TECHNOLOGY
An Essay
By

VIKRAM KARVE

DEFINITION OF TECHNOLOGY

In our everyday lives, most of us use a number of words that we assume have a universal, agreed-upon, and accepted meaning for all people in all contexts.

Often, the more frequently the word is used, the more we take for granted that our usage is the only possible usage of the term.

One such popular word freely bandied about and very much in-vogue jargon now-a-days is “technology”.

Let us explore the meaning of the word “technology”.

The word “technology” comprises two parts – “technikos” & “ology”

The historical derivation of the term technology comes from the Greek word technikos, meaning “of art, skillful, practical.”

The portion of the word ology indicates“knowledge of” or a “systematic treatment of.”

Thus, the literal verbatim derivation of the term technology is literally “knowledge of the skilful and practical.”

However, this definition is too general in nature and we have to transcend this narrow view of technology since every technology starts from a human purpose, from the intention to satisfy some human need or behaviour.

Indeed, technology is the manipulation of nature for human purpose – yes, manipulation of nature, so let us use a slightly different definition of technology.

We will define technology as the knowledge of the manipulation of nature for human purposes.

This definition retains the notions of both knowledge and practicality (human purposes) but adds the new concept of manipulation of nature.

This implies that all practical or technical skills ultimately derive from alterations or manipulation of nature.

Technology depends on a base in the natural world (Science) but extends the natural world through the phenomenon of manipulation (Engineering).

Since we want to manipulate nature, the ability to predict what nature will do when manipulated is most useful, indeed imperative.

ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY

By our very definition, technology manipulates nature for human purposes.

Technology manipulates nature.

Man is a part of nature.

By manipulating nature, man manipulates himself.

Thus, technology manipulates man, influences, even governs human behaviour, and in turn impinges on societal behaviour, traditions and culture.

Technology is an entity that intervenes in the life of human beings in multifarious ways, directly or indirectly, trying to alter behaviours.

Thus, Technology has an Ethical Dimension.

The very raison d’etre of technology is human purpose.

What is the fundamental purpose of human life?

Is it to increase standard of living?

Is it to improve quality of life?

Or is it to have greater satisfaction in life?

We can distill all these various aspects into a single holistic concept: VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE.

Thus, the cardinal aim of technology is to enhance the value of human life.

TECHNOLOGY and the VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE

Let us define the value of human life as the balance or ratio between satisfaction or happiness and pain or suffering:

Satisfaction or Happiness
Value of Human Life = ———————————–
Pain or Suffering

In the context of this definition, the ultimate purpose of technology is to enhance the value of human life, with a long-term perspective, by maximization of happiness and satisfaction and a concomitant reduction or minimization of pain and suffering (physical, mental and emotional).

As a generalization, people want a better life.

A better life may usually mean things like freedom from want, access to and possession of at least some of the “nonessentials”, comforts or luxuries, good health, a reasonable life expectancy, the absence of emotional stress, satisfying human relations (resulting from gratifying work experience and meaningful interpersonal relationships), intellectual stimulation, and personally rewarding leisure activities.

HUMAN NEEDS and VALUES

Human needs and values change through time as technology advances.

Man tends to accept the fruits of new technology more readily (satisfaction, happiness, comfort) whereas he is reluctant to accept changes in his personal life.

Thus, social and cultural changes always lag behind technology causing a mismatch and disconnect which consequently leads to unhappiness, dissatisfaction, pain and suffering (emotional) and concomitant lowering of the value of human life.

A crude but practical way of classifying human values is to divide needs into those that are essentially physiological and those that are psychological.

Most new technologies cater to the physiological aspect by performing Dangerous, Dirty, or Difficult jobs (the 3 D’s) thereby enhancing the value of human life.

As regards the psychological aspect, an example pertaining to Information Technology (IT) may be in order.

Information Technology (IT) caters to two unique categories of psychological needs of humans:

Cognitive Needs – which refer to the human need for information so as to be ready to act or make decisions that may be required, and

Affective Needs – which refer to the emotional requirements of human, such as their need to do challenging work, to know their work has value, to feel personally secure, and to be in control.

Undue emphasis on cognitive needs and consequent neglect of affective needs may cause emotional pain that counterbalances the gains from technology and this may be detrimental to the “value of human life” as a whole.

TECHNOLOGY IMPACT ASSESSMENT
Effects and Consequences of Technology

In our haste to milk technology for immediate economic advantage, we often lose sight of the long-term consequences: the higher order and indirect effects, especially the delayed and unintended effects of technology.

The Sorenson multiple effect network methodology is a useful technique for an analyzing the impact and consequences of technology.

Let us introduce the term malefit to represent harmful effects and consequences of a technology in contrast with benefit as a useful output.

We may categorize the consequences of a technology [Effects vs Consequences] as:

EFFECTS CONSEQUENCES

(i) First Order : Benefits
(ii) Second Order : Direct Malefits
(iii) Third Order : Indirect Malefits
(iv) Fourth Order : Unintended Malefits
(v) Fifth Order : Delayed Malefits

Such analyses definitely help in assessing the impact of various consequences of a technology on the value of human life in the long-term perspective in holistic manner.

Early identification of factors detrimental to the value of human life may prove useful in technology impact assessment to reduce mismatches and smoothen out incongruities.

CONCLUSION

We must not lose sight of our basic premise that the cardinal aim of technology is to increase the value of human life by maximising happiness and minimising suffering.

Ethical Technology Management comprises a harmonious blend of rational thinking and empathic understanding wherein one studies, analyses and mitigates the conflicting interplay between human cognitive and affective processes.

It may be apt to conclude with a comment by RM Pirsig, who states that, “The way to solve the conflict between human values and technological needs is not to run away from technology. That is impossible. The way to resolve the conflict is to break down the barriers of dualistic thought that prevent a real understanding of what technology is… not an exploitation of nature, but a fusion of nature and the human spirit into a new kind of creation that transcends both”.

VIKRAM KARVE

Copyright © Vikram Karve 2009
Vikram Karve has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

vikramkarve@sify.com

http://vikramkarve.sulekha.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/karve

It’s Friday. As CIOs clear down their inboxes and tie up loose ends before the weekend, it is time to take a break…

As IT professionals, we are constantly asked for our advice when it comes to purchasing computers. The questions usually gain momentum around the holidays when people begin shopping. I don’t mind giving my opinion, but to be honest, my knowledge of home personal computers is very limited. Let’s face facts; most tech people are working day in and day out on some pretty complicated equipment. If someone wants to purchase a blade server or router, I can more than recommend a few products to meet their needs.

This time of year is also when we get asked all sorts of computer-troubleshooting questions. For example, I am sitting at the dinning room table the other day (not talking technology) when and I hear my uncle say, “My computer can’t turn on.” The conversations go quiet and all heads turn toward me. Like if I know all the details about my uncle’s laptop! I feel obligated to help, so I help.

So Happy Holidays to all the tech people out there! Brush up on your pc reviews and troubleshooting techniques. You will need it over the next few weeks….

P.S. Here is a video posted on YouTube some time back that you might find funny. Enjoy…

Your Dad Asks Computer Questions: SuperNews!

Want to start a new career as a sleep technologist but lack the funds for training?

