Thoughts on Reboot 10
July 1, 2008 at 10:46 am
This blog was featured in last week’s ebusiness supplement of the Irish Independent. While I was delighted by the publicity, I noted that the impression I’ve made on the journalist is of a kind of tech-scene party girl! It is with some trepidation therefore that I’m posting below my thoughts on Reboot 10 which I attended last week. I will try and keep them serious and meaty and will not make any mention of the kicking street after-party.
I come to Reboot every year to get my brain pulled out and squeezed and then unceremoniously dropped back in again. That’s not entirely what I got this year. There was less optimism about the future and a sense of darkness was evident from some speakers.
Howard RheingoldTor Nørretranders - Share your Shit - was the first message I took from Reboot 10. He made the point that biological organisms exist by consuming the shit of other organisms. So too with us. We must share in order to thrive.- Stowe Boyd, self-declared webthropologist (I like that title) reminded us that we are living at the end of the Industrial era, the start of the new. Whereas last year, this signalled excitement, this year I detected a dark message of caution. He paints a grim picture of the gap between rich and poor, about the billions of people who live without government in feral cities whose lives are controlled by warlords and criminals. Individuals have discovered that happiness doesn’t come from being a cog in the mass civilisation that’s been sold to us. According to Boyd, the shift to many-to-many communications sees more people living on the edge. So for those on the edge (Edgelanders) with the most connections, we/they owe it to the world to create linkages and build bridges to the ones that are overlooked. The web brings us a sort of freedom, but we must use this freedom to reach out to those people who governments have missed.
It seemed to be quite retrospective. I heard too many speakers start off with ‘the history of things’. Even Howard Rheingold did a piece on how the invention of the printing press opened the way for a wave of transformations, and how it’s the same with the web today… yada yada…Maybe I liked it because it was at the start and I was feeling fresh and open. But Lee Bryant gave us a history of how industrial practices have changed. Jeremy Keith’s talk was billed as ‘a starting point for discussions on ideas such as public domain, copyright, and the emergence of the reputation economy on the web” whereas it was in fact, him talking about the history of Irish traditional music! The art appreciation vibe was carried on by Cennyd Bowles who gave a talk on “Beauty in Web Design” in which he referenced not one website but talked instead about what art is and Don Norman’s cognitive science on beauty.Who was briliiant and inspiring?
- JP Rangaswami the coolest CTO that’s ever walked this earth! He got up and talked on topic (yes folks, the theme this year was free!!) and obviously straight from the hip. He made several succinct points:
- Value is what drives the decision of where something is free and not free. It is the customer who decides that. They are always willing to pay for something they value. He gives the example of his kids who’ll pay £4.99 for a ring-tone but not £9.99 for a music download.
- Artificial scarcity - for each and every artificial scarcity there is an equal and opposite artificial abundance. Hacker culture is simply about trying to get at stuff with artificial barriers. People are fundamentally not thieves. What some companies call stealing/hacking, is where they created an artificial barrier and others are simply trying to overcome it.
- Figure how what people want to pay for and apply it. Stop trying to charge people for what they have an aversion to pay for, and charge them for things they value.
- Chris Messina raised my awareness of the fact that there there is no ‘view source’ in Silverlight. The ideology is that we don’t want to share (either bugs or ingenuity). The ability to view source is necessary for our evolution of migrating from A to B and something better. This Olympics will see around 2 billion people get Silverlight because all the web content for the olympics is on it. That’s developing the web?
- Jyri Engestrom who just is Rock & Roll! His background is sociology and I like the way he approaches technology from that standpoint.
- He talked about social objects, they are what connect people. So you’ve always got communities of interest based around a thing. He talked about communities of potato growers in Italy. I thought about all the social networking groups that I am active in are all around areas of genuine interest to me - books, travel, photographs… I’m not an avid FB’er because that’s just about collections of friends. Mine aren’t all online, so it doesn’t hold the same interest to me. “Good web apps take that thing and add value to it. What makes an item interesting is what people say about it and do with it.
