Novatel MiFi: Cool Device for Remote Events

Bell Canada is about to launch the Novatel MiFi 2372, a combination device that includes high speed wireless broadband on the HSPA network plus a wifi router plus an SD slot. For people who work collaborative events or conferences this is quite the all-in-wonder package. Internet service at conference centres can be really expensive or really shoddy. Being able to travel with small, reliable, reasonably priced gear is quite the boon. Of course the consistency and reliability of a wireless device can leave lots to be desired so while the MiFi might look good in theory, interference and network stability might make it less than awesome. And of course lots of conferences are in bunker like structures so the cell service is weak anyway. I’m looking forward to trying it and getting reviews of real world performance.

Chris Messina and Open Web Workshop

Centre for Social Innovation and Torch Partnership brought Chris Messina to Toronto for a 1 day workshop from which I learned quite a bit. Chris is a heavyweight, having co-founded BarCamp, developed the Flock browser and is now on the board of the OpenID Foundation. It was nice to have access to his brain for the day. While the conversation drifted into the realms of backend technology and architecture, there was enough layman stuff for me to sink my teeth into. Here are some of my thoughts from the day while they’re fresh in my head.

1. Objects+Social=Social Objects. In Chris’ parlance an object on the web would be something like a video on a website. It’s a noun. You upload it, it’s on a server, people can watch it. That object becomes “social” when verbs can be applied to the noun. When the video can become rated, shared, reviewed, commented…that is now a social object. I liked that framework. It’s a quick and dirty way of thinking about your website, user experience and company at large (which I’ll get to in a later point.)
2. The Importance of Owning Your Data and Social Residue. There was lots of kerfuffle when Facebook changed its terms and conditions recently to suggest that they would own your photos, videos, uploads, etc. The terms were changed back and people are back to owning their data. The idea of “social residue” is an interesting one. Getting back to point 1 about social objects, let’s say you want to switch from Facebook to the next big thing. Facebook might trumpet that you are free to do so and you can export your data. So you get your “objects” back but you will lose the “social”. You will lose your “likes” your relationships, comments, ratings and all of those verbs that people have applied to your nouns. Chris describes this data as social residue because it’s left behind if you choose to move your data around, but in reality it’s probably the essential glue that keep people engaged in social sites. So even though you own your objects, the company that is hosting your objects owns the social, unless there was a way to liberate the residue and reclaim ownership of it so it’s in fact truly portable.
3. What is Open Web? Chris didn’t have a fully articulated answer for this, but I thought his answer was excellent: You’ll know it when you see it. He likened an Open Web to a natural ecosystem. If an ecosystem is open for new players to emerge, for old players to wither away and the playing field is level for new entrants to come in with few barriers to entry that is a sign of a good ecosystem. If it is a closed system there are a few players who control who gets in, how much they pay to play and it seems like they spend just as much energy preventing innovation and growth as they do improving their ecosystem. Music industry, anyone?
4. Porter Airlines. Kind of Anti-Social, For Now. The last exercise of the day was to think about a business and how to make it more social. One of the folks at my table was a web developer for Porter Airlines and we thought about the entire travelling experience from start to finish and how it could leverage the social networks of its passengers. We made a couple of assumptions: 1) Porter, in its positioning and branding, has developed an active community and loyal customers who trust them to deliver a great service. 2) Travel, especially air travel, is often a stressful experience. You might be running late, traffic might be bad, flights get delayed, luggage gets lost, boarding card won’t print, security line is long and so on. Given that, here are some things we had in mind for Porter:
   • Seat assignment is an object (see Point 1). Make it social by pulling in a passenger’s Facebook interests during the booking process and if they want to be paired with someone who has similar interests, make it happen.
   • Tie seatback entertainment options to a Netflix account (movies) or Last.fm (music) so each person’s entertainment experience is customized.
   • Pull data from Facebook interests to proactively suggest an entire weekend itinerary with flights, hotels, attractions, concerts and email people with a “Click to Buy” feature.
   • Have people pay for a customized itinerary that they would receive at the gate before boarding that would suggest hotels, restaurants, etc. based on their TripIt/Dopplr data.
   • Luggage tags are objects and your bag could potentially Tweet from wherever it is in the airport.
   • Flight recommendations based on which flights people in your network happen to be on. Maybe you would switch your departure time if you knew that a contact was on the following flight.
   • Help coordinate travel to and from the airport by suggesting travel buddies.
   • To the point on stress during travel, John Maeda writes in his Third Law of Simplicity that waiting for a task to finish is more tolerable if you can witness its progress. (See the progress bar on computers, estimated hold time with customer service, wait time signs while in a line at Disney.) Is there some information that an airline could give you on a mobile device regarding traffic (geo-location), weather, checking in, security, flight delays…that would help reduce the stress of the travel experience?

