful story telling style, as you will know if you’ve checked his books (Tipping Point, Blink) or his video presentation on Spaghetti Sauce at TED.

This story is about the differences between work methods used by Michael Ventris in solving the Linear B code from the ancient Mycenean writing in 1953 and Andrew Wiles who solved Fermats Last Theorem in 1994.

By way of background, the theorem had been unsolved for 357 years and really most people know little about it and care even less. However it has been a magnificent obsession for mathematicians and might have some other less abstract value – (a story for another day – and BTW -what does solving the theorem achieve? – answers please)

Sidebar: Incidentally, Gladwell quotes Paul Erdos as saying that ‘a mathematician, is a machine for turning coffee into theorems’” in his wonderful essay on the rise of java man. Did you also know that Malcolm Gladwell was a history graduate which could be perfect training for his writing and speeches, and other amazing roles as suggested by Ion Valiskakis in “The Return of History”

Daniel W. Rasmus has elegantly summarised the arguments for and against Gladwells thesis that Ventris represented the “lone genius” while Andrew Wiles had 13 helpers – my paraphrasing. In other words, that modern genius was more about collaboration and focus than the archetype eureka moment. ( Note: Rasmus points out that Ventris had help from Kober and Chadwick so he wasn’t entirely isolated in his quest.)

Gladwell worked out that Wiles had done his 10,000 hours and that was very much needed to solve the problem and extrapolated that this might be some kind of rule. It certainly struck me as a usable idea for mastery of a subject and we should think more about this. Gladwell’s rough calculation was that 10,000 hrs equates to 10 years – however my calculation is that 5 years would do it if you were lucky enough to work the equivalent of a standard work week on your specialist subject.

So for Gladwell 10,000 hours of time represents some kind of threshold of advanced competency that Wiles was able to achieve.

Rasmus is not so sure and notes that problem solving is only one kind of genius and that:

“Collaboration is right. Obsession is right. So are many other attributes, like pattern recognition, building consensus, creating relationships, and incremental and purposeful innovation….

“Let us not be so narrow in our definition of genius because with change we can not foretell what kind of genius we will need so as we do with learning, pushing toward life long learning, we should be pushing for life long pursuit of insight, because we never know who, or where or what may be needed as the world’s values and economics and technologies shift around us. “

He goes on to suggest that:

“Ventris represents the model of the lifelong learner, the person who strives to add value based on their talent despite the lack of interest in formal studies in an area, a lack of aptitude for an approach or technique — but with a keen insight into problem solving that may in fact, be innovative, too innovative perhaps, and too time consuming to be supported in an academic world driven by the productivity of publication.”

Rasmus also notes the rise of the amateur professional as represented in part by Ventris and this is also the topic of a presentation by Charles Leadbeater @TED (see below)

This idea of the amateur professional is also supported by Charles Leadbeater in a TED talk called “The rise of the amateur professional” see the 19minute video on TED.

“Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can’t.”

…and he makes the point that the mountain bike industry came from professional amateurs who reinvented the cycling sector to the point that 65% of it is mountain bike related innovation. (ultimate mtn bike here)

So what do we all learn from this – within the context of a blog on thinking about business and technology? Shouldn’t I be trying to link this to business systems and the use of crm software for example?

At the very core of a CRM system is the idea of knowledge management and especially “tacit knowledge” management which I wrote about as CRM & Knowledge management a while back.

In your company you will have very experienced staff who have long ago completed their 10,000 hours of mastery and much more and now they are experts at the art of the deal.

Somehow they are able to craft brilliant results from what looks to be unstructured territory; and that can be a challenge for any business to incorporate that learning and knowledge transfer to others.

Part of the way we transfer tacit knowledge is story telling and I was pleasantly surprised to find that a company called anecdote even have a consulting workshop called “sensemaking”. Shawn Callahan of Anecdote suggests: (after checking the genius video)

1. persistence and collaboration might be more important personal traits than lone genius in a complex and changing world; and
2. a person needs to invest 10,000 hours of concentrated and reflective practice to achieve mastery—this amounts to about 10 years.

Part of what makes us successful into the future is the way in which we which can foster knowledge sharing, learning and collaboration by using new tools such as blogs, video and other new media tools to connect and leverage our own ideas.

In Gladwell’s story of genius, may I suggest that role of collaboration is the key learning point and that is we should look to capitalise on our supreme advantages of education, bandwidth and collaboration tools. The idea of capitalisation which Gladwell highlights is also very useful.

