Chris Heuer's Insytes

OK – me thinks this is really getting overheated, though I also believe the money is moving more smartly this time. But over on CNET there is a blog post about there being too many blogs about blogs and he is calling it the BLUBBLE.

1 – Just as the media is making inroads with niches (i.e. The Fly Fishing in Saltware channel) people who self-publish online (i.e. Blog) will create even more micro-niches (such as the former members of co-ed softball league championship dynasty who want to know what is happening with the team today)

2 – So an audience may only be 3 people, but they are 3 people who care.

3 – BLUBBLE? are you serious – please oh please don’t let this become a new buzzword

4 – Also, contributing to the rise of blogs are people, like myself, who post to 3 or more blogs for want of segmenting my audiences and making it easier for them to read what I consider important within a different context. On this blog, it is business strategy and trend related thoughts. On The Noble Pursuit it will be more focused on evangelizing that core idea.

Finally, I was debating on whether I would use MSN Spaces, LiveJournal, Bubbler, Yahoo 360 or Tribe for my personal journal but then again, I dont have much time to stay on top of the personal stuff as it is, so I am waiting them all out to see who advances best – Alex has certainly caught Tribe up with the Yahoo folks with the latest release of the Tribe profiles, so it is a tough call to pick a favorite, but Tribe and Yahoo 360 seem to have the best overall experiences.

During the summer of 2002 was when I first started organizing my ideas around what is becoming Insytes the company. Of course, everything up to that point lead me to this, but I distinctly remember sitting in a park in London on my way to a business partner’s wedding in Greece when the concept of the situational knowledgebase came into focus. In that notebook I just rediscoverd one of the foundational Insytes upon which this system is being built.

Reflection/meditation is the process of being still and thinking about something in order to determine how we feel about it.

Writing is the process of choosing words to share that feeling with others.

Music plays those feelings on our emotional strings.

Video powers the messages wtih action and images.

More to come later this week – later today even after my day of meetings…

Just found John Furrier was podcasting from the show.

Am here in Santa Clara at the SDForum Vertical Leap conference which has a WIKI here.

This morning brings even further evidence of the need for better relevance in search results. There are some 30 different companies in the vertical search space that I have identified so far this morning, with many more stealthily hiding behind new variants on the NewCo virus. There were 3 that asked questions and made pitches even that could seemingly be identifyng the same trends we are pursuing with solutions. Thankfully, having done this for so long, I think we may have a leg up on some of these – but only time and execution capabilities will prove that.

In the meantime, here is what I learned this morning

LookSmart CEO Dan Hills is a bright guy who also sees the value of sharing his knowledge and Insytes with others. It seemed that he was making a pitch for people with vertical focus to look to companies like his as a potential partner. His mantra is serving the people who have a passion, a need or a repetitive task to get them where they want to be and help them get tot he next place. Further, he noted that people will seek search engines for convenience, reputation and community.

Most importantly he noted what I have been saying all along – the real key to vertical search is to leverage people first and then apply the technology to making it an even better experience, not the other way around.

From the VC Panel:

Heard a great phrase for the first time in a long time – “becoming an eyeball bandit” – ie, being the first screen on a pervasive device in front of Yahoo, Google and others. This was a key focus with InfoApps when we were looking at selling customized PDA’s – we were going to rebrand the startup screen on each device we customized…

The problem with “expert advice” paid sorts of sites is that you have to discount the future result somewhat based on the uncertainty of the quality of that result – had not considered that before, but it is certainly true. While a strong reputation in a given subject matter will remove parts of that discount, the purchasers initial uncertainty would still introduce a discount preventing full market efficiency.

Also noted from Mark Kvamme and Theresia Ranzetta that their focus is on dollars out, not dollars in. More concerned with Return on Time (ROT) than with ROI. Their decision to back a company and an enterepreneur is their decision on a multi-dimensional analysis of opportunity costs.

Theresia also noted that the vertical seardch ideas has existed for a long time, only it was previously called a “focused media property.”

The rest of the day has some interesting panels, especially the future of vertical search and searching the blogosphere but this part of the day is definitely why I came.

I was asked by someone at Gnomedex (forgot his name unfortunately as I had a few beers) why I Blogged – I didnt really have an answer until a few mintes ago when it finally hit me…

I resisted sharing my professional Insytes for many years, trying to figure out how to apply them to new companies. But now I truly see that sharing such things with others, really truly is something that creates more value then it gives away. As Newton said, (paraphrasing) We stand where we are today on the shoulders of those who stood here before us – today more than ever, we also stand on the shoulders of our peers. That just makes sense to me on some guttural level and as such I am moved to do something about it. It still feels uneasy sharing important things that could make a competitive difference in my endeavours… but I also believe in the power of being a Lovecat, certain relevant aspects of living in a Transparent Society and the notion of a Fast Company in the Work 2.0 Economy. I have also seen how tithing in some form or another produces more wealth for the tither then the recipient. In the emerging world of the Wisdom economy, the broadest creators of value will be those who participate in sharing knowledge, developing Insytes, exchanging experiences and producing innovation. Those who collaborate well with others and have the best sources of wisdom are the leaders of tomorrow, forever expanding their own understanding of the world around them. I am pleased to be amongst such people here @ The CEO Bloggers Club – I look forward to watching our ranks go.

