It’s a miserable 6%! That means 94% of people are in various stages of disinterest, disillusion or despair as to how they are spending most of their waking time on this planet.

This is probably your first time here - so let me give you a quick low-down.

This is both my business and personal website. I believe that the two roles can’t be neatly separated, so I don’t try. We take who we are into everything we do.

I’d like to think that my website is an outpost for divergent thinkers, but in reality it’s more of a parking lot for some of my thoughts and interests.

I recently started my solo journey, and freelance as a facilitator. I’m passionate about discovering more human, productive, and creative ways for people to work together. A lot of the work I do involves face-to-face meetings, which I love. I also have a lot of experience in the online space, using social software (blogs, wikis, twitter etc.) and other technology to create loose ties and foster collaboration.

Thanks for dropping by. If you’d like to get in touch with me and have a conversation, you’ll find my details on the contact page.

Here’s a couple of things that have been occupying my thoughts, and my time outside of normal ‘business’ activities:

Podcasting: I’m writing this post having just finished recording my first podcast as a host. For episode #40 of the Productivity Show, the tables have been turned and I interviewed regular host Tony Goodson. I really enjoyed the interview and the process, so hopefully that comes through. We had an interesting chat anyway. So, it’s in the can — you’ll just have to wait a couple of days for post-production and publishing on TPN. I’ll post a link when it’s up.

Complexity: My friend, and fellow facilitator Viv McWaters has been writing some really good posts. I loved her description of an a-ha! moment she had when looking at Shawn’s sketchkast on the Cynefin model and complexity. I remember having a similar moment when I read a Kurz and Snowden paper. I also enjoyed reading this post because of her pondering on the need to be doing vs. being. It certainly expanded my thinking on my approach to productivity. I think that I might of mentioned something about this in today’s podcast.

Solopreneurship: I’m not alone. A couple of other friends–Michael and Keith have also just started out on their own and are busy setting up their respective businesses. We certainly have lots in common. Keith is busy helping to ramp up the Melbourne KMLF again for Knowledge Management practitioners. Michael is back blogging and has written some interesting articles of late. Well worth a look if you’re interested in the intersection between technology and the human face of business. I’ll be keeping a close eye on their progress, and wish them well — good luck guys!

Social Media: I’m really looking forward to this. Finally, Melbourne gets a Digital|Social Media conference: PubCamp Melbourne on 23rd June. It should be a great event. The format is a little different to your standard conference–it will be divided into 1. a more formal conference style and 2. an unconference–which I’m really happy about. An unconference is similar to Open Space Technology — it’s largely self-directed, and so should be less structured and hopefully more engaging and conversational than normal.

Micro-blogging: I’m really enjoying the conversations on Twitter and the feeling of connectedness. It’s tough sometimes working at home by yourself and feeling isolated. A couple of tweets have made me laugh, a couple have made me gasp. None have made me cry (yet). Who needs a water-cooler for those off-the-cuff conversations anyway? Follow me if you’d like.

Clay Shirky at Web 2.0 Expo SF 2008: Clay’s talk centers on the notion that in today’s modern society, there is a massive cognitive surplus, or untapped source of brain power. He tries to debunk the often heard phrase aimed at technophiles and ‘geeks’ — “where do people find the time?”

In his presentation he cites some staggering statistics, which are not only compelling on their own, but support his argument well. He calculated the amount of time American’s watch TV to be in the vicinity of 200 billion hours per year, which is equal to 200 wikipedia projects per year. Imagine what we could achieve if we re-directed this type of energy — use this surplus in a more positive way? A thought provoking presentation.

Paul Graham at Startup School 08: Paul’s presentation is an interesting look at why start-ups should not worry about the money too much, and act more like a not-for-profit in the early stages. He argues that being benevolent improves moral; helps you to be decisive and makes other people want to help you.

He recommends the adoption of Google’s “don’t be evil” model, and concludes by urging not to be satisfied with simply ‘not being evil’, but to be good! I found one of the best takeaways was the advice: “Cheap to run = Hard to kill”, sage advice for a start-up, even a micro-one like my own.

