Blogging again – inspired by Headshift and social business design

Big day today, something important has happened in the online/digital services sector. I’ve been involved in it for the best part of 15 years now and periodically something happens close to me that I believe will have an important and potentially significant impact.

My pals at Headshift have announced today that they are becoming part of the Dachis group. In the emerging field of social business design, this is really big news. As Lee and Livio, the founders of Headshift,  have compellingly demonstrated over the last six years, collaborative tools, enterprise 2.0, social media and a whole host of other related emergent activities, such as user-centred and network-centric design, agile programming and project management methods – all innovative ingredients, are generating new design and service frameworks that are now legitimate. To me, they’re at the forefront of a business movement that is as they say moving beyond early stage experimentation.

What I’ve experienced first-hand and continue to admire about Headshift is their commitment to principles and practices that are congruent and represent a vision. Headshift’s readme.doc from 2003 continues to resonate. It’s not often easy engaging in pioneering activity and committing to innovation is something that’s vital for most businesses in order to evolve, but few have the bravery and long-term vision to embrace in my experience to date.

There’s lots more to do to realise the group’s vision of smarter, simpler, social businesses but that’s the whole point. Social Business Design as Headshift and Dachis group call it, sums up the learnings and the potential – from the early stages of the journey, from the birth of the accessible internet, through it’s recent social awakening, to how this continues to evolve into the everyday system and lifeworld.

I’m delighted for all involved which includes me as a friend and collaborator. Operating internationally with a kick-ass team in the US and a talented team in the UK is something I’ve been lucky to do with great success during my time with iCrossing. Not only was it a real adventure with some brilliant experiences and outcomes but it made it all seem real. The web exists to connect us. To allow for new relationships, new experiences, new services, new forms of design. So with extended networks and new opportunities Headshift  are in a great position to realise their vision.

Good luck my friends

Out of the wilderness into Spannerworks/iCrossing

At the tail end of last year I stopped doing the London commute and said goodbye to my new friends at Headshift. Whilst I enjoyed the company of the people and the buzz of the social software/enterprise 2 thang it proved too much. I missed reading stories to the girls at bedtime and hated standing from London Bridge to Haywards Heath more often than not (if I could get on the bloody train in the first place!).

Fortunately, a good contact of mine, Ray Richards at Spannerworks, phoned me in November and asked what I was up to. His timing couldn’t have been better. Having spent a couple of months in a consulting capacity at Spannerworks, working with Ray and helping my good friend Antony Mayfield develop the Content and Media offering I jumped at the chance to get more deeply involved at the turn of the year.

I did read John Batelle’s book in October last year which was typically freerange of me and thankfully it served to confirm much of my thinking about the evolution of search as a marketing framework and the success of Spannerworks and where it’s heading.

Here’s the five reasons for joining Spannerworks:

1. The people. I’ve known Arjo Ghosh the founder since about 2001 and have always thought him to be a man of integrity, incredibly smart and focused on growing a great company. I’ve known Ray for a similar period of time, and his decision to join Spannerworks full-time five years ago confirmed many instincts about the company. When Antony Mayfield joined Spannerworks, another penny dropped. To be working with these dudes is great. They’re sound and going places. As I gradually get to know the other members of the team – now around 60, I can sense purpose and a very positive attitude to learning and growing.

2. The challenge. So far I’ve been extremely freerange in my work with involvement in projects spanning brand and product development, social media research and consultancy and an emerging focus as a client partner feeding all of the above. This is great as there’s nothing better than a mix of challenges that draw on my strengths and experience.

3. The tie-up with iCrossing. Creating a global digital marketing organisation of the future is a very interesting thing to be involved in. I completely subscribe to the Jeff Herzog (the founder of iCrossing) view of search marketing turning advertising on it’s head.

To quote Jeff:

“The interactive capability of the internet has turned the traditional advertising model of blasting out messages to the masses on its head. Today, the customer seeks the business – where and when they want – ushering in a new generation of media and advertising.”

4. Technologies
There’s some tools emerging at Spannerworks that make me smile. Having been part of the team that made AOL a huge success in the UK in the late ’90s and a pioneer in open source with Getfrank, (even if Charlie Leadbeater refers to me as Frank Byford ) I like to think that I can spot useful tools for communication every now and then.

5. Brighton (and beyond)
All of the above happening and I’m in Brighton. Yes, the home of the football team I’ve supported all my life, where I can walk to work and all that. But even better, there is a now a work-related beyond as Spannerworks begins it’s overseas expansion.

Bring it on.

ps: Haven’t been posting much recently as the last couple of weeks have been all about getting the brand integration and website ready. A remarkable story in it’s own right given the timescales.

Openness: Jobs makes the case for scrapping DRM

Apple’s Steve Jobs calls for Europeans to lobby the big 4 music labels to scrap DRM.

Put simply, he states, 97% of music is sold DRM free. Only 3% of music on iPods (the only source for which he has accurate data) is bought from the iTunes store.

In an interesting piece he explains why (and how) Apple has evolved the iPod/iTunes success and dissects the reasons why DRM is held as necessary by the major labels.

That figure, 97% is huge and to me represents a reasonable assessment of those of us that are lucky enough to be early adopters in numerical terms. Makes me think that the old school (major labels) really must believe that we are influential. As Jobs suggests, innovation is what it’s all about and protecting crap systems is an expensive waste of time that the labels must scrap if they want us, the early adopters to give them any attention down the line. There’s a big battle to be fought yet however. Openness though, it’s a recurring theme.

