Spark Minute » Search

Four solutions for taking collaborative meeting notes

David Spark — Fri, 06 May 2011 23:32:14 +0000

In general, I find the way people approach meeting notes to be a giant failure. Here’s why:

Attendees take notes and don’t share them with their colleagues.
Notes are often written on paper and never make it to a digital form to be searched and shared.
In some cases, paper notes do make it to digital form, but that requires the wasted and unnecessary effort of recopying the notes.
Sometimes notetakers email the notes, thus requiring each recipient to save the notes on their own system. Essentially repeating a task that could be done once for everyone.
Notes are often not produced and shared in a format that can be searched among any employee, especially after employees leave an organization.
Meeting notes are redundant. If ten people are in the room taking notes, they’re all doing the same activity.
Meeting notes are rarely shared.
Meeting notes are never appended to or discussed after the fact.
People take meeting notes often just to look busy.

Taking notes and never sharing them is the worst problem (Read: 10 Ways Meetings Suck and How to Fix Them). Meeting notes can be more valuable for your organization if you extend the effort to make them collaborative and live on for the entire organization, especially after employees leave your organization.

Here are four solutions for collaborating with meeting notes. Three of the tools offer real-time collaboration.

Google Docs – Collaborate in real-time with your colleagues: One of the fairly new features within Google Docs is the ability to take notes with your colleagues synchronized in real time. This was part of the promise of Google Wave which failed miserably. As you’re typing in the document, you can see each other person typing along with you.

ADVANTAGES:

No redundant notetaking – If you see another colleague writing something down that you were going to write down, now you don’t have to do it.
Catch everything – Often we miss things as we’re taking notes. Don’t worry, your colleague will pick up the slack.
Different perspectives – Your viewpoint may be different than another colleague’s viewpoint. Now you get to see each individual’s perspectives in real time.
Follow up information – People will often reference something in a meeting. Users can look up the reference in real time and publish it to the document with the source link.
Meeting notes are done immediately – When the meeting is over, the notes are immediately available and searchable for all.

DISADVANTAGES:

Everyone has to be invited to the document – You have to plan ahead and extend email invitations to all the people who will be collaborating on the document.
Have to organize the document in a file structure – Information would be structured more logically and seamlessly searchable and discoverable if it were published in a wiki.

Typewith.me – Take advantage of the wisdom of the crowd in real time: If you don’t actually know all the people that you want to collaborate with, you can utilize this service to publicly publish a link to an open document, thus allowing anybody to collaborate. All input is synchronized in real time just like with Google Docs.

ADVANTAGES:

One click to launch a collaborative document – Fastest way to start collaborating.
No need to register to participate – You just need the link to participate. Although you can type your name to identify yourself as you’re writing.
Publish the link and anyone can participate – Great way to get anyone to join in on a collaborative document. Appropriate for conferences and open meetings.

DISADVANTAGES:

No archiving – Need to export or copy/paste to another location, ideally a wiki.
Contributors can be anonymous – Since registration is not necessary, people often can contribute without identifying themselves.

Wikis – Searchable history for all of your meetings: There are tons of wiki applications out there. I won’t begin to list the wiki providers, but a wiki is great tool for asymmetrical collaboration and searching through past meetings. It’s often good to combine the use of a real time document tool with a wiki, such as those shown above. Simply have your meeting in real time and then copy and paste it into the wiki for archiving and simpler navigation and searching.

ADVANTAGES:

Can create a logical structure for archiving – Makes more sense than just shoving files in folders.
Easy to navigate through content – Create links within content to take you to other documents.
Archive valuable information as employees come and go – The data lives and grows with your company and doesn’t leave as your employees leave.
Designed to be a living document that is constantly edited – Although online documents aren’t static either, the purpose of a wiki is to be a living document so people treat it as such.

DISADVANTAGES:

Can’t actually see collaboration in real time – Although content can be saved in real time.
There’s a learning curve – Takes a while to feel comfortable with the architecture of building and contributing to a wiki.

Zoho Chat – Chat in real-time around a document: If you want to keep a main document pristine, but you do want a free form discussion around the document, then Zoho Chat is a good solution. There are tons of chat applications out there, but Zoho Chat integrates conversation with the view of your document, and the discussion is automatically saved as an adjunct to the document.

(DISCLOSURE: Zoho is a client of Spark Media Solutions).

ADVANTAGES:

Write in an unstructured free form environment – If you’re writing a document there’s a need to constantly be editing and being reserved with your words. With chat you can just type and type.
Create meta content for your document – The chat log is the support and back story of the creation or commentary on the document.
Real time document collaboration is not for all – Some people just can’t handle formally collaborating on a document and chat is the most comfortable way for them to get their ideas out.