Capitalisation is the concept that all 6’10″ tall males – have probably tried out for basketball where they might be a natural; but we don’t do that for other advantages like education , as a rule (at least to the same extent.)

Innovation and change can come from unlikedly sources and often do as Charles Leadbetter suggests and the youthful Eva Vertes hypothesis on cancer show us.

It can also be something much more prosaic and no less vital such as: doing better in the way to we address and service our existing customers and reach out to get new ones where collaboration, feedback and even stories form part of the learning process.

Malcolm Gladwell Fermats last Theorem New Yorker Conference collaboration knowledge management Charles Leadbeater Andrew Wiles

P.S Some of this research and content was used in Malcolms latest book “Outliers”. He is interviewed below by Kim Hill on Saturday morning radio. 13-Dec-2008

The big mystery for us down-under was the significance of holidays being when kids fall behind as we have a relatiovely short summer holiday with other 2 week holiday periods during the year. Apparently US holidays are longer and more concentrated.

I also liked the comments about the positive effects of “class” and entitlement thinking on individual performance.

RadioNZ podcast is over here from 13-dec-2008 with Kim Hill

A key challenge for policy makers is how to tell a compelling story with numbers. It is not easy to visualise the impact of change in a meaningful way—but help is now at hand.

Ironically it doesn’t come from the business intelligence (oxymoron alert) community—it is more the result of being able to add graphical tools and creative vision to the core data.

The person driving this vision is Dr Hans Rosling a global health professor. Google like the approach so much that they have now invested in the gapminder software developed by Rosling.

The second irony here is that it is much better for you to go view this video presentation than to carry on reading at this point (click here to display.) 20.35 minutes this link

“Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called “developing world” using extraordinary animation software developed by his Gapminder Foundation.

The Trendalyzer software (recently acquired by Google) turns complex global trends into lively animations, making decades of data pop. Asian countries, as colorful bubbles, float across the grid—toward better national health and wealth. Animated bell curves representing national income distribution squish and flatten.

In Rosling’s hands, global trends—life expectancy, child mortality, poverty rates—become clear, intuitive and even playful.” (from Ted.com)

It is easy to try the gapminder software out and what will be even more exciting is if policy makers actually use some of this to help communicate in visually compelling ways.

Note: TED is “like drinking from a firehose” see a report from Brian Sweeney who was at TED 2007 and has attended quite a few of previous conferences. His liked the Rosling presentation and recommended it as follows:

“See especially the presentation by Hans Rosling at the 2006 conference, it will change your world view of what is happening and what is possible”… and

“For me TED has been life-changing in terms of seeing ideas up close from the folk who had them”……Sam Morgan presented a new design for dispensing pain relief medicine which can save lives the world over.

He has also kindly posted his conference notes on TED 2007. See full post.

Also – Guy Kawasaki linked to a budget poster (yes really) which uses relative sizes to communicate well. Check the full poster over at budget poster use the control or shift keys to zoom in/ out. Another example of visually useful fast communication.

As of June 26th there is now a second video from Has Rosling:In a follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty.

He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software — which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Ten days later, he announced a deal with Google to acquire the software.) He also demos Dollar Street, a program that lets you peer in the windows of typical families worldwide living at different income levels. Be sure to watch straight through to the (literally) jaw-dropping finale. (click here for video.)

TED.com Hans Rosling add to del.icio.us here

If anyone mentions/raves about a 20 minute video featuring spaghetti sauce by Malcolm Gladwell (remember Tipping Point & Blink) don’t be surprised. The video is found on Ted Talks which is a bit like a youtube channel for adults.

TED (Technology Entertainment Design) has been around since 1984 and was started by Richard Saul Wurman but seems to have really taken off under the direction of Chris Anderson. But back to the sauce…”What we can learn from spaghetti sauce”.

“In this witty monologue, Malcolm Gladwell follows the career of a food industry consultant who uncovered a key secret to what eaters like. Running huge focus groups to find customers’ truest tastes, Gladwell’s hero draws a radical conclusion, an epiphany that has defined food marketing ever since. Note: The theme of the 2004 conference was “The Pursuit of Happiness” — hence the talk’s quirky presence. ….

Malcolm Gladwell specializes in surprises — counterintuitive truths discovered by clever researchers, obscure historians, and ordinary people observing the world.”

Malcolm is a great speaker and this is a good opportunity to see him and many other presentations that are often only found at expensive conferences and take forever to deliver. This one is meandering and discursive and totally fascinating to a contrarian like me.

