Design. Charity. Life.

Co-author of the best-selling book Wikinomics, Anthony Williams, discussed the Rise of Networked Intelligence during his presentation at the Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference hosted at University of Toronto. In his fast-paced presentation he covered a lot of issues and highlighted the potential we face moving forward.

Williams highlighted that the fusion of social science with technology and the economy is key; it’s important to branch out and look at the way the world is changing. He suggests we look for creative ways to use technology to re-think the models of healthcare, education or change things in the world of business – regardless of which degree you have. It is the fusion of these that his the most important in solving these problems.

Anthony Williams presenting at CUTC 2012 (Photo by Richard Cerezo).

Social networking becomes social business

Wikipedia – with only 10 employees – is larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. Procter & Gamble – a product company that was going downhill years ago – decided to get over half of their ideas outside of the company. That opens it up to another 1.8 BIllion people, accessible especially though the web, crowd-sourcing, all on-demand. The person who has the solution gets paid a cash reward; a new model of problem solving compared to trying to staff all of the “best” people. Apple – through their App Store – created a platform and ecosystem for innovation. They have turned a product into a platform for innovative design and software. The power of the cloud brings business capabilities to us on-demand. For free teleconferences, use Skype; for online invoices, you can use FreshBooks; to access design and software professionals  online you can use Elance; to have designs manufactured and shipped you can use Ponoko.

Bringing us into a new age

Online communication and connectivity has brought us from the Industrial Age to the Information age; it has spared the revolution in the Middle East and North Africa, it has influenced healthcare – social media has been proven to help improve cancer patients recovery rate, it has modernized education – with 32 million books there are now 500 billion public web pages, 500,000 movies, 750 million articles and essays, and videos like TED talks.

Connecting the planet

How will ubiquitous intelligence reshape our cities? There are applications today that can help you find where you are at any given moment, track public transit vehicles, view the news closest to the reader,and more. Cities can be re-designed to allow for this intelligence to be built-in. The World Tech Jam, discussing new solutions for a connected planet, will take place in June with 20,000 people online at wcit2012.org.

Supporting music and journalism

Without a revenue model, these journalists can’t make a living, and we will loose high-quality journalism. Anthony Williams quoted Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP Group, “In essence the commercial roles of music companies will be more as facilitators for bringing music and the rights that support them into the marketplace, as opposed to being originators of the content itself”.

What about democratic activities – stopping bills like SOPA?

It is up to us as users and citizens to do our research and access the information ahead of time. We can also come together online through social media campaigns to make our voices heard, and channel them to productive places (sending messages to elected officials, creating petitions on sites like Change.org). The key is that we remain vigilant and pay attention to what is happening, Williams said. We have to stay engaged.

Technology is evolving so quickly, it is getting more difficult to stay current. Anthony recommends to be an active participant and to never be complacent. With the size of today’s economy and global population, nobody can afford to stay out of the loop. Technology has never been so accessible – in the past it would be very exclusive, secretive to access this, but today the most exciting technology is driven by consumers. It us us, Williams says, that is driving the change.

Anthony Williams presenting at CUTC 2012 (Photo by Richard Cerezo).

About Anthony Williams

Anthony D. Williams is a leading authority on collaborative innovation and co-author (with Don Tapscott) of the groundbreaking bestseller Wikinomics and its follow-up MacroWikinomics: New Solutions for a Connected Planet (Portfolio 2010). Anthony is the chief advisor to Brazil’s Free Education Project, a national strategy to equip 2 million young Brazilians with the skills required for a 21st Century workforce. He is a committee member of the National Research Council’s Committee on Science for the EPA’s Future. He is also an advisor to GovLoop, the world’s largest social network for government innovators and a founding fellow of the OpenForum Academy, a global research initiative focused on understanding the impact of open standards and open source on business and society. As a senior fellow at nGenera Insight, Anthony previously founded and led the world’s definitive investigation into the impact of Web 2.0 and wikinomics on the future of governance and democracy. His work has been featured in such publications as the Huffington Post, BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review and the Globe and Mail. He has advised Fortune 500 firms, government agencies and international institutions, including the World Bank.

During a presentation at Canadian Undergraduate Technology Conference 2012, Rick Segal (CEO & Co-Founder of Fixmo) spoke to students about his experience as a venture capitalist and self-described “gadget phreak”.