DISADVANTAGES:

Chat is a mishmash of valuable and non-valuable data – You can’t read through this like a normal document. You’ll need to scan and search through chat logs.
It’s not in a format you’ll want to publish – When it’s done, it’s not going to look pretty to anyone but you and your group.

Stock photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

Will Gmail’s “Priority Inbox” decimate email marketing?

David Spark — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:55:05 +0000

When Google announces new news, you can’t avoid it. There’s nothing you can do about it. When they’ve got a new product it’s always the lead story. Well, no exception with the announcement of Gmail’s “Priority Inbox” which is supposed to handle the much complained about problem of email/information overload.

Related: Why did Google get into the realtime search game? Register for a free copy of the report “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web” (20-page PDF). Read a summary of the report.

On the onset the product sounds fantastic. Just give me the good stuff first and you can put all my other email in a secondary pile. But wasn’t that what the spam folder was? It was a mixture of true spam, and also every now and then a valid email would get tossed in there. The problem is you’d check your spam folder at most once every couple of weeks. And “giving a glance” is the most attention you would give to it.

The new spam folder

How soon will it take before this secondary folder is treated with the same respect as your spam folder? As more and more information comes in more stuff will be relegated to the secondary folder never to be looked at again. We already do this today. How many of you have an “I’ll look at it later” folder? And how often have you looked at that folder? Should be called an “I’ll look at it never” folder.

Are your gears turning already? Have you seen the obvious? This could put an end to email marketing. All email marketing will fall into this “I’ll look at it later” folder which will soon be viewed as a secondary spam filter. And could Google start prioritizing some email themselves? Maybe messages sent by Google Apps customers? They say that they don’t descriminate, but why is it I see YouTube videos with thumbnails before I see any other videos on Google Search results?

If I was an email marketing firm I’d be watching Google with an extremely close eye.

What does it cost you to bring people to your site?

David Spark — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:16:24 +0000

For years, the primary measure of success was the number of “hits” one got to their website. That definition was often incorrectly used to describe pageviews, or so people thought. In actuality, a site “hit” refers to a server call and every element called up on a web page denotes a “hit.” So if you had ten images on a page and a user called up that page, it would register as eleven “hits” (ten server calls for the ten photos and one server call for the HTML page). As you might expect, “hits” became grossly inflated numbers to describe pageviews.

Today, most users have smartened up about “hits” and they use far more accurate statistics such as users and actual pageviews. But we’re also concerned with social media statistics such as Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and YouTube subscribers.

But for most online businesses, revenue comes from drawing people to your site. Either you make money directly from your website, or people see your site and contact you to hire you.

If that’s the case with your business, the goal is to get your audience to your website. The question is how much is it costing you in time and money to bring people to your website?

The costs to bring people to your site

Here are some different ways companies spend money and time to bring people to their site.

Search engine marketing – This has been the de facto solution for driving traffic to your site. Google’s AdWords has been a very measurable, trackable, and tweakable means to get people to your site. Problem is its costly and the money you spend is not cumulative. The money spent in August doesn’t transfer to September. August’s content (ads) are gone. You have to continually keep spending money to bring people to your site.

Podcast – This is a great means to build an audience, and to have your brand consistently on a person’s iPhone or iPod. Podcasts though only speak to a limited audience and it can often take two years of hard work to build an audience. Minimal financial cost to set up, but ongoing production is costly on your time.

Blog – Timely content on blogs are often more visible in search that static content on your business site. If updated regularly, a blog will consistently get more traffic than your business site, yet will extend the visibility of your brand and drive traffic to your business site. Blogs have a similar cost structure as podcasts. There’s a minimal financial cost to set up, but ongoing production is costly on your time. Both blogs and podcasts are cumulative in nature. Money and time spent in one month transfers to the next month, because the content doesn’t vanish. This is unlike advertising which is not cumulative.

Advertising – Purchase offline media and online media (e.g., banner ads) to drag people to your site. Spend as little or as much as you want. Again, the money you spend is not cumulative. You have to keep spending to maintain traffic to your site.

Social media – Using audience gathering social tools such as Twitter and Facebook, maintain an ongoing relationship with your audience. Time, effort, and money spent is also cumulative. To ultimately bring traffic to your business site you need to generate offers and interesting content to entice visits.

