IT360 Notes – Wikinomics keynote

Writer of the Wikinomics book, Don Tapscott is giving this presentation. His book is on mass collaboration. He’s from New Paradigm. His book was given out with the expensive passes. All non-reserved seating is used. There’s about twenty people standing five minutes prior. Thirty-something two minutes prior to start.

This has a lot of notes.

• Book has been on US&Canada non-fiction best seller list for 15 weeks.
• Don is chief exec of int’l thinktank New Paradigm founded in 1993
• Research in tech, productivity, completed multi-million dollar IT and Competitive Advantage report
• Trying to convince us that tech is the heart of change in large corporations
• social networking growing, new blog every second, Time selected collaborator as person of the year, but it’s all so 2006
• We’re in new mode of production
• four big drivers:
  • technology, web today isn’t daddy’s internet, changes include access modes. The object of interest is the “thing”: phone, fridge, pen barcode reader that price compares.
  • it’s fast now. Wifi is growing. Eg. One Zone. Bell Canada didn’t expect the power company and San Fran telcos didn’t expect the Google. Google’s business model doesn’t include wifi, why did they do this?
  • geo-spatiality. Geotagging. Browse the physical world. Related searches to your location. Check out Plazes. Or Socialight. Put a sticker on the bakery, when your friends go by they know you like that place. IntelliOne is cool: using cellular signals to figure out where you are roughly. Can be used to figure out speed of traffic. Maptuit does traffic routing.
  • True multimedia. Not just pictures and text. Add Skype. TIOTI: Tape It Off The Internet. Look at PS3. Very realistic graphic. 3d animation could be new paradigm of media. Old web was static HTML, presentation, new web is distributed computing, programming. New web is as much about sharing content. Metadata is now important. Tags. Problems with lack of consistency. Once was said we’d only need five computers. He was off by five: we need one. Not desktop, webtop. New web moves IT to the web. God might have created the world but he didn’t have an installed base. Easier to start new with web2.0 designed to collaborate than to tack sharing onto old base.
• The net generation. People currently under 29 roughly. Thought children were prodigies, then realized it’s a common trait. Conclusion from ~300 kid study: no fear of tech, natural as breathing.
• Echo generation bigger than baby boom generation, marginally.
• Time on the net takes away from time on tv. Huge multitasking trend. IM+news+collaborating+gaming at once. Processes information differently. Kids are authorities on web2.0. Not as big of a generation gap: compare your ipod to your kids’. Generation lap: kids lapping parents in tech race. Check interview on newparadigm.com. E-mail is already dead. Kids only use it for formal tech. :) Question was asked: When do you use email? Response was: Something like a thank you note, something sort of formal.
• Generation wants choice! Customize everything! Don’t be like the auto industry that missed the tuner market. Scion vs Ford. Scrutinizers – they check everything eg images for signs of photoshopping. Integrity!
• Kids don’t get their news from the Daily Show. Daily Show isn’t funny unless you know the news. Gets news online.
• Collaboration allows you to know people online.
• Online do you collaborate, or learn, or entertain yourself? Net gen does all at once but doesn’t always realize it.
• senior exec asks net gen what to do to make company attractive. Kid answers “make the place more fun.” Google vs factory.
• Social revolution? Check flickr vs webshots on alexa. XML based community eclipsed old websites. Community over in-house content presentation.
• Check out Wikinomicists of the World Unite. Within hours of the facebook group’s creation, had ~120 users and critiques of the book (first 2 chapters were posted)
• Economic revolution. Collaboration costs used to be higher. Ford used to have a glass factory because it was more expensive to collaborate with others than to own factory.
• Theme #2 is openness. “The naked corporation.” Fitness is no longer an option, it’s mandatory. Integrity must be baked into your bones. Transparency allows others to build trust in you for you.
• IBM shared IP with linux, saved billions in upkeep costs, came up with solid platform
• World isn’t flat, it’s a skewed binomial. Look at east asia’s growth. Japan disproportionately contributes.
• New principals on how to run company: peering, openness, something, act globally
• Harnessing mass collaboration, 50 year old mining company peers, opens, shares data. Used to keep throwing money at prospecting. Frustrated by lack of results. “If I don’t know where gold is, who does?” Published geodata on internet, held contest, gave $500k to contest for “Do I have gold? If so, where is it?” Found $3.4 billion when 77 contestants used new ways of analyzing data to tell him.
  • peered: let anyone submit
  • open: told people he doesn’t know where gold is
  • acted globally: opened to the world
• What can you create in a way like linux and wikipedia? Linus Torvalds doesn’t know. DBs are boring, who would create an open one?
• Second Life’s content is 99% user generated
• Compare unauth mashup of Grey Album to hacking of Lego Mindstorm. Lego didn’t sue children, Lego opened up mindstorm. Lego made prosumers.
• Biggest new development is the amazon cloud. 200,000 people building apps on it. Mom and pop can use its open api to create value.
• Don forgot to turn his smartphone off, got a call an hour into it.. Then another 30 seconds later. :)

I can’t stay for questions and answers, have to rush to DNS security presentation.