One more time I have to give Google credit for doing the right thing - clearly they keep working on "do no evil":
- After building Gmail, they introduced Google Apps, as a way for anyone to have their own Google Apps for their own domain name.
- Then they have opened Google Apps to others and provided a Google Marketplace where you can get all kinds of Google Apps plugins to enhance your own experience. And you have the choice of maintaining several Google accounts separately (per domain name).
This is a great example of building services to the point where they gain critical mass (Gmail), to then deconstruct these services into independent sets (Google Apps) so that you can give more control back to the user and allow the creation of a healthy ecosystem around the IP created (Google Marketplace). The next step for Google is to open the hosting itself to other service providers so that you can have "Google inside" in a completely independent system, creating an architecture with no single point of failure.
In the meantime Facebook, LinkedIn and other silos should learn from this approach and open up their services. A Facebook for my own domain? Google Buzz may get there earlier than the others. Google Wave is now a plugin for Google Apps, so it may not be that long before Google Buzz becomes one too, and if they do it will be interesting to see what happens.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Google Wave in Google Apps
A great step forward that will certainly help adoption: Google Wave is now a plugin (from Google Labs) in Google Apps.
Sunday, May 09, 2010
We are fools
There are about 300 million people in the US, and the census bureau just collected information on where we live, how many people are in the household etc... And when a government ask this kind of questions, you cannot help but feeling a bit nervous and wonder what they will do with the data. There is a fear of Big Brother watching us, and we do not like to see the government gain too much control over the details of our private life. I was actually surprised and relived to see how little they were asking from us. But still the thought remains present.
Meanwhile Facebook is now 400 million active users. And we are all happily sharing information on what we do, where we are, who we know, including data that is becoming even more accurate with the latest social graph implementation. All this info is controlled by one corporation that we the people do not control, with no requirement for transparency other than what Facebook themselves have agreed to in the "term of use" of the website. But how many of us have really read the details of this agreement?
Something is wrong with this picture!
The platform brings us convenience but we should not allow the concentration of so much data into the hands of a just a few. We should remember that corporations are managed by CEOs whose fiduciary duty is to maximize profits for the investors, and by a board of director who is representing these investors. Of course they operate within the law and within the constraints that they have imposed on themselves through the term of use agreement. But Enron had the same constraints, and corporations have not always behaved like good citizens with the best interest of the public in mind (should I mention BP and their lobbying efforts?). And Facebook is not even a public company, so there is no reporting requirements.
Now that social media has been proven to be something that users want, we need to take a serious look at how we do this.
400 million people on Facebook is not right. If we are going to be 400 million citizens of a social media platform in cyberspece, this platform once proven needs to be deconstructed and opened so that it can be sustainable over time.
Status.net and microformats are a step in the right direction. We need to wake up, shake our laziness and get serious about building the right architecture for the web.
I want better control over my own data, and I do not want any corporation to accumulate so much data that they can gain control over more people than the entire population of the US.
Meanwhile Facebook is now 400 million active users. And we are all happily sharing information on what we do, where we are, who we know, including data that is becoming even more accurate with the latest social graph implementation. All this info is controlled by one corporation that we the people do not control, with no requirement for transparency other than what Facebook themselves have agreed to in the "term of use" of the website. But how many of us have really read the details of this agreement?
Something is wrong with this picture!
The platform brings us convenience but we should not allow the concentration of so much data into the hands of a just a few. We should remember that corporations are managed by CEOs whose fiduciary duty is to maximize profits for the investors, and by a board of director who is representing these investors. Of course they operate within the law and within the constraints that they have imposed on themselves through the term of use agreement. But Enron had the same constraints, and corporations have not always behaved like good citizens with the best interest of the public in mind (should I mention BP and their lobbying efforts?). And Facebook is not even a public company, so there is no reporting requirements.
Now that social media has been proven to be something that users want, we need to take a serious look at how we do this.
400 million people on Facebook is not right. If we are going to be 400 million citizens of a social media platform in cyberspece, this platform once proven needs to be deconstructed and opened so that it can be sustainable over time.
Status.net and microformats are a step in the right direction. We need to wake up, shake our laziness and get serious about building the right architecture for the web.
I want better control over my own data, and I do not want any corporation to accumulate so much data that they can gain control over more people than the entire population of the US.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Everything you want to know about Status.net
From its founder Evan Prodromou:
check out the video
If you have a doubt that this is a way forward, think again.
The word needs OStatus, and Twitter is the new AOL, unless they decide to change their current strategy.
check out the video
If you have a doubt that this is a way forward, think again.
The word needs OStatus, and Twitter is the new AOL, unless they decide to change their current strategy.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Is Twitter another AOL?
If you remember the early days of the Internet, the hot place then was AOL. You could dial up into a world of content and services, all within the AOL walls.
And then there was the internet itself.
Now you can plug into an infinite stream of tweets through Twitter, and there are thousands of developers who built great tools and services around the core Twitter system. And then there is the rest of the world, with open source and open standards like OpenID, OpenStatus (OStatus), etc...
Twitter is a great public infrastructure today, and they provide huge value, but there is one flaw in this system: it is owned by one corporation controlled by just a few people and these people are on a deadline to sell Twitter to the highest bidder, so that they can return the money they invested, plus profit, to their limited partners. And it could be an IPO, which means that the control is transferred to another few people seating on the board of directors, whose fiduciary duty is to maximize the return for stockholders. Or it could be sold to a large corporation controlled by another set of few people on the board of directors, with a different agenda but a similar duty to maximize returns.
The users in this picture are just fuel into the system, they are not even customers at this point, not the best position to be in.
And similarly, all the developers who built services on top of this infrastructure are dependent on a system that they do not control. Not a good position to be in either.
So while AOL was great for a while and Twitter is great for now, I think that the real future is with a distributed network of Open Status enabled services like status.net. You can get the same functionality of publishing notices and following as many people as you like, and letting other services access your info to provide you additional value, but in a much more transparent, sustainable way.
The question is how long will it take to switch from one architecture to the next?
I am there already (http://mdangear.status.net), and you should too.
EAVB_AXWOEJBQPI
And then there was the internet itself.
Now you can plug into an infinite stream of tweets through Twitter, and there are thousands of developers who built great tools and services around the core Twitter system. And then there is the rest of the world, with open source and open standards like OpenID, OpenStatus (OStatus), etc...