Resident desktop application – Another option is an application that stays resident on the individual’s desktop and drives traffic to the business site. The benefit is after you extend the energy and cost to get the individual to download and install the application, the cost to get that person to your site requires no advertising, blog, podcast, social media, or search engine marketing dollars.

The downloadable content-based application concept was abandoned a while ago because there was a sentiment in the industry that you simply can’t get people to download and install an application. This is far from true as there are many successful downloadable applications (read “Can downloadable applications survive?”). Another reason businesses have shied away from this solution is the history of TSR (terminate and stay resident) applications has a very checkered past. But today, what were once called TSRs, are now just referred to as apps that can be found on your mobile phone or iPad. This app concept can now make a return to the desktop, but it’s important to deliver a desktop experience that people want to have consistently on their computer.

One possible solution is from a client of Spark Media Solutions, itiBiti, which is a white-labeled desktop content and communications application. Companies such as NBC and McDonald’s Canada distribute their own branded versions of the product. What the consumer gets is a first look at content and offers before they hit the web (see “How to increase the value of your content without changing the content”) plus a communications application that lets them make free phone calls. The advantage to NBC and McDonald’s is once they get someone to download and install the application, they’ve got a portion of the consumer’s personal real estate, the desktop. Plus, and more importantly, they reach their audience before they go to the web.

I know I’ve left a few items out, so I’d like to hear from you as to how you spend your money and time to drive traffic to your site.

cc photo credit to Daniel Borman.

Huffington Post's Twitter Edition: Curated real-time content?

David Spark — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:19:04 +0000

As was expected and previous tested (Huffington Post’s World Series page), the Huffington Post is now curating real-time content (sort of) with its “Twitter Edition” now available in Tech, Politics, and Comedy editions (there may be more). PaidContent.org has an interview with Huffington Post’s chairman, Ken Lerer about the new Twitter editions.

I wrote about this inevitable next step in real-time content in my analyst report, “Search and Discovery of the Real-Time Web” (PDF). While this is a good first step, it’s not good enough. The curation is still mostly being done by the crowd and Huffington Post is still relying on Twitter lists of editor-approved journalists and personalities. There needs to be a true editorial viewpoint on top of it with someone summarizing and explaining why these stories are important.

One tool that’s the closest to doing this that’s available right now is Twingly. Think of Twingly as About.com, but for the real-time web. You decide that you’re going to be the expert in one specific area and then you create a space of real-time content for that area. People can comment/Tweet within your space on those real-time pieces. Tweetshare, a client of Spark Media Solutions, does the same thing, but in a slightly different way.

These applications are heading in the right direction, but what’s ultimately needed are true tools for the editor and publisher so that they can manage and publish real-time content. If you’ve seen something you like, please let me know.

How to find and be alerted to great deals online

David Spark — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:16:50 +0000

I hate to get screwed over on a deal. I feel like a complete sucker when I do. Most often it happens when I’m traveling. I purchase a trinket with some local artisan, and then four storefronts later I see the same item for half the price. It’s happened to all of us for one simple reason, we simply don’t understand the market. The more you know the value of goods, the less you get snowed. Luckily there’s a whole new market for Web-based and mobile apps that alert us to great deals and let us know whether or not we truly are getting a great deal.

Listen below or download my chat with Rob Black on his show on 910 KNEW about daily deals (Time: 11:00)

Daily deals straight to your inbox or Twitter stream

If you live in a major metropolitan area, you can take advantage of a series of services like GroupOn, SocialBuy, LivingSocial, and Center’d that offer up daily deals that you buy into. Usually it’s a situation of getting a $25 voucher for a $10 purchase now. The first three services have only one deal a day, but you can subscribe to a mailing list or follow your local Twitter feed to have local deals pushed to you.

Center’d offers up multiple deals every day, but only jump on if there’s a coupon code. Some of the information on the site and Twitter feed is just “things to do around town” and also telling you about deals that exist every day. For example, the site Restaurant.com allows you to get a $25 voucher at a number of restaurants for $10. Center’d pushes those “any day” offers all the time. Wait till you see a coupon code that gives you a $25 restaurant voucher for only $2 or $3.

Be wary before you purchase. Restaurant.com’s vouchers only count on certain days and times (sometimes only lunch and not dinner) and you must purchase a minimum of $50 of food, not including alcohol. They vary restaurant to restaurant, so read the fine print.

Are you getting the best deal?

If you’re in the market for a new electronic item, then start tracking it on Gazaro. Beyond just comparison pricing multiple retailers, this site tracks a number of other variables, like seasonality and how often an item goes on sale. When an item truly is a deal, it gets a deal score letting you know that this is the time to pick up your item.