- Social peripheral vision. How in the next 2 years we’re going to see services that make us more socially aware, eg. Maps that show where my friends are. Photos with facial recognition, etc.
- When asked the question “Is privacy still dead?” he answered that it’s going more in the realms of audience management.
All up, I enjoyed. And I will be back for Reboot 11. It got me thinking and that’s what counts. Surprised that I was the only one in the Irish delegation. Took it upon myself to take good notes and party with the best of them as a result. My heartfelt thanks to the organisers who are stars. Big love to Copenhagen which wins my heart more every year. (And it’s got cheaper cocktails than Dublin).
Ups & Downs of Being a Kenyan Web Entrepreneur
June 27, 2008 at 11:54 am
Reboot tends to be an almost exclusively white affair, so it was with great delight that I kicked off day 2 listening to Segeni Ng’Ethe of Mamamikes.com tell us about the ups and downs of running an internet business in Kenya.
Mamamikes facilitates payments from Kenyan expats who want to transfer vouchers back home. Check out their youtube vid.
This can be practical gifts eg. Shopping vouchers, electricity bill, sentimental gifts like roses, cultural gifts eg. Cow (to your granny!). I think that’s a great idea because it overcomes the difficulty of sending money to a home with perhaps an alcoholic parent. They’re seeing a huge growth in vouchers for mobile phones. And ring tones are huge – of local music of course!
In Africa, the mobile phone is the primary communications device because many people don’t have laptops and the bandwidth required to connect them to the internet. As a result, more SMS’ s are sent per day in Nairobi than in New York City. And kids are addicted to Facebook there just as they are everywhere, the only difference is that Kenyan kids access it by mobile phone.
What’s it like to be an entrepreneur in Nairobi?
Challenging. The Internet is still a growing concept in Kenya. Bandwidth is difficult, so you’ve got to plan around that – for example, my email is set up so that everything with more than 1.5mb goes straight to the server, because it would block every other email coming in. When you’re planning on uploading development or even just a simple youtube you’ve got to plan in advance.
Internet Costs in Kenya
56k connection speed costs $400 per month. Now they’ve moved to satellite, they have hooked up with others in their building and now pay $150 for 128k connection. There is no fibre in Kenya. But it has become political, and is on the agenda, but don’t be expecting too much too soon. (Sounds like Ireland)
Recent Violence in Kenya
How the phone was used and his service during the violence in December. What happened was that the elections socialised people to be tribal. So when the results came out, people went to war.
• If there’s violence in your area, people were asked to send an SMS. This was then added to a Google Map so people could see where the flashpionts for violence were.
• Crackdown on tracking hate SMS’s including viral
• Scratch card for phone credit is distributed physically. When the fighting was on, people were unable to leave the house and the shopkeepers weren’t there. Showed the people how reliant they were on the phones. Mamamikes was used by people sending credit to loved ones.
What he expects in the coming years from Africa is innovation the way phones are being used.
It’s like the phone is our version of the internet.
10 Things Customers Would Tell You If You Asked
June 26, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Great talk by Eric Reiss. Someone should get him to Ireland to talk on customer service. Passionate, engaging and very very entertaining.
- Don’t tell me how great, be great
- Go the extra mile
- Don’t get in my way when I’m trying to shop
- If I know what I’m looking for help me find it
- If I have questions, I want answers, not sales talk
- Tell me you’re looking for my size, don’t just turn and leave
- If you expect me to buy something tell me what it costs
- Are your own affairs so important that you feel justified in ignoring me?
- Don’t make me feel stupid
- If you make a mistake admit it
He goes through wine.com as a case study of the above being done badly. I’m thinking - he’d have a field day going through the Golden Spiders nominees!
If we do not demand good service we are never going to receive it.
