WE@Events - Friday, June 27, 2008 18:53 - 1 Comment

Free in every context – my Reboot10

Reboot10 brought 2 intensive days with many different perspectives on “free” and brilliant thoughts and ideas from people like Howard Rheingold, Alper Cugun, Jerry Michalski, Traci Fenton and Lee Bryant.

But to start with – I for my part have realized the complexity behind the word “free”. E.g. I was kind of unhappy and felt insecure because there was so little information about this years Reboot10 and the program – Instead Reboot10 just offered a lot of freedom and flexibility! What did I learn? Freedom can be difficult because it sometimes means the lack of structure – it’s all we aim for and it is a constant struggle.

Howard Rheingold talked about the idea of emergent collective response – a concept incredibly valuable at times of natural disaster. In the past reduced to a very local area and today a global phenomenon. He explained the idea with the search for Jim Gray, a Microsoft engineer who disappeared on a sailing trip. Leveraging the self interest is another possible powerfull business model as Google showed us.

1. I link to some source to produce adde value for my audience
2. Google produces superior search results based on Links via PageRank
3. Google makes billions via selling ad space around the attention generated by superior search results

Alper Cugun from tipit.to talked about the sustainability of “for free” business models and mentioned exmaples like TerraBite – a restaurant where someone decides by themselves what to pay. Todays abundance of Music/Content/Software imposes an important question: Why pay before I know that it’s good? That means we have to be famous first – then get rich!

On the second day Jerry Michalski also talked about different free business models based on the Article of Chris Anderson in the Wired Magazine:

1. Freemium (Flickr)
2. Advertising (Google)
3. Cross Subsidies (donate CDs, have packed concerts)
4. Zero Marginal Costs (digital goods)
5. Labor Exchange (digg, Amazon Reviews)
6. Voluntary Donations (A throusand friends)
7. Pay what you want (TerraBite)

He showed us also that so much can be done for so little – Craig Newmark shook up 3 industries of billions and billions with craigslist: Yellow Pages, Classifieds, Directory Services! No wonder given the fact that 60% of the internal cost at Telecoms are histrocial costs for legacy systems and billing processes. If one could get rid of that! We got told in business schools that Scarcity = Value. But we increasingly see a growing abundancy mentality.

Anne Okkels Birk calls herself a prison geek – she does a lot of research on prisons. And she talked about what we could learn about “free” when knowing more about prisons! She talked about the various ideas why prisons exist (like as: provide Justice, deter from breaking rules, Incapacitate, rehabilitate) and the aspects and emotional context. Some of the prisoners she interviewed defined the time in prison as a condition, a route to something. Like a busride of lost time and opportunities. For her freedom ist not self evident – are we free? She said as a “prison geek” she is fascinated by the fact that people use applications like as Plazes which include many aspects of surveillance systems originally discussed for prisoners.

Traci Fenton from WorldBlu talked about “Freeing Organizations” and discussed the idea of organizational democracy. When we talk about concepts like as distributed Leadership, what can we learn from e.g. distributed computing? Gallup’s Employee Engagement Index shows that 73% of the US Workforce defines itself disengaged! 1 out of 4 says “my workplace is dictatorship”. She talked about 7 strong trends that Shift happens like as the Internet, Generation X + Y, the Search for Meaning or Lifestyle Democracy. That is why she sees a development from industrial age, to information age and future democratic age. Steve Jobs once said “Design is how it works” and Traci told her 10 democratic Design principles:

1. Purpose + Vision
2. Transparency (open book management)
3. Dialogue + Listening
4. Fairness + Dignity
5. Accountability
6. Individual + Collective
7. Choice
8. Integrity
9. Decentralization
10. Reflection + Evaluation

JP Rangaswami from BT challenged us with his thoughts on the topic and said “for every artificial scarcity there will be piracy. It will be destroyed.” Maybe because artificial scarcity feels unfair. Back in the years we had to live with various Video Systems but why do we need Area Codes in DVD Players? Why are we focusing on what we want people to pay for – and force them to – instead on what they want to pay for?

Lee Bryant talked about freeing the Battery Human. And asked how we can codify freedoms and values to provide longevity to them. Ironically we are stuck in the concepts of Max Weber and Frederick W. Taylor. But the consumerisation of Enterprise IT is a big chance to change that. Given the fact that Taylorism is simply too costly in complex, global ever changing market. Social Networks combined with weak ties are a efficient corporate immune system – whistleblowing when things go wrong. So it is about helping Corporations to engage in difficult conversations with the wider world. Maybe this works best when building empathy by understanding the complicated problems we all have …

Some notes brought to you for free ;-)

Dieter Rappold, blogging at Sierralog.com and knallgrau.at