Lift11: Memi Beltrame, Artypedia — The free view on Art that anyone can edit [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Pet project about art which is an art project in itself. What makes art art?

Sooner or later, it becomes very clear what art is:

  • it is really hard to explain
  • it is really hard to understand
  • it is something everybody has an opinion on

Let’s challenge our opinions and views about art, in a fun and open way.

Artypedia. Copy articles from wikipedia. The main term of the article is replaced by “art”. Nice! *steph-note: excellent! love the definitions!*

Lift11: Azeem Azhar, Online communities and reputation management [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Reputation and its importance for communities. Azeem has known Chris for 11 years on a mailing-list, and this is the first time they’ve met in person.

The reputation graph. Plays a very important role in helping markets function.

History: initially we all came from very small communities. There was no trust/reputation problem, we knew everybody. No issue. If you didn’t know somebody, chances are they were a threat. In that world, we could hold all the relevant and necessary information in our heads. (cf. Dunbar)

The world has changed for most of us. Hyperconnected world. Facilities to connect to almost anybody we want to.

The cost of connections and making connections has really drops. So we have lots of connexions to a lot of people that we don’t really know. Azeem has 130 friend requests on Facebook from people he doesn’t know.

We’re pushing past the barrier where maybe it’s not that useful to have so many connexions, because the trust element diminishes.

Stock market: lots of people who don’t know each other very well transacting with each other. How does that work well? (1) Regulation (highly regulated! penalties for people who break the rules). (2) Contractual: standards bodies saying what things must mean when you say them. (3) Reputation rating: looking at activity in a firm and coming out with a rating from AAA to BBB or below. This lets a participant look at a complex company and evaluate the risk of making a trade.

What happens when people stop believing in ratings? that’s what happened in 2007-8 in financial institutions. “JP Morgan, I don’t care what your rating is, I’m not lending you money” => liquidity dried up, huge crisis requiring government to step in. This gave us an experiment to see what happens in a market where reputation systems break down. Answer: it’s really really horrible.

Other context: chess world, rating players. Determines what kind of competition you can enter, and what you stand to win or lose in any given match.

Academia: ratings help you win grants or attract talent.

When I buy a coffee at Starbucks, I can’t trust the person at the counter because the person is a good person, but because of the trust and reputation that Starbucks has built over the years. But we’ve learnt that this kind of reputation is built around other objectives and can break down easily.

Trust ratings in the web, Google. PageRank *steph-note: breakdown there I’m suffering from right now with CTTS, pages being unindexed because my site was hacked a few months ago and pages were full of spam*

But now the web is about people connecting to each other, not just about pages. What we need is a PeopleRank, to make sense of the connexions between people. Cf. Quora. We can think about doing this because now we all live in public. Huge set of data to make sense of.

Foursquare: move towards rewarding people on platforms by giving them badges, but it rewards activities and hoop-jumping — artificial activity. Reinforces the business model of the platforms (use the site more and more and more) but doesn’t really tell you anything about how trustworthy people are or if they really know anything about art galleries because they have the art gallery badge.

eBay: nice but not portable. Very context-dependent.

Other approach: get your friends to recommend you (LinkedIn) — but friends can be bribed. Recommendations cluster around the time people leave their job.

Azeem thinks we’re moving towards a single currency. Portable, handles different contexts, and has value. It’s what happened in the corporate bond market.

Peerindex. *steph-note: mine is 40 seems very limited and skewed towards Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn — doesn’t take into account my blog where most of my reputation is built, and I for example neglect linkedin recommendations completely*

What are the bad applications of reputation? Health insurance discrimination.

We get a fantastic benefit from Facebook etc, but once the reputation stuff starts working, a lot will start happening in matter of transactions.

Bond ratings: a single number, but tries to predict one thing — how likely is the company to defect on its bond payments?

We’re starting to feel a move towards quality of contacts rather than just hoarding them. Path for example, which allows you only 50 friends.

Popularity does not equal trust. But there is maths that allows to factor popularity out.

Lift11: Chris Heathcote, The invisible communities [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Communities that aren’t Facebook!

History of the internet is a history of community.

Usenet, for example. Let people talk about stuff they were interested in with anybody in the world. Very well-designed.

Mailing-lists. Used in academia a lot to collaborate for the first time.

As usenet slowly died and turned into a place where you can download pirated movies, web forums took up. Vbulletin, phpBB & discuz. Huge part of the internet, way bigger than Tumblr etc. But nobody talks about them anymore.

