If no-one has the answer ...

... where are the good sources of information?

Well, the problem with information sources in any emerging field is usually one of independence. Whilst many sites may talk about the subject, there is always the danger that you are being led to a specific conclusion: buy our product, research report or consultancy services.

As with most things in life, you should always take advice with a good pinch of salt unless there are compelling reasons to believe in the independence of the source or you have some personal trust relationship with the source.

Whilst there are many experts in the field, these are the people that I most strongly trust the opinions of:-

Enterprise 2.0: Euan Semple, Jenny Ambrozek, Andrew McAfee and Dion Hinchcliffe.

Cloud Computing: James Urquhart, Jesse Robbins, Artur Bergman and Rich Miller.

Social Media & Networks: Suw Charman-Anderson, Tara Hunt and Gavin Bell.

Future Technology: Tim O'Reilly, Matt Webb, James Duncan and Cory Doctorow.

This, of course, is simply my view. It's neither right nor wrong but instead a reflection of those things that matter to me.

Your view is probably completely different but then that's the beauty of freedom, participation and expression in the Internet age. No-one has the answers to an uncertain future and you have to decide where the good sources of information are. Don't let others make those decisions for you.

That said, there are some good people out there trying to bring you independent resources for information on particular subjects. Two of my favourites include the E2.0 portal by Simon Oxley and Nick Barker and Enterprise 2.0 Open by Bjoern Negelmann et al.

Monitoring the "cloud" ...

At E-Tech (March 2007), I talked about :-

• The commoditisation of IT.
• The need for competitive utility computing markets.
• The "potential" green benefits of large scale computing providers.
• Why open source was essential for SaaS.
• The need for open hardware.
• The change of consumer from a passive to active participant.
• Why patent length needs to be variable and set to the likely time of independent discovery.

All of these themes were connected to the underlying process of commoditisation.

I continuously keep tabs on how different business activities are affected by this process as this enables me to help my clients determine a better strategic choice for their activities. There are numerous stages in an activity's lifecycle, each with its own methodologies and strategies.

Now whatever the "cloud" is, it is certainly about the commoditisation of IT. It's therefore about the creation of a competitive utility computing market for which there are a number of requirements.

One of these is a high degree of substitutability between services (what I jokingly called Fungitility and Patration and James called Software Fluidity). Substitutability between services in the Software as a Service or Cloud Computing or whatever term is in vogue, means:-

The freedom to move from one service provider (including internally) to another without hindrance (including excessive cost, time or effort), without boundaries and predicated on the existence of an equivalent service or services.

This term really is about the portability of data, applications and frameworks (see my talk from OSCON) between providers but that terms is used by the DataPortability group to mean something equivalent to "access to data". It's all a bit messy but it's the concepts that matter not the actual terms. They will all get cleaned up at some later point along with aaS wars when there is less buzz.

All you need to know is that IT is moving from a product to a service based economy (hence all the different aaS terms), and in a service based economy the freedom to move from one service provider to another without hindrance is critical. This of course means there must be more than one service provider.

Oscon, July 2007

Substitutability between service providers will require the portability of any necessary data, applications and frameworks from one to another services that are interoperable. For this, and for reasons of strategic control, the services will need to be based upon open sourced standards. This is starting to slowly happen for example with the open SDK of GAE and Eucalyptus. Another requirement is compliance and assurance services. It seems like we have a first step being made along this path with CloudStatus.

Back in July '07, I said: "Six years from now, you'll be seeing job adverts for computer resource brokers."

The speed at which things are moving, it could be even sooner.

Inspiration ....

Thanks to Euan Semple for spotting this post by Tom Peters on the best link ever.

This is truly wonderful, the people are incredible and so full of passion.

Random connections ...

Every now and then I read a combination of random articles that in total make me shiver. Today's chilling trio are:-

• Japanese firms are "creating the world's first ratings agency looking at data security" in other companies.
• Autonomy releases a "Policeman Inside Your Computer And Inside Your Corporate Blog"
• an American consultancy is accused of "bringing 'union-busting' tactics to Britain"

Now this reads like some sort of 1984 dystopian nightmare. I've noted that the American consultancy involved, the Burke Group, believes that "human resources issues are a collaborative process of partnering".

