tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33155383256812525512024-02-20T09:12:32.622+00:00MementoVirtual keepsakes worth rememberingAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-31723075859708050452014-04-15T21:22:00.000+01:002014-04-15T21:22:27.936+01:00Fear and JoySport is fear and sport is joy.<br /><br />The joy of victory, of vanquishing opponents not by shutting them out, but overwhelming them in a fury of thrilling improvisation.<br />The joy of belief, like a sudden shaft of spring sunlight, instantly warming the heart, pushing aside the memories of countless dismal winters, decades of grumbling hopelessness and wishful thinking.<br />The joy of belonging, the simple pleasure of sharing a glance with fellow fans, like we’re all in on some gigantic exciting secret.<br /><br />But it’s a joy haunted by fear.<br /><br />A fear that at any moment, we might wake up.<br />A fear that we might find the dream that had brought us such joy, such hope, dissipating from our minds like a morning mist.<br />A fear that months later, years later, we'll cast our minds back, and struggle to remember that glorious sensation, that golden age when we believed anything was possible.<br />
<br />
Liverpool versus Manchester City was a tale of fear and joy. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://scontent-a-sin.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t31.0-8/1980487_695077160539057_3052050431651797828_o.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img alt="" border="0" height="448" src="https://scontent-a-sin.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t31.0-8/1980487_695077160539057_3052050431651797828_o.jpg" title="A teenage dream's so hard to beat" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />For the first half hour, joy prevailed. <br />We were fearless. Flowing.<br />Playing like carefree kids in the park.<br />A teenager has the coolest head of all, slotting home, in front of the Kop.<br />More pressure, roars and gasps, until a bullet header prompts delirium.<br />How we jumped and bounced and yelled with joy.<br /><br />Buzzing, we look down from our heady clouds. <br />And wonder at how high we really are.<br />And realise what a long way that would be to fall. <br /><br />Blue waves begin to threaten, we sense the gusts of a gathering storm.<br />The buzz of joy becomes a tingle of fear. <br />How similar they feel, a pulsating throb in our throats. <br />Close shaves endured, but we stand firm. Just about.<br /><br />At last, half time. <br />We blow out our cheeks, and wipe our palms dry. <br />We nudge those beside us, smile and dare to dream.<br /><br />When we return to the field, we know it’s out there. <br />Somewhere. Waiting, lurking.<br />We hoped our joy would protect us, insulate us.<br />But fear was stalking us, ready to shock us with its sudden pounce.<br /><br />Their first goal triggered a cascade of uncertainty and doubt. <br />Fear does funny things to the limbs, it dizzies the mind.<br />Once we played like warriors, now we flounder like drunken clowns.<br />Five minutes of increasing anxiety culminates aptly.<br />We contrive to scramble the ball into our own net.<br /><br />Now we look down, and realise what a long, long way it is to fall. <br />How painful it will be to hit the ground.<br />When there’s no margin for error, it’s never just a football match.<br />It becomes a trial of character. <br />Every mistake could be the one that brings everyone crashing down. <br />The moment that destroys the dream.<br /><br />Now it’s not about pressing and diamonds, or holding midfielders. <br />Or tactical reshuffles and runs between the lines. <br />It’s about overcoming the fear, the instinct to run and hide. <br />The basic primal instinct to stay safe.<br /><br />How do you fight the desire to flee?<br />Does a dressing room mantra spring to mind?<br />Or a psychiatrist’s <a href="http://www.chimpparadox.co.uk/" target="_blank">counsel</a> in a Teesside lilt.<br />That fear can never be dismissed, only mastered.<br /><br />What if you discovered a magic ring?<br />What if when you slipped it on your finger, your every fear vanished.<br />Suddenly, where once were problems, now there are only possibilities.<br />You stop hesitating, and start being who you want to be.<br />Wouldn’t that be the most powerful artefact in the entire world?<br />Just imagine what you could achieve.<br />You could do anything.<br /><br />A moment of bravery.<br />
Then everything changed.<br />A young full-back leaping in to win a header, when he could have stood off.<br />A Brazilian fighting for the loose ball, earning it with his determination.<br />A kid from Wembley driving forward, spreading jitters among the men in blue.<br /><br />Because the funny thing is, fear doesn’t take sides. <br />Fear stalks all equally. <br />Perhaps its insidious influence scuffed the ball to the edge of the box.<br />The Brazilian wasn’t afraid that he’d miss. <br />Courage enough not to demand another touch.<br />He trusted himself, and hit it instinctively.<br />And we lost ourselves in a glorious moment of redemptive bliss.<br /><br />The game resumes, the ground in ferment. <br />Our collective rush of joy corroded again by our nagging fear.<br />This is the time for brave hearts and resolute minds. <br />Headers are won, desperate blocks are made. <br />One too recklessly, and we’re a man down. <br />Fear will do that.<br /><br />At last, the whistle triggers an explosion of repressed emotion. <br /><br />This does not fucking slip now! <br />This does NOT fucking slip. <br />Listen, listen! <br />This is gone. <br />We go to Norwich. <br />Exactly the same.<br />We go again.<br />Come on!<br /><br />The leader exhorts: be brave once more lads.<br />Because the next game isn’t really against the men of Norwich City.<br />It’s against the doubts and anxieties in their own hearts.<br />Fear will be lurking at Carrow Road, waiting.<br />Each must face the anxiety of wanting it too much.<br />And the perilous complacency of not wanting it enough.<br />Disquiet mounting with every misplaced pass and wayward shot.<br />And suddenly we’re chasing a game we absolutely need to win.<br /><br />We’re so high up now.<br />So close.<br />Such a way to fall.<br />How would we ever recover.<br /><br />Were you ever this anxious playing footy in the park?<br />Can you remember those gloriously long summer days? <br />When we just ran, and laughed and played.<br />Just for the joy of it.<br />There might be a lesson there somewhere.<br />I do hope in growing up, I haven’t forgotten it.<br />Because just imagine the awesome possibilities<br />Of a life without fear.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-54460650724504243022013-06-22T11:43:00.000+01:002013-06-22T11:43:03.314+01:00You only die twice<b>“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a
second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last
time.” </b><br />
<b>-- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy" target="_blank">Banksy</a></b><br />
<br />
Alas. Iain Banks has <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/09/iain-banks-dies-59-cancer" target="_blank">passed away</a>. <br />
<br />
Since
I started reading make-believe, I've invited many authors to paint
pictures in my imagination. Tolkien inscribed medieval fantasies of
heroes and monsters, dingy caves and gleaming swords. I've walked
with Dickens around his London streets, amid a hubbub of
hawkers, chancers and strivers, the poor and the privileged. I've walked the same
streets with Conan Doyle, weaving chasing horse-drawn cabs through smog
and smoke, in pursuit of baffling mysteries. And I've visited places I
hope never to walk, through Orwell's nightmarish fairytales.<br />
<br />
But, for me, Iain Banks was different; I'd once felt the warmth of his
handshake, I'd heard his voice, I'd looked into his eyes. We had shared
the same time and space - and it's funny how few authors you can say
that about, these strangers who you invite into your mind, with their
Trojan horses of words. The man himself was funny, witty, infectiously
enthusiastic and endearingly humble; he described himself as a
professional scribbler, he addressed his audience as 'chums'. And he could conjure worlds that staggered the imagination. He quickly became my favourite author. <br />
<br />
Orwell's lasting gift to humanity was his warning of how technology
can enslave us. Not a manifesto, but a vision, a nightmare that
could be painted into any receptive imagination. A story with characters
and emotions, morals and motivations, hopes and dreams. We seem to
understand ideas better that way.<br />
<br />
How apt that at this very moment,
shadowy systems are sifting through the digital residue of our lives,
like Philip K Dick's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minority_Report" target="_blank">precogs</a>, trying to pre-emptively identify threats
to our society. Its advocates tell us: "If you've nothing to hide,
you've nothing to fear". But when communications are stripped of their
context and people become just another node in a graph, all you can see
is guilt by association. Suspicion exceeds threshold. Computer says Yes.<br />
<br />
Literature, particularly science-fiction, warns us of eventualities
that have not yet come to pass, like a postcard from a possible future,
detailing the dystopias into which we might sleepwalk. But sci-fi can also inspire.<br />
<br />
Banks wrote 11 books featuring The Culture, a <a href="http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm" target="_blank">post-scarcity civilization</a>. As its name suggests, this was a
decentralised anarchy, its trillions of diverse citizens united by their shared values, language and ideals rather than leaders and government. It
was a symbiotic society of God-like machine intelligences ('minds') and
humanoids. Individual minds kept things running at a galactic scale, and
the humanoid citizens kept things real. At first, the
relationship between the two might seem like that between Masters and their Pets, but you should make
your own mind up.<br />
<br />
The Culture is
the finest <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2013/apr/03/iainbanks-culture" target="_blank">utopia</a> in literature. Its creator was an idealist who believed that
technology need not result in a dark, sinister dictatorship. Technology could also liberate, allowing the emergence of a rationalist anarchy, one without religion, politics and empire-building. The
Culture was an inherently compassionate, libertarian society,
governed by good manners and individual consciences. To read his
descriptions of what humanity could become made the mind soar and the
heart ache, like Caliban crying out to dream some more.<br />
<br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">In his tribute </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/09/neil-gaiman-iain-banks" target="_blank">Neil Gaiman</a> said:
"If you've never read any of his books, read one of his books. Then read
another. Even the bad ones were good, and the good ones were
astonishing.</span>" I agree completely, and so my own tribute to the man is to encourage you to read some of his words.<br />
<br />
Iain Banks was best-known for two books in particular. One is his macabre début novel <b>The
Wasp Factory</b>, ("What's The Wasp Factory about?" its author was once asked, replying:
"Oh, it's about 180 pages"). Also justifiably famous is the brilliant family-with-secrets tale <b>The
Crow Road</b> ("We
continue in our children, and in our works, and in the memories of
others; we continue in our dust and ash"), which was adapted for TV by the BBC. But he also wrote 27 others, and of those, here are 5 you might like to get you started... <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Consider Phlebas</h3>
<br />
<i>"Vavatch lay in space like a god's bracelet.
The fourteen-million kilometre hoop glittered and sparkled, blue and
gold against the jet black gulf of space beyond." </i><br />
<br />
If
you've never read any of Iain Banks' science fiction, start with this,
his first book. Against the backdrop of a galactic war and destruction
on an epic scale,
we learn of a symbiotic human-machine society ('The Culture') from
the viewpoint of Horza, the story's protagonist. To Horza, the Culture
is an arrogant robot cabal with a God-complex, intent on galactic
imperialism, and he absolutely hates it. But what difference can a mere
mortal make in a war between the Gods? This is the story Homer would
have written if he'd envisaged kilometre-long spaceships. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iuxV6dRHntU/UXxMWVzkGOI/AAAAAAAADUM/gAFZj_UpEdk/s1000-fcrop64=1,5113512bffadffff/WS_ConsiderPhlebas_1080.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="180" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iuxV6dRHntU/UXxMWVzkGOI/AAAAAAAADUM/gAFZj_UpEdk/s1000-fcrop64=1,5113512bffadffff/WS_ConsiderPhlebas_1080.jpg" title="2nd edition book cover art by Mark Salwowski (salwowski.com)" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Starship and Ringworld</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I
once went to a book reading where Banks was asked what Consider Phlebas
was all about. With characteristic modesty he said: "It's about a
sailor gets shipwrecked, falls in with a bunch of pirates, and joins a
quest to steal a fantastic treasure from a haunted island guarded by a
monster."<br />
<br />
All of which explains the book's curious title, a reference to the
shipwrecked sailor in T.S Eliot's poem <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land" target="_blank">The Wasteland</a>. <br />
<br />
This
book is the epitome of Brian Aldiss's notion of "Widescreen Baroque", a
shockingly thrilling movie in your head with an infinite budget, awesome
sets and imagination-stretching special effects. The ultimate
unfilmable blockbuster for the cinema between your ears. Glorious.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>Use of Weapons</b></h3>
<br />
<i>"The bomb lives only as it is falling."</i> <br />
<br />
The
2nd Culture novel, <b>The Player of Games</b> is superb, but the 3rd is a
genuine must-read, a story as brilliantly inventive as its protagonist - a mercenary with a talent for improvising weapons who is directed by the Culture's intelligence division, (euphemistically named Special Circumstances). <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.alexholden.net/books/covers/Use_Of_Weapons_f.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="320" src="http://www.alexholden.net/books/covers/Use_Of_Weapons_f.jpeg" title="2nd edition book cover art by Mark Salwowski (salwowski.com)" width="201" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Battleship and Chair </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Last summer, I was lucky enough to see Iain Banks spend a couple of hours
talking about this book; as it happened, it was one of his last public
appearances. There was plenty to talk about, the story is like a double helix, alternate chapters proceed
forwards from the present and backwards into the past, ultimately
colliding in a shattering conclusion.<br />
<br />
During his talk Banks revealed this was the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/aug/03/use-weapons-iain-m-banks-guardian-bookclub" target="_blank">first</a> Culture book he wrote, and grew from the author's desire to create the ultimate Empire of Good Intentions.<br />
<br />
But those who claim the moral high-ground can find the temptation to meddle irresistible. It is a parable for our times, written decades ago; but like all great stories, it now seems eerily prescient. This classic deserves to be better known. Just brilliant. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Walking on Glass</h3>
<br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><i>"The Wars were not, of course, between Good and Evil at all, as
non-combatants of every species always assumed, but between Banality and
Interest."</i></span><br />
<br />
The backcover synopsis doesn't begin to do justice to this
outstanding book. Some guy is in love, there's another guy who's rather
paranoid, and a third guy who's trapped in a castle. So what?<br />
<br />
But trust me, from these seemingly unremarkable scenarios a brilliantly imaginative story emerges. You'll start by laughing at
crazy world of the paranoid Grout, a delusional London misfit convinced
he's an exiled soldier in a far-flung conflict. Then
we're introduced to Quiss, and we suddenly leave the familiar
surroundings of '80s London to encounter a surreal metaphysical conflict. Now Grout doesn't seem as
crazy. A masterly piece of storytelling.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://behance.vo.llnwd.net/profiles13/901069/projects/5579977/6a57efb75919a90fc4b6749684e57cc1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="http://behance.vo.llnwd.net/profiles13/901069/projects/5579977/6a57efb75919a90fc4b6749684e57cc1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Game Room by <a href="http://www.behance.net/gallery/Walking-on-glass-Ian-Banks-Design-proposal-%282011%29/5579977" target="_blank">Isona Rigau Heras</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But
the highlight of the book is the surreal neo-gothic castle made of
slate, glass and books that Quiss inhabits. It's as if Mervyn Peake had written
Gormenghast after watching the film Being John Malkovich.<br />
<br />
This is tale in the spirit of Jorge Luis Borges, the familiar clashing with the fantastic. And despite not being a sci-fi book it still induces vertigo in the imagination, like only the best fantasies can do. Walking on Glass is one of my favourite books. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Against a Dark Background</h3>
<br />
<i>“People were always sorry. Sorry they had done what they had done, sorry
they were doing what they were doing, sorry they were going to do what
they were going to do; but they still did whatever it is. The sorrow
never stopped them; it just made them feel better. And so the sorrow
never stopped.”