People of Ireland are you listening?
Addendum in September
In the last three days, I’ve been helpful to 3 different people and in every case I did not receive a thank you for my help. The first was in the supermarket when an Eastern European couple dropped €200 in cash on the floor. I picked it up, ran after them and gave it to them. They didn’t say thank you, their faces remained impassive. I stood there waiting for some sort of interaction and they thought I wanted money!! They tried to pawn me off with €10. How insulting. Not having command of the language is no excuse. I can say thank you in 8 languages, I’m sure they can say it in 1.
Today I noticed a prominent website that had a prominent typo on the home page. I was on to their Head Office about something anyway, I told the receptionist about it, and she was quite rude about it. I know it’s not her job to look after the website, but it is her job to be the voice of that organisation and at the very least placate an old spelling nazi like myself. For God’s sake is she thick - if you’re just about to put someone through to the MD, surely you’d have the cop on to be polite to them?
Lastly, I’ve just bent over backwards for a client. Delivered more than was required and way more than is being paid for. This client hasn’t said thanks to me once. They simply take and don’t give the slightest thanks back.
I’m feeling a bit disillusioned. Representing Brightspark I try so hard to do points 1 & 2 above. Yet people’s rudeness throws it back in my face and makes me question why I bother trying at all. As a customer I consistently do not experience point 10 and that really irritates.
Ireland - you’ve lost your manners. Dunno how or where, but they’re gone.
7 Ways to Make User Experience Count
June 26, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Reboot 10 is on. The annual meeting for ‘practical visionaries’. Rather self congratulatory, but apt. I go for inspiration, as a gift to myself to think about the really big topics addressed by the keynotes, to find out about new apps, services, and ideas in the breakout rooms, and to catch up with friends and see what they’ve been up to for the past year.
Best of the morning was Andy Budd , quintessential Brit user experience designer.
He introduced his user experience graph - time and pleasure plotted on x and y axes. (Am trying to get a pic to add here) and his lively presentation was peppered with real life examples and how to carry them over into the online experience.
1. First impressions count.
Unwrapping your apple product is like undressing your girlfriend for the very first time.
Research shows that women take under 30 seconds to make their minds up about a man. (Men take slightly longer).
To a packed room fuil of designers, he proclaimed that design counts! We all know that fancy product packaging in everyday products can entice us to spend that extra couple of cent.
People can tell the quality of a website in 50 milliseconds. This is based on design.
Nice examples of first impressions:
* First screen of Basecamp, little video to up your skill level and not bombardyou.
* In situ tours on Yahoo. Doesn’t take you outside that experience.
2. ATTENTIVE SERVICE
Real life examples include the waitor refilling your glass, the supermarket opening a new checkout because there’s a queue, etc.
It’s all about process efficiency. Again Apple as an example. They built a protoype of their flagship store. And when they started using it, they realised that it was based around the business model of ie. laptops, ipods, etc. That’s not how users use the products - so they re-engineered it by how users use the products - with a section for photographers, then videographers, musos etc.
3. PERSONALISATION & CUSTOMISATION
Real life examples are going into the pub and the barman remembering your name. Starbucks took this and built it into their processes - they take your name, shout back your order with your name. They’ve even gone further and allow you to customise your drink.
* On the Wii – most popular best feature is “mii” - tiny characters you can customise yourself. Beautiful social interaction.
* Gamers and their characters exhibit a high degree of attachment to that which they’ve created - . World of warcraft gamers post pics of their chars on flickr!
* Second Life – people pay real money for fake designer shoes! Don’t want to look like a newbie.
* Flickr does it well. Welcomes you back using your name… (and I like the hellos in difference languages)
Conclusion: personalisation and customisation works! A 12 year old’s bedroom really does look like a myspace page. No boundaries, no borders, create what you want! Freedom to experiment.
4. ATTENTION TO DETAIL
My favourite one. It’s details that make me smile that resonate.
