Nokia's Growth Economy Venture Challenge

Posted: Wed Mar 10 16:42:55 PST 2010

Many experts on IdeasProject have talked about the impact that technology is having on the way people communicate in emerging markets, and the almost boundless ability of communications technology to improve people's lives. 

Nothing like a little cold hard cash to encourage great ideas -- and I wanted to send a shout-out for socially-minded innovators everywhere to consider entering Nokia's Growth Economy Venture Challenge -- which is a MILLION DOLLAR PRIZE for a big idea that is both a great business idea, as well as an idea that demonstrates how mobility can improve the lives of people in developing nations.

There is still time to enter your Big Idea!!  Learn more at: http://www.callingallinnovators.com/venture_challenge.aspx

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Social Media & Haiti

Posted: Wed Jan 20 16:29:12 PST 2010

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Silicon Bangalore!

Posted: Thu Dec 10 16:01:04 PST 2009

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Platform Innovation & Mobility

Posted: Wed Nov 18 23:35:07 PST 2009

Continuing my whirlwind tour, meeting Nokia developers all over the world, I just spent a couple days in Paris and London familiarizing myself with the mobile development landscape there. It's very cool to see how excited these entrepreneurs and developers are to be coming up with new ways to connect and communicate. Following on my observations from Asia a couple weeks ago, I am struck again by how instantaneous and unified certain aspects of the digital communications ecosystem are. Developers in Singapore and Paris, Beijing and San Francisco, New York and London are all excited by the same thing: the unbelievably rapid growth of consumer application demand in the mobile space.
 
Many of our IdeasProject ideators, such as Andreas Weigend, Peter Hirshberg and Christine Herron, have considered and commented upon the effects of technology platforms on the pace of innovation. Cribbing from a number of these Big Thinkers, I've developed my own shorthand for the key drivers of mobile communications innovation: this shorthand has something to do with how we are now in the knee of the curve for mobility, and beginning to mature into increasingly 'computer-like' characteristics. We see this maturation as the processing power of mobile devices reaches critical mass (even at the low and mid-tier levels); as open standards become more pervasive in the technology platforms; in the growing ability of the network to access technology; in a rich and growing ecosystem of APIs; and in reliable tools. The final pieces of the puzzle are falling into place as we observe changing dynamics in the marketplace: consumer excitement growing in the applications space; device experience merging inseparably with the software and application experience; payments solutions being worked out; and various players in the ecosystem seeing their way to ROI (it was not so long ago that Silicon valley VCs were allergic to mobile application deals, due to the uncertain economics).
 
All this adds up to good news for those heavy lifters in the communications innovation world; developers and entrepreneurs scheming in the garage and on the cube farm. We've long suspected that the distinctions between PC and mobility would start to change in important ways. Judging from what I'm hearing from mobile developers, I'd say we're well on our way.

-Valerie Buckingham, Paris

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Social Media in China

Posted: Mon Nov 02 16:29:20 PST 2009

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IdeasCamp

Posted: Wed Sep 02 09:04:00 PDT 2009

I'm still basking in the glow of Nokia IdeasCamp -- an unconference hosted by Nokia in Monterey last weekend with the aim of sharing ideas and creating new friendships. I shared time and conversations with so many amazing people, deepened existing friendships and started new ones. In addition to a seriously switched-on group of invitees from the Web, technology, culture and entertainment worlds, there were many IdeasProject Ideators in attendance, leading sessions on topics as diverse as branded entertainment and the future of games.

You can check out many of the excellent session topics at ideascamp.wikispaces.com

The setting was “summer camp” and the content was amazing. In true unconference spirit (with participants creating the agenda in real-time), we enjoyed and shared incredible sessions on many ideas, including the Internet, mobile technology and culture, as well as quite a lot of participant-generated craziness. We socialized well into the night with midnight cooking madness, where campers wined and dined one-another with dishes created on camp stoves, flights of Belgian beer, and user-created wine combinations.

