Gumption

Innovating at MyStrands, Seattle

It's been a little over a month since I left Nokia and started principally instigating at MyStrands, Seattle. Most of my time thus far has been devoted to talking with people and looking at places, as my top two initial instigative goals are to attract a dream team and setup shop in a dream space. Eventually, we'll make progress on other p's - prototypes, papers and patents - but not without the right people and only (or, at least, more easily) in the right place.

I'm making some progress on these initial goals - I will be making official announcements when formal transitions take place - but meanwhile I thought it would be helpful (to me, at least) to write a little bit about what kinds of innovation - and what kinds of innovators - I hope to facilitate with this great new team and great new space! Taking a cue from one of Glenn Kelman's pearls of wisdom - "We never say 'I'" - during an inspiring presentation at my crash course in entrepreneurship (NWEN's Entrepreneur University 2005), I'll be using "we" liberally below, even though "we" is, technically speaking, "I" at this particular moment.

The mission of the Seattle Innovation Team for MyStrands is

To design, develop and deploy technologies that weave together the various strands of our activities, interests and passions to bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds and help people relate to the other people, places and things around them in ways that offer value to all participants.

That's quite a mouthful (even for me) so I want to unpack that a little:

• weave together the various strands of our activities, interests and passions: MyStrands started out as MusicStrands, a web application that can recommend new music based on the music you listen to ("what you play counts!"). Since then, the company has branched out into other types of media (e.g., MyStrands.TV), and we want to further extend this extension to additional types of media, as well as other digital representations of our activities, interests and passions.
• bridge the gaps between the digital and physical worlds: with the growing wealth of digital representations of our activities, interests and passions, and the proliferation of mobile devices and wireless connectivity, there are increasing opportunities to create new value by opening portals to that wealth in the physical world, either through mobile social computing (MoSoSo) applications or more situated social computing (SiSoSo) applications, such as proactive displays.
• help people relate to the other people, places and things around them: we all long to feel a sense of belonging and connection to other people we encounter, the places we inhabit and the things we see (or at least some of those people, places and things); our technologies will be designed to help real world communities better enjoy the benefits of virtual communities, digital communications and electronic commerce.
• offer value to all participants: one of the things I learned - the hard way - during my earlier entrepreneurial endeavor (Interrelativity, Inc.) was the importance of aligning innovative social technologies with viable business models; although our primary focus will be on technical innovations with significant - and positive - social impact, we want to do so in an economically sustainable way that enriches all stakeholders.

As for the types of innovators (we don't call ourselves researchers - or developers - at MyStrands, though we will be doing both) we hope to attract, the primary criteria will be a passionate commitment to the mission of the lab. Of course, following the precepts of Joel Sposky, we also generally want smart people who can get things done. Among the more specific types of smarts that we value are insights into and experience with social computing, mobile and ubiquitous computing, human-computer interaction, many flavors of design (user interface design, interaction design, user experience design, visual communication design), web programming, rapid prototyping, personal and social psychology, economics, business models ... and, of course, recommender systems.

I'm planning to follow the lead of Lars Erik Holmquist with respect to [one of] his goals for the PLAY Research Group: build a multidisciplinary team composed of multidisciplinary people. As Anne Galloway relayed this idea (in what may be an unexpected recursion based on something I may have sent / said to her about Lars Erik's CHI 2000 organizational overview talk):

Alan Kay once remarked that he was attracted to the MIT Media Lab because of the..."attempt to collide technology with the arts, rather than [to] collide technologists with artists," and continued "You're always better getting people who have already had that collision in themselves." In PLAY, rather than composing a multi-disciplinary group, we try to have a group of multi-disciplinary people ... No group member specializes in only one topic. A typical member has a degree in a relevant field such as computer science, informatics or fine arts, but a strong interest in several other fields such as electrical engineering, linguistics, literature, film, or music. Whether accompanied by academic degrees or not, a wide range of interests is seen as a vital factor in the composition of the group.