Twitter is a great public infrastructure today, and they provide huge value, but there is one flaw in this system: it is owned by one corporation controlled by just a few people and these people are on a deadline to sell Twitter to the highest bidder, so that they can return the money they invested, plus profit, to their limited partners. And it could be an IPO, which means that the control is transferred to another few people seating on the board of directors, whose fiduciary duty is to maximize the return for stockholders. Or it could be sold to a large corporation controlled by another set of few people on the board of directors, with a different agenda but a similar duty to maximize returns.
The users in this picture are just fuel into the system, they are not even customers at this point, not the best position to be in.
And similarly, all the developers who built services on top of this infrastructure are dependent on a system that they do not control. Not a good position to be in either.
So while AOL was great for a while and Twitter is great for now, I think that the real future is with a distributed network of Open Status enabled services like status.net. You can get the same functionality of publishing notices and following as many people as you like, and letting other services access your info to provide you additional value, but in a much more transparent, sustainable way.
The question is how long will it take to switch from one architecture to the next?
I am there already (http://mdangear.status.net), and you should too.
EAVB_AXWOEJBQPI
Google Apps is the next Google
I went to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory yesterday, and I was amazed to see on the doors of the buildings announcement presenting Google Apps. Google is now handling the email system for all these scientists, and not just the email, but also of course calendar, docs, etc...
If you had any doubt about cloud computing being the next generation architecture, here is a proof that it is real. I cannot imagine the security concerns that had to be resolved before Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory would actually commit to shift their internal system to Google Apps. But if they were confident that it is ok to do it, and get something better than what they had before in the process, there is no doubt that every business should at least take a serious look at the option.
From my side, I have been using Google Apps since the very beginning, it is a great service and it keeps improving, with new features coming out of Google labs on a regular basis. In addition to the basic services that you can expect from such a platform, Google Sites is a great way to get people into "wiki style" collaboration. Google Sites reduces greatly the barrier to entry for collaboration tools, with a simple interface to co-edit documents. A small change in the way you work but a huge impact on team productivity.
If you haven't done so yet, make sure to take a look at Google Apps!
If you had any doubt about cloud computing being the next generation architecture, here is a proof that it is real. I cannot imagine the security concerns that had to be resolved before Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory would actually commit to shift their internal system to Google Apps. But if they were confident that it is ok to do it, and get something better than what they had before in the process, there is no doubt that every business should at least take a serious look at the option.
From my side, I have been using Google Apps since the very beginning, it is a great service and it keeps improving, with new features coming out of Google labs on a regular basis. In addition to the basic services that you can expect from such a platform, Google Sites is a great way to get people into "wiki style" collaboration. Google Sites reduces greatly the barrier to entry for collaboration tools, with a simple interface to co-edit documents. A small change in the way you work but a huge impact on team productivity.
If you haven't done so yet, make sure to take a look at Google Apps!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum: why you should attend
Post originally published here.
After my earlier post about the Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum coming up April 28-30 2010, I have had an opportunity to talk to Bill Strathmann, who is the CEO of Network for Good, and also Vice Chair at the Social Enterprise Alliance. Here are my impressions on the summit after that discussion:
1. The Social Enterprise Alliance has a very narrow definition of what a Social Entreprise is. They define it on their website as "an organization or venture that achieves its primary social or environmental mission using business methods". So we are looking at businesses with a very specific focus on resolving social issues, and located somewhere in the middle of the "do-good" spectrum between corporations involved in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on one side, and non-profits on the other. BUT don't feel excluded, please keep reading...
2. Despite this narrow definition, I believe that the summit should be of interest to a wide audience:
- because, on the down side, the reality is that the problems that we face today around the world are too big to be fixed by just relying on Social Enterprises to do the right thing while everybody else keeps doing business as usual
- and because on the up side, the ideas that are coming out of Social Enterprises, and the best practices that can be identified from the existing implementations, can be very useful to corporations trying to get into creative capitalism, and to non-profit trying to evolve towards a more sustainable model of doing business than relying on grants.
So really everybody should come to engage.
The summit is set to deliver a lot of great content to enable real change, because beyond the various tracks offering knowledge sharing and discussions on best practices for social entrepreneurs or would-be social entrepreneurs, it is opening the doors to a larger discussion. The title of this summit is "New Approach, New Economy" and it is bringing up important questions, and prospective from key stakeholders:
- the first plenary session takes a look at what governments are trying to do to help social enterprises, with representatives from Canada, UK and US governments.
- the second plenary session gets into "how to think different", with a look at system thinking
- and the summit offers opportunities for side discussions through the "Dine around" program and through tours of local social enterprises, great opportunities to mix and brainstorm on the next best thing.
With this great content and these key stakholders, and in order to get the perfect mix, who should come?:
- corporations currently involved in CSR and interested in creative capitalism should send people at this conference, so that they can identify opportunities to serve markets that they have ignored so far. The creation of Grameen-Danone Foods is a great example of what can be done by corporations when they open their mind to such new opportunities.
- non-profits should come to learn how it is possible to introduce new revenue streams into their programs so that the people they help can be engaged better and longer, and so that they can become more sustainable by relying less on grants and more on a solid business model. According to Bill Strathmann the message from the Social Enterprise Alliance to Foundations is that they should consider spending more grant money on financing the creation and/or growth of social enterprises rather than on financing spending programs that require new grants year after year. And I agree that they should.
- and of course all entrepreneurs should be involved, because business is social and entrepreneurs achievements emerge from the ecosystem that they were able to build around themselves.
Ultimately the success (from my prospective) of the social enterprise movement will be when we can get rid of the word "social enterprise" because we will have learn to do business the right way, maximizing the returns for all the stakeholders rather than maximizing the returns for the stockholders. This is the culture that Entrepreneur Commons (my own social enterprise dedicated to helping you the entrepreneur) is nurturing, and I look forward to attending this summit, to learn more what can be done and how.
After my earlier post about the Social Enterprise Summit and World Forum coming up April 28-30 2010, I have had an opportunity to talk to Bill Strathmann, who is the CEO of Network for Good, and also Vice Chair at the Social Enterprise Alliance. Here are my impressions on the summit after that discussion:
1. The Social Enterprise Alliance has a very narrow definition of what a Social Entreprise is. They define it on their website as "an organization or venture that achieves its primary social or environmental mission using business methods". So we are looking at businesses with a very specific focus on resolving social issues, and located somewhere in the middle of the "do-good" spectrum between corporations involved in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) on one side, and non-profits on the other. BUT don't feel excluded, please keep reading...
2. Despite this narrow definition, I believe that the summit should be of interest to a wide audience:
- because, on the down side, the reality is that the problems that we face today around the world are too big to be fixed by just relying on Social Enterprises to do the right thing while everybody else keeps doing business as usual
- and because on the up side, the ideas that are coming out of Social Enterprises, and the best practices that can be identified from the existing implementations, can be very useful to corporations trying to get into creative capitalism, and to non-profit trying to evolve towards a more sustainable model of doing business than relying on grants.
