eb2.0 & Automotive portals? wow..!!! As a passionate automobile enthusiast and a firm Web.20 believer, it represents the best of both worlds for me.

I have been following the auto portal scene in India from the late 90’s and have seen them evolve, stagnate and fade away. Have witnessed portals such as indiacar.com, cybeersteering.com, bsmotoring.com come and stagnate in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.

When ‘AutoMartIndia‘ (now called ‘FirstChoice‘) was launched in early 2000’s, as an automobile enthusiast I was excited as it represented a paradigm shift in the way Indians bought & sold ‘used cars‘. In fact, the term ‘used cars’ came into existence — at least in India after that only. Previously ‘used cars’ were always referred to as ‘second hand‘ cars.

In the last one year or so, I have been very impressed by carwale.com. The way these folks have approached about building an auto portal is simply great. They put in one feature at a time, must have analyzed user behavior to ensure that it was working spot on, and then built on the simple web2.0 premises of usability & simplicity tied together and anticipating user needs. Once you looked at carwale.com, you realized — why the hell did other auto portals not think of it? This is exactly what I as a user wants.!! Features like used car prices to the granular level of models/city and mileage are a great boon to users. carwale perfected this with tapping into it’s user base to come up with city/model specific indicative pricing for used cars. There are a number of other features that one can go on and on about the value proposition that carwale.com provides — both to end user(car buyer) and car sellers (individuals & used car dealers).

Of late numerous auto portals that are replicas of carwale.com have come up. In my opinion, while this is testimony to the fact that carwale.com is successful and good, is also resulting in mee-too auto portals‘ whose value proposition is exactly same as that of carwale.com. While this can also be termed as expansion of market, this leads to stifling of innovation & new business models. These mee-too auto portals are doing exactly what the auto portals of late 90’s did — copy each other.

Don’t believe me: Just look at the home pages of three different auto portals(carwale.com, carazoo.com, driveinside.com). It would be very hard for a user to distinguish one from another.

In the ‘print’ media, auto magazines like Overdrive, Business Standard Motoring, Autocar, etc cater to the motoring enthusiast of the country and all of these are very successful print magazines. For years, these magazines have been the sole medium for the auto enthusiasts to keep in touch with the passion they are mad about — automobiles.

Similarly, in the ‘television’ space, literally every channel worth it’s name is having it’s own ‘auto’ show  — at times with tie-ups with the ‘print’ magazines. These ‘auto’ shows on television have their ‘experts’ who are very knowledgeable and respected in the motoring world and very often these ‘experts’ are also the experts/editors of the print magazines. These experts often do the following:

• Answer queries on issues/problems that viewers face with their  vehicles
• Recommend which vehicle to buy to their viewers depending on their needs
• Analyze the auto industry for happenings and trends
• And other things – like international motoring scene, product launches, motor sports etc.

In the ‘internet’ space, as far as ‘automotive business websites/portals’ go, there seems to be a vacuum w.r.t websites/portals that can be termed as successful and having a broad user base (with the exception of carwale.com – a late entrant).  Many of the internet websites/portals aimed at the automotive segment were even backed by big names of the tv/print media – autocarindia.com from the Autocar stable, bsmootoring.com from Business Standard, Indiacar.com, cybersteering.com, overdrive.in from the Overdrive magazine.

One can safely assume that auto experts were involved with these websites and they would have shared all their experience. Why were these internet websites not able to catch the users attention in India and become successful? All these websites seem to have the ‘obvious’ and ‘seemingly right’ set of features available to make them successful. Most of the websites offer the following:

• News from the auto industry & editorial articles
• Compare vehicles
• Buy & sell vehicles
• Road Tests
• Ask the experts
• Prices of vehicles

It seems that most of the print magazines don’t know how they can leverage the internet and create communities of auto enthusiasts. At most, these print magazines view their internet websites as the place to advertize about their print magazine and few other add-ons. These magazines are not taking a strategic view of how ‘building communities’ can increase the sales/subscription of their  print magazines. It can offer a whole new paradigm of distribution channels, business models and extremely great competitive advantage.

