Richard,

Yout should take a look at Prof. Jeffery Sachs' recent book "The End of Poverty" and the work of the Earth Institute he heads up at Columbia (http://www.earth.columbia.edu). He specifically talks about the importance of female eduction in the developing world and adds to your list of reasons that educating woman (and more generally helping children survive childhood) leads to lower fertility rates and reduction of population growth from rates that are currently doubling populations in very short periods to more sustainable levels.

He also adds to the importance of School Lunches by way of a story he tells of one school, I think in Kenya, where prior to instituting school lunches they were ranked ~110th out of 200 schools in the region. After just adding school lunches for the 8th grade they raised their school ranking (on the basis of national tests) to 2nd in the region. Prof. Sachs is working with NGO's to extend the school lunch program there to all grades.

Thomas P. M. Barnett in his books and writings also emphasizes the critical importance of woman's education on closing the gap between countries. Countries where girls get an education and woman have rights and opportunities tend to move forward in many other areas (environment, development, stability).

Shannon

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A model that might be looked at is Oprah.
i.e. if you manage to do the following trifecta, you can collect big:

- Generate a large, passionate, ongoing audience (which stays with the station/channel who air you giving them an incentive and value to supporting you)

- Own the content yourself and negotiate for a significent portion of the advertising revenue (and ideally manage a mix of local/national advertising)

- Continue to add other content and outlets, as well as maintaining a strong brand and connection to your audience.

Shannon

This also makes for an even more short term focus.

One of the major roles of the media, historically, has been to spark and foster debate. Coverage of many issues has started with an initial report, perhaps full of inaccuracies or errors, which then over time is reacted to, corrected, and refined getting a bit closer to "the truth" but also importantly fostering public knowledge of and debate about the issues (and the facts).

If we are entering an era when most media from the blogosphere (see Apple's lawsuit) to major newspapers and magazines to TV think only of the immediate, short term, initial reactions to everything they write about - then we are unlikely to see ongoing support for investigative research, or coverage of anything which can not both be simplified to a single story and vetted by advertisers. Small bastions may remain in the publications supported by foundations or interested groups (Mother Jones, Unte, New Yorker on the Left, other publications on the right) but their circulations are a far cry from the New York Times or the reach even now of Network TV news.

Shannon

We tried to address some of these issues at MeshForum 2005 (http://www.meshforum.org)

A few things we did which seemed to work.

- spent a lot of time planning and thinking about the speakers and the order of the speakers to help reinforce each other and minimally overlap

- brought together a mix of speakers - academics, business professionals, consultants, military experts

- though we did have a bit more PowerPoint than I would like to see at future MeshForums, most speakers were introducing new ideas, had a lot of content, and were given enough time to get their ideas across

- we scheduled speakers for a significent amount of Q&A and had an audience capable of asking great questions without giving mini-speeches.

- MeshForum 2005 was a single track - so everyone attending saw and heard the same speakers. We also had a majority of speakers who attended for the whole conference and thus had heard the speakers before them, brought their talks into their own presentations, and were able to later interact with later speakers

- Held the conference outside of the "usual" venues (not a hotel, not a resort, not an auditorium). The flatness of the space with just a low stage, yet a slightly elevated section allowing for great sightlines for everyone, led to a sense of connectedness to the speakers and easy interaction

- We incorporated meals and evening events into the conference, this was critical to allowing people to interact, truly network, and follow up with questions and thoughts for future action

- We ended the conference with an entire day in Open Space. This format allowed for a fully interactive workshop - everyone who attends that portion of the conference sets their own agenda, picks the topics they want to work on. Though smaller than the full conference, the workshop led directly to lots of future action and helped translate the conference environment into one that will lead to ongoing, continuing interactions and relationships.