So really everybody should come to engage.
The summit is set to deliver a lot of great content to enable real change, because beyond the various tracks offering knowledge sharing and discussions on best practices for social entrepreneurs or would-be social entrepreneurs, it is opening the doors to a larger discussion. The title of this summit is "New Approach, New Economy" and it is bringing up important questions, and prospective from key stakeholders:
- the first plenary session takes a look at what governments are trying to do to help social enterprises, with representatives from Canada, UK and US governments.
- the second plenary session gets into "how to think different", with a look at system thinking
- and the summit offers opportunities for side discussions through the "Dine around" program and through tours of local social enterprises, great opportunities to mix and brainstorm on the next best thing.
With this great content and these key stakholders, and in order to get the perfect mix, who should come?:
- corporations currently involved in CSR and interested in creative capitalism should send people at this conference, so that they can identify opportunities to serve markets that they have ignored so far. The creation of Grameen-Danone Foods is a great example of what can be done by corporations when they open their mind to such new opportunities.
- non-profits should come to learn how it is possible to introduce new revenue streams into their programs so that the people they help can be engaged better and longer, and so that they can become more sustainable by relying less on grants and more on a solid business model. According to Bill Strathmann the message from the Social Enterprise Alliance to Foundations is that they should consider spending more grant money on financing the creation and/or growth of social enterprises rather than on financing spending programs that require new grants year after year. And I agree that they should.
- and of course all entrepreneurs should be involved, because business is social and entrepreneurs achievements emerge from the ecosystem that they were able to build around themselves.
Ultimately the success (from my prospective) of the social enterprise movement will be when we can get rid of the word "social enterprise" because we will have learn to do business the right way, maximizing the returns for all the stakeholders rather than maximizing the returns for the stockholders. This is the culture that Entrepreneur Commons (my own social enterprise dedicated to helping you the entrepreneur) is nurturing, and I look forward to attending this summit, to learn more what can be done and how.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Nothing to buzz about
Clearly Google is struggling with innovation, and they are starting to look like the Yahoos of the world when it comes to social networking.
It seems that everything they try is failing, and buzz looks like another one of these. Time will tell, but for now I am not impressed.
So what's going on? Lots of cool stuff is coming out, and employee are said to have 20% of their time that they can allocate to special project, but then whatever is produced is only a half success at best. Lots of buzz that falls flat after a while. I am talking here about Google video, Google talk, Google check out, Google Lattitude, Google wave, and I suspect Google buzz.
My take on this is that Google is too fat. They make good money from ads revenue, and they are not hungry enough that they need to go to the bottom of the solution that they are offering to make them really appealing on the business side.
One exception: Google mail, which evolved into Google Apps. Clearly they have something there, a very compelling solution for businesses to handle the typical basic services like email, and doc sharing. It took a while to get here, but it is happening.
The good news for Google is that they have money, so they can buy their way into better solution. And they did get their hands on cool technologies: the most famous was YouTube as a replacement for Google video, but also Writely for Google docs, Grandcentral for Google Voice, Etherpad, Gizmo - to name a few.
So is there a lesson here that good innovation cannot by design come from the corporation after it has reach a certain size?
All teams inside are geared to optimize the delivery of their solutions, and protect their market, and even with 20% time for other things they are not in the right state of mind to create, really think outside the box to the point where it could be counter to their bespoke solutions. The people inside cannot think of the Google mothership as the enemy against which they can produce a better app.
After many years of trying to create software exclusively from the inside, Oracle went into a buying spree. And probably acquisitions are where the next hot things will come from in Google's case too. Not to say that you should not experiment, if anything to understand the issues before you go an buy something, but I do not expect too much from Google buzz to turn Google into a social networking success...
-------------------------------------
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It seems that everything they try is failing, and buzz looks like another one of these. Time will tell, but for now I am not impressed.
So what's going on? Lots of cool stuff is coming out, and employee are said to have 20% of their time that they can allocate to special project, but then whatever is produced is only a half success at best. Lots of buzz that falls flat after a while. I am talking here about Google video, Google talk, Google check out, Google Lattitude, Google wave, and I suspect Google buzz.
My take on this is that Google is too fat. They make good money from ads revenue, and they are not hungry enough that they need to go to the bottom of the solution that they are offering to make them really appealing on the business side.
One exception: Google mail, which evolved into Google Apps. Clearly they have something there, a very compelling solution for businesses to handle the typical basic services like email, and doc sharing. It took a while to get here, but it is happening.
The good news for Google is that they have money, so they can buy their way into better solution. And they did get their hands on cool technologies: the most famous was YouTube as a replacement for Google video, but also Writely for Google docs, Grandcentral for Google Voice, Etherpad, Gizmo - to name a few.
So is there a lesson here that good innovation cannot by design come from the corporation after it has reach a certain size?
All teams inside are geared to optimize the delivery of their solutions, and protect their market, and even with 20% time for other things they are not in the right state of mind to create, really think outside the box to the point where it could be counter to their bespoke solutions. The people inside cannot think of the Google mothership as the enemy against which they can produce a better app.
After many years of trying to create software exclusively from the inside, Oracle went into a buying spree. And probably acquisitions are where the next hot things will come from in Google's case too. Not to say that you should not experiment, if anything to understand the issues before you go an buy something, but I do not expect too much from Google buzz to turn Google into a social networking success...
-------------------------------------
Would you like to rate me?
Monday, February 08, 2010
Entrepreneur Commons Academy: engaging your community and its influencers
Do you need to understand better what is being said about your company and your product?
Would you like to get a better with online communities within your ecosystem?
Then this Entreco web event is for you.
At the end of this webinar, you will understand:
* How to identify key social influencers in my target market?
* What are hot topics people are talking about?
* How current topics and discussions relate to my brand and
competitors?
* How to establish a relationship with key social influencers?
* How to mix buzz, outreach and content marketing to improve your
visibility and attention in key communities?
PRESENTER: Dominique Lahaix - co-founder and CEO of eCairn
Dominique has over 15 years of experience in e-marketing, knowledge engineering and software development. Prior to founding eCairn he was the CEO and founder of Cairnalys, an e-mail marketing technology company, which customers included companies such as eBay. Prior Cairnalys, he was manager of WW Consulting Practice at HP Emerging services. Dominique previously held engineering and engineering management positions at HP, McDonnell Douglas Information Systems and Tymnet. Dominique holds a Management degree from the prestigious INSEAD European business school and an engineering degree from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, France.
