MFIs: where to go next

If you do not have time to read Muhammad Yunus book "Creating a world without poverty", I recommend this article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review:


This is what I got from the article:
- I like to think about these things in terms of ecosystems, where there needs to be a balance between all players. And therefore there should be a cap on the overall returns that an investor can get from micro-finance, and the goal should be to keep these rates at a max that would be close to typical average market returns (S&P for example). This guarantees sustainability from the investor prospective, they are not "losing" money when investing in MFIs, but at the same time higher returns should be not acceptable because then other parts of the ecosystem are getting squeezed. What the investor gets for his money is that he will not loose, and then he is contributing to helping the poor by choosing to invest in the right places instead of going for the usual suspects (oil and guns on the stock market to be extreme).
This is where there is good co-existence between the 2 worlds within the larger global ecosystem, because the markets provide a good benchmark for what is reasonable. Then the decision from the investor prospective becomes a choice between getting high returns from companies whose impact on the world is not considered, or reasonable returns from companies who also do good somehow. An analogy here is what Peer-to-peer lending (prosper.com for example) is doing today, where people decide what level of return they want from one person/project or another. The good news from what I have read is that borrowers tend to get better rates there than from regular loans, because investors value good credit more than a bank would, and they are happy to keep their return "reasonable" if it can help these "good" borrowers.

- Once this is established, I see MFIs being a platform as 2 things (what the article promotes):
-- a blueprint, with processes and governance that can be applied to other under-served areas. This is what I think the examples in the article talking about Grameen Healthcare and Grameen Renewable Energy are about. This is horizontal growth, getting into other "markets" where similar recipes can be applied.
-- and then each individual MFIs is its own platform in the sense that it is a social network of people who work together and share a chart of ethics (the glue between these people) that guarantees the success of their effort. This social network as a platform can be expanded from the original mission to fulfill other needs of the people within the group. Call it vertical growth, expanding from providing loans to providing insurance for example. This is where the reinvestment of profits above the reasonable rate of return come into play.

Clearly a good way to grow from where we are with Microfinance to a better world overall. And very much in sync with the Entrepreneur Commons project I have launched recently :-)

"Strategy and the Internet" revisited

In these times when economic trouble seems to be looming (did you hear about budget cuts and rising cost of gas?), and when the hype over the web20 revolution seem to have been another mini-bubble, it is interesting to go back to the basics. And a good place to look is this article "Strategy and the Internet" that Michael Porter wrote in the Harvard Business Review in March 2001. The lesson from the article is that we should not lose the focus on strategic development and competitive advantage. It was true then and it is true now. But in the light of what has happened since then, a few things should be added to the previous analysis.

Here are some exerts from the article:
>>
The great paradox of the Internet is that its very benefits –making information widely available; reducing the difficulty of purchasing, marketing, and distribution; allowing buyers and sellers to find and transact business with one another more easily–also make it more difficult for companies to capture those benefits as profits. (...) The openness of the Internet,with its common standards and protocols and its ease of navigation, makes it difficult for a single company to capture the benefits of a network effect. (...) In general, however, new Internet technologies will continue to erode profitability by shifting power to customers.
(...) As all companies come to embrace Internet technology, moreover, the Internet itself will be neutralized as a source of advantage. (...) Established companies will be most successful when they deploy Internet technology to reconfigure traditional activities or when they find new combinations of Internet and traditional approaches. (...) Only by integrating the Internet into overall strategy will this powerful new technology become an equally powerful force for competitive advantage.
<<

This remains true if you consider the Internet as a technology, which seem to be the "lens" Michael Porter used when writing his article. But I believe that we need to consider also that the Internet has become more than just a technology, it is now also about people, the famous social networks that appear everywhere and are today the next hot thing, the "ConsumActors" as Xavier Comtesse calls them.
When Michael Porter states that "new Internet technologies will continue to erode profitability by shifting power to customers", he was not taking into account (who could at the time?) the value that customers can add, the famous "user generated content" that can actually help boost profitability instead.

The good news is that in the end, we can all agree that the answer is that "only by integrating the Internet into overall strategy will this powerful new technology become an equally powerful force for competitive advantage".
And for this, Xavier Comtesse (see my previous posts about his work here and here) is offering us 2 very powerful tools:

• A matrix to understand a market or how to deploy a product strategy that includes customers in the value chain
• And now a Value Chain 2.0, to add on top of the "Prominent Applications of the Internet in the Value Chain" that Michael Porter show in his article

This latest document (Value Chain 2.0) is a great way to clarify how we should consider the management of the ecosystem, by including both internal and external resources into the equation, and by considering how the data+knowledge should shared as the main strategy driver: the company as the underlying platform supporting one large ecosystem rather than a fortress of employees interacting with customers and suppliers. If you had any doubt that there is no other choice than to do it, now is the time to take a look again. Thank you Xavier for clarifying all this for us...

The Entrepreneur Commons™

After looking at VCs, and after managing the European American Angel Club for 2 years now, I have come to the conclusion that entrepreneurs are not really being served properly when it comes to seed funding. And I would like therefore to propose the concept of an Entrepreneur Commons to help with the issue.

Here is the story:

I have seen are roughly 3 types of angels:

• The super-angel, who has enough money to be a one-man show VC playing with his own money (and maybe money from a few friends). Either he is known by the VC community, and he is treated well by them because he can source good deals for the later-stage rounds, or he has enough money within his ecosystem that he can help entrepreneurs all the way through.
  
• The social type, who has money and like toying with the idea that he could invest and may do so one day. He likes attending meetings and talking about it, but the reality is that he never really invests in anything.
• And then you have everybody else in between these 2 types.

These last group of angels is facing a lot of issues with the model as it is today:

• Angels their put money down and they have no clue when it will come back (if ever). Typical time before a cash event is 7 to 9 years if you believe angels who have done it for a while
• When investing in early stage, they have no real data to figure out a valuation, so any equity deal is based on arbitrary valuations where somebody is getting a bad deal on one side (angel) or the other (entrepreneur)
• If the business requires additional funding, Angels are being squeezed of the deals by VCs, who impose liquidation-preference clause
• And finally because you are just an Angel after all and not a fund, you are limited in your resources and cannot really spread yourself into a number of deals that is statistically relevant.
  

So in the end, they are playing the lottery, and they know it. And because they are playing the lottery, they want the reward to be as big as possible if they win, so they tend to shoot for companies with a potential for return of at least 10x the investment.

From the entrepreneur side, this leaves out of the system a whole lot of very good startups with very promising businesses but not "hot" enough. This is even more critical these days when you see an emergence of "social entrepreneurs" who are interested in making money, but whose focus (and measure of success) is also to help the community one way or another. They are not really non-profit, so most of the time they do not qualify for grants, but they are not the 10x type either. Meanwhile they clearly deserve help.

The way I see out of this situation is the Entrepreneur Commons:
A not-for-profit social network of entrepreneurs providing financing for early stage company through debt guaranteed by a mutual guarantee fund. The financial risk is mitigated by the mutual guarantee fund. The risk on the "management" side is mitigated by the social network: loans are by invitation only, so you will have to be approved by your peers to get in. And the typical scalability issue faced by general partners in a VC fund (which causes the famous "funding gap") is also resolved by the social network: the size of loans and the number of entrepreneurs involved is no longer a problem, and if anything it helps stabilize the results of the group as a whole.

The project is starting to get some traction, and we have been getting a lot of positive feedback - the recent post from my friend Jessica is a good example of the reactions I get.
The goal is now to confirm the blueprint for this model, so that it can be replicated anywhere. We have started looking for funds so that we can make loans soon. Stay tuned...

It's time for geeks to learn about design thinking

One thing about Web20 is that it has clearly brought us to a commoditization of services.
With open source tools and with the decreasing price of computers, it has become very easy and very cheap to build a service in a few weeks. Along with that is the fact that if you have an idea, chances are that someone else somewhere else has had or will have soon the same idea. It is very common to see similar ideas appear within a six months window in various places around the world.
Ideas are all over the place, technology is cheap: online services are just another consumer product.