I welcome feedback about what we did this year and how we can hold the best conference possible next year (our plan is for May 7-9 again here in Chicago), we hope Corante can once again be a sponsor and be an even more active and involved sponsor this year. :)

thanks,

Shannon

As a writer myself, I find this trend a mixed one - I certainly see the branding value of what people at Springwise/Trendwatching (http://www.trendwatching.com) call "branded brands" - i.e. the use of one brand (Broadway, Hollywood, TV shows) to promote another brand (though in fairness to Springwise, they focused on branded products using other branded products such as Smuckers Jam as an ingrediant in another item).

But like the all pervasive use of 555-####'s for phone numbers in the media, brands are rapidly becoming signs and reminders of what (and who) paid for the show, and in their all to often blurred state indications of who did not.

If you watch most of TV you see a very removed version of "reality" - the only brands visible on most shows, especially on a network like MTV, are those brands who paid to be there (or much less often brands that weren't seen yet as brands). The cast of most reality TV wear shirts not with actual logos but with made up slogans or catch phrases, the kitchens are full only of specific products, even scenes of "reality" are filtered and blurred.

It is a small item, but it is also a grating one - it shows how divorced our creative products have become from the reality we all experience. Who knows, perhaps this will lead to a generation who demands clothes and items without brands. :)

On a more serious note however, by adding an assumption that "visible brand == payment" it raises new issues of the chinese wall. It is one thing for the supporters of a show to be mostly anonymous to the show itself (clips mixed in, occasionally "sponsored by" messages as in early Radio and TV) but as the brands become an active part of the experience of the show they clearly have the strong potential to influence the show itself.

Further, I wonder how this will change our view of history over time. Plays are studied usually by reference to the text - does this sponsorship "change" the text of Simon's play as performed elsewhere, or just for this run (I assume just for this run). On TV will future reruns (or DVD boxed sets) have logos from brands which fail. Technically I suspect that some shows at least may substitute one brand for another for future reruns (or market segmentation, I think some live sporting events show different ads based on the audience, inserted electronically and not visible to people attending the game)

As well, what happens to the next piece sponsored by a future Enron, Worldcom, or Tyco? We've begun to see this as sports stadiums get renamed/rebranded, but as brands work their way further into all entertainment (and increasingly only there if payments changed hands) this problem will be one that happens with greater frequency.

A great topic.

Shannon

1. Networks
2. Due Diligence of early stage firms, vendors, competitors, and without naming names clients
3. Software architecture and design
4. Philosophy of consulting
5. Project management methodology
6. and many others

I may add guest bloggers in the future and expand the blog from just my posts to include other consultants with whom I have worked. Initially the design is pretty basic, I'm using b2 as the software. In upcomming days I'll likely be adding payment and contact details, links to applications we have written, google adsense content (possibly), tags, and hopefully further improvements.

If you have any suggestions - design, content, or otherwise, please leave them there as a comment.

There are some categories of information we call get you missed:

- SPAM - I get a lot of this, spam filters get rid of much of it, blacklist kills most of it on my blogs, but some still gets through

- Low priority emails - events coming up months from now, amusing articles from friends, general reference articles etc

- High priority emails - changes of location/time for an upcomming meeting, question from my girlfriend, news from family or friends, inquiries about possible projects, responses to proposals or requests, etc (generally speaking a response to what I wrote - a reply to an email, comments/trackbacks about a comment/post I wrote etc should get high priority

On Bloglines - I love it, use it all the time, but there is one feature I wish worked better.

Specifically, I wish that when I "mark something as new" (i.e. keep it around in my primary view) I could do so in way that would behave differently from "new" as in "unseen" messages.) Yes they have a clippings folder/blog which can be used to move items and store them - but since I view the updated page all the time (since it changes) while only view my archives (saved items) very rarely this goes unused by me mostly.

Which brings me to a key point:

- we visit and monitor those views which can CHANGE. When they do, we need ways to quickly and reliably see what HAS CHANGE/IS NEW. (this btw is why I often don't like WIKI's takes a different view and a lot of work to see what is new and changed)

Think about your calendar. If, like many of us, you are the only person who adds items to your calendar then no matter how often you do so, your calendar is unlikely to be a view you visit frequently and often, probably just in the morning when you see what you have planned for the day, perhaps during the day as you add notes, new appointments etc.