WHERE: this is an online event at Entrepreneur Commons Academy
http://entreco.supercoolschool.com/
To register: http://entreco100211.eventbrite.com/
HOW IT WORKS: Once you register for the event, you will receive an email invite to join the Entrepreneur Commons academy, where you will be able to join the class.
Note that this event is a live online event using the Adobe Connect platform - you will need a computer and a headset, and ideally a webcam to participate.
Once you signup you will receive an invite to join the Entreco supercoolschool space, where you can then access the online event.
If you cannot attend the live event, you should consider becoming a member of the Entrepreneur Commons Academy so that you can access the video archive of the event, and other events that will happen throughout the year.
Would you like to get a better with online communities within your ecosystem?
Then this Entreco web event is for you.
At the end of this webinar, you will understand:
* How to identify key social influencers in my target market?
* What are hot topics people are talking about?
* How current topics and discussions relate to my brand and
competitors?
* How to establish a relationship with key social influencers?
* How to mix buzz, outreach and content marketing to improve your
visibility and attention in key communities?
PRESENTER: Dominique Lahaix - co-founder and CEO of eCairn
Dominique has over 15 years of experience in e-marketing, knowledge engineering and software development. Prior to founding eCairn he was the CEO and founder of Cairnalys, an e-mail marketing technology company, which customers included companies such as eBay. Prior Cairnalys, he was manager of WW Consulting Practice at HP Emerging services. Dominique previously held engineering and engineering management positions at HP, McDonnell Douglas Information Systems and Tymnet. Dominique holds a Management degree from the prestigious INSEAD European business school and an engineering degree from Institut National des Sciences Appliquées de Lyon, France.
WHERE: this is an online event at Entrepreneur Commons Academy
http://entreco.supercoolschool.com/
To register: http://entreco100211.eventbrite.com/
HOW IT WORKS: Once you register for the event, you will receive an email invite to join the Entrepreneur Commons academy, where you will be able to join the class.
Note that this event is a live online event using the Adobe Connect platform - you will need a computer and a headset, and ideally a webcam to participate.
Once you signup you will receive an invite to join the Entreco supercoolschool space, where you can then access the online event.
If you cannot attend the live event, you should consider becoming a member of the Entrepreneur Commons Academy so that you can access the video archive of the event, and other events that will happen throughout the year.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Entrepreneur Commons is growing! 3 new chapters
I have been pushing Entrepreneur Commons for some time now, and I am happy to announce that we are growing. Here is the official announcement:
>>
Entrepreneurs around the world get valuable help from their peers through Entrepreneur Commons.
San Francisco chapter member Brandon P. says: "Through EC, I've met a solid, knowledgeable group of entrepreneurs who challenge my thinking and gladly offer assistance."
To serve entrepreneurs better, we are happy to announce the creation of 3 new chapters.
A new chapter in New York
Melcion Chassagne et Cie and Alexander Lexington & Co are happy to announce the first Entrepreneur Commons meeting in New York City on February 9, 2010. This meeting will be hosted by Foley & Lardner, and will start promptly at 8:30am.
LOCATION: Foley & Lardner - 90 Park Avenue, 37th floor - New York, NY
WHEN: 2/9/10 from 8:30am until 10:30am
click here to register for the NY meeting
A new chapter in Oakland (CA)
Katovich Law Group is happy to announce the first Entrepreneur Commons meeting at their office in Oakland on February 17, 2010. This meeting will start promptly at 8am.
LOCATION: Katovich Law Office - 436 14th Street - Suite 208, 2nd floor - Oakland CA
WHEN: 2/17/10 from 8am until 10am
click here to register for the event
A 2nd chapter in Paris
In addition to the existing chapter already meeting at Club Melcion, Melcion Chassagne et Cie is happy to announce the creation of a second Entrepreneur Commons chapter in Paris on February 1, 2010. The meeting will be hosted by Regus Paris St Lazare, and will start promptly at 5:30pm.
LOCATION: Regus Paris St Lazare - 26-28 rue de Londres - 75009 Paris - France
WHEN: 2/1/10 from 5:30Pm until 7:30Pm
To register, contact christine at melcion dot com
We look forward to seeing you all there
And if you are interested in starting an Entrepreneur Commons chapter in your area, please contact us
Best,
Marc Dangeard
***
Entrepreneur Commons is a network of entrepreneurs that provides peer mentoring. Entrepreneurs meet on a regular basis (typically once a month) to share issues and successes on their current projects with other entrepreneurs. These meetings are an opportunity for all to exchange information, knowledge and contacts in a trusted environment.
Members of Entrepreneur Commons also have access to the global network of entrepreneurs who have already joined local chapters in other places, or who have joined the online community through the Entrepreneur Commons Academy.
>>
Entrepreneurs around the world get valuable help from their peers through Entrepreneur Commons.
San Francisco chapter member Brandon P. says: "Through EC, I've met a solid, knowledgeable group of entrepreneurs who challenge my thinking and gladly offer assistance."
To serve entrepreneurs better, we are happy to announce the creation of 3 new chapters.
A new chapter in New York
Melcion Chassagne et Cie and Alexander Lexington & Co are happy to announce the first Entrepreneur Commons meeting in New York City on February 9, 2010. This meeting will be hosted by Foley & Lardner, and will start promptly at 8:30am.
LOCATION: Foley & Lardner - 90 Park Avenue, 37th floor - New York, NY
WHEN: 2/9/10 from 8:30am until 10:30am
click here to register for the NY meeting
A new chapter in Oakland (CA)
Katovich Law Group is happy to announce the first Entrepreneur Commons meeting at their office in Oakland on February 17, 2010. This meeting will start promptly at 8am.
LOCATION: Katovich Law Office - 436 14th Street - Suite 208, 2nd floor - Oakland CA
WHEN: 2/17/10 from 8am until 10am
click here to register for the event
A 2nd chapter in Paris
In addition to the existing chapter already meeting at Club Melcion, Melcion Chassagne et Cie is happy to announce the creation of a second Entrepreneur Commons chapter in Paris on February 1, 2010. The meeting will be hosted by Regus Paris St Lazare, and will start promptly at 5:30pm.