While there were some hilarious statements, like ”We developed this toolkit for the BlackBerry – you remember the BlackBerry, right?” there was some valuable development and business advice shared.

Rick Segal (Photo by Richard Cerezo).

(Click here for more photos.)

Some general advice about working with investors and venture capitalists and starting your own business or product:

• Always have a Plan B with your business plan and product idea; never give up, but always have a new plan B after the current one starts to fail
• Hire smarter people than you, and get out of their way (as Founder, your only job is to keep it successful and check on things – like if there’s enough pizza in the office)
• The most important thing a leader can do is be funny; keep the stress level as low as possible and interact with your team
• Canada is one of the best places to start a business – people will take a few minutes to listen to your pitch (unlike in Silicon Valley, for example, where they want you to work to even find them)
• Investors and Venture Capitalists are all inherently greedy (because that’s the way the model works); the best only take a reward after your company generates a reward
• If you truly believe you have a billion dollar opportunity or idea, don’t be caught up in deals or losses in smaller amounts (millions or thousands) if you have a plan for greater success
• “Dragons Den is entertainment first and investment second.”

1. State the Existing Problem
2. State Your Solution to the Problem
3. Who’s Going to Pay for It?
4. Are Alot of People Going to Pay For It?

More About Rick Segal

Rick Segal, Fixmo’s Chief Executive Officer, co-founded the company in 2009. Segal began developing Fixmo Sentinel under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with the National Security Agency following an initial meeting at a telecommunications trade show. He has since grown the company into an international business, fueled by his passion for startups, combined with years of experience with Blackberry users as a partner in the Blackberry Partners Fund. A self-described “gadget phreak,” Segal believes that technology should make our lives easier and continues to shape Fixmo in that image.Before founding Fixmo, Segal was a partner at JLA Ventures, a large Canadian Venture Capital fund. He has also served as President and CEO of Microforum, a leader in integrated e-business solutions for a wide array of industry verticals; President and COO at Chapters Online Inc., a leading Canadian e-commerce company; Partner at TMS Consulting; and Director of Technical Services for the Internet Customer Unit at Microsoft. Segal has authored four books on Network Management and Windows software development. He majored in Computer Science at the University of North Texas.

Do you have control over your life right now, and where it’s headed? For most, other people and institutions have a huge control over where you go, what you can buy, where you live and sadly, what you spend your time doing.

In the summer, I read Chris Guillebeau’s 2007 book, The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World. It focuses on setting your own rules, living the life you want, and – an important to me personally – changing the world. Not only is it focused on “World Domination” but also on making the world a better place at the same time.

The book is based on the author’s online manifesto – which brought me back to Think Tank 1 at OCAD University when a personal manifesto was part of the course. The author’s manifesto that inspired the book was called “A Brief Guide to World Domination”. It is a very honest book that challenges the way you think and how you live your life, so I do not think it would be for everybody.

As a summary of the book and its purpose, I selected this quote:

“You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to. You can do good things for yourself and make the world a better place at the same time.”

Essentially the book aims to show you how to do that.

As a graduating university student, I am very drawn towards how this book defies common assumptions about life and work, while also providing tools to begin living differently. As recommended online, the book is ideal for people asking, “There must be more to life than this,” which I feel can include students and people who have been stuck in an unexciting career for years.

Exploring creative ways to be self-employed is key – helping me to convince others that the route I would like to take is a feasible one potentially full of great success. Goal-setting and “sufficiency” are still major aspects the author addresses, but also the key component I admire is remembering to embrace life as a “constant adventure”.

An aspect I found valuable is that it the book is all based on personal experience and real examples of the author’s life – making all of the advice significantly more valuable and encouraging to follow.

I aspire to adopt and practice the art of non-conformity, and regardless of if you have chosen your ‘career path’ or not, would really suggest you read this book.

This post about Open Source is in response to an essay called What did we learn from Open Source? by a scientist in Finland, Ilkka Tuomi.

Open Source is a philosophy that promotes “free redistribution and access to an end product’s design and implementation details” according to the free, open-source platform Wikipedia.

Open Source software has become extremely important for everyone who uses the Internet. As Canadian designer Bruce Mau asks, “Now that we can do anything, what will we do?” designing for social change, innovation the betterment of society is something to consider.