Price protection is up to you

Even though not heavily advertised, most retailers have a price protection plan, meaning if you find the same product at a lower price at another location within 30 days, they’ll pay you the difference. The trick is finding that lower price is up to you. Luckily, the web has some services that will do the work for you. For most retail products, try PriceProtectr, and for airfares you can use Yapta.

Swap your old books, CDs, movies, and games for ones that are new to you

Even if something isn’t new, if you haven’t seen it, then it’s new to you. We all have a collection of media that we’re tired with. We often walk to a local bookstore to trade it in for a little cash or we give it away to Goodwill. Much of your junk is a treasure to someone else, and vice versa. The problem is who wants it, and who has what you want? The answer is Swaptree, a free service for matching people who have books, CDs, movies, and games they want to trade.

Hey I see something at a store I really want. Is it cheaper online?

Most of the time when you want to know about a deal is when you’re out in the real world shopping. It may not be easy to whip out your notebook, but you can check your mobile device and see if you’re getting a good deal with Save Benjis (iPhone), Walmart Mobile (iPhone, BlackBerry), Amazon app (Android), and MobiQpons (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android).

Looking for a great deal? Ask your Twitter followers.

While all these tools are great, the best resource for finding great deals is your social network. Looking for a coupon code or maybe advice on a product or deal? Go ahead and make a request to your Twitter followers. You’ll be surprised with the results. Read my tale of how my Twitter community saved me $150 on the purchase of a new HP computer.

For more advice, read my article “Sites, tools, and tips for saving money.”

Personal productivity tips I actually use every day

David Spark — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:33:46 +0000

Lifehacking, personal productivity, there is an endless slew of advice and information, much of which isn’t applicable to you. While all of this personal productivity information is interesting, it’s not always applicable. I have to admit that I sometimes offer productivity tips that I don’t adhere to myself.

So that’s why I decided to write an article about personal productivity tips I use on a daily basis. My interest in this subject piqued when I heard entrepreneur Stephen Jagger describe how he has moved many of his company’s business operations to the cloud using cheap to free Web 2.0 applications. What made his story so interesting is it wasn’t just “advice,” he was actually using these tools regularly for his business.

So I’ve decided to do the same. I’m going to walk through every element of how I’ve improved the efficiency of my work process, personal branding, and media consumption. It’s far from perfect. I can still be highly distracted and I’m always looking for new productivity tips. If there are any that you can recommend, I’m always up for updating my regimen.

Real-time content will be the next best resource for journalists. Read how in the 20-page report, “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web.” Read a summary online or just register to download the full report here:

Email:

Tools and tips I use for everyday productivity

Run in the morning – First thing I do in the morning. Sometimes I’ll blow it off with the rationale “I’ve got too much work to do.” If I do what results is I’m far more sluggish and I don’t think I’m nearly as productive. The run definitely helps amp me up for the rest of the day.

Password memorization – I have more than 300 accounts on various sites. Before I had a password memorization tool, I used to type in a variety of usernames and passwords hoping that I got the right one. Today, I skip that fruitless pastime and just use Roboform2Go, a password memorization tool that you install on a USB drive. The advantage of using a flash drive is I can take my passwords wherever I go and use it on any computer, even if it isn’t my own. Passwords are erased when I remove the stick. For more, read my article “Products I love and actually use – Roboform2Go.”

Personal content management – I use two tools: Microsoft OneNote for any communications and scraps of info I find. And I use my blog as a thought space to collect my ideas on different topics and issues.

OneNote is hugely advantageous in that I can pop in and out of different projects incredibly quickly and content is really well organized in tabs and folders. Opening, naming, and saving Word documents when you’re parsing out a variety of different information is simply not possible. OneNote makes it possible. Read my article “Products I love and actually use – OneNote.”

The blog is great when I want to collect my thoughts on a specific subject. I used to do this in long emails. When I wanted to share it with someone else I’d have to hunt for that email and forward it. Now I just write a blog post. When someone brings up an issue for which I’ve written something about it, I just search my blog, and then attach the link to an email.

Quick access to sites – There are about ten sites I consistently go to every single day. I used to type them in and let the browser’s auto-complete finish it off. Instead, I just create toolbar buttons at the top of my screen. The trick to getting them all in one row is trimming down the letters of the site’s name or removing them altogether and just leaving icons.

Bookmarking – I used to stick bookmarks in a folder and then they would disappear and I’d never see them again. Now I use Delicious along with the Delicious Firefox plugin to quickly bookmark and catalog items I see online. Often I’ll see something that will be of use to me in the future. A quick click of the Tag button and a couple clicks of the suggested tags of the site, and that page is bookmarked, making it easy to find again in the future.

Keeping up with trends – I use real-time search tools such as OneRiot and Twitter Search. For more on real-time search, read my report “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web” (20 page PDF). If I need to understand what a certain hashtag means, I take advantage of WhatTheTrend.

Mobile communications – My BlackBerry on Verizon. Yes, the iPhone is cool, but it does one thing very poorly, make calls. Where I live is an AT&T dead zone. My Verizon phone is awesome. I’ve yet to have a dropped call. Yes you read that correctly, NO DROPPED CALLS. As for that, the only thing I use daily on my BlackBerry is email and Twitter with Twitterberry.

Digital communications – Beyond email, I heavily use Twitter and instant messaging. Much can be debated as to whether they’re making me more or less efficient. All I can say is at least they’re keeping me entertained. The two applications I use are Twhirl for Twitter and Trillian as an all-in-one instant messaging application. While I know most Twitter goons have graduated to Seesmic or TweetDeck, I’m still very happy with Twhirl for its simplicity and small footprint on my desktop. Similarly, that’s why I also like the latest version of Trillian. Although when you first install Trillian, it doesn’t seem that simple. Tons of annoying alerts pop up. The trick is to go through the settings and turn them all off, and then only turn on the ones you need.

Consuming the news – Google Reader as my homepage is invaluable. Although I need to get it to cycle other news sources to the front. Another tool I started using to speed up my reading is Zap Reader. If you highlight some text, and then click a Zap Reader button on your toolbar, it will immediately load the text in the Zap Reader. Depending on the speed settings you had previously set, the words from the document will flash through in sequence allowing you read the document quickly without moving your eyes. I’ve just started using it and it’s become really valuable for concentrating and reading online documents more quickly.

The other time I use to consume news is during what I call my semi-distracted time, where I’m doing something else that doesn’t require mental concentration, such as running, cleaning up, or commuting. I figure I have somewhere between 1-3 hours of semi-distracted time every day. During those times I can’t read, but I can listen so I take advantage of those semi-distracted moments by consuming podcasts. When I used to hold an office job, I’d listen to my industry news on the way to work. So when I got to my job, I already knew what was happening. Podcasts are very valuable for keeping me informed and entertained. Check out my podcast listening lineup for 2010.

Promotions – I manually post every blog post to Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and StumbleUpon. I tried Ping.fm for mass posting across multiple services but the problem is submitting to the different sites is nuanced. No two are really exactly the same. That’s why I customize my promotions for each service differently. It’s obvious when people use the auto or mass-posting services. I kind of get turned off by them and start ignoring auto-postings. I just don’t feel comfortable doing it myself. It is a little extra effort, but for the audience I think it’s definitely worth it.

Writing faster – For filling out forms online, I turn once again to Roboform2Go which also has a built in utility that auto fills out online forms. These services have been around for a while and I used to just ignore them as silly until I started using them.

While I may not fill out a form every day, I do type a lot of the same text every day, such as my phone numbers, web sites, email addresses, and more. To speed up the monotony, I started using a small macro utility called Texter that works in all applications in Windows. Simple to use and I use it multiple times every day.

Getting around town – When driving, I rely on Google Maps, but I don’t take advantage of them on my mobile phone solely because of the small text. I print out directions first. But the real life saver for me is NextMUNI which is a service from the San Francisco transit system that tells me when the next bus is arriving, This is an ENORMOUS life saver as bus delays allow me to plan my schedule accordingly or take a different route. On my BlackBerry I’ve bookmarked my most frequent routes.

OK, that’s it for me. I’m eager to hear your suggestions on what productivity tips and tools you use on a daily basis.

Creative commons photo courtesy of Ashley Fisher and stock photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Cranky Geeks asks, "Are we living in a Googleopoly?"

David Spark — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:11:18 +0000

Yesterday, on Cranky Geeks, John C. Dvorak and co-host Sebastian Rupley, argued with myself and Cade Metz, U.S. editor of The Register. We complained about Google claiming that it’s going to pull its operations out of China, me getting uninvited to a press party, and my favorite, sex robots! Watch the 30 minute show.

The cool and not-so-cool of LeWeb

David Spark — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:53:18 +0000

This week I traveled to Paris with a consortium of fellow bloggers, the Traveling Geeks. We’ve been meeting with tech companies and French entrepreneurs all week. The tour ended with attendance at LeWeb, a two day tech conference produced by tech entrepreneur and Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur. Here’s my summary of the best and the worst of the event, plus I included some other stuff experienced from the Traveling Geeks tour and Paris in general. For a summary, make sure you watch my end of day show reports from LeWeb (day 1, day 2) and my other end of day report from the Traveling Geeks tour.

