Stu Downes

I’ve had some time recently to catch up on a number of TED talks.  Rachel Bostman spoke in Sydney on 2010 on the subject of Collaborative Consumption.  The main themes of the talk were society moving to a point of utilising technology to highlight reputation, and trusting that reputation in transactions which are moving from ebay and swapsites through to lending money or sharing expensive resources such as land or cars.

One graphic that stood out during the talk was this visualization from Jason Tester proposing a reputation statement account, and he first created this back in 2004.

Image Rights Creative Commons (Jason Tester) (Source)

There are some interesting points of reflection in 2011 which make me believe we finally have the critical mass to start to see reputation based models moving into employment models.  Those are:

• We are increasingly trusting of reputations to allow us to make purchases, its only natural that this will progress to skills and services.
• LinkedIn is now over 100 million people strong, this means that we all find peers and opportunities from this community than we do from our much smaller social circle or enterprise communities.
• We increasingly are working as specialists in the long tail and the likelihood is that within the tail is where we will find peer support, opportunities and employment in the future.

The question is when?  Employment contracts today aren’t ready for the change, simple financial tools such as credit rating tools aren’t ready for the change.  It seems that we need to see the shift that society is making in trusting reputations to be repeated by institutions.

With that comes cautions too.  How easy would it be for our reputation to be damaged maliciously etc..  Its an exciting new world we are moving towards but its also just a little bit scary too.

 

Increasingly I find myself spending more and more time in PowerPoint.  To articulate ideas and gather input the first thing I turn to is PowerPoint.  PowerPoint is as important to me to articulate ideas in the workplace than any other office tool.  I’m a firm believer in the beyond bullet points ethos and work hard to make my slides visually compelling and my presentations flow and tell the story [although I must add that I never followed the beyond bullet points methodology to the letter as its too constraining for me].

What I found recently was a wonderful site called Speaking PowerPoint where Bruce Gabrielle tries to overcome the problem of poor slides and presentations, and shares some great tips and tricks to make presentations more visually compelling.  I’ve picked up enough tips to want to buy his book.  Here’s one, enjoy and hat tip to Bruce:

 

It’s been anything but a quiet year, except here on the blog which has been too quiet. I’ve had lots I’d like to write and the time factor and means twitter is still my easiest update tool. So twitter is in (@sdownes1972).

Evernote is most definitely still in. All my research and analyst reports are there. Ok not all tagged but easily searchable. Excellent tool. Premium account is worth it.

New is the iPad which has resulted in using Instapaper. Absolutely superb for reading later. I generally use it as a staging post and if articles make the grade they get promoted to Evernote. Again excellent and recommended.

Now the iPad. The work device? Erm not for me, some work on it but not its primary use. The family device absolutely yes. Quick checking things, buying things (excellent eBay app, Amazon Windowshop, Debenhams, etc.).  Its also great for grab and instant browse and games are superb (my 5 year old is a wizz).  We have found we spend more online now – just need some good supermarket apps to do my online regular shopping.  Now don’t get me wrong I do use it for work and I can get all my corporate emails and access to a virtual desktop – however its primarily an information consumption device not a production device and I’ve not really had any travel where I haven’t had need for my tablet PC.  Rather than a corporate device its really a personal professional device which I use to keep up to date with information, read PDFs in a friendly form factor, read RSS feeds, keep up to date with twitter etc.  I do use it to scan emails, check my calendar etc. but don’t really use it as a mobile device.  Having said that I do like to take it with me……

The reason I take it with me is as a second monitor using MaxiVista which really helps on those evenings working in hotels etc.  You’ll notice from the picture I also have a mobile keyboard/mouse and laptop stand to allow me so save the old neck.

2011 I have no major plans for new tech, I will be using a mifi (my Christmas tech) to allow me to always have access to a personal mobile wifi unit which connects to the internet using my mobile data sim…just need more 3G coverage please

2011 I expect to be productivity focused, my life is generally very hectic and without focus nothing gets done well.  I’m managing a to-do list less and a focus list more and forcing myself to try and avoid distractions…..well its a challenge especially as I actually want to spend quality time at home with the family and enjoying my hobbies as well as being successful professionally.

So here goes…..happy new year!

 

Recently Steve and I have been working on some really interesting work which we’ve had to socialise.  What has been really interesting is the responses it has provoked within the wider organisation, and more importantly within the elements of the organisation which would be most impacted.  I spoke on web meeting today to one group for whom this would cause change, in my typical interactive mode the tablet pen was out and pen functionality in PowerPoint got overused.  New blank slides emerged on top of the slides Steve and I had worked up with explanations of new emerging technologies and how we should adopt them.

[and given Graham’s recent post on attribution, mostly Steve’s slides ]. 

The response was great and the closing comment from the lead was how good it was to see this content and it seemed to me that there was a buzz and motivation around the message, one comment summed it up which was “its great to see that we are doing this”.  Its certainly a tactic I’m going to repeat for future services I’m working on.  So watch out!

When I was looking for some backup to this thought I came across this great article, the key extracts being:

“When processes change, then people who work in the processes must also change. Any given process includes particular roles in which certain knowledge and skills is required. Changes in these roles requires that the people involved change, which may or may not be good news for them.”

For me this is key but its something I have to consciously remind myself of – I shouldn’t have to because I think I’m very much a people person but I still need to remind myself that there is more outside the work you are immersed in.