Thoughts You Can Think About (or not)

I’m treating it similarly to this blog, but I’m trying much harder to keep a conversational, not a broadcast, tone.

It may split into two blogs later, one for short-form thoughts and another for longer-form essays. It might not.

Anyway, go check it out. I’ve been posting consistently there recently, and it’s already becoming a part of my work habits.

For that reason, if you still care about my writing, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m starting a whole new, slightly more personal, writing outlet over at aidannulman.com.

The first part is up: Music You’d Better Listen To (or, in short form, MyBLT). Expect more in the near future, all aggregated at aidannulman.com. And you’ll hear about it here first. Or maybe second, after my Twitter feed…

Thanks for the fun and conversation this past year-and-a-bit! I’ve relished every moment of it.

I’m in Seattle right now with my mother, visiting my little brother. Neither of them are “tea people”. But I am (somewhat). So when I saw a sign advertising a “free tea tasting” at a small shop, I had to drag them in by the ear.

We sat down at the Vital Tea Leaf counter, and Bonnie poured us some tea made with chrysanthemum flowers and stevia (a natural sweetener). My mom’s eyes lit up, and my brother was excited. It was good stuff.

The experience didn’t end there: we drank some ginseng oolong tea, a rose-and-some-other-flower one, a jasmine tea, a black tea with litchi, some tea made with the hibiscus flower, a variety of pu’erh, and what they called “Smoke Tea”, which was the Chinese version of one of my Japanese favourites, lapsang souchong.

No joke, my mom spent about $100 on two teapots (one for me, as a “thank you” for bringing her), three teas, and a bag of stevia.

This, to me, seems normal for tea shops. My favourite one in Toronto, Davidstea, has the nicest girls behind the counter, all of whom are excited about tea. But that’s the least they do. They bring you a free sample as you walk in the door, and they act as your own personal concierge, pulling down tin after tin of their teas for you to smell. Your thumbs-up/thumbs-down then guides their decisions in a Pandora-like process to find the tea that’s right for you.

I have also spent, on occasion, upwards of $80 on a single visit. And I keep going back.

Now, compare that to your favourite coffee shop. I have yet to find one that cultivates its customers, getting them as excited about what they’re about to drink. I also haven’t seen anyone spend $100 or so in a single visit.

It’s so much easier to buy in when you’re excited about something. How can you excite and delight every day?

Again, it’s nothing new that newspaper readership is declining, that newspapers are folding, etc. Now, it looks like the AP is taking a stance for the newspapers, right? With decreased paid readership, somebody needs to take a stand to protect the newspapers’ quality content from the likes of aggregators!

If that’s what you’re thinking, I suggest trying on a new pair of lenses.

Think, for a second, back to the heyday of the newspaper. When you got your fill of local, national, and global news… before the internet. Hell, even before AP/Reuters started standardizing the content. Articles were written by authors you recognized and trusted… maybe even knew. They were, without a doubt, written by a member of the community you were a part of — after all, your community was reading and writing the same newspaper you held in your hands.

Then the AP/Reuters/other syndication services came along. And they made everything a lot cheaper and a lot simpler: if a story broke, they’d have the facts and they could quickly get the news to your paper’s (and a boatload of other papers’) editor(s).

Your local newspaper suddenly had a quality story without having to fact-check the article. You, up in Toronto, were reading the same stuff as your cousin in Boston and your nephew in London.

But the individualized, local flavour your paper once had when reporting these events? Gone.

Now, aggregators are being blamed for harvesting and unfairly using content. But imagine using Google, or any other web service, to compare the differences between local reactions to a story. These aggregating tools, all of a sudden, are providing a unique service that our current news-making (and news-serving) model could really take advantage of.

But instead, we have countless copies of syndicated articles clogging up our inter-tubes.

Call me a child of the information age, but I’ve never thought of a newspaper as simply a way to get the news. I’ve always thought the Montreal Gazette should be the Montreal Gazette. The Toronto Star should be the Toronto Star.

If all I wanted was a universal report on current affairs, I wouldn’t open either of these… or any other local paper.

In the hour-long podcast (originally broadcast on TV, I imagine), Weinberger speaks about the triumphs and weirdness of the internet have done for knowledge. One of his key insights is that the internet really opened up meta-data: when search can be ubiquitous, we don’t need to limit ourselves to three (or five, or any arbitrary number of) tags or categories to fit a piece into, unlike the Library of Congress.

That got me thinking: Google’s PageRank is, admittedly, a really useful system. But I think Google really won because they found a clean and efficient way to sort through the meta-data before any of their competitors did. And yes, I remember Altavista’s ability to search a database of MP3s or images, and I imagine other search engines had it too. But Google made it both intuitive and relevant (more often than not).

That, dear readers, is why I believe that Twitter’s real-time search won’t be a Google Killer yet: before it can be, it needs to be able to sort through the meta-data, to fit its real-time results into the mold that its users aren’t asking for, but are hoping to see.

And no, Tweefind, an attempt to apply PageRank to Twitter just ain’t gonna cut it.

So why do they exist? Are they a relic of some sort of archaic system when they were necessary? Well, yes. But is that all they could be?

A friend of mine ran an experiment last year, just for fun. He put signs in the elevators at UofT’s biggest library, prompting people to talk. Then he rode the elevator a bunch. And people talked. They seemed to have a good time, too… at least they weren’t standing in uncomfortable silence, right?