Well I agree. Collaboration is often an important factor in success, however it is also worth remembering that people innovate and not companies.

Without companies, people are still people but without people, companies are nothing.

So what should you do if you're faced with a Burke & Autonomy & Rating nightmare? The most powerful weapons we have are openness and collaboration. Share your own ideas with the rest of the world and if you want to make a change in your company, form a union.

Nothing worthwhile comes easy, you need to fight for it. Fortunately those good people at Retroshare have released a new version of their system for the private broadcasting of messages.

Listen to us ... no, don't listen to us ...

I was asked recently:

"Would the spread of digital fabrication lead to a personalisation revolution?"

"Do you think people will be bothered to print stuff themselves?"

Yes I do. If you don't know anything about fabrication technologies, here is a video of the last talk I gave on the subject. It's from 2006, so it's a bit old.

So, why will people be bothered? Well, for the last fifteen years, most companies have been using choice (along with branding, price strategy and patents) as a way of slowing down the commoditisation of their products. The bewildering array of offerings suited to you, are not for your benefit. They prevent you from making comparisons between almost identical products.

A mobile phone is a mobile phone, except of course in the ad-world. Here, it is a personal communications device which says something about you and your lifestyle. It even has a price plan suited to your needs. Your mobile phone, is your phone and it is unlike any other mobile phone.

After fifteen years of this, we have got very used to the idea of personalisation. As digital fabrication starts to spread, I suspect most people will want to personalise and print their own products, rather than buy someone else's.

I can hear the advertisers trying to convince us that we want to buy XYZ's product rather than products designed and built by you. Too late, we're already far too brainwashed.

GATTACA

Last year, Google invested in 23 and me, an organisation that specialises in genetic sequencing. Apparently, the company intends to create a genetic database that people can search for both personal and scientific reasons. As they say on their site: "unlock the secrets of your own DNA, today!"

This year, Google has unveiled its personal health records service. According to Nick Carr, future partners will include a "slew of hospitals and care providers, medical testing companies, pharmacy chains, and health insurers".

For some reason, I always get nervous whenever "the secrets of my DNA", "search" and "health insurers" are mentioned in close proximity to each other.

Out of curiosity, the 15th amendment states: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude".

Do you think you might need to add "DNA sequence" to that as well?

Every trough-full helps ...

Over 3 million children live in poverty in the UK. The government plans to cut this by 50% by 2010, however it needs an extra £3.4bn to do so.

Well, on the 3rd March, Tesco runs its annual "computers for school" advertising campaign. Through the scheme, which is now in its 17th year, you can donate to your school a £700 computer if you spend £379,000 at Tesco's.

Well, you know "... every little helps" towards Tesco posting a £2 billion profit this year.

I have a really radical idea for them. Since Tesco likes to play "our part in local communities", why don't they instead pay the £1 billion in tax which allegedly they are trying to reduce through the use of tax efficient off-shore investment vehicles?

If you didn't mean to read this ... then why did you?

I just received the following email:

Thank you for your previously expressed interest in {name removed} beta testing which has now begun. We would greatly appreciate your participation and subsequent feedback. Please click on the following link to create your account and begin your involvement: http://{url removed}
If you did not previously request to be involved, please do not click the above link but instead contact us immediately at {email removed}.
Thanks
The {name removed} Team

My immediate thought was Social Engineering Attack! Except, of course, I knew I had expressed an interest. I still had to check the raw source and headers just in case.

I was suspicious because of the text that I've highlighted. Why would you ask someone who has not contacted you, to contact you? Doesn't that say something awful about the quality of your service? Are you just randomly spamming people as well?

If you don't mean to contact me, please don't. Certainly don't contact me and then ask me, that if I didn't want you to contact me, to then contact you to say so.

