Tomi Ahonen will tell you that in many many countries mobile penetration rates are 100%+, 120%+ and even 150%+, yet when it comes to discussions around, “Social Media”, mobile gets scant look in, in reality. Yet even in the UK millions cannot get access to our online world depriving them of a vital source of knowledge and information and a means of making their way in the world (just ask Martha Lane Fox), whilst simultaneously places such as Africa are being re-defined by mobile technologies, services and capability.
Around the world from the most basic SMS services, to the most sophisticated concepts requiring smart phones and converged media platforms/technologies, companies and people are transforming our society.
Last week Peggy Anne-Salz of MSearch Groove – interviewed me on what I thought were some of the key issues that companies need to address to get, as Baloo would say, “with the beat”.
So thank you Peggy, I very much enjoyed our conversation that I hope your listeners will also benefit from.
In what could be a defining milestone in Indian entrepreneurial development domain – GrowVC, the ‘Virtual Silicon Valley’ software platform and world’s first-ever ‘Crowd-Funding’ and interaction platform for startups announced the launch of a local funding network in India, in association with Springboard Ventures – an ensemble of experts dedicated to promoting start-ups. Based around the same model as the existing global funding network Grow VC offers, the Indian local funding network will be the first of many “local” networks the company looks to launch within its wider global network in the coming months. Grow VC’s community platform for entrepreneurs who are looking to grow their early stage startups through the “crowd-funding” has already gathered considerable interest with hundreds of new sign-ups each month and active participation of investors, startup service providers, advisors and entrepreneurs within the online community. Satish Kataria – Managing Director at Springboard Ventures, is quoted as saying,
It would be the first ever single platform to bring together the various entities which revolve around the creation and growth of start-ups while allowing them all to interact and work together with each-other. Besides uniting angel investors and entrepreneurs, this platform offers a first-time opportunity to various experts and consultancies to now come forward and offer their services to start-up community through innovations such as ‘Service Investments’.
It was Noam Chomsky in the 60’s that developed a view that we (humanity) was programmed with a universal language DNA. But what if the very diversity of languages is the key to understanding human communications? This is a question asked by Christine Kenneally. Linguists Nicholas Evans and Stephen Levinson, who argue that languages do not share a common set of rules. And that, this extraordinary range of diversity is a defining feature of human communication.
There are no universal traits, only tendencies says Evans and Levinson. Kenneally writes,
Focusing on language diversity also highlights the tragedy of language extinction. In the old model, all languages are merely variations on the same underlying theme. In the new model, however, each of the worlds 7000 languages contains its own unique clues to some of the mysteries of human existence… in the diversity of the worlds languages we find facts about ancient human history, the path of languages through time, and deep knowledge of the planet.
And what does that mean, from a media and or culture perspective? Well – if we insist on creating a monoculture, don’t we destroy the thing that makes us what we are? Henry Jenkins writing in Joshua Green and Jean Burgess book YouTube makes the observation that, one of the reasons YouTube is so universally successful is that, “we” were ready for YouTube, a means by which we can return to our participatory roots, and, explore and express our unique diversity, which is also part of our identity, perhaps its no accident we live in an age defined by social story telling, culture making, and individual entrepreneurship?
Jane Jacobs argued in The Nature of Economies, that to accept the truth that human nature exists wholly in nature, is difficult for example for economists, industrialists, or politicians – they preferring to believe that human capability, our ability to reason and create things; culture, industry, complex government etc., in ways that the rest of the natural world cannot, seduces us to see ourselves as different to nature, falsely superior.
I met Roland Deiser in 1990 when I was working in Vienna. At that time he was running a management consultancy and I was working for an advertising agency. We met through mutual friends but ended liking the cut of each others jib. I am not sure how communications strategy fits with management consultancy but there. We lost touch over time and then last year Roland contacted me as he was doing a little piece of research, and my name kept cropping up – so when I get a call from Roland it was a most unexpected but welcome surprise.
Today our mutual interests are more aligned, as I have come to recognised, or did quite a while ago, that it seems that as we evolve into a world more joined and connected up, people and companies seemed like they are increasingly doubled parked in parallel universes. For me, I recognised this 6+ years ago, doing work for a whole list of bluechip clients who invited SMLXL in to innovate for them, yet they struggled or failed completely in the end to execute – because organisationally they could not cope with what we had designed for them – compelling and creative communications strategies, that were built around the principles of Engagement, and the brand as a transmedia story.
As I like to say, it is only when companies start to hemorrhage cash, that they start to pay attention. Although there is still a great deal of parallel parking going on, companies are also in what is described as transition trauma. Which means, they know there world is changing, but are now traumatised as to what to do about it.
Well you could start by reading Dr. Deisers new book Designing the Smart Organisation. Roland explores how large-scale corporations are using the power of dynamic corporate learning approaches to drive innovation, enhance cultural values, master post-merger integration, transform business models, enhance leadership culture, build technological expertise, foster strategic change processes, and ultimately increase bottom line results.
The blurb says, for any company that wants to compete in the 21st century, Designing the Smart Organization offers inspiring perspectives for integrating corporate learning as a core business practice that will create sustainable strategic and organizational capabilities. I have read the book, and I am not doing this as a favour to Roland, I am suggesting that the case studies are so good, and the book so well written, anyone scratching their head about the organisational challenges they face right now would do far worse than spend some time ingesting what Roland has to say.
He writes,
The imperative to innovate and reinvent oneself in these changing contexts has become ubiquitous, and permanent. The capability to learn is not just nice to have; it has become a key factor for survival – not only for people, but for organisations, industries, and our global society.
and he makes this telling point,
Organisations need to learn to let go of operational control of non-strategic activities and learn to act successfully in networks. Giving up control is a major challenge, one that has little to do with teaching knowledge or skills but with developing the social and political skills to orchestrate a companies stakeholder universe.