LOCATION: Regus Paris St Lazare - 26-28 rue de Londres - 75009 Paris - France
WHEN: 2/1/10 from 5:30Pm until 7:30Pm
To register, contact christine at melcion dot com
We look forward to seeing you all there
And if you are interested in starting an Entrepreneur Commons chapter in your area, please contact us
Best,
Marc Dangeard
***
Entrepreneur Commons is a network of entrepreneurs that provides peer mentoring. Entrepreneurs meet on a regular basis (typically once a month) to share issues and successes on their current projects with other entrepreneurs. These meetings are an opportunity for all to exchange information, knowledge and contacts in a trusted environment.
Members of Entrepreneur Commons also have access to the global network of entrepreneurs who have already joined local chapters in other places, or who have joined the online community through the Entrepreneur Commons Academy.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Good to see another piece of the puzzle
"we've acquired Gizmo5"Good to see another piece of the puzzle added to the overall Google toolbox.
Comment posted on Google Voice Blog: Google welcomes Gizmo5 at googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com using Reframe It
Friday, November 06, 2009
Test from iPhone
Test from iPhone
Comment posted on Reframe It - Javascript Injectable Margin (JIM) Integration Demo at delphi.reframeit.com using Reframe It
Thursday, October 01, 2009
The tower of Babel - another take
Since the beginning of my life on the web I have had this gut feeling that we are building a Babel tower, and that we have to be very careful how we do this if we do not want the whole thing to blow up in our face.
There is the issue of architecture, and how we are today surfing private silos (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc...) rather than surfing a global web of distributed servers. And there is risk in this.
And then there is the social web.
This is what I see:
- people have limited time to spend reading stuff and interact with others on the web, so they have to choose
- meanwhile there is an increasingly large number of sources of news, and of places to interact, so choice is becoming even more difficult
- in the end, what will make me choose one place or another is where the people I know are. And if I make new friends, I will invite them to join these places where my network is, as a way to share this network with them and bring them into that one place where I can maintain network. Pick one and stick to it.
- what it means, is that these places can only be public places, easily accessible by others and places that will remain open to me whatever happens to me (job situation, personal life situation). This is the promise of a LinkedIn or a Facebook, and many other "public" services.
- from a business prospective, this is also the promise of these vertical networks of experts, which make a lot of sense to share best pratices and create some critical mass around a given subject matter.
The issue however, is that the more we get together talking about a subject, the more we are turning this vertical network into a competitive economy where the winner takes all. From the network, will emerge a few recognized experts, and they will get most of the traffic, and most of the deals. Everybody else in the group becomes another person stuck in the middle and struggling to get their voice heard. An individual among many others in the long tail. Which is not a very healthy economy for most (who makes money from his/her blog today?).
For the expert in the middle, the way out (until he gets some attention and can be the lucky beneficiary of the network effect) is the personal network, people who appreciate the value he brings and will agree to compensate him fairly for that value.
And this is where the tower of Babel story comes back into mind: the story ends with a lot of small groups that do not talk to each others, because this is a more sustainable way.
Let's see what happens this time around...
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There is the issue of architecture, and how we are today surfing private silos (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc...) rather than surfing a global web of distributed servers. And there is risk in this.
And then there is the social web.
This is what I see:
- people have limited time to spend reading stuff and interact with others on the web, so they have to choose
- meanwhile there is an increasingly large number of sources of news, and of places to interact, so choice is becoming even more difficult
- in the end, what will make me choose one place or another is where the people I know are. And if I make new friends, I will invite them to join these places where my network is, as a way to share this network with them and bring them into that one place where I can maintain network. Pick one and stick to it.
- what it means, is that these places can only be public places, easily accessible by others and places that will remain open to me whatever happens to me (job situation, personal life situation). This is the promise of a LinkedIn or a Facebook, and many other "public" services.
- from a business prospective, this is also the promise of these vertical networks of experts, which make a lot of sense to share best pratices and create some critical mass around a given subject matter.
The issue however, is that the more we get together talking about a subject, the more we are turning this vertical network into a competitive economy where the winner takes all. From the network, will emerge a few recognized experts, and they will get most of the traffic, and most of the deals. Everybody else in the group becomes another person stuck in the middle and struggling to get their voice heard. An individual among many others in the long tail. Which is not a very healthy economy for most (who makes money from his/her blog today?).
For the expert in the middle, the way out (until he gets some attention and can be the lucky beneficiary of the network effect) is the personal network, people who appreciate the value he brings and will agree to compensate him fairly for that value.
And this is where the tower of Babel story comes back into mind: the story ends with a lot of small groups that do not talk to each others, because this is a more sustainable way.
Let's see what happens this time around...
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Thursday, September 24, 2009
If you like Google Sidewiki try www.reframeit.com
Google Sidewiki is a very nice concept, but ReframetIt is a way better implementation of the concept. try http://www.reframeit.com, see it in action here
I have tried Google Sidewiki, and I have uninstalled it within the half hour, because it is missing the point on the user experience side, and it does not really deliver on its promise. Maybe the next version will be better. In the meantime, ReframeIt rules :-)
It is always nice to see Google push great new ideas, but in this case I think that they are victim of becoming too big for their own good. And they seem to be spreading themselves over too many things without really going into the depth of them enough to make them really worth our while.
I have seen it happen several time: friendconnect was a great idea, but I do not see too much happening with it, Google talk was a good idea, but I do not seem much happening with it, etc...
The worst of it all in this area is Google contacts, this link you have in Gmail to access your contacts. This is the worst contact management system I have seen, and it has not been improved a bit in the few years I have been using Gmail. And even if you use Google Apps and pay for the service you are very limited on that side, and for example there is no UI to upload contacts that you want to share with colleagues within the same domain. Just an API, and outside vendor who have built the HTML and will charge you for that piece. How hard can it be for Google to resolve this?
I love Google and I love what they bring us (I can't wait to see Google Wave open up to more people so that I can start use it fully to communicate), and I appreciate that they bring it to us for free, but I wish sometimes that they would do a little less and go a little deeper to make it really work...
Comment posted on Google Sidewiki at www.google.com using Reframe It
Monday, September 14, 2009
Google Voice on the iPhone
I just ran into this post mentioning that there is now an app to use Google Voice on the iPhone. I have tried and this is a major cool app.
Basically I can use the app the call, the keyboard is the same as for the regular phone app, and I have access to all my contacts on the iPhone. What it does for me is resolve the issue of the Google contacts not being synchronized with the right account.
Google Voice native uses my Gmail contact, while I am using Google Apps (dangeard.com domain) for my address book. Not a problem anymore, since these contacts are synchronized on my iPhone through the Exchange sync, and since they are the contacts I can use when dialing from my iPhone. Very very cool. If you have any question why you would want your iPhone jailbroken, here is the answer. Thank you Sean Kovacs for this...