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A-STEP, the Accredited Sleep Technologist Education Program, was developed by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine to standardize a comprehensive curriculum for sleep technologists. A-STEP is now part of the recognized pathway required to become a registered sleep technologist.

The Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine, an approved A-STEP provider, offers 24 hours of training in an interactive, online format followed by a one -week live course in Atlanta. Time away from work and home is minimized in an effort to help facilitate training requirements for adult learners.

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Maria Sipka (twitter feed) is the CEO and founder of Linqia, a company whose investors include Esther Dyson, who is on our advisory board. The Linqia marketplace helps monetize social networks by attracting valuable partners. I interviewed her because she can teach clinical teams a lot about creating and managing online communities for and with patients.

Download to the interview or read the full transcript below.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Welcome to the “Patients Know Best” podcast. I’m very lucky to be joined here today by Maria Sipka.

Maria, tell us a bit about your background, because it was very interesting for me to learn about the work you’ve been doing.

Maria Sipka: Well, thank you first, and thank for inviting me to share some of the knowledge and experiences that I’ve had over many years. My background in the last five years has been in online communities, building online communities and helping brands and companies and individuals leverage community tools to achieve their objectives.

Prior to that I spent ten years in the offline world. The online world is, I guess, fairly new to me; but in the first ten years of my career I focused on helping clients acquire relationships, either with customers or members, and also on how they were able to keep those customers and members.

So currently I’m the CEO and Founder of an online marketplace for online communities called Linqia, and we are passionate about driving value into these communities and making sure that communities thrive and grow and serve the needs of so many people around the world.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Well, thank you, Maria. I mean, the reason I wanted to talk to you is exactly those communities. So as healthcare gets more complicated and as patients deal with more and more clinicians, and clinicians deal with more and more patients, as well, the community becomes really important as a new tool that helps people work together, and online it’s really where the community building is beginning to thrive. So walk us through some of the things that … some of the new technologies that are available when you’re working with communities online.

Maria Sipka: Well, the actual definition of “communities” can be interpreted as many ways. People know them as clubs, as groups, as forums, chat rooms, social networks. What it really boils down to, any number of people, whether it’s two people or millions of people, that come together to form a gathering for a specific topic, interest or need. We see them as a fairly flat structure or a flat system. Control doesn’t work terribly well within a community environment, especially in the online-community environment, because people can join communities quickly and they can leave communities quickly.

So what’s extremely exciting with online communities today is that everybody is equal: they can participate, they can raise questions, they can contribute to existing topics and spark discussions around interests that prior may have been extremely challenging due to geographic, economic or even language barriers.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: But the fact that people work together as a team rather than like the centralized, hierarchical previous approach is a bit of a switch for clinicians. So previously the doctor or the nurse would speak, and the patients would kind of obey the orders; but they’re a lot more participatory right now.

We have a presentation from you that we’re gonna put on the podcast website, so you can look at it; but could you walk us through that, because it’s really about how do you actually make this happen?

Maria Sipka: Most definitely, and you hit on a very important point there and that is the patients. With the emergence of social media or what we term as Web 2.0, what’s happened is that it’s enabled anybody in the world to have a voice, and what we’ve seen is that the patients are actually in the driving seat today. They have the voice; other patients are listening to each other. And so it’s one of the challenges and opportunities that’s presented itself is the possibility for all of the other key stakeholders to participate in that experience. We’re talking the clinicians, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies — I mean, anybody, the carers — anybody that has an interest together, it’s made possible today with social media.

And so what’s really important and the presentation that we’re going to go through is specifically in the area of community-building and how communities play a role within your relationship ecosystem. I like to use the word “ecosystem”, because it also fosters that concept of a flat, non-hierarchical structure where one element impacts the other, and so if you put too much pressure within one element or there’s too much control, you run the risk of that ecosystem breaking down. And so with online and with social media and with communities, it almost self-regulates itself.

(00:05:13)

And so what I’d like to do is just go through the whole notion of community-building. This presentation is very much for beginners; so if you’ve already well advanced and you’ve created your community and attracted members and it’s thriving, I’m confident you will be able to pick up some insight. But this presentation is very much for the newbies or the beginners that are like, “Where do we start? How do we enter this space of social media, specifically within community-building? How do we build a community, or how do we join an existing community, and how do we participate? you know, how do these communities play a role of in our relationship ecosystem?”

So I’d like to start out firstly by making a very powerful statement, and it’s one of the biggest misconceptions amongst traditional marketers or advertising agencies or anybody that’s been in a position of influence, and that is that whilst communities are an extremely powerful distribution channel, a place where you can certainly influence the members of the community, it’s very important to note that communities are rarely new to direct selling.

We’ve often dealt with a number of brands and individuals to say, “I want to create a community so I can sell more, or I can get people to fill out surveys” or just focused on their end objective, which is extremely important; but understanding that a community is an ecosystem, the last thing you want to do is waltz into this community or create a community and start selling something, because you’ll frighten people away. You know, people want to … people really that join a community or create a community want to feel like they’re starting a shared experience where it’s a trusted place, there’s transparency and that people are open to really discuss what’s important to them and share what’s important to them. So –

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Sorry, may I?

Maria Sipka: Certainly.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: I was just going to add that for clinicians, this is a really important point to make, because they don’t want to participate in a commercial environment where they feel like they’re trying to sell their clinic or they’re trying to show for more business.

The participatory approach or relationship ecosystem is really about different people helping each other out, and that may well lead to more patients coming to your clinic; but you’re not there to advertise your clinic and not there in direct selling.

Maria Sipka: And communities work the other way around. The more you add value, the more information that you share, the more you enable people to connect and really develop their relationships, the likely result of that will be some kind of a sale or commercial outcome; but that really comes in 99% of cases on the tail end. You do a great job of the first bit, you know, and then the rest will fall together, because at the end communities for clinicians or for businesses do need to clearly demonstrate some kind of ROI, some kind of Return on Investment.

I’m not talking about cash, but there does need to be some set objectives and you need to monitor and really determine whether you’re meeting those objectives, because if you’re going to be investing time into building a community or joining an existing community and sharing, then there does need to be some benefit for you; but within a community, we like to see it as a relationship conduit.

So it’s a place where you can establish and deepen relationships, and it’s very much an authentic experience, unlike traditional advertising or focus groups or … you know, okay, that’s still taking place today; but you’ll find the most successful communities on the Internet are those that really foster relationships and people feel like they can share.

So in terms of community-building, we’ve identified — well, actually we didn’t identify this, a site called Awareness — they do a lot of research in this space — identified eight different types of communities, and as a clinician you could fall into any one of these eight different community types.

So the first different community type is a corporate-voice community. A corporate-voice community facilitates a dialog with your audience in a personalized, humanized voice that builds trust through ongoing conversations. So it’s very much intended to dialog and converse with whoever it is: it could be your patients, it could be doctors, or it could be carers, or it could even be other clinicians, okay? So a corporate-voice community is where you can participate in a dialog.

(00:10:14)

The second type of community is a user-generated content or micro-site campaign community. That’s where you can build demand for your products and services. It could be through a contest, it could be through a survey, it could be through some other viral marketing program. This is typically for brands that want to sell a product or service, not necessarily do research. It encourages interaction amongst the users through the content that they submit, and they vote on the submissions of others. So it’s a way of being able to see that community with some kind of, we call it, a content or an asset and enable the community members to interact with that by the voting or sharing, and it gives you direct, immediate feedback. But what’s absolutely key in a user-generated content community is that 98% of the content should be generated by the users. Your role is to spark or inspire the users to actually create that content.