Cool – Accordions, Accordions, Accordions – There are plenty of street performers in Paris. Most of them are carrying accordions. On my first day I saw four sets of performers hop onto a train car, play a few tunes, and jump off. On one train a duo jumped on with an accordion and a stand up bass. My favorite was the karaoke accordionist that would also take a mic for a solo himself to sing “Just a Gigolo”.

Not-so-cool – The first day, the conference wasn’t about real-time web – The theme of LeWeb was heavily advertised as being about real-time web. That didn’t seem to be the case with most of the companies demoing, and except for a presence of Twitter and Facebook, and some mentions, there was no major discussion about real-time web on the main stage. After day one we all started asking ourselves, “Where’s the discussion about the real-time web?”

Cool – On the second day, finally the real-time web – If you were interested in the real-time web you could have completely skipped the first day of LeWeb and just come on the second day. Obviously everyone was eager for the real-time discussion because the deep discussion room in the back of the hall was packed for the event’s eventual real-time web agenda. I was very eager to learn more since I just published an analyst report this week on the subject (“Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web” 20-page PDF). The presentations and conversations on real-time were truly excellent, beginning with some great actionable advice from Jeremiah Owyang. On the main stage, Queen Rania of Jordan, who has become an Internet celebrity, spoke about the real-time web, specifically making a call out to the audience to use the real-time web as activism to change the world.

Cool/Not-so-cool – Moderators not agreeing with the topic – Andrew Keen, Author of Cult of the Amateur, led the panel entitled “Content vs. Conversation: The Debate over Real-Time Search.” His attitude towards his panelists from TweetMeme, Netvibes, Collecta, and OneRiot was pretty much “Why the hell do we need real-time search?” While I think it’s a good idea for a moderator to create some controversy (see article: “More Schmooze, Less Snooze: How to Deliver the Most Talked About Conference Session” 6-page PDF), Keen didn’t seem to be too savvy on the real-time search market and he didn’t let go on his opinion. There is a ton of value of real-time search (see business models section in my real-time search report), and until the end of the discussion he kept saying “Why would someone want real-time search?” He was constantly putting the panelists on the defensive.

C0ol – Double-sided name badges – One of the most irritating conference annoyances is name badge flip. Wear a lanyard with a name badge and inevitably it will twist around hiding your name. I must be a master because I think it’s more often than not for me. LeWeb is the first conference I’ve been to where they smartly printed your name on both sides of the badge. Brilliant.

Cool – Our former President is wrong. The French are unbelievably nice – This entire week has been fantastic and the Traveling Geeks have been treated unbelievably well. Everyone. From the people who invited us to any random Parisian I ran into, I’m very impressed with how nice and welcoming everyone has been. Thanks.

Cool – The French speak English – It’s been a while since I’ve been to France and I was amazed at how many people speak English. LeWeb is a conference in Paris, but it’s completely in English. The all-English conference is an obvious incentive to draw people from 40+ countries, most notably the U.S., to the conference.

Not-so-cool – I don’t speak French – I’m a pathetic single language learner. Most people in Europe know at least two languages. And most of them have learned English for lazy clowns like me that haven’t bothered to learn another language.

Cool? – Non-stop photo and video recording of the Traveling Geeks – I think this is cool, or just unbelievably dorky so it’s become cool again. For the Traveling Geeks’ first dinner in Paris everyone was taking pictures the moment we sat down at the table. There were probably 500 photos published from that dinner. And that’s continued throughout the trip. Guilty myself, here’s a video I shot of all the geeks on the Metro with all their digital image recording equipment. For more, here are all the photos taken by the Traveling Geeks crew (full screen).

Not-so-cool – LeWeb is overhyped – Back in San Francisco, I had heard so much about how fantastic and wonderful LeWeb is. I had a lot of hope for this conference, and was overall disappointed mostly because of the hype. The number of demo stations of new companies was anemic and didn’t represent real-time web as I had hoped. While there were heavy hitters on the main stage, they weren’t revealing. But that’s always the case. The bigger your presenters at your show, the bigger the hype. But the bigger they are, the less they’ll talk openly. Often that has to do with working at a public company. But I think the issue is millionaires stay millionaires by not telling their secrets to a group of more than a thousand strangers. There were a few exceptions.