On Technorati and Ogilvy alliance

Big news of the last twenty-four hours for me is the tie-up between Technorati and Ogilvy. Many questions arise as to to why Technorati has chosen to go this route. But first here’s the quote from Technorati:

Ogilvy creatives and account teams will use Technorati’s conversational marketing products to build relationships between brands and conversations relevant to those brands. This will result in the the creation of destination sites, new forms of advertising and communities of interest.

For bloggers and other citizen media creators it means new forms of distribution and awareness as brands increasingly enter the web as media sites and hubs of live web conversation. As we developed this product line it was clear that the best way to advance the state of the art was to show some of the worlds best creatives on what was possible and then work with them and major brands on how to build sites and advertising that reflect the conversations and passions of each brand’s identity.

In a period where marketing is daring to shift from traditional to social media, and from one-way communication to relationships, we are extremely excited about helping Ogilvy’s clients to innovate on the Live Web. A genuine conversation beats mass communication any day– and thats an arena Ogivly and Technorati are working together to advance.

Stay tuned for more exciting developments from the citizen marketing front, and don’t be surprised when you start to see our little green talk-bubble popping up on your favorite popular brand websites.

First question is why Ogilvy or any so-called creative agency for that matter? I thought Technorati could be the Google of the blog world if it played it’s cards right. That is, blogging is a manifestation of human interests that cut across the commercial, private and public spheres. Is this not a step into the centre-ground of the commercial sphere too soon? (Centre-ground being the space between digital and old-school advertising/media). Perhaps I misjudged their idea of the big idea – ie commoditising conversation. Silly old idealistic me.

Or, second, given the debate about the future of advertising in the UK does this alliance open up a tacit acceptance of a new basis for collaboration between media/tech/creative businesses that get networks over channels as the key organinsing principle in the future of media?

Or thirdly, will this move encourage others to create more enlightened and thus open models of ‘conversation marketing’ services to deliver linkage and thus value between people, brands and conversation? Personally the idea of myfavouritebrand.com with a ‘conversation station’ with a nice green bubble provided by Technorati sucks big time. It’s about as authentic as a focus group.

Or finally, am I missing the point entirely?

Any thoughts?

On What you measure matters the most

Measures, targets, metrics, ROI, KPIs.. we can’t escape the things. In a gem of a post, Tara Hunt explores the idea of measures for economic, social and online community health. Related and also interesting reading is the Futurebrand 100 as reported on Antony’s blog.

I think Tara’s identified a really important missing element in a shift towards social progress that’s occuring in commercial, public and private spheres, particularly amongst online communities across all three. Replacing GDP with a General Progress Indicator is spot-on. There’s more to life than economic growth indeed.

In a comment on the piece, Colin provides a great quote: “what gets measured gets done”. Or, attempts are made to get it done, and lots of effort goes into working out how to measure it, and a large amount of faffing about with powerpoint goes on regardless.

I think some politicians and many communities in the UK and elsewhere are waking up to the opportunity cost of a perpetual economic growth based model. In basic economics (as I hazily recall from university) opportunity cost is a really important concept for measuring the true cost of an opportunity – including the lost benefit of alternatives. So scary stuff for businesses that pollute overly the environment and obsessively use powerpoint. I love Edward Tufte on powerpoint by the way. I’d also love to be involved in determining the true indicators of progress.. They would surely have to be developed by an independent entity, not a single political party.. Perhaps it this could happen if the wave carrying social enterprise continues. A cross-party body balanced with outside representation?

Back to measures.. Been thinking about the Social Investment Bank concept a lot. For the benefit of those who haven’t read the previous post – this a concept of the utilisation of unused assets (or idle finance/dormant capital) by channelling it into socially beneficial initiatives – eg projects aimed at reducing poverty in deprived areas, through the support of social enterprises that generate social value as well as profit.

So a venture capital fund of sorts but with the key metric, social value, as it’s primary indicator of success. At a micro level, it’s pretty easy to set up a social enterprise as a legal entity. The growth of social enterprises would be a good and relatively easy to determine measure of progress. Amongst the metrics could be the volume and diversity of lending and success of funds shared by a Social Investment Bank. I guess I should read the full report and see if this sort of stuff is included in it’s objectives.

As for online.. for commercial entities. It seems to me that an important approach to take is to rethink what constitutes brand equity amongst groups like boutiquers and work out ways to measure it. My colleague Antony Mayfield’s post on Futurelab 100’s remix of the Interbrand 100 discusses the Futurelab criteria and the positive and interesting shift that could occur if theses measures were the norm. It’s a great way of looking at which brands ‘get it’.

Link: The Futurelab 100

Towards a social investment bank?

In an interesting episode of In Business on BBC Radio 4 tonight, Sir Ronald Cohen outlined the idea of a social investment bank. Taking the long term view, he described how idle finance (my term) or unclaimed assets could be diverted to tackling market failure on a large scale through investment in deprived communities.

Having been briefed by the Chancellor, as Head of the Social Investment Task Force, Sir Ronald’s report on idle finance led to Ed Miliband’s statement earlier this winter about further stimulating the social enterprise sector. My money’s on social enterprise becoming a central part of government thinking if Gordon Brown assumes the top job later this year. Perhaps even the establishment of an independent Social Investment Bank within the first budget. The Tories have already made noises in this area too and so there’s likely to be cross-party support for the broader idea, but as James Blitz in the FT points out, there may be dividing lines in the debate over voluntarism around the scale of enterprises, with Labour accused by the Tories of favouring larger over smaller, more localised organisations.

Under Blair, big initiatives have been the way, often fizzling out – such as pathetic ‘Big Conversation’ in 2003. I hope that if Brown is elected by the party, that he takes the long view and gives a greater role to localised, small scale social enterprise.