In a subsequent post, I will talk about a auto website/portal that is successfully ‘building communities’ and is perfectly poised to leverage the user community into a great competitive advantage.

Why do all experiments conducted on software/professionals fail? In my post on the wisdom of crowds experiment, I wrote on an experiment conducted on approximately 150 computer professionals.

Coincidentally, I attended a conference where Richard Gabriel spoke on ‘In Search of Beauty’ and expanded on Christopher Alexander’s work: ‘Timeless way of Building’.

In one of the slides he had images of 2 carpets kept side by side and asked the audience as to which one was ‘more beautiful, more like an image of themselves, more human’. About 1/3 of the audience choose the one on the left and 2/3 choose the one on the right.

He mentioned that this result was a conclusive proof that we all were computer professionals. ONLY in this sample group did the results always come up this way and in all other sample groups – doctors, psychologists, biologists, lawyers, normal people etc, 9 out of 10 people choose the carpet on the left.

This raises a question: Is it something to do with software/computer professionals – all experiments that seem to work on ‘normal people’ fail on them?

Quite a few experiments, like counting the number of coins in a jar & guessing the weight of the cake have been conducted to test out the ‘wisdom of crowds’ concept. Recently I got a chance to conduct an experiment at a gathering of approximately 150 people — all software/computer professionals

We put up a jar filled with éclairs and asked the audience to guess the number of éclairs in the jar and note it down on a piece of paper and hand it over to us. Obviously, we were excited to know the results – if the experiment worked, did someone guess the correct number?

Here are the results:

We had responses ranging from 25 éclairs to 786 éclairs. The actual number of éclairs in the jar was 204. Out of the 134 responses, only 1 person got the number right. The average, the ‘collective wisdom’ of the ‘crowd’ was 161.4 – an accuracy % of 79.14.

The results have left me wondering as to why did the results not concur with the ‘wisdom of crowds’ theory. After all, the following elements of ‘wisdom of crowds’ were present in the experiment:

• There was enough diversity among the participants. even though all the participants were software engineers, they came from different project teams, had varying levels of experience, roles etc.

• Each person was making his/her own independent choice and was not influenced by any other member

• There was means for us to collect and aggregate the responses.

The fourth element ‘Decentralization — people being able to specialize and draw on local knowledge’ can be debated to be missing from the experiment. How can we assume that there were people specializing in guessing the number of éclairs in a jar? How could they draw on local knowledge?

In Galton’s experiments, there were people who were butchers and farmers who one can assume to be specializing in ox/cattle. In ‘Guess the weight of the Cake’ experiment, people could feel the cake in their hands, there were people who were traders and hence one can assume that ‘knowing the weight of an object’ was something that they were familiar with.

The ‘guess the number of coins’ experiment was an online experiment and had no option for people to see, to feel the jar, hold it in their hands. Similar aspects were present in the experiment we conducted – we just showed people the jar filled with éclairs. We did not have people holding the jar, touching it, feeling it. Could such seemingly insignificant things allow people to make more informed choice? I don’t know.

BTW, ‘Guess the weight of the cake’ experiment was 99% successful even though it had just 120 participants whereas ‘guess the number of coins’ experiment was just 88% successful even though it had 1760 participants. This indicates that while the sample size could be a factor, but it does not seem so in the above examples.

I am wondering if aspects of ‘cognition, cooperation, coordination’ are present in such experiments?

What about the sample composition itself – all software/computer professionals? Do they bring diversity or are software professionals just not the right sample for any kind of experiment?

]]> http://shahnawazkhan.wordpress.com/2008/06/09/wisdom-of-crowds-did-not-work-is-it-something-to-do-with-software-engineers/feed/ shahnawazkhan http://shahnawazkhan.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/generation-gap-web20-the-cost-of-missed-opportunities/ http://shahnawazkhan.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/generation-gap-web20-the-cost-of-missed-opportunities/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 22:03:34 +0000 Shahnawaz Khan http://shahnawazkhan.wordpress.com/?p=61

In a casual conversation with a practice/business head of an IT services firm, I happened to ask her how she is seeing the adoption of Web2.0 in the organizations she interacts with and her line of business. Her response was on the lines of:

‘Very less.. it’s too early… actually people don’t want social networking the way it is on Flickr, YouTube.. In my view, LinkedIn is the ideal social networking platform… it is text based and doesn’t have too many images etc.. I can quickly check it out and come back… Why would I want to see my friends pictures on the net…. It’s a waste of time… how will it benefit the organization..’