new media becomes citizen media

context is king (now more than ever)

audioblogs are the killer app because of the portability or headphones

sharing insytes in the commons is massively important to innovation

there are a lot of people doing the same sorts of things

bloggers are cool socially aware folks that your mother will like

we really are moving from a left brain to a right brain society

people with brain power will listen to anyone with a good idea

people with money power will listen to anyone with a rolex and armani suit

seattle has one of the coolest public libraries in the world

good people are everywhere, filling many different roles

Yahoo understands and is working with a version of my holsitic knowledge model

blogging is pr with candor – steve rubel

Microsoft may or may not be developing a community focused soul, but if the transparency from Scobel, Royal and others is allowed by MS today, the proverbial camel nose is in the tent…

the api is the UI

tinkerers are really cool – crafting is play

canadians are fun, nice folks

synaptivity is everywhere

some of the things I thought about traditional media and blogging are already being done

people have a lot of important stuff to say – I wonder what the world would be like if the people in power learn how to listen

and finally, I really love the people I have met – just the right sorts to do the right thing and change the world

MS is making the format called “Simple List Extensions” available via a creative commons license. This is definitely something that should be easily leveraged by others – hopefully they will let others contribute to the core standards as they get built. The particular license they are using is to require contributors under attribution share license – the core of my ideals in limited source. This is a great thing, and something we can further point to as perhaps a shift in their perspective and attitude. I will continue to look for more real contributions over coming months.

Take a look at The Windows RSS Platform Architectural Overview of Simple List Extension specification

The head of IE development just said, “today is just the beginning of the conversation” – another person riding the cluetrain…

He also just said that “if the user accesses the feed (for an audioblog) through IE, it would feel like an IE experience – if you accessed it via Word, Word would feel like an audioblogging aggregator.”

Bob Wyman held Dean’s feet to the fire concerning Microsoft about how come they are ignoring existing standards bodies to put themselves at the point of origin for the next wave of stuff. His answer was really not very good – though he did use humor to defuse the serious nature. Bob is right, particularly in light of the fact that MS has this new standard and licensing format but did not have a community process figured out. On the spot, Scoble offered up a WIKI – shows that he really is one of the smartest people at Microsoft.

Audience member asked for proof that this isnt just ’embrace and extend lite’ and that the Death Star is really blown up.

Looks like some really cool new stuff with Outlook. Turns a schedule from an RSS feed into downloadable iCalendar standard(ics). When you subscribe to this feed via their new OS and IE, it automatically adds these to your Outlook calendar. You can then look at this new calendar using the Outlook side by side feature.

This is a further example and extension of what I call ‘synaptivity’, which is something i have been meaning to explain for a while. Hopefully you will keep an eye out for this, but in brief synaptivity is the automatic process of making smart connections for people between their devices, their data and their daily life.

They also showed a really cool way to deal with photoblogs and photo feeds where it downloads the images and the envelope to show the images in a full screen slide show. Yet another area where current efforts by the community to create new companies will be more difficult.

One of the great things MS does is how they leverage their developer and beta community to provide them with up to what some estimate to be be an extra $3-4 billion of research and development. They are smartly doing this again, but this time they are presenting it in a more inclusive tone. Judge as ye will, but the spirit of their requests for community involvement seems to be coming from the heart – or at the very least, coming from the hearts of the individual’s representing the corporation.

– From Gnomedex

A very good thing happened for RSS today. Microsoft has integrated RSS throughout Longhorn – probably within Office, but definitely within MSN Search and IE 7.0

A very bad thing happened today for everyone out there building their businesses around RSS feeds – see above.

If you are one of those experts, working on building an RSS feed company and suddenly think your great business idea may be a little tougher to make happen, get in touch with me and lets talk about how we might collaborate. RSS is only one small part of what Insytes is doing.

– From Gnomedex

While I don’t want to be just another voice in the crowd, I do want to chime in on Dave Winer’s keynote at Gnomedex. The way he is bringing outlining into the blogosphere is very similar to how I am thinking of applying the insights I used in forming my first company, which I briefly spoke about in my post how I got here.

But the OPML editor he showed is a really good first step towards the next generation which will enable more people to adopt this new form of communication and knowledge sharing. Better still, he realizes it needs to go a lot further to get this technology past the ‘tinkerer’ phase which it is in now. He also had one great quote in particular, which was that “user’s dont need to bring new features and ideas to him, they could go and recruit a developer to do it themselves”.

To a certain extent, I had the same idea with regards to The Communications Strategy. Rather than writing the book, I thought to myself “why not build it as software instead?” With the Conversal Communications System, I got about 50-60& of what I really wanted. Till now, I really thought I was abandoning that software (though I am using it as my core operational platform). Turns out, this is just the next generation of the vision for me – a logical extension arising from the incorporation of recent and emerging trends. And of course, instead of trying to sell into the enterprise, we will be providing the system to the people who get it.