However, if you are in an environment (usually a corporate environment) where your calendar is open and other people (assistants, co-workers, bosses, perhaps even clients) can add items and schedule you, then you very likely monitor and view your calendar on a regular and very frequent basis. That view has to show you quickly and easily what is happening, possible conflicts, and perhaps visually highlight "new" items (perhaps "tentative" items) etc.

Generally speaking when we (as developers) design tools we should think about why would users visit and use the tool? If it is "just" for themselves with only content they create then the tool will work and serve one set of purposes, useful perhaps but vitally different than if the tool involves the pushing of content down to the user - then the user has to have ways to work within the tool over time (modern email clients make it easy to see what is a "new" message vs an old message, though many don't clearly show "new" vs. "unread")

Hope this helps,

Shannon

Tod Maffin is a fantastic source for new podcasts. We ought to organize this better. Somehow we built a centralized system, and we already know that centralized systems suck the life out of communities. How can I ask this question. Tod, I have an hour to spare. What should I listen to? Or alternatively, let's say I want to give Tod my Tuesday walk-time. Every Tuesday he's got something good for me to hear. He had to make a gut-wrenching decision because there are really 18 things he knows I should hear, but I'm only giving him one hour per week. I have six other days. Who else should I give a day to?

I'm in the US and as an entrepreneur I set my own hours - that said, under these guidelines I would have a severe problem working in Europe.

For one - and this is not such an easy question - "what is work"?

Seriously - as a consultant am I working when I read and search/monitor the web? When I'm thinking about a client's problems in the shower? What about when I attend a networking event in the evening? (Martha Stewart recently had this problem due to her attending an event - she claimed and I would tend to agree - that her attending such events was part of her job)

And for another, a lot of my work and those of many other consultants and IT professionals is cyclical. I spend relatively resonable hours in research and preparation, in the meeting with clients and preparing, but then frequently may have extremely long hours as we reach significent milestones and deadlines. (One project involved a call Friday morning, working all day and night to understand an app which had failed, then all day meetings on Saturday and Sunday to create a solution which could be rolled out early morning on Monday).

Which points to just one of the other issues involved - extra time is frequently needed in the middle of crisis - and it is unlikely that people will be looking at their watches and in the middle of critical events leaving saying "well that's my 48 hours for this week - see you next week" (if anyone I ever worked with did this, I doubt I would ever work with them again. Yes there is a time and often a need to take a break and recover, but there is also at times a need to stay and finish.

Shannon

I posted about this a few times in comments on Robert Scoble's blog and on my own personal blog (http://searchingforthemoon.blogspot.com).

I think that corporations whether small or large have a significent social responsibility. But even more importantly, corporations have to be consistent and transparent in their positions - when a corporation such as Microsoft claims one set of standards for internal behavior, but then shifts from those positions to a very different one in its external engagement - the message which is sent is one of great distrust, lack of leadership, and inconsistancy. Whether you are an employee, potential employee, business partner, customer or even a shareholder this is not what you (well at least I) seek in businesses. Consistency and transperancy allow me no matter what my relationship with the firm is to understand and make decisions based on clear choices - I want to trust that while a firm is doing and stating one thing it is not simultanously working at cross purposes someplace else.

I also think that as a society and as business people we are misunderstanding the structure of businesses and the relative importance of different stakeholders. Literature and the popular press typically focuses on the "shareholders" - often to the exclusion of all other stakeholders in a corporation. However especially in a firm such as Microsoft (with billions in cash/near cash assets and significent cash flow) shareholders actually should in many ways play only a minimal role in Microsoft's business actions.

Why do I say this?

