Innovation/Long Now/Strategy

Paul Saffo on the Rules of Forecasting

Posted on by charlie

Saffo to me was always some sort of weird wizard who thought and saw differently than others. I’ve met folks who channel the future, and it’s always wondrous and bewildering.

Saffo gave a Long Now seminar recently and here (link below) is the summary (alas, I am way way behind on listening or watching them).

A few things here I’d like to throw at the Singularity Techno-Optomists.

Rules bandied about in Saffo’s talk:

  • Wild cards sensitize us to surprise.
  • Change is never linear. (one discontinuity can derail your favourite singular optimism)
  • Look for indicators- things that don’t fit.
  • Look back twice as far.
  • Cherish failure.
  • Be indifferent.
  • Assume you are wrong. And forecast often.
  • Embrace uncertainty.

Go listen to it.

Liunk: Long Views » Blog Archive » Paul Saffo, “Embracing Uncertainty – the secret to effective forecasting”:

Rules of Forecasting

Reflecting on his 25 years as a forecaster, Paul Saffo pointed out that a forecaster’s job is not to predict outcomes, but to map the “cone of uncertainty” on a subject. Where are the edges of what might happen? (Uncertainty is cone-shaped because it expands as you project further into the future— next decade has more surprises in store than next week.)

Strategy/The Narrative

The Coral Reef is sick: Twitter is now Stumblr.

Posted on by charlie

Shel Israel is a long time veteran, on the leading edge of internet services. As a big Twitter user, he’s written an open letter to the Twitter team, speaking for the users, pointing out the precarious position Twitter is moving themselves into as they start having prime-time outages.

Evan is a sly dog who knows well the ups and downs of a start-up. I think he _has_ been honest and open with his thinking on a wide range of entrepreneurial desires and decisions.

Yet, the coral reef is sick. Evan and Biz and Jack need to get back on track, not pull a Jaiku,* and grow-up by setting Twitter on a solid financial path.

Link: [via @alexdc]: Global Neighbourhoods: An Open Letter to the Twitter Guys:

To: Evan Williams & Biz Stone

RE: Fix it before we nix it

*Hm, with Jaiku and Twitter stumbling in the past few months, now is the time for the next service to come and pounce on these grumbling networks of friends and help them migrate en masse.

The Narrative

Very frank CEOs

Posted on by charlie

As part of my new job, I need to get back into the world of, ugh, corporate blogs.

Well, seems like things have moved pretty far since I was watching the scene back in 2005.

For example, this post from Johnathan Schwartz is quite well written and insightful and not what you would expect from a CEO of a large company who just spent $1B on an acquisition.

Link: Jonathan Schwartz’s Blog:

In a vortex. That’s the only way to describe the past thirty days, during which we closed out our second quarter, and put together the transaction to acquire MySQL. How’d it all start?

And then there’s GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons. Can you imagine Nokia’s OPK writing posts like this?

Link: Super Bowl Ad rejected! Fox: “Beaver” is verboten! Hot candids of Danica & Candice.

Last week, FOX network rejected Go Daddy’s Super Bowl ad because an actor referred to a beaver – a replica beaver that was, in fact, being portrayed – as a “beaver.” We were told that under no circumstance could we use that word, and if we didn’t say the word “beaver,” the ad would be approved.

Heh.

The Narrative

Nice quarter for the company

Posted on by charlie

Nokia just announced their quarterly earnings. Not bad.

What was astounding, as usual, was the scale of sales. Cameras – 200 million? Wow.

Link: Nokia Q4 2007 Net Sales of EUR 15.7 Billion, EPS of EUR 0.47 (EUR 0.47 Excluding Special Items): PRNewswire Business News – MSN Money:

In converged devices, according to Nokia estimates, the total industry volume reached approximately 122 million units in 2007, compared to an estimated 80 million units in 2006. Nokia’s own converged device volumes in 2007 grew to 60.5 million units, compared to 39.0 million units in 2006. In 2007, Nokia was the world’s largest manufacturer of cameras and music enabled devices, selling approximately 200 million camera devices and approximately 146 million music enabled devices. Nokia shipped approximately 38 million Nokia Nseries devices and approximately 7 million Nokia Eseries devices during 2007.

Innovation/Strategy/The Narrative

Facebook is a persistent Julie McCoy

Posted on by charlie

I was trying to figure out why I can’t seem to get into Facebook. Now I think I know why.

I don’t like how Facebook is an annoying persistent overly intrusive Julie McCoy.

For those not in the know, Julie McCoy was the activity director on the TV show ‘The Love Boat’. As activity director, her job was to get people to mingle (and, apparently, fall in love).

Well, most of the Facebook apps that I’ve seen or been invited to join have been gimmicky like a cheezy-activities director. Also, all, All, ALL of them seem to make it way easy spam anyone I have ever sent an email to, like a client or some unknown sucker on an organization mailing list whom I do not even know.

<dripping sarcasm>Wow. That’s proper social etiquette.</dripping sarcasm>

I understand that Facebook wants to be the electricity that fuels all these cool apps (oooh, oodles of comments there, too). But, really, they should have some standards.

And don’t give me this ‘openness’ krap. Facebook shouldn’t mar their brand with krappy stuff.

Example: If I said that I was going to build a pork-fat rendering plant across your street, you’d freak out and wave the zoning laws in front of my face, right?

Same here.

I never used Facebook ‘in the day’. But, I spoke with a lot of users early last year (pre-platform) and all they spoke about was connecting to people through various forms of messaging, direct human to human communication.

And these post-platform apps don’t even act as useful social objects that trigger conversations, either.

I’ve been fighting starry-eyed Web 2.0 wannabes for a long time to get them to realize that the wildness at Facebook is not something to emulate. Sure, openness is great, but let’s not let the developers build willy-nilly and mess with a brand we are working hard to build and keep.

Zoning laws can be helpful and stimulate, too. I made the mistake of calling it ‘curating’. That smacked too much of untouchable objects behind a window. A colleague suggested ‘steward’, promoting the good and discouraging the krap.

What do you think?