</i><br />
<br />
<a href="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174599757l/422452.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1174599757l/422452.jpg" width="203" /></a>Banks wrote three sci-fi novels that didn't feature The Culture, the other two: <b>Feersum Endjinn</b> and <b>The Algebraist</b> definitely deserve to be read, but as this list is an introduction to Banks' canon, I'm going to recommend this, a back-to-basics sci-fi novel.<br />
<br />
What sets this book apart is there is no interstellar travel, no God-like artificial intelligences, and no aliens. In their place are assassins, apocalyptic weapons, crazy gadgets and almost cartoonish ultra-violence.<br />
<br />
This is a
solar-system-wide treasure hunt through some brilliantly imagined
locations. It is also terrific fun; it will make you wonder how Holywood studios can routinely spend several hundred million dollars making sci-fi movies so dull, and why they never seem to make anything anywhere near as inventive as this.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
The Bridge</h3>
<br />
<i>"</i><span class="st"><i>There was another part of him which seemed like a hawk or an eagle; hungry and cruel and fanatically keen-eyed. Self-pity lasted a matter of seconds in the open; then the bird of prey fell on it, tearing it, ripping it. The bird was the real world, a mercenary dispatched by his embarrassed conscience, the angry voice of all the people in the world, that vast majority who were worse off than he was."</i><wbr></wbr></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.iain-banks.net/lib/TheBridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.iain-banks.net/lib/TheBridge.jpg" width="204" /></a></div>
A man wakes up on a bridge the size of a city. He has amnesia,
he doesn't know who he is, or where he is - and his doctor doesn't seem to be in any hurry to cure him. So he spends his days exploring his strange new surroundings, and his nights in bizarre, disturbing dreams. <br />
<br />
If you liked
the TV series <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars_%28TV_series%29" target="_blank">Life on Mars</a>, you'll love this, the original 'trapped in your head' fantasy. A
Kafkaesque tale of surreal happenings, fantastic adventures, love, loss, and
self-discovery. This is a fantasy with a distinctly Scottish flavour, with a hat-tip to Alasdair Gray's cult dystopian novel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanark_%28book%29" target="_blank">Lanark</a>; one character's dialogue is phonetically rendered in Scots dialect, years before Trainspotting. Banks considered it his finest work; it must be good.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A great author achieves an type of immortality few of us will ever
obtain. An author's words will outlast them, propagating through new
generations of readers. I hope you'll be one of them, that his stories
will entertain and inspire you. And I hope it will be a long,
long time indeed until the name of Iain Banks is spoken for the last
time.<br />
<br />
Or as his friend <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jun/10/iain-banks-ken-macleod-science-fiction" target="_blank">Ken MacLeod</a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline !important; float: none; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"> said, "He was one of our very best, a star whose light will travel a long way, and fall on places not yet built.</span>" <br />
<br />
I wish you many happy imaginings.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-20228729555201148002013-05-28T00:39:00.000+01:002013-05-28T00:39:33.912+01:00The Social Network Analysis of Football Matches<div class="course-forum-post-text">
<ul>
<li><b>"Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple." -- Bill Shankly </b></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="course-forum-post-text">
<ul>
<li><b>"Football is simple. But nothing is more difficult than playing simple football." -- Johan Cruyff</b></li>
</ul>
<br />
Did you know that several academics have used network analysis in an attempt to derive insights into the beautiful game?<br />
<br />
During the 2010 World Cup, FIFA analysts compiled data listing every pass exchanged between players, and put it online (unfortunately it seems to have disappeared since then). This data was used by researchers at Queen Mary University of London to create a <a href="http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~ht/footballgraphs/index.html" target="_blank">network theory explanation</a> of how each team played. There's also a media-friendly <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428399/pagerank-algorithm-reveals-soccer-teams-strategies/" target="_blank">summary</a> of their work, and a more detailed write-up in the following paper: <br />
<ul>
</ul>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<ul>
<li><i>J. Lopez Pena, H. Touchette, A network theory analysis of football strategies. Proc. Euromech Physics of Sports Conference, 2012. </i><a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.6904v1.pdf" target=""><i>http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.6904v1.pdf</i></a></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<ul>
</ul>
<br />
And the QMUL group aren’t the only researchers seeking to apply network analysis to football, there’s also the long-running <a href="http://arsfutbol.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">ARSFutbol</a>
research group at the university of Buenos Aires. Some of their work
looks very interesting, it's in Spanish, but Google Translate will help
you read it in your own language.<br />
<br />
I also found another paper analysing the 2010 World Cup from some Spanish researchers: <br />
<ul>
<li><i>FIFA World Cup 2010: A Network Analysis of the Champion Team Play. Carlos Cotta et al, Complex Systems in Sports Workshop 2011 </i><a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.0261v1.pdf" target=""><i>http://arxiv.org/pdf/1108.0261v1.pdf</i></a></li>
</ul>
<br />
As <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22299503" target="_blank">this BBC article</a> explains, most big clubs now have a team of data analysts, and companies like
Prozone produce detailed data on every aspect of what happens on the pitch. Unfortunately clubs pay a lot of money for Prozone data, so it's unlikely to be publicly available; so if you're hoping to do some bedroom-based analysis, you might be out of luck.<br />
<br />
Not all are convinced of the value of this type of analysis, mind you. Tottenham
manager Andre Villas-Boas said: “I have never used Prozone. I
don't use it because I don't believe in it". Whereas other managers, like Rafa
Benitez, are more keen on the <a href="http://www.memento.org/2012/05/lean-football.html" target="_blank">data-driven approach</a>.<br />
<br />
That network theory might be applied to football is not particularly surprising. After all, football is a passing game, and interactions between players are
fundamental to a successful team. Hence when we fans watch players
playing well, we frequently call them “influential”. And network theory has proven to be <a href="http://www.memento.org/2013/05/run-experiment.html" target="_blank">especially good</a> in determining who or what is influential amongst the millions of documents now online.<br />
<br />
By comparison with the Byzantine complexity of online content, analysing what happens on a football pitch seems child's play. The graph of a football match will only have 22 players (nodes), a handful more if you include substitutes.<br />
<br />
However, to paraphrase Cruyff: calculating the numbers is simple, but deriving useful insights from them - that's difficult. For instance, say you notice a lot of passes are going through your centre-forward (he has high betweenness in the network jargon), is that a good thing? Was that part of your team's plan? Or should you be yelling at your centre-forward to get into the bloody box and to start causing some fecking mayhem?<br />
<br />
Does network analysis have any value to our understanding of football? Will it one day be able to quantify what football professionals have come to understand
intuitively - demystifying it for the rest of us? Or perhaps the spirit of football will always defy analysis, generating as many opinions as there are fans watching it. After all, what model could ever hope to explain the <a href="http://www.memento.org/2010/05/remembering-istanbul.html" target="_blank">Miracle of Istanbul</a>...<br />
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-36829452032417621572013-05-03T00:03:00.000+01:002013-05-03T00:03:32.404+01:00Run the ExperimentA few years ago I built a system to create social networks by mining online conversations. The idea was that from these networks I could determine (amongst other things) who was talking about a particular topic, and the relative influence of each speaker.<br />
<br />
I've been interested in the science of social networks ever since, and so I've really enjoyed re-acquainting myself with the theory and practice of networks during <a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/sna" target="_blank">Lada Adamic's excellent Social Network Analysis</a> course. <br />
<br />
Then a few weeks back, <a href="http://www.quora.com/Google/How-did-Sergey-Brin-and-Larry-Page-realize-the-pagerank-algorithm-would-be-a-useful-indicator-of-good-search-results" target="_blank">a question</a> about the practical application of social networks appeared in my Quora feed: "How did Google's creators realise the PageRank algorithm would be a useful indicator of good search results?"<br />
<br />
It's a good question, because it goes back to the dawn of the information age, when pioneering thinkers had begun to contemplate how to make sense of the massive amount of knowledge that would inevitably become accessible. Vannevar Bush's<b> </b>classic article <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_We_May_Think" target="_blank">As We May Think</a> suggested using a citation index to find influential information. Then in the 50s, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Garfield" target="_blank">Eugene Garfield</a> developed the idea of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor" target="_blank">impact factors</a>, using citations to empirically calculate the influence of academic papers. <br />
<br />
But citation analysis is not trivial to calculate, especially if the documents in question don't even have an index, and are literally dispersed across the globe. So the first internet search engines simply counted keywords; it was the pragmatic thing to do.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XBT7k8FF1UPt5A8WoC5uHf7WuNoIw3o5Cxr_aROJIYz1HgjLOJzLc1HnWGg1yXLKKQQZBjakbnWBEiv6xJRbqkXAg6SCAJ6Fx41QSgx2pnRGg2aqk1SkGaxScals2x8qmk_GGkNSwuYB/s1600/P1000426.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1XBT7k8FF1UPt5A8WoC5uHf7WuNoIw3o5Cxr_aROJIYz1HgjLOJzLc1HnWGg1yXLKKQQZBjakbnWBEiv6xJRbqkXAg6SCAJ6Fx41QSgx2pnRGg2aqk1SkGaxScals2x8qmk_GGkNSwuYB/s640/P1000426.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><ul>
<li>One in 100 million: how <i>do</i> you find what you're looking for? (with metaphor by Ai Weiwei)</li>
</ul>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It turns out finding things is hard, especially when there's a lot to sift through. And so here begins the fascinating story of the PageRank algorithm - and Google - the company formed to exploit it,
which is nicely told in the first few chapters of John Battelle's book, <a href="http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_search_electronic_resource.html?id=4MY8PgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y" target="_blank">The Search</a>.<br />
<br />
It began with a brave, complicated, highly ambitious experiment: <br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">"In graduate school at Stanford University, I had about ten different ideas of things I wanted to do, and one of them was to look at the link structure of the web. My advisor, Terry Winograd, picked that one out and said, 'Well, that one seems like a really good idea.' So I give him credit for that." -- <a href="http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bestadvice.fortune/2.html" target="_blank">Larry Page</a></span><br />
<br />
So whilst the idea of citation analysis wasn't new, what was novel was the ambition of applying it to the whole worldwide web, which by 1996 was at least 10 million documents, and growing rapidly.<br />
<br />
In Battelle's book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Winograd" target="_blank">Terry Winograd</a> recollects that what he didn't say when recommending the topic to Larry Page was that he thought the task was impossible in practice. But knowing when to hold your peace, and trust your student to explore the topic without prejudice, is the hallmark of a great mentor.<br />
<br />
And Winograd was right not to dampen Page's enthusiasm, because once you start trying to implement citation analysis on a graph as gigantic as the web you're forced to confront all sorts of challenges.<br />
<br />
For instance: one non-trivial problem is the graph you're trying to analyse is enormous, far beyond what would fit into the memory of even the largest supercomputer. And Page and Brin were grad students without budgets at the time, they would have to make do with desktops they could beg and borrow.<br />
<br />
But necessity is the mother of invention, and the constraints of their available computing resources became the impetus behind their solution. They would split the graph into smaller individually computable fragments. They would distribute each fragment to one of their processors, analyse it, collect the results centrally, and integrate them into an index.<br />
<br />
As well as technical challenges, there were theoretical ones. For example, by nature citations form a directed graph, and because of the way websites are interlinked, it's easy for any analysis algorithm to get stuck in a closed loop. Page's solution was to introduce the concept of the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank" target="_blank">Random Surfer</a>', who'd visit a portion of a graph, explore it to build up a local picture of what's important, and then get bored after several clicks and switch to a random page in a completely new region of the network.<br />
<br />
This approach to computing citation analysis using a divide and conquer approach was novel, because no-one had ever had the means or the motivation to analyse such a massive network. The breakthrough was making the problem tractable, creating an infrastructure and algorithm that allowed the network to be explored and understood in small fragments. This allowed the seemingly overwhelming challenge of analysing the web to be divided up. Then Page and Brin built a search engine called BackRub to utilise the new PageRank index, and by doing so were able to prove it would scale: the more they processed, the better their results.<br />
<br />
Returning to the original question; when did they realize the PageRank algorithm would be a useful indicator of good search results?<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">"Page and Brin noticed that BackRub's results were superior to those from existing search engines like AltaVista and Excite, which often returned irrelevant listings. 'They were looking only at text and not considering this other signal' Page recalls. That signal is now better known as PageRank. To test whether it worked well in a search application, Brin and Page hacked together a BackRub search tool. It searched only the words in page titles and applied PageRank to sort the results by relevance, but its results were so far superior to the usual search engines - which ranked mostly on keywords - that Page and Brin knew they were onto something big." <span style="font-size: small;"></span>-- <a href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/battelle.html" target="_blank">John Battelle</a></span><br />
<br />
In other words, like all good scientists, Page and Brin knew PageRank would be great after they ran the experiment, saw the results, and saw how exceptional they were.<br />
<br />
So as well as a fascinating story, there's a marvellous moral in the genesis of Google.<br />
It's not enough to have a great idea.<br />
You need to build it.<br />
You need to prove it.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-43765960334969318002012-09-12T20:12:00.001+01:002012-09-12T20:12:25.744+01:00A crowd of precious individuals<a href="http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/img/flowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/img/flowers.jpg" height="331" width="640" /></a>Twenty-three and a half years ago.<br />
My goodness. I was just a naive teenager.<br />
Dad was listening to the game on the radio. He called upstairs, to tell me "something's happened".<br />
I shooed him away. I wanted to watch the game on Match of the Day later that night without knowing the score.<br />How antiquated that time seems now, a bygone age.<br />
Soon after, he told me the game had been abandoned.<br />
Hours later, on the evening news, I learnt that over 50 fans had died.<br />
<br />
I remember the bewilderment. 50 dead? What? How?<br />
It was only a football match.<br />
By Monday over 90 were listed dead, and through the shock the slander started.<br />
Bloody hooligans! No tickets! They rushed the gates! Drunken scum!<br />
I remembered Heysel; and to my eternal regret, my sorrow was poisoned with shame.<br />
Months later, watching a television documentary, I learned what really happened.<br />
How 95 people could die at a football match. <span class="il">Horribly</span>, as it turns out.<br />
And I wept.<br />
<br />
The more I learnt, the more I raged at the inhumanity of the police.<br />
How they saw us as a problem to be managed, not citizens to safeguard.<br />
How they saw football fans, their fellow countrymen, as a chaotic mob.<br />
As a rabble to be caged, rather than thousands of fragile, precious individuals.<br />
<br />Individually, we are so small. We trust the law will give us justice.<br />
But our system of justice was rotten.<br />
Granting impunity to the incompetent, whilst treating the victims with contempt.<br />
A slander, an injustice, that has persisted for 23 years.<br />
<br />
Today - at last - an <a href="http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/report/Section-1/summary/" target="_blank">independent commission published</a> its long awaited report, finally nailing the wretched lies and revealing the truth.<br />
<br />
The commission reported that in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the South Yorkshire police and emergency services made 'strenuous attempts' to deflect blame for the crush onto the victims. That the police took blood from every victim, including children, testing for the presence of alcohol in an attempt to 'impugn their reputations'. That 116 of 164 police statements were 'amended to remove or alter
comments unfavourable to South Yorkshire police'. When the prime
minister announced this in parliament, the chamber collectively gasped.<br />
<br />
Put simply, not only have hundreds of families suffered the loss of a loved one, but they've been victims of an institutionalised cover-up. Remember those who died were not part of a reckless mob, they were ordinary folk just like you and me. And they walked unwittingly to their deaths. Yet those in authority decided their own reputations were worth far more than the truth, a truth that might help bring some closure to the grieving, a truth that one day, might save your life.<br />
<br />
The truth matters because the truth keeps us safe.<br />
<br />
Before Hillsborough, I'd experienced standing in heaving crowds, in shitty football grounds, being lifted and carried by ominous waves of surging people. Looking back, those memories make me shiver.<br />
