Future Changes

Neglected Keystrokes

Stewart Mader — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:23:00 +0000

Josh Tyrangiel, TIME: Short-Form Writing Beats Long-Form Online

Stewart Mader — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:53:49 +0000

Eisenhower Interstate System: London Underground-Style Map

Stewart Mader — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:08:23 +0000

Cameron Booth created this map of the U.S. Eisenhower Interstate System in the style of H.C. Beck’s iconic London Underground map. Full Size

Andrew Savikas on Software Development as Collaborative Writing

Stewart Mader — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:56:47 +0000

Andrew Savikas, writing for the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing blog:

Software developers spend enormous amounts of time creatively writing with text, editing, revising, refining multiple interconnected textual works — and often doing so in a highly distributed way with many collaborators. Few writers or editors spend as much time as developers with text, and it only makes sense to apply the lessons developers have learned about managing collaborative writing and editing projects at scale.

So true.

20% off Confluence or Free 10-User License; Drawing for Kindle and Charitable Donations

Stewart Mader — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:50:04 +0000

My thanks to Atlassian for sponsoring Future Changes this month. They’re running a Cash for Clunkers – Confluence Edition program offering a free 10-user license or 20% off any other license. All participants are also entered into a drawing for four charitable donations and four Amazon Kindles. They’ve put together a humorous – and accurate – top 10 list of reasons to trade in your old intranet:

Your team has meetings to talk about reducing the number of meetings
Your wiki constantly loses page edits when your browser crashes
You use SharePoint and everyone complains about its wiki
Your team’s idea of collaboration entails emailing documents back and forth
The most recent search result on your company intranet is dated July 2002
You have to email the Webmaster to update your company intranet
Three teams in your company are working on the same project and don’t even realize it
You frequently find yourself cc’d on long emails along with 15 other people
Your wiki came bundled with an Enterprise 2.0 business suite with 40 other tools
Not everyone in your company is an XHTML / CSS wizard

Submission Guidelines – Offer ends December 11.

Disney Digital Media Group Uses Wiki to Track Accomplishments

Stewart Mader — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:35:41 +0000

Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at Disney-ABC Television Group, explains how a wiki is the hub for his digital media department:

His team didn’t ask permission to create the internal Web site, with staff profiles and a section called “Cool Stuff We’ve Done This Year.” They just did it. And truth be told, Cheng is rather proud of that. The project captures what his 20-month-old incarnation of the digital-media department is all about. Speed. Collaboration. Gumption. “I see us as a Silicon Valley startup within a big company,” he says.

The business benefit of the wiki shows in the creation of that “Cool Stuff We’ve Done This Year” section, because people can start by informally listing things they’ve done, then go back and add descriptions, links, images, and video as they are produced, and pretty soon they have a comprehensive report on what they’ve accomplished.

Video: If Saul Bass Designed the Star Wars Opening Sequence

Stewart Mader — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 19:26:20 +0000

Video: Jordan Frank on the “Responsibility to Collaborate”

Stewart Mader — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:44:29 +0000

Video: Traction User Group 2009 Closing Keynote – “Designing for Collaboration”

Stewart Mader — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:10:58 +0000

Providence, RI – October 14, 2009. Thanks to Traction Software for the video!

Brand: Information Wants to be Free. It Also Wants to be Expensive.

Stewart Mader — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:52:48 +0000

Anyone who does anything with information these days should know this entire quote. Many people know the famous short version: “Information wants to be free.” but the rest of the quote makes those first five words sound naive and utopian. The rest of the quote is what industries from the obvious – media and publishing – to the not so obvious – almost everything else – are struggling with in equal measure these days.

Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine—too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away. It leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.

Stewart Brand first said it in 1984 at the first Hackers’ Conference. It was first printed in the May 1985 Whole Earth Review, and again in 1987 in his book, “The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT.”

Imbedded Confluence spreadsheet nirvana [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:58:57 PST

"I feel that this feature opens up the Confluence tool to even more possibilities regarding emergent applications/user organized applications and is possibly another nail in the coffin of the traditional CMS style intranet."

Ten Realities of Managing and Using Technology to Generate Business Value [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:13:16 PST

"Years of managing, studying, developing, consulting on, and using information technology have taught me the realities of using technology to help generate business value. Here are ten of these realities:"

Nikon | Universcale [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:59:58 PST

"See our Universcale and experience the sizes of various objects. By setting them up against a scale, we are able to compare and understand things which cannot be physically compared." This is awesome.

Five Starter Moves for Introducing Social Media Into Your Organization [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:21:43 PST

"...what does it mean? Where should one start? I’ll break these five ideas out over a few posts, but will give you the whole thing in one tidy downloadable file when they’re all completed. Fair? Here goes the first one:"

The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:26:18 PST

"...the very development that wireless carriers feared for so long may prove to be exactly what they need. It took Steve Jobs to show them that."

Challenges of Social Media Types in the Workplace [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:18:17 PST

Regarding access to social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace), blogs, etc. at work, Chris Brogan offers some timely "thoughts an employer might consider, and a few that you as a social media type might use to your advantage."

Wiki-style Graffiti in New York's Subway [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:18:54 PST

"Check the “citation needed” sticker that’s been plastered on this poster: You can tell wikispeak has gotten under our cultural skin when it starts turning up in New York subway graffiti."

Why Non-Obvious Brand Icons Work [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 22:20:54 PST

The story behind the famous O'Reilly animal book covers. It's an excellent lesson in going with your gut and doing something that makes sense (and turns out to be a great branding move!).

When a Blogger Criticizes Your Company… [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:51:31 PST

"One way or the other, if you can engage and win over bloggers with honest communication then you'll become the darling of the blogosphere among your competitors and you'll be in a better place than you were before any of it ever happened."

The FASTForward Blog » Wisdom takes time [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:45:21 PST

"...where other projects may fall out of fashion, and a lot of expensive software and consultants will come and go, a real enterprise social software project will stand the test of time."

It's the gadgets, stoopid* [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 16:07:41 PST

English Children's Minister tells children not to bring tech tools to school. Moronic. Ewan McIntosh suggests "...get them to show how they can be used to make learning faster, more fun or more accessible." Smart!

Anne Gentle: Are wikis good for creating manuals and ebooks? [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:27:37 PST

"The idea is that a text by beginners, for beginners, can be far better than a conventional textbook written by an expert...and can conceivably even be perpetually developing and growing stronger, as readers who climb the way up take responsibility..."

Very Official Macworld Keynote Predictions [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:29:55 PST

Magnetism Studios and The Bureau of Communication have something fun to keep you occupied until the Keynote: the 2008 fill in the blanks Keynote Prediction form. Reminds me of the always entertaining WWDC Bingo (Google it - you'll see).

How Wikipedia has changed Kevin Kelly's worldview [del.icio.us]

ikiw — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:33:15 PST

"When you grow up knowing rather than admitting that such a thing as the Wikipedia works...when you are certain that sharing your photos and other data yields more than safeguarding them — then these assumptions will become a platform for a yet more..."