The third type of community is an enthusiast community. An enthusiast community typically increases brand awareness by stimulating a common passion in the audience while encouraging members to share thoughts and ideas. So if your key stakeholders are particularly enthusiastic or passionate around a specific topic, then you can create a space where people can — those key stakeholders can start to share their ideas and thoughts; so it’s bringing people closer together and increasing the conversations on a much more frequent basis.

The fourth type of community is an association or a subscribers community. So the purpose is to increase like customer satisfaction through an exclusive velvet rope-type community, so they’re typically closed communities or not even visible to customers, association members or subscribers. So this is particularly relevant when the key stakeholders that you’re looking to create a community around are extremely pressed for time. They have many other choices where to participate, and you want to offer something very unique and compelling, and one of the reasons why that physician or that clinician would join your community is because you’re offering something exclusive. It doesn’t necessarily mean exclusive in terms the film or the music industry. You know, exclusive might be that you have access to do content or something that people would want to join and participate in a discussion around.

The fifth type of community is a loyalty community, and the purpose of a loyalty community is to enhance customer or member loyalty by communicating and rewarding these top key stakeholders. So if you have people within your community and they are consistently contributing and really adding value to your cause or your topic of interest, then you can also create a community to be able to reward these people and give them some form of status. It could be that they become moderators in your community. It could be that they get to attend special events. You somehow find out what are their hot buttons and provide them with means to motivate them to participate, because what’s really important when you create a community is you don’t want that community purely to sit on your shoulders. If you can distribute the moderation and the participation amongst the community, then it becomes a very thriving opportunity for people to share and it’s not totally dependent on you or just a few people. So loyalty communities are a great way to be able to identify those champions and keep them engaged.

The seventh type of community is a peer-support community, and a peer-support community is sort of touching on what I’ve just mentioned, and that is reducing customer service and support costs by providing a vehicle for community members to solve others’ problems. So if you create a community for patients and they start to discuss a specific topic, you’ll find that the community will start to help each other. Again, you don’t want the one-to-many approach; you want the many-to-many, where everybody can help each other, and they are some of the most thriving and valuable communities that are out there, because you’re actually enabling, people are still compelled and inspired and motivated to help others, and then those that are being helped can also find ways to overcome their challenges.

(00:15:07)

And then the last type of community is an event community. So an event community builds and maintains buzz leading up to and following an event. So if you are currently organizing gatherings amongst a few or many people, then you can actually create a community that keeps those conversations ongoing, and as well as generates enthusiasm leading up to that gathering. What we find with event communities is that often a lot is shared and discussed when people physically get together. It might be a presentation, or people might be referencing books that they’ve read or people that they’ve come across. Well, community is a great way as a repository to then — you know, whoever shared something of value, they can go back to that community and actually upload it into that group and say, “Hey, everyone, I’ve just shared this presentation that we went through” or “Here are some of the outcomes of the survey that we did” or “Here’s some insights from the experience that we had”.

So they’re the eight different types of communities that you’ll typically see throughout the Internet, and I would say that specifically what would be related to you is communities around perhaps the association and subscribers, the peer-support communities and the event communities would be the three communities that would be most relevant to those that are listening to this podcast.

Is there any comment that you wanted to make on that, Mohammad?

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Yeah, I was going to say that’s a really nice classification, and I think the three you picked out are the ones that I was thinking of, as well. The new one that I’m also noticing is six, the innovation community, in that we’re seeing now patients who are both, you know, giving advice on new medications, but also contributing to the production of those new medications. So you’re seeing patients who are also creating groups, that are fundraising, that are allocating resources and then stepping forward when the clinical trials are around. So they’re part of the process of creating that new innovation that cures the disease itself; but, yeah, the three that you’ve picked out are really particularly interesting to clinicians, I believe.

Maria Sipka: Well, thank you for those observations; very relevant. And what we’ll move on to in terms of the next slide is to give you a little bit of a pulse-check on what’s happening within communities around the community space around the world. All of you will no doubt belong to at least one social-network channel. It could be you could be a member of Facebook, you might even be a fan on MySpace of a particular band, or you may be using Twitter by listening or participating by sharing. There are so many different channels out there, and I have no doubt that you belong to at least one of them.

Specifically within communities in social networks, today we have over 2,000 social networks. Five to ten years ago or five to seven years ago, there were only a few, and that’s really where the masses congregated; but, today, there’s been an emergence of many, many, many social networks, and what we’re seeing is the emergence of niche social networks around nurses and, even if you have a look at a nurse community, it could be in specific languages or specific fields. So we are finding that people no longer want to be part of a generalistic community; they will be to maintain their friendships or their professional contacts who are LinkedIn. But for those that are really wanting a valuable experience, they will choose to either create or join a social network or a community of purpose that’s highly relevant to their field or their passion, or their hobby.

We’re finding that within these social networks, we have around about 160 million communities. Most of these communities, 95% at least, have been created by the members themselves; so they’re volunteer-led. One important point I should note is that not all 160 million-plus communities are active or alive. We estimate that only 5% of them are actually interesting and would complete our assignment.

So in the social-networking space we have around about 950 million members. They currently belong to a social network, and keep in mind that there are roughly 1.6 billion people who are online today. Of the 6 billion that are in the planet, we have 1.6 that are currently online, of which 950 million belong to a social network, and at least 350 million people belong to some kind of community.

(00:20:06)

They say that the average number is around about five; you know, typically a person that belongs to a community and gets what a community is about and somehow receives some form of value, whether they are part of a tech community or something around an iPod or even a patient group, they will then join at least five other groups that match their interests and needs.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: So just to come back to the comment that the vast majority of the active communities that are user-led, so a clinical team is much more likely to join an existing patient-led community than they are to create their own community for such patients.

Maria Sipka: Exactly, exactly. and we’ve found that professional communities that are created by professionals, like clinicians, companies, brands, those type of communities it’s the other way around: 95% of them are alive, they are thriving in one way or another, simply because they are tied to business, some form of objectives, business objectives. It is very different from a member that belongs to Facebook that is passionate about golf that creates a golfing group. That community has a 95% chance they could be (glitch) a community that’s created by a professional has a 95% chance of having (glitch), has all the … whether it’s (glitch) come forward and one of the acts we got (glitch) we got, because you (glitch) their patients, your blood, to keep it going.

So in terms of what we spoke about before, how we started different presentations in that community, shouldn’t be seen as a sales channel, but rather a relationship conduit. Another way to see community is (glitch) way to teach with your kids, because in communities patients are live. If you take a look at what you’ve traditionally done before, what you’ve been exposed to before is that you had somebody, an individual or a company or an organization with an objective, whether it’s, say, to promote an event, create a loyalty program, promote some kind of new information about a service or product or to do a survey or to create a focus group.

