Climb to the Stars

The Web that Kevin found 10 years ago and how it is changing now. Left Apple in 2003 selling stock for $10 and joined Technorati, switched to LAMP. The browser war was over, IE6 had won, XML was replacing HTML.

Was everything over? Not really.

Webkit. The hegemony was not really there. Mobile: Sidekick. steph-note: I used to chat with Kevin at the time while he was on his sidekick commuting to work.

Did we have a social web 10 years ago? We did. Friendster. Realtime? Not really. Google updated their index once a month in the Google Dance.

They way you got to things on the web were portals.

What changed? Blogging. A parallel social web overlaid on the web we were all using. Personal publishing pages connected to each other and updated in minutes. Technorati was indexing that. Minutes rather than once a month.

The key thing were interoperable open specs. Over the next 10 years new devices came along. The Sidekick was ahead of its time, but these new devices all started out with a good web browser, and the apps came later.

Blogging was absorbed into social silos: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc. More streamlined but more constrained.

Mobile has now displaced desktop. Biggest OS = Android. IE is now irrelevant.

In 2013, social is consolidated silos. Links spread rapidly, hashtags bridge them.

Myths:

– Apps will replace the web
– Facebook is your website — you still should have your website
– Mobile is some special different thing than the web that we had before

The App is just a browser that only works on one site. steph-note: I’ve always seen them like that.

Facebook is the new portal. Starting to feel like Yahoo a few years ago. We work around it.

Mobile screen resolution has caught up (more pixels than your laptop at times). Distinction of small and large screens is not as binary.

Long-term view:

– open outlasts companies: we’ve seen companies come and go, but open protocols are still there
– open protects people, they aren’t trapped in the destiny of a company; an open flow of data between sites protects you; open protocols is also why we now have all these devices (Webkit lay the seeds for Chrome and the iOS browser)
– open saves effort

IndieWeb: your own website, developers making tools, using silos to connect. Connecting across silos and becoming resilient against any one of those going away.

Principles:

– you should own your own data, have a website which is not a Facebook page or a Google Plus page
– you should have visible data; what made Google and Technorati possible was that web pages were visible and indexable and shareable. Social silos going up are taking this away. You can’t crawl Twitter anymore. Bits of Google Plus you can’t crawl either.
– POSSE: publish own site syndicate share elsewhere steph-note: what us bloggers are doing

Make tools for you, not tools you think somebody else will use. If you don’t use it nobody else will. Cf. Odeo.

Document. Say what works. Open Source what you make.

If you’re a company an hire a developer to work on an Open Source project, and they leave the company, they might continue to work on the OS project and contribute code. A project in a company is only going to last as long as the management chain understands the roadmap — fragile.

Design and UX are most important. Protocols come later.

Be modular. Don’t try and build everything. Use silos and swap pieces out.

The Long Web. Are you making something to last or to disappear? Expect it to last. Don’t destroy history. Spread copies elsewhere. steph-note: blogging again

Bet on the Web: open outlasts closed. Make infrastructure.

Tired because has been taking a lot of pictures in Paris, and doesn’t know where to post them: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook…?

Every week brings a new app, a new trend… Wants to think differently about technology.

Has spent the last several years studying tech that disrupts markets.

Either the next 10 years are going to happen to us, or because of us.

LeWeb is full of people trying to change the world.

Saw a headline recently about the lack of innovation. But VCs are paying attention to Europe now: what is Europe going to do with this opportunity?

Disrupting is something that happens because of what we do. We need to be inspired but also think about a new approach. The future of innovation starts with empathy, seeing things through the eyes of somebody else. See things differently and have the courage to try it.

Some of the best traits in innovative companies follow.

Innovation introduces us to something new, changes behaviour. So obsessed with raising money and reading Mashable that we lose sight of that. Changing behaviour.

Innovative companies apply some variety of design thinking or systems thinking to their approach.

Generation C, the connected generation. Face in our screens. This is the world where we have to either feed complacency or change behaviour to be more productive.

Teenagers can focus on homework for 6 minutes before they need to turn to a device or an app.

Can you read long articles like you did before? Or do you find yourself looking at pictures of cats? steph-note: all the time!

This is the person we need to inspire. How do you invoke empathy for a group that seems to lack empathy?

Creative destruction. Ideas that will make the leader in a market lose its place. Uber, AirBnB. You know you’re onto a good idea when the government tries to shut you down.