On the web, but often invisible. Sometimes Google can’t see them, so they don’t exist to us.

Chris is seeing a lot more communities like this, for example community game-playing in Japan. 22 mio users (2 communities) — maybe the reason Facebook isn’t taking off in Japan. Pseudonyms and important life/persona separation, stark contrast with the over-sharing identified user that Facebook wants.

Korean messaging apps. Hugely popular, but the community is completely in-app.

Image-sharing: Instagram for example — you see the pics on the web, but all the rest is only in-app, and it feels private because it’s on your phone. Other example: Path.

All of these things are of the Internet, but not of the Web.

Unexpected communities: Grindr.

Gay dating application. No login, your physical phone is your identity. You just see the photos of the 100 nearest people. Works well, compare to Gaydar where you probably never get past the first screen because you’ve forgotten your password. Grindr is very limited!

A community despite its original intentions. People are using it just to chat. Designed to minimize the time between seeing the person on Grindr and actual physical meetup, but people just use it to chat. Excellent: map of gathered weight of people on Grindr one Saturday night per London tube station. Interesting: in Grindr profiles, lots of Ping! identities.

Even dating becomes a community.

Gaydar: started as a web dating site but is now much more. Has its own radio station. Website larger than Tesco’s in the UK!

How do you get people to come back? We’re lucky, people love talking about everything and anything. Go where the people are.

If you have people doing something, you might want to add community features so they can talk.

And in many cases, don’t use Facebook Connect or Twitter login, people don’t necessarily want to tie their identity to everything they do. Don’t connect identities.

Let people to talk both in private and in public.

Moderate with personality. Moderation is really key. Passionate and interested moderators that are real people and not Google Groups moderators.

Watch what’s happening. Not every site has sociologist going through their data.

“Get them to like each other” (Rushkoff) Don’t look to monetize. Look to foster connexions between people, and let them go about their business. *steph-note: hmm, this is kind of how I roll*

  • people like to talk
  • whatever you build will be used to communicate
  • more than one identity
  • public, semi-public and private conversations
  • watch what’s happening
  • let people like each other

4chan tries to rule the world by taking down whole countries, etc — they need somewhere to organize…

One of the cool things about usenet was that there was a master list of groups. That doesn’t exist anymore. Google Groups is a great chance to try and make sense of all this, but Google dropped the ball.

Could we imagine a Facebook competitor based on the fact you have a fake identity, asks Laurent? *steph-note: connexions are limited with a fake identity — if you connect to too many people who know you it breaks down*

Lift11: Tiffany St James, How to encourage involvement in online communities [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Community engagement benefits: connecting with like-minded individuals, p2p recommendations, resources, stimulation, engagement with people in their spaces…

Gardening community. Craigslist. Communities of practice. Communities of circumstance (people drawn together by events).

Types of online community:

  • led by individuals vs. organisations
  • conversation-oriented vs. content-oriented

[photo coming]

But there are also risks in online engagement. Also, the engagement has changed over the last five years. “UM Social media Wave 5”.

OK, we know all these things, so what?

Trust in communications has changed. More powerful than professional sources: good contact on social network (3rd most powerful recommendation source, just after family member and close friend), author of a blog you read regularly, main contacts on Twitter.

Smart mobs, democracy in action? People are using social media on a lobbying level. Use of #cnnfail hashtag to get more coverage on CNN about Iran.

Last year: BP and pollution.

The truth will out: gagging order on the Guardian about Trafigura.

What can we learn from wikileaks? Tiffany threw away her notes to follow Tapscott: we are going to be naked in this age of hyper-transparency. So we better be fit.

Using social media for good: microloans, green stuff, human rights.

Individuals can have enormous power (cf. Beth Kanter — she’s just one person!)

Turning online action into offline action. Big businesses are also using it for good: promoting local endeavours that they want to champion. Voting causes up and down.

Connecting like-minded individuals: nike

All very well, but what does this mean for me? Should I throw a party or join one? Create a community or join an existing one?

You need to first identify relevant communities. Search google with relevant keywords.

Criteria: number of posts and topics, their date, the member list, structure and management, contact details of moderator…

Never underestimate the ressources needed to simply host a community and manage it.

Set an objective:

  • listening?
  • stimulating a discussion?
  • looking for feedback on a particular issue?
  • co-producing something?