As I said before, I don't want to be pushed or pulled, I want to draw.

Final rant in November.

Well it has been ages since I've posted anything about "The internet is killing our culture" debate. To be honest, I've been ignoring it again. However I was talking to Jonathan Laventhol recently and we wandered onto the subject.

The bit I hate about this debate is that it implies that somehow "our" culture is static. What is "our" culture - 1970s? Victorian? Edwardian? 1450s? 10 minutes ago? which country? which region? whom in particular?

Now I can discuss the debate "Is the internet killing the pre-internet culture" in the same way I can debate "Did the renaissance kill the pre-renaissance culture". We still need a bit more definition but it's a better starting point than "our".

The idea that a previous culture is some "golden age" compared to our own is a continual myth passed down throughout history. Our culture includes the internet and whilst I'm sure that many professionals lament its creation there was probably once a large number of wandering minstrels and town criers lamenting the printing press.

It makes no difference, culture changes, it's not a static thing. There is no "our" culture to begin with. It's temporal, and if "our" means today then today includes the internet.

So "Is the internet killing the internet culture" ... blah.

Give me strength .... rant over ... mischief managed .... time for December.

Build or wait?

Back at E-Tech, Mar'06, I talked to Artur Bergman about building a mood map of the world. He was going to look at feeds, I ran off to buy a monkey .... long story .... it was all about getting the monkey to react according to the world mood.

Anyway, in the end I fiddled about with some code on Zimki and put it online collecting some very basic data - I'd totally forgotten about it until now.

Well, thanks to Björn Negelmann - I've just come across Wefeelfine by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar.

This is utterly wonderful, captivating even.

Oh, yes ... why moods? Well Artur and I were both interested in information markets - we'd even started messing around with the idea of one in Fotango, sometime in 2005. Anyway, mood and location seemed an interesting combination for highlighting whether something was happening somewhere in the world.

Don't know if anyone has done this, I'd be interested to hear the results.

A question ...

In between working on my talk for Web 2.0 Berlin and writing a number of articles, I've been looking at the issue of distributing the social graph, P2P infrastructure and some of the fundamentals underlying the phenomena of "web 2.0".

This led me to ask a question on Facebook:

"Are there 100,000 people who believe Facebook should open source?"

I was surprised by some of the comments, and as a result I asked another question:

"Are there 100,000 people who believe that Facebook should provide our data in an extensible open data format?".

I'm more than a little curious as to which way this goes, if it does at all.

It's time we said enough is enough.

After a decade of spin and short-term headline grabbing actions, we currently have a proposal for something of political significance - a bill on the misrepresentation of the truth.

It's being proposed as an early day motion. What's interesting for me, is who has signed up to the EDM?.

Liberal Democrats - 8 MPs

Plaid Cymru - 2 MPs

Labour - 3 MPs.

So how many Conservative MPs? None, zilch, a big fat zero. The only whiff of a Conservative opinion is given on the Ministry of Truth site, and yes it's an objection in principle to an act requiring that elected representatives don't lie.

Cameron recently spoke at the Google Zeitgeist conference and spoke of "In the post-bureaucratic era, you shouldn't just be telling government what you want. You should be choosing what you want, and acting to get what you want" - well we are trying.

He quoted Edmund Burke, so I'll use two more of his quotes to explain the problem.

First, "Hypocrisy can afford to be magnificent in its promises; for never intending to go beyond promises; it costs nothing."

Cameron quotes the wisdom of the crowd, however this idea is based upon the Marquis de Condorcet's work. The crowd can be either completely right or completely wrong, and the factor controlling this is access to correct information.

Unless we have the correct information, the crowd is unlikely to make the right choices - we need the truth.

So what to do about it? Well back to Edmund: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

This is exactly what the Conservative party is doing on this matter - nothing; hollow words and no action. To think, I was even starting to consider voting for them.

If you believe in a post-bureaucratic era and the wisdom of the crowd.

If you trust the people.

If you believe in social responsibility rather than central control.