Good ideas sound ridiculous at the beginning. The first mouse doesn’t get the cheese, but the second one does.

Bread, once it became sliced, became a platform that created markets for sliced meats, spreads, a company providing you with your dinner. Created an entire market. steph-note: Switzerland doesn’t really have sliced bread… or at least it’s second-rate bread.

Followers outperform pioneers. Benefits of second-movers.

“Does anyone in the audience have the new Samsung smartwatch?” — nobody moves. “Exactly! How many of you will have the Apple iWatch when it comes out?” Apple applies design thinking to their stuff.

Inspiring book: The Innovator’s Dilemma.

What’s the problem? What’s the opportunity? Disrupt the market because you solved a real problem and created a solution for it.

The best companies out there have all applied this model.

Start with Why, not What and How. Why = motivation, How = process, What = product. Start with Why. Apple believes that they can challenge invention, shake the status quo, and do that by thinking differently. Computers that are beautifully designed, with great user experience. When you start with why you’re already empathetic.

Empathy — Context — Creativity — Rationality

Characteristics of innovators

Wonderful paper by Google: 8 pillars of innovation (head over and look at them).

Starting with Why, empathy and context, that is more powerful than you imagine. Design and systems thinking is key, not technology.

New York lit up by electricity. Needed a power plant, needed to be built!

Nike don’t just make shoes now. They’re a technology company, services company, data, platform.

Tesla don’t just make electric cars. They’re the second mouse. They figured they needed a complete ecosystem to support that car. A platform. Not just about how the car looked and drove. Built a new model to sell cars, because they wanted a great experience throughout.

They’re building a whole electrical infrastructure around key points in the US so people can feel safe about having a full battery. => best car that’s come out in a long time.

Two ways to influence human behaviour: manipulate or inspire.

The future is a blank slate. Yours to define.

Fear and the role it plays in your life. Dina asks for a show of hands, who has thought about it? steph-note: I’m astonished how many peopled didn’t raise their hands.

Two years ago Dina was at an intersection, two blocks from work, incapable of crossing the road.

Thanks to Adam Tinworth for the photo.

When they launched, she worked without stopping. Literally. High-power, high-media life. Public face of the company, daily press stuff, managing 6 departments, awards…

She looked fearless, but it was all BS. She wasn’t mindful of her fear, but fear was holding her back in every area of her life.

She was super stressed and taking way too much on, but afraid to ask for help. She’d taken on a role, emulating men (“What would Larry or Sergei do?”). She was held up as a model woman entrepreneur, but felt like an actress playing that role. Didn’t have the confidence to be herself. Imposter syndrome, part of her who worried that she didn’t deserve what she had.

She started having panic attacks. Lived in fear of passing out in the middle of NYC intersections. Started taking cabs everywhere.

Back to that day in November, she’s on that intersection, trying to make eye contact on the other side of the street so that if she did pass out, they would stop to scrape her body off the street.

Decided it was not working. Quit her job, took a one-way flight out.

Travelled, but was still being entrepreneurial. The girl with the endlessly cool vacation photos on Facebook.

Patrick, for years, had been telling Dina to meditate and face her fears — which she didn’t listen. Went on a hike together, tried meditating. Being rather than doing.

She went to a 10-day silent meditation retreat to study meditation. Hard and painful, no way escaping herself. Wanted to quit on day 1, on day 2, on day 3. On day 8, she understood what her driver was: she was obsessed with being like. Bullied in summer camp when she was little, vowed to herself that she would be like. Cost? Was never authentic even though she managed to surround herself with people and friends.

Didn’t ask for help because didn’t want to upset people or cause trouble.

How could she break the pattern? Patrick’s words came back to her: if she faced her physical fears and conquered them, would that help?

Start with a big one: scuba-diving. When she was young, somebody had died on her very first scuba-diving trip. Went diving with another family, the father never came back up.

Super afraid before going into water, but felt ok once inside. And after, felt different: she had done something for her. Ziplining. Bungee jumping. Decided to do it for herself, for a new life.

Back in NY, she has changed. Tells a VC friend she thinks every entrepreneur should learn to meditate. He calls back to say it was a super meeting. She dared to be herself.

Used to be afraid of confrontation, of asking favours, of being herself. Is OK with people not liking her.

But… no need to bungee jump to be free or spend a year in Asia.

Three things:

– mental agility, breaking your habits, those that hold you back
– fear: what if I face my fear?
– mindfulness, not just to connect to others, but connect to yourself