Real life examples - car companies design the sound of the car door going thunk. They know that we perceive that sound as the quality of the machine.
Disney – even the trash cans are themed. A regular bin would break the magic.
Innocent smoothies – ’stop looking at my bottom!’ on the bottom of their cartons.
Conclusion: if you can build delightful experiences into your service/app, youll will make a difference in people’s lives.
Online:
* Threadless – if you add something to your shoppoing cart and you forget it, they email you if it’s about to sell out. Win win. I feel ilke they care. They might make a sale.
* Moo email confirmation email - beautiful - “Remember I’m just a bitr of software. So if you have anuy questions please contact customer services who are real people… ”
5. GIVE THEM FEEDBACK
Real world example is slot machines/pokies. They’re very responsive, you put your money in and it makes a thunk sound. You press button it beeps. You get immersed into the feedback cycle. Even include speakers in the tray to make it sound like you’re winning more. Or another example -if you press a button in a lift, you think it’s not working if you don’t see a light.
Online:
* Apple .. genius bar in stores where peole can get help to solve their problems based on hotel concierge desk. Take offline nuggets to make online exp better.
* Buttons that look like buttons.
* Process completion bar - Lined in
* Kayak – shows you immediately that the system is working, shows you what it’s doing and updates as you wait…page changes to show you it’s done. (Except I have never bought a flight from kayak because they are always the most expensive. An example of where good design doesn’t entice me to pay more!)
* Google maps ingenious.. people love to play with it. It’s fun to use. Because of the feedback mechanisms built in.
6. MAKE IT FUN
We love having fun. (In fact I think this point has stimulated a little break out chat later today on fun and play). We love collecting especially if there’s a payoff, like free coffee! But beware - as points can lead to leaderboards. And if you show people where they are in the system, they might not want to play anmore.
Real life examples:
* Fly on the urinal in Schipol airport. Reduces spillage by up to 80%! You can now buy your own fly for your loo at home here. urinalfly.com !!
Online:
Collecting photos on Flickr (or I might add Pixie)
Colecting friends on Facebook
Conclusion: we love collecting, but don’t go with leaderboards (like Digg did and that has impacted on the quality as leaders on the diggerboard are digging for position rather than content).
7. CREATE THE PERFECT ENVIRONMENT
Real life: Starbucks… sofa, cd, mug…
Virgin lounge, … make you want to pay ..
Vegas – the centre of design with the purpose of imparting people from their money.
Right now we have too many sites that create negative curves in terms of user experience. We have frustrating sign up processes and spaces you can’t escape from.
A great presentation from www.andybudd.com. I had all the links in above, but the damn connection here is flicking in and out, so I lost it all!! Go find them yourself, use Google!!
Pre Reboot 10
June 24, 2008 at 8:28 am
Am off to Reboot in Copenhagen tomorrow. Looking forward to inspiration, some relaxation (!), and some mind-bending talks and chats to cool people. The theme this year is FREE, here are my thoughts on that. Note that none of these thoughts have been ‘influenced’ by the website because I have given up trying to learn how to use that piece of crap. Reboot is a brilliantly organised inspiring event but the website sucks. I was horrified to find that my profile is still showing as attending last year’s events. And as a mark of just how bad it is - you have to register to attend the boat party drinks - and I have not been able to do so!
Free spirit. Free love. Freedom of choice.
That’s what I think of first.
- The web started out free - should we have to pay? If we don’t pay, then who owns?
- If we give too much for free, then is it valued? That was my learning from last year. No more freebies!! Because freebies aren’t valued as much as even a nominal fee. They tend to get abused and taken advantage of.
- Free delivery and how contentious an issue that can be.
Last year’s theme was human and I have spent the 12 months since last Reboot noting how much more humanity surrounds us in business life these days than before. I’m curious and excited to see how Free works it way into my head, and I’m thankful in advance to those who are responsible.
