broadstuff

So, coming to the end of the week at the BBC Innovation Labs, our Memetic Difference Engine system has been pummelled. pushed, tweaked and had all sorts of indignities heaped on it (just so long as it doesn't get pinched), and has come out stronger as a result, for 3 main reasons:

- Firstly, many more brains have gone into the concept, it has added richness and depth, and allowed us to clear out the outlying ideas.

- Secondly, it has become clear that the smart stuff we have focussed on also needs a lot of smart stuff around the graphical output - different people see complex data in very different ways, and different situations need different representation modes.

- Thirdly, we have learned to communicate the idea to a wide variety of different people. To our shock , not everyone "groks" memetics, so you need to shift your semantics - fast - to communicate.

Now, one can get the above three in a variety of other ways - in company peer review, market testing, focus groups, user testing. What is interesting about the BBC Innovation Lab is that the testing and iteration is done in intensive sessions with a range of facilitators with different skills, various BBC people, and of course a wide range of digerati peers - sort of like a 5 day mashup.

But unlike a mashup, there are some tight deadlines, requiring constant blood, sweat and tears - and sleep deprivation from real work rather than networking round the bar

And also unlike a mashup, there is a real chance of the BBC choosing to commission further development - real rewards for effort changes the game theory just a tad !!!

And speaking of changing the game theory, we also get to keep our IP so there is a real payoff in sharing to improve. Increasingly we think users will look for some recognition of their input, so clarity of IP ownership is necessary - and in our view ceding IP ownership to the "UGC Aggregator" will become increasingly unacceptable - just look at the hoo-ha over the Economist team's User Generated Innovation project.

Its also an interesting approach to matching innovation to front line business needs.

We have worked with clients, trying to connect innovation (sometimes their own R&D) to their front line service areas, and there is often a complete misunderstanding. As a process this one used by the BBC has a lot of benefits - it hones the innovation and its story into a form the front line "gets" easily, and it also starts to allow busy front line people to "imagineer" themselves out of their comfort zones into thinking about how new services can work in their environments.

Postscript - after a live (scary) demo (that actually worked...) we have been asked by the BBC to work with them on further developing the system.....good news on a wet Friday

On Wednesday I was working with Simon Torrance of STL Partners, hosting the Digital Home workstream at the Telco 2.0 Brainstorm.

The overall discussion was about the evolution of the digital home, and we had a number of very interesting presentations, of different people's views on the evolution of areas like IPTV, mobile content (including football rights) and femtocells, plus discussions around the likely maturity of emerging technologies.

Of course, a theme that came across fairly consistently was the issue that the customer is not interested in technology, but in services.

There were a few nuggets that emerged:

- Customers like Capex spend so they have control, Operators like subscription services

- A large proportion of mobile calls are not made when people are mobile - apparently about 1/3rd are from the home to boot

- Confirmation from more mobile surveys that a lot of mobile TV is watched at home

There were also a number of "disruptor" talks, including Slingbox and yours truly, and one from Marty Algire of Radialpoint

Now at the end of Marty's talk he asked a very interesting question...to quote:

What would happen to the stock of a BT, AT&T, or T-Online tomorrow if
they together announced they were halting all internal software
development projects, and putting 10MM each into Nutch for search,
jabber for IM/VOIP/presence, and Zimbra for web based email? The
announcement would also outline their plans to launch each of these
applications on their networks by the end of the year, and would offer
their subscribers discounts on their monthly bills in exchange for page
views and/or ad clicks?

This is a very interesting question.....whether its those companies or not, its basically an argument for Telcos to use some of their resources to create the "next generation" search, social net, unified messaging and similar "Web 2.0" services, and make them open.

I recall discussing a similar thought at BT about a year ago. Most large Telcos have enormous assets and capabilities in the Open source space, and IBM is making some moves in the space as well.

The session used a user feedback system from wireless computers on the delegates' tables, feeding into a backchannel screen and a database - sort of an openly sourced discussion about Open Source strategies. The audience were not hopeful:

- Too slow to get to market
- Can't deal with cross-silo services easily
- New services struggle to get traction above the powerful interests of the main existing services
- Radical ideas are anathema, even to try them out

And yet, and yet...as Marty pointed out, Google's own SEC filings say that in essence there is a risk for them because Telcos can do some of what they do better.

So clearly the competition see the potential threat.

