Posts By :

Raymond Blyd

  • Raymond Blyd

6 Reasons for Building for The Concept Worker
6 Reasons for Building for The Concept Worker 960 540 Raymond Blyd

Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future contains a description of a new age: the Conceptual Age which features the Concept Worker. This is different from what is called a Knowledge Worker, a term introduced by Peter Drucker. Publishers traditionally serve the knowledge workers: people who work primarily with information and those who develop and use knowledge in the workplace. So, if the next wave of customers will be Concept Workers, what tools would they need?

Concept Workers
Concept Workers would hopefully enjoy working with a tool like Concept Zepp (Solving Social and Research Online) which I introduced in an earlier post. It aims to reward researching and sharing information between peers to expose expertise; a personal knowledge management application that will help them advance their knowledge.

building for knowledge worker

6 rules of knowledge management
First, we need to understand what knowledge management is before we can make a tool for it. Unfortunately, there is no industry consensus. One blogger stopped counting knowledge management definitions at 54, after which the blog went offline. As with a lot of complex problems they are often easily solved by explaining them to a 4-year-old. Keeping that in mind, I found this definition in Rules of knowledge management:

How children share – Davenport’s Kindergarten Rationale:

  1. You share with the friends you trust
  2. You share when you’re sure you’ll get something in return
  3. Your toys are more special than anyone else’s
  4. You share when the teacher tells you to until she turns her back
  5. When toys are scarce, there’s less sharing
  6. Once yours get taken, you never share again
Translating this to a concept worker network it might look something like the image below:
Legalcomplex Concept-Workers-Network
In short: we get smarter by reading and enriching content other people have produced. By sharing our own we have the chance to make others benefit equally. But we only share if we’ll get something in return.

 

6 reasons social is important
In essence, knowledge sharing is a fundamental part of being a social human being and a member of society. I’ve gather a few arguments which indicate why ‘social’ is important:

  1. There is a growing awareness among most major players that they must tap into social networks. For instance, Google is reportedly betting the company on GooglePlus and CNN made a sizable investment to acquire technology to incorporate a more personalized experience for its users.
  2. The main impetus is to extract information from the social activity that occurs on such networks and to use that information to make better decisions about search results and other targeted services. From: How Social is Changing the Search Industry
  3. Activity streams in social networks facilitate serendipity and informal learning.
  4. They help flatten organisations and traditionally hierarchical structures.
  5. They inspire an open knowledge sharing culture. From: 5 Reasons Why Activity Streams Will Save You From Information Overload
  6. Corporations like law firms want to create a social platform for better knowledge flow because they are struggling with email filing and knowledge management as a whole. From: What’s New in Legal KM?

6 reasons for building tools for the concept workers
Finally, here are 6 reasons why we should build tools to support concept and knowledge workers:

  1. Knowledge workers understand information as currency. Sharing is a core strategy for success even in a corporate context. This can bring knowledge workers to the commons.
  2. Their worldview is informed by systems thinking or is polyglot. It’s not informed by a single political ideology.
  3. They understand that influence depends on the ability to persuade, and that choice of language is important.
  4. Knowledge workers can become moderate radicals, meaning they believe that fundamental change is needed.
  5. Their identities are not wrapped up in a single belief system so they have options. Courtesy of: The new knowledge worker
  6. And to add my own: They will always look for and find better ways of advancing their knowledge.

So why don’t we give them a special toy to do just that.

  • Raymond Blyd

Concept Zepp: Solving Personal, Research, and Social
Concept Zepp: Solving Personal, Research, and Social 960 540 Raymond Blyd
“The next big thing needs to be a proactive approach to knowing where data lives and what it means. It needs to include tools to keep data organized and secured regardless of location.” I lifted this quote from 3 Geeks and a Law Blog because it sums up part of Zepp, a concept that I have been thinking about for the past few months.

