Anyone who knows me well would never characterize me as a Renaissance Man, which from here on in I will call a Polymath to keep this post gender-neutral.

A Polymath is "a person with encyclopedic, broad, or varied knowledge or learning." It's an individual who knows a lot about a great many things. Leonardo Da Vinci and his famous notebooks, naturally, spring to mind.

I may know a lot about the digital landscape, but I could never be a Polymath. I blame the Internet.

Even though the web makes it easier than ever for an individual to stay reasonably informed about a great many subjects, my gut is that people go deep into their interests at the expense of being well rounded. The implications are significant for business and society overall.

The web is deepening specialization and giving rise to experts that become highly successful in a given domain. This is a trend that Seth Godin champions in his great book The Dip. In addition, it's what Markus Buckingham recently talked about with Oprah as a ticket to success in one's career and life. (For more, check out the podcast on iTunes.)

I have seen this vividly in my own life. I used to read three newspapers a day. I also never missed the local 11 o'clock news every night. I excelled at current events quizzes in school. No more. Since I started living in my feed reader, I became blissfully ignorant about the world, facing an ever-pressing need to stay current in my domain of expertise.

Case in point: when three New York City cops accused of killing a man the night before his wedding were acquitted it made national news. However, I had no idea that there was even a trial going on. Worse, I hadn't heard about the crime itself, which took place back in 2006.

So my question to all of you is - what is the future for the Polymath? Once this was a ticket to success. Now is it equally a way to fail in an increasingly specialized world? Do you know any Polymaths? They seem to be dwindling in number as we spend more time online.

[Cross posted at FASTforward]

The phrase “technology for us” has been kicking around in my head for the past several months. At the FASTForward ‘08 conference, I took a first pass at articulating my thinking in a video interview with Jerry Michalski. Consider this my next attempt. I expect there will be more.

Technology for Them

Information systems in organizations generally have been “technology for them.” Accounting systems, inventory control systems, ERP systems, reservations systems are all designed and imposed on their users.

Done properly, these systems yield efficiencies, predictable quality, and significant economic benefits. The design and implementation processes for these systems are industrial engineering at its best. Expert designers observe, redesign, and streamline processes to define and constrain what the target user population is allowed to do.

In these systems, users are simply one component in a mechanistic environment designed to constrain behaviors. User roles are limited to situations where technology is too expensive and a human user is more economical. Individual creativity and initiative are neither desirable or appropriate.

Technology for Me

The personal computer revolution brought “technology for me.” We saw innovation and scores of programs designed to improve the productivity and effectiveness of individual knowledge workers. Few of us would go back to a world without spreadsheets, word processors, or the other tools made possible and accessible via personal level information technology.

The first waves of innovation in the PC world focused largely on individual productivity. Attention to work process, if any, was a function of the idiosyncrasies of each user. Broadly speaking, innovation took one of two forms. Programmers and developers generalized from their own needs to develop unique tools solving their own problems. With luck, those solutions found enough kindred spirits to sustain a market. Early examples here would include the original Visicalc, ThinkTank, More, and dBase. More recent examples would include MindManager, SketchUp, Powerpoint, and the Brain.

The alternate development path was more corporate, with planned attempts to meet the application needs of perceived large markets of individual information and knowledge workers. Examples here would include the original Lotus 1-2-3, Microsoft Word, and Visio.

This development path emphasized industrial and mechanistic conceptions of work. Moreover, the logic of mass markets produced products targeted to the perceived lowest common denominator of user needs. At its worst, this path leads right back to technology for them and Microsoft Bob as a distorted model of users and use cases.

Us as Knowledge Worker

There are two dimensions of “technology for us” worth exploring. The first is “us” as knowledge workers; individuals charged with “thinking for a living” in Tom Davenport’s coinage and expected to exercise substantial initiative and autonomy in the design and execution of their work. The second dimension of “us” is the degree to which key work products and deliverables emerge from the collective and coordinated action of multiple knowledge workers. We’ll return to this second form of us in a bit.