<br />
Crush disasters don't happen because of drunken crowds, or ticket-less fans trying to sneak in for free. They happen because crowds are poorly managed, when those in authority forget their fundamental duty of care, and start treating individuals like ball bearings, to be pushed down pipes. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/hillsborough-documents-released-brian-reade-1318730" target="_blank">Brian Reade memorably wrote</a> of the 96: "Never forget that for English football's bright tomorrow, they gave their todays".<br />
<br />
Never forget their sacrifice; the lessons bought with their blood keep you safe when you join a throng of thousands on the way to match or a concert, or stand in a crowd 10-deep on a packed subterranean tube platform.<br />
<br />
From today, the truth can be told: that on April 15th, 1989, a crowd of precious individuals gathered to watch a football match, that their custodians failed them utterly, and then besmirched and blamed them, and perpetuated a disgraceful lie that has lasted for 23 years.<br />
<br />
And understanding why is more than putting the record straight, it's about the kind of society we want to live in, one where the powerful protect the weak, and there's truth and justice for all.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-62345120807690448292012-05-14T19:49:00.000+01:002012-05-16T22:17:24.550+01:00Lean FootballWhat's the connection between a football club and a lean startup?<br />
<br />
Rafa Benitez recently talked about being a <a href="http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story/_/id/1041950/richard-jolly:-the-forward-thinking-rafa-benitez?cc=5739">data-driven football manager</a>, which I found very interesting, because what Rafa was describing sounded a lot like the <a href="http://theleanstartup.com/principles">Build - Measure - Learn</a> loop employed by lean startups. <br />
<br />
In the business world, this process is popular with startups because they're attempting to make decisions in environments of considerable uncertainty. They don't know how good their product is, or even if anyone will buy it. So they need to test their assumptions, and they need to incorporate what they learn into the next version of their product.<br />
<br />
The lean startup idea is about getting away from the 'Great Man' theory of leadership - that good decisions are informed, not opinionated, and driven by data rather than ego. This is scientific decision-making: you run experiments, you test your hypothesises, because nature can not be fooled. Remember, lean is not a synonym for quick and cheap, lean is a synonym for quick and experimentally proved.<br />
<br />
Sport is a very different kind of experiment, a test where you
get the examination first, and the lessons afterwards - as the baseball
pitcher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vern_Law">Vernon Law</a> put it. <br />
<br />
Though just like in the business world, in the football world is dominated by 'Great Men' - patriarchs with decades of success behind them - who reign autocratically over the biggest clubs. The natural order of things seems to be Great Men rule Great Clubs with Great Transfer Budgets funded by Great Plutocrats (or Great Debt). Which made me wonder whether the Reign of the Great Men was inevitable and eternal, or whether the football world might ever witness the the kind of disruption the technology world has seen.<br />
<br />
So I began to think about where lean principles have been applied to football. Looking back, was Rafa attempting to implement a lean approach when he was in charge of Liverpool? At the time, I remember Rafa being mocked for his insistence on "facts" and "qualitee" - and derided as being a cold, passionless strategist. Then again, we'd expect an approach based on objectivity to be much better at answering "how do I get the best out of each of my players?" than answering "how do I win matches in the most eye-pleasingly way possible?"<br />
<br />
One form of evidence-based decision-making that has definitely been applied to sport is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics">sabermetrics,</a> currently in vogue having been popularised by the book and film <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball">Moneyball</a>. Originally conceived in baseball, it seeks to find under-valued players by using stats to quantify talent. Whilst this can work well in baseball, which is effectively a series of one-on-one set pieces, it is more challenging in football, which is a much more dynamic team game.<br />
<br />
In baseball, batting is easy to score, the striker either hits it or doesn’t. In football, a striker might score lots of goals, but understanding why is more complicated. Perhaps they play with several creative players, perhaps their style of play exploits weaker defenders, perhaps the manager has made playing football fun, or he's tailored the team's approach to suit their star man.<br />
<br />
This makes it difficult to identify a talented, but under-valued, footballer through stats alone - because much of what makes a player exceptional isn’t actually evident in stats. This is why scouts repeatedly go to watch players in person, and why understanding a player’s personality is so important. A great team can make an average player look exceptional. Scouts attempt to assess a player’s natural talent.<br />
<br />
The problem is that the evidence used in moneyball decision-making has been collected from the player's past. A player that has proved his worth in one team will not necessarily transfer that success to his new team. The lean strategy would be to identify lots of cheap prospects, put them into your team, and test them. If they work, great! - if not, that's a shame, we move on.<br />
<br />
The sorry tale of Andy Carroll and Stewart Downing provides a chastening lesson on basing your decisions on stats. In January 2011, Liverpool's then director of football, Damien Comolli, was tasked with quickly identifying a successor to the outgoing Fernando Torres. His eyes settled on Andy Carroll, a tall, strong Englishman then in great form for a resurgent Newcastle. <br />
<br />
After an inauspicious start to his Liverpool career, it was clear Carroll wasn't getting the service that allowed him to thrive at Newcastle. So what about that Downing fella - he's a winger, and he's created more chances than any other player in the Premiership last season. Sign him, he creates chances, Carroll scores the goals, we win games. Too easy!<br />
<br />
Now if your prospect is rated at £20 million pounds, and the stats say he’s one of the best in the country, the logic of moneyball is to say: no, don't do it - he’s too expensive. Forget the English Premium, we’ll look for someone similar here or abroad, after all there’s a lot of people playing football worldwide - as Arsene Wegner continues to demonstrate masterfully.<br />
<br />
A £20m purchase also goes against the principles of the lean strategy, because you can’t afford the experiment to fail. As it happened, during the 2011-12 season, the experiment did fail: Carroll and Downing performed poorly, and there was no plan B. With our football having no direction, our Director of Football departed.<br />
<br />
Yet one team that did use the moneyball approach shrewdly was Newcastle United, who quietly bought talented - but unheralded - players from the European leagues. Without a benevolent plutocrat to back them, Newcastle are forced to operate like any normal business, buy cheaply, add value, enjoy its advantages, and use profits on sales to fund growth.<br />
<br />
In the coming years, as UEFA introduces its long-overdue <a href="http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/manchester-citys-incredible-deal-know.html">Financial Fair Play</a> regulations I hope the long-forgotten art of running a football club like a business will be revived. Just as in any business, once dominant giants are inevitably overtaken by upstarts. Historic clubs like Liverpool, Everton and Arsenal must now strive to compete against the expensively renovated plutocrat project clubs like Man City and Chelsea - and not forgetting Man Utd, who've dominated the last two decades through their commercial savvy and an exceptional ability to nurture talent.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3rQMm6wllwsyBxrZLhWBubIzBKUMDh45HTrS06m5B66QcjReorRZyWvG2gNjk8_BY_N5ogHOg0qqX_hCH8E5ALrhIBHsVD6WAHrJQFDGympe8R33lP4N3NH7mBqoRGV6QoUrYGnAiYNwF/s1600/Liverpool-Warrior-Sports-Shirt-2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3rQMm6wllwsyBxrZLhWBubIzBKUMDh45HTrS06m5B66QcjReorRZyWvG2gNjk8_BY_N5ogHOg0qqX_hCH8E5ALrhIBHsVD6WAHrJQFDGympe8R33lP4N3NH7mBqoRGV6QoUrYGnAiYNwF/s320/Liverpool-Warrior-Sports-Shirt-2013.jpg" width="238" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">New kit; means business</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As we Liverpool fans look back on a season of considerable disappointment, with the league won by one billionaire-backed club, and the Champions League final being contested by another, what next?<br />
<br />
When we sing "They say are days are numbered, we're not famous anymore" we celebrate that we went from being a laughing stock to the best team in Europe in the space of a few years. Like 1999 and 2004, we must rebuild again, and we are missing more than just a piece from the jigsaw.<br />
<br />
It was very sad to see King Kenny go, but in attributing our dismal last league campaign to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/9268508/Kenny-Dalglish-clinging-to-Liverpool-managers-job-after-meeting-with-clubs-owners-fails-to-lift-doubts-over-future.html">bad luck</a> he revealed he didn't properly understand what was going wrong, or how to put it right. Read through this <a href="http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php?topic=291464.0">excellent discussion</a> of our lack of on-field intelligence, for example, and then tell me if you still believe in the power of bad luck.<br />
<br />
Clive Woodward's "Thanks, you just cost us the World Cup" approach sounds
harsh, but it needs to be said. Just as in business, mistakes need to be called, in order to be understood. Players need to understand why they're making mistakes
before they can hope to correct them. Zen temple. Battlefield. Football field. The path to mastery is the same. <br />
<br />
King Kenny had natural talent and intelligence in abundance, together they made him our greatest ever player. But he was unable to teach his football intelligence to others, perhaps he expected his men to intuitively understand the game, like he did. Whereas Rafa Benitez believed in data, he would scour videos for hours, so he could <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/feb/16/fernando-torres-liverpool">tell Torres</a> where he should be in the box. <br />
<br />
Like a man in charge of an ailing family business, Kenny managed by instinct, by sentiment. I believe we need a different kind of manager, a data-driven manager, who believes in making his own luck. Someone with fresh ideas, who can coach our players into better individuals, and collectively fashion them into a superior team. A startup manager.<br />
<br />
<b>Liverpool must become an upstart club again. </b><br />
One that's young, agile, innovative and fearless.<br />
<br />
For Liverpool fans, 2005 to 2009 now seems like a <a href="http://www.memento.org/2010/05/remembering-istanbul.html">glorious</a> age of over-achievement.<br />
Like many startups, Rafa's Liverpool FC enjoyed a meteoric rise and sudden fall. <br />
<br />
But as Beckett said:<br />
"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."<br />
<br />
Vive le sport.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-28284044718563751442012-02-22T16:30:00.000+00:002012-06-03T12:08:26.117+01:00How to give a meaningful gift<span id="internal-source-marker_0.39954916586644096" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Giving someone a meaningful gift is difficult.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We want the gift to say what we feel: </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“I love you!”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “Your life is so adventurous!”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “You’re gorgeous!”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “I treasure your friendship!”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> “You’re unique!”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But our gift can not talk.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So we buy something expensive and hope it conveys the right messages. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Or, we just convert our love into money, and send a gift voucher.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Why </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">is</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> giving a meaningful gift so difficult?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How did we end up expressing our love through money?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Why do we try to send messages through objects rather than expressing how we feel?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Are our words really that worthless?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After all, what could be nicer than accidentally overhearing someone say something lovely about you?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Everyone wants to be </span><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-robbins/appreciation-the-most-mea_b_800338.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">appreciated</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,
and secretly, we covet praise. It makes us feel good. It reinforces our
social bonds, it makes us feel accepted, part of the tribe. Without it,
we feel ostracised, rejected, and lonely.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We've even invented a medium to convey our appreciation - the greetings
card. So why is a humble handwritten card not the most treasured gift
one can receive? We do we spend so </span><a href="http://zenhabits.net/bah/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">lavishly</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> on products to demonstrate our affection? </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Alas,
senders of greetings cards rarely open their hearts to express how they
really feel. Instead they quickly scribble what they believe they’re
expected to write; like a safe message wishing the recipient a lovely
birthday, that they’re thinking about them, and they love them lots.
What goes unsaid is why they love them, what makes them so unique, and
why they absolutely treasure the time they share together.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tell
those close to you how you feel, before it's too late! Friends can
drift apart, family members can move far away, and sudden tragedies can
silence any one of us. What record will there be of the journey you
shared? Do not save your feelings for a </span><a href="http://articles.herald-mail.com/2010-05-22/news/25201229_1_death-share-life-story-death-notices"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">memorial</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. Tell them now.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And what power words have.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A
couple of years ago, a friend was feeling down, so we contacted her
friends and asked them: what is it about her you love so much? And they
told us: scores of beautiful messages, heartfelt words, and quirky
in-jokes. It gave us goosebumps. We married each comment to an image,
and made them into a hardback book. When we gave her the book, she read
it, then she smiled, and then she cried. She hadn’t realised how much
she was loved. Few of us do.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Her
friends loved it too, we’d provided an opportunity to truly tell her
how much she meant to them. It was as if we’d given them all permission
to say something heartfelt. Our creation had brought joy to our small
world of friends, and it felt awesome. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Producing this first book was
tremendously time-consuming, unexpectedly hard work, but as Paul
Graham says, at the heart of every good venture is a </span><a href="http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">schlep</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> - a tedious task you believe you can do better. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, we sat on the idea for a year, thinking someone should do something. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The realisation dawned slowly; gift giving was broken, and we had an opportunity to fix it. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We imagined a social gift, where feelgood messages of appreciation didn’t just accompany the gift, they were the gift.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And so we created </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/hqviQHKl0is&hd=1" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">gleambook</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
idea was to bring friends together to create unique, heartfelt gifts.
Now all you need to do is say something nice, and invite your friends to
do the same, and we take care of the hard work. From the collected
comments we design and produce a truly unique work of art, a physical
artifact, a book full of pages that look like this:</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvtMV82xP2HqXcuXOgURX7adjtNPPdOPls4aITvhUd5gkD-SdXe5QrCce5lsOJtFVmBC9OHkIeyXKSE__Q8ARFUYjGErkL8A5zNXHFVuaPKEX3DCjyeEcE21hjLhLwSEkQkznJf4BzqX_S/s1600/gleambook_Ilovemummy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvtMV82xP2HqXcuXOgURX7adjtNPPdOPls4aITvhUd5gkD-SdXe5QrCce5lsOJtFVmBC9OHkIeyXKSE__Q8ARFUYjGErkL8A5zNXHFVuaPKEX3DCjyeEcE21hjLhLwSEkQkznJf4BzqX_S/s640/gleambook_Ilovemummy.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> And you get to see your loved one gleam.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How much better it is, to give the gift of feeling good.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Come and say hello at </span><a href="http://gleambook.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">gleambook</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We’d love to hear from you.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-3529178194638352612012-01-29T20:41:00.000+00:002012-01-29T20:41:03.653+00:00The Lean Startup Montage<span id="internal-source-marker_0.3220667804463142" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The best way to have a good idea, is to have lots of ideas” -- Linus Pauling </span></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But how do you prove an idea?</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Last week, I went to listen to </span><a href="http://startuplessonslearned.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Eric Ries</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> talk about </span><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/marklittlewood/bln-ceo-tales-eric-ries-the-lean-startup"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">lean startups</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> to a packed Mermaid Theatre, (a great event, thanks </span><a href="http://thebln.com/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">BLN</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">).
He began by asking the audience if anyone had ever seen a movie about a
startup; all hands up, for sure, we’d all seen “The Social Network”.