The Challenges
In some of my previous posts (the LegalComplex Library and it’s precursor post) I looked at the analysis of the current and future environment of knowledge workers. The challenge many knowledge professional face is that they have a multi-verse of applications and solutions to do research tasks in sequence and within one workflow.

Example: How can one capture web content, annotate, save, organize it for easy retrieval, and share it while preserving context and within this process also be rewarded with a pleasant experience and the ability to showcase your work and expertise? This would ultimately benefit the user through recognition and perhaps more profitable assignments.

The Workflows
Let’s run through this: You’ve discovered an important argument for a copyright case on the web while browsing. You now want to save, annotate, and share it. A browser’s core function is singular in the sense that its main focus is rendering web content. The save, annotate, and share parts are just add-ons.

So one will have to just copy and paste the content and hyperlink (! must not forget) to a word processor. Depending on your tool of choice, you will either have a canon or water pistol in your hands to do the basic saving and annotating. You head over to your email client, hunt down your work via the ‘attach file’ dialog box and send it. It’s now gone and only you and your recipients know what has transpired.

The Solutions
So far we ran through 3 applications (Browser, Word, Email) and I haven’t counted the retrieval part yet. Depending on your set-up you are faced with having these 3 add-on features (Browser History, File Search or Email Search) to do the retention/retrieval or have a fourth application to tie it together.

Some tools might even add a layer of knowledge management but this is most often an afterthought. You could use something like Apple’s Reading List, however, you would still be faced with figuring out the initial integration with your other solutions.

The Social
Most of these applications will not have the goal to help you promote, showcase or profile your work. As indicated in this post on The Next Web (“In Social Media: Doctors, Lawyers, and Financiers, oh my!), ’chances are, when you think “open,” “social,” and “sharing,” your doctor, lawyer, and financial person are probably not at the top of your list…But doctors, lawyers, and financiers are people too.

The above link and this article delve into a paradigm of these heavy regulated industries and why being social is so difficult because of compliance or policy. On our own Solutions, Blog Cathy Betz talked about it here and here for the Drug Industry and Leanne Summers also made a passionate plea for sharing with colleagues.

The sheer number of users on Facebook (700+ mln), Twitter (300+mln) and Google+ , reportedly the fastest growing in history, make the case: it isn’t about traffic, searches, or page views anymore, it’s about users and sharing.

“Social Business” is not about technology, or about “corporate culture.” It is a sociopolitical historical shift that is bigger, broader and much more fascinating.” (Social Business Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does, Neither Does Enterprise 2.0)

“Zepp it”
To sum it up, the core activities to be tied together and simplified are:

  1. Discover (Search, Read, Browse)
  2. Organize (Save, Annotate, Group)
  3. Share
  4. Profile

Copy/pasting, multitasking and app switching has become so ingrained in our daily workflows that we have grown accustomed to it. We tend to forget the frustration and tediousness until we have to do it on a 3.5-inch screen with no keyboard.

So Zepp is first and foremost an acknowledgment that these four essential research activities for any knowledge professional can and must be simplified and…pleasant. The video below demonstrates how Zepp would look like…plus a sneak peek at what’s next, Enjoy!

Tags for this article:
  • Raymond Blyd

Call My Agent: Evolution In Information Retrieval
Call My Agent: Evolution In Information Retrieval 772 457 Raymond Blyd
 It is known by many names: Offspring, Magnets, Filters, Bloodhounds  but in theory they can also be called: Agents. My definition: An intelligent application that basically goes and fetches ‘your’ information without you re-entering a query at every instance. Undoubtedly there are other more scientific explanations but for argument’s sake we’ll keep it simple and stick to this one. Now, how can agents make our lives more pleasant?

You’ve got Mail!
The first ‘agent’ I used online were email newsletters. If an interesting site had the option to subscribe to an email newsletter it gave me two features in exchange for my email address and exposed preference:

  1. I did not need to visit the site to get the latest information;
  2. By popping up in my inbox, it was a reminder that this source existed.