Then give us the right to be told the truth. Cameron, don't just talk but do something and lead.

By the people, for the people ...

I written several times about my disillusionment with our current political system and the lack of accountability.

Today, I listened in horror at the mocking of the electorate by Gordon Brown.

However, today, I also watched a BBC 2 program about an early day motion to introduce The Elected Representatives (Prohibition of Deception) Bill, in order to make it an offence for MPs to misrepresent the truth to the public.

Watch the video ...

.

It is already an offence for business leaders to do so to their shareholders, and many professions are covered by such legislation.

BUT NOT MPs.

This early day motion is set to be introduced on the 17th Oct 2007 by Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price.

If you, like I am, are fed up with not being able to trust what our elected representatives tell us.

If you, like I do, feel that there is lack of accountability in parliament.

If you, like I do, feel that what I'm told is not always the truth.

Then NOW is the time to take action. Ministers and the parliamentary parties are as likely to vote for this as turkeys would for Christmas.

They work for you, despite their mocking of us.

Write to your MP, ask them to support the bill, join the online petition and spread the word to everyone you know.

This is your opportunity to make a difference, and make parliament accountable to the people, to us.

Accept no half measures, no more so called self regulation and make it an offence for MPs and their employees to misrepresent the truth to us, the great British public.

If you want to do one thing right for our society, make sure it's this.

Our democracy and the very basis on which it is built depends upon such truth.

All in a name ....

I've noticed that a lot of energy, effort and debate seems to being going into the "what's in web x.0" question.

I thought Tim had made a mistake in calling the change "web 2.0" rather than a neologism or re-using some archaic word. However, the mistake wasn't his. Tim had created a neologism, "inforware", we just chose to ignore it ... damn that crowd.

Hence we are now stuck with wasteful debates of what is in web x.0.

Why wasteful? Well, we have been entering a new phase of participation, enquiry and expression which is driven by :-

1. The growth of the open meme and its spread from software into other areas (content, hardware, finance etc) increasing participation and enquiry.

2. The effect of the internet, open source and standards in removing barriers to adoption and increasing serendipity, analogy, spread, participation and enquiry.

3. The commoditisation of the communication process and IT through their ubiquity. This increased the ability of the public to express, enquire and participate by removing the barriers to participation (entry) in many information fields.

Web 2.0 is a marker, to signify that this change is occurring. It's not about a particular technology, a rich user interface nor this standard or that standard. It's not even really about web browsing.

What we should be doing is debating, exploring and discussing those driving forces - and adapting to them.

Instead we have a lot of energetic arguments over which things which haven't happened yet belong to which moniker in the future?

Wasteful...

Pictures as words

I was reading with interest an article about 'Writing With Pictures: Toward A Unifying Theory Of Consumer Response To Images'
So I thought I'd mix the two together to summarise my latest rant

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Looking at my calendar, I notice that I've got nothing to do on Tuesday night. So I thought I'd go and see a tragic comedy, Andrew Keen's talk "The Great Digital Seduction" at the RSA.

I blogged about Andrew some time ago, and since then I've decided to ignore the man whom I believe is the greatest digital hyprocrite of our time. However, seeing that he is going to the trouble of speaking, and even more that I'm going to the trouble of attending - I thought I'd say a few words.

Andrew's thesis is basically that the internet is robbing us of our culture, that art is something you pay for (making Damien Hurst surely the greatest artist of all time?) and that talking is best left to those self selected elite whilst the rest of us pig farmers should keep quiet - a sort of "Stop all that chattering! I'm talking" approach. Watch the video.

A cynic would probably describe his approach as inflammatory and pointlessly controversial designed to promote sales of his book. A real cynic would be expecting a further book about "How to make a mint out of controversy".

You can add me to the real cynic camp.

Comedic? Well, in my view it's laughable as the discussion is pointless. He is the King Canute of the Internet world asking the mass of bloggers and other producers to stop producing. I don't disagree that there is a lot of noise on the Internet, and a need for reputation-based networks to help filter this for the individual. But the choice should be with the consumer, not some censor or self-elected quango. The crowd will choose their own gatekeepers, their own filters - they are doing so already.