In the TED format each presenter has 18 minutes and a few go over time but one of the best presentations is only 3 minutes long. You do have to register to get full access but it is free and a brilliant resource. The new improved website for the talks was relaunched on 16th of April.

Other video presentations I really like are:

Richard St. John: Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes
Inspired by a chance encounter with a high school student who asked him how to become a success, St. John interviewed more than 500 successful people, then distilled what they told him into eight simple principles.  

 Joshua Prince-Ramus is best known as architect of the Seattle Central Library and his presentation is mind blowing. There is also a presentation by Frank Gehry on TED talks as well – but I haven’t seen that one yet.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? is one of the most popular presentations. Sir Ken led the British government’s 1998 advisory committee on creative and cultural education, a massive inquiry into the significance of creativity in the educational system and the economy, and was knighted in 2003 for his achievements.

(Update: I found a transcript of a similar speech by Sir Ken over at The second Principal Voices round-table which took place in Beijing, China, on Monday 16th May 2005.)

There are even a couple of NZ connections with Sam Morgan (TradeMe) and an intriguing project called “GoVirtualMedical” (GVM) which is a group of surgeons, educators, businessmen and computer experts who have created a multimedia clinical skills trainer that meets the practical training needs of health professionals.

GVM which features a brace of significant NZ names including Professor John Windsor,  Dr Rick Boven (whose PHD thesis I once read – very rare event!), Greg Sitters and Craig Meek who are well known in tech circles here.  This sounds like a project well worth checking out so watch this blog space for news about them.

Actually there was/is a NZ mini version of 7 minute presentations inspired by TED and some of those NZ presentations are also available at this site.

“TED is owned by a non-profit foundation whose mission is to leverage the power of ideas. The new website was inspired by the viral success of TEDTalks, the audio and video podcast series, which premiered in June 2006 and has been viewed more than 8.5 million times worldwide. The TEDTalks series was exclusively sponsored by BMW, who returns as the inaugural sponsor for TED.com.”….which features:

• More than 100 full-length TED talks, including 30 never-before-seen outside the exclusive TED Conference
• Ideas, insight and inspiration from a diverse group of thinkers and doers, including Kevin Kelly, Bono, Bill Clinton, Jeff Bezos, Jane Goodall, Stefan Sagmeister, Seth Godin, Alex Steffen, Nicholas Negroponte, Peter Gabriel, Al Gore, Richard Dawkins, Ted Warren, Hans Rosling, Jeff Han, and many others including Sam Morgan  (whose presentation was this year and is not posted yet.)
• Social-networking tools — including Profile Pages, Comments and Favorites — that allow for interaction among members of the extended TED community including TEDblog see news
• Free site membership for everyone worldwide

Finally here is a great reason to blow that datacap. This is what broadband was built for. Note: a 20 min clip is around 70mb and there are also audio clips as well. Could be perfect for the Ipod too as you can save (possibly not all clips) in iTunes mp3 or mp4 formats for the desktop or devices.

Note: A slightly different version of this is also over at Idealog Magazine blog area where you can also read other blogs as well.  

See also a post by Brian Sweeney over at NZ Edge TED Conference: Edge Experience

Or alternative title – “How to amplify relationships & build trust in banking” using the power of  of social peer networks.

About 5 years ago I wrote about the potential of the web to change the finance sector in new and exciting ways. The example at the time was Grameen who pioneered microfinance loans in Bangladesh which was set-up by Muhammad Yunus. Since then Yunus has won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Part of the thinking was to be able to use technology to amplify relationships and be able to deliver a level of trust outside the conventional wisdom of the day. This allows donors or funders to take part in micro-credit and makes it much easier to do so.

Some of these ideas were discussed in Kevin Kelly’s “New Rules for the New Economy” 1999 book where he correctly picked the rise of peer networks and the positive effect this could have on the quality and quantity of those commercial relationships.

Given that the web and all the social tools and relationships built up around the wider use of technology has now progressed;  it should be no surprise that web based loan markets have started to develop in a much wider context.   Imagine an angel capital market register for consumers, because that has started happening now. Here are 3 examples.

ZopaWeb in the UK is based on the big idea of social lending. To quote from their about section:

• Social Lending is a financial category of genuine and increasing importance.
• It’s been happening on a small-scale in a families and social groups for hundreds of years and the internet has opened it up to everybody.
• It’s the biggest development in the world of money for decades, as people deal directly with other people, cutting out the banks.