But - says Eric - don’t forget that other truly great startup movie:
Ghostbusters. Then he asked: what do both films have in common?</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Both
films have the same structure: introduce the characters, show the
struggles of the nascent business as they count down to their last
dollar, before finally hitting the big time and connecting up/saving the
world. And somewhere in between comes the bit where the company
actually gets built, but that’s not as interesting, so it gets condensed
into a </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf-GMMOasRg"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">montage</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> with a catchy </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yczul_609Gg"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">soundtrack</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Of
course, in a startup, the building bit is the difficult bit, and
product design meetings make poor cinema. But products shouldn’t take so
long to build that they have to be squeezed into a montage. In a
nutshell, the lean startup approach urges entrepreneurs to get a minimum
viable product out as quickly as possible, rather than worrying about
perfecting it. Then once in customers’ hands, the product can be
scientifically tested and tweaked to fit the market’s demands.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Steve Blank </span><a href="http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">defines</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> a startup as: “a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model”. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In other words, startups attempt to monetise opportunities, rather than exploit certainties.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It
is this extreme uncertainty that makes the scientific method of
forming hypotheses, collecting data and testing your assumptions so useful
to early stage startups. If you’re being innovative, or seeking to win a new market
niche, there’s no blueprint, no-one to imitate, and no guarantees anyone even wants
your product. You’ve got to run the experiment. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And the key word here is experiment. The lean startup approach is encapsulated in 3 words: Build. Measure. Learn.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Build</b>
means launching as early and cheaply as possible. Using an agile
approach to code and deploy quickly, using open source to avoid
reinventing the wheel, and the Cloud to minimise capex. Scaling is done
just-in-time, as it’s needed; there’s no sense delaying your launch
until you’re convinced you can support thousands of users when you don’t
know if you’ll attract ANY users.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Measure</b>
means determining what users think about your product. The data is
collected by tools like real-time analytics, split testing and surveys -
the principle here being: better to have bad news that's true, than
good news that you’ve just made up.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><b>Learn</b>
means deriving insights from what you’ve measured - to better
understand your product’s performance and the needs of your market. This
will generate new ideas to tune your startup’s engine to perform even
better. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If
you're building the wrong product, there are no possible optimisations.
But better to discover that now, rather than 5 man-years into
development.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This
field-testing seeks to avoid wasting time solving a problem that no-one
is having, or a technical solution that just doesn't work, or a product
that users don't like. The insights you derive can help distinguish
between user indifference and disapproval, and allow you to adjust your
approach accordingly.</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
lean startup philosophy is about testing and continual improvement,
with decisions based on solid data rather than the whims and egos of entrepreneurs. It’s
about realising an idea, but not being so wedded to it that you can’t
improvise and adapt it into something even better. </span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As Pablo Picasso once said: “You have to have an idea of what you’re going to do, but it should be a vague idea...”</span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-15261507544826624692011-05-29T12:02:00.005+01:002011-05-29T12:33:43.269+01:00The Planet of the Landlords<span style="font-size: x-small;">"Forty years ago, wealthy Americans financed the U.S. government mainly through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans finance the government mainly by lending it money." -- <a href="http://robertreich.org/post/5583016733%20">Robert Reich</a></span><br />
<br />
The wealthy have engineered a very cosy arrangement for themselves. Instead of giving their money away, they lend it to their governments - by buying bonds and securities - and so get paid interest instead of being taxed. Sociologists call it the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect_%28sociology%29">Matthew Effect</a>: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It comes from '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_talents_or_minas">The parable of the talents</a>" - an exhortation not to waste valuable capital. It seems that Jesus was an closet entrepreneur, as well as a social revolutionary. <br />
<br />
But isn't it weird that the radical generation that grew up in the 60's wanting the change the world, now presides over a world where power and privilege is just as concentrated as it's ever been?<br />
<br />
This week I watched Adam Curtis' excellent new documentary: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_%28television_documentary_series%29">All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace</a>, which sets out to explore how the elite use their power in the information age. The task of explaining <i>Why Things Are The Way Things Are</i> is far too complicated and subjective to be explained in an hour long documentary, but Curtis' documentaries are like core samples, taking an issue - in this case the rise of individualism - and exploring its origins and ramifications.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/75/Atlas_New_York.JPG/220px-Atlas_New_York.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/75/Atlas_New_York.JPG/220px-Atlas_New_York.JPG" width="133" /></a></div>This introduced the curious character of <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2233966/">Ayn Rand,</a> her Big Idea was the triumph of individualism, she believed that Man was stifled by government, and that altruism was a weakness that limited Man's ambitions. Her vision of society was a big Darwinian competition where the creatives, the innovators and the entrepreneurs would perform mighty deeds, reshaping the world through the sheer force of their Nietzschean will, unencumbered by the petty restrictions of bureaucrats and the sneering of critics. After all, who's ever built a statue to a critic? <br />
<br />
This sounds a bit like the philosophy of <a href="http://www.cloudave.com/1171/what-makes-an-entrepreneur-four-letters-jfdi/">Just Fucking Do It</a>, which is especially popular amongst entrepreneurs, but Rand's message is more insidious - that the success of the elite is due to their own inner brilliance. We are just better than the masses, they say. We are Supermen. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonfire_of_the_Vanities">Masters of the Universe</a>.<br />
<br />
When you start thinking like that, you have no social debt to repay. No one helped you get to the top. Altruism is just shackles. Why should you pay taxes to the lazy and the feckless?<br />
You forget wealth comes from millions of pairs of hands. Not just your genius. But you jealously guard your riches. You stash them offshore. Government is just another mendicant, looking to shake you down. If they want your money, you'll expect a return. So you lend it to them.<br />
<br />
In the late 90s, many Americans thought their Randian Übermensch-ness was responsible for the long boom of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economy">New Economy</a>. But the dirty little secret was that US productivity was flat. The wealth they thought they were creating was actually debt. Countries like China were doing the work, the Americans were borrowing to pay for it, and the Chinese and wealthy individuals were lending the money to them.<br />
<br />
Not that this was China's fault, they were just trying to get a fair deal for their vast population's hard work. Chrystia Freeland <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/01/the-rise-of-the-new-global-elite/8343/">recounts</a> a CEO talking about the transformation of the world economy: "If it lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade”.<br />
<br />
So whilst China created wealth, financiers created an elaborate Ponzi scheme of investment, and everybody got to feel good about the new economic miracle. <br />
<br />
Of course, the values of investments can go down, as well as up. Fortunately for the wealthy, they wrote the rules of the game, and the selfishness of the rules would make Ayn Rand proud. The game is played like this:<br />
<ul><li>The wealthy obtain access to cheap money </li>
<li>They use it to fuel a boom (property, shares)</li>
<li>They rake in the profits of the boom</li>
<li>The bubble eventually bursts </li>
<li>The wealthy <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_capital">evacuate</a> their money </li>
<li>The bondholders are bailed out (in the name of preserving economic stability)</li>
<li>The debt gets loaded onto the citizens of the unfortunate countries, who are made poorer for years to come</li>
<li>The wealthy move on and find another mark(et)</li>
</ul>It seems a financial crisis is only a crisis if you get stuck with the bill. Like the citizens of Ireland and Greece are currently discovering, the wealthy have already left the restaurant.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron">Gil Scott-Heron</a> died. His classic poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" was written 40 years ago, and captured the era's spirit of discontent. The children of that era are grown up now, and the world they fashioned is more tolerant, but also more selfish.<br />
<br />
40 years ago, men were walking on the moon, put there by the combined effort of 400,000 people. Apollo's collective <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/02/apollo-space-missions-eugene-cernan">grand adventure</a> is history, replaced by internet-empowered individuals steered by their own rational self-interest. Powered by technology, what each of us can achieve alone, with just one pair of hands, has never been greater. I hope we use that power constructively, to build - not exploit.<br />
<br />
I'd rather live on a planet of artisans than a planet of landlords.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-14621444706756813642011-05-16T00:21:00.000+01:002011-05-16T00:21:24.568+01:00One Night in Dortmund"And gentlemen in England now a-bed<br />
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,<br />
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks<br />
[of that night in Dortmund when we won the treble]"<br />
-- Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4<br />
<br />
Hard to believe it was 10 years ago today.<br />
Let me take you back to a humid spring night in Germany...<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_UEFA_Cup_Final">2001 UEFA Cup Final</a> was the sort of game that defines the phrase "you had to be there". A sensational game of footy, in a magnificent stadium, in wonderfully friendly environment, with a glorious, historic result.<br />
<br />
We arrived in Dortmund at 2pm, and took the train into town to find the Altemarkt, the old square where the fans' party was taking place. Unfortunately this coincided with a downpour of biblical proportions, the sort of storm that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote songs about.<br />
<br />
But perhaps this was a blessing in disguise. Dashing for cover we found a café, giving us the opportunity to sample the regional food and drink and mingle with some of the travelling Basque supporters: a very pleasant bunch who responded to Liverpool songs in good humour with chants of their own. In fact the atmosphere was so friendly that the two sets of supporters were soon swapping scarves, flags and shirts.<br />
<br />
A few mobile phone calls later and some fellow fans we knew had been summoned to the venue. By then the downpour had stopped and the sun was shining. So we began walking south towards the stadium, stopping halfway at a local pub to soak up some more atmosphere (and liquid refreshment). Here the canon of Reds' songs was recited for the benefit of the locals present, I'm not sure how much they understood, but they cheered along with us all the same.<br />
<br />
Then off the stadium itself, and the crowd swelled to the size that could sustain a rendition of 'Scouser Tommy'. One underpass was used to good effect, with a standing chant of 'Gérard, Gérard Houllier' continued by those entering it. Meanwhile the police kept a discreet presence, treating the fans as guests rather than cattle and contributing to the good-natured atmosphere. We laid to rest the ghost of Heysel in Dortmund.<br />
<br />
Getting into the ground was the only point where our hosts' legendary efficiency broke down. There weren't enough stewards at the gates so the crowd built up faster than it could be admitted. But once inside we could appreciate the Westfalenstadion in all its glory.<br />
<br />
The Westfalenstadion is a marvel. Four huge cantilever stands giving all 65000 seats unobstructed views. Superb acoustics and no running track meant songs from one stand easily reached the opposite end of the stadium, generating a superb enveloping atmosphere. As the teams ran out you could tell the stage was set for something memorable.<br />
<br />
The pre-match huddle that epitomises the new Liverpool spirit was greeted with a deafening roar that set the tone for the night. The team responded, and from kickoff we went for the throat. 3 minutes later we're already in dreamland as Babbel nods Macca's perfect free kick home. Yes!<br />
<br />
Playing as if we had a point to prove to the Cruyff family we continued to attack their nervous 3 man defence. The second goal was a beauty of quick passing, Hamann to Owen, perfect pass, Gerrard scores. Get in! Needless to say we're now going bananas, this start is beyond our wildest dreams.<br />
<br />
Before the game <a href="http://twitter.com/kevhowson">Kev Howson</a> predicted we Reds would give the Alavés supporters the respect they deserved, and he was right, instead of the jibes like "2-0 in your cup final", so beloved by the Mancs, we celebrated by singing the manager's praises. "Who let the Reds out?", "Are you Shankly in disguise?", "Gérard, Gérard Houllier..."<br />
<br />
With the party atmosphere in full swing we began to start thinking of achieving the treble with a 4 or 5-nil scoreline. As did a few of our players it seemed, tackles were missed, men weren't closed down, and out of nothing a cross is headed into the goal below us. Bugger.<br />
<br />
Come on you Reds! The inspirational mood returns and the team dominates the rest of the half. Hamann (again) plays in Owen who's tripped by the keeper as he rounds him. As clear a penalty as night follows day, 40000 voices chant "Off Off Off!", but ref only books him. Macca takes the kick, never ever doubt, 3-1. And the party atmosphere is back!<br />
<br />
At half-time there was a guest appearance from Anfield announcer George encouraging us to keep the noise up. We did our best, but Alavés were even more fired up, back on the pitch 5 minutes before kickoff. And they started the half on fire, catching us completely cold. 1 minute in and Carra is torn to bits by the impressive Contra, deep cross - Moreno scores.<br />
Oh bollocks.<br />
<br />
We're still licking our mental wounds when the ref awards a series of debatable free-kicks. Moreno shoots low and we see the net at the far end bulging. We can't believe it, and the Alavés fans at that end go absolutely mental. 3-3. Oh shit.<br />
<br />
For the next few minutes we Reds sat stunned and subdued. For all I know the Alavés supporters could have been singing "Shall we sing a song for you?" in Basque. Whatever, they were making all the noise now.<br />
<br />
Probably feeling that the best form of defence is attack, Ged hauls off Henchoz and puts Vlad on. Given our defence is having a collective 'mare it's a huge gamble, but SuperSteve moves to right-back and the ship is steadied. And we Reds find our voices again.<br />
<br />
The game is really open now, Heskey has had a few chances but hasn't taken them, so there's a huge cheer when we see God about to come on. His appearance whips the Reds support back into a fervour, and we begin to start playing like we did in the first half.<br />
<br />
Then the best move of the night, a patient build up releases God into the box, he feints, runs on and places a shot inside the far post. And the ground explodes into a deafening din. No words, just cheering, hugs, yells at the clouds and fists in the air. Already a classic match, it's now become a footballing fairytale. Unbelievable.<br />
<br />
Now the Alavés fans are stunned to near-silence, but we still don't look comfortable, so Ged replaces Owen with Berger. But Alavés keep on coming, their fans roar them on, and we're now hanging on. A striker breaks into our box and falls over, luckily the ref sees through that one and he's booked.<br />
<br />
We breathe again. Come on Reds, let's not do an Arsenal.<br />
<br />
A few minutes left, we're trying to sing YNWA but the Alavés pressure throttles it. Sander saves us twice but the price is a last minute corner. This time Sander is beaten to the ball and it's in. Since we've been standing urging the lads on to one last effort, it's almost a reflex reaction when we slump to our seats with our heads in our hands.<br />
<br />
4-4. And it's Jordi bloody Cruyff. Oh fuck.<br />
<br />
The elation that followed Robbie's masterstroke now wears off and notice I'm hoarse from shouting and my hands are aching from clapping. In fact I hurt all over, talk about your dreams being tossed and blown. I half expect Alavés to score a winner in injury time but it never comes.<br />
<br />
Then an announcement comes over the tannoy: Golden Goal rule.<br />
<br />
Sighs of agony, the realisation extra time will be torture to watch. But we channel our energies into motivating the team, and as extra time starts we've found our voices again. "Oh when the Reds..."<br />
<br />
The chant almost chokes in our throats as Alavés run through us almost from the kickoff. We clear, then Berger almost does the same. By now the tension and noise are incredible, when we attack the Alavés support whistle for all they're worth, it's like hearing a jumbo jet take off. In return we respond to their attacks with roars.<br />