Does anyone really think that people are going to stop expressing themselves? You'd need to abolish the principles of democracy and establish a fascist state to achieve that. Ah, I note he invokes Godwin's Law in reverse and asks whether he is a Nazi. Shame on you Andrew, shame on you.

Never the less, despite his views Andrew has the right to express this - as we all do, it is the basis of a democratic system. He has the right to use the same mechanisms that we all do - which he does. Hypocritical? Well of course, he uses the same mechanisms to lambast them - blogging is wrong, stop blogging and read my blog instead ... yada yada yada.

The questions we should be asking as we move from elitist producers to a more open Stentorocracy, is how do we create relevance in all the noise? How do we push further and create that elusive Meritocracy?

Tragic? Well I'm sure he has made a handsome return on his book, when there are so many more deserving causes. Still, freedom is about people being able to express their opinions and choices even when such choices support individuals who would happily take away your freedoms.

Economies progress, new means of distribution appear and societies adapt.

"Oyez, Oyez! who are these upstarts taking away my job?" as many a Town Crier must have cried as so called journalists started to publish "news" papers. Bloody amateurs.

How many wandering minstrels lost valuable income when any Tom, Dick or Harry could buy sheet music and thump out a tune on an old piano? Bloody amateurs.

How about the Telegraph? According to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the first message received by a commercial telegraph line in the United States was "Why don't you write, you rascals?". Bloody amateurs.

I'm sure history is littered with those "keen" to keep it the same. However things change - businesses and society move on - no matter how many Keens you have. Yes, I'm sure that some artists will suffer from the opening up of the means of expression, they will not adapt but then I'm sure many will benefit. The crowd will be the arbiter, not Keen and his fellow "old guard". Unless, of course, the crowd choose them to be so.

One advantage of any future reputation based networks for searching information, will be the madame guilotine of the Internet. As any World of Warcraft player well knows, it is the /Ignore function.

However, in this case the /Ignore function is dangerous, as the feebleminded concepts of TINA (there is no alternative) promote a view that it is simply a choice between authority or anarchy. TINA promotes FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the Internet. Well there is an alternative - it's called participatory democracy.

Vive la revolution - liberty, equality, fraternity - and keep on blogging.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who shall guard the guardians?)

We shall. It's our society after all.

More good news? ... You decide

Hot on the tracks of my post about the new world of news, I've just picked up from Artur Bergman that the world bank is open sourcing a news aggregation service known as BuzzMonitor.

It's described as a:-

a "super-aggregator" that "allows users to aggregate all types of feeds (blog feeds, search feeds, news feeds) and collaborate around them. It provides tag clouds, Digg-like voting, Technorati and Alexa widgets, user tags and many other features.

This could well accelerate the Stentorocracy but also provides us tools for choice .

Whether it will create a true meritocracy is another matter but at least these new community mechanisms for identifying trust are starting to appear.

Something I'm watching ....

I've posted before about a future world of news where I get to decide whom I listen to. An "old guard" being replaced via the Stentorocracy with a "new guard".

There are lots of nominees for this "new guard" and they don't have to be the all encompassing monoliths of the past. An example for me is Vincent Camara and the team at intruders TV

Now I'm biased of course, Vincent recently interviewed me at open coffee (Saul Klein's event which is making waves). It was just too much fun.

However I'm also biased towards, Viddler (thanks to Colin for the mention) and Talis but the reality is they among others others are all forging new channels of news.

Surely being biased is what it is all about? I should choose whatever news sources I want, the one's I trust, I'm interested in - you can choose your own.

That's why I was really interested in bubbletop. It's worth watching the video.

Search on RSS feeds, tagging of feeds and items, recommendation to others, search over community ... ah the tools I need to search through the Stentorocracy and find what I want.

Guess who controls it? Me. Oooh, I like that. It's a start.