Cool – Credit card scanning on your mobile device – Jack Dorsey of Twitter demoed his new project, Square, a small box that connects to your mobile device’s audio out port and allows you to scan your credit card allowing for quick and easy credit card transactions via mobile devices. While cool, and can work on a huge number of devices, is it really practical? Are people really going to carry around this little black box wherever they go? I think the next step will be to embed this credit card reader in new mobile devices.

Cool - Tim Ferriss on “How to Create a Following for $10K or Less” – One of my major complaints about most of the main stage presentations was the lack of actionable advice or telling the audience something we didn’t already know. I’ve seen Tim Ferriss present before and read his blog and he always delivers on great actionable advice. This was an updated presentation of one I had seen at WordCamp in San Francisco. One tip is to simply focus on the blogosphere and key people in the blogosphere and look for the long haul. Begin by reading Kevin Kelly’s article “1,000 True Fans.”, said Ferriss.

Not-so-cool – Who didn’t pay to go on the main stage? – It appears about half of everyone who appeared on the main stage (panelists possibly excluded) paid in some manner to be there. It could be more. It’s obvious because so many sponsors were on the main stage. None of these seemingly paid appearances were disclosed. I’ve been to plenty of conferences where there were paid presentations. Many disclose that information in the printed programs with the note, “Sponsored presentation.” For a community that keeps talking about the need for “authenticity” online, I think it would be nice if there was some authentic disclosure as to who did and didn’t pay to be on stage.

UPDATE: Loic Le Meur responded and emphatically denied this claim. Saying that none of the people on stage paid to be there. See comments below for more.

Not-so-cool – LeWeb is an old boys’ network – I was thinking this and then I heard it repeated by a few of my colleagues. Loic gets many of the same people to present, interview, and moderate, such as Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington. Since they’re friendly off stage, their on stage presentation has this sense of being an old boys’ network. It’s not the most welcoming feeling for the people in the audience. People were definitely unnerved by it.

Not-so-cool – Chris Pirillo is the Rush Limbaugh of the Web 2.0 community – Rush Limbaugh, a conservative syndicated radio host, became popular because he’s a credible voice that confirms people’s existing beliefs. This is exactly how I felt about Chris Pirillo’s presentation about community. Better known as preaching to the choir, my sentiment was evidenced by the number of tweets that echoed “I agree with him” rather than “I learned something.” Here’s an edited sample of tweets to prove my point: My favourite quote of the day :-), Brilliant!!, i love it!!, Chris Pirillo is right, I’m loving Chris Pirillo’s presentation, The Reverend Chris Pirillo is wrapping up. He actually made be blurt out jesus christ, and Halle-freakin-lujah. One other tweeter saw what I was seeing: Chris Pirillo is Great speecher but only brought self-evident ideas.

I had a conversation with Chris about this last night and I simply said to him that I think he could do better. He has done better. He knows how to educate an audience as a former host of TechTV’s “Call for Help” and in previous presentations. I noted his vision six years ago that RSS would be the Holy Grail. He was right. That’s what I wanted to see at LeWeb and he didn’t deliver. He told us what we already knew which was we need to stop focusing on the tools and think about the importance of community. He didn’t think the audience knew that. The general populace yes, but the LeWeb audience? They know. Pirillo just led a revival to confirm their beliefs.

Cool - A scannable and identifiable model of Paris – Forget Google Streets, through a project called Terra Numerica by a research group called CiTu, they’ve completely scanned and identified elements all around the city of Paris. This information is now in a database that’s been used by developers to create fly-throughs, simulate a flood’s effect on the city, and test security cameras around the city. Watch a video of the fly-through and my interview with Maurice Benayoun, Artistic Director of CiTu. This was during our Traveling Geeks tour, not LeWeb.

Not-so-cool – Europeans’ fear of failure – While we were visiting the startup incubators I heard multiple times that there’s a European culture of fear of failure. This is quite unlike in the U.S. where failing is a learning experience. In the U.S. we’ve actually got a conference entitled FailCon where we learn from each others’ failures. For some, failure is a badge of honor. I remember talking to one entrepreneur who proudly told me about his seven failed startups.

Not-so-cool – Robert Scoble’s outburst at the French entrepreneurs – Well known blogger Robert Scoble joined the Traveling Geeks briefly for one event prior to LeWeb. At this series of presentations by French entrepreneurs, Scoble sat down and immediately wanted to know everyone’s Twitter address. They didn’t have any and instead of just accepting that fact and listening to their presentations, he started yelling and swearing at them telling them they must get on Twitter. He argued that it’s the only way he can promote them to his 100K+ followers. Ubergizmo blogger, Eliane Fiolet, asked Robert, “Could you say that a little nicer?” Scoble responded, “No.” His childish and rude response created a pall over the room and the rest of the Traveling Geeks were very unnerved by his behavior, as it spoke badly for our group. I should note that Robert is a really nice guy and it’s not normal for him to behave like this.