Why haven’t airlines with middle seats turned them into something appealing? Windows have a view and an easy-to-nap “corner”; aisles are just plain easier to use and let you feel less guilty if you need to get up.

Middle seats could:

• come with cards prompting discussion with (willing) neighbours
• be given free travel-related sample products to share with one of the people sitting beside them
• be a little bit wider than the other seats next to them, compensating for the squished-ness that might occur
• have their own little on-board chatroom with other middle seaters on the plane, letting them whine about the arsehole sitting next to them — or brag that they’ve been randomly placed next to their favourite hockey player
• come decked out with office supplies they might need to get some work done (branding it as “the business seat”, as opposed to the “nappers’ window” or the “escape artist aisle”) — thanks to @thetiniest for inspiring this one

And that’s just 5 or 6 minutes of highly-distracted brainstorming. I’m sure you can think of better. Let’s hear ‘em in the comments!

My point, though, is that if you’re offering up middle seats, either lose them or use them. Doing otherwise is hurting you in the long run.

I sent a document I was working on to Jeff Widman last week, asking for some quick feedback. His comments boiled down to:

“You’ve done really well on these two things, but you’re slacking with this other one. You can do better.”

And then he prompted me with a quick example.

After working on something for long enough, it’s really easy to fall into the “wow, this is amazing!” trap. After all, you’ve been working on it for hours, if not days! It’s come so far from the blank page it used to be.

Still, you’re missing something. Guaranteed. You’re almost there, but you need a swift kick in the ass to cross the finish line.

So I spent a lot of yesterday thinking: “What’s the next big game-changer?” What’s the next thing that will shake our society to the bone, like electricity, telephones, cable TV, and even the internet have done?

(It was a good day to think, by the way. Beautiful, crisp, and sunny, I spent the late afternoon on a bench with a newly-purchased copy of “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”… what a steal at $5!)

The answer I came up with made me both incredibly uncomfortable and incredibly excited (which, luckily, was what I was hoping to feel):

The next game-changer will open up people like the internet opened up data.

Think Web 2.0… but without the permission. Think about being able to reach anyone without anything standing in your way. But then think of the flipside: anyone can do the same to you.

A system — or a protocol — like this scares the daylights out of me because it’s too easy to game. Which is why — like the internet — it will need to start out slow. With people who are excited about the possibilities. With people who want to prove the skeptics wrong. And, ultimately, with people who see the promise to enhance their own lives by being involved.

By opening ourselves to others, by creating a searchable, indexable, and intuitive platform of universally-accessible people, we have the opportunity to enhance our own lives by enhancing everybody else’s. We also have the ability to directly connect and share wisdom with anyone sharing our journey from birth to unfortunate death.

The funny thing is (and this may, unfortunately, sound a bit “May 1968“) that most business executives, celebrities, and others who most of the masses would want to get in touch with right now won’t get involved until it’s too late. But, to be honest, they shouldn’t. We need them to keep society stable until this happens. Or, alternatively, as a fallback plan in case this fails.

No, this platform, system, protocal — whatever you want to call it — will be built, tested, and developed by those of us who aspire to be like them. It will be built by the people who want to reach that level and, by the time they (or we) do, it will hopefully have whatever spam filters are necessary to keep it from negatively impacting their (or our) lives.

Yes, I know Facebook kind of does this. Yes, I know Twitter kind of does this, too. But what they’re really missing is the ability to be accessed. There’s no way to reach someone directly, and they lack proper accountability. I mean, sure, things can be public, but that doesn’t mean that anything you do right will impact you positively (or vice-versa).

Conclusion:

The next big game-changer, at least in my mind, will be a ubiquitous platform that makes everyone in the world easily find-able and accessible, like the internet did for documents. Anyone want to start working on a model protocol?

• Working with Andrew (aka @hyfen), a brilliant friend of mine, on a project called Communitie. We’re setting up skilled professionals who have a bit of extra time (which we see too much of these days, what with layoffs and cutbacks) with local non-profits and community organizations that need their expertise. We set the site up in a night, presented at DemoCamp three days later, and we’re just waiting on approval of our write-up before we post the first project.
• I have some ideas about how the above can scale, but I’m looking into potential business models for it — and applying for some startup programs.
• Continuing to avoid “schoolwork”, since most of my assignments have little to no impact on my personal development, let alone anyone else’s.
• Figuring out fundraiser ideas for the UC Follies. We came up a bit short this year, but Blank Canvas inspired a (similar, though slightly tweaked) spinoff to help make up the loss and make sure next year’s team can work on a show.
• Learning Python. I was falling behind on my ability to talk to programmers, and needed to catch up.
• Getting to know some fantastic people in the Toronto tech and non-profit communities. I’m not going to name names, but search #csiTO and #genyTO on Twitter Search to see what’s up.
• Dreaming of organizing a crowdsourced Tom Waits concert in Toronto.

Come check out why I’ve been absent from this blog/most of my life for the past two weeks: Urinetown; the Musical.

We can even meet in person in the lobby! And, if you come tonight, you’ll get to see me brave one of my greatest fears: apple juice. I wish I was kidding.

[/shameless plug]

I’ve got some thinking points to write about, but I’m rarely around a sustainable internet connection anymore for more than 5/10 minutes. And, for some reason, I just don’t write like I should when I’m writing in Word/any offline writing software that I could draft a blog post in.

Get ready for a return to a semblance of regularity this Sunday/Monday, folks.