One, corporations care about their share price (the corporation as a whole, we'll talk about individuals with stock or stock options in a moment) primarily only if the corporation is planning selling additional shares on the open market. Less often corporations may have financial instruments pegged to share price (bank covenents, listing agreements with markets) so corporations do care about some minimum per-share price. When a corporation is planning on using shares to purchase another party then the share price may matter, though again corporations often have many options to finance purchases.

For a corporation such as Microsoft they have cash on hand and if anything are a net purchaser of shares on the open market (to fulfill options issued to employees). Should they require financing, they have bond and bank recourses which they would use prior to the step of issuing new shares.

The power of shareholders at many firms is often overstated. Many firms, Microsoft included, have majority blocks of shares in the hands of a few parties (founders, large mutual funds, pension funds etc) These blocks frequently have sufficient votes to handle all but the most exceptional of occasions. Further, most shareholders sell shares of corporations they no longer believe instead of casting votes to encourage change.

The exception to this is employees and others who have restricted shares or who are holding options. They have a strong, personal interest in specific pricepoints for the shares and may (as in the case of shares held in 401k plans or restricted stocks) be limited in their opportunities to sell shares to express disagreement.

In short, I would argue that for corporations who do not expect to sell additional shares on the open market and do not expect to make significent acquisitions with stock, that they should take a longer horizon view.

As part of this they may as many firms are look at ways to also shift executives and employees away from short term, quarter over quarter share price connections and also tie their interests to long term success (cash bonuses, profit sharing, options and vesting tied to business performance etc).

Firms should also look directly at those stakeholders who will no matter the share price have a direct and immediate impact on the business - namely first the firm's employees and secondly the firm's customers, partners and suppliers.

If the firm can take steps and stands which will enhance opportunities and ease challenges faced by customers and by employees (i.e. in the recent Microsoft case making personal sexuality not a reason for discrimination in housing for example) then the firm will benefit by having more focused employees and more generally by lowering the challenges faced by customers.

At least that's my view.

Shannon

I'm an entrepreneur and consultant based in Chicago. I wear two hats - one non-profit and one for-profit (and actually a few additional non-profit hats). My non-profit hat is MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) a conference on Networks I started and which was first held at the beginning of this month here in Chicago. We had speakers from around the world, including Esther Dyson and many others.

My for-profit hat is JigZaw (http://www.jigzaw.com) a software and consulting firm I started five years ago in May of 2000. While we started out with angel funding and software ambitions, at present my focus through JigZaw is very high end consulting and the occasional contract software development - typically involving complex data analysis. I describe our consulting as being a bit more technical and in depth than what a McKinsey & Company can offer - I provide business analysis, but also can go deep into the actual code of an application or system to analyze it to make recommendations about whether to enhance, replace or build a new solution to complex business problems.

Our business tends to either be for very large, often Fortune 100 sized firms, or (and this is why I read your blog and Fred's) for early stage startups.

I've been active on the Internet (to the point of managing my own servers) since 1991. I have many friends across the globe who are at various stages of launching businesses. I try to stay up to date on emerging technology, on the VC community, and on general technology and business trends.

(I'm also the technology director of a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank - Hope Street Group (http://www.hopestreetgroup.org) and I'm the webmaster for a few other non-profits)

Keep up the interesting writing!

Shannon

"Shannon Clark Says:
May 13th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
I read about 150 some blogs (about 160 feeds in my rss reader, but ~10 of them are search results etc)

I subscribe to about 35-40 podcasts.

For me they serve very different and equally interesting purposes.

Blogs I read for content, to follow friends, less often for entertainment.

Podcasts, at least the ones I follow, I listen to mostly for entertainment, occasionally to learn. I subscribe to about 20 podcasts which are mostly music - various IndieFeed podcasts, Rock & Roll Geek Show, Coverville, Karin’s themed podcasts, the $250 Million Radio Show and a few others. These have entirely replaced listening to radio for me - they play great music, selected with care by someone who cares and usually puts the music together in a way that is very compelling - great listening and vastly better than commercial radio (though I would be happy if they included ads especially if that meant they could continue to do what they do).