Rule of participation inequality: 90% of people in the community are lurkers, 9% intermittent contributors, 1% heavy contributors.

Need to change strangers into lurkers. Change lurkers into commentators. Turn the commentators into creators.

Another way of manifesting a community is to develop a partnership.

Continual optimisation: not that many metrics we can use, but there are some. Some KPIs (what are we trying to achieve that we can measure?)

There isn’t enough work on exit strategies for a community. Change of government: how do you stop maintaining some of the communities set in place? If no strategy, hurt and disgruntled participants. You can’t just shut things down. Be transparent about your exit strategy: what will happen when it’s over?

5 things to look out for:

  • myth: build it and they will come
  • don’t be too too strict
  • conflict: moderator/participants (not too much ego in moderators)
  • not too complex
  • don’t neglect the community and the moderator interaction


Code of conduct: credible, consistent, transparent, etc.

Are you ready for this?

Lift11: Jennifer Gay, Google Translate, Skype conferencing, and the future of my career! [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Crazy conference interpretor. *steph-note: speaks really fast!!* Also is a translator.

You can’t read as fast as you can hear.

Google translate back and forth: interpreters become performers, and something else disappears.

Competition for translators: Google translate.

  1. approximate, instantaneous, free
  2. accurate, elegant, next week, 500$

Glups. People choose 1.

That said, interpreters have always been dependent on technology. Cables etc. Channels in parallel. Also need to evolve with their time.

*steph-note: very fast-talking!*

Lift11: Yasmine Abbas, Design for Neo-nomads [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

What are neo-nomads? What are the spaces they inhabit? How do we design to accomodate their needs?

Mobile: physically, mentally, digitally. No allegiance. Go for convenience, with the flow, wear many masks, flexible, hypertext…

When you move you have to adjust. “Consume”: people, information, goods, spaces.

Relocation and space reorganization. *steph-note: have felt that a lot in hotel rooms — need to nest*

Variety of neo-nomads, from the climate refugee to the digital activist.

For a neo-nomad, territory is distributed and shifts as you move. Need services 24/7 when crossing timezones. You organize your space, maybe by buying the same piece of furniture from and IKEA store at the other end of the continent.

George Perec dans Espèces d’espaces: why not favour dispersion and split our living space all around the city (or the world)? *steph-note: clearly, mobility/transport issues — it’s not streamlined enough*

Cost of mobility: stress, waste. Many neo-nomads indulge and are in denial about the cost of their lifestyle. [photo coming]

How can design and technology address the cost of mobility? Maybe we’re going to have to become more mobile, it might not only be by choice…

Embed transience into design to soothe the stress of mobility and control waste. Foldable, dematerialization, shareable… Design is situational, an experience, relational.

Yasmine is using herself as an experiment. Finds it difficult to discard all these excesses, have nothing. Showed photo of her hamac, which she carries everywhere.

Lift11: Alexandre Bau and Birgitta Ralston, The story of a unique workplace: transplant [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Met on 02.02.2000 — immediately decided not to work together. But they’re both designers, so it was kind of difficult!

Left Paris to settle in Norway. They dreamed a huge house where they could live and work. Failed. Went back to Paris in an old van. But didn’t give up.

*steph-note: I think I’m tiring and find it difficult to take notes in the two-speaker format, though it’s nice to listen to. Check their pre-lift interview.*

Found some land, spent a lot of energy convincing a lot of officials, found an architect to draw the house. Different modules with different views on the water. Different functions for these different spaces.

How does transplant work? One company, for example, came to them for new business ideas. Engaged all the resident designers to discuss the ideas. Another one, the whole management came and worked strategically but also on their product. Information design and food. A Japanese chef came over to do the final design of her restaurant.

*steph-note: basically, having clients come in-house and working very closely with them, involving them throughout the process. Seems like a live-in office for clients too, if I understood correctly.*

Transplant allows going back and forth between ideas and concepts and prototypes etc — that requires a lot of meetings. So at transplant they have the beginning of a coach network, professionals they know and can draw in. *steph-note: the “need lots of meetings” reminds me of why I do half-day sessions with my clients to make websites with them instead of doing them for them.*

Ideal lab: engaging in social issues that have not been brought to them by a client (because they’re too high-level or ideal).

Intensive, because receiving people in their own space. Truly international organization. 80 people, 6 nationalities.