Extremely cool – The Traveling Geeks – I only knew a few of the Traveling Geeks before I went on the trip and I was really impressed by the entire group. Everyone was incredibly friendly, nice, and welcoming. I want to say an enormous thanks though to the lead organizer of the event, Renee Blodgett, and also to Sky Schuyler, and Eliane Fiolet for all their work. I look forward to being on another trip with them in the future. Here’s a silly animated video of us, plus a video of Geeks on a Train, and make sure you check out the thousands of photos (full screen) taken on the trip.

Some of my other coverage of the event.

Creative Commons photo attributions Olivier Ezratty, Robert Scoble, Chris Heuer, Matthew Buckland, Rodrigo Sepulveda, LeWeb, and Blogowski.

What can you do with a scannable and identifiable model of Paris?

David Spark — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:45:53 +0000

At Silicon Sentier, a startup collective in Paris, I interviewed Maurice Benayoun, Artistic Director of CiTu a research lab for artistic projects. One such project, Terra Numerica, is an easily digestible and programmable scan and index of the city of Paris for which others can use the data to develop applications. City planning and management examples include:

Walk through Paris virtually like you would in the real world.
Paris had a flood in 1910 and it’s feared that it’s going to happen again within the next ten years. Simulate the flood and see what the effects of such a disaster would have on the city.
Virtually raise and lower buildings. See what views would be like.
Since the database knows where all the cameras are all over the city, you can play a game where you run through the city avoiding security cameras. I asked Benayoun, “Couldn’t this tool be used by criminals?” Watch the video for his response.

I was very interested in Benayoun’s presentation because the city of San Francisco has been doing things similarly with DataSF, which is a series of open city information databases that developers can utilize to create useful applications. Examples include San Francisco Crimespotting and EveryBlock for monitoring city services block by block.

Terra Numerica is a more unified project of one giant powerful database with easily identifiable and programmable information. The database was created through three scan levels: video drive throughs (Microsoft Bing maps), laser scans, and flyover scans. Through all this scanning they can draw a 3D map of the city but more importantly they can also identifying objects (e.g. doors and security cameras) that become part of a very usable database. Check out this very cool video demo.

Benayoun said the goal is to create commercial ventures from all of CiTu’s projects, including Terra Numerica. Their next in line project is Terra Dynamica where they plan to identify and track everything that moves within a city (e.g buses, cars, and people).

Free report "Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web"

David Spark — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 23:40:26 +0000

Call it good or bad timing, but I just happen to finish a report on real-time search on the day that Google announced its rollout of its integrated real-time search results within its general search results. While I had to do some last minute edits, the report is done and I’m making it available to everyone for free.

Simply register to receive the 20-page report, “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web.”

UPDATE (August 28th, 2010): Google now has its own full-blown real-time search engine. They have a detailed article about it here. This report explains the background as to why Google had to make this decision, and the competitors they still have to face.

You’ll get the report for free plus you’ll be subscribed to the Spark Media Solutions newsletter that’s packed with abridged media goodies twice every month. You can unsubscribe at any time.

I’m giving the report away for free. All I ask in return is some feedback. Positive, negative, but whatever it is, please make it constructive. I’m eagerly learning as much as I can about this subject. This is an area that I think is going to grow like crazy, and we’re only looking at a thumbnail’s worth of what is yet to come.

Here are some highlights from the report.

Real-time search could steal away as much as $40 billion from traditional search. Google and Microsoft’s announcement to incorporate real-time search results is a good first step to prevent losses.
The definition of real-time search is far more varied than the definition of traditional search. You’ll see more variations in what is considered a real-time search engine.
All real-time search engines are far from equal. The major reason is they don’t index the same content.
Real-time search engines that only index Twitter are missing up to 90 percent of the real-time web.
One exciting new aspect of real-time search is the creation of real-time programming that will be complimentary and competitive with traditional programming (e.g. TV, radio, print, and online).

Enjoy and let me know what you think. David

December 10th, 2009 CORRECTION: The article mentioned that real-time search engine Wowd required a plugin for its use. That is not true. Current report is updated to reflect that it’s not required.

Photo credit: Creative Commons Bikoy.

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