The summer camp spirit continued with a water fight, robot wars and campfire sing-alongs, then kicked up a notch with a talent show to make some of us wonder if these folks actually needed their day jobs. Other unique IdeasCamp features included a gadget-ethon, musical performances from Dave Stewart and Cindy Gomez, a Nokia point-and-find scavenger hunt, magic and illusions from Lior Manor, and an unbelievable presentation by Itay Talgam surveying the leadership styles of musical conductors. Believe it or not, the above just scratches the surface, as there were so many participant-created activities going on as to be impossible to recount.

This being an event hosted by a Finnish company, we couldn't resist setting up an authentic Finnish Sauna, and providing Finnish treats and food (Fazer and Battery!) to fuel the 24 hour games room. We worked hard to create an environment where people could really get to know one other; an atmosphere of ideas-sharing and creativity. Reading through the workshops created on the 'Big Board' agenda in real-time by our participants, I think we succeeded.

Ideo hosted an incredible brainstorming session, taking people through their design thinking process to tackle the challenge of teen obesity. Andreas Weigend led a session with Itay Talgam on data sharing and music. Jeff Pulver led a session on “Real Time and the State of Now." Jan Chipchase and Rebecca Allen led a session on the opportunities of mobile technology entitled "The Cell Phone is Dead.” Brad Templeton directed a session on why phones should never ring. Cathy Brooks helped us discover and tell our own stories, John Jordan explored the world of metrics in his session on “What Counts,” and Doc Searls set a populist tone with his session entitled “Users Rule.” Most of us left elated, our brains literally stuffed with incredible new ideas. It will take awhile for me to process them all!

I want to offer a heartfelt thank you to the many people who helped pull this event off. Yossi Vardi and Gary Bolles provided indispensable guidance and serious elbow grease (to say nothing of the weekly conference calls leading up to the event). We could not have pulled off IdeasCamp without them. There were literally dozens of people who volunteered to play director roles, all of them rock stars who made IdeasCamp an incredible experience.

Photos of the event can be found on Flickr. And don’t miss Sam Glassenberg's hilarious animation put together in real time at the event. 

Thanks to everyone for an unforgettable weekend!

-Valerie Buckingham

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Fame-ish

Posted: Mon Aug 17 13:45:40 PDT 2009

 

Andy Warhol was wrong.

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” That’s the line from Warhol's classic statement in 1968. But what the Internet has bred isn’t giving people fame; it’s more “fame-ish” – something akin to fame, but without much in the way of consistent benefits. 

What, after all, is fame? Rather than trying to deconstruct it, the Wikipedia community prefers us to focus on “celebrity.” The distinction matters because we’ve changed as a society: Merely having one’s name widely known might be enough to qualify for fame. But celebrity often brings with it a tabloid full of characteristics, often providing detail that gives us deeper insights into a person’s persona – or at least what we imagine that persona to be.

Cyber-celebrity is far different from the historical celebrity of actors and authors, politicians and pundits. A purely online identity is a thing unto itself, a construct of bits and bits alone. Maybe you’re famed for having a gazillion Twitter followers. Or so many Facebook “friends” that every virtual inch of your Wall is covered with shout-outs. 

What’s so different about this era is that any of us who tweet, or blog, or post Facebook updates, can be accused of being fame-ished. Virtually anyone online can find us, friend us, and follow us. Any of us is susceptible to the “cyber-celebrity storm” that comes when droves of people suddenly discover – and create – a popular blog or site or feed.

Is that good? Is this kind of frictionless popularity machine a net positive for society? Certainly many people yearn for a forum and an audience, so finally having the pieces in place to allow for waves of attention to crash over us must be creating some kind of success. But is this the audience we truly want, or deserve?

Maybe this brave new world is simply playing off of our too-human need for recognition... To paraphrase the Bard, “Frailty, thy name is Twitter.”

gB

 

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What's Next, Versus What Matters

Posted: Mon Aug 03 02:37:42 PDT 2009

 

In Silicon Valley, we’re constantly focused on the next big technology. We talk incessantly among ourselves, we try to guess at what’s going to become hot. And eventually we look back with 20/20 hindsight to define why our predictions were accurate. Those of us with a decade or two in the Valley (okay, nearly three decades) have ridden a number of these trends throughout the years.

We’re continually obsessed with what’s next. But I’m not sure we’re always concerned with what matters.