<br />
But with Alavés a striker down we begin to dominate. Our back line is now just Sami and Jamie whilst Markus and Steve push forward. Death or glory!<br />
<br />
It's end to end stuff, but too often we only had God up front. Time ticks away, but we're still urging our heroes on, with speech now painful our encouragement is more often in form of claps and roars.<br />
<br />
Then a clever Vlad spin fools his marker, who's booked again and sent off. It's Karmona their captain and defensive rock, Alavés now have 9 men and there's 4 minutes left. There's a buzz of expectation as Sami jogs into the box, we're on our feet again, expecting a Macca free kick special onto SuperSami's forehead.<br />
<br />
In it comes, and from 100 metres away we see the net bulging.<br />
<br />
A split-second of disbelief and then absolute delirium breaks out. Joy magnified by relief multiplied by the glory of what we've achieved. Even that doesn't do the experience justice.<br />
<br />
Soon after we saw on the replay it was an own goal, but we couldn't have cheered it any louder if it had been a bullet header from Robbie himself.<br />
<br />
The celebrations involved pretty much every song we know, spine-tingling renditions of YNWA, praise for Houllier, the team, the club. It only stopped when our opponents went to collect their medals, when we joined their fans in singing "Alavés, Alavés, Alavés" as loud as we could. We wanted to make sure they knew how much we respected their achievement, it was a wonderful moment.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9KRCFzdJOge7w0wLKcb-UKAmEHLXBCSjv7AUah7OnAWI_xNEK83Luf5qiIe0nEVCDiUcnJ2DdR5ua6TflrPAjzLBh_U3Y9LvC7rioyB7oF0bFa1nOTksjm5rFR0B54s-sPD74IzKXrKz7/s1600/lfc-uefa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9KRCFzdJOge7w0wLKcb-UKAmEHLXBCSjv7AUah7OnAWI_xNEK83Luf5qiIe0nEVCDiUcnJ2DdR5ua6TflrPAjzLBh_U3Y9LvC7rioyB7oF0bFa1nOTksjm5rFR0B54s-sPD74IzKXrKz7/s320/lfc-uefa.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
Then our turn, Robbie and Sami lift the cup, and we're in ecstasy. The team assembles in front of the North stand, YNWA starts on the tannoy and everybody, players, management and fans sing it together. You treasure memories like that forever.<br />
<br />
We've just won the treble, 5-4, in a match they'll talk about for decades.<br />
<br />
4th place for the Champions League?<br />
In Dortmund I witnessed what glory really is.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-84091531615723432242011-03-10T00:13:00.000+00:002011-03-10T00:13:38.193+00:00Time to End Rotten Boroughs<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Archive/Images/Polling1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="476" src="http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/Archive/Images/Polling1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Hogarth's satire The Polling (1758), shows the few electors being 'encouraged'</td></tr>
</tbody></table>In the classic Blackadder the Third episode "<a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=dish+dishonesty">Dish and Dishonesty</a>" foppish Prince George faces ruin if parliament votes to cut his income. But the government's majority is 1, so if he can just win a crucial vacant seat, his income will be safe. Fortunately, the crucial seat of Dunny-on-the-Wold is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten_and_pocket_boroughs">rotten borough</a> - it has a single voter. Win over that voter, and the government will be foiled.<br />
<br />
It sounds farcical, but until <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832">rotten boroughs were abolished</a> in 1832, that was how the system worked. A few people, wielding a disproportionally huge amount of influence. It made no sense, but up until the 1830s, it suited the establishment of the time.<br />
<br />
Then in 1832, rotten boroughs were replaced, and in their place came <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_seat">Safe Seats</a>.<br />
<br />
Safe seats give an illusion of democracy, an election occurs, leaflets are published, hustings are organised - but just like the rotten boroughs of yore, the result is never in doubt. In the 2010 general election, the predictability of safe seats meant that of the 650 seats contested, only votes cast in about 100 key seats really mattered. According to the <a href="http://www.ippr.org.uk/articles/?id=4304">Institute for Public Policy Research</a>, the decisive seats were determined by just over 460,000 voters, 1.6% of the electorate.<br />
<br />
OK, we've moved on a bit from the era of the rotten borough. Now instead of a handful of rich landowners holding the balance of power, it's the selection committees in 100 seats, who choose the candidates to go before the 1.6% of our fellow citizens, who by accidents of social geography happen to cast the decisive votes.<br />
<br />
Why? Because just like in the 1830s, the system works this way because it suits those in power. <br />
<br />
But on May 5th, you have a once in a lifetime opportunity to change this system.<br />
By voting in the electoral reform referendum. And saying <a href="http://www.yestofairervotes.org/content/">YES</a>.<br />
<br />
The referendum offers us a choice, to change to a more proportional system called <a href="http://www.yestofairervotes.org/pages/learn-more/">Alternative Vote</a> (AV), or keep the current system, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post">First Past The Post</a> (FPTP). <br />
<br />
Choosing AV would mean that instead of targeting the 100 'battleground' seats, the political parties will be forced to come up with better thought-out, more inclusive policies - ones that will appeal not just to their traditional supporters, but also to supporters of other parties, whose 2nd and 3rd preferences may prove crucial. AV means no more wasted votes - everyone's vote will count.<br />
<br />
Or we could stick with the idealogical headcount encouraged by FPTP, which forces everyone to decide which tribe they want to belong to every 5 years. In many parts of the country, only one party has EVER been elected. But is that really democracy? No wonder so many of us are disenchanted with politics. Disagree, and depending on where you live, your voice just won't be heard.<br />
<br />
In FPTP, the minority can govern the majority (look back over the last 30 years).<br />
But in AV, because of the 50% rule, it will be the majority that governs the minority.<br />
<br />
It's time to finally get rid of rotten boroughs, and replace them with something fairer.<br />
Vote <a href="http://www.facebook.com/YestoFairerVotes">YES</a> to AV.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-39050689038963191162011-02-03T23:54:00.000+00:002011-02-03T23:54:40.978+00:0010 reasons why I didn't create Facebook<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2010/10/04/101004crat_atlarge_denby?currentPage">The Social Network movie</a> tells a striking story: how a 19-year old student wrote some software, founded a company, and changed the world. But why was it that Mark Zuckerberg was the one to create it, and not you or me?<br />
<br />
It's an interesting question. You might dismissively answer that Zuck just "got lucky" - but in doing so you'd be missing the opportunity to understand what makes a successful entrepreneur. In fact, a psychologist might say that those choosing to believe "he got lucky" are actually just trying to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/health/06mind.html">protect their own egos</a>, to avoid acknowledging their own limitations. Namely that a 19-year old with few formal qualifications was not just more technically-savvy than the millions of us who call ourselves technologists, but also more business-savvy than the millions who consider themselves businessmen.<br />
<br />
So why didn't you, or I, with all our educational advantages and years of professional experience create Facebook? Here's 10 reasons to ponder:<br />
<br />
<b>1 We weren't hungry enough</b><br />
<br />
By the time Zuck sat down to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Facebook">write Facebook in 2004</a>, I was already a start-up veteran. I'd been the fifth employee in a pioneering London dotcom, helping to build and run the company's services platform. But I became worn out, and by 2003 I'd left to go travelling for 5 months, which proved to be an awesome adventure - so much so that when I returned to work, my plan was simply to earn enough <a href="http://www.memento.org/2010/02/lost-in-patagonia.html">go travelling</a> again. At this point in my life, I didn't want to change the world, I wanted to see the world.<br />
<br />
<b>2 We weren't itchy enough</b><br />
<br />
Most successful ventures start because their founders have <a href="http://lateralaction.com/articles/entrepreneur-happiness/">an itch they need to scratch</a>, before realising that other folks also have the same problem, and there might be a business in providing a solution. For Zuck, the itch was how to connect with fellow students better (and a Napsteresque desire to share news and music throughout a dorm). Once he realised there was a demand for an online version of the paper 'face books' his college printed, he went ahead and built one. What's bothering you today?<br />
<br />
<b>3 We weren't visionary enough </b><br />
<br />
Almost everyone's first online experience is having a conversation. Networks are inherently social, that's obvious, we use them to talk to others. Nevertheless, it wasn't until Facebook arrived in the UK that I started to understand Social Networking, and its distinguishing feature: on the internet you can talk to anybody, but on a social network it's just your friends. As a consequence, the services you build upon a social network are specialised: to share the stuff that binds you together. If I'd asked you in 2004 to draw the internet in 2010, would it have looked anything like <a href="http://xkcd.com/802/">this</a>? <br />
<br />
<b>4 We weren't courageous enough</b><br />
<br />
There are two ways to work in a startup: found one yourself, or join the team at an existing venture. For the past decade, I've done the latter; eschewing the harder, riskier and <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/30/should-you-really-be-a-startup-entrepreneur/">more stressful</a> path of the founder, for the slightly less stressful role of senior techie. You have to be very driven to consider swapping the security and rewards of a job you've worked so hard to achieve for the uncertainty of founding something new, which might not even work.<br />
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<b>5 We weren't connected enough </b><br />
<br />
In our hubris, it's easy to over-estimate what we can achieve on our own. But eventually life teaches us that who you know is indeed just as important as what you know. What's a better investment? Spending 1000 hours reading everything about this year's hottest new technologies, or spending 1000 hours<a href="http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/04/contributing-to-your-field/"> attracting</a> an awesomely-connected mentor like Sean Parker? These days being connected doesn't mean you have WiFi, it means you have access to the kind of influential people who can help you change your world.<br />
<br />
<b>6 We weren't located well enough</b><br />
<br />
What have Apple, HP, Oracle, Sun, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Twitter all have in common? They all grew up in the same small corner of California. (And here's the <a href="http://steveblank.com/2010/11/24/when-its-darkest-men-see-the-stars/">reasons</a> why). Such is the area's cachet, even the 6 month old Facebook moved from Boston (no high-tech wilderness) to Palo Alto, to be better connected. I suppose I could have moved there too, but chose to stay near my friends in London, where the startup and VC community is smaller and much less vibrant.<br />
<br />
<b>7 We weren't skilled enough</b><br />
<br />
Or perhaps more accurately: we lack the right balance of skills. You might be an expert at designing and implementing software, but how much do you know about incorporating a company, or contract law, or tax allowances, or sales and marketing? I came away from university knowing all about how computer systems work - from low-level memory registers right up to complex artificial intelligence applications, but next to nothing about how to build up businesses. Then in the years subsequently, I kept on deepening my technical knowledge. Perhaps the moral here is avoid specialising too deeply, and instead look to broaden your horizons, and become a <a href="http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/2008/03/11/is-it-better-to-be-a-creative-generalist-or-a-specialist/">creative generalist</a> instead.<br />
<br />
<b>8 We weren't adventurous enough</b><br />
<br />
Being an entrepreneur is more difficult than being an explorer, because there is no map to guide you, and the blank spaces aren't visible until you stumble across them. Say, in 2005, you were inspired to follow in the footsteps of Facebook - would you attempt to compete for the same niche or try to pioneer something new? Would you have spotted the possibilities of a brand new niche for a real-time web-scale bridging network? Twitter found that one. As Steve Blank says: companies execute business models, <a href="http://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-principles/">startups search</a> for new ones. There's always another blank space to find, if you're adventurous enough.<br />
<br />
<b>9 We weren't determined enough</b><br />
<br />
There is a passion in creative artists that makes them strive to create new works, because creating things is their calling. As Paul Graham says "the most important predictor of success is <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html">determination</a>". But I have been content to earn rather than yearn, deploying my skills to further others' projects, and being well paid for doing so. This is just how the world works, the determined few hire the talented many to make their visions happen. Are you sitting comfortably?<br />
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<b>10 We weren't motivated enough</b><br />
<br />
A quick straw poll of friends reveals virtually everyone has their own pet idea or hobby project, but few are actively considering turning it into a business. So those ideas will be left to marinate inside their heads, until someone more driven comes up with the same idea, and goes that bit further: filling in the company paperwork and putting in the late nights. Ever noticed there's a lot more <a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/19/what-makes-an-entrepreneur-four-lettersjfdi/">late night hacking</a> in 'The Social Network' movie than soliloquies? The real pioneers just do it.<br />
<br />
<br />
So the reason why I didn't create Facebook has little to do with personal characteristics, otherwise I might as well have written an article called "10 reasons why Usain Bolt runs faster than me". Instead, the reason neither of us created Facebook is a result of where we've come from, our attitudes, and - crucially - the life decisions we've made along the way. Most people, me included, tend to choose the <a href="http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/11/04/is-it-time-for-you-to-earn-or-to-learn/">comfortable path</a>. Perhaps that's why our culture respects entrepreneurs highly, because in our comfy, cosseted modern life, they're amongst the rare few willing to leave their comfort zones to actively seek out new struggles.<br />
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So whilst the opportunity to build Facebook is past, new opportunities still lurk undiscovered in the blank spaces, awaiting the determined and the adventurous. Perhaps you already have all the skills you need, perhaps you don't need <a href="http://steveblank.com/2011/01/31/startups-so-easy-a-12-year-old-can-do-it/">any</a>.<br />
<br />
And that's why I didn't create Facebook. What about you?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-40622458694739991012010-10-04T17:41:00.003+01:002011-05-15T23:49:08.157+01:00You say you want a revolution?How would you change the world in 2010? We've never been more connected, at our fingertips are social networking services that can potentially broadcast your thoughts to hundreds of people, and maybe even thousands more you've never met. Surely this should herald a new era of activism, with causes spreading contagiously, rapidly exposing injustice and bringing it to the attention of those who can right it. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://danesecooper.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83458215069e201156f412afb970b-pi" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://danesecooper.blogs.com/.a/6a00d83458215069e201156f412afb970b-pi" width="320" /></a></div>Or maybe not. <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all">Malcolm Gladwell</a> has just written a contrarian article, arguing that whilst the inherently weak ties in social networks have the power to spread ideas, they can change very little. His argument is that revolutions require serious commitment, and that spreading the word is not the same as getting involved. And I agree.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Mass movements aim to use the power of social proof to win over uncommitted minds, by demonstrating that "we" are more numerous, and more passionate than "them". This can be very effective in a democracy, where winning over a majority of the electorate will award power to your cause via the ballot box. But what if you're challenging a much more powerful, deeply entrenched, and potentially violent establishment - like the theocratic dictatorship of Iran?<br />
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In the summer of 2009, there was a lot of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603391.html">wishing thinking</a> about Iran's "Twitter Revolution". The "Green" national consciousness movement, so the theory went, was growing contagiously, sidestepping state media controls and winning the hearts and minds of decent Iranians one tweet at a time. Sadly, this proved to be a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/11/iran-twitter-revolution-myth">total myth</a>.<br />
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The problem was, whilst the <a href="http://wthashtag.com/Iranelection">#iranelection</a> tweets proved very effective at spreading the message of discontent, most of the audience wasn't actually in Iran, and so was powerless to affect events. Inside Iran, <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/evolution_revolution_visualizing_millions_iran_tweets.php">a study</a> of archived tweets suggests that Twitter was primarily used to propagate news, rather than recruiting and galvanising strategically important individuals. <br />