Her responses made me wonder:

• Do our business leaders really understand, or have attempted to understand what Web2.0 is all about?
• Why do our business leaders equate Web2,0 to Social networking?

I my opinion:

• The generation gap between the GenNet and Baby Boomer generation has HUGE implications on how web2.0 is viewed within the organizations and how it can be out to productive use.

• In most organizations the leaders belong to the Baby Boomer generation and their interactions, in the course of business, would be with other baby boomers in their counterpart organization. This scenario lends nicely to a classic status quo model(unintentionally, without even the leaders realizing it) and a huge opportunity is being squandered – both in business, competitive advantage context.

Organizations that recognize the existence of generation gap within it’s workforce, the relevance of Web2.0 to todays genNet generation are in a great position to leverage the advantages of web2.0 within an enterprise to become more responsive, agile & competitive.

It’s an opportunity that an organization can either say ‘Pass’ or grab with both hands and run.

While we may believe that unconferences, barcamps are things that have evolved in the recent past and the openspace concept is where they draw inspiration from, I believe that even openspace draws inspiration from something that has existed for decades if not centuries.

It is called the : THE SPEAKER’S CORNER — a place where public speaking is allowed and anybody can turn up announced to speak on any topic, as long as it is within the law.

In my opinion, the speakers corner represents all the essential elements that the unconferences, barcamps are about. The fundamental aspects of a speakers corner are the same as that unconferences, barcamps emphasize.

Let’s look at some of the fundamental aspects of a ‘Speakers Corner’

• Any one can turn up at the speakers corner and volunteer to speak on any subject
• The audience are ‘active’ participants and can argue, debate with the speaker and even heckle the speaker
• There are ‘n’ number of speakers speaking at the same time
• The audience can walk to the next one if the one they are listening don’t hold their attention
• There are no rules. You can speak on anything as long as ‘you are within the law’
• The whole atmosphere is electric, informal, chaotic and yet engaging and full of energy. There is never a dull moment

Speakers corner have been frequented by the leading though leaders of the world, including Valdamir Lenin, Karl Marx, George Owell etc. It’s no coincidence that many of the bright minds of todays generation are so in tune with the unconference, barcamp movement and instead of the Marx & Lenin’s we see the CEO’s, CTO’s, future thought leaders frequenting the barcamps.

So, Hyde Park Corner London can lay claim to as the venue for the oldest unconference, barcamp. In fact may countries besides UK have had the equivalent of Speakers Corner for ages.

AAR’s is a process used by the US Army where after each action [in army's parlance] the team meets to capture the learning’s and lessons, what went well and what could be done better. The advantage of such AAR’s is that the activity performed is fresh in the teams mindspace and they can reflect better on the activity performed and learn from it.

Variations of AAR have been used in the software industry(and in other industries also) in form of Post Harvests, Sunset Reviews, Post Mortem Report etc where the team meets at the end of the project, to look back and reflect on what went well, what could be improved and how to gain from the experience.

While all such practices are fine in theory, there are some fundamental issues in their execution. Few of the limitations are:

• Projects, programs etc get executed over a long span of time – maybe months, years. If a post harvest, sunset review etc is conducted at the end of several months, then it is practically impossible for teams to remember what went well and what could have been better. These meetings then usually will turn into blame game, finger pointing, or of things at a very superficial level. The real learning’s may not surface in such scenarios.

• The importance if learning’s, lessons may become trivial. When the team of individual is facing an issue, or trying to solve a problem, then the lessons they learn while solving the issue/problem the first time is the most important. The next time they face the same situation/problem, then they will see little value in the lessons. They already know how to do it and over a period of time, by the time the post harvest, sunset review happens, the very important lesson that the team had while solving the problem could have become trivial to even mention it.