Anyhow, go see for yourself.

Serendipity. Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for. — Lawrence Block

I’m finding it quite amazing: a number of opportunities and serendipitous events have popped up since I made the announcement about going solo. It’s quite staggering.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. At other times in my life when I’ve taken risks, unexpected things have happened — and usually for the better. Perhaps it has less to do with being in the right place at the right time and is more about putting yourself in the right position creates the right time? Or perhaps it’s because of emergence - patterns arising out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions? I’m getting philosophical now and wading in way too deep.

I’m not trying to brag about my ’success’ on day 3 - after all they’re just opportunities. I haven’t hit pay dirt, nor am I receiving buyout offers (yet). I mention it because it might be relevant to you other would-be entrepreneurs out there who are waiting to take destiny into your own hands, but just haven’t quite made the leap over the chasm. I hope it inspires you to throw caution to the wind and to set sail on your own adventure. Perhaps your big opportunity is sitting there waiting for you to make the next move?

A big thanks to all of my friends and colleagues who’ve sent me notes wishing me well, and for those who’ve been kind enough to put my name forward; to beat the jungle drums; to care. Cheers.

I remain good friends with Mark and Shawn and we still have plans to stay in touch and do some exciting things together. I’ll just no longer be a full-time employee.

I plan to concentrate my efforts on working as a Facilitator, enabling groups to work collaboratively & effectively in meetings, workshops, conferences, retreats, forums, seminars and other exchanges. I am keeping an eye out for opportunities and new clients.

Making the leap is pretty scary, but it’s also really exciting at the same time. If you have any thoughts or suggestions that might help me, I’d be interested in having a conversation with you. Please contact me.

D.

So, to get things rolling, I wrote a press release for Nick to put up on his site in the hope that I can pay it forward for Nick and generate some traffic and interest in his story. It’s probably a little contrived but I honestly believe that this is a story that will be of interest to others. If you agree with me, please digg it, blog it, help out with some link lovin’ to Nick’s site or contribute in some other way to spreading the word, as far and wide as possible.

Whilst doing some research, I came across an elightening piece on the challenge of building communities by Dave Pollard.

I’ve read everything I can get my hands on on intentional communities, and what strikes me most is that their failure, just like the failure of so many new-age business models, is a failure of imagination. The intentions are good. They invest a lot of time and energy in research, and in trying to make it work. But when they run into difficulties, they keep falling back on ‘conventional wisdom’: we need a council, and committees, and voting and non-voting shares, and strategic plans, and legal agreements, and to borrow lots of money; we need to work harder, and to wait until conditions are exactly right. I appreciate that creating a new community is scary, but the social, political and economic failings of the old system are exactly what got us into this mess, and incorporating them into the new models is just asking for the same terrible results.

Whilst the focus of his post seems to be a broader context of intentional communities, I think the same reasoning applies to building communities of practice and social networks. It is very easy to fall into the trap of making things too strucured or formal, and this can stifle creatvity and openness.

To be successful, you have to nuture and create the right conditions for evolution and transformation rather than trying to control and force resolutions. This is the philosophy I hope to take with me into the new venture.  Do you subscribe to this philosophy, or do you think I should take a different tact?

At the risk of sounding rude … what a load of rationalist crap. For better or worse, the jobs environment of yester year–where there was some notion of stability, structure and security–is gone. And this is not a recent phenomena. It went a long time a go.

What we need to do as individuals is to respond creatively and decisively and take advantage of the situation rather than becoming a victim of it. We need to free ourselves of the master-slave mentality and forge our own path. As quoted here before … “security only comes from controlling your own destiny.”

Isn’t it funny when you discover that someone has a great idea — that you’d already thought of some time ago …

[Dave Winer]

You know what would be really cool. An office in Silicon Valley that was open 24 by 7, with pizza and coffee, for open source projects. A patent-free zone. A place to work on open formats and protocols. The missing social pulse of the tech industry. I wonder if it would work, or if it would just attract homeless people. Thinking out loud.