There are both political and practical problems with applying technology effectively to the unique needs of knowledge workers. Previous organizational uses of technology have not had to deal with situations where the target audience was free to ignore you. Knowledge workers occupy positions of power and influence within the enterprise. They have the power and inclination to ignore, dismiss, and actively undermine ill-conceived and poorly executed efforts to modify their work practices. For that matter, they have to power to dismiss well-conceived and well-executed efforts on their behalf. 

If you’re smart enough to avoid the trap of trying to dictate an approach to this user community and actively engage them in the design and implementation process, you run into the next constraint. Knowledge workers can’t articulate quality, effectiveness, or efficiency with anything resembling the precision that applies to manual or information work. The nature of knowledge work and its deliverables makes typical measurement approaches suspect (see Crafting Uniqueness in Knowledge Work and The Invisibility of Knowledge Work, for example). We have only recently begun to understand individual knowledge work practices in ways that let us apply technology with some likelihood of success. In many ways we are still working out the details of the vision of knowledge work support first articulated by Vannevar Bush in the mid-1940s in As We May Think.

Us as Groups of Knowledge Workers

Organizations exist to solve problems beyond the capacity of individuals to tackle. This is as true of knowledge work as it is for all other types of work. For all the power of technology to make individual knowledge workers more productive and effective, the greater opportunity lies in developing skill at using technology to support collective activity.

What we haven’t yet done well is knit together our knowledge of how to improve group oriented work practices and technological possibilities. Further, the more promising efforts have seen limited penetration into organizations. When dealing with collective knowledge work we compound the problem of knowledge worker autonomy with the problem that the knowledge work processes we wish to improve are vague, imprecise, and squishy in ways quite uncharacteristic of the work processes we are comfortable working with in industrial settings.

If we take the analysis and improvement tools we are comfortable with in industrial process settings and simply port them to knowledge work environments, one of two things happens. Either, we become hopelessly frustrated trying to force a dynamic and fluid process into the confines of our swimlanes. Or, we mistake the small fraction of the process we can force fit into our tools for the entire phenomenon; guaranteeing that our target users will ignore us and route around our efforts.

While there are people who have thought about the problems of applying technology to complex knowledge work processes and practices, their work has not achieved the widespread adoption it needs to be a meaningful factor in most organizations. Some good entry points into this work include:

• Doug Engelbart. Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware
• Alan Kay. The Real Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet
• Dave Snowden. Cognitive Edge (Snowden’s blog may be the simplest place to start here; the papers tend to be a bit academic)
• Jeff Conklin. Wicked Problems and Social Complexity (PDF). Cognexus Institute

The inventory of technology solutions promising to streamline, improve, or transform group activities continues to grow, although it often seems more like baroque and rococo variations on a handful of themes than like new insights or frameworks. Will the next implementation of threaded discussion make any major contribution to educating a group on when and how to make effective use of that technique? Or to understanding what situations make it a poor choice of tool?

What seems to be missing is a synthesis of Group Behavior 101 and a groupware pattern language. I’m not aware of anything that would fit that bill, although Stewart Mader’s recent Wikipatterns might represent a potential starting point. Can anyone point to some examples I’m unaware of? Is this something that we should be working to develop?

Oh my.

Oh my oh my oh my. I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just say it outloud.

BusinessWeek are stupid!

Not the journalists or editors working there though, but the knucklehead that thought it was a good idea to tell users not to link to pages on the site, and put it in a user agreement (the only link to BusinessWeek you’ll find in this piece) at that, and then follow it up by telling you not to link should you do it, well, s/he’s stupid.

Web 2.0, oh yes.

I thought old media (this is ancient media really) had gotten a bit further than that, and an overall pretty good site/mag like BusinessWeek should be getting it, right? Well, obviously they’re not, as SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill found out, after wanting to link to an interview with him from his blog. My, my, very smooth.