• Team members join and exit the projects/programs throughout the life cycle of the projects/programs (This is especially true of software development projects). This is compounded by the fact that people leave or join a project not in one shot but in a staggered manner over a period of time. Post harvest, sunset review do not account for tapping into the lessons learnt by people leaving the project, nor do they try to tap into the lessons that people joining a project/program midway bring with them.

• Many times during Post harvests, sunset reviews etc, the team members who had left the project and are now part of other teams are asked to join for such meeting. The intent is very noble — to also tap into the learning’s that these people had and benefit from it. However, the problem is that these team members who had left the project are mentally NOT associated with their previous project anymore, they are mentally switched off from their previous project and are very unlikely to contribute any meaningful learning’s or lessons, and even if they do, it will be very superficial. NOTE: It is not that they have noting to contribute, but the very fact they are mentally, emotionally and physically removed and no longer part of the project, make it difficult from these people to contribute anything meaningful.

There is no doubt that learning’s from Post harvests, sunset reviews can be applied to new projects, but the very fact that lessons/learning’s of AAR’s can be applied right away in the next activity of the current project make it very powerful.

It’s about time that the software industry looks real hard at the value it derives from Post Harvest processes.

Is it a coincidence that the adoption and popularity of barcamps, unconferences has coincided with the emergence of Web 2.0? Are there any parallels and similarities between the underlying principles of Web2.0 & barcamps, unconferences? After all both web2.0 & unconferences are about user generated content, architecture of participation etc.. etc..

I have tried to map the web 2.0 principles from the seminal article on Web 2.0; Oreilly: The Web 2.0 Design Patterns and tried to map them to the underlying principles of unconferences — and I see a striking similarity between both.

So; are unconeferences as the Web 2.0 equivalent of conferences? I bet they are..

Yes, it sounds like an oxymoron: a ‘CORPORATE UNCONFERENCE‘.

An unconference is diametrically opposite to what ‘corporates’ stands for. Unconferences are unstructured, self organized, non hierarchical, user driven, sense of chaos, loose controls, speaking your mind out, no formality etc. A corporate is all about control, hierarchy, structure, predictability, organizational thoroughness, formality etc. It’s like echoing Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.. It’s like Eric Raymonds “The Cathedral & the Bazaar” — the ‘cathedral’ standing for the formal organization and the ‘bazaar’ for the unconference…

However; the reality is that unconferences gaining traction and being widely adopted in the techie circles, and this provides an opportunity for corporates to try out unconferences as a mode of sharing & learning, conversations within their setups.So, how do organizations go about adopting, adapting, experimenting with this social, participative & emergent concept of an unconference?

One way can be to learn from other organizations that have tried unconferences within their organizational setup and factor those learning’s, inputs into their planned corporate unconference. Needless to say that each organization is different and the organizations culture, structure etc will for sure have a bearing on how the corporate unconference is rolled out.

Here are some tips that can be adopted/adapted according to your needs while planning a corporate unconference.

Tip #1: Don’t make it MANDATORY: In my opinion, making participation mandatory for all employees can be the biggest in a corporate unconference. An organization, in all its best intentions, may decide that ‘everyone’ needs to attend the unconference. However; this goes against the spirit of an unconference and is a sure fire way making the unconference unsuccessful. Organizations need to understand that an attendance of 4000 does not guarantee participation from 4000. However only 1000 out of 4000 people participate in the unconference, it is absolutely great.
At MindTree, we did the unconference on a Saturday and did not make it compulsory for people to attend. There were more than 1000 people who turned up out of their own choice - and EACH one of them enjoyed the 30+ sessions during the unconference.

