Category: Online

In general I am big supporter of “small is beautiful”. People perform best in contexts that they can relate to and where they know people. A famous example is the 50 employee limit of the old BSO cells. This is especially important in healthcare… being a personal and social branch. However, there is an important exception: Big DATA. Continue reading “Big is Beautifull (well, only sometimes)”

Technology means different things for different people. That means that we need a lot more user involvement in the development of technologies for elderly. However, most technologies are developed by people in a different age bracket than the elderly people they are meant for. In the video below you see an advertisement where a company tries to sell an advanced alarm button with video to their elderly customers. Look at 40″ how horribly ugly that alarm button is. Continue reading “Onze size does not fit all”

One of the interesting aspects of Google+ is the concept of Circles. The idea is that in real life you have different circles of friends to whom you communicate differently. There is no single you but there are several you’s that are a bit different depending on the context. Most people act a   different towards their boss, their old university friends and towards familiy.

There is however one aspect missing that I think will turn out to be crucial to it’s succes: uncertainty.

Friendship is by definition two sided. It does not have to be symmetrical (meaning you both feel the same towards eachother) but at least there is to be some level of reciprocity. Most group of friends consist of a small group of people that have a high level of reciprocity and close bonds in their relations to each other. Around that group there is a larger community where the level of reciprocity is not consistent for the whole core group. They are sort of in the group and out of the group at the same time, depending on who you ask.

This foggy definition of a circle of friends is something we as humans need since we deal badly with rejection. This lack of Transparancy makes it possible to create blurry edges for people to feel in while in fact they are only partly accepted. This blurry edge however does create a gradual path for people to move into the circle step by step. This is something we probably all recognise from our own experience, especially during school.

Because of this transparancy in Circles what you end up with is the relationships type in LinkedIn where everyone is a friend since it is too confronting to reject someone as a friend. And when everyone is you friend than no one is.

So unless Google is able to build in a combination of reciprocity and bit of vagueness in circles my prediction is that it will not succeed. If they (or Facebook) does succeed in modelling how friendships works in real life than that social network will win the battle. Because, aren’t we all looking for friends?

For many open source is a great example of innovation. Software like Linux, Apache, Joomla and OpenOffice have thriving communities that create great software. however, these products are not innovative. Linux is a clone from Unix that was developed in the 60’s, Apache is just another webserver, Joomla is one of the many content management systems and OpenOffice tries to mimic Word.
At the start of the open source movement the statement was that Open Source was to be free like in free speech, not as in free beer. In English the word free has two connotations: free as in gratis (no money) and free as in libre (free to go). Unfortunately open source has become free beer.
For an innovative product to be sustainable it needs a business model. Picture a young programmer that, in his time off from his day job, creates an innovative product that others start to use. After some time more and more demands will be made for new functionality and the solving of bugs. More and more of his free time will be spent on this product. He can not quit his day job because his innovative product does not bring in money in license fees since it is gratis. After some time he quits the project. Sourceforge, the place where many open source projects have a home, is filled with interesting but nonetheless failed projects like these. Sourceforge is the place where projects go to die ..
The main reason why a few examples like Joomla and Linux survive is because of many companies around it make money by delivering services. Because it is not innovative it is a product category that is understood by potential customers that are willing to pay for services implementing it. What we need is a business model for the software itself. What we need to do is to severe the connection between the openness of the software (to be able to inspect code is a good thing) and the business model behind it (being able to make a living creating great products).
We run the risk that the same thing now is happening in the open data movement. Pressure is set on several organizations to open up their data so app developers can build applications on top of it. We should realize that, once these organizations do not make money on that data, that the quality and access to that data will not be of strategic importance to them. We should as much as possible enforce the openness of the data to prevent a monopoly of information access. But the original creators of that data should be able to make a llving out of it.
Data should be free like in free speech, not as in free beer …

Fractals create fascinating pictures. On the one hand they look very structured and symmetrical but when you look closer you see that the pattern is repeated in a different way on every level. There is order and there is chaos simultaneously. The math behind fractals is surprisingly simple. The trick is that the factors in the equation repeat themselves in a recursive way (meaning that the formula calls itself withing the formula).
For example, the formula for the fractal on the right is “(1 − z3 / 6) / (z − z2 / 2)2 + c” (for more info on these fractals go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_set). Many of natures most beautiful expressions are based in Fractals, e.g. leafs , trees and flowers. Here the relatively simple codes in the DNA create fascinating structures in the organism.
The mechanism is similar with the effects of new technology on our way of living and working. At the moment we see many fields of business changing in very profound and different ways. Often due to wide spread implementations of new developments like Cloud technologies (that impacts how business interact) and Social Media (that impacts how people interact).
However, the driving forces behind this change are relative simple. The basic variables that are impacted by this change in technology are:

• Unlimited Scalability: Technology and processes become scalable. IT costs become a variable costs. This means that a company can start small and grow evolutionary. Communities can be scaled up from a few to hundred thousands of people in a short period. This flexibility gives rise to new competitors and new services that had not been possible before.
• Ubiquitous Communication: (Social) Technology makes it possible to find the person with the right knowledge instantaneously. Communication channels are easy to access for broadcasting to targeted audiences as well as direct interaction.
• Seamless Cooperation: We have now been given the freedom to work and cooperate everywhere. Where in the past closed systems made it difficult to work together it is now made possible by standardized tools in the cloud. Sharing data, sharing tools and sharing contacts is now possible.
• Anytime, Anywhere: Instead of real-time communication in a specific place we are now free to interact wherever and whenever. Many of our tools support direct communication (chat) as well as a-synchronous communication (e-mail). Changes made in an online document are always seen directly by all so they can be reacted upon. In many ways we overcome the limitations that a physical world imposes on us
• Maximum Transparency: With the use of Cloud technology information can be visible to all and often is.  In the past systems were closed by default since databases could be accessed only from a few places. Now all you need is an Internet connection and a browser. Also by sharing much of our thoughts, activities and trivialities a sometimes unexpected amount of transparency is achieved, though sometimes accidentally.

All these themes create tremendous opportunity but also unexpected risks and consequences. As society and as businesses we have to learn how to optimize these themes to create good and sustainable outcomes. The differences between MySpace and Facebook were small at the start …

Sometimes I have the feeling there are too many communication channels. Lately I have been using twitter a lot and I see that it distracts me from writing the blog. You can only spend you time once.
Nice thing about the blog is that it forces you to think about a (small) subject and in order to say something coherent about it. Twitter is much more instant gratification it seems: fun but also easily flushed. Let’s see if I can switch back to the blog a bit more.