What happens next? Well, Gawker picked it up, along with CNET’s News Blog, and I’m guessing this’ll make even more rings on the water.

So stupid. Really, it is stupid. Why would you say no to free traffic? Traffic brings ad dollars! Making it hard for bloggers and well-meaning sites like this makes them pissed up, and you end up on The Blog Herald with a cranky editor whining about your policies!

What do you think? How stupid is this?

I’m reading that Google is closing Hello, which apparently was (and is, as I’m writing this), a photo sharing service that came with Picasa. I guess they feel it doesn’t fill a purpose anymore.

This from Hello.com:

We originally embarked on a mission to make photo sharing easier and more fun with Hello. We plan to keep carrying that torch in new projects to come.

We hope that you continue to enjoy the other sharing products Google offers including Picasa, Picasa Web Albums and Google Talk.

More over at Google Blogoscoped, with some links to the old version. Matthew Ingram says that Hello was a really cool app, in which case it’s a shame it closes.

On May 15, Google can begin doing something really cool with hello.com, a truly premium domain name. Too bad for the users of the defunct service though.

Sometimes our thoughts crystallize not through direct learning but through looking, comparing and contrasting. Such a moment happened for me after returning from Chicago and checking through Twitter and my emails. I saw a division between the openness, positivity, helpfulness, encouragement, passion of social media, with one or two individuals who, frankly, don’t want to get it.

I was jabbed with a tweet yesterday “all this ‘feelings’ stuff and those that gravitate to it are for those that cannot compete”. Oh dear, how sad. How many ways can one sentence be wrong? Now, of course, this particular tweet account is all about getting a rise out of people, so best not to give too much attention to it. Let’s instead look at the top of human achievement, according to Maslow:

Read through what Maslow said we as humans need and, you know, I think feelings do matter. It’s very much not just about competing for dollars. I do ok financially, I pay my bills, have nice vacations, buy boys toys, but if that’s all it was about I would still be in my corporate commuting day job.

Self-esteem, confidence, respect, morality, creativity. Sounds right to me.

As Terry Starbucker (via the New Radicals) says:

“Wake up kids. We’ve got the dreamers disease”

That’s what I like about blogs and bloggers. We achieve without climbing over each other, we cooperate, we assist, we share. The old guard can keep their cut throat business, I’m sticking to my touchy feely social media stuff because I like it :)

Some random observations of my first few days in Oz:

First, how is it Qantas can serve a free hot meal and free beverages on a 55 minute trip from Melbourne to Sydney when most US airlines I fly on can barely provide a cold, stale sandwich on a cross country flight? It’s also cool, by the way, that the people meeting you off the flight can do so at the gate instead of being relegated to baggage claim. Overall, flying has been much more pleasant here, kiss of death I know for tonight’s flight back to Melbourne.

Surprisingly, what hasn’t been great is the Internet. The connection at my workshops thus far has been spotty or nearly non-existent, and buying it in airports or hotels is insanely expensive. From everything I’ve heard from folks here and others answering questions on Twitter, access is very uneven and, in general, pricey. In fact, many state right out that they are worse off than some third world countries in the connection respect.

As always, the Aussies that I’ve met have been exceedingly generous, helpful, and complimentary. Just like our trip here last year, I’ve felt very welcomed. It’s definitely a place that I would highly recommend making a journey to, despite the fact that our currencies have almost reached parity making things a bit more expensive here than in the past. (Obviously, that’s the case for us Yanks no matter where we go these days.)

While the new government has allocated some significant funds to getting all high school students on a computer in short order, the amazing thing from what I hear is those computers are going to be desktops. Just as in the states, there is not a lot of vision at the top in terms of where to spend technology dollars and what the future might look like.

My “Small World” moment came when my phone suddenly rang and it was Tess calling from back home. Nothing special these days, I know, but a first for me. I just can’t get my brain around how many wireless signals we must be floating in if her phone call found me here in Sydney. Amazing.