And…from their FAQ
3. Why has no one done this before?
The principle behind Zopa is very similar to local micro-lending schemes that operate in Asia and Latin America. Families, neighbours or friends will lend amongst themselves, often a very structured way, to the benefit of the community. Because the groups are closely knit, trust is not usually an issue.

The growth of the internet, the advance of verification and credit scoring technology, and changing attitudes to corporate institutions have combined to mean this method of lending and borrowing is now viable for everyone.

The Zopa site was launched in March 2005 and currently has 105,000 users according to a news report.

As Kelly expressed it in 1999 – “The central economic imperative of the network economy is to amplify relationships.” *Or as you may prefer it better “Its not Kansas anymore; its Oz” from the Wizard of Oz.

Prosper in the U.S is based on similar thinking and claims 180,000 members and $36m in loans to date. It was launched in February 2006 and interestingly Benchmark Capital is an investor in both Zopa and Prosper. The Prosper system allows users to put a human face on their loan needs.

The way Prosper works is intuitive to people who have used eBay. Instead of listing and bidding on items, people list and bid on loans using Prosper’s online auction platform.

People who want to lend set the minimum interest rate they are willing to earn and bid in increments of $50 to $25,000 on loan listings they select. People who lend can easily diversify using “standing orders”, which automatically make many small loans to different borrowers.

Kiva whose tagline is  ”Loans that Change Lives” has a different business model. According to their stated objectives loans are interest free to micro credit lenders who then charge their own interest rates. PayPal provides free processing service and while you stand to get your loan back – eventually; the service is still refining its business model. It plans on charging 2% interest to field partners (actual micro-credit loan managers) who then onlend at rates much lower than other finance sources, if there are any. 

 ”Kiva is using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.”

In this part of the world, SPBD (South Pacific Business Development) is responsible for micro credit loans in Samoa as a Kiva field partner.

It is clear that using the web for social re-engineering in the three examples listed above represents quite a significant shift in the way that loans can be raised. It is also likely that over time the business models will change a bit so that the balance between social conscience and viable returns will be sustainable.

Personally I’d like to see interest rates on Kiva loans come down – however the irony is that the field partners costs are still quite high exactly because of a lack of technology at that end of the equation.  In the Zopa and Prosper examples, because there is pervasive technology on both the lender and the borrowers’ situation – the net result is not only that loan costs can be reduced in some cases below the commercial rates but that they get access to loans at all.

And for those borrowers who were previously unable to access a loan at any rate – this is certainly creative banking.

Kiva

micro-credit

Zopa

micro lending

Prosper.com

p2p lending

One of the keys to better communication is to understand the way that groups of people around you and especially our/your customers view the world. 

When we speaking with our customers we need to align ourselves with their needs, goal and desires to better serve them. When we are aligned with our customers we can save a lot of time and energy by knowing what will make the most sense in their particular universe.

But how do we get there, how do we become aligned to our customers?

Sales thinking has long identified  different roles in buying process and devised particular methodologies to satisfy those different roles and/ specialised groups.  In the wider context we are also dealing with different regional, historical and social factors as well.

To win business we also need to understand the wider social issues as well. We already recognise some of this thinking by bringing in industry and subject matter experts who “speak the same language”.

One way of looking at a market is to get some form of social demographic read on which factors might be more important to a particular group.

However that’s easier said then done or in this case, known as no one group of people is exactly the same as the next. The trick is how to find out what those needs, wants and desires are within the context of each new group that we engage with.

Perhaps we need to also know which tribe our customers belong to as well?

What makes sense to a customer in Auckland or Sydney is not so valued in Dunedin or Canberra / Wellington.

Now there is a book that can give us some insights into which NZ ”tribe” we might belong to which could be different from the one our customers are in. Certainly when you are in presentation in Dunedin (as I have been) it is wise to remember that Auckland latte drinkers might seem a tad smug and superficial in the heart of Otago. (Bring on the Aussie tribe survey!)

However – now you can get a latte anywhere the local tribal characteristics and customs need a much smarter decoder. And just because someone lives in Dunedin doesn’t mean they don’t belong to the Grey Lynn tribe for example. In fact to extend the idea a bit each group translates the message that is most meaningful for them to their “tribe”.

Which is why a couple of consultant/ researchers* in Wellington have come up with a new book on the subject . It is called ‘The Hidden Classes of New Zealand’ by Jill Caldwell and Christopher Brown.  *About the authors.