More advanced email delivery systems gave you more flexibility in delivery times or topics to choose from and the more advanced sites gave you more sources. Yet, not all sites had these options so I moved on.

webtimeline

Blowing the Pipe
With the rise of R.S.S. (Really Simple Syndication) feeds also came more creative features to play with. As with email one could subscribe to a site and use a separate application (RSS Reader) to receive the information. Yahoo Pipes – An interactive feed aggregator and manipulator- gave me the extraordinary ability to, “rewire the web”. For example, one of my favorite pipes was created right after the launch of the first iPhone. It used several online feed sources and persistent searches to scour information on the iPhone. If a site did not provide a feed I could always create one for it by using a web scraper.

While it all started out nicely, information overload crept in really fast. By using services like Postrank to prefilter my feeds based on popularity I was trying to stem the tide. By using trends and suggestions instead of Pipes in Google Reader I was also encouraging serendipity.

Back to Basics
Twitter, Friendfeed ,and Facebook added a new dimension to this overload fire I was fueling. Especially FriendFeed was menacing in its torrent of good information. By piling on filters on feeds I think I’ve managed the problem. My latest darling filter isSummify iPhone app. It summarizes and reduces my Google Reader 78 feeds and Twitter 226 friends to 10 story-links every 8 hours, depending on my settings.

Looking at this from another angle I think I have subconsciously created a personalized newspaper edited by humans and machines alike. Yet, I feel like I’m still missing some things in terms of relevancy, quality, and serendipity. Moreover, in the real world, I’m still pleasantly surprised by learning new stuff from friends and colleagues at the water cooler. It’s also scary to realize that speed will increasingly become more important. The earlier we know something the better prepared we can be and you might even be able to predict the future.

I think the web has evolved enough for us start rekindling this notion of agents. My dream is to have an intelligent agent which can rummage the web and alerts my friends in the real world to provide me with relevant information based on my profile. In real time or at predetermined times based on the substance of the information and the impact on my live and work.

More importantly, I hope that the web and my friends also know that I’m available to share, just ring my agent.

  • Raymond Blyd

The Dogs of Legal Search: Facts vs Concepts
The Dogs of Legal Search: Facts vs Concepts 1024 640 Raymond Blyd
Legal research has passed the crossroads of print or digital and is heading for the next: facts or concepts. But are search engines getting too “easy” to use? Is the “dumbing down” of legal search engines a real threat to the quality of legal research?

Bloodhounds
As promised in a comment on a previous post, I would delve into the dilemma of simplifying of legal search engines. The question was raised again on the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog , which led me to some very intriguing insights presented in Roberta Shaffer’s key note at the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Vendor Colloquium.

Here are some of the many trends in legal research which she highlighted during her keynote:

  • More complexity in legal issues (opinions longer)
  • More diversity of jurisdiction
  • More cases of “ a first impression”
  • More data-driven evidence
  • More focused on fact as compared to previous centuries – concepts/legal theories
  • Legal academy is more multi-disciplinary as are practitioners (judges?) – bringing to the table different ways of finding, evaluating, exploiting, and employing knowledge
  • Education by “edit” and “isolation”

The reason I’ve picked these statements is that I think they are key in the evolution of legal search engines. Deep analytical research is like finding a crumb and following its trail through the forest. My suggestion is to clear the forest or use a bloodhound. The skill set we needed in the past are evolving but the tools we use aren’t. In short, a logical evolution of legal search engines is trying to distill more facts and less concepts; also because the latter is much harder to achieve by a ‘machine’.

How much will this case cost me?
The European Cartel Digest compiles and summarizes every decision of the European Commission and all case law of the courts on cartels. Unlike most legal print publications its construct is similar to a database. This setup makes it especially suitable for extracting facts in a flexible manner and experimenting with alternate online displays. The ultimate goal is answering factual queries quicker by exposing facts such as: what are the amounts of damages awarded in particular cases? This concept video demonstrates how such a question might get answered faster:

The essential question on everybody’s mind will always be: what’s at stake? In this new age the margin for errors for professionals are far greater simply due to amounts of data available. Let’s not forget that an online legal search in the many repositories is only one way to get answers. But wouldn’t it be nice if it was our first stop for quick answers about the facts of the matter.