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Basically I can use the app the call, the keyboard is the same as for the regular phone app, and I have access to all my contacts on the iPhone. What it does for me is resolve the issue of the Google contacts not being synchronized with the right account.
Google Voice native uses my Gmail contact, while I am using Google Apps (dangeard.com domain) for my address book. Not a problem anymore, since these contacts are synchronized on my iPhone through the Exchange sync, and since they are the contacts I can use when dialing from my iPhone. Very very cool. If you have any question why you would want your iPhone jailbroken, here is the answer. Thank you Sean Kovacs for this...
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Post originally published here
My friends at eCairn recently came up with a new service to get to know your ecosystem better: network and keyword maps.
I am already using eCairn to collect and read blogs on several topics: entrepreneurs, entreprise 2.0, social capital, etc...
I use the service to find new blogs related to each of these topics: the "suggested blog" feature that they have has allowed me to build from an initial set of about 20 blogs that were relevant to me to a list of about 500 to date.
I also use eCairn influence ranking to sort out these blogs, so that I have a choice to filter the posts I read using keywords, but also influence. If I am short on time, I'll stick to checking posts from the top influencers, and then if I have more time, I will dig down into the bigger set of blogs. This same influence ranking is what allowed me to post the top 150 "Social Capital" blogs for example.
And now they are offering some interesting visualization tools. I did experiment with them on the Social Capital list of blogs:
1. Network map: this is a big blob, and not much can be seen, but it is interesting to notice that within this big cloud of 548 blogs there are a few networks within the network that appear on the edges (blue tags and green tags).
2. Network map for the top blogs: in this map, you can see 2 distinct networks for blogs. From what I could see, one group seem to focus more on funding and marketing, while the other seem to have a focus closer to social entrepreneurship. But in the end bloggers are people and who they reference and why is not a strict rule. In this case I would be interested in feedback from bloggers on why we have such 2 groups at the top.
3. Keyword map for the blogs mentioning "Social Capital": in this last example, I used a filter on "Social Capital" to look at the posts from the Social Capital ecosystem that I am tracking. And what is interesting here is that we are looking not just at keywords, but at groups of words as well, up to 3 word. The big difference here is that while it is interesting to keep keywords, there is value in identifying groups of words such as "office of social" for example. In this case, it is probably fair to assume that this group of word refers to the Office of Social Innovation established by the Obama administration. And if we start looking at this group of words and how often they are used in posts, we can see here that "Office of Social" is used more often than "government".
The most striking group of words for me is "Social Media" which comes back more often than almost anything else. For a group of blogs focusing on Social Capital, it comes back more often than "social entrepreneurs" or "social innovation".
On the more "to be expected side", "Social Venture" is comes back more often than "philanthropy", "Impact" comes back more than "investment".
And then note the importance of "San Francisco" in the overall cloud. If I am to believe bloggers, San Francisco is clearly the place where things are happening.
And if there is one event that stands out, it is the Social Capital Markets Conference (look at the size of the "Capital Markets Conference" group). Kudos to the Socap team for the awareness that they were able to raise in the blogs. It would be interesting to see how this cloud evolves over time...
My friends at eCairn recently came up with a new service to get to know your ecosystem better: network and keyword maps.
I am already using eCairn to collect and read blogs on several topics: entrepreneurs, entreprise 2.0, social capital, etc...
I use the service to find new blogs related to each of these topics: the "suggested blog" feature that they have has allowed me to build from an initial set of about 20 blogs that were relevant to me to a list of about 500 to date.
I also use eCairn influence ranking to sort out these blogs, so that I have a choice to filter the posts I read using keywords, but also influence. If I am short on time, I'll stick to checking posts from the top influencers, and then if I have more time, I will dig down into the bigger set of blogs. This same influence ranking is what allowed me to post the top 150 "Social Capital" blogs for example.
And now they are offering some interesting visualization tools. I did experiment with them on the Social Capital list of blogs:
1. Network map: this is a big blob, and not much can be seen, but it is interesting to notice that within this big cloud of 548 blogs there are a few networks within the network that appear on the edges (blue tags and green tags).
2. Network map for the top blogs: in this map, you can see 2 distinct networks for blogs. From what I could see, one group seem to focus more on funding and marketing, while the other seem to have a focus closer to social entrepreneurship. But in the end bloggers are people and who they reference and why is not a strict rule. In this case I would be interested in feedback from bloggers on why we have such 2 groups at the top.
3. Keyword map for the blogs mentioning "Social Capital": in this last example, I used a filter on "Social Capital" to look at the posts from the Social Capital ecosystem that I am tracking. And what is interesting here is that we are looking not just at keywords, but at groups of words as well, up to 3 word. The big difference here is that while it is interesting to keep keywords, there is value in identifying groups of words such as "office of social" for example. In this case, it is probably fair to assume that this group of word refers to the Office of Social Innovation established by the Obama administration. And if we start looking at this group of words and how often they are used in posts, we can see here that "Office of Social" is used more often than "government".
The most striking group of words for me is "Social Media" which comes back more often than almost anything else. For a group of blogs focusing on Social Capital, it comes back more often than "social entrepreneurs" or "social innovation".
On the more "to be expected side", "Social Venture" is comes back more often than "philanthropy", "Impact" comes back more than "investment".
And then note the importance of "San Francisco" in the overall cloud. If I am to believe bloggers, San Francisco is clearly the place where things are happening.
And if there is one event that stands out, it is the Social Capital Markets Conference (look at the size of the "Capital Markets Conference" group). Kudos to the Socap team for the awareness that they were able to raise in the blogs. It would be interesting to see how this cloud evolves over time...
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Post originally published here
The last day of Socap started with very moving and sobering accounts of the state of the world from 3 women. According to the program we were looking at 3 stages of Social Entreprise, but really it was 3 vivid snapshots from the ocean of issues we need to address:
- Elizabeth Lindsey talked about vanishing indigenous cultures and the absence of respect for elders in Western countries. "We earn these wrinkles, we should be proud of them"
- Ann Wizer talked about trash, and how we need to think about what happens after a product has been used. This is not just about recycling, it is about including the "end of life" into the design of the product
- Eve Blossom talked about fighting the sex trade by providing a competing market options
Inspiring stories that ultimately show us that regardless how bad things are, something can be done to try to make it right.
And after the tone had been set, the open space format of the last day always make it the best of all. This is where we go past the formal presentations to dig into the heart of things.
For me today it was virtual currencies and how they can help unlock currently untapped or under-utilized resources. 2 examples, from each end of the spectrum:
- Recipco offers UTUs, a universal trading unit backed by large corporations. A very impressive solution worth checking - more details here
- Everywun offers credits to compensate for positive actions: displaying support, learning about causes or reaching out to friends. These credits can be used then to support charities. Simple and powerful.