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The difference between <a href="http://www.memento.org/2010/08/difference-between-facebook-and-twitter.html">bonding and bridging</a> is a pet subject of mine. Twitter is a bridging network of weak ties, whilst Facebook networks combine a few strong bonds with a much larger number of weak ties. Revolutions, however, require the steadfastness of the very strongest of bonds - where you know your fellow activists personally, and trust them with your life (in the case of Iran, literally).<br />
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Gladwell's argument is that if you’re taking on a powerful and organized establishment activists need to arrange themselves into a hierarchy of ultra-strong bonds - which will maintain morale, keep discipline and allow the movement to act strategically. There is another factor though, which I was surprised he didn't mention, which concerns how change actually happens. <br />
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In 1989, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989">revolutions</a> swept through Eastern Europe. In each case, the revolution was preceded by popular protests, which grew progressively in size and militancy. The difference between Europe in 1989 and Iran in 2009 is that the army, sensing the popular mood, came out on the side of the demonstrators. Once the public knew the state's ability to suppress the movement violently was over, revolution was inevitable. <br />
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The lesson to draw from these successful, relatively bloodless (pre-Internet) revolutions is that fermenting a revolution requires swinging the key influencers behind your cause. These individuals are not journalists, or university professors, authors or <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8024328/Popular-Twitter-celebrities-hold-no-influence-online-scientists-discover.html">movie stars</a> - but the army lieutenants and police captains that give the orders to cadres of troops and paramilitary police. It is absurd to think that such individuals will be watching screens, ready to be swayed by a barrage of tweets. They'll be on the streets marshalling roadblocks, motivated by the fear of lethal retribution if their part of the line fails.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="155" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Go_capturing.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="200" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Place stone at A to capture black</td></tr>
</tbody></table><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Go_capturing.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>The only way to influence such people is through the bonds that matter more to them than their chains of command. Perhaps their best friends, most trusted colleagues, or their wives, or sons or daughters. In this respect, fermenting a revolution is more like a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28game%29">game of Go</a>. It is not about the number of stones you play (or friends or tweets you make). Instead, it is about applying pressure to key individuals. To truly win, you must surround those you seek to influence, and turn them to your side. Such is the wisdom of the ancients.<br />
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Fortunately, most of us will never need to risk our lives challenging a despotic regime, but the same principles apply to any intransigent opponent, (albeit with far lower stakes). For instance, how can a loosely assembled group of fans force out the <a href="http://www.spiritofshankly.com/debtliescowboys.html">disastrously inept</a> current owners of Liverpool football club? Certainly not by tweeting, petitions or protest marches. <br />
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The lesson is to effect change, you need to find some way to win over the key influencers - in this case the banks who own the debt used to buy the club, and those who might be tempted to refinance it. You need to convince them that the incumbent owners are leveraged-buyout chancers and second-rate businessmen, and offer them <a href="http://www.shareliverpoolfc.co.uk/index.php">an alternative</a> they'll view as a better investment. <br />
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So, if you know anyone at the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/liverpool/7993092/Liverpool-loans-shifted-by-RBS-into-bad-debts-division.html">RBS's Bad Debt division</a>, please give them a nudge. As for the rest of us, we'll just have to continue shouting our protests.<br />
And cross our fingers.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-13044847341824264542010-09-21T01:41:00.000+01:002010-09-21T01:41:56.747+01:00How I discovered barefoot runningI am not a trendwatcher. Maybe more of a trendcoral; comfortably attached to a lovely rock, letting the cultural sea wash over me. My currents are carefully selected RSS feeds, rich in memes and intriguing new ideas, from which my polyps pick out interesting morsels, which I slowly assimilate to become more colourful. What interests me are not the current affairs of common knowledge, but the emerging concepts that people in disparate communities are beginning to talk about - ideas that are beginning to spread. Last year, several instances of one such concept floated past and tantalised my polyps: it went by the name "barefoot running".<br />
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Being a keen hiker, I knew about Vibram soles, so my interest was piqued when I read about their weird-looking new product called the <a href="http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/">FiveFingers</a> - which was actually made for your toes - and which looked more like a comedy rubber foot than a shoe. The motivation, it transpired, was that walking or running barefoot was supposedly more "natural", and paradoxically less likely to result in injuries. I mentally filed that discovery away under "Intriguingly Crazy Ideas That Might Just Work". And went on to read something else.<br />
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Later that year, my polyps picked up the barefoot meme again, this time in <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/barefoot/">Wired</a>. So what prompted Wired to write about it? As so often with emerging ideas, there's a wellspring that unleashes the river, and in this case it seemed to be a recent book by Chris McDougall, called <a href="http://www.chrismcdougall.com/barefoot.html">Born to Run</a>.<br />
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When I looked into the book, the story became more interesting still. It seemed that going barefoot wasn't just a bunch of footwear refuseniks, it was a subculture. And one that had generated enough interest to keep the book in the bestseller lists for months. I was sufficiently intrigued to buy a copy, it turned out to be an excellent book, and I resolved to try it for myself. (I'm glad I did, but that's another story)<br />
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And as the idea spread, I began to see articles in mainstream newspapers. In July 2009, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/13/vivo-barefoot-ethical-trainers">The Guardian</a> was reviewing barefoot trainers and asking whether it was a craze or a fad. By October, the New York Times was reporting on the <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-roving-runner-goes-barefoot/">barefoot boom</a> and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27well.html?_r=1">summarising research</a> into barefoot running published in recent Sports Science journals. <br />
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The barefoot meme continued to spread, it even became a metaphor. Going barefoot was cited as a <a href="http://zenhabits.net/barefoot-philosophy/">zen habit</a> - a minimalist way of living: of travelling light whilst remaining aware and present.<br />
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By January 2010, a study of barefoot running was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8483401.stm">published in Nature</a>. Looking back at my Google Reader history I sense that once it became an area of legitimate scientific study, barefoot running seemed to gain a new level of media acceptability. Subsequent articles would discuss the pros and cons of going barefoot, rather than dwelling on its quirkiness, or pondering whether it was just a craze.<br />
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Perhaps then, this is how ideas form. They start with a few enthusiasts talking amongst themselves, which if popular enough, attracts a small subculture around them. As the idea spreads, community members start writing books and articles, some of which will be picked up by more general media and distributed to wider audiences. Until eventually, outsiders like us stumble across them...<br />
<br/>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-22329197251936185402010-08-17T17:21:00.000+01:002010-08-17T17:21:44.252+01:00The difference between Facebook and TwitterOnce upon a time, it was obvious: Facebook was that portal with your friends' personal profiles, whilst Twitter was that quirky stream of collective consciousnesses. <br />
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Now, Facebook is effectively a <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_profile_pages_becoming_irrelevant.php">feed</a> too. So are they just different channels? Although many Twitter clients can be configured to automatically post Tweets to Facebook too, allowing users to maintain two separate social networks (like work and play), I don't know many who actually use it that way.<br />
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Digging deeper, a <a href="http://www.edisonresearch.com/twitter_usage_2010.php">recent study</a> of the two social networks found that 87% of Americans knew about Twitter, and 88% knew of Facebook. Yet only 7% of Americans actively use Twitter, whilst 41% actively use Facebook. Worldwide, Facebook currently has over 500 million members, whilst Twitter has around 100 million members. <br />
<br />
So why is Facebook so much more popular than Twitter?<br />
Here the nature of the connections within each social network may hold the answer.<br />
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There's an idea within sociology called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_capital">Social Capital</a>, which seeks to measure the value of the connections in an individual's social network. The idea being the greater the quality of your social connections, the greater your productivity and opportunities. "It's not what you know, it's who you know."<br />
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Social network researchers refine this idea into two subconcepts: bonding social capital and bridging social capital. <br />
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Bonding (also called Closure) is the tendency of like-minded individuals to form connections amongst themselves. The community that emerges from these interactions is densely interlinked, and social proof and reputation become powerful forces. <br />
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Bridging (also called Brokerage) is the function performed by people whose relationships bridge across structural gaps in social networks. Brokers introduce people from previously unconnected social networks, and help information flow between disparate communities.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG17580B4N93CObDm2zJEmBQRStZZ1NCjnNUHp1EnE5LUL10ziujh2x_N36Jwsb89iYW5CjnefJnjTEwQZYY2kuJvp-QgvsJaCH9WmuOOCKPKlRjF6LNZ0ZCuprr3PPJBmstcqO6eUI7sR/s1600/SNA_segment.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="88" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG17580B4N93CObDm2zJEmBQRStZZ1NCjnNUHp1EnE5LUL10ziujh2x_N36Jwsb89iYW5CjnefJnjTEwQZYY2kuJvp-QgvsJaCH9WmuOOCKPKlRjF6LNZ0ZCuprr3PPJBmstcqO6eUI7sR/s200/SNA_segment.png" width="200" /></a><br />
These concepts can be seen in this diagram, taken from Wikipedia. A densely linked community on the left, with a couple of brokers bridging the gap to a smaller community on the right.<br />
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Facebook is a bonding network, dominated by strong ties between friends and families. Whereas by encouraging weak ties, Twitter is designed to be a bridging network. Users can follow distant strangers, and high quality information can quickly spread between closed communities by the retweets of brokers. <br />
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Most social networks tend to contain many more bonds than bridges. So the reason why Facebook is much more popular than Twitter might be because, collectively, our urge to bond with friends is stronger than our desire to bridge with relative strangers.<br />
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On reflection then, it's probably best not to tweet about what you've had for breakfast; but it might make a friend on Facebook smile.<br />
<br/><br/>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-21131950945277942262010-07-16T16:50:00.021+01:002010-07-21T22:14:40.456+01:00The Games of Life<font size="2">First we were encouraged to buy. Then we were encouraged to contribute. Next: will we be encouraged to play?<br />
<br />
A decade ago, e-commerce was the hot area for new startups. Once it became possible to buy almost anything online, the new new thing became contributing and sharing content. Now that field is pretty packed, what's next?<br />
<br />
One interesting trend I've been following is the increasing use of <a href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/game-mechanics-business">game mechanics</a> to drive user activity online. In some <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/">communities</a>, points, leaderboards and achievements are being used to reward high quality contributions. Others are more <a href="http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/05/games_wired/">competitive</a>, with players motivated purely by earning new achievements. <br />
<br />
At this point, you might be asking: why would anyone want to create a game around a service? For some, games are pastimes, fun distractions for idle hours. Why would a business waste time and money providing games that cost the players nothing to play? Personally, I can think of at least 4 motivations for game providers - educating players, capturing intentions, encouraging new experiences, and influencing behaviour.<br />
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Educational games sugar the pill of learning with an entertaining activity, a staple of schools for decades, you're bound to have played one. But recently a new breed has been created by activists seeking to virally spread a message through social media. One of the best examples is <a href="http://www.darfurisdying.com">Darfur is Dying</a>, a 2006 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsgame">newsgame</a> that puts the player in the role of a persecuted refugee. Such games aim to provide a thought-provoking experience that will propagate the message and perhaps even galvanise players into action.<br />
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Intentional games, by contrast, are more business-like. They involve a trade, with the player revealing their current intentions in exchange for some micro-reward. For instance, John Battelle talks about <a href="http://battellemedia.com/archives/2010/07/search_foursquare_and_checking_into_states_of_mind">checking into a state of mind</a> - a more explicit version of what we currently all do when we use search engines.<br />
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Experience games try to get players out of their homes and doing things they've never done before. <a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_use_location_checkin_apps.php">Foursquare</a> and <a href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/scvngr/">Scvngr</a> are good examples, where players are encouraged to explore their local environment, undertake new activities and discover things they've probably never noticed before. <br />
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Finally, <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/1669932/behavioral-videogames">behavioural games</a> seek to encourage positive behaviour. The motivation here will be familiar to anyone who has read <a href="http://www.nudges.org">Nudge</a> - the recent manifesto of libertarian paternalism. By way of illustration, see game designer Jesse Schell's excellent presentation on what might happen when <a href="http://www.kk.org/quantifiedself/2010/06/when-games-invade-real-life.php">games invade real life</a>. And if you think that's far-fetched, just watch the hilarious <a href="http://www.epicwinapp.com/">EpicWin</a> app trailer. <br />
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It's coming, after all, <a href="http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/12/life-the-ultimate-game/">life is the ultimate game</a>.<br />
<br />