A few other notables - WeFunk (nearly 2 hours of great radio, broadcast on radio but available on the web); The Thomas Edison show - from NJ, a 1 hour show also broadcast on radio but available as a podcast of early turn of the century recordings, many from the archives of the Thomas Edison museam.

I then also subscribe to a handful of other podcasts - Adam Curry’s because I enjoy it, Dawn and Drew because I mostly enjoy it, KOMO news which would be even better were I in Seattle but shows how commercial radio can use podcasting very effectively 30 second to 2 minute short news stories - great stuff and good to shuffle amidst my other listening. And I listen to IT Conversations for deep, rich, highly interesting tech interviews and conference recordings - much more compelling than reading a powerpoint presentation or even a report of a presentation - and vastly more portable than trying to view a small video/web presentation if that were even an option (full disclosure, the conference I run, MeshForum will be distributed by IT Conversations later this Spring).

And I listen to a few other shows like the Podcast Network, David Winer, Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything, Le Show from Harry Shearer etc.

A common theme to most of the podcasts I listen to - they are made by people who if not professional radio people are very close, and in most cases have a significent background in audio recording and often in radio. i.e. They put together a well recorded (usually) and compelling show. Some, like Benjamin Walker do a lot of audio editing, others record and do no editing, but all sound good.

I think of my ipod shuffle as my self-programmed radio. For me podcasts offer a mix of music and tech (mostly) with bit of politics mixed in which I can set up quickly and listen to over the course of the day.

So I encourage you to give other podcasts a chance.

One final note - based on the podcasts I subscribe to 15-20 megs is a more accurate average and quite a few that I get are more like 50+ megs. I think this reflects deeper more comprehensive content - might be worth looking for larger podcasts to sample them.

Shannon

Danah,

I'm outside of academia but have just finished running MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) a conference on Networks where we made a lot of effort to bring together a truly wide range of academics, business people and government experts around multiple aspects of and views on Networks.

From this a few thoughts - I would argue that the growing study of and understanding of networks which has blossomed in the past 5 years represents a truly interdisciplinary and important development. Social scientists, physicists, economists, and dozens of other fields finding a common language and means of collaborating together to address very real and important problems.

At MeshForum we had a number of people who's careers illustate real work across disciplines:

- Dr. Anna Nagurney of U. Mass - Amherst. Dr. Nagurney is an economist but has professorships in both the school of management and the school of engineering. She has published and/or edited 8 books on Networks - including works specifically on transportation networks and Network Economics. Her talk at MeshForum brought together work from operational engineering, transportation, economics, and many other fields.

- Dr. Noshir Contracter, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Contractor is in the school of communications, but his research interests and works (over 250 papers and books) have been with researchers from many other fields.

- Dr. Eivind Almaas, University of Notre Dame. Dr. Almaas is a physicist but his research at Notre Dame in Dr. Albert-Lazlow Barabasi's lab is on biological networks. Dr. Barabasi's work (see his book Linked) includes studies of computer networks, social networks, and physical networks.

Just a few examples from speakers we had - our other speakers are also great examples.

My own interes (well one of them) is in studying economics through a lens of networks. To do this, I am learning as much as I can about networks in every context - social, physical, biological, technical etc. I expect to adapt techniques from many fields to address the issues I'm studying.

Hope this helps,

Shannon

A few thoughts. I like Target, have enjoyed every time I have shopped there, but haven't shopped there in years.
- why not? Well the simple answer is we (my girlfriend and I - and before you assume anything, I'm male - name is confusing online) both sold our cars a few years back - as a result we rarely shop anyplace we can't easily walk or take public transportation to.

- But a more complex answer is "I don't know what I would shop for at Target" - why should I go there? Even more specifically, why should I go there this upcomming weekend?

Almost every week my girlfriend logs into the Walgreens website, downloads the circular for walgreens (specifically, I think, for the walgreens down the block from us) and looks for specials and coupons on products we need.