Ideally, we will compose a diverse group of diverse people, with a variety of skills, from a variety of backgrounds, who respect each other and work well together, even though - or perhaps because - we may not always agree with each other (indeed, I hope we won't always agree with each other). I have enjoyed many conversations with many talented people so far, and I welcome the opportunity to initiate or renew conversations with other talented people. If current trends continue, we may be able to assemble a dream team without ever having to compose or post a formal job description.

As I mentioned in my review of First Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, I subscribe to the philosophy of Bud Grant, former head coach of the Minnesota Vikings:

You can’t draw up plays and then just plug your players in. No matter how well you have designed your play book, it’s useless if you don’t know which plays your players can run. When I draw up my play book, I always go from the players to the play.

Given my commitment to multidisciplinarity, I'm going one step further and not even specifying player positions at this early stage, hoping that we will be able attract just the right people with just the right talents to accomplish our innovation mission.

[Update: I forgot to mention that we have a number of more formally specified job openings at many of our other sites around the world. The (Senior) Mobile User Experience / Interaction Designer position may be of particular interest to some of my international friends.]

SlideShare: YouTube for Presesentations

I signed up for an account on SlideShare shortly after Mor Naaman told me about this social networking service for slides (after I'd asked him for his slides from Mobile Persuasion 2007). SlideShare is like a YouTube for presentations, with capabilities for creating links to or embedding slides into a web page (such as a blog), tagging, commenting, favoriting, grouping and subscribing.

It seems to me (and others) that any social networking service offers some form of self-presentation (manifestations of Erving Goffman's notions of Presentation of Self in Everyday Life), so it's only natural to have a service devoted to the self-presentation of presentations. Of course, most people don't create and give presentations on a daily basis, so this service may have a more limited set of producers and consumers than, say, Flickr.

I see that there are entire conferences represented [pun intended] on SlideShare. Given that it is an increasingly common practice to post photos from a conference with a particular tag, e.g., "pervasive07", it will be interesting to see whether a conference content aggregator service emerges in the near future.

Although I haven't given any conference presentations recently, I decided to experiment with the site by uploading some older presentations. I hope to have some new presentations (and papers) to share in the near future, and may even experiment with uploading presentations before a conference (er, except that I'm usually, er, "refining" the presentations right up until I take the stage).

Anyhow, a selection of oldies [but goodies (?)] is included below.

Working at Nokia on Context, Content and Community

We recently posted an external web page for the Context, Content and Community project I'm working on (and playing with) in collaboration with some of my new colleagues here at Nokia Research Center, Palo Alto. This is, by definition (or at least by name), a rather broad and ambitious undertaking. As we summarize it on the site:

Our project is dedicated to the design, development and deployment of systems to connect individuals with relevant resources in ways that create value for all stakeholders.

As we continue to explore this space, the distinctions between context, content and community seem increasingly blurred (to me). For example, as more aspects of our physical world context(s) can be captured and represented digitally, this becomes yet another dimension of content. As the people formerly-known-as consumers are empowered to [co-]create, organize and share digital content more effectively, communities of shared interests (and shared differences) emerge and grow more naturally. And as these communities form and flourish, they offer a new perspective that can, in turn, affect the contexts within which future content may be collected, shared ...  and, one hopes, better understood.

[Slightly] more detail about the project can be found on our web page (the project only officially started this month). While I am interested -- and will likely, at varying levels, be involved -- in all aspects of the project, I am particularly interested in the part that represents a continuation of a decade-long exploration:

Demonstrate new applications with compelling value propositions for bridging the gaps between people by bridging the gaps between the physical and digital worlds

Although our plans along this dimension are still incubating, the basic idea is to extend the work we [well, different we's at different times and places] have done with using technology to help people relate to and connect with one another by showing elements of people's online representations of self in the physical spaces they share with others (e.g., the Intel proactive display deployment at UbiComp 2003 and in subsequent Interrelativity deployments). The profiles we will be creating and utilizing as part of the Context, Content and Community project will be far richer, and more useful (and hopefully usable) than the special-purpose profiles that were incorporated into the earlier systems, and using mobile phones as digital proxies -- rather than special-purpose RFID tags -- offers a more natural and convenient way of enabling people to reveal more about themselves in an ambient manner.