And one last: when I was in Brisbane the other day, I was walking down the street when I saw a long line slinking around the corner, dozens of people queued up to get, believe it or not, Krispy Kreme donuts. I kid you not. People were walking out of the store with boxed dozens of the things, and apparently, it is the latest American sensation to hit the continent. Let’s hope it’s not followed by those other sensations that we’re getting more and more famous for: obesity and diabetes.

Finally, one very cool moment: when in my keynote I was discussing the fact that my kids had been taught to use Scratch by Neil Winton’s son Andrew from Scotland during one of our “extended classroom” sessions, it turned out that Neil and Andrew were watching live from Scotland. I only wish I would have known when it happened; what a great model-able moment that would have been.

I’ll try to carve out a few more observations this weekend before my final presentation in Melbourne on Monday. Then back to the states on Tuesday.

In case anyone is interested, my keynote was Ustreamed here, and the other sessions are on this page. Enjoy!

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Thomas Vander Wal has written about achieving success with enterprise social tools. To quote: Social tools require much more than just the tools for their implementation to be successful. Tool selection is tough as no tool is doing everything well and they all are focussing on niche areas. But, as difficult as the tool selection can be, there are three more elements that make up what the a successful deployment of the tools and can be considered part of the tools.

I recently interviewed Colleen Coplick about taking over Buzz Networker, and there I said that an interview with her focusing on PR was due on BloggerTalks. Well, it is up now, and Colleen shares her views on paid reviews, PR agencies sending out samples, getting famous in the social sphere, how to write a great press release, and more.

Check it out, over at BloggerTalks!

MyBlogLog have added some new stuff, since the obviously get that we’re not monogamous when it comes to online apps and social networks.

Specifically, whenever you:

• post a question to Yahoo Answers
• share an item on Google Reader
• post a video on Seesmic

MyBlogLog will post those events and make them part of your New with Me page.

All you need to do is to share your service ID for these services respectively. Good stuff.

The last two days I've been running a workshop in Wellington, New Zealand. A great group, and very vigorous discussions and debates.

As ever, for the record, these were the "big questions" raised by participants at the beginning of the workshop:

• Homepage policy?
• Intranet vs document management?
• Process for delivering a business-effective intranet?
• Intranet redevelopment process?
• Conducting needs analysis?
• Collaboration tools?
• Web 2.0?
• Getting the launch right?
• Project management methodologies vs intranet team?
• Keeping momentum going?
• Governance?
• Managing scope?
• Working more effectively with business units re content?
• How to find the right "activities" to add to the intranet?
• Different needs for each area?
• Analysing research results? And choosing the right activities?
• Obtaining business buy-in?
• Usability testing and information architecture?
• Trimming fat?

The GNU General Public License heads to court again today, as Skype attempts to defend its distribution of Linux-enabled SMC hardware handsets that appear to be in violation of the operating system's open source license. It's easy to guess why Skype is fighting the suit, which was brought by GPL activists: the company relies on a proprietary protocol, and releasing the code could give competitors an advantage. You can't blame them for trying. Although in the past few years the GPL has made important strides in establishing its legal enforceability, it's still conceivable that a court could find something wrong with its unusual, viral nature.

Few think that this will be the court case that makes or breaks the GPL. Skype's already lost early rounds of this fight, and the claims it's now making seem so broad as to imply desperation. Besides, the case is being tried in the German legal system, which to date has proven friendly to the GPL.

But even if the license was invalidated, either in this case or another, there's an argument to be made that the GPL has already served its purpose. Its impact on the world of open source software is undeniable: by ensuring that an open project would remain open, the license encouraged programmers to contribute to projects without fear of their work being coopted by commercial interests. And by making it difficult, if not impossible, for a project derived from a GPLed project to go closed-source, it encouraged many programmers to license their efforts under open terms when they otherwise might not have.