Traditionally, how that process has happened is via some form of a communication channel. It could have been via an email database; a mailing list, whether it be sending letters or email addresses; it could have be by an advertisement or picking up the phone. You know, communication really in the old days, or how we classify as Web 1.0, was quite rigid, you know, and the reality was that all of the people that they were communicating to, whether it be two or three or thousands, all of those relationships were locked in like a database. You know, the people were unable to communicate with each other; so they’d participate in this survey and weren’t able to share their experience around participating in that survey; or if they attended an event, yes, they could talk with one another at the event, but then there was no before or afterwards.

So it was very much a rigid, one-way channel, and what’s happened today is that those databases or those relationship groups have been brought to life, you know, and what we see today is not a one-way channel, but rather a collaborative channel so that you can actually release any type of message or spark any type of conversation, and immediately you can start seeing the results of that through communities and other social-media channels.

And what’s happened is that — and this is what most of us are grappling with — is that the rules have changed. Because of this level of transparency and immediate feedback, suddenly those that are actually releasing that message have had to deal with a completely different set of rules.

One of my favorite cartoons in the presentation is that if you talk to people the way advertising talk to people, they’d punch you in the face. And that’s how severe it is within social networks and communities and sites like Twitter and so on. People just don’t like being manipulated or influenced or sold to. And so what we need to understand is how to operate and play within this whole new ecosystem of social media where suddenly users are the ones that really have a say in this ecosystem.

(00:25:27)

So what I’d like to –

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: So, Maria, the — I guess that the traditional way that if you’re a hospital, for example, you would have the Communication Team releasing press releases and they’re the ones also talking to … they’re the kind of public-facing Communication Team.

Now they can’t do that; now it’s gonna be the clinicians who are communicating with patients in a public forum through a community website. They’re the ones that are actually the Communication Team, and it’s more distributed — it can’t be centralized — and they’re talking the way they normally talk to patients; they haven’t had the professional advertising way of talking.

Maria Sipka: Exactly, and it goes even a step further than that. Clinicians are the closest people that can relate to the masses. You know, the masses don’t want to hear from the Marketing or PR executive; of course the Marketing and PR executive has a very important role to play in all of this, but we’re finding with any type of company or brand or any user group, the people want to talk to people that they can relate to.

And so, you know, the step further that it goes to now is that the clinicians are actually reaching out to the influencers within this social-media ecosystem, and those influencers could be prominent people that have a lot of … they could be patients; but those specific patients have influence over many other people. They could be bloggers, you know, and those bloggers could be the patients that have decided to share their experience by blogs and by Twitter and they’re the mass and have a huge following. The clinicians are reaching out and identifying these influential people — we call them influencers — and then sometimes those people are the ones that then deliver that message.

So it’s almost like, you know, we’ve got a game of Chinese Whispers here: you’ve got the Marketing Department that then communicate with the clinicians, and the clinicians communicate with the influencers, and the influencers are the ones that communicate with the members. And it’s fascinating to see how that message is transformed, and it evolves when the Marketing people finally get around to monitoring, “Okay, well what’s actually being said here?” that’s where the greatest insights and innovation come from, because that’s where you truly listen and understand what are the needs and what are the interests of these key stakeholders that we’ve traditionally been talking to, not talking with.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: So the Marketing group, it’s more that their role is training or sort of cascading expertise, because there still are some risks of when you’re talking online with patients, because everything you’re saying is archived, is stored, and if you say something wrong then it’s available for people to talk about. So do you switch to a training role as you go to thinking about the stakeholders and what they would want?

Maria Sipka: Yeah, well, what we’re finding is that executives such as Marketing, Communication, PR, they’re responsible for identifying the tools that are out there; they’re responsible for monitoring what’s being said; they’re responsible for somehow digesting that information and gathering various different stakeholders — whether it be community members, whether it be clinicians — and sparking a conversation as to, “Okay, how do we respond to this? What does this mean?”

So they’re also involved in understanding what are the rules and regulations and guidelines that are out there, because specifically within the health industry it’s a minefield. We’re speaking with some of the world’s global pharmaceutical brands, and some of them have done nothing because they’re just so scared to take that step and risk being fined or put into the spotlight as having broken the rules. And so it’s very important that the backroom or the engine behind is feeding the right type of frameworks and guidelines and tools in order for that community to really thrive. Does that make sense?

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: It does.

(00:29:58)

Maria Sipka: So one of the approaches that I like to take when going through some of the basics of community-building is that we start off with taking off our professional hats. So if you are a marketeer or you are in PR — okay, most of you are clinicians — or whether you’re in Market Research, just take that hat off for a moment and put yourself into the shoes of your key stakeholders. So picture the type of people that you would like to be conversing with that you would either like to join a community with those people or create some kind of a community.

We’re specifically going to focus here on community-building, and we’re going to go through a journey to understand the role of online communities within your relationship ecosystems; and how the relationship ecosystem operates is, it’s a cycle, okay? And this cycle can actually be applied to different community types that we went through earlier.

With any type of community-building initiative, there’s always … you start off with defining your offering, okay? So what is it that you’re thinking of offering to these key stakeholders that you’re wanting to gather and really questioning is there really a need for this offering, because often we find that, you know, we’re convinced that there needs to … a conversation or a gathering needs to take place around a specific topic. We don’t do anything to validate that, so it’s a very, very important to question is there really a need for what it is that we’d like to offer.

And who are your key stakeholders; you know, how are they currently segmented? I’m not lumping them all into one bucket, you know; there might be four or five different members of your community. Mohammad, you might have more of an insight into, you know, when we think about a community of clinicians, who would be the different participants that you would see that would be engaging within this community?

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: So you have, obviously, the clinical team, which the doctors, the nurses, the allied professionals; but also you’ve got the patients, and you’ve got the carers for those patients, and finally there might be some social support, as well. So the people who are preparing the social-care package along with the clinical one.

Maria Sipka: Okay, so you’ve got roughly anywhere between three to five key stakeholders that you’re addressing.

And the next question once you have identified them is, how do they currently behave? You know, this is to gain an insight and understanding of how they could potentially participate within your community, understanding how they can behave. If you’re targeting carers that are around the clock taking care of patients, then is a community really going to be valuable within their day-to-day activities; how are they going to find the time to participate; and what’s going to be relevant and meaningful to them?

To understanding how these key stakeholders currently behave and the relationship that they potentially have with this online medium is important, because then you can plan around that and find touch-points to engage those people to make it a very relevant and meaning experience to them.

So this first stage, or phase one of defining your offering, requires that you research; you speak to these — you identify the key stakeholders, you speak to them; you find out what’s important to them. You might have some ideas as to what you feel is important, validate that with them and create a crystal-clear image of what it is that you’re going to be offering the type of experience.

It’s very similar to if you’re setting up a restaurant, where you can imagine what type of people are going to be visiting your restaurant, what kind of food they’re going to be eating, are they going to be there for two or three hours or just a half an hour. You know, it’s really creating that crystal-clear picture.

The second phase of the community-building process is a very important one, and that is setting your objectives. So once you’ve started to paint a picture of the offering, then ask yourself: what does success look like? You know, in order for this community to be successful, what are the different things that need to happen? Out of our potential key stakeholders, if you’ve identified 50 or 100 or even 1,000 people, then how many of those people would you like to join your community and at what stage? They’re not going to suddenly join from day one; it may take twelve months or even two years to engage those people.