The other bit ... is they hint at making it an open platform ... now, that's smart

Stop all that chattering! I'm talking ...

I've read some disturbing posts over the last few weeks regarding freedom of speech, the consumer as a producer and the web 2.0 phenomenon.

I though I'd post something on these, and finally get round to replying to Jenny's questions.

==

As Yochai Benkler and Eric Von Hippel have studied the open source movement and emerged understanding of the "Wealth of Networks" and "Democratizing Innovation", am I understanding correctly lessons from your open source experience for creating sustainable networked organizations include:

• i. "you cannot efficiently plan out the process of development as it is more akin to research and therefore dynamic".
• ii. "three axis of technology, people and requirements being relatively unknown"
• iii. "try, measure and adapt"

==

My experience comes not from creating open source communities but dealing with static or dynamic processes of building. I'm not sure how applicable these are to your work on networked organisations, but let me explain these processes and how the three points you mention relate to my experience.

ii. "three axis of technology, people and requirements being relatively unknown"

The process of building a software system can loosely be described as involving people, technology and a set of requirements.

If all three of these "axes" are well known or well defined, the process of building can be described as static. Whereas if these "axes" are not well known or defined, the process can be defined as dynamic.

Hence mass copying CD's, is a fairly static process - you know exactly what the requirements are, CD writing technology is well known etc. Conversely developing a new and novel web site can be described as a dynamic process - even the requirements are generally not well known.

iii. "try, measure and adapt"

Unfortunately in the software industry there seem to be two common re-occuring issues:

• Firstly, despite much being CODB (cost of doing business), there seems to be an over tendency to develop or customise. Fortunately with the rise of SaaS (software as a service), utility computing markets etc - some of this tendency may diminish.

• Secondly, where things were novel and new - and therefore technology, requirements and individual performance are relatively unknown, there has been an over tendency to attempt to use static planning processes. Concepts such as "software factories" and the scientific approach to management (e.g. Taylorism) have been misapplied in this context.

About a decade ago, when developers started to use more dynamic planning methods to deal with dynamic problems, there was a significant improvement in productivity for the companies they worked for. Today, techniques like SCRUM & XP (also known as agile development) are becoming widely used because they are inherently dynamic and are designed to deal with new and novel software development, unlike static planning systems.

These new methods are based upon the concept of "try, measure, adapt". In the case of test driven development, you write a test, you write some code to try and pass this test, you measure whether this worked, you adapt if it didn't and on and on.

i. "you cannot efficiently plan out the process of development as it is more akin to research and therefore dynamic".

Now "try, measure and adapt" is a valid form of control, but notice there is no specific planning step. This doesn't mean you don't have a plan, it just tends to be fairly minimal.

I'd like to make a joke that "you wouldn't try to Gantt chart a cure for cancer"; unfortunately in todays R&D environments in the UK, for some quixotic reason such static planning methods are being enforced. Lunacy ... no, just wasted energy and effort.

Novel software development is more like a game of football - you never play the same game twice. You have a common goal, an idea of how to attack the game, but fundamentally you try out something, see if it worked and adapt - during and between games.

Every football team dreams of playing a team whose players are following a rigid plan. Could you imagine Gantt charting a football game before the game? Could you imagine a team who followed such a plan? What happens if the ball isn't where you planned it to be?

This illustrates why static planning processes are good for static systems, whilst dynamic processes are good for dynamic systems.

Hence my points :-

• i. "you cannot efficiently plan out the process of development as it is more akin to research and therefore dynamic".
• ii. "three axis of technology, people and requirements being relatively unknown"
• iii. "try, measure and adapt"

Now let me try and link these ideas to the concepts of agile enterprises.

First onto Enterprise 2.0 technology and specifically wiki's. At Fotango, we adopted a wiki some four years ago as the static process around our intranet (this person writes this bit, this person approves etc) had created a information resource which was useless. So we decided to try something new. We put up a blank wiki and before long everyone was contributing something.