What got me thinking about this: I spent the weekend camping with a family of close friends, and talking with an old buddy about the good old days of the early Internet, fifteen years back. We reminisced about the time that I helped him to build a Web site back in 1995, focused on – believe it or not – fishing in Northern California.

Now I’m not a fisherman: I’ve been told it’s not clear I know which end of a fishing rod to pick up. But at the time it was a great exercise for me in understanding what a small businessperson might be able to do on the Web, and to help out a great friend.

We talked about the Big Ideas of the mid-90’s, some of the hints that could be discerned about the Big Ideas of the day. Remarkably, a few of those ideas actually came true, and in some big ways. I developed the initial idea of Interactive Week magazine back then, betting that the Internet might become big enough to support its first newspaper. That turned out pretty well.

But as we talked, what hit home to me is that in many cases what really mattered, to my friend and to the broader group of people out there, were the long trends – the Big Ideas that took a while to play out. It made me realize that our focus on new technology is inevitably coupled with a need for rapid gratification. Yet it can take years – or decades – for the really important ideas to show their true impact to most people.

What’s great about a lot of our Big Ideas – and the Ideators who devised them – is that they aren’t locked into a specific technology, or the latest buzzword. What they’re trying to define are Big Trends, the kinds of radical capabilities that will change how we live, how we work – and maybe even how we think. And in many cases, the impact of those ideas may not be felt immediately.

A few years ago, I became a little annoyed with this push toward the demand for rapid advances in technology. So, for one conference I helped to produce, I asked an author to focus on “slow innovation” in his talk, deconstructing examples of innovation that played out over a long time. He ended up talking about authors, artists, and others who were successful in their later years, those whom at times took decades to develop their abilities. It was a great counterbalance to the typical Valley push for more / faster / better.

So what’s the takeaway? I’m not saying you shouldn’t go to conferences looking for the latest cool gadget or technology. (I sometimes produce conferences, so to me, that would be, well, counter-productive.) I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t want the latest gadget, the fastest computer, the coolest technology.

But Valerie was right in her post from last week: What I know I need to do more often is to get out of the Silicon Valley echo chamber, and talk with people whose lives aren’t highly dependent on the minute-by-minute knowledge about every single hot product. Andreas Weigend, one of my favorite Ideators, has it right when he talks about relevance. But this is Relevance with a capital R – how much an idea or trend has the ability to truly have an impact on people’s lives. Getting out and talking to people about how technology affects them (or doesn't) is a great way to get an education – not on what’s next – but on what really matters.

 

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Beyond the Echo Chamber

Posted: Sun Jul 26 18:02:28 PDT 2009

All around us culture has been revolutionized by the disruptions from Internet technology. Anyone tracking the share of voice in media, changes in what is considered news, and who is sharing what on behalf of whom, seems to agree things are different now that the communication default has shifted from broadcast to participation. We all agree that the participatory potential of the social Web has changed everything.
 
Or has it?
 
Living in Silicon Valley (which is frequently accused of being a USA-centric echo chamber), amidst people who check their Twitter stream before and after their morning shower, and for whom the professional ethos is more likely to be fulfilled by a Facebook status update than an out-of-office email alert (certainly not a phone call!), I sometimes wonder whether this seismic change brought about by the social Web might be actually be more of a local phenomenon, or at least a local perception; a tempest in a teapot.
 
Just like that “inside baseball” feeling I get when I watch a movie that is “about Hollywood” and made by Hollywood, I frequently wonder what the impact of the social Web really looks like once you divorce it from all the digerati who are in love with it, following each other’s tweets about Twitter, making their living by it, pitching to it, or otherwise biased. Unlike the singular Jeff Pulver, not many people are troubled by the 5000 friend limit on Facebook.
 
IdeasProject is rife with Big Ideas from Big Thinkers who trumpet the irrevocable disruptions being brought about by the rise of the social Web: Craig Newmark asserts that the Net shifts authority to the Crowd; Robert Scoble sees social search revolutionizing how we access information; Reid Hoffman imagines entirely new products being created from social data...These proclamations reverberate at IdeasProject and throughout Internet echo chamber of daily blogs and bylines. So, and I have to ask, is this sound and fury warranted?
 