So how will you make your idea/service stand in front of similar others? My take is it's all in the design of it.
Not design as in cute logo or a weird name that you hope people will remember, but design as in thorough analysis of what users expect and how to best present your service to them. We are talking user interface, thinking about design in anything that will be presented to the consumer, and thinking about how they will use the service to make it as easy as possible for them, including intuitive, pleasant, and efficient. The kind of things Apple did for smartphones with the iPhone, a beautiful demonstration of the power of design to other manufacturers who were focusing on functionality without wondering why very little of it was really usable when they were sticking to the computer metaphor and its ridiculously complex navigation on small screens.

If you are thinking, or in the process, of creating yet another web20 service (and we are just seeing the beginning of the services that web20/30 will bring about), you should consider very seriously investing in design before you do anything. Design thinking will help you confirm who your audience is, how and what you should communicate with them and them with you, making it a complete and coherent experience. And therefore it will help you fine tune the product/service you will create. Or in the worse case it may save you a lot of time and money by allowing you to discover sooner rather than later that your idea was not that great after all. Doing anything else is keeping closer to playing the lottery, and hoping blindly that users will like what you came up with. Some are lucky and win, most don't.

Think design!

Non-profit as another step into participative democracy

I attended last week a very interesting seminar at the Stanford Center for Social Innovation by the Stanford Social Innovation Review and FSG on Evaluation for Foundations: how Foundations should measure the results of what they do so that they can learn from the process.
I had always been thinking of non-profits and foundations as charity organizations picking up issues where the government would not or could not go: environment, social matters, etc...
What I had not realized is how this process can be used in a very proactive way to get things done and act where politicians seem to be unable to do anything. What foundations do, when it is proven to work, can and should be publicized and shared widely so that their impact goes beyond the point fixes to benefit the population at large.

A striking example of this was how Tom Siebel worked on the Meth issue in Montana with his Meth Project Foundation:
- The government approach was a typical law enforcement one, resulting in the filling up of jails (50% of adult population in Montana jails is related to the meth issue) and no real progress on the ground: despite this effort, meth consumption was on the rise and kids were not really aware of the dangers of using it, some even though it had beneficial effect on memory, the whole thing costing the State about $100M every year.
- Tom approach of the problem was a marketing one: Meth is a product, and consumers are consumers, therefore the best thing is to reach them as you would reach consumers, and give them the relevant information that will allow them to make an educated choice when it comes to buying and consuming. The results of the ad campaigns (TV, radio, press) and after $15M between 2005 and 2006 was a decline in Meth use in the work place by 70 percent, meth related crime has decreased 53%.
Beyond fixing the meth issue in Montana, what Tom did is that he made a very interesing point: he picked an issue, devided a plan to resolve it, worked out the kinks and documented the process and results, and he is now licensing the "platform" to other States so that they can resolve the issue themselves in other places.

This is very close to what Muhammad Yunus is pushing in his book "Creating a Worlds Without Poverty" in the concept: real things come from people who live in the real world, and so the best way up is to have non-profit collaborate with for profit while governments just provide the infrastructure within which all this can happen.

While business with Web20 is starting to include consumers into the value chain (wikipedia, delicious, digg, google maps edits, etc...) there is no questions in my mind that the same can happen with government processes, where citizens can have a lot more impact than they used to: it is all a question of the data you can access, and how you can document what is being done.

The answer is in the network

Just ran into something very interesting that is proving one year after it was written to be as predicted where social networking is going:
Rich Gordon is right: with the proliferation of social networks of all kinds what will make the difference for me is not which destination site you can attract me to, but rather which data you are able to send to me wherever I hangout. So forget Facebook (or not if this is where I am most of the time), just find where the right place/network is for me and talk to me there. The future belongs to those who have the right social engineering tools to do this.
And if you want to get into this, eCairn is a good place to start: www.ecairn.com

Future of small business forecast report released

Just released: the 3rd edition of the Future of Small Business report. It is called The New Artisan Economy. This was a joint effort by IFTF, Intuit and Emergent Research. The report and related materials are at: http://www.intuit.com/futureofsmallbusiness.

Politics within the Corporation - how bad things happen and nobody feels responsible

The lastest fiasco from Societe Generale is another good exemple of how the political game is played within the corporation:

- let's start by saying that the whole corporate system is conceived to promote people who do not take risk: taking a chance and trying things means taking a chance that it will not succeed, and when the time comes to select a candidate for the next level up, if you took a chance and it did not work, you will be eliminated in favor of the guy with the perfect track record, the guy who did not take a chance.
Granted this is not the complete picture because you also need to ride the various hypes as they come, so that you are always seen at the right place at the right time even though you are not doing anything (the beauty of delegation and getting credits for what your reports do right)

- In such an environment doing nothing also means letting your reports do things that may not be 100% ethical as long as you can maintain an ability to claim ignorance. If the results are good, you will benefit from it, and if the results are bad, you can always join the chorus and protest at the discovery of the facts.
Nobody is fundamentally bad, but it is human to do things that benefit you as long as you know (or think) that there will be no serious consequences to your actions. And not everybody has the same level of tolerance when it comes to evaluating the acceptable from the bad.

- In the end, the dilution of responsibility is built into the system, and it becomes very easy for everybody to never feel really responsible for what is happening. And this is how you get the Enrons, Societe Generale and many other stories that don't always make it to the front page of the International Press.

I worked for many years in this type of environment, I have seen it happen at a small scale, and from where I am today I still do see it happen at a much larger scale in some corporations.

Now: why do we let these things happen? This is the power of status quo: when issues pop up, the press makes a lot of noise and a few bad people are punished, and maybe the corporation is shut down, but who cares if this is not really affecting me. Or is it? But then who am I to make a difference?
The very sad thing about all this is that when the large corporation loses, the real losers are the little guys who have their retirement in mutual funds.
Should we care about these little guys?

Something becomes wrong with Corporations when the entrepreneur who started them disappear behind investors or even worse behind a multitude of public stock holders who do not really have much details (and much less control) on what these corporation are doing! Back to my previous post, let's hope that the changes brought by Social Networking and Peer-to-peer collaboration will bring us better systems to organize how we work together...

Open Business: a world of guilds

Social Networks made a big splash, and we are still trying to recover from the hype (where is Facebook going?). But while it is nice to share pictures and videos, this is not much more than entertainment and another cool way to waste time.

Meanwhile I also see the workforce getting organized and social networks with a purpose. There was the grassroot movement during the previous presidential election, the voting machine incident with Diebold against a network of activists as described by Yochai Benkler in "The Wealth of Networks". And all this is now getting corporate: I watched the coworking movement start in San Francisco and expand all over the Globe, I see efforts at the infrastructure level, such as FON, and I see discussions around social networks of business development consultants, CFOs, developers, designers, tech support experts, etc... Soon you will be able to do business by just getting resources from the relevant network. You will pick them from each other based on their rating, how far they are from people in your direct network and how much they cost.

Michel Bauwens talks about P2P civilization and Xavier Comtesse talks about Direct Economy (and even Direct Anything)
I see the emergence of a world of guilds of specialists, similar to the ecosystems that John Seely Brown describes in his book "The Only Sustainable Edge".

Ultimately, I see a lot of opportunities: if this is where we are going, what else do we need to make the guilds system completely functional?

Web30: Xavier Comtesse was right

While "semantic web" is a very confusing name, and web30 will tell you nothing, I finally got a better understanding of what this is about (sorry if I am a bit slow) when I read the Semantic Wave 2008 Report from project10x.

And I realized that the matrix presented by Xavier Comtesse one year ago (see my previous post on this) is a very good lens that helps figure out what this is going on:

Xavier's matrix looks at 2 axis:
1- Knowledge
-- raw data
-- data with context
-- data with context over time that leads to
-- modelisation and then to
-- forecast

2- User involvement in the value chain:
-- receive info
-- pick and choose (self service)
-- customize (Do-it-yourself)
-- co-design
-- co-creation

From what I see, web10 was about getting raw data on the web, and providing tools to pick and choose. Web20 was about connecting people. Now ajax, mashups, geotagging (connecting intelligence) are giving people the ability to customize how the data is delivered to them (do-it-yourself), and so what is coming next becomes fairly obvious when you look at the matrix. What worked to explain the success of eTrade also works at the macro level to explain what is happening.

If you haven't read this yet, I recommend you look at what Xavier presents: http://thinkstudio.com/text/directeconomy_slides.pdf

The web as an education tool for the next elections

I just ran into a very interesting website, still beta but something worth looking out:
Check out http://www.select2008.com.