We talked about something similar in Melbourne a couple of years back … with the concept that it could also provide a showcase of open source products/services for newbies. Is this worth persuing?

Joel Spolsky (
Joel on Software) has written an interesting piece on the importance of hiring good programmers, and in a broader context, his formula for a successful software company. I think he’s right on the money when he says …

The real trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers instead of a couple of good ones is that no matter how long they work, they never produce something as good as what the great programmers can produce.

At the end of the day, it all gets back to the concept of quality. The more the software business is driven by commoditisation, the more the cream will rise to the top (i.e. poor quality software will cease to exist).

Has anyone else noticed that the media portrayal of Steve Vizard has shifted from “Company Director” or “Former Entertainer/Lawyer” Steve Vizard to “Entreprenuer” Steve Vizard? Here’s a couple of recent examples …

from The Age …

The entrepreneur has to persuade a judge that his remorse is deep and sincere.

and The Australian …

DISGRACED entrepreneur Steve Vizard has made elaborate plans to sidestep sanctions imposed for improper business dealings, setting himself up with a consulting role in a media group.

Why is it that the media use the term Entreprenuer to portray failed or dodgy businessmen? If I’m not mistaken, the media did the same thing in the cases of Skafe, Bond, Rivkin, and Rich. Perhaps it has something to do with the creative nature of entreprenuers and the media are immediately leaping towards the negative connotations of “creative accounting”?

Yes, most people would indetify these individuals as being entrepreneurs, and in the strict sense of a definition of an entrepreneur as “someone who acts without regard to the resources currently under his control in relentless pursuit of opportunity “, I don’t have a problem with this.

But I do object to the media’s use of the term in this context, as there are many honest and decent people who chose the entreprenuerial path, and this portrayal does not serve them well. It does not give these people any credit for having the courage and conviction to put their career and financial security on the line for an idea, nor value their creativity and innovation which leads to new ideas and opportunities from which we all benefit.

I’ve been working with a client over the past couple of weeks helping them to develop and present a business case for an online application. During this time, I’ve had cause to think about exactly what “value” means.

According to Wikipedia, the meaning of value is:

1. often expressed as the equation: Value = Benefits/Price

2. Describe how much value a person places on various ideas, objects, or beliefs.

These values can be grouped into four categories:

* Ethics (good, bad, moral, right, wrong)
* Aesthetics (beautiful, ugly, unbalanced, pleasing)
* Doctrine (political, ideological, religious or social beliefs)
* Inborn (inborn values such as reproduction and survival)

I’ve worked in a number of roles during my career, and they all seem to have a common thread — identifying value (or proving it). In Business Development and consulting you are developing value propositions, as a Product Manager you’re developing business cases for new product functionality and proving the value of your product to the market. As a strategist you are looking at how a company delivers value — to its shareholders and to customers. So are the tools we use to do this the correct ones?

Conventional wisdom is that Business Cases are crucial to organisations to predict the results of business decisions. This is because a Business Case helps to predict the likely financial results and other business consequences of an action. A good business case uses evidence and reasoning to reach a conclusion and involves financial techniques that are well know and long establised - NPV, IRR etc.

However, all is not as simple as it sounds. Cost-Benefit Analysis itself is not easy. Classifying what costs to include and where the benefit figures come from in the first place are difficult enough to resolve alone. And how do you account for the business impacts that cannot be weighed in monetary terms? Things such as the customer relationship, customer service, brand value and market perception? These issues are beyond the scope of traditional financial practice.

For some time, I have thought that was needed is an approach that works with the whole picture — seeing value not only as profits and capital as the measures of success. Then recently I came across the concept of Value Network Analysis. Whilst I’m nowhere near an authority on the subject, it appears to resolve my particular dilemma in an eloquent way. The methodology’s handling of the intangible benefits is an extremely perceptive take on what adds value to a company. The Author has written a paper here explaining it much better than I can hope to!