CIL 2012 Day 3 - Keynote

This morning's keynote, Creating Inspiring Services: Going Boldly into the Present, was presented by the always inspiring and thought provoking Michael Edson, Director, Web Strategy & New Media, Office of the CIO, Smithsonian Institution. Edson focused on the fact that the change of cultural and technological change has become so fast, that anticipating the future is hardly possible, as in many cases we haven't even completely absorbed the realities of the present.

To build up to this point, Edson started in the distant past, mentioning that people who lived in stone age Europe had a period lasting 25,000 years in which they had cultural continuity. He mentioned that William Gibson has said that in the 1950's science fiction authors had a 3-5 year period that could be considered “now” which could be used as a relatively stable point from which authors could anticipate the future. Edson mentioned technology that we were looking forward to future versions of in 1997 like dial-up modems, limited digital cameras, Geocities and Windows 95. We've now reached the state that we were imagining in 1997 with largely ubiquitous high-speed internet connections, cheap digital cameras that have made film cameras obsolete, a sophisticated and varied World Wide Web, and mature and (generally) stable operating systems.

Edson mentioned some landmark books and articles from 6 to 10 years ago that anticipated the exact conditions that we have now, namely:

• Howard Rheingold's Smart Mobs from 2002
• Lawrence Lessig's The Future of Ideas from 2002
• Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams' Wikinomics from 2006
• Tim O'Reilly's What is Web 2.0 from 2005

We now also have some well established concepts which define many aspects of todays world:

• The Long Tail
• Joy's Law
• Cognitive Surplus
• Network Effects
• Moore's Law & Mobile
• Every user a hero...

All of this adds up to a situation where “the present is far more interesting than most people have noticed” and that the “tangible value of the present moment remains to be exploited.”

The problem lies largely in our perceptions of the present and Edson relayed some concepts to help people develop ways to grapple with our changed world:

• The extraterrestrial space auditor – When your organization says that they stand for something, imagine yourself as a complete outsider and compare the stated mission with collaborative actions.
  
  
• On Ramps and Loading Docks – If you believe that your goal is to help our users be the heros in their own epic journeys we need to think expansively about platforms.
  
  
• Edge to core – The best work happens where we have subject matter experts, data, public together in the same place.
  
  
• Focus on the mission – Everything should focus on the mission, and everything else should go away. Organizations that can articulate what they need to do aren't struggling with how to react to constant change
  
  
• Place the bet – What world am I living in, what impact does my country, my city, my organization want to have in that world, What should I do today?

It was a great keynote and an inspiring one. Now to try to put its ideas into practice.