The Industrial Age has defined needs through laws, industrial structures, business models, professions, and social institutions, which are changing today. While Intellectual Property Rights are important and should be respected, working on such open, collaborative platforms compels a re-design of these rights and principles. When the Open Source movement began, without rights for developers, it was thought that technical progress could slow down – yet this has not been the case. However, because corporate jobs and software fees do not necessarily motivate developers, they may only be interested and inspired to create things that they want to – not necessarily what the world needs.

The idea that developers “do not produce for others; instead, they create code to create themselves” could be detrimental to society’s future. What really motivates designers and developers is the urge to “make a meaningful difference in life, listen to a calling, and to become real by participating in a project shared by others who value the same values”, as Tuomi explains in reference to Aristotle.

People who have no money to spend cannot vote on the market of what is being developed and whose needs are being met, however. This is concerning because developing countries (which house the majority of the world’s population) and individuals with low income are stuck in Tuomi’s “bottleneck” of money being required to pay inventors – cutting off all those that do not have the financial resources. If the inventors are being paid for their inventions, “someone has to find them worth paying for,” Tuomi states. The exception could be in the case of impoverished nations, however, where Open Source products could be extremely valuable despite users not being able to pay for them.

Two years after Tuomi wrote this piece, a report from Boston-based Standish Group stated that the adoption of Open Source software models had already resulted in savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers. Ironically, to access Standish Group’s full report “Trends in Open Source”, a fee of $1000 per copy applies. These savings are a positive for consumers, and great news of the success of Open Source products – but neither the developers, nor the existing companies that customers did not pay, benefit financially.

Considering the developer and designer perspective, OCAD University Graphic Design Program Chair Keith Rushton, asks, “how do we design and work in a world, when we’re not thinking about the future of that world?” Rushton states that designers can facilitate change, however, with Open Source, it is completely up to the developers to decide whether they are interested in facilitating positive change or not. Tuomi states that there is “no guarantee that Open Source developers would focus on societally important challenges.”

Today, global information and communication networks have enabled an ongoing socio-economic transformation toward an “expansive economy of meaning, where culture, values, identity, and communication matters”. Tuomi argues that this economy requires a new concept of intellectual property.

There is evidence of hope of developers doing positive things for the online community, however. When it comes to recent successes, there are many – some of which have become extremely popular and mainstream. Namely, WordPress is a huge Open Source platform that hosts over 71,295,000 blogs and websites by individuals and many of the world’s biggest brands and industries (from TechCrunch to TED, CNN, and the NFL). Additionally, MySQL is the most widely used database server in the world and is required to install WordPress; a majority of websites use the Apache web server; and Firefox is one of the world’s top web browsers.

Open Source is part of mainstream society and everyday life, which is a sign that developers can build quality products useful to the world. Evidently, the future of communication depends on cooperation from a variety of groups and users – and today discussion continues on intellectual property rights, which may be transformed dramatically.

This emerging network society will require new institutions, new laws, and new ways to understand intellectual property and Open Source projects are the alternative – as long as everyone is on-board in support of the greater good.

You’re going to fail at having a good career, Larry Smith says passionately. Why? Because there are now only either great jobs or high-stress, blood-sucking, soul-destroying jobs – no “good” ones.

If you want a great career, you have to peruse your passion and dreams. Yet, so many people decide not to do this, despite countless desires to do so.

This talk, both funny and blunt from TEDxUW, Larry Smith “pulls no punches when he calls out the absurd excuses people invent when they fail to pursue their passions”.

One of many parts that stuck out was Smith sharing that, “When I was 5, I was a genius, but my professors have beaten that idea out of my head long since”. Although the audience laughs, I think it’s horrible how so many kids ideas and passions are shut down by parents, society and stereotypes they’re conformed to. These are missed opportunities.

Want to get a job and work hard? Society and your employer will let you work hard – but will that make you happy? Smith says the evidence is against it.

Even most people that find their passion fail because they continue to create new excuses on why not to peruse it. I don’t plan on being one of these people – I plan to continue per suing my passions and not locking myself into a job or situation that’s repetitive and doesn’t allow for continued growth and creativity.

It’s not just about pursuing your interests – it’s pursuing your passion. Passion is the key. Passion is the thing that helps you “create the highest expression of your talent”.

Don’t be afraid to try, don’t be afraid to fail.

Watch Larry Smith’s “Why you will fail to have a great career” from TEDxUW