 

  • Raymond Blyd

LegalComplex Library: Concept of a Modern Library
LegalComplex Library: Concept of a Modern Library 1132 506 Raymond Blyd
Awhile back I went on an adventure to uncover the “modern library.” A traditional library is a place the curious roam and discover bundles of meticulously crafted and curated information. Massive wooden bookshelves would instill a sense of awe and ignite a challenge to absorb all hidden wisdom. Then came the Internet and it became a dated notion to pick up a book. The library was effectively replaced by a search engine. LegalComplex Library is an attempt to rekindle this enchantment in a new era.

(Unique) Case

The starting point was looking at a typical ‘modern library’ that a knowledge professional would operate in and the tools they would use to solve a case. Most often they would use an internet connected PC accompanied by installed software to accomplish several tasks. Depending on the subject matter or phase in the research process, the professional would need to switch between several tasks and applications to accomplish their overall goal.

Unique_Case-2

You the Platform

In the above examples, most of the used tools would have been developed with a focus on a specific set of tasks. It required a certain level of skill and knowledge to effectively operate these tools. The reason is that most were not developed with personalization or customizing in mind but rather adding enough features to accommodate the majority of projected uses. In short: they were not built around you but rather the perception of a task you would ultimately be forced to adapt to. The video below is the first in a series and presents the framework and fundamentals to try and change this paradigm.

Time magazine announced in 2006 the person of the year: You. Now let us start building products and services that are suitable for this magnificent person.

  • Raymond Blyd

Rewards Research, Organizing, and Socializing (R.R.O.S)
Rewards Research, Organizing, and Socializing (R.R.O.S) 960 540 Raymond Blyd
I’ve submitted a concept named RROS in a contest. RROS is based on my notion of knowledge management: the personal kind. Ok, there’s also this reward of an iPad 2 which I really crave. So the concept attempts to go to the heart of why we do what we do: rewards.

RROS is a conceptualization of what I think makes any product good: it aims to reward the user for their effort of using the product.

It tries to combine timeless principles of how we gather information to gain knowledge with current pervasive models on the web.

Is RROS ‘New’ and ‘Innovative’?

No, but in my universe, there is no such thing as ‘new’. RROS is just the exercise in walking a different path towards the same goal. Sort of reconnecting existing dots in a different pattern.

When I perceive something as new or innovative it is just a matter of me being ill-informed. Just like the discovery of a new planet. It has always been there yet we did not have the knowledge (or dumb luck) to have stumbled upon it sooner. We know there’s more out there but we just cannot see them.

The real challenge is convincing insiders that this ‘new’ thing is not that different (and thus unsettling) while convincing outsiders it is, in fact, an ‘innovation’.

Now the big question: did I win? Well, my reward was the scenery of a path less traveled.

  • Raymond Blyd

Apocalypse 2014: the End of Three Mobile Myths
Apocalypse 2014: the End of Three Mobile Myths 980 431 Raymond Blyd

1. Consumption or Creation?

A recent report by usability guru Nielsen on the iPad reiterates a common understanding about the iPad, which is that it’s mostly for media consumption. Email is “the only slight exception to the rule.” This might be true now but it is not a sign of things to come.

The main reason why consumption is more prevalent is simple: good consumption apps far outnumber good creation apps. The internet started out the same way until Web 2.0, Cloud and SaaS.

The ultimate example of mobile creation – microblogging (Twitter), photography, notes, to-do and other productivity apps aside- are in fact the Apple apps. Garageband, Pages, and Numbers are excellent examples of creation on the tablet. Especially iMovie on the iPhone I find extraordinary. I’ve created over 15 iMovies ( a mix video, photo’s and music) and loaded them onto YouTube in HD straight from my iPhone.

overview_imovie_20110302The trick is to figure out the usability and tasks and refitting them to the mobile form factor. It’s design led by format as oppose to desktop-based workflow.