In addition, in the Telcos and Advertising work we did with Chris Barraclough, we had evidence that media advertisers valued some telco assets (e.g. reach, ability to give analysis) more highly than Telcos did.

And work we have done in the past shows that Telcos are fairly well placed for industrial grade privacy, presence, security and online directory services.

So, are Telcos suffering a crisis of confidence? ( interesting thought in an industry normally thought of as arrogant

What do you think?

Should Telcos embrace Open Source and start funding the next gen "Web 2.0" based services?

Sad to see Kathy Sierra has quit blogging for now due to low behaviour.

Its not a bad blog at all , here's to the resumption.

Noli illegitimi carborundum!

Besides, what about the sex life (Kathy says blogging is great for that

What can one say that hasn't been said.....been rumoured awhile, now it are here.

NBC and Newscorp are finally starting their own New New Channel to the End User

Thing that actually interests is that they are not automatically looking at acquisition.....maybe they will build it rather than pay high prices 2006 style, may not be such a dim plan, consider:

Broadstuff Biz Case (expurgated version*)

Cost of Service build - $1m
Cost of Operation before breakeven - $100m
Cost of "persuading" critical mass of YouTube UGC videos onto new service = $5 / video x 50 million clips = $ 250m (added to their content)
Ongoing cost of suing ass off YouTube - $10m

Bargain

* Numbers strictly for illustration only of course

As always, execution is the issue....................

We were one of the companies invited to develop technology in the BBC Innovation labs of 2007, so here we are in leafy Surrey this week contemplating memes, memetics and the BBC. Our project, in short, is to:

Capturing the Conversation

How does the BBC monitor, capture and reflect how users are engaging with our programmes, channels, actors and presenters away from the BBC? How do we represent the latest BBC related memes and reflect that zeitgeist in both our tv and radio journalism and integrate it into bbc.co.uk?

This sort of stuff is just what we started Broadsight to do, and just to think about solving it has been educational in itself - so to spend 5 days offsite to further develop and hone the technology is exciting to say the least, and our inner geeks are happy - not least because we may even possibly find a use for memetic algorithms. (Wikpedia note):

Some researchers view them as hybrid genetic algorithms or parallel genetic algorithms (GAs). If a GA is combined with some kinds of Local Search, the algorithm is termed as memetic algorithm.

And not just Local Search in our opinion......

Postscript...Matt Locke,who is running these labs, wrote a piece on it here

Can't attend owing to work commitments, but Suw Charman and Kevin Anderson have done an astounding job of recording the discussions over here at Strange Attractor

Reading their notes though, I'm struck by how little things have changed - among the chatterati on the panels anyway - compared to same time last year.

The IPTV, DRM, Radio, Gaming, New v Old Media stories in particular look like rehashes of the same old same old. There was one telling comment about old business models being dressed in New Words.

Will mine for nuggets in more detail later, my initial impression though is that the cutting edge innovation is not being picked up here - or at least, people are less prepared to talk publicly about new stuff they are doing and thinking perhaps?

Now that all tells you something in itself....the trend is shifting from innovation to execution.

This post was sparked by the latest Budget. The "2p off the 22p tax rate" headlines were fairly rapidly followed up with the realisation that the 10p tax band was gone in the small print.

(Imagine if we treated our customers that way - you'd never come back! The problem, of course, is no competition - I can't buy another Government without emigration as things stand. Maybe the EU could arrange for an Clear Skies and Government policy - can I buy my Government services from, oh, Holland from now on

Anyway, what was less well noted is that although Corporation tax has gone down from 33p to 30p (not enough of course, grumble the Big Guys), the rate of tax for small business is going up, from 19p to 22p!

Apparently, the worry is that all those Corporates may disappear from our shores if they don't get lower tax rates, so the trick is clearly to tax it off smaller companies who are less likely (ie able) to pack up and go.

This, of course is just the latest in a continual drip of extra operating costs onto small companies over the last few years. Employment law, Health and Safety, restrictions in what can be expensed and a host of other small regulations make it harder and harder to run a small business as a lean operation, you wind up with a proportionally similar Admin load as a Corporation the minute you have your first employee. And if you have an office in another country.....

The Game Theory of all this has always struck me as odd. Starting a business is very risky, the casualty rates are very high, there is a defined Entrepreneur's Discount. And yet - we are told - entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of our future competitiveness. So you would have thought that the higher risk would have meant the UK's start-up policy was structured for rewarding people with breaks, not breaking them?