So, understanding how many people are going to be part of your community; then also painting a picture of success around their interactions: are they simply going to be digesting information. If so, how will they respond, you know, and what percentage of people will respond. Typically within communities, most people are what we define lurkers: they will come in, they’ll browse around, but they won’t participate. They will click on articles, which is one success indicator; but they won’t necessarily post new articles or respond to others.

But still there does need to be a healthy level of, say, 5% or 10% of your community that are continually contributing, because otherwise you’ve just created another communication channel that relates to what we call Web 1.0, which is just a blasting tool of information. You know, the aim is to get people to participate.

So, you know, over what period of time? Communities on average, depending on what type of community and how challenging or easy it’s going to be to engage those key stakeholders, can take anywhere between six months to two years to mature. You know, what we’re seeing today is that people will join communities, and they need to see that there’s some level of consistency in order for them to come back and contribute over again, for it to become a part of their life in some way. And so realizing and managing expectations from the outset as to how much time you’re going to give in order for this community to grow is extremely important.

A community that I saw, I witnessed being created last year, was a community called Business Fights Poverty. It was created on NING, which is a free social-networking tool where you can instantly create a community, and now this community has over 5,000 members. It’s deeply ingrained within the community leader’s day-to-day activities; however, he’s not the only one that’s contributing in this community. Lots of 5,000 members are not certainly contributing on a regular basis.

If you have a look at this community and see the activity stream, you have a very healthy level of community members that are participating on an ongoing basis. So he was able to achieve his objective within 12 months in a very proactive way, where he integrated this community into his day-to-day communication with his various different stakeholders that he identified.

Thirdly, you know, how are your goals, how are your community objective tied to your business goals? We spoke earlier about Return on Investment. In order for you to justify spending time in this community and potentially even gathering more resources, which could mean some level of cost, then how are they tied to your business goals? If it’s around research? Then, what type of research looks successful to you? Is it based on the number of people that participate in that research; or if it’s about innovation, then how have you been able to measure the activity that relates to new innovative ideas? And so clearly being aware of what your business goals are, they need to be aligned with the objectives of your community; they go hand-in-hand.

And finally, how and when will you measure success? Many of the tools that are out there enable you to measure activity on a daily basis, okay? So you can measure, you know, how many members belong to that community; you can measure how many people are clicking on specific posts or topics that you’ve posted; you can measure how many are replying to posts. So the average community platforms and tools that are out there will enable you to measure.

You can do a little bit of a pulse-check on a regular basis if you want a highly active community; otherwise, we recommend that you measure the success at least on a monthly basis and then determine what do you need to be doing more of and what do you need to be doing less of, and then implementing those changes and again monitoring that the following month to see what impacts change or not.

One example of measuring success that we’ve implemented within a community that we launched is that we find that when we post topics within our community — that could be a new job, or it could be an event, or it could be a question that a member has posted — we will then promote that through Twitter.

So we will say, “Hey, does anybody have any answers to these questions?” or “Is anybody interested in this job?” And we find that that increases our number of traffic. We will have 40 to 50 people visit our community every time that we’ve broadcasted something of interest via the Twitter channel, depending on how many followers we have.

So there are different ways that you can adjust how you go about doing things, and then just do more of that once you find what works. As they say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So measurement is absolutely key within this process.

The third phase of the community-building process is developing your community plan. So it’s sitting down with the people that are going to be important within this community. They could be any one of your key stakeholders, they could be a patient, a carer, a physician and a number of clinicians. It’s important to gather as many people as possible, because whoever gathers at this stage, they’re your early supporters and they can play a key role within your community.

As part of the community planning process, there are a number of different areas that you need to address; but the most important one is, do you have a budget to create your community? and what I mean by “budget” is not necessarily in dollar values, but it could be how much time you’re going to invest. Time is as good as money, and so what type of budget can you realistically contribute towards your community-building initiatives; or if you decide to join a number of communities, how much time and money would you allocate towards that.

Once you’ve identified your budget, then identifying what type of resources you’re going to need to manage this community; and resources fall into two categories: you have internal resources, so your internal resources could be yourself and your colleagues and potentially even what we’re seeing is engaging the Legal Department to make sure that we’re abiding by the latest rules and regulations that are out there; it could be touching base with your Marketing or PR or Communication. And so what type of resources are going to be necessary; and what does that mean in terms of their time and what action items or responsibilities they may have either as a one-off or on an ongoing basis.

And then the second bucket is the external people. External people are absolutely key within the community-planning process. External people could be potential patients that would like to moderate a forum or can moderate reviews; they’re the people that evangelize and really provide that level of support to the members that are going to be joining your community.

We’ve often also seen that people that create communities engage external partners and suppliers. So anybody that you have a relationship with, how can you engage them in this community and give them some kind of a role and manage them on an ongoing basis. When I say “manage”, it’s more like really inspire them and motivate them to contribute.

The third area — and we’ve briefly touched on it before — is the technology aspect. Will you be building this community, or will you be using an existing technology? I wouldn’t recommend building at all unless a company or organization that has extremely deep pockets, which not many companies do today. Why reinvent something that’s already been created? There are over 120 different providers of community platforms and technologies. Some of them are completely free, like NING. I’ve seen even some companies create their communities in groups within existing social networks where there already exists thousands, if not millions, of their potential key stakeholders.

So I’ve seen on business communities formed within LinkedIn, within Zing. You could create a patient group or community within patient-related or health-related social networks. So this is a very key question, and often we’ve found that those that invest heavily into the technology, unless there is a strategic reason why it just has to be that way, you really should put 95% of your focus into actually creating the community experience, because unfortunately we’ve seen many companies spend literally millions of dollars on creating their communities, and by the time they’re ready to launch the community, they’ve run out of budget. Then 12 months to two years later, they’ve had the headaches to deal with, and they haven’t even got their community off the ground. So you really need to think twice about how you’re going to draw about your image, and I would highly recommend that you use an existing platform and one that’s free to start with.

The next element –

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Can I just, just to repeat that –

Maria Sipka: Yes?

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: – the whole aim is if you do have millions of dollars, you should really spend it on the connections that you have who build the strategic content for the community, as opposed to developing software or building your own platform.

Maria Sipka: Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: So we’re coming to the kind of ingredients of the community, you’re kind of laying them out; so can you just repeat those for us? It’s on the last slide, again, starting from the transparency.

Maria Sipka: Yeah, so we’re talking about the cycle to create communities and the first –

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Yeah. So go ahead, I’m sorry.

Maria Sipka: Yeah, and so the first phase is defining your offering; so being very clear about what it is that you’re going to offer to this community that you’re going to create.

The second step is setting your objectives, and how are they aligned with your business objectives?

The third stage is the community-planning phase; so, creating a plan. If you don’t have your own plan, you become a part of someone else’s. So really putting the energy and effort into the planning. And then there’s three other phases that we’ll go through. So I can run through those a lot more quicker because I know we’re running out of time here.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Uh-huh.

Maria Sipka: Okay?

Dr. Mohammad Al=-Ubaydli: Yeah, go ahead; I’m sorry (laughing).

Maria Sipka: So just to finalize on this third phase of the community plan, where will you gather content? As with traditional media, content is king; it’s the substance that sparks and generates conversations.

So if you’ve created a community around a specific topic, then being able to feed that community, continually with fresh, engaging, compelling content is absolutely key.