I'll be writing more about this project as our thoughts, plans and [other] actions evolve. For now, I simply wanted to note that we have "gone public" ... and that we are hiring -- interns and post-docs, as well as full-time research scientists / engineers -- in case anyone reading this has skills, experience and passion for the design, development and deployment of sociotechnical systems that will redefine our perspectives on, and approaches to, connecting people.

Almost Famous

Kristi Heim wrote a nice article about Interrelativity (and me) in The Seattle Times, entitled Using High-Tech to Help Break Ice, that appeared in today's paper.  As with Kristi's' great article about Amal Graafstra and his RFID agenda, she really captured the essence of what Interrelativity -- and I -- are all about.

I felt quite honored (and, perhaps, somewhat self-important) to be invited in for an interview.  The hour with Kristi flew by, and we spoke about so many interesting topics, I was looking forward to seeing which aspects she would choose to focus on.  When the article came out this morning, I could not have been happier ... except that I [now] recognize that I was looking forward to some "atta boy's" from people who might read the article.  To my surprise, I didn't receive much acknowlegement that anyone I know -- aside from people I'd told about it -- had read the article ... and, as with most surprises, this represents a learning opportunity.

Cindy, a friend in the neighborhood, brought by a copy of the article, but I had seen her yesterday, and mentioned the article, and [so] I am not sure whether she would have noticed the article ... or thought to drop off a copy (though I suspect she would, given that she is an incredibly kind and generous person).  Dan and Scott, other kind and generous friends, sent emails -- as did my mom -- but I had alerted them about the upcoming article, too. I received an email from Anthony, at 3:30am, who had read the online version after it was posted around midnight and had some great suggestions about other potential applications of proactive displays ... and also noted that the email link on the web site was broken (which I hastened to repair). I received another email from Adam, who kindly offered to help me find office space for Interrelativity, an offer I'm not in a good position to take advantage of now, but perhaps will be able to, if / when we grow beyond my home office in the future.

All of these acknowledgements were welcome, but I felt some disappointment that I didn't hear or read from more friends (or acquaintances ... or strangers).  Recognizing this disappointment has, in turn, helped me realize that, despite my best intentions, I have not [yet] succeeded in living without attachments.  I will continue to work on this issue of attachment to outcomes, but I also want to take the opportunity to muse a bit further.

There are several possible explanations to this low level of response, among them:

• Few people read the article
• Few people who know [of] me (or Interrelativity) read the article
• People read the article but were not impressed with the article or its topic (or both)
• People read the article and thought it was a good article and/or topic, but didn't think it was worth mentioning [to me]

While this seemed like a big deal to me, perhaps it doesn't seem like a big deal to most other people ... not the first time I've experienced mismatch between my perceptions and those of others. It reminded me of Noah Kagan's recent observations about the joy of receiving comments on a blog post , my own observations about filling buckets online and offline, and Don Miguel Ruiz' first agreement to be Impeccable with your Word, as one's words -- or lack thereof -- can exert a strong influence (positive or negative) on others.

I feel a bit self-conscious in writing about this, as one possible outcome is that people might read this blog post and submit comments ackowledging the post and/or the Seattle Times article.  However, one of my explicit goals in maintaining this blog is to detach from any expectation that anyone else is reading it, much less willing to take the time to comment.  I now recognize that I was applying a different perspective to the newspaper article ... and I recognize all the more poignantly the value of detaching from outcomes ... especially those involving [near] fame and fortune.

Blog What You Love, The Money Will Follow

I signed an agreement with Newstex yesterday to include the Gumption weblog feed in the collection of online content they make available to their customers:

The revolutionary Newstex Blogs On Demand product delivers value-added full-text blog content. Newstex processes blogs in real-time through its NewsRouter technology to automatically tag each blog post with key data such as company names, stock tickers, key executives and government officials, and detailed topical categories for distribution to downstream enterprise customers to ensure greater exposure and reach for this valuable content.

