Tagged with ideas …

Oct 26 2010
Leave a comment
General

20% time revisited

I don’t get 20% time, though there are times I think I have 100% time, but that’s not the point.  Today’s topic is how Q&A services utilize our 20% time.

When I take a look at services like StackOverflow, Quora, and LinkedIn answers where professional people spend time to answer questions for others, I have to start wondering why, the obvious motivators are:

  • Status and reputation
  • A need to help others
  • Puzzle challenges

Recognition – It’s very clear when you look at those services that recognition based system are where they are focus on creating the greatest value.  Very similar to how farmville gets you to plans strawberries three times  a day and gift them to a friend…  At the heart of it your seeking some recognition for who you are, most likely you’re spending part of your day Dilberting away in an office.

Helpfulness – In general humans want to be teachers, we want to help others.  This Nova episode bring the point home:  ”Teaching may be the signature skill of our species”

Puzzles — Watch a while ago Wordplay where the topic is Crossword puzzles, but in it they spend quite a bit of time with Will Shortz (NY Times Crossword Editor), and I also realized he’s on PBS, etc.etc.  Think about it, Crosswords, Puzzles on Radio Shows, etc, etc.  Grandma & Grandpa sitting around watching Jeopardy.    There must be a whole class of people out there who will work on challenges just for the challenge sake.

Back to 20% time — I’m currently trying to figure out how to find new ways to involve people in interesting puzzle actives that both are challenging and seek to reward them with either reputation/recognition or other long term status bits.   The short code fragements of StackOverflow are too small, asking people to do code reviews is too big…  How can we turn peoples attention into fundamental productivity?

If you’re interested in finding out more, drop me a note via twitter.com (@koblas)

Tagged ,
Nov 18 2008
Leave a comment
General

Signal vs. Noise — How to make decissions

Once again I’m faced with the challenge of how to make good decissions.  It’s not Life vs. Death, not anything meaningful in the scope of the world, but something amazingly simple — where to eat!  Two easy examples where this has been a problem:

Last Night — I’m “stuck” in a hotel in Washington DC with my timezones totally messed up, so at 8pm at night I want a quick dinner.  Chat with the folks at the front desk and they pull out the handy sheet which has a bunch of dining places listed, all for serious $$$ or $$$$ … sigh, I want dinner not a production.   Now I’m down to wandering the neighborhood to find food.

This summer — Was picking up the family at the trainstation in Roseville (near Sacramento) around dinner time.  Since we don’t live in the area, go to yelp to find food… ha!  This is a pure signal vs. noise problem.  I’m faced with hundreded of resturant reviews all with good/bad/etc..  All I want is a short list of four places that are worth going to, instead I find myself spending over an hour sifting through listings…

While the Hotel was doing a good job of trying to help — it’s the right concept, limit choices — I failed in not specifing that I wanted “non production” food ($22 entries are production quality).    In my day-to-day life I have resources like “The Metro” when I want to find a new dining establishment, or maybe I just read movie reviews to find a worthwhile movie to attend.   Where the Internet is failing is that we continue to create site after site which provideds a great outpouring of content and allows the masses to create that outpouring of content, but no filters.

Most of the time I’m not worring about the difference between a 3 star and 5 star rating on a resturant, I just want food.  If it’s date night with the wife and we’re up to spending $$$$ I’m probably more interested in some other details (Parcel 104 vs. Wendy’s).   But, I’ve now watched most of the 4+ star movies at Netflix, so of course I want to watch interesting 3 star movies (once in a while a 2 star action flick).   Presenting long lists of possibilites doesn’t help me decided, it only makes me spend time spinning through lists.

The two services I envision are (I’ve mentioned this a few times to people — if you want to work on it let me know):

Celeberty Food Stops: Just taking all of those food network/travel channel/etc. TV shows and creating a repository of places they’ve eaten.  Many visitors to cities and towns would find it “fun” to eat where Rachel Ray or some other celeb ate.

Guideposts: Not really the Alaska magazine, but similar in concept which is if you’re around HERE (Sacramento) here’s 4 places to go eat/visit.  But, designed more along a travel route rather than a singular destination.  Make it easy, enter a google map and it’ll create a guide book…

Tagged , ,
Jan 28 2008
Leave a comment
ideas

The next music service

In the 80s we had MTV, a great distribution media for videos and creating a whole new set of artists.  Of course we all know that MTV stop showing videos at some point and became a reality TV station…  We’ve had Internet services from Napster to last.fm but I still think they’ve missed the mark.

There are a few forms of “listening to music”:

  • Totally passive – sitting at work with background music.
    This can pretty much be satisfied with either a play list (if it’s personal) or my a radio station if it’s more broadcast.
  • Partial attention -  this is where you care what’s in the play list.
    Everything from a workout list, to wanting to have new artists introduced.
  • Community experience – what are my friends listening to.
    This of course is the last.fm and the ilk place in the world.

The “great” part about a radio experience is that it’s simultaneous with everybody.  Thus if you hear a great song you can call a friend and say “turn on the radio!”.  With the Internet you should be able to listen to a “group radio” where 80% of the songs are shared between you and your friends.  When you hear a song (or watch a video) you can comment right their (ala Mystery Science 3000).

If you say that you and you’re friends listen to different music, you’re clearly the wrong age!  Think about how music is enjoyed by people < 20 … it’s a group experience a shared experience.

Tagged , ,