And then the fantastic thing about social media, a benefit about social media, is a lot of this content already exists on the Internet. You can actually go to YouTube, you can go to Flickr to get photographs, you can go to SlideShare to get slide presentations, and you can see feed a lot of this content into your community without you having to recreate it from scratch. Of course, you can also use your community to feed with your own content; so if you’ve created a research paper or you’ve written a blog article, then your community is the place where you can feed this and spark conversations.

And finally addressing is there any potential to draw sponsors to your community? If you were to create this community and the more innovation focus there is and you’re able to acquire a gathering of people, then who would be interested in sponsoring this community? And sponsorship may not necessarily be in cash, it may be in kind: it could be offering an event venue, or it could be offering exclusive content; it could be the opportunity to drive more members into your community. So really think about sponsorship and what type of value you could provide and they could provide to you.

The fourth phase of community-building is the acquisition and uptake. So this is the stage where you go out and engage these key stakeholders that you identified earlier, understanding how they’re segmented will enable you to, number one, identify where it is that they currently hang out, okay? Sometimes you might need to go and approach these people offline through a telephone call, at an event; or they may already exist within existing groups online, or they could be a Twitter following. These people could already exist, and tailoring and customizing an approach on how to go and identify where these people hang out and how to reach them is something that needs to be defined before you actually take that action.

And when you identify these people and you reach out to them, understanding what are the different carrots you’re going to offer: what’s going to compel those to either invite their members or themselves to actually come and join your community or group? You need to give them a good reason; you don’t just say, “Hey, we’ve created a community around X, come and join”; “Hey, we’ve created a community around X, and this is the value that you’re going to find if you come and join us.” So part of the acquisition and uptake stage is making sure that you’re very focused in who you’re going after; that those people are highly targeted; and that you’re offering an authentic experience for them to join.

The fifth phase of the community-building process is the result and pulse-check phase, which we went over earlier. So this is where you’re really establishing and generating some kind of return on investment of money or time. So when is it that you know that you’ve achieved success? If you’re monitoring on a daily or monthly basis, you’ll quickly determine whether you’re generating success or not.

How does your community fit into the life of your key stakeholders? You preempted it in the first phase, but are you really playing a role within their life somehow? If these people are returning and spending 5, 10, 20 minutes within your community, then you’re a part of their life; so understanding how you are a part of your life is important. It gives you an opportunity to then create some kind of a formalized referral if membership grows is one of your objectives and you’d like to attract some more people into your community.

If you’re a part of your members’ lives, then there’s a high chance that they will invite others. So why not formalize that process of invitation, either through tools or through incentives or simply just asking, “Hey, do you know anybody else that would like to join this community?”

If you’re creating a larger community, then — and this is something you need to check with IT or your Communication Department — is how does your community integrate within your existing customer relationship-management system. And at the end of the day, the results and pulse-check, the proof is in the numbers. So make sure that whatever tool that you do use, you’re able to track the success.

The final stage is retention. So once you’ve attracted all of these people, you’re keeping them engaged, you’re seeing the success factor is there; then if you’re in it for the long haul, how you’re going to retain your members’ interest. How will you keep these people engaged and deepen those relationships? Will you offer some kind of incentives? Will you incentivize evangelists within your communities?

People love to meet offline, so if there’s a possibility that you can create some offline events, then you’ll find that people will develop deeper relationships, they will refer more and they’ll come back to your site more often. So engagement is and retention is a very important consideration, because once you’ve got that final phase figured out and you’re successful in that, you can then start the cycle all over again and perhaps introduce additional offerings and then go through that relationship cycle again.

What’s important to keep in mind when building communities and going through these six phases is that create a checklist and ensure that your community is maintaining high standards. And what we mean by “standards” is that we’ve found the most successful communities have a high degree of transparency, engagement amongst many members and not just a few. There’s consistency; so, you know, you say you’re going to communicate once a month, then you communicate that newsletter once a month. If somebody posts a topic, then you respond to them within 24 hours. Consistency is something that’s very rewarding for members.

The ability for the members to be able to collaborate amongst one another, celebration is key. so if you’ve achieved something successful within your community, then celebrate that success; promote it through a newsletter; feature it on the homepage; create a discussion; celebrate members and the various different activities.

And the last two points are simplicity: keep it very simple. There’s nothing worse than joining a community that has too many bells or whistles. Start with a very simplistic approach, offer less, find out what it is that the members are looking for and then start to test that out and add more and more as time goes by.

And then finally, measurement: the ability for you to measure the contribution from yourself, as well as the members, that enables you to really benefit from this ecosystem that you’ve created or the community that you’ve created.

Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli: Maria, I really appreciate this, partly because for clinicians they’re not really sure how to communicate with patients online, and partly because no one’s really sure. It’s kind of a new medium, and so I really appreciate the expertise and experience that you’ve brought. It really kind of breaks it down for everyone involved. Thank you.

Maria Sipka: Thank you.

Total Duration: 55 Minutes

Full transcription provided by Tech-Synergy.

Banks and their facilitators have had many challenges over the years operating in Africa. It has been a painful process for many and one that has had 1st world integrators perplexed many times when considering rolling out their products here.

Africa is not unique in its problems, but it does set an interesting challenge due to the combination of issues that impact any such banking project. The usual challenges exist of course, as in the lack of consistent communication and power, as well as security and data protection. Throw in a healthy dose of political interference or influence or demands and the skills shortage, and it starts getting tricky.In my industry, it has become a trying process of carefully balancing all these factors to achieve an acceptable solution to all participating parties.

I remember how shocked I was to sit in a Barclays Bank (with the Caribbean & African regional managers of their card processing div) meeting some years ago in London and hearing just how expensive it was for them in 2002 to get their African merchant transactions processed, PER transaction! It was unbelievable how expensive, but against their customer’s perceptions something they just had to do as a bank. It was inconceivable for their card customers to pay with their Barclays Card somewhere in Africa and not be accepted, so this cumbersome network of links had to be created to authorize and settle their card transactions. At that time, mobile penetration was in it’s infancy and growing rapidly, and Barclays only had about 800 merchants of importance that they wanted to retain for their customers in Africa. Since then this demand would only have grown rapidly, and hopefully the ABSA deal would help their teams better understand how things can be done successfully at a much lower cost now, not that ABSA is perfect, not by a long way!

That said, it’s Africa and this vast continent has its own challenges that we simply have to overcome if we wish to serve the majority with a banking service. Today the mobile networks have offered us an amazing network for consistent wide area data transfers, making our banking solutions for real-time transaction authorizations, processing and settlement much easier to consider at a lower cost than before. Fraud is rife though and so we are forced to look at adding robustness to our solutions we would not have considered for a first world roll-out.

Many good banking solutions exist today both for the front end processing and bank-end accounting, but too many are fixed systems requiring the bank or client to conform to it instead of changing to meet that bank or client’s current process requirements. My own view here is that we must lose our colonialist approach of ‘we know best’ and start considering Africa as a market unique in many ways and worth accommodating with more flexible solutions.

Though regulations are always rigid and rightly so, they only protect where they are respected by the participating individuals, otherwise they are worth less than the paper they are written on. However, this is not just an African issue, but can happen anywhere in the world today – take the apparent cardholder data breach at PCI DSS certified Network Solutions as an example – so regulations alone will not ‘enforce’ a better banking environment for our solutions, services or products. Our technology needs to police itself better and hence the unique design challenges we face as technologists here, pitting cost against performance against customer expectations against robustness.