But today, with open source firmly established as a cultural and commercial force, the GPL's relevance may be waning. The transition to the third version of the license left many in the open source community upset and intent on sticking with its earlier incarnations. And an increasing number of very high profile projects, like Mozilla, Apache and Open Office, have seen fit to create their own licenses or employ the less restrictive LGPL. The raw numbers bear out the idea of a slight decline in the GPL's prominence, too: Wikipedia lists the percentage of GPLed projects on Sourceforge.net and Freshmeat.net, two large open source software repositories, as 68% and 65%, respectively, as of November '03 and January '06. Today, the most recently available numbers show that Sourceforge's share has fallen to 65%, and Freshmeat's share has fallen to to 62%.

This is, of course, a small decline, and the GPL remains the world's most popular open source license by a considerable margin. But it does seem as though there may be a slowly decreasing appetite for the license's militant approach to copyleft ideals. I certainly don't wish Skype well in its probably-quixotic tilt at the GPL, but if they were to somehow get lucky at least they'd be doing so at a point in the open source movement's history when the GPL is decreasingly essential.

Tom Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tom Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

We do not remember days; we remember moments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Successful and Outstanding Bloggers Conference (SOBCon) in Chicago last weekend was a collection of moments I will remember for a long time.

Throughout the weekend, people kept asking what was different about this conference from all the other conferences they go to. It was clear it was different, and different from the first moment. Why?

Was it because it was a group of bloggers? I’ve been to blog events and while that was part of the reason, it wasn’t the whole reason.

After the first pre-conference party, Joanna Young of Confident Writing made an attempt to explain it. She said that so many business conferences are filled with attendees that arrive with an agenda. It’s all about them and what they can get. It’s all about grasping the opportunities. Admitting she hadn’t been prepared for the openness, she struggled to make sense of it. I told her that there is something special about social bloggers. They don’t arrive to such events ready to grasp and grab. They arrive with open hands, waiting for whatever drops in.

As fans of Liz Strauss, the leading expert in the art of the blog conversation and online community building and producer of SOBCon, the people within the room in Chicago read each others blogs. Even if they didn’t, they had some notion of the type of blogger they were, and cut to the chase. Unlike other conferences, conversations didn’t start with “How do you do. Nice to meet you. What do you do?” There was no need to explain what blogging is or why it’s easy to get so passionate about it. We knew all that. We got right to the point.

“Tell me about you.”

It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about preconceptions or assumptions. These people were here for the connections, not the surface stuff. As showcased in the post-conference reactions, there was a level of honesty and sincerity that was extraordinary. People didn’t want to play the typical social games. They wanted to get right to the heart of the issues. No holds barred.

In her presentation, Liz Strauss made these important points that might help define the difference:

Customers: Is your traffic a reader or a customer?

Don’t sell your customers something they don’t need or what you think they need. Sell them what they want.

Make it about them.

How to be irresistible. They are all about Frosted Mini Wheats. The fiber appeals to the adult in me. The sugar appeals to the kid in me. If I don’t want breakfast, you need to tell me something to make me want them. Tell me they make a good snack or that they are good for me.

Head, heart, and meaning. Make the connection.

Make it about them. Sound familiar? For these bloggers, it wasn’t about them. Having learned that the strength in a successful blog is making the blog about the readers and giving them what they want, the conference attendees understood how to connect in person, too. Make it about them, not you. When you do, you’re more interesting, and they want to know you better. You make them want to come to you.

A lot of business connections were made this past weekend. And a lot more will develop over the next year or two. These connections will be stronger as the courtship dance was over before they ever met.

I’ve been to a lot of blog conferences and events, but there is something special about SOBCon. Maybe you and the attendees can explain it better, but I think Wendy Piersall of Spark Plugging summed it up very nicely:

SOBCon is like walking into a room of your best friends you have yet to meet.

We weren’t there for the day. We were there for the moments. And we got them.