The service helps users select their top candidates for the US Presidential Election by answering 20-30 questions. We use advanced analytics to ask the most relevant and selective questions to zero in on your top candidate, from a database of over 1,500 questions on policy and programs. It is both fun and enlightening.

You can view your results at any time in the process and compare how much in agreement you are with candidates on all types of issues, such as the war in Iraq , healthcare, taxes, social issues, etc. You can also register and then compare your results with your friends. The site should be integrated with Facebook shortly.

Isn't the web a beautiful tool?

Venture Capital: the truth behind the myth

After spending quite some time helping entrepreneurs, I am know convinced that the VC model has evolved to a point where it is starting to die from too much success, creating another bubble in its own world:

- Too much money, too little time, resulting in smart people being hired to track the deals, but who have no clue what entrepreneurship is about and spend too much time in spreadsheets. Not a good recipe for success.

- Too much money resulting in a funding gap getting bigger and bigger: in 2006 the average initial investment from VC firms went from 5.9M$ to 6.2M$, and VC firms only invested in 700 "seed and early stage" deals, while angels invested in about 50,000 of these. Big money, later stage deals also means that the return are going to be less, how often can you expect a 10x from a C series investment?

- And beyond the returns on one deal or another, the results overall are not that great: VCs themselves will tell you that out of 10 deals 4 will die, 3 will do so-so and only 3 will do ok to very good. But even worse, the rest of the world will confirm that something is wrong: if you take a look at the Inc magazine top 500 companies, in 2006 only 7% of these were funded by VCs or private equity. So it means that 93% of the fastest growing companies were not part (did not get in or fell out of) of the famous and so well advertised VC process - VCs have been missing something.

- Even VCs are getting tired: raising funds is getting more difficult, and the business is getting very tedious, getting away from the passion of entrepreneurship (what I believe the "old school VCs" were about) and into a more austere financial world (the smart but arrogant MBA with no clue about what is happening in the trenches)

So what next?

- While VCs seem to be lost, the angel community is thriving: about the same dollar amount as done by VCs is invested by angels each year, but it is done by 250,000 to 300,000 individuals investing in many more deals at much smaller amounts. The good news is that if I go back to my 93% of the Inc top 500 companies, the average initial startup capital for these companies was $75K. So it seems angel investment is the right place to be. And these angels are now getting organized into angel groups to spread risk and help scale (sharing the work of screening, due diligence etc...), and they are starting themselves to raise funds (typically from individuals) to increase their reach if needed.

- Angels are getting the good deals: while I have no numbers on this, I have heard VCs tell me that their best deals were referred by angels rather than by other VCs. And I see now VC firms trying to get back into the early stage through scheme such as Charles River Venture Quickstart program, or YCombinator.

- So while it is easier and more sexy for the press to keep talking about the successes of famous VCs (Stories about Yahoo, Google, Skype and who's next?), the real work of value creation is being done somewhere else.

- Beyond the investment aspect, I think the key to success is that we are talking about individuals who are often time contributing their experience directly into the business, mentoring the entrepreneur through his/her own venture. People investing in people, something that looks like the P2P work we see happening in the Open source community, but applied to entrepreneurship. My bet is that this is where the future is...

PS: thank you to my partners Jean-Xtophe and Alberto at Melcion Chassagne et Cie for some of the homework on numbers

Pipl.com

Thank you to my friend Erik for pointing out pipl.com. Yet another people search engine, but with a better UI than what I have seen until now, and an impressive coverage. I was able to find my French friends in there. Scary thing to see how exposed we are - we know that there is no privacy on the internet, but it is always a lesson to see how true it is...

Quickeo is getting visibility

An article in a French magazine on Quickeo: http://www.lexpansion.com/art/32.0.161330.0.html
The service is getting momentum :-)
The hard part for this service is that it is not for geeks, but for the mass of non-geek users who still need an easy solution to share their pictures and videos, and still rely on email rather than hyped websites to do so. And these people are not as easy to find as your average geek, because they do not hang around the web as much. Slowly but surely Quickeo is getting to them, so stay tuned...

Forget Skype, GizmoProject rules

Just came back from a few days off to find that Skype had taken over my machine and would not give it back to me. After the poor performance Skype had a few weeks ago, for which they sent an apology and a credit of a few days for the "Skype Pro" user, I now discover that Skype is using my bandwidth and my CPU when I am not around, and keeps it when I come back. My machine was slow, and my CPU running at 90% for Skype. I understand that they would do that when I am not using the PC, but if it keeps creeping down the system when I am using it, then I have a problem.
Meanwhile GizmoProject quality of calls is just as good if not better, and it is built on an open system, using SIP numbers that can be used across network. If I needed something to convince me to switch this is it, I am now a GizmoProject user. You can find me there at the same ID.

Vator.tv - a new way to do PR for your business

It is now possible for companies to upload a video version of their PR pitch on Vator.tv. A great concept with many opportunities: for investors to save time when looking for deals, for entrepreneurs to showcase themselves in yet another setting.
I have tried the process for Quickeo and it is pretty cool...

Quickeo viewer has been updated to support blogs better

In the album url provided from the Quickeo client (in the Manage screen, click on the URL tab on the right side of the screen), all you need to do is replace www.quickeo.net/qViewer/qViewer.php?key=blabla by www.quickeo.net/qViewer/qViewer4b.php?key=blabla, and add the option scrolling='no'

We will work on something more user friendly in the future, but at least it can be done now :-)

From the web2.0 conference 1st keynote

The news from the first keynote at the web2.0 conference is that there is nothing new:
- Jeff Bezos is working on OnDemand infrastructure, he is a believer of the web as a platform. Software as a Service has been around long enough that I would agree with the idea that the trend is here to stay.
- Beyond this and despite the fact that there is a lot of people attending, not much was said that was a real revelation. Web2.0 is about collaboration, and building blocks are being worked on, but we are still looking for where all this is going to go, and the energy level was not exactly what I expected.
Maybe more will come out of the next few days...

MoveOn's Virtual Town Hall Meeting on Iraq: Apr. 10, 2007

For me Web 2.0 is more about social change than technology, as brilliantly explained by Yochai Benkler in the Wealth of Networks. And MoveOn.org has been a major player in trying to capitalize on this trend. It will be interesting to see what happens with this next one:
>>
MoveOn.org Political Action will hold three "virtual town hall meetings" in 2007 to introduce presidential candidates to MoveOn members and publicize candidates' positions on top issues facing the American people.

The first virtual town hall, on April 10, will focus on the war in Iraq. Subsequent meetings will discuss health care and energy/global warming. Each will bring together thousands of people at house parties around the country to participate through an interactive online presentation.

Quickeo for my blog

The real thing for sharing spreadsheets

Google has tried, but their Google spreadsheet is not really great, nothing I can use in real life.
But there is a start-up who has an interesting solution you may want to check:
http://www.xcellery.com

What is nice about this service is that you do not have to be online to access the info. You access the spreadsheets through your regular Excel software, but the data is synchronized in the back so that the other users you are working with can also see the updates as they happen.

The best I have seen so far on the matter....

Another attempt at managing online reputation - Venyo

I just ran into this very interesting start-up working on reputation. What is nice about their approach is that they tie ratings to tags, so it allows for very flexible rating of people.

www.venyo.org

blog.venyo.org

http://www.venyo.org/download/venyo_reputation_service_presentation.pdf

A service to watch...

The Quickeo website is finally open

For those of you who want to share videos, photos, music etc... with friends (and only with friends, not the whole word), Quickeo is finally available for download. The software is slick (I am on the team, so check it for yourself), and it is addictive. I have to admit that after playing with it for sometime, I really like sending quickeomails to my friends and family, much nicer than plain text :-) Check it out, let me know what you think...

Something really cool from the Gizmo project team

Check this out, it is now possible to call from your browser at gizmocall.com
I love the idea, one less client I have to load at startup...

Protest in 2nd life

A good story here about somebody virtually protesting on 2nd life.
I really believe that 2nd life would be a perfect place to do conflict resolution. No yelling, no fighting, no killing, just sit and listen to the other (if you are willing to get some progress), then take your turn to speak...