Tip #2: Don’t do a PoC. Yes…!!! In my view, this can be the biggest deciding factor in the overall success of the corporate unconference. At MindTree, we made unconference to the grand finale of a quarter long Osmosis event. One of the fundamental aspects of an unconference is to bring in people with diverse backgrounds, interests together and then have discussions, sessions. If an organization tries to do a PoC for an unconference, it would most probably be limited to a function, technology group of limited set of people - essentially people with SAME background interests etc… This in my opinion could be a foolproof way of ensuring a conclusion that unconferences don’t work in an organization. We did not do a PoC - though there were suggestions to try out a PoC. So, just do it… LARGE!

Tip #3: Get involved in organizing unconferences: If you have never been part of organizing unconferences in the outside world, then DO SO. There are plenty or barcamps happening in most of the cities and all of them need volunteers. Get involved as a volunteer - from the planning stages itself to get a first hand feel on what it takes to organize an unconference. Get down to the nitty-gritty details. This will come in handy when you organize your corporate unconference and is your insurance for NOT doing a PoC internally.

Tip #4: Educate the masses: The moment you announce that your organization will be doing an unconference, people will have all sorts of questions. What is this, why? How? When? Etc. Plan for educating people on the concept of barcamps/unconferences from the moment you announce the unconference. Dig out the appropriate barcamp/unconference videos from youtube and reach out to their authors for permission to use them for evangelizing the concept of unconference/barcamp in your organization. Most authors will be happy to allow their video’s being used for the promotion of unconference concept. We at MindTree did this and this helped a lot in educating people and answering their questions.

While the videos will help in general education, you need to prepare a FAQ/Mailer on what exactly will happen in the unconference in your organization. This will bring in a sense of reality for the people, within the context of your organization, and also help you in your planning of the unconference.

If possible, take awareness sessions around unconference. We did such in MindTree and more than the corporate unconference, we asked them to get involved in barcamp/unconference movement outside of the organization. That’s more important in my view.
We even created a cheat sheet around unconference concepts and made it as part of the unconference email campaign within the organization.

Tip #5: Ensure content ahead of time: Let’s face it. 99.99% of people in an organization would have no clue to what an unconference is. In a typical unconference, the content [sessions] are decided impromptu by the participants on the morning of the unconference. However; in a corporate setup, where almost no one has an idea of what an unconference is, hoping that content [sessions] will spring up on the morning of the unconference is wishing for 100 mm/day of rain in the Sahara. You need to put up a wiki, web page to solicit unconference topics well in advance. This serves multiple purposes.
- You build content for the unconference. After all the ‘meat’ of the unconference are the sessions.
- The fence sitters can decide to take part in the unconference depending on the sessions suggested.
- It helps in breaking the ice. More people are likely to come up and take sessions if they see few sessions already listed.
- You get inputs for your logistics planning

Tip #6: Educate the facilitators: Once you get the content ahead of time, you need to educate the session facilitators. For most of the participants, the sessions would be the barometer, their yardstick for measuring how the unconference went. In this scenario the role of the session facilitators becomes very important in a corporate unconference. Most of the facilitators would never have taken an unconference session before and you need to ensure that the facilitators understand how unconference sessions happen and how they are different from regular sessions. They need to know things like people can interrupt any time, people can walk in/out any time, sessions should be conversational, bi-directional, discussion oriented and not necessarily training/tutorial, and most importantly facilitators need to be comfortable with the session scheduling happening on the morning of the unconference.

You can communicate the same to all facilitators either though emails, meetings, sessions etc. This way you can ensure that sessions happen in the true spirit of an unconference.

Tip #7: Do some prior scheduling & have 10-15 minute gaps between sessions: Even after all the education, personal sessions & awareness campaigns; most people will still not get the unconference concept until they experience it. This means that you need to set the ball rolling by scheduling few unconference sessions from the session list you would have solicited earlier. This would require you to prepare your ‘paper wiki’, your session notice board, and scheduling/populating some sessions in advance. The key is that on the morning of the unconference, there should be no vacuum with people just standing there and no one knowing what to do - in a corporate setup, considering that most people would be new to the unconference concept, this could be a dampener, a false start (in a regular barcamp, this is something that people are used to but things are different in a corporate setup). Once you ‘seed’ some sessions, things will flow smoothly. This will also address the request from some facilitators who will continue to ping you for knowing when, where their session is.