“8 Tribes calls an end to the myth of the “typical New Zealander” and gives us a new vocabulary to talk about New Zealand in the twenty first century. This snapshot of contemporary New Zealand explores our unspoken class system and the hidden social boundaries that separate us from each other. “

I did the test on the site (this link to try it out-automated) and apparently I am predominantly a member of the Grey Lynn tribe which values culture and ideas most highly. I also have a high percentage of Cuba St avant garde which is funny and more accurate than I’d like to admit.

I do admit that I am contrarian and like to delve into the margins of art, film and music for example. Once things reach the mainstream I have already moved on so that fits the Cuba St profile. Not sure what a negative rating menas and a total zero in the North Shore column is worth thinking about as well.

For a more recent update go here.

My profile result is shown below. It is a great concept and perhaps we can gain some business insights from this as well.  Thanks to the 8 tribes authors.

One of the things I like to do when I visit or revisit a new city is to check out the art galleries for signs of cultural exploration and pathways to the future.

It is one way of learning more about a culture. Art once collected by a gallery often tells us as much about the journey as the road. It can also be a form of time travel as we look back at what was collected earlier and try to understand the context and debate around particular acquisitions which become social makers of a sort.

On a recent trip to Sydney I saw that the National Gallery in Canberra had a guest exhibition of Egyptian Antiquities on loan from the Louvre in Paris which was all the excuse I needed to get to Canberra for the day. Arguably this doesn’t tell us much about Canberra but quite a lot about ancient Egypt without going to France or Egypt where the best of these objects are on display. To quote:

“The Department of Egyptian Antiquities is the most popular at the Louvre. The permanent display of around 5,000 exhibits from the 60,000 housed by the department gives visitors the opportunity to discover this age-old civilisation, the works of art of which never fail to fascinate and generate admiration.
On 15 May 1826, a decree created the division of Egyptian monuments in the Royal Museum of the Louvre in Paris after Jean-François Champollion, an Egyptologist, convinced King Charles X to collect precious relics of ancient Egypt…”

So what we saw was quite dramatic and stunning collection of ancient mummies and related afterlife items dating back thousands of years. Well worth the trip if you are in Australia where the exhibition is on tour at present.

While also at the NGoA, I took the opportunity to see the Blue Poles Number 11 painting by Jackson Pollock caused a bit of a stir in 1973 when it was bought by the gallery. Now we are so used to thinking of art as an collection of ideas that we can bring our own meaning to that it doesn’t seem that unusual. There are also quite a few other international paintings at the gallery which is probably good for some carbon credits, in that a Monet in Canberra is worth two in Paris (not really but…) but more significant is just which local artists are celebrated and how.

Back in Sydney I wanted to see some Sidney Nolans (Ned Kelly iconic series) and so went to the main NSW gallery which has a room dedicated to him.  Perhaps what people like about those paintings is the larger-than-life story of Kelly the outlaw. From this historical distance it seems an inexplicable  cause for celebration but the paintings do connect you to the story in a clever way.

Every city has a few galleries of treasure that forms some kind of emotional shorthand for the political and social landscape of times gone by. The very best offer a platform for thinking about the present and the future.

Brian Eno expresses this resource idea very well and much more that is worth pondering about the place of art in our society.

“What is cultural value and how does that come about? Nearly all of the history of art history is about trying to identify the source of value in cultural objects. Color theories, and dimension theories, golden means, all those sort of ideas, assume that some objects are intrinsically more beautiful and meaningful than others. New cultural thinking isn’t like that. It says that we confer value on things. We create the value in things. It’s the act of conferring that makes things valuable. Now this is very important, because so many, in fact all fundamentalist ideas rest on the assumption that some things have intrinsic value and resonance and meaning. All pragmatists work from another assumption: no, it’s us. It’s us who make those meanings.”

The piece goes on to link to an interview with Eno where he develops his theory of culture in a more eloquent way than I might. Enjoy – and do get to a gallery once and a while to explore some of the these ideas in a more visual way.

Also worth checking is a very recent quote at the same site where Brian suggests a reason for optimisim and echoes some of my thoughts about cultural development.

“Which brings me to my main reason for optimism: the ever-accelerating empowerment of people. The world is on the move, communicating and connecting and coalescing into influential blocks which will move power away from national governments with their short time horizons and out into vaguer, more global consensual groups. …There is a real revolution in thinking going on at all cultural levels: people comfortably cooperate to play games for which the rules have not yet been written with people they’ve never met, listen to music and look at art which is emergent, not predetermined, and accept the wiki model of the open-source evolution of knowledge.