A great report on the Future of Small Business

The corporate social contract is broken (no more job for life, much less benefits, etc...) and personal business is on the rise, as a way to provide better life-balance or options for baby-boomers reaching retirement age. If you want to get a glimpse at what the future of work is, the Institute of the Future has produced a very interesting report.
With the new trends, comes a need for coworking spaces such as workclub, and comes collaborative entrepreneurship. Something to look forward to...

2007 - the year for reality check

After a year with a lot of bubble feelings (YouTube acquisition, hype around social networking, etc...), we are now entering into a year of reality checks. Many start-ups have been launched but I have the feeling that the excitement around social networking is cooling down. While the technology is much more accessible, and the price to get a website going much lower, it remains really hard to build a strong community of users, and there is always this unavoidable need to bring value but also revenue at some point.
Interesting enough, it could also be the beginning of the end of the free. While it is really cool to get all these services for free, developers, designers, managers all need to pay rent at one point or another. So I believe we will see more and more of paying services, and I'll be the first to enjoy paying for something that brings me value and does not have the same level of noise that you get with all these ads.
Signs of this trend:
- Google results are being questioned - can you trust page rank? and how are search results being impacted by paying ads?
- Skype is starting to raise their rate, and free calls are being changed into monthly flat rate offers
- Bitwine and Wengo are trying to help people monetize their knowledge, which otherwise could not be delivered online outside of free forums

The end of the free does not mean the end of freedom on the internet though. Actually I see it as an opportunity for entrepreneurs to re-organize around a more sustainable model, so that individuals can better compete against large corporation and collaborative entrepreneurship can take a stronger hold.
So I am ready for another exciting year, and hopefully you are too :-)

Open Source for Hardware

Another interesting idea in the area of crowdsourcing: open source approach to hardware design.
http://newassignment.net/blog/nichole_altmix/dec2006/11/open_source_move

Tech lessons learned from the wisdom of crowds | CNET News.com

Crowdsourcing is making its way into the corporation. A very interesting article on how this is happening:

Read more at news.com.com/2100-1014_...

histoire2femme.com

A very interesting discussion with David Sifry, from Technorati, on what is happening on the web and where this is all going.Thank you Estelle for organizing the meeting and capturing this moment.

Read more at http://histoire2femme.typepad.fr/histoire2femme/2006/12/interview_de_da.html

NewsTrust - Our Guide to Good Journalism - Beta Home

A great service launched today, which brings some balance in the distribution of news through a rating system that helps evaluate the neutrality of news articles. Definitely something that everybody should subscribe to...

Read more at beta.newstrust.net/webx...

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » BitWine Gives Access To Those In The Know

Finally something that will help unleash the voice services market, one of the huge potential offered by Skype that had not really been exploited so far.

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

Smart Mobs: Boston Launches Small Business Incentive Card Program

This is great news, the Interra project is finally getting more visibility. This program has the potential to change how we function within our community, let's hope more implementations will follow...

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

Paris blogue t'il?

Maybe this is me being French, but I am amazed at the amount of activity in France around everything web2.0. I see people involved in Coworking, Pinkomarketing, I see great start-ups being represented at shows in the US. Maybe something that has to do with the online culture of people who were raised with Minitel?

I'll will not be in Paris for LeWeb3.0, but I will at least get a glimpse of who is involved in these events the week before:



I will be looking for the begining of an answer there, why so many French are involved in this? Is it me or is there really something?

I love Google :-)

I was not impressed by Google acquisition of YouTube, but since wikis are a key component of building a better web I really like this one:


>>

JotSpot is now part of Google

We're writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users. More importantly, we want to reassure you that you'll continue to have uninterrupted access to your account. Both Google and JotSpot are committed to supporting our customers, and we understand that users have invested a lot in our products. In the near-term, we're focused on migrating JotSpot to Google's systems and datacenters. We'll work hard to make that move as seamless as possible so that customers won't be inconvenienced.

Why is Google acquiring JotSpot?

Google shares JotSpot's vision for helping people collaborate, share and work together online. JotSpot's team and technology are a strong fit with existing Google products like Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Groups.

What does this mean for JotSpot customers?

We believe that joining Google will accelerate our team's vision of offering users the best collaboration platform on the web. Google shares that vision and presents us with the world's best environment for delivering on it. We'll be taking advantage of Google's world-class systems infrastructure and operations expertise to ensure that access to your JotSpot is fast and reliable. We can't share any of our plans publicly just yet, but we can tell you that we're incredibly excited about the possibilities. We can't think of a better company to have been acquired by.

Will paying customers still be charged?

We will no longer be billing customers for the use of the service. Although you will still have use of the product at your current pricing plan, we won't charge you anymore when your current billing cycle expires.

What about security and privacy?

Your data is yours — that doesn't change at Google. We will continue to work to ensure the privacy and security of your data. Furthermore, Google is as committed to privacy and security as we are. Since the user information you provided to JotSpot will soon be transferred to Google as part of their acquisition of JotSpot, we want to provide you with the opportunity to retrieve your user information and cease usage of the JotSpot service before the transition. If you do not wish to continue using JotSpot, send an email to privacy@jot.com in the next sixty days and we will reply with instructions for retrieving your user information.

Answers to more frequently asked questions are available at http://www.jot.com/. If you have any other questions, please email support@jot.com.

In closing, we wanted to offer our sincere gratitude to you — our customers — for believing in us and helping us achieve success. We look forward to continuing that relationship at Google.

Best wishes,
The JotSpot Team

Blog for Change

A very interesting approach to mobilizing people to help influence the next election: the Blog for Change campaign from MoveOn.org, using blogs as a way to spread to word and recruit volunteers. Something everybody should consider doing...

Is the VC model broken?

Daniel Primack asks this question in his latest newsletter: Sevin Rosen Funds has indefinitely postponed fundraising for its tenth fund, which had been scheduled to hold a first close this week. This is being treated as big news in VC...

Interesting to see that some VCs are discovering that adding value in an investment should not be just adding money at a late stage, but rather getting involved early to help the company grow.
The "old school" VCs were doing, they may have to go back to it...

Read more

The Direct Economy document has been summarized in English

Following up on an earlier post , I have summarized the document published by Xavier Comtesse on Direct Economy .
The summary is available on the Cooperation Commons website here . A must read if you try to make sense of what is happening today with media, politics, and social networking in general...

Open Services

There is a discussion going on on the Open Business site regarding Open Services and what they should look like.
On this matter, as I see it, there is what would be ideal (from the theoritical point of view) and then there is economic reality.

We have gotten used to get all services for free, thank you Google and co for my email, calendar, text editor, web pages, blog, forums, photo+audio+video storage etc… This is great and it does cost money (lots of money if you look at how much YouTube was pouring down the tube every month). And while it would be nice to have truly open services, something where the company that owns the infrastructure behaves ethically (The famous Google “do no evil”), then I think that the fake open is a good compromise if it can keep the model sustainable.

It is the same concept as for open source: you get the code, but the experts who built it or improved it get paid to support you using it. Nothing is really free, just easier to access even if you do not have a large budget but lots of time instead. For Open Service, you get the service, but you agree that the content will be on that one website so that they can benefit from the mass effect to get some revenue from somewhere. After all we are talking Infrastructure, this is a better alternative than having the government provide it (and charge us taxes for the service).
My concern is actually that we are not even sure that this model is completely sustainable for the long term. YouTube was said to be loosing money all the way to the day they got acquired. Google is getting so big that they may end up imploding: just think of the payroll they carry for example, how much innovation can you sustain with such a big organization? Could it be why Google Video did not really take off (too much friction internally) and why they had to buy YouTube instead to keep the motion going?

A solid underlying infrastructure is healthy, having large companies to take care of it is ok: we have today at least 3 big players to keep the competition going (MSFT, Yahoo, Google). And it may come a time when P2P technology will allow us to get the same infrastructure from home computers all connected together and sharing resources (a la Skype for example). But even then we will have to figure a way to pay for these computers and these connections. There is no such thing as a free lunch…

Having said this, I am also sure that the day people really want to edit the content that is available and the issue of licensing is clear enough (a whole other subject) that they can do so without problem, then it will be easy for a GooTube to add functionality to let users do this. And if they want to keep their audience they will probably do it too, because somebody else could offer the option and attract users away from them.