Lift11: Dorian Selz, Virtual Organizations [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

The only things that evolve alone in an organisation are disorder, friction, and malperformance. (Peter)

Bio: small Swiss-German village, C64, UniGE and asking for an e-mail address in person, Local.ch, and Memonic.com.

There is no such thing as a virtual organization.

First type of organization: killing mammoths.

Modern organizations: railways. The train was the fastest means of transport. Need organization so trains don’t crash into each other. Need for structure.

(1) Zero-cost production does not exist, if you talk about physical products (for digital products, it’s nearly zero). Huge gap between reproducing physical goods and ctrl+C/ctrl+V.

(2) Rational self-interest is not always the dominating factor. (3) Cooperation is key.

Start with a simple plan. Do away with complexity.

  • Local.ch: best local search in Switzerland.
  • Memonic.com: keep the essential.

Do your partners understand your business plan? That’s important. Make sure they do.

Forget command and control. Railways need it, but not all organization does. Have commonly shared values.  [photo coming]

Split the system into independant units. Anti-Titanic Strategy. Failure of one piece will not threaten all the rest. APIs between the pieces.

Project managers do more harm than good. Reduce the number of managers. Techies hire techies, managers hire managers. Less managers than managed!

Get rid of process: set goals, and get out of the way. Forget MS Office. Use a wiki *(steph-note: or shared documents online)* No more specification headaches!

Physical presence is no longer required. It can be an advantage to have people who are geographically (and time-zone) distant. Hard at the beginning, though, you need to take the team together to shape those values. Get people in shared communication tools online. *steph-note: cf. Automattic*

Partnerships and not master-servant relationships.

It’s all about the result!

Lift11: Alexander Osterwalder, The new business models [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Process of creating new businesses, and how that’s changing today. What does the process of car design have in common with creating your business? Not very much. Car design is a structured process, with crash tests before you roll. In business, it’s real life directly. Could we learn something from car design?

Dreamy: Mike is 34, MIT graduate, passionate about a business idea, masters the tools, does market research, crunch the numbers (tweak them a little), goes to find money, and builds his company with the huge pile of cash he got.

But… most business plans do not survive the first customer contact. This means we rely on real-life crashes. No crash tests.

Car design: sketching, all angles, different varieties, then prototypes. Then tests.

Could we design business models in the way we design cars? We know what the parts of a car are, but what exactly is a business model? When people try to explain business models, tower of Babel. We don’t have a common language to talk about business models => the business model canvas.

  • customer segments
  • value proposition
  • customer relationships (what kind of relationship)
  • revenue streams
  • key resources
  • key activities (what do we do?)
  • cost structure

Nine building blocks for a business model that can help us make it tangible.

Solar energy: horrendous upfront costs to put panels on a roof. Guy came up with a different business model: sell solar energy at a fixed price — target companies. Pays the upfront costs in exchange for a 5-10 year commitment to the fixed price. SunEdison.

We can sketch our business models.

Prototyping? Poster on the wall. Sketch out many different variations on the initial idea or business model. Variety! Usually we stick to ONE business model. What a shame. Each product can lead to five, ten, twenty business models. Go through them if you’re serious.

Amazing product: peepoo — portable one-use toilet, biodegradable. Not-for-profit is not what we want to do, so which sustainable business model? Free? Licensing? Cross Subsidies? Franchise? …?

Simulate the different business models. For example a fremium model for a running iPhone app. *steph-note: Alex goes through different scenarios.*

The simulation helps you see what might work.

But then, how do you test? Everything in your business model is a guess. Take it outside and test it to learn. Talk to customers (trivial). Fake ads can help you test. Then feed the results back into your business model. Only then can you think of building.

  1. an entrepreneur in the 21st century needs to be systematic about their process
  2. need to play
  3. test hypotheses before building organization

Lift11: Matthias Lüfkens, Twiplomacy [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Obama doesn’t tweet himself, but the Russian president does. He has recently split the account though, and his “personal” account is really interesting. He’s an amateur photographer, for example.

Twitter relations between Obama, Russian president and Downing street follow each other, so could send each other secret DMs — probably more secure than the traditional channels 😉

The French president has started reactivating his account, which was a little boring… Not very personal, but already a great step!

Very much used in Latin America. Nine Latin American presidents are on Twitter, and actively interconnected.

Interesting? Even if these political figures are not reading their @replies themselves, most probably their staff is monitoring them. Direct line of access.