Technology exist that works, we can use virtual currencies as a tool to change the dynamics within a given ecosystem.
My idea for Socap next year would be that every attendee gets 10,000 units on the first day, with a mission to spend it all during the conference on social entrepreneurs or other resources that help make a difference. You must spend your initial 10,000 units, and then you can spend units that you earn during the conference.
And at the end of the 3 days, some of the foundations present at the conference could match these units with real dollars for the top earners.
Spending units could be fun, it could be a good opportunity to meet people, and it could be an opportunity to get a few projects funded on site.
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The last day of Socap started with very moving and sobering accounts of the state of the world from 3 women. According to the program we were looking at 3 stages of Social Entreprise, but really it was 3 vivid snapshots from the ocean of issues we need to address:
- Elizabeth Lindsey talked about vanishing indigenous cultures and the absence of respect for elders in Western countries. "We earn these wrinkles, we should be proud of them"
- Ann Wizer talked about trash, and how we need to think about what happens after a product has been used. This is not just about recycling, it is about including the "end of life" into the design of the product
- Eve Blossom talked about fighting the sex trade by providing a competing market options
Inspiring stories that ultimately show us that regardless how bad things are, something can be done to try to make it right.
And after the tone had been set, the open space format of the last day always make it the best of all. This is where we go past the formal presentations to dig into the heart of things.
For me today it was virtual currencies and how they can help unlock currently untapped or under-utilized resources. 2 examples, from each end of the spectrum:
- Recipco offers UTUs, a universal trading unit backed by large corporations. A very impressive solution worth checking - more details here
- Everywun offers credits to compensate for positive actions: displaying support, learning about causes or reaching out to friends. These credits can be used then to support charities. Simple and powerful.
Technology exist that works, we can use virtual currencies as a tool to change the dynamics within a given ecosystem.
My idea for Socap next year would be that every attendee gets 10,000 units on the first day, with a mission to spend it all during the conference on social entrepreneurs or other resources that help make a difference. You must spend your initial 10,000 units, and then you can spend units that you earn during the conference.
And at the end of the 3 days, some of the foundations present at the conference could match these units with real dollars for the top earners.
Spending units could be fun, it could be a good opportunity to meet people, and it could be an opportunity to get a few projects funded on site.
-----------------------------------------
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Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Socap09 - day 2
Post originally published here
Lots of conversations today at Socap09, and a lot of the same questions from last year still unresolved: how to get projects funded, how to scale, how to measure impact, how to better account for intangible assets, etc... We are still experimenting, and sharing results from here and there, trying to extract the lessons learned so that hopefully next year we can show a little more progress.
Meanwhile the highlight for me today came from the discussion on "hubs": building communities anchored around a space. Nothing fundamentally new, incubators have been around for quite some time, except that we are not talking about real estate, but rather we are talking about establishing geographical landmarks as anchors for local communities to gather around the idea of changing the world. A small difference in the narrative and in the pricing model, but a huge difference in the type of community you establish and the results you can expect.
And it seems to me that it is a very good opportunity to start fresh with people and their dreams (their BeDo, as I discovered yesterday) gathering to help each other and share experience.
There are several examples of such concept implemented in various places, but the best I have seen so far is The Hub. A good place for entrepreneurs to hang out.
I have been working on my side on the Entrepreneur Commons, and I see a lot of synergies between hubs and Entrepreneur Commons. If the Entrepreneur Commons is a community anchored around a fund for seed capital, and hubs are communities anchored around geograhical landmarks, then what we have really are 2 pilars upon which we can build strong ventures. Something that I intend to explore further...
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Lots of conversations today at Socap09, and a lot of the same questions from last year still unresolved: how to get projects funded, how to scale, how to measure impact, how to better account for intangible assets, etc... We are still experimenting, and sharing results from here and there, trying to extract the lessons learned so that hopefully next year we can show a little more progress.
Meanwhile the highlight for me today came from the discussion on "hubs": building communities anchored around a space. Nothing fundamentally new, incubators have been around for quite some time, except that we are not talking about real estate, but rather we are talking about establishing geographical landmarks as anchors for local communities to gather around the idea of changing the world. A small difference in the narrative and in the pricing model, but a huge difference in the type of community you establish and the results you can expect.
And it seems to me that it is a very good opportunity to start fresh with people and their dreams (their BeDo, as I discovered yesterday) gathering to help each other and share experience.
There are several examples of such concept implemented in various places, but the best I have seen so far is The Hub. A good place for entrepreneurs to hang out.
I have been working on my side on the Entrepreneur Commons, and I see a lot of synergies between hubs and Entrepreneur Commons. If the Entrepreneur Commons is a community anchored around a fund for seed capital, and hubs are communities anchored around geograhical landmarks, then what we have really are 2 pilars upon which we can build strong ventures. Something that I intend to explore further...
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Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Socap09 - first day
This post was originally published here
One year later, it feels good to be back at Socap, and it is great to catch up on the Social Capital Markets conversation.
My first impression is that just like everywhere else I go these days, and whoever else I talk to, the subject of Innovation, and more specifically Social Innovation takes over the conversation.
Socap and its attendees were no different today: the first keynote was from Sonal Shah, the director of the office of social innovation in the Obama administration.
- 4 people working across the various bodies of the administration to help them think differently and work with each other to scale efforts taken from the public or private sector that work
- a social innovation fund to help finance the process
It used to be that people dreaming of a better world would try to stay away from government ("big brother" could kill the dream). The same people see now the government as a potential (or even unavoidable) ally. This is a huge change in perception, and a huge opportunity to make things happen differently. Just that is a major accomplishment of the Obama administration, and even if it is just starting and much still needs to be done, it clearly makes this office of social innovation a success already.
So if you did not know yet, it's official now: 2009 is the year of Social Innovation. And what it is really is a re-definition of organizations models and infrastructure: whether it is government or enterprise, or any kind of organization, people have realized that military style hierarchies with top down communication are not sustainable over the long term. Michel Bowens has been talking about the rise of the peer-to-peer civilization, and it is now happening.
What this means for entrepreneurs is that they too should think about Social Innovation and Participation for their own organizations. If you are going to build a company that will last, it should have participation built in.
And this is the other highlight of this first day of Socap09 for me: BeDo Spring as the "Intel Inside" for enterprise.