The key to an healthy ecosystem is the balance between the investors who want to see some return on their investment, the users who want the service and the company employees who want a salary for their work. A good guideline for Open Services should take this into account. Assuming this, Open Services do not have to be about users doing what they want with their content, but about the communication between the 3 groups (investors, employees and users) and keeping sure it is open enough that all can function together with minimum or no friction.

Designing Business for an Open Model

Howard Rheingold just released on the Cooperation Commons blog a great document produced by Herman Miller and the Institute of the Future that provides an excellent view into the various concepts at play with web2.0 and the related changes brought by social networking and the use of new technologies of cooperation.

A must read for anybody interested in Open Business and how to make it happen...

The next frontier

The word is out, major companies are now moving into 2ndLife. Recently Sun Microsystems held a press conference in 2ndLife , from which you can see pictures here and here
Howard Rheingold also did a conference on the pedagogy of civic participation with even more pictures here .
It is time everybody gets an avatar, this new world is starting to take shape in a major way...

Another idea for YouTube

I have already written here about one of the way I could see YouTube start to make sense from an economic prospective,as a way to foster candidates (people or stories) for reality TV shows. Another opportunity for YouTube would be to become a marketing arm for the Majors: imagine a service where you would ask fans to create their own trailer for a coming movie from carefully chosen clips that would be released to them. Guess how much they would do to spread these to their friends, and the buzz you would get around contests to figure out which one the consumers like best. Something I would not be surprised to see one day...

Tagami.com » Coworking Sausalito

A big thank to Ted Tagami for this great video of our recent Coworking day in Sausalito. The place is great, hopefully there will be more days like this one...

Read more at tagami.com/2006/10/12/c...

The sure sign of a bubble

Now it seems that it is true that Google is in talks to acquire YouTube (See Techcrunch )
While I understand audience as a value, what is really this for? From what I have seen, and despite interesting experiments on what can be done in terms of entertainment and next generation reality TV, why would Google care about YouTube. From the reports I read, YouTube is loosing money and had no real revenue model that is worth anything.
Google might as well let them disappear and pick up the left-overs.
If you were wondering whether there is a bubble looming behind the web 2.0 hype, now you know...

Investment discussion

I just come back from a seminar on Angel Investment, and there are a few things I noted that may be of interest to Entrepreneurs:

1- Beware of notes (bridge loans from investors until a round of financing can be completed): notes with discount are not a good idea above 20% of the amount you plan to raise in the coming round (notes typically are to bridge until you can get a real round of financing). The trap is that if you raise too much money that way, you may end up with a problem when the time comes to discuss valuation: if you raised $500K with notes and then you want to raise $1M in a series A round. If the VC/Angels ask for 40% of your company for $1M, then you will also have to give away another 20% to the people with notes (assuming no discount, it will be more if you had a discount included with the note).

2- The other trap with notes, and with friend and family money in general is that you may be tempted to take money from non-accredited investors which will represent a risk for the company, and therefore will pollute your negotiations with future investors. The issue with non-accredited investors is that they could decide to sue if the company does not perform as they expected. And if they are not accredited, they can claim that they were not familiar with investing and they were mislead. Not a good thing.

3- The funding gap (the funding levels that are too high for Angels and too low for VCs) is increasing. It seems that after the clean-up that has happened in the VC industry after the bubble, we have now the same amount of money invested through fewer VCs. As a result, an average VC deal is now closer to $7M (instead of $4M a few years ago). Something that is not going to make the life of entrepreneurs easy...

4- Some good news to finish: some people are trying to help reduce this funding gap by encouraging Angel investment through a tax credit:
"The Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs (ACE) Act of 2006 (HR 5198) was developed to fill a gap in current equity funding between venture capitalists and angel investors. This bill addresses that gap by encouraging accredited investors to increase equity investments in certain qualified small businesses through the creation of a 25% tax credit for accredited investors and certain partnerships (including angel investment pools if all are accredited investors) that invest cash or cash equivalents at an arm's length in a qualified small business (as defined by the Small Business Act)."
More info here

Coworking day in Sausalito

For those in the SF BAy area, I would like to suggest a Coworking day in Sausalito.

I have spent some time thinking about the concept of Coworking and Telecommuting. And while I am convinced that telecommuting is the way of the future, and Coworking environments a must to make telecommuting a more viable or pleasant experience, I also think that it will take time, and a lot of education, before it becomes something that can be truly sustainable.

In the meantime, as a smooth transition towards the ideal, I think that there is room for "Coworking days" where one day a month maybe I would go in a Coworking environment to meet other professional who like me work from home most of their time. This would allow the establishment of the coworking concept without a critical need for it to be completely sustainable from the beginning.

I was lucky enough that I have been telecommuting for a couple of years before going full time into working from home. I am also lucky that I have an office, and a complete setup that allows me to be self sufficient. But then going from telecommute where I was still going to the office once a week to full time working from home as meant that I do not get to socialize with corporate co-workers anymore. I meet clients and partners, but not this guy that happens to be at the watercooler at the
same time I am and with whom I can exchange and relax.

A coworking day event is the opportunity to do that: keep working from home where I have all I need, but go to a local Coworking place once a month, or once a week to see who else in the neigborhood works from home, and to get a chance to learn what they are doing.

I have a friend who owns a very cool space in beautiful Sausalito (http://www.studiomsausalito.com/), and she has been kind enough to let
us have it for an experiment, trying to make the idea happen.

I have created a page to explain the concept and allow people interested in the idea to sign up. check out details here

Let's see what happens...

Google User Experience Research

Crowdsourcing at its best - I love Google:

Read more at www.google.com/forms/us...

Notes on Techmeme's new sponsorship model - blog.memeorandum.com

A new model to provide advertising on a blog. Simple and brilliant. The concept is similar to adversing articles in magazines, with the advantage for the reader that it is clearly identified as sponsored content while being better integrated into the blog itself (you can hope for more relevant and more interesting content than just ad banners).

Very cool...

Read more at blog.memeorandum.com/06...

Mysterious Paypal Secure Storage

From Techcrunch at www.techcrunch.com/2006... Finally the service that I had been looking for: a place to store digital content. It may sound stupid, but one of the big questions I had was what happens when I die? I spend a lot of time online, and I have a lot of accounts in many places, and documents that I write for myself. I am sure a lot of people also have electronic documents that they care about, pictures or books they may have written but never published. And then nobody around them would really know they exist or how to access themClearly there is a need for an "electronic deposit box". I have seen MySpace setup some special places for their users who died, but this is really only the tip of the iceberg.With this new service from Paypal, we may finally have a solution for this problem. A secure place where we can save pieces of our digital personna for future. I hope now that they have also figured out a process for providing access to the Drop Box to family or whoever is named in a will. And maybe this is the next move for Paypal to provide a place to submit online wills that can be opened under specific circumstances. I am sure there is room for such a service as well...

Lunch over IP: Direct Economy

A very good summary of an article published by Xavier Comtesse - Read more here - original here if you can read French.

Xavier explains how the technologies available today allow the transfer of knowledge to customers, so that they can become more involved in the value chain, thus helping companies to become highly productive, as the only way to survive competition from low cost providers (which sometimes does not mean low value, there are a lot of good engineers in Eastern Europe, China or India).

Xavier Comtesse offers a great tool to help companies define their strategy and understand how to move forward and best use knowledge transfers to improve productivity. He also presents an example of how this can work in a presentation available here (in French as well), but the matrix is in english and give a good idea of what can be done).

Web 2.0

I was asked yesterday whether I think that Web2.0 is a bubble or not. And I think it is, but clearly nothing as bad as what happened in 2000.

There is a lot of hype, and there is a lot of unknown, but what cannot be ignored are the fundamental underlying trends that are shaping beyond the hype.

The buzz words are the growth of P2P, marketplace disruptions, swarm innovation, social webs, folksonomies, long tail economy, etc...

Many thought leaders have been preaching to the crowd already:

• Yochai Benkler describes in his book "The wealth of networks" how grassroot movements have been able to resist and fight against large corporations, for example on the voting machine issue. He demonstrates that the cloud is a very powerful and productive force.
  

• John Seely Brown talks about swarm innovation in ecosystems across Asia. In his book "The only sustainable edge", he describes how a network of independent subcontractors can produce faster better goods than a large corporation.
  

• Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore recently published a book called "Communities dominate brands", in which they show how the next generation is about more than just being connected, it is a Community generation. They show how start-ups with low budget can outperform large corporations by fostering a solid ecosystem around their business and by engaging their customers.
• Seth Godin talk about "The purple cow" and the need to move from push marketing to engagement marketing
  
• Chris Anderson exposes the power of the web to enable the long tail economy
• Thomas Malone predicts in his book "The future of work" that the technologies of cooperation available today will change the way we do business and manage organizations

• Michel Bauwens talks about Peer to Peer as the emergence of a new civilization

The online community is vibrant with creativity, and a lot of options/revenue models are being explored or are emerging:

• Virtual worlds are getting real (2nd life, everquest, etc...) with items sold on eBay and credit cards to cash money out at ATMs (gold farming)
• Online videos uploads and dowloads, IPTV and P2P are trying to offer an alternative to regular video content distribution. I have mentioned in my previous post that it is clearly a very good way to produce reality TV
• Social Networks are still the thing of the day, and to me another form (but only 2 dimensional) of virtual worlds
  

Meanwhile Interruption marketing is dying: for example I have read in "Communities Dominate Brands" that a study had shown that 71% of car buyers got influenced by word of mouth vs. 17% influenced by TV ads.

With all these changes come new challenges

• The explosion of services and communities results in content overload and creates the need for managing our attention and digital identities
• Ranking/ratings/reputation systems need to be enhanced and controlled, to prevent gaming, we need to understand whether trust can be transitive, and if so, in which circumstances. In this area, I like also like the concept of transparence: how much of your identity are you willing to divulge. I see it as a good indication of trustworthiness.
• Making sense through tags requires maintenance to aleviate overuse and obsolescence, and to better describe individuals semantic, context, and goals. How will we be able to manage all this content moving forward, at the global level and at the personal level (what happens to my content when I die for example)
  

The opportunity is for companies, large or small to make sense of what is happening. But overall, more than a technology evolution, web2.0 is really an expression of a sociological change that has been enabled by technology, and it goes far beyond just technology. Web2.0 is not about Ajax or the latest cool free service, it is not about cool phones or IPTV, it is about how people relate to each other, how they learn to trust each other, and how they learn to live and work with their neighbors.
And since we are talking humans and not technology, we'd better be ready for this changes to take a long time. The Internet bubble happened because people though the world would change in one day, the web2.0 bubble is another sign of impatience from the techies community and their investors, we should already be looking at web3.0 and beyond...

Techcrunch » Blog Archive » Top social media users getting paid; is the balance shifting?

Here is something interesting: a few days after I was musing on the idea of YouTube videos being sold on DVD after a given video dialogue is completed, here comes the news that the amateur video from the popular lonelygirl15 were indeed shot by professional. If there is any doubt that we are experimenting with new ways of producing reality TV, this one is a good sign that we probably are...

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

Audience 2.0 Launch! — CooperationCommons

Something to look forward to: Issue one of Audience 2.0 will be released this week:

Read more at www.cooperationcommons....

How YouTube could increase revenues

I am looking at some videos on YouTube, and how they are linked to each other to create a complete dialog between a few individuals. The videos remind me very much of the reality TV shows that you can watch on MTV. And some of these discussions have gone long enough that you could make it into a season release on DVD.
I have not seen it yet, but I would think that there is potential for revenue in such a scheme. YouTube can print the DVDs and market them, and would share the revenue with the various participants in these discussions.
The whole thing reminds me of how Armistead Maupin book "Tales of The City" was originally released one chapter after the other as a chronicle in a Marin County newspaper. What I see on YouTube now seem very much like the same thing for videos stories. While the TV format was not really a good venue for this type of process, the web is perfect, and people are not expecting to get more than a few minutes of videos at a time, unless this is the video of a live event.
I am curious to see how long it will take before we see DVD releases of YouTube content...

Trustmojo » Facets of Facets, Tagclouds And Trust

I am happy to see that somebody liked my business card :-)

I have a tag cloud on the back, because I think that it is a good representation of who I am and what my interests are. Maybe this will inspire others....

Read more at trustmojo.com/2006/08/3...

Open Business as Entrepreneurs Lifecycle Management

After doing some research and experimenting with "collaborative entrepreneurship", this is how I see that Open Business should (and hopefully will) emerge:
Entrepreneurs Lifecycle Management:

- Entrepreneurs, because they are the drivers of the economy, the ones who create value from their ideas. They should be the clear focus for any business opportunity.
- Lifecycle Management, because throughout their life they will most probably succeed at some point, and they will succeed many times if they are good at what they do
The cycle includes starting a project/company, generating revenues, cashing out or growing through acquisition. All transactions that can easily be identified and measured.

So what's new?

The current model for business is based around corporations with many individuals and projects. The individuals inside the corporation are managed by the excutive team. The executive team ultimately answers to the investors. And the overall responsibility for actions is spread along the chain with enough intermediaries that none can feel entirely responsible for anything bad that the Corporation does.
Inside the corporation, the focus is on products or services issued managed as projects. And while everybody agrees that the people are what makes the difference most of the time between good and bad projects, the focus remains on projects, and the assumptions is that one qualified individual can be replaced by another qualified individual.

Instead, I would like to suggest that a better model would be to focus on entrepreneurs, and the team of individuals around them.
In this model:
- everybody is their own corporation of one individual
- the project is managed as a commons, with the entrepreneur as the benevolant dictator and with the other people involved as contributors volunteering to the project
- the entrepreneur carries the idea, and keeps the motion forward with the help of whoever is relevant at a specific time/phase of his project
- At each step of the lifecycle (where transactions are clearly identified and value can be measured), the entrepreneur will decide how much value was added by who, and will distribute the reaches accordingly

Yeah right, but how do you make it work?

There are many issues obviously with the model:
- it takes a while to see revenue: this all depends on where the entrepreneur is in his lifecycle when you meet him. If he is just getting started with a project, it may take some time. But if he already has revenue coming in, then it becomes much easier.
- it requires that everybody has access to an entrepreneur: this is what social networking should help achieve. Whoever comes out of school or is looking for a job is already using his/her network to find such a job. So people are already going through the motion, the only difference is that since the system is focused on people, it requires to focus not just on skills, but also affinity with the entrepreneur and the other members of the team. I believe that it is better to have such focus anyway, so this is not really a big leap from what we have today.
- it requires complex discussions to distribute revenues: yes, it may be complex, but no if the size of the "business cell" is small enough. In order for such a model to take off it needs to be constructed with a layer of small businesses rather than huge organizations. But we are seeing already that ecosystems of small subcontractors are doing very well if not better than large organizations in Asia (see the ecosystems studied in "The Only Sustainable Edge" from John Seely Brown). So if we are talking small business cells, discussions remain at the human level and are very manageable. If I do not get what I think should be my share of the rewards, I am always free to work with somebody else. At the same time, the entrepreneur has no interest in being unfair because the word would get out and nobody would want to work for him.
- It will be hard to get investment: who would invest in projects if they are not hosted within corporations? Well, what we are talking about is similar to what has been done to IP in the Open Source model. Everybody gets the right to use instead of the right to own. So now investors are contributors, except that they contribute money instead of just time. And they will get their share just as the other contributors (call them angel employees for this discussion, or think advisory capital as described by Stowe Boyd). The good news with this concept is that money will no longer get accumulated in stock, but rather it will be re-distributed to all contributors. As the result, it will also probably become a lot less sparse than it is today.

Some good things about this:
- no need for large corporations anymore, the corporation is used for individuals to be the recipient of their business personna. This will bring to an end a model where organizations will sometime knowingly do the wrong thing for the sake of generating revenue for their investors. In a one man corporation, nobody can hide.
- a much stronger focus on people: any contributor is no longer a pion in a large organization, but rather somebody who chose to work with a given entrepreneur or a given team, and who has been accepted for his/her contribution - a good thing for everybody's own self estim
- a "companion" model, where individual contributors will be included as part of a team, and where it is everybody's interest that each individual keep learning and growing.

So how real is this?

As I mentionned earlier, and as it has been presented for example in "The Only Sustainable Edge", collaborative entrepreneurship and crowdsourcing are trends going in the right directions. Meanwhile telecommuting is changing the way people think about their job and how they relate to their company.
I believe that change is on the way.
Let me know if you think I am dreaming...