You can get grants to start up in the UK, typically in economically unfortunate areas, but they are confusing, very time consuming to apply for, and at the end of the day typically fairly small. There are organisations to help startups, but they are typically under-resourced, often at cross purposes, if not contradictory ones.

If one was a tad cynical one would suspect that in fact UKGov was actually trying to prevent entrepreneurialism

Countries like Ireland have cottoned on to this, looking at attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs. They already give their Tech entrepreneurs some amazing perks to start up - zero/low tax, government assistance grants in places people actually want to live, and even paying some of their salaries as they set up. Other Eastern EU countries have low corporate taxes, and a far more helpful view towards what can be claimed as business expenses....an interesting thought given how many top class IT developers are in these countries. And of course Silicon Valley always beckons.

Think about this policy from an Entrepreneur's point of view......why not be entrepreneurial about where to set up, never mind what to set up?

In today's climate there is as much choice of where to start a business as there is about where to move Big Co's HQ. We know that less capital is required, and geography is less of an issue for Web service based businesses, and a flight to Europe can cost less than a train trip from Reading to London. People like Skype have already shown that location in key centres is not as critical as it once was.

So, will we see UK entrepreneurs joining the supposed exodus of the Big Co's and setting up elsewhere, I wonder (apart from the Silicon Valley Shuttle I mean)?

They do great coffee in Bratislava and Budapest after all...............and in Ireland its not the coffee

Slainte!

Was watching the BBC 2 programs on Sunday night - The Trap - The series explores the concept and definition of freedom, specifically how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom - using Game Theory quite heavily.

It's probably the most detailed exploration of Game Theory in the media, and I was tempted to look at Technorati to see how much was written about Game Theory in the Blogosphere - and its very little once you've sorted out the cheat tips in World of Warcraft - and most of that is written is about A Beautiful Mind, the film about John Nash, who worked mainly in Game Theory and conceived of the Nash Equilibrium (of which more later).

On reflection, this is odd because a huge amount of the New Tech sphere is relevant - the evolution of the new markets, the design of social software, collaboration in open source, the gaming of digg, Amazon et al, even the building of a succesfull blog, all are major applications for Game Theory. We use quite a lot of it, and elements of similar disciplines like System Dynamics in our work.

It does work for new businesses, as evidenced by Bary Nalebuff - Game Theory professor and founder of a succesful organic tea business. (Article here, bigger article behind signup screen here).

Incidentally, Game Theory (and related areas like System Dynamics) is not really used by the major strategic consultancies (apart from a few enthusiasts) either, and tends to be a play by small niche players....there is hope for us yet

Anyway, here are some links to some good short articles:

Fixed Point on Free vs Paid for Behavioural Economics

John Newton on Game Theory in Open Source

Adam Smith Esq on using Game Theory to redesign Knowledge based business processes.

The Panda's Thumb on Game Theory and Net Neutrality

Freedom to Tinker on the game theory of DRM and Encryption

And finally, the Nash Equilibrium. This is where a situation emerges, typically non optimal, but it is not worth any one of the existing players time to unilaterally change things. It can be shown that so many systems in the world today are of this nature - political, economic, social - and the opportunity is clearly there for smart new entrants who know how to play The Game. (Here is a more tongue in cheek usage)

We blogged last week that we felt that FOWA 07 was the High Watermark of the Web 2.0 movement - or the hype at least - seems this is occurring to other people as well now - Here at Crosslink, and Jeff Clavier

A month or so ago, Andrew Orlowski of the Register opined that Web 2.0 was a presentation layer technology, and it would eventually need to integrate with infrastructure layer technologies to continue adding value. This seems to be the case.....however, we think its a bit soon to start the Scribblerati off on Web 3.0 or even Web 123

And for that last Web 2.0 posterchild, it would seem that the twittering about Twitter at SXSW was not only due to virality, good old fashioned Cashola played a role too. And there are now a few pieces of reasonable comparative analysis emerging.

Postscript - End of Web 2.0 is picked up on GigaOm here

For those readers who want to get broadstuff on Twitter, it is over here.. Beware though, the service is a bit flaky at present.

We don't "get" Twittering as it is (a plethora of posts on what are you doing now does not help to reduce the Data Dump), but we think it is a service worth playing with to see what else one can do with the basic concept of a simple integrated IM/SMS/mail service.

In a way its yet another example of a service (like Blackberry, iTunes etc) that the Operators/Mobile industry really should have launched, and have now been possibly disrupted by it.