The Web 2.0 Citizen Journalist

 

Max Headroom Season 1, Ep. 1

MAX Headroom c. 1987

Remeber Max Headroom?  The show that ABC killed because they said it was not popular enough?  I beg to differ. I think it was ahead of its time and maybe challenged the franchise that network news had with the public.  The tag was “20 minutes into the future”.

Edison Carter to network 23, can you read me?

I think Matt Frewer (aka Edison Carter, roving live video reporter) was in contact with his ‘control’ or producer.  What was happening was he was on scene with a video camera that had a satelite link built into the head.  When his red light was on, that meant he was ‘live on air’. 

A little farther into the future than 20 minutes, replace all of that with EVDO, the internet, and a hand-held PC that provides logistical support via IM, email, collaboration etc. and you have today’s version of Max.

Vlogging in YouTube, VIDBLOGS , Blip.tv and others with live streaming coming from YouTube and Yahoo, today Justin.tv, Ustream, Blogtv, Mogulus (very cool!).  Next-gen comers like Motionbox with their HD player are impressive.

My fave is Mogulus right now because it emulates a video studio with live broadcast capability.  Imagine having a 3G handheld computer, HD camera and something interesting to report on.  Hmmm.

The Mogulus home page has a cool video on it that you must watch.  It features a retro voice-over instructing on how it works and what you can do with it.  The woman is very young and vibrant and is almost an unrealistic salesperson for the offering. That aside, the video is very convincing. Check it out.

Expect more from this thread.

 

Mixed-Mode Virtual Team Spaces

Synchronous and asynchronous collaboration are in themselves, not new.  Mixed-mode however, is.  Asynchronous provides the after-hours visitation in the team space while Synchronous involves immersive, live and interactive online meetings. I.M., persistent chat and document sharing also have mixed modalities.

At WebEx, the Connect Ecosystem team meets every week, in person mostly to keep each other up to date on the progress of each sub-group.  The overall group is lead by one of the VP’s and he holds a WebEx online meeting for the remote members of the team.

We thought that what better way to exercise WebEx connect for team spaces then to create one and use it for our cross-functional team.  I set out to create a space called ‘Connect Ecosystem’.  This first screen shot shows the ‘discussions’ tab within the Ecosystem space.    Here, members can leave messages for each other or chat in real time.  The entire conversation is persistent and can be seen by all space members.     

    

 

Another 2.0 Conference? Hmmm, Office 2.0.

The office was 2.0 , but so was the conference itself. Held in if not the, one of the toniest hotels in SF.  The ultra-modern St. Regis, squeezed into a city block with a very small area to pull a car in, scratches the skyline like a glass and steel megalith. 

Fitting, the conference would be held where the 3 year old building struts its stuff behind a crowd of visionaries, knowledged-up workers carrying and fondling iPhones all day while listening to prophets of 2.0 technology.  Conference Link

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Oh, what a conference - 

Without really re-living the panache’, ‘elan and verve’ of what came from the mind of Ismael Gualimi, I can easily say that this conference was far different than many I have attended.   Besides insisting that everyone get an iPhone so they could watch live video from the sessions, streamed by Veodia (connect partner) he fed us with very carefully selected foodstuffs during the breaks.  I mean gourmet all the way.   Notwithstanding that knowledge workers and high-tech people like all of that stuff, his demo ‘pods’ were novel.  You had to use the Intel iMac or nothing.  Well, we solved that by installing bootcamp (alternate Windows XP O/S that made the MAC look like a windows PC.  In essence, it was because the CPU is the same one in my family-sized Dell laptop.  So there.

Now, the real work -

While at O2Con, Steffen and I had the opportunity to test-drive the new Act-On software email campaign space.  Chris Logan, marketing manager of Act-On, came by and installed the widgets, created the space and gave us some training.  We were able to demonstrate quite a bit of cool functionality including directly reaching into SalesForce.com databases, pulling leads, engaging with Google AdWords, touching EventCenter’s API, creating an event and tracking the registrations.  Chris sat down with me for a video heads-up shoot and gives some value-prop evangelism on the mashup between Act-On and WebEx Connect.

 

Chris Logan of Act-On Software

Here is a tour Chris Logan did of the Act-On/Connect solution space

Steffen gave a lot of demos.  He was demonstrating the Virtual Emergency Operations Center space as well as showing off our Connect Ecosystem space.

 Diane Davidson sits on a Community Panel

Others who dropped by include some of the following:

www.longjump.com – CRM and app mashup platform. Their focus is in the Media space, newspapers, broadcast, cable companies. 

 www.docgle.com – Document management in the cloud. 

www.inetoffice.com – Includes a cool word processor that runs completely online.  Collaborative capabilities, team interworking, rich content inclusion etc.  inetWord is the word processor. 

www.timebridge.com – It has good integration with exchange and outlook wherein lies the problem.  They showed meeting conflict resolution which is a great thing but again, very dependant on Exchange and outlook.  

www.gliffy.com – Graphic environment – sort of like visio online. 

www.huddle.net  - Received a demo by their product strategy director.  Like a virtual web office.  

www.jivesoftware.com  - They provided the site for the conference.  Jive recently received around $20mm in new VC funding.  They have recently implemented Ajax widgets on their ClearSpace site.

FlowThrough

Getting conceptual here ..  FlowThrough refers to information and knowledge as they move through the many minds in the world interested in using it.  Sometimes it goes right through without modification or derivation.  Ideas come from bits and pieces of information, concepts and images passing into and out of people’s minds.  One realizes that in a way, this process is self-replicating as in the wider physical universe whereby planets and other heavenly bodies are made up of remnants of exploded stars moving around in a vast space. 

Knowledge and learning are radiant in nature.  Ideas ripple through our consciousness, passing through our minds like a radio transmission. Since humans have the propensity to share, this knowledge is transmitted to anyone interested in receiving it.  Anyone around to listen will get a copy. This also encourages temporary ownership of the orginal data, voluntary modification or expansion, building of new data from the old and eventually, live, realtime colaboration to affirm, extrapolate or nullify new types of ideas. 

In the conditions spoken about earlier, human communication tends to resemble other processes of nature such as the expansion of the cosmos.  With the idea of FlowThrough, we cry for lower resistance to knowledge, easier exchange of information and better understanding of new concepts. 

Alternative View #1 - Task - Solve a complex problem as a group. 

A small number of people, spread around the globe possess as a group, all of the knowledge to solve a particular problem.  Each has a piece of the puzzle.  To foster their creativity and allow the least constrained work environment, they are not brought together in a physical location.  Instead, they create a virtual thinktank

where their ideas, data files, supporting theories and research results are placed for each member of the group to consume.  At key times, individuals draw on a virtual whiteboard, sketches of their ideas.  At future times, others, using different markers draw over previous sketches for others to freely view.  Another member leaves a message for the group that it may be a good time to gather in the tank, live and online to discuss and further develop their ideas.

While together, they can markup drawings, documents and share their computer desktops freely.  All of these interactions can be recorded and perused at their leisure. 

A shared calendar is exposed to the group as well as the member contact info and online status and presence.

This virtual think-tank can be replicated with a template and regenerated for different problems, groups or objectives.  Think of what happens to knowledge in this state:  It gets to flow-through everyone’s computers, the network and ultimately their minds.