Last week we interviewed Ross Mayfield, one of the pioneers of wikis, and it was fascinating to hear about the evolution of Socialtext from basic wiki to today's enterprise-grade knowledge tool. I remember sitting down with Ross several years ago, when I was with Innovent, an early-stage venture innovation unit at Nokia, and being so impressed by his enthusiasm for the transcendent nature of participatory authorship. Even then, he thought it would totally change how businesses operate.
 
So, last week, chatting with Ross outside his Socialtext offices in Palo Alto, I had to think, “If the social Web is now truly legit, truly mainstream, and not just some local phenom for the digitally-addicted, then the degree to which it may be transforming the often staid, risk-adverse, ROI-requiring enterprise might be a good gauge.”
 
I think the answer probably bodes well for Team Internet. Ross laid out what I think is a very savvy summation of the shift that he's seeing in the enterprise -- from a “need-to-know” to a “need-to-share” culture. I think anyone tracking the consumer social Web would recognize that sharing inclination (status updates, tweets etc); and the idea that this inclination might be fueling company-wide conversations and new kinds of collaborative behaviors is very cool. If true, this is great news for the workplace. I've occasionally experienced the chilling effect on innovation that comes from a lack of sharing; when hoarding information is thought to be a good strategy for individual advancement, which is the opposite of inspiring; the opposite of “need-to-share”.
 
As folks like Ross continue to confirm that the social Web is creeping into old-school contexts like firms, non-profits, education, the government, the military, I'm starting to believe that “need-to-share” will supplant “need-to know" and my unease about the social Web being a local insider phenom may soon start to fade away.
 
When I get the final word, you'll definitely get the retweet.

- Valerie Buckingham

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How Are We Changing?

Posted: Mon Jul 20 14:41:35 PDT 2009

There’s a raging debate among many of the big ideators of our time, an argument that seems to cry for response from scientists, philosophers and technologists: Has the human race stopped evolving? Or is its evolution in fact accelerating?

We could avoid voicing an opinion, acting like college students haggling over definitions late at night in the dorm: “Uh, what’s evolution?” Let’s agree over our beers that Wikipedia is the tie-breaker: “The change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next.”

Sure, you could argue that we’re pretty much as evolved as we need to be. We’ve had plenty of recent evidence telling us that we’re undeniably in charge of our planet – with perhaps too much control, given our apparent ability to mess with the dial on the global thermostat. And though we continue to discover that individual animal species are pretty good at one or another mental or physical activity, our unique combination of opposable thumbs and big brain cases mean we’re not in near-term danger of being toppled from our lofty perch at the top of the world’s food chain. So what could possibly be the impetus for us to evolve any further?

Yet I find it hard to believe that anyone could ignore the evidence that we’re not only changing as a species, we’re changing at an increasingly accelerating rate. We live longer than we used to: Life expectancy for a newborn has doubled in the past 150 years. We’re taller than we were just a few hundred years ago: The average height in many countries has significantly increased. We have far more genetic diversity than ever before, given the intermingling of our various genetic lines. You can blame some of these changes on environmental factors, but that doesn’t change the fact that our physiology is changing in a variety of dramatic ways.

What got me thinking along these lines was Vernor Vinge’s big idea, that we’re about to become superhumanly intelligent critters (though I don’t think I’ve actually ever called anyone or anything a “critter”). If we treat our technology as part of the mix, then we’re evolving at an even more rapid pace. Our ability to create and use new tools is accelerating, and the power of those tools to connect us in new ways is continually expanding, dramatically increasing our aggregate capabilities as a species. Technology allows us to create new connections that would never have happened: Think of all of the marriages spawned through social networking sites. And linking our collective intelligence is making the human race smarter, allowing us to identify and solve problems – and some might add, to create them – more rapidly.

What’s next is even more seismic. Like it or not, our ability to directly modify our genetic structure isn’t right around the corner: It’s already here. Add in nanotechnology (think little bitty autobots scrubbing our bloodstream of, say, cholesterol) and microcomputing (enhancing our ways of thinking with increasingly-connected technology), and we may need a new word for evolution that accounts for the blinding speed with which we’re about to change.

Gary A. Bolles, San Francisco

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