We see some giants arising within Africa itself to do this relatively well. Two solutions come to mind, eTranzact and Fundamo, both mobile phone based banking solutions with excellent track records. Both have years of experience with the African challenges for such banking solutions, and both have had many years exposed to African fraud and managed ways to continue to address this pro-actively. They are good examples of solutions that work well in Africa and though one is an active service and the other a product provider in the banking space, both have been recognized by their peers for the excellent companies they have become.

With the changes in the technology landscape happening very quickly, the African market will open up to many more players, and the whole ‘cloud’ computing world will pro-actively focus on this market to gain a strong foothold, with Google or Microsoft leading the pack. Banking solutions will also see a strong growth and to me the SaaS model of service or product offering over the mobile phone channel may be the saving grace for many solutions wishing to gain a foothold in Africa. Offering your product to banks and their facilitators in a SaaS format allows for powerful tools to be handled by basically trained staff remotely managed by well trained SaaS operational managers.

Building that SaaS model with the flexibility to adapt to a very unique business environment that is the African market, will be as important. ‘Third world’ business processes differ enormously from first world practices despite the impact of British and French banking practices in Africa in the past century. People just work differently here and one has to make sure your solution caters for this or it will fail, either in its implementation or its use. This is Africa and people are innovative in their own right with how things are done here. Just because a process uses 10 more people than we would have used in the west to deliver it’s respective responses in a business, does not mean it is a failure. If it works that way, try to understand the reason it became that way before shooting it down and trying to enforce some first world argument on the client.

Solutions should show the same grace towards African traditions and business practices than shown towards Western traditions and business practices, whilst addressing very strongly any fraudulent processes with internal checks and balances. Often we fail in this, as we keep offering our own Western developed ideas to a continent rich in its own culture of doing things.

When they do not work, and the evidence is clear that the process keeps failing, we should again handle it without arrogance and ensure that we highlight the failing processes with diplomacy and care. Africa has had a long history of failed projects where people were ignored in the project. They need to be included and the issues managed with the same grace they themselves show so often.

Getting one champion insider is crucial to the success of a project and ensuring its ongoing use will be through thorough training of the staff who would use such a solution. Add to this that the solution should intuitively address the customers too, acknowledging that we are Africans and therefore may look at the application or solution differently is essential. Let me put this thought across in an analogy – if you ask someone to play the Vuvuzela expecting music, you’ll be greatly disappointed, but if you were expected noise, you would be very pleased; handing that person a trumpet, expecting noise will again please you, but if you were hoping for music it will only happen through training and lots of it. As designers of solutions we often design a trumpet and are disappointed in customers when all they produce is noise. When that happens you may have missed the mark, as the customers may only have wanted a vuvuzela, despite your grand design for a trumpet or you may have underestimated the need to train them, not only in the use of the solution, but also in their perception of what the design is used for – in this analogy, for making music, as opposed to making noise. So ensuring that the training and the interface design (GUI) brings across the proper message to the users of your systems in Africa, will achieve the proper results, both in their perception of your solution and in their use of it (swing by South Africa for the World Cup in 2010 and see just what can be achieved with a Vuvuzela btw).

So step 1 for me is a basic SaaS framework of services delivered to the customer in SMS format (information messages, balance enquiries and remittance payments being the only considerations for transactions here). Ensure that the use of this service first grows to an acceptable level before introducing step 2, so that you are clear that customers know how to use your solution.

Step 2 would be adding a Java based application for example, with AUTOMATED activation! Don’t assume that the customer knows what Java is or how to activate DATA on their phones. Design your solution with as much automated installs as possible, in partnership with the bank and the networks, or you will see failure very soon. Also consider making this application introduction a non-banking feature, for example simply send customers the latest news and updates for free as a bank sponsored project. Am I nuts here? No, not at all, but a bank solution in the mobile world is often an utterly boring feature to add to a phone, so one has to bait the hook as it were, and to me there can be nothing as exciting as a mobile chatroom with lots of down-loadable content driving the consumer to download the app for all this free content. Once you feel that there are enough or agreed number of unique customer downloads of your application, introduce step 3.

Step 3 is the introduction of secure banking tools to the customer, who by now have shown that they understand and appreciate the need for bank information using their mobile phones (SMS services) and that they are savvy in the use of the Java or Flash based application you built as the interface to your solution. You have a much more mature consumer base now for the full bank tool set to be featured to, and they would be expecting to manage more advance features on their phones too. Introducing this feature to the various city based networks first and then using family or friend pushes of services to bring on more rural customers (migrant remittances or payroll for example) will help you manage the acceptance of the products during roll-out.

Using consistent market monitoring alongside these steps will help you best understand the needs and problems of your customers, and give you time to adjust for them. Remember the customer must feel that they remain in control and you need to be flexible enough in your designs to adapt to THEIR requirements, within the regulatory framework of the country or region where you are commissioning the solution of course.

Feel free to add your comments to this post as it only reflects my personal view at the moment. As a design community we can better address this type of challenge as a group and I look forward to hearing from you all on what you believe we can add, change or take away from the post and the issues of bank solution design and commissioning in Africa.

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? Often times, it seems like people are thinking it’s synonymous with “that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think ‘technical’ deep thoughts” or “that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim.”  So what does CTO mean, besides just “technical founder who really can’t manage anyone?”

Being a manager didn’t sound fun – deep down, who really wants to be held accountable for other people’s actions? I mean, have you seen other people? They might do anything!  It is hard to separate how the software is built from how the software is structured. If you’re trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? How can it work if some folks are pre-building and others use five why’s to drive decisions? And what about if deployment takes forever? Some options can improve the performance of the software at the expense of readability, deployability, or scalability. Should you take them? These sounded to me like technical problems, but when you do any kind of root cause analysis they turn out to be people problems. And there’s really no way to tackle people problems from the sidelines.

So here’s my take. The CTO’s primary job is to make sure the company’s technology strategy serves its business strategy.

I’ll try and break this definition into three primary skills :

Platform selection and technical design – if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, you’d better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard. Massive proprietary databases? I don’t think so. Can the company dig into its tools when they fail and fix them? If not, who’s going to insist we switch to free and open source software? When projects are getting off the ground, who can the team check with to make sure their plans are viable? Who will hold them accountable for their project’s impact on the platform as a whole?

Seeing the big picture (in graphic detail) – the CTO should be the person in the room who can keep everything your technology can and can’t do in their head. That means knowing what’s written and what’s not, what the architecture can and can’t support, and how long it would take to build something new. That’s more than just drawing architecture diagrams, though. Being able to see the macro and micro simultaneously is a hallmark of a great CTO.

Provide options – another mark of a good CTO is that they never say “that’s impossible” or “we’d never do that.” Instead, they find options and can communicate them to everyone in the company. If the CEO wants to completely change the product in order to serve a new customer segment, you need someone in the room who can digest the needs of the new (proposed) business, and lay out the costs of each possible approach.

