Learn to Adapt

These are my links for February 27th:

• 12 Screencasting Tools For Creating Video Tutorials – Its been around for ages, but you can't argue with quick, simple, and effective. If you have to teach (or better yet EPSS) folks computer applications, screencasting is effective and cheap. This great lists includes FREE tools (for great ROI).
• Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design | Tactical Technology Collective – Presentation is everything: "This project aims to raise awareness, introduce concepts, and promote good practice in information design – a powerful tool for advocacy, outreach, research, organization and education."
• Extend Your Brain With Evernote – This isn't open to the public yet, but it is another example of how Internet (Web) technology is changing the way we learn and remember. Einstein was joking when he said "I never remember anything I can lookup". Still a joke?

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At dinner last night with friends, we discussed politics and many agreed that Barack Obama did not have enough leadership experience to prepare him for POTUS. So, I decided to do a quick scorecard of “leadership experience” of all the candidates. I decided after throwing it together to post it here.

First some disclaimers: This scorecard is entirely arbitrary, quick, and dirty. It is also really a scorecard of leadership/political/management experience instead of a true analysis of “leadership”. The list of qualities of “leadership” is lengthy and arguable, and I will leave that argument to the thousands of books already written on the topic. Finally, as shown below, the scorecard is simply a quickly-assembled list of 11 roles/experiences that might prepare a candidate to be successful as POTUS. The 11 are:

• VP
• State Governor
• Cabinet (heading any large federal government agency)
• US Senate
• US House of Representatives
• State elected official
• Local elected official
• Military officer
• CEO (or any managing executive role in a large company)
• MBA
• Political Science, Foreign Relations, or Public Admin degree

And then I checked Wikipedia to complete the scorecard for the three remaining candidates for POTUS (Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain). For contrast, I included the previous four POTUSs (POTUSi?) as well. The results:

But, obviously, all these things are not equal. So I decided to weight the 11 categories like this: VP: 5, Governor: 4, Cabinet: 3, Senate and H of R: 2, every thing else gets a 1. I also spotted a few points for Hillary’s First Lady (3 points under VP) and gave Reagan a CEO point for his presidency of SAG. With that weighted scale, the leadership experience scorecard winners are:

So, if we are to judge how successful a candidate will be as POTUS based on their “leadership” experience, the best of the bunch would be both of the Bush boys. And the recent favorites from both parties (Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan) only score a 6 – half of the total for the clear winner, Bush the First. As for our current three candidates, it is a close race. The three points spotted to Hillary for for First Lady put’s her on top of McCain by one point.

Now, to wrap things up, I will spot one last set of (completely arbitrary) points. I start with the assumption that every day you are alive you gain wisdom that makes you a better leader. So, for every year in age, I will give each candidate one-tenth of a point. Hillary gets 6, Obama gets 4.5, and McCain gets 7.1. The final tally this increasingly arbitrary scorecard of leadership experience:

• John McCain: 12.1
• Hillary Clinton: 12.0
• Barack Obama: 8.5

So, when you do this (admittedly arbitrary) math, Obama is considerably less experienced for the job (30% less so than Hillary or McCain).

Now we just need to decide if leadership experience is what we need most in a POTUS now…

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These are my links for February 21st:

• Requirements of a PLE Framework (Mohamed Amine) – From Mohamed's blog on Technology Enhanced Learning, a brief but broad list of the attributes of a successful personal learning environment (PLE).
• e-Learning Reloaded: Top 50 Web 2.0 Tools for Info Junkies, Researchers & Students | OEDb – These are some of the best tools for organizing, citing, searching, and more online (according to Jessica Hupp).
• What is eLearning 2.0? : eLearning Technology – An older post from Tony Karrer where he provides his very e-learning focused view of what Learning 2.0 is. He touches on very good points. What's missing may be how learning behavior will change based on the new paradigm.
• Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Crisis : eLearning Technology – Another great thought provoker from Tony Karrer. He posits The Long Tail" with attention as the X-axis instead of sales. Then he discusses the challenge that corporate learning has in continuing to be relevant in this new attention economy.

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Here is a simple illustration I put together for a client that displays the six primary monetization methods on the Web. Is is a simplification and expansion on a post from Dion Hinchcliffe from awhile back. The only real “Web 2.0″ advances in monetization lurk in the “back door” that was opened up using APIs. Recently, Larry Dignan reiterated a common refrain that APIs are the future of Web monetization based on very rough numbers of how much Amazon makes from its numerous Web Services (additional interesting point here). While the numbers are not yet firm they are the only new monetization method that has arisen with Web 2.0. The illustration shows the monetization methods from the traditional “front door” of a Website as well the new opportunities opened up by APIs (all presented simply enough for even the busiest executive):

And here is a very brief summary of the six methods:

Advertising: The Web site owner sells spots on the website (“inventory”) to advertisers. There are numerous models for this type of monetization. Some are fixed price, some are per displays (“impressions”), other are based on the visitor clicking or taking some other action from the add link. Example: AOL sells premium ad banner locations for up to $500K per day.

Subscriptions: The Web site owner only makes some or all of the content or functionality available to customers who create an account and use a credit card (or other means) to subscribe to use the content or services. Rhapsody.com charges users $10/month to be able to listen to millions of songs from thousand of artists anytime, anywhere (online – additional charge to download a song).

Retail: The Web site sells products or services directly to the site visitor. This is a single transaction as opposed to an ongoing subscription. Example: iTunes makes it money be selling individual songs for download.

Donations: The Web site allows people who find the site’s content or services useful to donate money to keep the service functional. Example: RadioParadise.com is a user-supported online radio station that generates all its revenue from listener donations.

Fees: This is a B2B charge where the Web site makes some or all of its content or services available to other businesses for a fixed fee. Example: Amazon.com opened many of its online merchant functionality to other companies and generated an additional $250M in revenue in 2005.

Commissions: This is a B2B charge where the Web site makes some or all of its content or services available to other businesses and collects a percentage of the other business’ resulting revenue. Example: Google AdSense allows everyone to put Google text ads on their website and get a percentage of the money Google makes from the advertising.

And that is a wrap of the original document. But…

Coming Soon: Web 2.0 Show Me The Money (Part 2) – wherein I revisit the illustration and update it based on recent developments and the great monetization summary article from Professor Michael Rappa. (I will try to get part two up in the next 30 days!). In the meantime, please leave comments especially if you can point out everything I missed!

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These are my links for February 18th:

• The Pirates Can’t Be Stopped – An interesting look at the seemingly futile battle against piracy. This has huge implications for life as we know it. We have had IP since the first copyright law in 1663. How can we adapt to a new model that will still reward our “starving artists”?
• First Look: Kluster’s Market Approach to Crowdsourcing – A nice article on the forthcoming Kluster.com. Sounds like a nice spin on crowdsourcing plus a predictive market for the ideas generated plus financial incentive. As these markets grow people need to learn how to harness their potential

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