How I would like to consume

I have read a lot about attention economy and how we could make it easier as consumers for brands to reach us.



Everything that I have seen or read so far requires extra work on my side, to install a piece of software or maintain my data somehow. I do not think than the average consumer would go for this. Who has time to install software so that we can receive targeted ads?

Meanwhile, it is also true that when I want to buy a car, or a camera, or a surf board, I am looking for information and it would be good to have it all in one place.



So far Google has done a very good job at helping me do this, and I suspect this is the reason for the success they have with their Google ads. But it is still a painful process, because the data I have access to is not always good quality.

Del.icio.us has also done a very good job at helping me if I am a geek and I want to get into collaborative filtering.



But what I really want is a repository of product information, a mix of wikipedia and YouTube, where all brands would agree to show their product information, including cool videos or cool ads that they may have. And if brands are really sincere about helping me, they would even allow the public to add their own comments or revisions to the information.

With this ONE SOURCE OF TRUTH, I will be able get the information I need when I need it, and then I will be able to decide what I want to buy.

It would be nothing different from what I do today, except that it would be designed from the beginning to work for me.



So what happens to competition?

Well, with this system in place, it will become more obvious than competing is not about luring me into believing something about the product, but rather it will be about truly providing value, through great prices (value to my budget) and through great features, which is what it should be about.



If any one brand cares about getting my attention, please listen to this...

Supernova 2006 - Weblog

Il y a de la vraie bonne action a Supernova, et les notes sur les sessions sont mises en ligne sur le blog de la conference. Un must read pour ceux qui n'ont pas pu se rendre sur place:

Read more at www.supernova2006.com/g...

Pinko Marketing - Commons based unmarketing.

[via AttentionTrust.org: http://www.attentiontrust.org/node/293]Une experience interessante a suivre:Pinko Marketing (http://pinkomarketing.pbwiki.com/Why%20Pinko%20Marketing), qui veut mettre en application les theories sur le pouvoir des communautes dans le domaine du marketing …

Read more at pinkomarketing.pbwiki.c...

Innovation through design thinking

Une presentation interessante sur le process de Ideo (en anglais). Le process commence par une approche entropologique, pour essayer de comprendre ce que l'utilisateur vit. Il s'agit ensuite de transformer les observations en idees, et puis experimenter pour pouvoir finalement executer

Read more at mitworld.mit.edu/stream...

Thumbstacks.com - Live presentations on the web!

Si vous cherchez a faire des presentations sur le web, Thumback vous permet de faire ca:

Read more at www.thumbstacks.com/

eyeOS | Web desktop - Web OS - Web office - your data and applications everywhere

Apres YouOS, il y a eyeOS:

Read more at www.eyeos.org/index.php...

Google Spreadsheets

Je viens d'avoir mon compte pour les Google Spreadsheet, this is hot. Pour l'usage tres basique dont j'ai besoin aujourd'hui c'est largement suffisant, une vraie revolution.

J'avais aussi essaye Writely, que Google a rachete, il ne manque donc plus que de pouvoir faire des presentations et la boucle sera bouclee.

Par contre je desespere encore avec le Calendar: pas vraiment convivial, rien a voir avec ce que donne evite aujourd'hui. Les gens de Microsoft ont donc encore quelques beaux jours devant eux...

Read more at kre.spreadsheets.google...

RED HERRING | VCBank's $250M Islamic Fund

Apres avoir vu certains groupes ou pays parler de mettre en place des internets indepedents dans lesquels ils pourraient mieux controler l'information, voici maintenant des investisseurs qui se specialisent dans les business qui respectent la sharia. Peut etre une tendance positive (il y a aussi des investisseurs qui se specialisent dans l'ecologique), ou peut etre encore un fosse qui se creuse...

Read more at www.redherring.com/Arti...

BarCamp

Encore un concept fascinant...

Read more at barcamp.org/

Skype Journal: Getting money via Skype

Skype avance encore d'un pas vers les services vocaux payants (tech support, legal, astronomie et bien sur les lignes "roses").

Read more at www.skypejournal.com/bl...

InstantAudio.com

Encore une idee excellente. De quoi vraiment "personaliser" un website :-)

Read more at instantaudio.com/

Rules, Roles, Personas and Goals - InternetIdentityWorkshop

A l'intersection de toutes les communautes auquelles j'appartiens, il y a moi. Mais qui suis-je?

Ma "personne" varie dans le temps et selon le contexte, un vrai probleme pour definir un systeme qui voudra gerer mon identite...

Read more at iiw.windley.com/wiki/Ru...

MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites: Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow? - Knowledge@Wharton

Un article interessant sur les opportunites et les challenges du Social Networking.

Read more at knowledge.wharton.upenn...

MOBILE SIGNAL - Make your life easier

Voila un vrai pas en avant en matiere de social networking sur telephone mobile. Une societe a suivre:

Read more at www.mobilesignalcenter....

www.buzzeebee.com

Une start-up qui peut faire la difference, en offrant aux communautes locales un moyen de communiquer a travers des reseaux ad-hoc qui utilisent des connections bluetooth pour transmettre des informations locales, petites annonces ou coupons. La beaute de Bluetooth est que ces reseaux ne sont pas controles par les Telcos...

Read more at www.buzzeebee.com/

All Marketers are Liars; - Seth Godin speaks at Google - Google Video

Une video excellente sur le marketing, dans une presentation faire chez Google qui sert donc de "case study". Un must-see pour tout ceux qui n'ont pas lu les livres de Seth Godin...

Read more at video.google.com/videop...

Micro-loans et Entreprise

J'ai assiste aujourd'hui a une presentation de l'Institut du Futur sur les micro-organisations, avec des representants de SPARC, Village Enterprises , Interra, et quelqu'un qui a travaille dans le passe avec Grameen bank. J'ai retenu de cette discussion quelques points:

• Comme aucun des partis (banques et beneficiaires des prets) n'a acces a des informations tangibles sur le parti d'en face, le systeme repose sur un reseau qui permet a chacun de confirmer que l'autre est un interlocuteur fiable. Une composante importante donc pour que le systeme marche est qu'il y ait une communaute, et que la transaction se fasse dans le cadre de cette communaute.
  
• Une fois le pret fait, il faut aussi etablir une relation reguliere avec les personnes pour venir collecter les remboursements, mais aussi pour eduquer et apporter de l'aide dans le developpement du business. Typiquement Grameen bank organise des groupes de 5 entrepreneurs qui permettent cette entraide et un auto-controle sans avoir a voir les entrepreneurs individuellement. Moyennant quoi les emprunts sont rembourses, et les personnes voient leur situation economique evoluer de facon radicale.

Ce qui est interessant est que les meme principes pourraient sans doute etre appliques pour construire des communautes d'entrepreneurs:

• Communaute qui permettrait d'etablir une certaine transparence des individus qu'elle regroupe, avec des individus par le groupe
  
• Communaute qui pourrait s'organiser pour offrir du financement a ses membres (par exemple avec un mechanisme d'emprunts sur un modele prosper.com), mais aussi du conseil sur la facon de faire grandir leur business

Une experience qu'il serait interessante de tenter...

IT Conversations: The Profession of Blogging - Darren Barefoot and Jeremy Wright

Un podcast tres interessant sur le monde du blogging et les problemes ethiques lies au fait qu'il faut pouvoir en vivre.

Listen at cdn.itconversations.com...

Cybernomadic Framework

Un document excellent sur le fait que nous sommes en train d'evoluer d'un monde de frontieres a un monde ou les frontieres s'effacent (globalization, world wide web). Et nous sommes en consequence amener a devenir des cybernomades, pour qui les reperes et le sentiment d'appartenance se font plus pricipalement autour de centres d'interets. Avec toutes les consequences que ca peut avoir pour la vie sociale et le business.Le document fait une comparaison entre la vie des nomades telle qu'on la connait aujourd'hui (basee sur l'histoire) pour extraire les points cles a prendre en compte pour gerer cette evolution.

Read more at www.iftf.org/docs/SR-84...

John Seely Brown on the challenge and opportunity for technologies of cooperation — CooperationCommons

Aussi poste sur Cooperation Commons - Un podcast interessant de John Seely Brown, qui analyse des ecosystemes en Asie pour en tirer des lecons sur la facon de gerer l'apprentissage au sien de l'entreprise:

Read more at www.cooperationcommons....