Were Target to have a blog - and more specifically - were Target and especially target.com to have a blog - which featured the stories about their products, perhaps specials, but even just the backgrounds, why I might want to buy it, and reminding me that it is an option - they would get business from me more often. And we're certainly well within their target demographic (and "the Target..") - urban, young, professionals who care about strong design, quality, as well as fair prices. We're not the Walmart demographic - I've been in a Walmart I think once in my entire life.

Recently I purchased, on the somewhat spur of the moment, a jacket from Wilson Leather, in no small part because it was featured in a post to Boing Boing. In a similar manner were Target to have a blog, in which they told the stories of products they sold - especially the everyday, basic, but very well designed products which are one of their specific niches - it is not unlikely that besides the specific readers of their blog, other blogs, perhaps even major sites like BoingBoing would pick up on these items and mention them as well...

(it strikes me as I write this that even more so than Target, CostCo really should blog - they have dozens, perhaps hundreds of items each year which are unique, special, and often extremely good prices - and they have a very specific challenge to consumers that you never quite know which products will be in stock any given time you go to the store (and if, like me, you don't have a car a trip to Costco is a big commitment but worthwhile when I had my membership).

Some models to consider specifically.

- Woot (http://www.woot.com) - they blog, they have an RSS feed, they sell a single item per day - and nearly every day sell out of that product. Why can't a Target or a Costco adopt a similar model - possibly on a per-store basis, taking a cue from Woot of injecting a personal touch when describing the products - yet retaining a highly accurate and reliable touch as well - and offering fair prices for interesting products.

- Design Within Reach. They have a newsletter which is content rich, but also does a lot to convey the mission and passion of their company for design - even beyond just products they sell. The newsletter creates a personal connection and passion for the store even before purchasing products - I feel engaged and interested. And they use this medium for more than just marketing and specific sales messages, they also use it to recruit new employees as they open up new stores - a clear winner as they start by recruiting people who already have formed bonds and ties to the firm, even before working there.

I want to like a company such as Target - but as I said, I am also while favorably inclined, not a recent customer.

To those who wonder whether or not blog readers are sufficient to make an impact on a non-tech company. A few considerations - done well, the "blog" would and could be reached by many different ways - say by including it directly on the pages already present for people who search for details about their specific local Target store.

Blogs for the specific stores, as well as general blogs for Target could also serve as a permanent counterpart to ongoing advertising and marketing campaigns - rather than one-time-use domains as many advertisers seem to try out these days, and rather than rather cryptic but apparently effective ads as Target does today - why not incorporate an online component and counterpart to offline ads - this could be done as a very low cost.

One idea: ad a URL to the end of existing Target ads.

At that URL, a blog which details ALL of the items seen in that spot, highlights the current prices and/or sales on those items, and takes a potential customer through to related products and other specials as well as the stories behind some (all?) of the items - at least those which are unique to Target.

Sure, for the branded items you might (but only might) have to incur a small extra fee to use them online as well as in the spot, but clearly Target in their current advertising is very willing (or at least hsa been in the recent past) to show other brands alongside with the Target circle.

I think a consumer company such as Target should focus on their connection with those consumers - a blog for suppliers & partners is something very different, perhaps useful, but I would think not the best and most impactful place for Target to focus.

Another thought - with a good, accurate and passionate story brands and items acquire a different level of price flexibility. That is, when you know and have been told the story behind a product, believe (and better understand the reality) of why it has advantages over the generic, run-of-the-mill example of that type of product - people have a willingness to pay more because with that purchase they also get the value created by that story.

Now I'm not arguing for spinning yarns or half-truths, but for a firm such as Target when they do invest carefully in design (and I hope as well into quality) they should find ways to tell that story - it likely could result in solid sales without resorting to as many discounts and/or allowing for higher prices. And clearly anything which might allow for higher margins should get Target's attention.

Hope this helps and is interesting.

Shannon

Shannon Clark • 5/5/05; 1:49:31 AM