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UX Is The Beating Heart Of Tech

[via satori, ai]

Scrapbooking: Principles For Social Tools

In a recent post (see How Will Twitter Be Governed?), I pondered the potential for conflict between the aspirations of social tool developers and the communities using those tools. I have started to think about a set of principles for social tools that might somehow serve as a foundation for this.

So I have been eagerly looking for others' thoughts on this subject, and when I saw something related at Kashklash.net, it caught my eye:

[via kashklash:: exchanging the future » Blog Archive » Principles for a digital social enterprise by Franco Papeschi & Tory Dunn]

To invite further discussion, we are posting below the initial
thinking we have done on a set of principles and guidelines to support
the formation of ethical / sustainable social enterprise services.
(With contributions from Heather, Irene and Mark..thanks!)

1. Does the initiative help people use time to their best advantage?


2. Does it strengthen relationships between people?


3. Does it have a clear socially* beneficial mission (or in the
   absence of clarity, a positive trajectory in a socially beneficial
   direction)?


4. Does it produce more for a community/society/environment than it
   takes, including balance of profit distribution v. social reinvestment?


5. Is the initiative and its outcome sustainable in the long term?


6. Are the workings transparent, including products, processes,
   consequences? Are there processes in place to protect and steward the
   socially beneficial intent and outcomes?


7. Is it at least neutral for people who don’t use it? (i.e. doesn’t permanently reduce resources for non-users)


8. Is the result of any accumulation process socially positive?


9. Does it reduce barriers to access? Does it make things easier? Is it accessible in the broad sense of the word?


10. Is there no unjustified and/or artificial barrier to entry or exit?


11. Does it respect human rights and the culture it is in? (Although
    these may be in opposition, in which case, we believe, human rights
    should prevail.) Does it value diversity?


12. Does it build and substantiate trust and collaboration?


13. Does it foster socially positive, sustainable use of the data/information it generates?


14. Does it provide/use a means of value exchange that is appropriate to the context?

Further elements to be considered include:

1. Does it leverage and / or facilitate local ownership and economic development?
2. Is it scalable?
3. Is it applicable in different contexts/sectors?
4. Is it culturally adaptable?
5. Does if follow best practice in user-centric design?

*social used to indicate social / environmental throughout

We started this project focusing on the way social enterprise services can be designed to “create sustainable business-driven solutions to societal problems” (Paraphrased from http://www.goodcap.net/faqs.php), but we feel that the framework can be applied to all projects that aim to benefit society at large.

Some of this is perhaps inapplicable to the context of social tools that aren't explicitly aspiring to better the world, but I will put it in my scrapbook and steal thoughts from it.

Is Enterprise 2.0 For Band Geeks?

Venkatesh Rao suggests that Enterprise 2.0 isn't taking off until the cool kids start pushing it:

[via Can Enterprise 2.0 Afford to be Boring?]

The exciting people, by and large, are missing. One part of the reason is hard to fix. The exciting people — say the guy leading the consequential re-org, or managing the “bet the company” product launch, is probably far busier than everybody else. But I suspect there is another reason: to put it in terms of an American high school analogy, it is the same reason the “cool kids” avoid the “loser kids.” Enterprise 2.0 is mostly populated by the equivalent of band geeks. The equivalent of football players and cheerleaders are possibly avoiding it. Just possibly, they might be thinking “nobody who is anybody goes there; nothing that matters happens there.” And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Enterprise 2.0 stuff fails to deliver value, despite popularity and heavy activity, because the valuable stuff isn’t happening on it to begin with.

The world of business inherits its exciting elements from the market economy, the only truly Darwinian ecosystem (modulo bailouts) that modern information workers participate in. Those who participate in the risks, participate in the excitement. Those who want safety and security do their best to stay out of the line of fire.

It is critically important that Enterprise 2.0 tools get adopted by the risk takers and in-the-line-of-fire people actually driving the business. If we speculate that 20% of the employees are responsible for 80% of the results, we need that proportion reflected in online activity. The people who don’t pull their punches. The ones who dare to call a spade a spade. The ones who know how to tell the truth without unnecessary collateral damage. Without them, the revolution that Enterprise 2.0 thinking is capable of triggering will not happen.

Nate Nash disagrees:

[via ]

First off, the claim that Enterprise 2.0 is inhabited by the equivalent of band geeks and high-school losers sounds like a text message you wish you could take back after a SharePoint bender. My dear friend, we are not losers. We are the organizationally elite. We are a minority because of the majority interest’s penchant for feeding tube IT and collaboration that is…well…easy. Keep thinking I sit alone at lunch because nothing that matters happens here. I am sorry, but in the rat race to be a better, faster, more informed knowledge worker (can I still say that?), the cool kid good looks, easy going nature, and belief that all problems can be fixed by relationship X or quid pro quo Y is a surefire sentence to a lifetime of inconsequentiality.

[...]

Yeah sure…there are some geeks using the technologies. And yeah sure…the guy who is a jerk in real life will probably be a jerk on the wiki. But in both of cases, having these events occur in the clear will go a long way toward said “loser culture” breaking down the crippling organizational and technological silos – put there by the football players and cheerleaders – evidently as a representation of their “winner culture.”

I think both of these guys are off.

Venkatesh, it's totally possible to be cool and into Web 2.0 tools, and even, perhaps, how that might change business -- in the large or the small -- for better. But the folks generally in charge of enterprise 2.0 efforts, Nate, are likely to not be the most wild-eyed fanatics.

Honing The Balance: Brad On Accessibility

[via A VC, Saying No In Less Than 60 Seconds] [...] my goal: to minimize the amount of time I spend on things I don’t care about which allows me to maximize the amount of time I spend on things I care about, while still being very accessible.

Community Currency Magazine June 2009

Community Currency Magazine June 2009, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.

Found a link to a publication dedicated to local currencies, called Community Currency magazine (see here). The magazine is published by Mark Herpel, who was formerly the editor of Digital Money World at b5 media. Mark may be motivated somewhat by the fringe-y 'back to the gold standard' end of the world types, but the June issue focuses on local currencies of various kinds, as well as a piece on energy-based money.

Greater Washington Exchange, originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd.