On a personal note

For the most part, I've been focusing this blog on my professional interests, but today I make an exception. I've lost a young cousin, an Aunt, and an Uncle to cancer, and an older cousin is fighting hard today. This is not a sad story though, but a story of empowerment and inspiration: My mother, Jill Alexander (turning 70 on her next birthday), is training hard to run a marathon in October to raise money for Leukemia and Lymphoma research (the cancer that took little Tommy and Aunt Arlene from us). She has a website where she's keeping a training log, and accepting donations. I hope you will visit, and consider making a donation. I should say a little about my Mom: My Mother is the great inspiration of my life. With all the challenges that come with being a single mother of two small boys, she grew a business from nothing into a beautiful day spa and health centre. She worked hard so we never felt that we lacked for anything that truly mattered. I remember her greeting customers and employees alike with a hug and loving kindness. Losing her brother and sister-in-law, whom she dearly loved, and burying baby Tommy would be a terrible burden for anybody, but she has turned the pain of her loss into a positive will to do good. Those who know my mother well will tell you that this is how she lives her life: with love, and to the fullest she knows how.

Boom!

In Turning the Generational Dial, Carol Orsborn (who works at Fleishman-Hillard, along with my good friend Jennifer Torney) makes the case that the generations that follow the Baby Boomers will be the first in all of history "not (to) have grown into adulthood anticipating the marginalized, invisible, powerless future boomers once expected to have—but rather, the promise of lifelong vitality, relevant entertainment and the thriving careers at midlife and beyond that boomers pioneered." This, I find very interesting. I've heard it said that the web is for the young, that youthful early adopters (alone) are driving the new generation of applications we're seeing on the web. I don't believe it. I heard something at the Web 2.0 Expo regarding the demographics of users of the instructables website. I can't for the life of me, find a link anywhere to it on the internet. If anyone can find something, please let me know. Instructables is a site where people post plans for projects that people can build themselves. The interesting tidbit was that Instructables users fall into two categories: posters and readers. Posters tend to be older (over 35) and readers tend to be younger (under 35). What's interesting about that is how obvious it is. Older people passing their knowledge and skills onto younger people. How... human. One of the things the web 2.1 may give us is better access to an increasingly web-savvy older generation with more energy and more things to share than ever before. Maybe, I'm starting to get a sense of why I should care about the Wikia search engine project... Google lets you search what's on the web, but how do you search somebody's life experiences? That's what I want. Anybody working on that?

Kinzin beta update

It wasn't the worst I've seen, but I think it's fair to say that the Kinzin launch wasn't as smooth as we wanted. Anyway, Paul's team is working fast and furious (quickly and furiously?) to get the holes patched and loops closed. In retrospect, I would say the Mother's day promotion was too ambitious for the first release. Still, we're getting more signups every day, so despite my own perception of the warts and flaws, there are people out there who are adopting and using Kinzin (a big "thank you" to any of you that might be listening). The next phase is going to focus on closing the loop on publishing and inviting, to make it more fun to create using Kinzin, and more obviously valuable to visit.

All together now (all together now)!

The great people that I work with at Uniserve (hello Paul, Kate (Trgovac), Dethe, Joanna, Kate (Inglis), Vince) have launched a great new product. It's called Kinzin, and it's a site where people can create many small, overlapping, family-centric social networks. It's very cool, and the launch promotion right now is a free high-end custom photobook for a Mom in your family if you sign up and create a family space. It's kind of in a public beta phase, and it would be excellent if you would sign up and try it out. With families getting spread out geographically and bigger age gaps between generations, there are very few truly shared family spaces, where families can share and nurture their micro-cultures. Kinzin is an attempt to give people the tools to create those spaces for themselves. It's just the beginning, too - there are all sorts of cool things coming down the pipe. Check it out!

Unbanking

(source: Springwise) CommunityLend is "an online community where people lend money directly to other people. (...)You can set your own rates, payback periods and meet some cool people along the way..." I love the sound of this, and I'm very glad it's made its way to Canada. Peer-to-peer lending "banks" been launched in Holland and Germany and, it seems, with some success. In the Netherlands, Guus Drijver, founder of the unfortunately named Boober, says: "Boober doesn't work with hidden costs and is completely transparent. We don't sponsor yacht races or soccer teams, and don't have expensive headquarters or pay thousands of people high salaries." Amen, brother. In "the next few months", CommunityLend will be launching what the are calling a "test phase" where you can "set up profiles, manage loans, bid on auctions and create groups without using real money". I can hardly wait.

Socially Networking

Visualization of a Community
Originally uploaded by DC Rob.

According to an article in the NY Times, to follow up on their purchase of Five Across, Cisco is purchasing Tribe.net. It looks like they think that "social" networking with and among customers will become a standard part of corporate infrastructure. Fancy that. Marc Andreesen says this: "The idea that Cisco is going to be a force in social networking is about as plausible as Ning being a force in optical switches."

messy times
Originally uploaded by el frijole.

I'm not sure if I would go that far, given Cisco's resources, but his point has some validity. There's not a lot of ordinary people in the circles that Cisco typically runs in. Still, it looks to me that they've recognized that the networks that really matter to most companies are made of people, not machines. Good for them. Interesting times...

Co-Creation Rules!

Here's a great manifesto I got from the folks over at Changethis: Co-Creation Rules. Written by James Cherkoff and Johnnie Moore, it gives 17 guidelines to those hoping to engage with their customers, Marketing Participation-style. I liked how they opened their essay, suggesting an exercise to the readers: Draw a picture with one of your colleagues. Using a single pen, and without speaking, take turns adding lines to draw a face, and then give it a name. Which one of you "owns" the picture? Does it look like anything you've drawn before individually? Can you imagine collaborating with your customers in this way to create a new product or campaign?