Those are a few ideas generated in 30 minutes on how an airline could leverage its customers social activity streams to provide a more social experience during travel.

Thoughts on how a favourite business of yours could be more social?

Uffe Elbaek and the Project Paradox

On October 15th I had the pleasure of attending the latest Design with Dialogue session, hosted by Peter Jones of ReDesign Research and Greg Judelman of Bruce Mau Design. The special guest of the night was Uffe Elbaek, founder of KaosPilots and the CEO of the World Out Games in Copenhagen which took place this past July.

Uffe was amazingly candid and generous in sharing his experiences, good and bad, in getting a huge undertaking such as the World Out Games off the ground in just 2.5 years. Having worked on the Olympics technology planning, I can tell you that 2.5 years to get an entire event off the ground and successful is a Herculean feat.

Five things stood out for me:

1. As the organizer of a major event, Uffe dealt with many sponsors, vendors, partners, political organizations and sub-committees…and in many of those instances Uffe was asking for something, whether it was money, products, permission, support, time. There were lots of asks. However, to make the entire experience beneficial for everyone, he authentically posed the question, “What can we do for you?” He really viewed the relationships with all of the stakeholders as a true two way street. But he didn’t stop there. He also viewed his role as the “hub” in all of this activity as a connector of stakeholders. He made sure that relationships were forged between sponsors, between political organizations and really acted as a catalyst for new connections. The committee could have been in a  ”take, take, take” situation but saw the opportunity to create a new eco-system around the goal of putting on a spectacular event.
2. This is Uffe’s design process, in a sense. It starts with an idea such as “let’s host the World Out Games”. Uffe’s assertion is that all too often people skip straight to the concept, put together a team, organize the team and then execute. He calls this the “Bermuda Triangle” because the important steps of figuring out what needs the idea fulfills, what the purpose is what values are held don’t inform the concept. This can result in conflict well into the project because there isn’t a cohesive understanding of what the team is trying to accomplish. In deciding things such as which sponsors to approach, a lack of unity on needs and purpose can result in interpersonal conflict and the project can suffer. Spending time up front to work on the first few steps can save time and conflict later in the project. Uffe’s took the time to write a manifesto of this work so that anyone could go back and visit the manifesto when tough, contentious decisions had to be made. Revisiting the question of why they were doing this in the first place helped make those decisions easier.
3. Your purpose should be succinct enough so that you are able to pee it in the snow. Apparently this is a common saying in Denmark. I guess it applies more to men than women. No visuals for this point.
4. Uffe’s team wrote a run book on how to deliver an event of this magnitude just BEFORE the event took place. The rationale is that the run book shouldn’t be tainted by the perceived success or failure of the event. While things will go wrong at an event of that magnitude, you wouldn’t want those mistakes to be overly represented in the run book. With a month before an event of that size, everything is pretty much locked down. Not much will change but a run book won’t be overly influenced with the emotion that comes with delivering the event if it’s done just before launch.
5. The Project Paradox. Uffe explained that in a big project with an end date you start with tons of decisions to make and very little knowledge . You end the project with all of the knowledge but no decisions to make. The challenge is to shrink the gap in those two curves so that the project kicks off more effectively. One way of doing that is to quickly ramp up on the knowledge curve or hire people who have that knowledge before making key decisions. Curious if there are any comments on the paradox and ways in which to overcome it.