Also, try to have a uniform duration for each session (ideally between 30-45 minutes) and keep 10-15 minute break between each session. This will help you in couple of ways:
- Provide a buffer if some sessions overshoot their allocated time.
- Participants can again flock to the notice board after the session is over in a relaxed manner to choose which session they would like to attend next, take refreshments breaks in a relaxed manner.

A large, vibrant & humming crowd around the notice board creates the necessary energy in the atmosphere making it contagious.

Tip #8: Get Volunteers: You will need an army of volunteers to run the unconference. In my opinion the best volunteers for the corporate unconference would be the ‘fresh campus graduates’. They have unbridled enthusiasm, energy and are always full of ideas. The best people you can wish for as volunteers and to be honest, they make the corporate unconference vibrant and colorful.
Many things that happen on it’s own in a regular unconference - such as the paper wiki/notice board update, would need volunteers. You will need volunteers for announcements, food, registration desk etc.
Most importantly, these volunteers help infuse energy and joy into the whole unconference.

Tip #9: Have all venues close by: One of the beauties of an unconference is several sessions running in parallel and participants having the freedom to choose which session to attend. This would mean people having to walk from one session to another quickly, in between sessions or after sessions and having all rooms/venues close by helps a great deal. Ideally all the rooms/venue should be on the same floor so that mobility between rooms is easy for the participants. In choosing the rooms/venue for the unconference sessions, don’t worry about the chairs, tables etc. participants will stand in the aisle, sit on the floor, squat around as long as the session is interesting.

Tip #10: Fun/Cultural activities around the unconference: This may seem trivial, but has a lot of value in creating the necessary energy. Every organization will have its share of artists - leverage their talent to create a platform for people to have fun.
This will also serve the purpose of allowing participants, who are not present but not attending sessions to bond together, socialize and meet up with each other in a relaxed atmosphere.

In MindTree we arranged for a rock band, instruments etc and we had enough people within the organization who were more than happy to perform. In the true spirit of an unconference, there were impromptu songs, dance and jamming sessions going on.

We also had ‘Mob the Leader’ sessions, where a group of 20-30 participants would ‘mob’ a person from the senior management and have them talk on topics of the ‘mobs’ choice. This was a way of encouraging unstructured conversations, discussions in a very relaxed atmosphere

Additional Tip:

Tip #11: Create an easy to use virtual platform: For people to share their experiences, pictures, blogs about the unconference and even the unconference sessions. If your organization has the culture of Corporate Wiki’s and corporate blogging, then  leverage those platforms. This way, the conversations can start well before the sessions and even carry on after the unconference sessions.
At MindTree, we used the concept of ‘Citizen Journalists’ to encourage participants to cover and share the unconference proceedings as they see it. We encouraged participants to bring their cameras video recorders or even use their mobile phones to cover the Osmosis unconference.
We even created the equivalent of Flickr, Blogger etc within the organization, making it easy and intuitive for people to share their experiences with each other.

Here are some blogs that have a review of how the MindTree Osmosis - A Corporate Unconference went.

http://shahnawazkhan.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/mindtree-osmosis-unconcerence/

http://ujjwalgrover.blogspot.com/2007/12/unconference-at-mindtree.html

http://generally.wordpress.com/2007/12/18/mindtree-osmosis-2007-an-external-view/

http://iduvejeevana.blogspot.com/2007/12/osmosis-celebrating-innovation-mindtree.html

http://labsji.wordpress.com/2007/12/08/filmcampin-mindtree-osmosis-unconference-adaptations-to-watch/

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mindtree-unconference&search=tag

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/20967821@N02/tags/osmosis/

Here are some video’s of the MindTree Osmosis unconference. You had to be there to see the energy, atmosphere, the electric vibes.. a great day..

Unconference session about IPTV.

One of the ‘houseful sessions’.. An unconference session about “are we losing tradition by globalization”. Notice the session facilitator is surrounded by people. there were people behind the facilitator..

It was not just serious sessions.. there were impromptu songs also…