</font>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-31757328382209182962010-05-25T10:58:00.006+01:002012-05-25T10:13:57.982+01:00Remembering Istanbul<span style="font-size: 85%;">5 years ago tonight, Liverpool played AC Milan in the Champions League final. It was to be one of the greatest games of football ever played. This is what I remember...</span><span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;"><br />Let me tell you a story of young team<br />Who were sent far away from their home<br />To fight for their fans in that country<br />And also the red folks back home.</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: bold;">Prelude</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /><br />It was half-time on a cold December night, and we were lost in a desert.<br />We needed to score three goals in the 2nd half against Olympiakos. The ruins of our season stretched before us like a barren landscape. Then when all seemed lost, two rookie strikers appeared and the captain conjured a wonderstrike.<br />And then we noticed something, faraway on the horizon, an oasis?<br /><br />At the time, even our captain didn't believe the oasis was real, but we had little else to walk towards. When our thirst took us past Leverkusen, the oasis came closer. Then our brilliant general masterminded the improbable conquest of Juve and Chelsea's mighty legions. And so it was that one night in May we finally reached the lush oasis that had once seemed so impossibly far away.<br /><br />We sang and stared longingly at its silvery surface, mesmerised by our accomplishment. But still it shimmered, unreal, like a figment of a half-remembered dream. One final act was required - that would distinguish glory from mirage.<br />We needed to beat AC Milan.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: bold;">1 - Requiem for a Dream</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;">They put them in a champions' division<br />Sent them off to a far foreign land<br />Where the fans swarm around in their thousands<br />And there's nothing to see but the sand.</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /><br />Sadly I wasn't in Istanbul, so I would watch the game in the legendary Extra Time Bar in London. Obviously a lot of people had the same idea, I arrived 90 minutes before kick-off and had to queue to get in, all 3 floors were already almost packed to the rafters. This was not a place for the agoraphobic.<br /><br />We watched Sky's pre-match build-up with growing anticipation, we had plenty of dreams and songs to sing. When the line-up appears there's a buzz of excitement as Rafa's attacking intentions are revealed. The Italians won't know what's hit them! Someone nearby starts humming the Ring of Fire, which spreads contagiously until everybody joins in.<br /><br />We kick off amid a roar of noise, but Djimi immediately gives the ball away and fouls his man trying to recover. We can scarcely believe it when Maldini hammers in the resulting cross. Imagine a party, everyone's having fun, when the music suddenly stops and someone announces the host's mother has died. Our carnival atmosphere deflates like a runaway balloon.<br /><br />A minute later our resolve has returned. Hands are clapped. Come on you Reds!<br /><br />But Milan are making our limited attacks look pretty feeble, spearing balls into our defence left, right and centre. With Sheva and Crespo constantly threatening to burst past the last man, our previously rock solid defence now seems made of plasticine. Then from a corner Crespo has a free header - Luis Garcia clears off the line. Bloody hell!<br />Eyes are rubbed, heads are shaken.<br /><br />By now the wheels had well and truly fallen off our attacking plan, and Harry Kewell limps off to be replaced by Vladi Smicer. Plenty of phrases spring to mind now, but 'strength in depth' is not one of them.<br /><br />Our unimaginative attacking, with Baros marooned up front, contrasts embarrassingly with our opponents, whose midfield moves forward as a unit, with two quick outlets scaring us witless. Poor passing and lack of movement means the Reds can't keep the ball, and when Milan have it we're chasing shadows.<br /><br />Worries increase when Kaka bursts forward, and plays through Sheva who finishes expertly. We breathe again when the sympathetic linesman gives us the benefit of the doubt and flags him offside. Nervous smiles all round.<br /><br />Suddenly Garcia breaks into the box, and Nesta blocks it with his arm.<br />Expectant shouts! But no pen! With more Reds watching the Ref than Kaka, Milan sweep forward again, Sheva beats Djimi, squares to Crespo who couldn't miss even in a Chelsea shirt. Oh bollocks.<br /><br />And it's all gone quiet over there.<br /><br />With few tackles to worry about Milan move into exhibition mode.<br />Kaka slides a long pass behind Carra's despairing lunge - no flag this time - and Crespo chips it in with his first touch. Oh fuck.<br /><br />On Sky, Andy Gray announces "Game well and truly over".<br />Around me there are no shouts of disagreement, just bowed heads.<br />Hundreds of red-shirted people stand silently about me.<br />It's like being at the Pope's funeral.<br /><br />We had reached the oasis, knelt at the water's edge, bowed and kissed the silver surface... and tasted sand.<br /><br />The half-time whistle goes, and our dreams lie in ruins.<br />Having come so far, we curse the mirage's cruel capriciousness.<br /><br />With no Reds highlights to watch and plenty of adverts, most fans seem to spend the interval sending text messages. Here's a quick summary of what I received:<br />Fuck. Gutted. WTF! Screwed. Shit. Bollocks. All over.<br /><br />Basically, we are dead.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small; font-weight: bold;">2 - Testament to a Miracle</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 85%; font-style: italic;"><br />As we lay on the battlefield dying, dying, dying<br />With the blood rushing out of our heads, of our heads<br />As we lay on the battlefield dying<br />These were the last words we said...</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /><br /><br />"Remember Garcia's against Juve?" ... Oh yes.<br />"Carra against Del Piero!" ... Awesome.<br />"The Kop against Chelsea!" ... Oh mate.<br /><br />At the interval the mood is changing from gloom to rueful resignation as drinks are ordered and memories are replayed.<br /><br />It might only have been a mirage, but it had led us on a wonderful journey. It had made us believe such adventures were possible again. How lucky we were to catch sight of that oasis when we were stumbling so hopelessly in the wilderness.<br /><br />Whilst the dream might be in ruins, we were here to support our heroes and 45 minutes of our season remained. We had our pride to play for. No one was leaving, the bar remained packed, but subdued.<br /><br />Coverage from the Ataturk resumes, and news comes in: Finnan is off and Didi is on – we’re going to a back three, just like we did against the Greeks. Heads nod. Interesting.<br /><br />But the 2nd half doesn't get off to an auspicious start. Jerzy spills a simple cross. Groans. Milan humiliated Barca 4-0 in the '94 final, and we're now battling to avoid the same shame.<br /><br />But now there's something different about the Reds coming forward. Instead of isolated raids, now we have 6 men in enemy territory, with commando captain Stevie G at the front-line harassing the enemy. A bit of pressure and the ball begins to ricochet off white shirts. One chance falls to Xabi who rifles a shot just wide.<br />A consolation goal looks distinctly possible.<br /><br />Our momentum is interrupted by another Djimi Traore mistake, Kaka bursts through and Sami brings him down just outside the box. Sheva blasts in the free-kick, but Jerzy pulls off an amazing late low save.<br /><br />That was the tipping point, when everything changed.<br /><br />From their corner we win the ball back. Didi and Xabi work it neatly forward before picking out Riise. He crosses - it's blocked, he tries again and Super Steve heads into the top corner. Get in!<br />We explode into noise; we've an hour's pent-up emotion to release.<br />Captain Fantastic pumps his arms, "Come on! Come on!" he yells to his troops. We need little motivation. "Oh when the Reds! Go marching in!" You know the words.<br /><br />And we'd just started singing the Fields of Anfield Road when Hamann feeds Vlad on the edge of the box - and holy fuck - it's 3-2!<br />"Come on! Come on!" I scream at the screen. "This is football!"<br /><br />We're at fever pitch now, strangers are shaking each other by the shoulders, geeing each other up, the noise is deafening.<br />"Come on! Come on! We can do this!"<br /><br />Now the Reds really are working like lions and fighting like tigers.<br />We hustle the ball off a white shirt and flood forward again.<br />Baros backheels to Gerrard, and he's clean through!<br />But Gattuso hacks him down!<br />It's as clear a penalty as night follows day.<br />Bedlam breaks out as the ref points to the spot.<br /><br />Xabi Alonso steps up amid a din of clapping, cheering and shouting.<br />Shouts of anguish turn into delirious cheering as Dida saves only for Xabi to hammer in the rebound.<br /><br />3 goals in 6 minutes. What a comeback!<br />As one, our massive crowd is jumping, dancing, singing, yelling, embracing.<br />The place is in ferment. "Come on! Come on!"<br /><br />And there's still 30 minutes to play. Next, Riise goes for glory.<br />Dida saves, but we shout out John Arne's song anyway. The carnival atmosphere is back. YNWA echoes around the stadium and into homes and pubs around the world.<br /><br />But back come Milan, and disaster! Jerzy spills an easy catch at Sheva's feet. Amazingly Djimi gets back to clear Sheva's shot off the line!<br />Around me, a hundred voices sigh in relief. Shamefully, Djimi doesn't have a song of his own for us to sing, so a chorus of his name has to suffice.<br /><br />But now Milan aren't finding it so easy any more. Didi continues to intercept their probing passes and harass those who venture too close.<br /><br />It's end to end now, a classic Stevie G Hollywood ball finds Garcia, but he can't control it. 30 seconds later Jerzy hesitates, Sheva gets in behind and is about to square to Kaka to score, when Carra appears from nowhere to pick the cross off his feet with a last-gasp tackle.<br /><br />10 minutes left, and the bar now looks like a marathon finishing line, a crowd of haggard looking fans in red Reebok jerseys, faces drenched with sweat. For a few minutes the Reds produce a bit of "Ole!" football and we can get our breath back.<br /><br />Oh no! Here they come again, Sheva carves us apart - whoa! thank fuck - there's Carra with another brilliant slide tackle 10 yards out. From the corner Stam flashes a header across goal - Kaka gets a touch and we're almost solksjaered - but it flashes wide. I notice a lot of my fellow fans now have hair reminiscent of Doc Brown in the Back to the Future movies.<br /><br />Injury time finishes with Milan in the ascendancy. We seem to have settled for extra time; maybe Rafa fancies our chances against Milan's tired old legs.<br /><br />Mind you, by now those in Red shirts aren't looking too spritely either.<br />Our dynamism isn't helped by our inspirational captain having to play at right-back. But it's a wise move by Rafa. In the space of 10 minutes Super Steve saves enough of our bacon for a super-sized fry-up.<br /><br />Out of the blue a long ball arcs over Traore, and Newcastle-reject Tomasson half-connects and slices wide. Ouch. This is torture.<br /><br />After 15 minutes of mostly Milan pressure, Smicer collapses with cramp.<br />I know exactly how he feels.<br /><br />The 2nd period begins with a few forays into Milanese territory, but we don't commit enough forward so Milan win the ball back easily and continue to dominate possession.<br /><br />10 minutes to go, and Carra stretches to make yet another last-gasp clearance before collapsing clutching his groin. Worldwide, every Red holds their breath. Stevie G moves to centre-back until our hero limps back onto the pitch. A minute later, Carra stretches to make another crucial interception. What a hero.<br /><br />6 minutes to go. And Pirlo almost breaks through but Didi blocks him just outside the box. It's now obvious that the Reds are knackered, and that we're not saving ourselves for a final minute sucker-punch cavalry charge. We'll defend what we have.<br /><br />Then, in the 118th minute, all was lost.<br /><br />Finally one of Milan's crosses makes it through, and Sheva's bullet header from 8 yards is brilliantly saved by Jerzy.<br />But the ball falls at Sheva's feet.<br />And I saw him fire in the rebound from 2 yards out.<br />Gutted, my insides lurched. We'd lost. After all that, we'd been solksjaered.<br /><br />I can barely believe my eyes when the replay shows Jerzy throwing out a hand to deflect Sheva's shot over the bar. It's the most astonishing save I've ever seen. A true wondersave. Unbelievably against all the odds, we are still alive.<br /><br />Our incredible reprieve lifts us and the superb Didi Hamann charges forward, and Vlad wins a free-kick in the very last minute. We sing Riise's song, hoping for a fairytale ending. But not this time.<br /><br />The final whistle blows for one of greatest cup finals of all time.<br /><br />Diego Maradona comments afterwards:<br />"Even the Brazil team that won the 1970 World Cup could not have staged a comeback with Milan leading 3-0."</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: bold;">3 - Coda</span><span style="font-size: 85%;"><br /><br />So, how confident were you?<br />Did you believe?<br /><br />We were facing a team of superstars who'd already won this competition on penalties.<br />At the Milan fans’ end.<br />Against Dida, the penalty save expert.<br />And we'd missed 7 of our last 15 penalties.<br />Including one less than an hour ago.<br />So, no problems then.<br /><br />Of the 22 players on the field, 21 look like they're eating lemons.<br />But one is wearing a wide grin and having a laugh with his coaching staff: Jerzy Dudek. Bizarrely, Carra runs over to Jerzy and starts waving his arms. We'd soon discover what that was all about.<br /><br />Meanwhile in London the noise is back. We shake each other shouting 'Believe!', clench fists and kiss badges. Huddles are forming mimicking the players in the centre circle. All around expressions range from stunned, to petrified, to expectant, to manic.<br />Here we go.<br /><br />Serginho steps up first.<br />And amazingly Jerzy begins to run through an aerobics routine on his goal-line! This obviously brings back bad memories for the Brazilian, who completely bottles it and puts the ball into row F.<br />We react with restrained cheers; mindful our lads are hardly penalty kings either.<br /><br />Our first kick is Didi versus Dida.<br />In contrast to Jerzy, Dida looks like he's been turned to stone, a bloody huge stone mind you.<br />Didi missed a pen in Cardiff, but he's obviously been practicing with the national team, he puts his kick into the corner.<br />Gasps of relief.<br /><br />Next up is Pirlo, a dead-ball specialist.<br />Now Jerzy's dancing on the line. Pirlo does the Aldo shuffle but chokes, Jerzy guesses right and saves his weak shot.<br />Our wild cheers segue into a high volume rendition of "We've got a Big Pole in our Goal!"<br /><br />Next up is Djibril Cisse.<br />Seven months ago he was minutes away from having a foot amputated.<br />Now he completes the fairytale comeback by sending Dida the wrong way.<br />Now we're really celebrating.<br /><br />Now it's Tomasson's turn.<br />He ignores Jerzy's impression of a man guiding in a jumbo jet and blasts it home.<br /><br />Riise steps forward next.<br />We expect him to blast it, but the huge Brazilian goalie gets his fingertips to the placed shot.<br />Doh! Heads are slapped, hair is ruffled.<br /><br />Kaka takes the next kick.<br />Jerzy does the Brucie homage wobbly legs routine this time. But Kaka ignores him and contemptuously knocks it in the top corner. Ooooh.<br /><br />There are nervous gasps - we know the next kick is crucial one.<br />And up steps Vlad, for what is probably his last kick in a Red shirt.<br />Gerrrinthere! He secures lifetime cult hero status by sending Dida the wrong way.<br />After jumping up and down for a while we remind everyone in earshot that he's Czech, great and really good friends with Patrik Berger.<br /><br />And so Sheva must score.<br />Our small huddle holds its breath.<br />Jerzy stretches, wobbles, then crouches…<br />The European Footballer of the Year drives it straight and hard...<br />Jerzy has already dived, but flicks out a hand...<br /><br />How can I possibly describe what happened next?<br /><br />Basically, the place went berserk.<br />Jumping, screaming, cheering and yelling.<br />An explosion of noise.<br />Then came the random hugging of strangers.<br />Then came the exclamations of achievement.<br />Then came the singing.<br />I can do the experience pathetically little justice.<br />You had to be there.<br /><br />What a night.<br /><br />We'd created a legend, and several hundred million around the world witnessed it.<br />We saw Stevie G kiss the Cup, and found the dream was real after all.</span><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-45716539421332968502010-02-20T01:19:00.010+00:002010-02-20T01:56:50.537+00:00Lost in Patagonia<span style="font-size:85%;">Five years ago today, I embarked upon an adventure.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">It wasn't until my bus dropped me off at a bend in the road in the middle of P</span><span style="font-size:85%;">atagon</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ia</span><span style="font-size:85%;">,</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTwKkCPYpEwNgZ_CGKAa8Xl_qP9E4osUscMJgqwCH3q4uERay1zbH0Z-yqGyGBUlIytlfJYCzIr_j8E-Amipuj3IXukzwh7ZwIEVYPGmqRBGJAENxNpMntv9N-68F8BOtvUvIbjL1D6-z/s1600-h/DSC00614.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 4px 4px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 235px; height: 189px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdTwKkCPYpEwNgZ_CGKAa8Xl_qP9E4osUscMJgqwCH3q4uERay1zbH0Z-yqGyGBUlIytlfJYCzIr_j8E-Amipuj3IXukzwh7ZwIEVYPGmqRBGJAENxNpMntv9N-68F8BOtvUvIbjL1D6-z/s200/DSC00614.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440137720439966226" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> and I was the only one to get off, that I realised this wasn't exactly a tourism hotspot.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Now I really had left Gringoland, that tourist-friendly urban face of South America. This was the real Patagonia: a land of soaring peaks and </span><span style="font-size:85%;">glacial gorges</span><span style="font-size:85%;">, raging rivers and impenetrable forests, howling storms, desolate plains and lustrous lakes. The uttermost end of the Earth.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I began walking, past the last artefacts of human habitation - the odd ramshackle hut and rusting farm machinery. My only living companions the seemingly feral groups of cattle that weaved their way between the beech trees. Before long I'd reached a river crossing, where pleasant gurgles mingled with the ominous buzz of mosquitoes. Sudden stabbing pains indicated an involuntary blood donation to the local ecosystem, despite layers of repellent that made me smell like an incident in a chemical</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> factory.<br /><br />By late afternoon I reached the campsite, or rather I reached a sign with a picture of tent and the word 'Campo'. But no tents. Maybe my fellow campers were just behind me? So I occupied a desirable riverfront location and </span><span style="font-size:85%;">waited for company. None came. I crawled into my sleeping bag wondering: is this trail closed? Or have I got lost?<br /><br />Doubts grew the next morning when I awoke to the sound of hooves. I opened my tent to find a gaucho (cowboy) outside, mounted on a gigantic brown horse.<br />He looked agitated. Hespokeveryquickly. In Spanish. I think.<br />I smiled dumbly, "Lo siento, yo no comprendo."<br />He wore the exasperated familiar to parents of small children everywhere and repeated his question a bit louder. But he might as well have been explaining how differential gearboxes work. I was baffled. And slightly concerned that what he might actually be saying is: 'Get off my land'.<br /><br />Tension rose. I noticed the pistol on his hip. Suddenly, a breakthrough! A word I recognise; he's looking for his cows! And I point him towards the nearby creek. He beams happily and canters off to find his charges. Leaving me to wonder why locating cows was never discussed in any of my S</span><span style="font-size:85%;">panish classes.<br /><br />I packed up and hit</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5f-0dxrnVO-wF8ZE1hzJ5DLB9RpmxO6u7a-RJfsPAHU2DFsSfidJjTvqkrdrAVDu2ESJwBhwS-Fua9t-ZnIUS5Yli_6MIOvaDPydZYQSkJAzWA8TLhGA8guX43ihpWuc-In6cRAQviR14/s1600-h/DSC00630.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 4px 4px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 241px; height: 181px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5f-0dxrnVO-wF8ZE1hzJ5DLB9RpmxO6u7a-RJfsPAHU2DFsSfidJjTvqkrdrAVDu2ESJwBhwS-Fua9t-ZnIUS5Yli_6MIOvaDPydZYQSkJAzWA8TLhGA8guX43ihpWuc-In6cRAQviR14/s200/DSC00630.