I have often wondered what characteristics make a good CIO. Books have been written about great leaders throughout history but can the same rules be applied to CIOs? Lui Sieh, in his blog, A Bottom’s Up View From a Pai Mei Guy, discusses “(Successful) IT People Characteristics”. Here, Lui lists nine characteristics that makes an IT person a success.

1. Passion
2. Self-teaching and love of learning
3. Intelligence
4. Hidden experience
5. Variety of technologies
6. (Lack of) Formal qualifications
7. Self-confidence vs Hubris
8. Star-Trek test
9. Perseverance

Can the same be true for a CIO? Yes. But let’s go deeper. What are the key ingredients of a CIO? What is that “stuff” that makes a good CIO a great CIO?

• Visionary-A CIO must look to the future and figure out a strategy on how to get there.
• Pragmatic-A CIO must be sensibly and realistic in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations when dealing with issues.
• Business Acumen-As a CIO you must interact with the business and therefore you must relate in business terms. You make business decisions about technology.
• Motivator-As a CIO you must be able to motivate people.
• Politician-As a CIO you must be able to deal with and navigate politics.
• Leader- As a CIO you must be able to supervise, manage, and inspire people. Delegate assignments and ensure things get done.
• Technophile – As a CIO you have to be wowed by technology. Let’s face it; we deal with cool types of technology everyday.

Being CIO takes a lot determination, special skills and characteristics to succeed. We have to walk the line between technology and business. A good CIO will be successful in developing these characteristics so that we can excel at our job. The job – to lead and maximize the leverage your firm gets from using technology.

Ok, back to some of the basics, such as cell phone p0rn.

Anyone in the same boat as me? So the next iPhone is likely going to be introduced very soon. 3.0 seems to be just what I’ve been waiting for. The App Store has anything and everything one could want, and I’ve even read in a few places (ok, likely one report regurgitated 100 times) that AT&T may reduce the monthly charges by $10.

So, is it time to take the plunge?

I’m been pretty damn happy with my Curve on Verizon. The Curve keeps me entertained just enough to feel like it’s the right device, but I’ve got a wandering eye.  The Storm 2 might be nice if I’m going to just end up staying with Verizon.  People reasonably satisfied with the first one?  Know anything about the second one?

Palm on Sprint? Not that crazy about it. I actually don’t like the form factor too much. Just doesn’t do it for me. Stick with Verizon? It is the best service around, and now that we’re settled in this new metro area, I STILL hear people saying that AT&T service leaves much to be desired (I’m in Mamaroneck, NY and have been working in Stamford, CT).

Conveniently enough I forget to think about the cash that would have to leave my hands for the switch to the iPhone. That cash is, of course, multiplied by two unless I am truly desiring being single again and not live with the two cutest boys on the planet. Pay for setup, phones, apps…just coming off 5 years of being broke ass (well, still broke ass for now until my dissertation is done) is not the best time for this. But…

Folks still happy with their iPhones? Anyone gotten used to a keyboard like the Curve’s and then made the switch to just typing on the screen? I’ve gotten pretty fast, and I know there are folks that can’t live without a real keyboard. Personally, I’d like to be less tied to any device, but well, I take that back. I probably do.

Added 5/26:  I also wonder how many Blackberry apps will be available that remotely come close to what works on the iPhone/iPod Touch.  I am a Mac user so it’s obvious which device will be a better fit.  I’ve been thinking that I’ll go freaking bonkers if AT&T’s service sucks, and maybe it’s time to just go iPod Touch. 

Wait for a newer model after June?  Wait unti they’re sold with 3.0?  Anyone happy with their iPod Touch AND Verizon phone?  Might be a good time to cut back on the Blackberry $30 expense, too, then.  But BBM, some email, being online, etc. seem like nice bonuses.  The Touch would be more like a pda and toy only.  Hrmm…

One of my favourite Twitterers, @dburrows, pointed out a very interesting article appearing in The Times today.  The basic premise is that the Internet is not  terribly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things and certainly shouldn’t be considered as a defining technology of our time.

David Edgerton, professor of the history of technology at Imperial College London, is quoted as saying “The Internet is rather passé . . . It’s just a means of communication, like television, radio or newspapers.”

Like speech as well, then, presumably.

The Professor quotes Steam Power and The Wheel as more fitting examples of revolutionary technology.   These are, after all, technology that spawn other technology – they’re solid and tangible and can be banged with spanners.  Communication, on the other hand is obviously far too much of a wishy-washy social science subject for the eminent professor to consider important.  Of course, one might note that neither steam power, nor the wheel would have existed without communication, as, indeed would no other technology.  But communication isn’t something an Engineer is an expert at.  Especially not this particular one, I fear.

It might not be engineering, but the societal impact of communication is beyond measurement – society simply doesn’t exist without communication.

So, communication is kind of important.  Revolutionary, in fact.  Dare I say it, very possibly communication is the one factor that defines humanity above all others.  Certainly not something worthy of the dismissal it has received in this article.

Without the wheel, I daresay the invention of the hovercraft would have come more quickly, but we’d have had to live without rollerskates.  Without steam power, well, we’d probably be pretty much where we are now, with a few tweaks and changes to our power plants.  Without the complex communication we capable of, we’d likely be extinct.

But within the sphere of communication, can we truly describe the Internet as revolutionary?  Isn’t the point the Professor is making is that the Internet is just a progression beyond what has already been established?  Does it really propel us beyond where the invention of the printing press took us?

I say it does.  The Internet is the only medium to be as accessible and as instant as speech, but provide a truly global audience.  Unlike speech, it can be referenced and archived.  The moment I publish this (free) blog entry, it is available to everyone across the world to read, use, comment and expand upon.

The table below captures the attributes that make the Internet so revolutionary in terms of communication media.

When the wheel was first invented, one can only imagine how long that knowledge took to disseminate and improvements iterate via the channels of communication then available.  The Internet makes it possible for any idea to disseminate and iterate at the speed of light.  To aid this process, unlike speech, radio or television, it can be referenced again and again, instantly, universally, democratically. If that isn’t a technological revolution, then I don’t know what is.

Beyond this, the article goes on to quote another eminent professor, Clive James.

“After Lehman Brothers crashed,” he says, “The Wall Street Journal carried an analysis that is still the best thing I have seen on the subject. But the story needed half a dozen qualified financial journalists to put it together, and masses of research that no lonely blogger could possibly do . . . This throws into relief the intractable fact that the liberty which the web offers to the individual voice is also a restriction on group effort.”

Hold on a second.  Did I read this right?  It is intractable fact that journalists can’t work together on the Internet?  Collaboration is only possible when the output is destined for printing presses?  I assume this means spurious crap becomes intractable fact when a newspaper columnist tells you so.

I’d be very interested to know where that group of half a dozen qualified financial journalists carried out their ‘masses of research’.  Which library of printed materials had so quickly amassed so much data?  And how did that group of journalists collaborate, exchanging ideas and thoughts quickly?  Did the WSJ fly them in from all corners of the world to sit and work together in a single room?

Of course, the group of journalists used the global, instant, free communication medium of the Internet, drawing on and iterating knowledge already pinging around the world.  They used the same medium to collaborate their efforts as they packaged their Internet research, before WSJ published it in both digital and paper form.  Had Mr. James wished to, he could have read this interesting piece on WSJ’s website long before his antiquated, dessicated tree hit his doormat.