The traditional leadership model of command and control works fine within the boundary of each organisation of the network, but hierarchical power does not work between the memners of a network that co-creates. The interplay between the players needs horizontal coordination and adjustment processes, and these follow the logic of leading without formal power.
Another great presentation that I discovered on how local news becomes – well, local again.
So if you cannot truly give value back to your relevant community and stay relevant then you become irrelevant instead. Simples. The only thing I would say is where is mobile in all of this guys? And lets see some of that innovation this side of the pond! Question – really is anyone in the UK doing some good stuff on local news and journalism? As I would happily champion their cause.
We came across the BBC2 Documentary about Detroit recently, and today I sat down and watched it again and made some notes.
There is a section in the film where we are told that at one point the Packard plant became the backdrop to some big rave parties, and one track is dedicated to that time and that place called ‘Packard’ by Architeq.
so have a listen.
My notes, the film is a cautionary tale for the industrialised world, a pioneers map into the future, where the big 3 car makers in Detroit siphoned off cash for for their own fiefdoms, this was not thinking in human terms. Add in a policy from the very start of apartheid, so Detroit was dealing with a very potent mix of trouble.
In 1929 it was all going great 5.6 million cars produced, but due the Depression by 1932 that figure had dropped to 1.4 million. The fight for the unionisation of the car plants led to mass riots and the gunning down of union protestors.
In the desire to connect people in Detroit to the suburbs entire communities were ripped up, and became dislocated – GM played a primary role in dismantling the street railway system to make way for the freeways that started in the very heart of Detroit.
When the Edsel Ford (I-94) Expressway was under construction during the early 1950's initial plans called for the construction of four stairways to be built from Woodward Ave., leading to the Ford Expressway below. These stairways were part of a rapid transit plan where passengers could board DSR buses from expressway level bus boarding stations. Unfortunately, the end result became a "Stairway to Nowhere!
Returning to white vs. black tensions in a city racially divided, one observer makes the point “The police was like a white occupying army”. Whilst the Klu Klux Clan, made there presence felt, with mass demonstrations, and shall we say intimidation.
Kicking out the Jams
MC5 are described as protopunk – A Detroit band, as Wikipedia describes them, While “Ramblin’ Rose” and “Motor City is Burning” open with inflammatory rhetoric, it was the opening line to the title track that stirred up the most controversy. Vocalist Rob Tyner shouted, “And right now… right now… right now it’s time to… KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!” A clip shown in the BBC film, a prelude to what came next.
Police watch as chaos spills into the intersection of 12th and Clairmount in Detroit following a predawn police raid on a blind pig – an illegal drinking establishment. It is Sunday, July 23, 1967. When the violence ended five days later, 43 people had died. The racial unrest became known as the nation's worst.
In 1967 it all kicked off, “here on the corner of 12th and Clairmount, this is where it happened”. It being, the explosion of violence and rioting that brought national guard troops and tanks into Detroit and its Freeways – almost ironic you could say – ‘tanks on the freeway’. On guy remembers his experience as a child, ” I saw the National Guard going down the streets, buildings were burning and I thought it was the end of the world”.
The result of that rioting saw a division made between city and suburbs, as great as that of the great wall of china. Blacks in the city, whites in the suburbs. One guy asks the question of where the real war is happening – you can see his point.
We watch Detroit fall apart, a city built for 2 million people now has 800,000 living in it. And witness the first person stories of people that were born and raised in Detroit, taking us on their own personal journeys of remembrance. Many remember the blowing up of the Hudson Department store, as a day which will forever live in their collective memories.
Is there hope for a city left abandoned? We are left with hope, one of the biggest movements in the US today says the BBC programme is called Urban Pioneers. Detroit in this link, (well worth reading the post) seems to inspire people to come and reinvent the city,
It’s not just farmers, intellectuals and artists of various types are drawn to Detroit, both to study it and pursue ideas about the remaking of the city:
Detroit has achieved something unique. It has become the test case for all sorts of theories on urban decay and all sorts of promising ideas about reviving shrinking cities.
Urban Farming in Detroit
And
the city offers a much greater attraction for artists than $100 houses. Detroit right now is just this vast, enormous canvas where anything imaginable can be accomplished. From Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project (think of a neighborhood covered in shoes and stuffed animals and you’re close) to Matthew Barney’s “Ancient Evenings” project (think Egyptian gods reincarnated as Ford Mustangs and you’re kind of close), local and international artists are already leveraging Detroit’s complex textures and landscapes to their own surreal ends.
In a way, a strange, new American dream can be found here, amid the crumbling, semi-majestic ruins of a half-century’s industrial decline. The good news is that, almost magically, dreamers are already showing up. Mitch and Gina have already been approached by some Germans who want to build a giant two-story-tall beehive. Mitch thinks he knows just the spot for it.
Michel Bauwens of the P2P Society has put together with the help of Lily Fisher, a beautiful presentation on how various legal/creative/production/business tools and frameworks fit together. Thank you Robin Good for the hat tip
Alan has addressed, radio, television, and conference audiences globally. His book and his articles have been published many respected magazines, journals and newspapers globally.
Some comments on my 2010 sxsw presentation
One of my overall favorite sessions at SXSW #nostraightlines
Great big thinking. A perfect ending to #sxsw #nostraightlines
Hearing about #nostraightlines I am wishing I was at SXSWi for the first time
fantastic talk #nostraightlines #swesxsw
RT @saraschneider: I played the #sxswi lottery this am and won, with #nostraightlines
Its taken all weekend for somebody to say it. RT @elinesca: #nostraightlines it is not about social media it is about embedded sociability
Yet another great talk #nostraightlines best sxsw yet
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