What BeDo Spring does is help corporations develop unique mission brands and action platforms, which engage employees around social responsibility, sustainability and purpose. It helps brand evolve from a top down model of a small strategic marketing team defining plans and actions to a model where employees are empowered to do something good that will benefit them as well as the brand and the rest of the world.
Brand management is becoming community management, starting with employees. If we are evolving towards a world where "communities dominate brands" this is good strategy to implement. You too need to find your BeDo...
-----------------------------------------
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One year later, it feels good to be back at Socap, and it is great to catch up on the Social Capital Markets conversation.
My first impression is that just like everywhere else I go these days, and whoever else I talk to, the subject of Innovation, and more specifically Social Innovation takes over the conversation.
Socap and its attendees were no different today: the first keynote was from Sonal Shah, the director of the office of social innovation in the Obama administration.
- 4 people working across the various bodies of the administration to help them think differently and work with each other to scale efforts taken from the public or private sector that work
- a social innovation fund to help finance the process
It used to be that people dreaming of a better world would try to stay away from government ("big brother" could kill the dream). The same people see now the government as a potential (or even unavoidable) ally. This is a huge change in perception, and a huge opportunity to make things happen differently. Just that is a major accomplishment of the Obama administration, and even if it is just starting and much still needs to be done, it clearly makes this office of social innovation a success already.
So if you did not know yet, it's official now: 2009 is the year of Social Innovation. And what it is really is a re-definition of organizations models and infrastructure: whether it is government or enterprise, or any kind of organization, people have realized that military style hierarchies with top down communication are not sustainable over the long term. Michel Bowens has been talking about the rise of the peer-to-peer civilization, and it is now happening.
What this means for entrepreneurs is that they too should think about Social Innovation and Participation for their own organizations. If you are going to build a company that will last, it should have participation built in.
And this is the other highlight of this first day of Socap09 for me: BeDo Spring as the "Intel Inside" for enterprise.
What BeDo Spring does is help corporations develop unique mission brands and action platforms, which engage employees around social responsibility, sustainability and purpose. It helps brand evolve from a top down model of a small strategic marketing team defining plans and actions to a model where employees are empowered to do something good that will benefit them as well as the brand and the rest of the world.
Brand management is becoming community management, starting with employees. If we are evolving towards a world where "communities dominate brands" this is good strategy to implement. You too need to find your BeDo...
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Why I am going to Socap09: can we re-invent currencies?
This post was originally posted on the Socap09 blog
I read recently on Edge.org an essay from Douglas Rushkoff entitled "Economics is not a natural science".
In the article, Douglas reminds us that the current economic system we take for granted is a result of history. It goes back to the middle ages, when people went from bartering what they were producing, and the main measure of value was the amount of food that could be produced from an ecosystem, to currencies based on how much gold where held in central banks. Scarcity was no longer in the ends of mother nature, but rather it became disconnected from it, and in the hands of the rulers of the land.
Since then, currencies has evolved to no longer being connected to gold either, they are just an artificial instrument to regulate exchange within and across nations.
Comes the internet, and another phenomenon appears, that Xavier Comtesse describes in his essay on "Direct Territories": we are now living in a world at the intersection of several and often conflicting layers. There is the geographical layer, several government layers (from local to national), a business layer (the corporation that spans across nation), and many other community layers. With the internet, stakeholders from these layers that typically did not have access to the discussion now can have their voice heard and can contribute to the balance of powers. Yochai Benkler in his book "The wealth of networks" gives very good examples of how this power is being re-distributed, and of the opportunities but also the risks it represents.
Today the economic crisis shows us a world where many people are without a job while there is enough work for everybody if we want to fix the issues at hand. Douglas Rushkoff concludes his essay by saying that "the economic model has broken, for good. It's time to stop pretending it describes our world". So what can we do from here?
- From the internet came the Open Source community, that has shown us how a large group of developers who were not bound by any constraint other than their own desire to contribute could self-organize to build and maintain very complex systems.
- And from history, we learn that it is possible to go around the lack of liquidity in situations of crisis by using our own currency: in 1934, and because there was a shortage of cash due to the stock market crash of 1929, a business man in Switzerland created the Swiss Economic Circle, now called WIR Bank. They started with 16 members, and there are now 62,000 businesses strong. They eventually returned to managing real currencies in 1952, but the system worked well to help businesses out of the crisis in the meantime.
One opportunity at Socap09 is to derive from these lessons and to consider what the ideal currency should be used for social capital markets, that would allow us to restore the right balance for a more sustainable world. I am looking forward to having such a discussion...
-----------------------------------------
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I read recently on Edge.org an essay from Douglas Rushkoff entitled "Economics is not a natural science".
In the article, Douglas reminds us that the current economic system we take for granted is a result of history. It goes back to the middle ages, when people went from bartering what they were producing, and the main measure of value was the amount of food that could be produced from an ecosystem, to currencies based on how much gold where held in central banks. Scarcity was no longer in the ends of mother nature, but rather it became disconnected from it, and in the hands of the rulers of the land.
Since then, currencies has evolved to no longer being connected to gold either, they are just an artificial instrument to regulate exchange within and across nations.
Comes the internet, and another phenomenon appears, that Xavier Comtesse describes in his essay on "Direct Territories": we are now living in a world at the intersection of several and often conflicting layers. There is the geographical layer, several government layers (from local to national), a business layer (the corporation that spans across nation), and many other community layers. With the internet, stakeholders from these layers that typically did not have access to the discussion now can have their voice heard and can contribute to the balance of powers. Yochai Benkler in his book "The wealth of networks" gives very good examples of how this power is being re-distributed, and of the opportunities but also the risks it represents.
Today the economic crisis shows us a world where many people are without a job while there is enough work for everybody if we want to fix the issues at hand. Douglas Rushkoff concludes his essay by saying that "the economic model has broken, for good. It's time to stop pretending it describes our world". So what can we do from here?
- From the internet came the Open Source community, that has shown us how a large group of developers who were not bound by any constraint other than their own desire to contribute could self-organize to build and maintain very complex systems.
- And from history, we learn that it is possible to go around the lack of liquidity in situations of crisis by using our own currency: in 1934, and because there was a shortage of cash due to the stock market crash of 1929, a business man in Switzerland created the Swiss Economic Circle, now called WIR Bank. They started with 16 members, and there are now 62,000 businesses strong. They eventually returned to managing real currencies in 1952, but the system worked well to help businesses out of the crisis in the meantime.
One opportunity at Socap09 is to derive from these lessons and to consider what the ideal currency should be used for social capital markets, that would allow us to restore the right balance for a more sustainable world. I am looking forward to having such a discussion...
-----------------------------------------
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