The experience edge - James Hilliard - CNET News.com — CooperationCommons

Aussi poste sur Cooperation Commons - Voila une bonne video sur les Wiki, y compris des infos sur comment ca a ete implemente:

Read more at www.cooperationcommons....

OpenSource Biotech

Je poste aussi sur Openbusiness.cc - De l'Open Source dans la Biotech:

Read more at www.openbusiness.cc/200...

TribalWeb

Via l'Atelier: Voila un software qui peut vraiment aider a faire la difference pour duu business. Possibilite de partager des fichiers avec un groupe restreint de personnes, qui permet donc d'etablir un "espace de travail" entre colloborateur meme sur des projets qui sont realises entre plusieurs entreprises differentes. Pas besoin de se soucier de qui est en charge du serveur central, puisqu'il n'y en a pas. Et puis cette approche P2P est une excellente reponse au probleme de l'email sur les projets de groupe, ou on ne sait jamais quel attachement correspond a la derniere version et ou les emails avec attachement finissent par remplir les boites aux lettres.

Read more at www.tribalweb.net/tour/...

Encore un bel exemple de "The web as a platform":
YouOS

Au dela d'etre une simple "home page" avec des applets cool, c'est vers ce genre de concept que Microsoft live.com (et autre Netvibes et Google home page) devrait se pencher. Avec quelque chose qui fait une vraie difference, c'est que les developpers peuvent construire des applications sur cet environnement...

WAY Systems - Mobile Payment Solutions for 100 Million new Merchants

Voila un projet vraiment interessant, qui permet d'utiliser un telephone comme POS (point of service). Encore un bon moyen de fluidifier les transactions commerciales...

Read more at www.waysystems.com/inde...

FON: WiFi everywhere!

Ce que j'aime avec FON, c'est que c'est encore un bel exemple du fait que le concept de peer-to-peer est ce qui permet de faire changer les choses. A la base, les utilisateurs peuvent mettre leur bande passante a la disposition des autres, et le modele permet de deployer a cout reduit un vrai reseau d'acces wifi. Aucun doute que c'est une vraie bonne solution pour des deployment en ville (ou les besoins sont aussi les plus importants).

Read more at en.fon.com/

Smart Mobs: Smartmobs and the art of tuangou

Un exemple tres interessant de ce qui peut etre fait avec l'internet pour faire des achats de groupe et reduire les couts.

L'info me vient d'un blog que je recommende: CooperationCommons Blog

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...

Box.net - Free Online File Storage, Internet File Sharing, RSS Sharing, Access Documents & Files Anywhere, Backup Data, Share Files

Encore un service pour virtualiser le bureau: storage gratuit jusqu'a 1G, de quoi garder quelques documents en ligne.

En attendant GDrive...

Read more at www.box.net/home

Open Business

J'ai vu recemment une presentation de Steven Weber, auteur de The Success of Open Source et j'en ai retenu les choses suivantes:

- la force de l'open source vient du fait que le concept des droits utilise est base sur les droits de distribuer, et non autour des droits de posseder
- le modele utilise aussi un modele ou l'innovation est produite en mode "distribue"

Des evidences peut etre, mais il sait bien les formuler...

Grace a ces 2 moteurs, on a vu l'emergence de meilleures organisations, et non pas seulement d'une meilleure economie de marche ou d'un modele de revenu different. Le modele a permis la mise en place de reseau "ouverts", par opposition aux "chasses gardees" que represente les corporations qui produisent du software de facon traditionelle. Dans ces reseaux ouverts:
- le code est distribue facilement et utilisable par tous
- les utilisateurs contribuent aussi a l'amelioration du produit, et donc il y a un vrai echange ou chacun profite et contribue au bien commun
- les joueurs qui ne respectent pas les regles sont exclus de la communaute, et il y a donc une vraie motivation a jouer le jeu.

Je pense qu'il est possible d'appliquer ces concepts au business, ou de facon plus generale d'elever ce qui se fait avec du code a ce qui pourrait etre fait avec des idees ou de l'information de business (par exemple des contacts):
- dans un mode de business "open", chacun doit donc penser a faire circuler les informations plutot que de faire de la rentention, avec des regles de conduite qui implique de n'utiliser ces informations que pour faire avancer les choses plutot que de faire de la "competition" (le fameux "don't be evil" de Google).
- du coup, c'est par le reseau que se resolvent les problemes ou que ce font les affaires plutot que par des groupes fermes.

Une objection evidente est que le systeme risque de vite etre sature par le nombre de participants sur chaque projet, mais je pense que la realite est qu'il difficile a chacun de contribuer utilement a plus de quelques projets, et il est difficile a travailler avec plus qu'une poignee d'individus sur un projet donne. Et donc finalement les choses doivent pouvoir naturellement s'equilibrer...

Une autre objection est que chacun voit les choses de facons differentes, et il peut donc y avoir des divergences. Il faut donc dans un tel systeme un mechanisme de "regles" qui aide a resoudre ces differences. Mais si tous sont d'accord sur le but ultime a atteindre, et agissent en toute sincerite, ces problemes doivent pouvoir etre resolus. Si le but final n'est pas le meme, alors que chancun tente sa chance, et se retrouve plus tard quand les choses ont evoluees.

Ce principe rejoint d'ailleurs les concepts de "collaborative entrepreneurship" et "project economy" qui existent deja. Il s'agit donc principalement de continuer a definir les outils qui permettront de gerer un tel mode de fonctionnement. Je pense en tout cas qu'on risque de voir une augmentation de ces modeles d'organisation...

TechCrunch » Writely Confirms Google Acquisition

Apres une abondance de start-ups qui font toutes la meme chose, des features web2.0 avec le seul but d'accumuler un minimum d'audience pour pouvoir se faire racheter, voila la consilidation qui commence a s'accelerer sur ce marche. Le debut de l'ecatombe pour ceux qui ne seront pas elus...

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

TechCrunch » Thumbstacks - Ajax/Flash Web PowerPoint

Apres le text editor, les spreadsheets, voila le Powerpoint ajax. On a donc maintenant la suite au complet, bientot plus de raison d'installer Microsoft Office sur son PC...

Read more at www.techcrunch.com/2006...

Feed43 (Feed For Free) : Convert any web page to news feed on the fly

Il etait interessant de s'abonner a des feed RSS existants, voila qu'il est maintenant possible de s'abonner a n'importe quelle page web pour en tracker les changements:

Read more at feed43.com/

IFTF_New_Literacy_of_Cooperation1.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Pour ceux qui ont le temps, le Institute For The Future a produit une etude fascinante sur la Collaboration dans le business. En regardant le comportement de groupe de differentes especes, ils etablissent 7 criteres qui permettent d'evaluer et d'influencer un groupe pour en ameliorer la collaboration:

- Structure (dynamique vs statique), Regles (Internes vs. Externes), Resources (Public vs. Prive), Niveau de transition (Haut vs. Bas), Feedback (local vs. systemique), Memoire (ephemere vs. permanente), Identite (Individu vs. Groupe).

Avec des exemples a la cle de ce qui c'est fait autour de ces differents aspects, avec des technologies ou des business qui ont apporte de vrais changement: Google, eBay, etc...

Read more at cooperation.smartmobs.c...

MIT World » : Innovation Everywhere—How the Acceleration of “GNR” (genetics, nanotechnology, robotics) Will Create a Flat and Equitable World

Encore une brillante presentation de MIT: Raymond Kurzweil presente le resultat d'etudes de modeles mathematiques sur l'evolution, et nous donne une vision tres optimiste des annees a venir. Rien de vraiment nouveau, mais cette fois ci il y a une theorie et une justification derriere ces predictions- prolongation de la duree de vie- des ordinateurs en 3 dimension- des nano-cellules pour soigner les maladies, avec des download de software pour mettre a jours ces cellulesetc...

Read more at mitworld.mit.edu/video/...

Smart Mobs: Employees blogging what they know

Maintenant que le blogging est passe dans les moeurs, et qu'on en comprend mieux les avantages et les inconvenient, et les regles de conduite a adopter, les entreprises vont pouvoir commencer a utiliser cet outil. Un article parle de blogs pour faire du knowledge management, ce qui semble une excellente piste a explorer...

Read more at www.smartmobs.com/archi...