All these represent dramatic and promising changes in the way people are thinking about how things work, how things come into being and how they evolve”.

And the feedback loops for all of this – in my view are cultural and show up in our art and all other forms of expression as well.

It is the end of 2006 and the beginning of 2007 which is a popular time to take stock and think about what we might want to do differently in the coming year?

When we are growing up we have many well meaning people trying to guide us. We may even be doing this to our friends. As we get older – hopefully we can notice more about what we need to change and be guided more by self awareness and motivated by the results.

Having a goal or new years resolution is one thing. If we really believe in the goal then we need take the next steps.

As  David Maister suggests in his excellent essay called Strategy and the Fat Smoker BTW he was the fat smoker and his personal goals got a rev-up when his health was threatened.

The necessary outcome of strategic planning in not analytical insight but resolve. …..The essential questions of strategy are these: “Which of our habits are we really prepared to change, permanently and forever? Which lifestyle changes are we really prepared to make? What issues are we really ready to tackle?”

This can be confronting and unpleasant but also insightful and empowering if we actually take the next step which is doing something differently to get to a goal.

The essence of successful strategic change is not technique, but will (determination, commitment or resolve) To achieve any goal – ‘We’ must really want the goal

The smartest people I know are those who really enjoy what they do. It can take a while to define what that particular mix of pleasure and work looks like. Years even.

Jim Collins describes this as a Hedghog Concept ( and definition of disciplined thought)

Hedgehogs are relatively simple animals who know just one big thing and stick to it. Good-to-great companies do something similar – they consistently stick to doing what they do best and avoid getting distracted into new fields of business that are away from their core competencies. Good-to-great companies move ahead of their competitors by pursuing only those projects that have three traits:
1. What they can be “best in the world” at.
2. What drives profitability for their business model.
3. What their people are deeply passionate about.

Or another version I like – sometimes we have to stop doing something we don’t like! (Yahoo!) however more often than not we may have to do something we find unpleasant like stopping smoking and getting more exercise. Or getting a new job. I did that almost 3 years ago and a continuing goal for me is to have a job that I love. In the words of Bob Dylan…

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more….
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more….
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s pa no more….
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more….
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

To stop doing things we don’t like – we may need a circuit breaker or way to redefine ourselves. Using creative tools and techniques works for me and also for Hugh Macleod. Its time to get out the crayons!

26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative

Merit can be bought.
Passion can’t.

The only people who want to change the world are people who want to. And not everyone does.

p.32 essay by MacLeod, an advertising executive and popular blogger with a flair for the creative, gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative. Each point illustrated by a cartoon drawn by the author himself.

How to do What You Love – Paul Graham

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We’ve got it down to four words: “Do what you love.” But it’s not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.“Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who like what they do.”

Many of the source essays I have quoted today come from ChangeThis.com In my view the essays there have all been great at promoting insights and actual outcomes. For me getting closer to what I love and want to do is important and this is an ongoing goal.

“ChangeThis is committed to providing you with the tools to change your life. Whether you yearn to tap into your creativity, be motivated to start your own company, make more of your work day or more from your money, or even just be able to write a more concise email…visit ChangeThis to get excited again, excited enough to do something different, to make a small change that could just change your life.

The note below comes from their end of year newsletter. Three more essay links that rated very highly with readers in 2006. They are creative commons licenses so download and pass on if you like them.
  
Most well-written: The Power of the Marginal by Paul Graham (If you’re reading ChangeThis, you’ve probably spent some time in the margin, taking a risk, looking at life differently than your officemates. This manifesto includes diverse cultural references and spot-on insights sure to keep you off the beaten path.) In the essay Paul discusses how outsiders, free from convention and expectations, often generate the most revolutionary of ideas. Clever and entertaining, this manifesto will energize you and spark your creativity.

Most intriguing: Know the Codes by Clotaire Rapaille and Getting Out of Embed by Michael Mauboussin (Both authors use psychology to illuminate how we make every day decisions. You’ll never look at yourself the same way again.)

Rapaille reveals the unconscious motivators behind how we act and what we buy by unearthing the unique culture codes found within each of us. This could also be very insighful for personal change as well.

Getting Out of Embed: The Role of Social Context in Decision Making. Decision making is an inherently social exercise. Here, Michael Mauboussin details three shocking psychological studies that reveal just how another’s action or opinion can profoundly change your own.

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi.

* Check out this T-shirt if you still want more. Best wishes for 2007