I will receive a percentage of royalties generated by subscriptions that include the content from this blog.  My intention is to continue ruminating on what inspires me, what I aspire to, and/or what I perspire about without being influenced by this arrangement with Newstex.  The only change I expect is to have more incentive to blog more often (though my uncertainty over whether this will help me be a better blogger continues ... perhaps increasing the quantity of my blog posts will help me gain clarity on this issue -- doing something, rather than simply thinking, about it).

Gene Becker recently posted some of his insights into and experiences with the use of advertising in blogs, commenting on the impact of advertising on relevance, aesthetics and public and personal morality.  I have noticed an increasing number of blogs that have Google Adsense frames on them, and I have to admit that the more advertising I see on a blog, the more I question the motivation(s) of the blogger.  Gene's comments on the personal morality issue are particularly relevant to my decision to link up with Newstex:

This is the bad one: having ads changed how I thought about blogging. Instead of focusing on my own interests and creative expression, I started to think about what kind of content would attract ads with higher CPM rates. Mind you, this didn't show up in actual behavior b/c I've just been 2B2B (too busy to blog, eh?). Nonetheless I'm amazed by how quickly and easily the money influenced the content; this seems immoral on a very personal level.

Like Gene, I do not want to be influenced by monetary considerations; however, I consider Gene a man of the highest level of personal and professional integrity, and so if he found there was a creeping influence of financial considerations into his blog during his experiment (he has since removed all advertising from his blog), I know I need to be extremely vigilant.

I have never checked on any statistics for my weblog (e.g., subsribers or visitors); the only way I know about whether / when anyone reads anything I post is when they post comments, use trackbacks or send email.  I do not want to pay attention to subscriptions or readership via Newstex, but I suppose that if royalties do flow my way, the checks will be accompanied by some kind of accounting statistics, and so I will not be completely ignorant.  However, I do not want Newstex to tell me how my blog (or entries) are categorized, or what kinds of people and organizations are reading or subscribing to this blog -- although if there are any such entities out there, "welcome!" :-). 

I have seen increasing signs that the Internet is creating an entirely new set of tools for realizing the promise of "Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow".  At a recent Idea Day presentation on podcasting, Alex Williams and Matt Day highlighted a number of ways that people are creating podcasts (many of which, presumably, are about things they love), and making money from them.  One of the insights I came away with from a recent panel discussion on eBay was that people who are creating specialty niche products (many of which, I again assume, are labors of love) have a new channel through which to make a living via eBay.  There are already a number of bloggers who have money following them because they blog about what they love.  I don't know whether I will be joining their ranks, but I'm willing to open myself up to yet another dimension of the abundance of the blogosphere.

Practically Creative

The first issue of Practically Creative Quarterly was published recently: "a free webzine and creative community on the grow, exploring the creative process ~ increasing creative productivity ~ enjoying the creative life."  There are many inspiring short articles throughout the magazine, with sections focusing on process, craft, practicalities, creations, practice and practices, crackles and preferrals.  All of the articles are about creativity and inspiration, differing in the channels through which these are expressed, including studio muses, stray puppies, gardening, and cycling.  In addition to the non-fiction articles, the magazine includes works of fiction, business card art, doodle art, floating tissue art, photography, poetry and a cartoon.  There is also a practically creative blog.

Highly recommended ... and not only because one of the articles is a nicely edited revision of one of my blog posts (thanks, Nancy!).

"Living Labs" keynote at UCSD

I'll be giving the keynote this Friday at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering Research Review. The theme is "Living Labs" and while I will, of course, be talking primarily about our experience with proactive displays at UbiComp 2003, I'll be starting off by emphasizing the committment of Intel Research to the concept of living labs (as illustrated by this and other projects, e.g., PlanetLab and PlaceLab).

The other talks look interesting [too], with topics including a network telescope, unmanned aerial vehicles, a smart vivarium and a project to "integrate live cell arrays with synthetic 'chip' platforms" (this last one, in particular, adds a whole new dimension to the idea of a "living lab").