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440134524427600610" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"> the trail again. This time the direction was up. Several hours and an ice-choked pass later, I was sitting </span><span style="font-size:85%;">on a precipitous ridge beneath the titanic basalt turrets that give <a href="http://www.besthike.com/southamerica/chile/castillo.html">Cerro Castillo</a> - 'Castle Mountain', its name. From my rocky throne I surveyed the glacier and the raging river far below. My own private </span><span style="font-size:85%;">Patagonia. Population of my kingdom: 1.<br /><br />That night I camped beneath the mountain's formidable walls. It was colder here, more exposed, with only wind-stunted trees for shelter. By dusk the skies were battleship grey and the wind was gusting, but I easily fell asleep inside my sleeping bag's warm cocoon.<br /><br />At midnight, my cosy tent became a haunted house. I awoke in absolute primeval blackness, a shrieking wind battering my flimsy walls as the tent-poles creaked and groaned. And then the rain came. I finally fell asleep and dreamt of a galleon in a storm.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">By dawn, it was obvious the tent was one strong gust away from catastrophic structur</span><span style="font-size:85%;">al failure. So much for a lie-in. I packed hurriedly, made myself weatherproof and quickly dis</span><span style="font-size:85%;">mantl</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ed the tent before the weather did it for me. I had breakfast hiding amongst stunted bushes. The gla</span><span style="font-size:85%;">mo</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ur of adventure tourism.<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgKiQp_hRcVLauTuyV86h2DAq8nSb4e_UZDJ1s-AAyr_IRug_zDj4lsgyeJeV5gXbUdYq3Y6Sd4GzmfT2mO1eesFX3nugrmRQ3B39obI7rmktlPheLMVVvbgpzUGN9g_m2H13gn6cZyhqy/s1600-h/DSC00686.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 4px 4px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 218px; height: 162px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgKiQp_hRcVLauTuyV86h2DAq8nSb4e_UZDJ1s-AAyr_IRug_zDj4lsgyeJeV5gXbUdYq3Y6Sd4GzmfT2mO1eesFX3nugrmRQ3B39obI7rmktlPheLMVVvbgpzUGN9g_m2H13gn6cZyhqy/s200/DSC00686.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440131857262439218" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">My way out involved a treacherous climb over boulders slick with rain, high ab</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ov</span><span style="font-size:85%;">e a mesmerisingly beautiful turquoise laguna. The final icy pass was so slippery it resembled w</span><span style="font-size:85%;">alking up a b</span><span style="font-size:85%;">ob</span><span style="font-size:85%;">sleigh run.</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />At the top I drank in the view, on the other side I looked down a precipitous scree slope.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> It was very steep. It reminded me of That Slope, the one I recklessly mountain biked down in New Zealand. The one where I learnt that when crashing, it's always best to try to steer into something soft.<br /><br />I consulted my guidebook, hoping to find mention of a secret shortcut or a magic doorway to a taverna with an open fire, but it was unequivocal: descend the scree to a bare rocky ridge. No mean feat, the gale-force wind and loose scree underfoot conspired to make me wobble like a jelly in an earthquake. And it was a long way to tumble.<br /><br />Despite being wind-blasted by rain, hail and grit, and several heart-stopping slips, I reached the ridge, where a new problem became apparent. Out here, there wasn't much to distinguish path from wilderness, and I was relying on the presence of cairns. Unfortunately, the cairns were becoming ever more tumbledown, until now they had become indistinguishable from random trailside rubble. My trail had petered out and my only map looked like it had been hand-drawn from the space shuttle through<br />binoculars.<br /><br />Lost in the sheeting rain, with team morale dipping, I crouched behind a boulder for an emergency chocolate break. Despite the water dribbling off my nose, I was soon laughing at the ridiculousness of my situation.<br />What's that?<br />The chocolate must have granted me superpowers; beyond - I saw footsteps in the mud, heading down the valley. I decided to follow.<br /><br />The footsteps led down to the treeline, and into a dead end. There, the footsteps became random and erratic. I recognised this pattern: it's called being lost. I looked around nervously, half-expecting to find skeletons of long-lost backpackers.<br /><br />Good sign: no bodies; if they got out - so could I. Now too tired to climb back up the valley, my rudimentary map did 'suggest' that somewhere in the spooky misty forest ahead lay a path back to civilization. So be it.<br /><br />The subsequent log clambering, stream wading, mud squelching and bush-bashing were exhilaratingly terrifying. Each footstep was taking me deeper into the wild, either I found this path, or I was really, really lost.<br /><br />What was I doing here?<br /><br />When I finally stumbled across that lonely trail 20 minutes later, I'd found my answer.<br />I was writing a new scene in the screenplay of my life.<br />I threw off my pack and celebrated ecstatically.<br />Make sure your life makes a great movie.<br /><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-26149357279898152012010-02-12T00:53:00.007+00:002010-02-12T01:33:47.587+00:00You have no influence: how to use it<span style="font-size:85%;">Where do policies come from?<br /><br />Does a sweaty government minister abruptly wake in the middle of night exclaiming "We must do this!". Or are they contrived by a panel of senior politicos as they draft their election manifesto? Or perhaps the cabinet has a suggestion box, and every week one is drawn at random to be enacted. Or maybe a conversation on a <a href="http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6797844.ece">Mediterranean yacht</a> is transcribed into a memo a few days later, and then amplified into draft legislation by a gaggle of mandarins eager to impress their boss.<br /><br />It's a serious question - where do the ideas that come to shape our world actually come from?<br />The public - or the political elite? Which would you prefer?<br /> <br />Consider the recently launched <a href="http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/">Robin Hood Tax</a> campaign. The basic idea was elucidated by Yale academic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tobin">James Tobin</a>, who proposed adding a levy on currency transactions to deter speculation. That was 1972, since then the idea has marinated and evolved in the minds of various economists. Some governments have even talked about enacting it into law, but only if everybody else does it.<br /><br />So where <span style="font-weight: bold;">do</span> policies come from? Say you think the Robin Hood Tax is a great idea, how would you get it into law? Perhaps one day you'll find yourself on a sunny yacht with the Lord High Chamberlain, you get on well, you have a chat, he likes the cut of your jib, he just <span style="font-style: italic;">loves</span> your new idea... a few weeks later, it's on the order papers.<br /><br />But more than likely, you're outside the inner circle. It's a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network">small world</a>, but not <span style="font-style: italic;">THAT </span>small. You're still too many hops away from the high and mighty. No waterside pow-wows for you. Know your place, citizen.<br />Most individuals have no influence.<br />And yet, collectively, individuals have huge influence. Together, we elect governments.<br />So policies come from us, after all?<br />Not quite.<br /><br />Voting in an election is like choosing which door to walk through. One door might be safe and sturdy looking, one might be slick and slimy, another might be downright scary. You pick your door and enter. You do not get to position and decorate your own door. Slightly inflexible, but them's the rules.<br /><br />So how can you use your choice to further the prospects of something you believe in? For instance, you could ask your prospective MP if they will support the Robin Hood Tax. If they say yes, vote for them. If a majority of your fellow constituents agree, you have your representative. If not, no-one really cared. It must have been a half-baked idea anyway. Get over it.<br /><br />So there's two challenges: first, you've got to convince the majority of your fellow electors this is an issue worth caring about. Talk about it. Individually, tweets and blog postings are insignificant, they won't change the world, but they might get your friends thinking. Who might mention it to a relative, who tells their partner, who...<br /><br />The second challenge is holding your representative to account once they're elected. Here again, social media can help. If they renege, ensure every mention of their name is accompanied by #RHTliar, let your fellow constituents know they've been betrayed. These days politicians are very sensitive about their personal brand; they know if it's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Parliamentary_expenses_scandal#Resignations_and_disciplinary_action">sullied</a>, they'll be out of a job.<br /><br />And if, collectively, you can get enough of the MPs to <a href="http://www.theyworkforyou.com">keep their word</a>... job done.<br /><br />Social media offers you the chance to say to politicians:<br />We'll decide on the ideas, you just implement them.<br />If you want it to, it might just work.<br /><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-74160024981909933802010-02-09T23:11:00.005+00:002010-02-09T23:28:22.911+00:00All your opinion are belong to Us<span style="font-size:85%;">The BBC's <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/">Virtual Revolution</a> documentary contained a fascinating relation: the Chinese government pays a massive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing">astroturfing</a> army to massage public opinion on Chinese blogs and message boards. They're known pejoratively as "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Army">Wu Mao Dang</a>" - 'the 50 Cent Army' - because that's what they're paid for each pro-government posting they make.<br /><br />That's the carrot. Here's the stick. A blogger called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tan_Zuoren">Tan Zuoren</a> started asking questions about why so many schools collapsed during the Sichuan earthquake. A lot of Communist Party buildings survived. Shoddy building standards? Backhanders? He was <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8505399.stm">jailed</a> for 5 years yesterday. Don't ask questions, comrade.<br /><br />A friend suggested, in the spirit of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Proposal">Swift</a>, that the Chinese should outsource their astroturfing to the American public. The US could then pay back its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Foreign_ownership">foreign debt</a>, 50 cents at a time...<br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-38154754568600134702010-01-26T21:17:00.009+00:002010-01-26T22:25:50.804+00:00The Power of Ridicule<span style="font-size:85%;">In the aftermath of the July 2005 bombings, a friend and I discussed the appropriate response during the course of an afternoon's walk. We were unanimous. They could only be one response to such an outrage! A SITCOM.<br /><br />We reasoned a security clampdown would be counter-productive. It would only frighten the public and glamorise the bad guys. No, prevention is better than cure. And so we thought the best way to stop young angry men from becoming suicide bombers would be to make the very idea of martyrdom ridiculous. Make the protagonists not shadowy villains, but hapless clowns.<br /><br />We never penned our sitcom, after all, we were technologists not screenwriters. Fortunately, a group of far greater minds - Chris Morris and the writers of Peep Show - had the same idea. The result is a film called "<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/24/chris-morris-four-lions">Four Lions</a>", recently premièred at Sundance. It is jihad as farce. Great work.<br /><br />You can write essays on the folly of established religion. You can deliver impassioned speeches. But you'll never be as awesomely subversive as an episode of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Ted">Father Ted</a>. Belief can not be denied. Only ridiculed.<br /><br />You may say: comedy is just bourgeois chatter. But how many satirical programmes are there in Iran, or China? Satire can't topple governments, but it still has the power to influence. That's why they ban it.<br /><br />Postscript. One day, an angry old preacher tells a young lonely loser of the glory and heavenly gratification that await him in martyrdom. But our message got to him first. And he laughs in the old man's face...</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-34358926305303494122010-01-06T22:17:00.003+00:002010-01-07T20:25:31.847+00:00Snow Joke<a title="Snowy Britain seen from NASA's Terra satellite, January 7th 2010" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8447023.stm"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 250px; height: 300px;" src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47061000/jpg/_47061196_greatbritainjpg.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Transport chaos again in London today. Snowmaggedon? Not quite. Just a few hours of snow flurries, and a centimetre or two on the ground. But the train operators weren't taking any chances, pre-emptively cancelling most of their services, and introducing an 'emergency timetable'. The fragility of British transport infrastructure is a personal bugbear - but never mind, I'm sure "the market will fix it". At least this excellent <a href="http://www.transportchaos.org/">Transport Chaos</a> mash-up made me laugh.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-36968203387630896962010-01-05T19:56:00.000+00:002010-01-05T20:21:42.980+00:00What makes a message go viral?The New Scientist has investigated, appropriately enough, by running an <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427392.800-atomic-dogs-the-making-of-an-internet-sensation.html">experiment</a>. Through their article I stumbled Judith Donath's paper on "<a href="http://smg.media.mit.edu/classes/library/donath.socialsupernets.pdf">Signals in Social Supernets</a>", which has a good explanation of why people are so keen to share things they didn't make themselves. (And that impulse to share is stronger than any fear of the law).<br /><br />My professional life involves the study of social networks, and speaking from personal experience, I agree with Donath's explanation. Basically, it's about social proof. About demonstrating your position in the information food chain. You're In The Know. The truffle pig. Quality is scarce, but your effort filters and aggregates it. Sharing is, indeed, caring.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-68746479709402905162009-07-20T20:20:00.002+01:002010-02-09T23:29:11.343+00:00Saluting The Great Adventure<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/hires/a11_h_44_6642.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 304px; height: 313px;" src="http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/hires/a11_h_44_6642.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">40 years ago tonight, men walked on the moon. I'm too young to have witnessed <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/02/apollo-11-man-on-moon">humanity's greatest adventure</a>, but the event has always inspired me. And, it seems, it <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090715/full/460314a.html">inspired a lot of others too</a>. I remember having a big colourful hardback science book as a kid; on the front cover the familiar scientific montage of animals, crystals, volcanoes and waves; but on the back, just a single image: this one. </span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">It's an image that captures the imagination, one that inspires. Intrepid adventurers hovering above a strange barren world, the blue gem of home gleaming in the distance. As a boy, I never knew anyone who wanted to be a train driver or a fireman. We all wanted to be astronauts. I still do, although now I have to concede my best chance is experiencing it vicariously. </span><span style="font-size:85%;">So what happened to the great space adventure?</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />Perhaps it was too expensive? The Apollo Project cost $25 billion at 1969 rates, (equivalent to $135 billion today). The Iraq War has so far cost the US Treasury $845 billion, (although <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2921527420080302?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&sp=true">one Nobel prize winning economist</a> estimates it's closer to $3 trillion). Put like that, it sounds more like a desperate failure of leadership.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Speaking today the Apollo astronauts spoke of the <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17488-apollo-astronauts-advocate-trip-to-mars.html">power of great endeavours</a>, how a mission to Mars had the potential to unite humanity in a common goal. And I wonder, why do we spend so much 'defending' ourselves from nations who could be partners in the greatest adventure in human history? Why do we tolerate the unemployment of countless millions worldwide, when their eager hands could help build it? Oh well, perhaps I'm still just that naive kid, looking up the stars. Dreaming. </span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315538325681252551.post-42803974508429885952009-01-21T09:44:00.001+00:002010-02-09T23:30:12.538+00:00The Age of Responsibility<span style="font-size:85%;">The mark of a great speech is the opportunity it allows each individual listening to decide what it actually meant. And having just watched the rerun of Obama's speech on the late night news, the theme that struck me was "the age of responsibility".<br /><br />Responsibility to our fellow man, to our communities, our nations and our world.<br /><br />Bush was elected by a society who wanted the good life, and didn't much care who suffered to provide it. Gordon Brown is currently trying to convince us he can fix the broken system and bring back the feelgood factor. Obama's message is more courageous: the world has changed, and we must change with it.<br /><br />"Put away your childish things". The west has been living like trust-fund kids, spoiled by unearned wealth, bequeathed by our forebears and perpetuated by our clever accountants. Now it's time to grow up, to see that what gives life meaning is not conspicuous consumption, but honestly making something that endures.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16655331943400688600noreply@blogger.com0