Unfortunately, so much information was put onto the wiki that it became overloaded with "noise". So we needed to adapt and try something else - "gardening". By "gardening" I mean a regular pruning of information within the wiki.

In some organisations "gardening" may emerge naturally, in ours it didn't. This is a critical point: you shouldn't plan out in detail the adoption of an Enterprise 2.0 technologies within an organisation because you don't know what behaviours will emerge. Instead you need to "try, measure and adapt".

Note, I say you shouldn't plan out. This doesn't mean you can't. I can always plan out exactly how a football game is going to go, who is going to be where and at what moment in time etc. I'm not going to get the best result if I do - especially if the other team don't follow my plan.

So on to my title ... stop all that chattering! I'm talking ....

Whenever I've been involved in introducing more dynamic processes, I've generally come up against a fairly resistant and incumbent "old guard" who like the "old way".

So we come on to the latest spats about amateur online journalism. The "old guard" of the news world has been very comfortable with the well defined macro level processes of them collecting information, editing and disseminating it. Sometimes, they have been caught out spinning or doctoring information - reinforcing the old adage of "don't always believe what you read in the papers".

The "old guard" also selected who had a voice, it decided upon the criteria of expertise, it chose.

Unfortunately for them the ball has moved, and now we are in a world where anyone can collect, edit and disseminate information.

This "new world" does create a lot more noise. It provides powerful new mechanisms for anyone to be heard. Much of what is behind the attack on "net neutrality" in the US, the involvement of more traditional news organisation into the internet space and the recent spate of articles about the need for curators or editors for the internet appears to be about re-establishing that neat, old view of the world.

What is needed however, are new forms of control that are more adaptable to the reality we find ourselves in. I do want to know what is happening in the world. I do want to trust the source and sometimes I do want to have my say.

However, in this "new world", I get to decide whom I listen to. The only issue is who do I choose?

Unfortunately whilst the mechanisms of dissemination exist, the mechanisms of choice or trust don't. What is needed are reputation-based social networks. A method for searching for information from people that I, my friends, or the general public, trusts.

It may emerge that we choose to trust the same "old guard" as before. If not they'll just have to adapt and try something new. It may emerge that a "new guard" is created through the Stentorocracy as I called it.

You cannot understand everything on the Internet, you cannot make perfect sense of all the noise. In much the same way in economics you cannot make perfect decisions, or be that " rational man" or reach your "pareto-optimality". There is always too much information.

Something needs to separate the noise from that which is useful. Hence a new system, reputation-based social network, is needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Of course, there will always be winners and losers. There will be the included and the excluded. Maybe we'll all end up listening to some random 15 yr old blogger because he made some good points.

Maybe not.

However, I don't think an approach of "Stop all that chattering! I'm talking ..." is going to get the "old guard" very far. Especially if they use the same techniques, such as blogs, which they complain about. Hence I'm far from convinced by Andrew Keen

Still he has a voice, he has a right to be heard. But then so does that 15 yr old blogger.

You see, in my simple world it's the idea that's important, not the source.

My voice, your voice ... our voice.

The market is changing, and conversation is becoming as or if not more important than product. It's all about our experience or relationship with something and that isn't just the thing itself.

This is one of the reasons why I believe that the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 like technologies is inevitable. As a company you need to become the canonical source of information about your product, warts and all, otherwise you run the risk of someone else becoming that voice.

Then again, why not allow someone else to become that voice? If you can build a community around your product, why not let that community set your direction?

With Zimki we wanted to build a forum, but we also have to get ready for the open sourcing of Zimki, there is also the documentation to get written, and this feature and that feature and so on, oh yes - we also need to provide more tools, improve the IDE etc.

We're only a small company, the team are doing an amazing job but we have a huge number of projects to manage and many things we need to improve.

So, I am very grateful to Joel for creating the unofficial Zimki forum

Thank you Joel.

Hopefully when we get to OSCON and the open sourcing of Zimki, we will find others willing to help create this idea of an open utility computing environment with much less Yak-shaving and moveable applications.

So it is truly encouraging that people are already starting to help.