Mobile-Personas

 

2. Apps or Web apps?

A Forrester report stated, in general, to do both because it deemed the distinction irrelevant. But here’s the quote from their blog post: a majority of consumers across the globe will access the Internet, not apps.

This is especially true for areas which do have ubiquitous and ambient connectivity. Those areas are expanding. Moreover, real-time and streaming will always be preferred over sync, update, and download. I heard somebody once say: You need real-time data if you want to cross a street. Just as Cloud and SaaS are getting the traction we should not revert back to the notion of “installed software” and its drawbacks.

3. Mobile vs. PC

Taking the above into account the question is not if but when mobile will replace the traditional concept of a PC. Laptops have already replaced the workstation in most business and homes. Smartphone are doing the same with cell phones just as the iPhone is replacing Blackberry.

Predicting the tipping point is a challenging endeavor but here’s my attempt: 2014

mobile-internet-growth

 

  • Raymond Blyd

Burning Filters and Popping Bubbles: The Personalization Paradox
Burning Filters and Popping Bubbles: The Personalization Paradox 834 472 Raymond Blyd
 In 2008 Clay Shirky coined the phrase “It’s not information overload. It filters failure.” In 2011 this was reversed by Nicolas Carr stating: “It’s not information overload. It filters success.” He also stated that we were, in fact, getting dumbed down by filters like Google. Eli Pariser at TED gave a presentation called Beware online “filter bubbles” which gave a warning of the dangers of filters and personalization. So are we going filter mad?

bubblesA question of perception

The reason for the filter upheaval is understandable from a certain perspective. So was book burning in its day. Filters have been around since there was information exchange of any sort. Eli Pariser made the case that in the last century we had filters called editors with build in ethics who decided to give us a wide spectrum of information. Algorithms – without ethics – are replacing editors in this century as our main filter. However, the problem is that algorithms for personalization will inevitably calculate your persona and provide you the information it can deduce you might want. This can be very confrontational. But that’s not much different from the previous century whereby the act of buying and reading a certain newspaper brand is highly ‘personal’ and would say a lot about who you are.

bubbles2The luxury of serendipity

In a world of consumer-targeted filters, do these also pose a “danger” for the business market? On the contrary, they are the core of the business proposition. The rise of information providers and publishers depended solely on finding the appropriate filters called sources, experts, authors, editors, etc . A lawyer arguing before the bench, a physician at the bedside, or an accountant before a filing deadline do not have the luxury of the accidental discovery of crucial information. They rely heavily on meticulously chosen filters to deliver in a clutch. And now they are requiring us to design better filters and not force them into haystacks to find a needle.

Information overload is a symptom best cured by filters that do not aggravate the problem or deceive the user.

bubbles3

  • Raymond Blyd

Needles & Magnets: What’s wrong with legal research today?
Needles & Magnets: What’s wrong with legal research today? 2048 1152 Raymond Blyd
An excellent piece by Mary Abraham at Above and Beyond KM questioned if Westlaw or Lexis are offering the right legal search solution. She states:

“It seems obvious that the current approach to legal research is fundamentally flawed. Lexis and Westlaw have created these enormous databases of case law that cannot be completely mastered unless you have world-class research skills.”

This prompted a response by Greg Lambert on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog to compliment her on daring to ask the essential question of “why are we doing it this way?” I’ll go a bit further and ask why are doing it all and what should we be doing instead?

A Needlestack
Both articles discuss the “needle in the haystack” approach of legal research tools and propose fixes. The solutions suggest pre-filtering or questioning the searchers’ motives before the search. But after the search, every nugget of retrieved information is a potential ‘needle’ so what is hay and what is a needle? Ultimately the end-user decides but it begs the question: why is there hay?

Publishers do not purposely produce products which nobody would value. That business model would not last. Publishers produce “needles” …lots of them. Research publishers produce content for extensive varieties of end-users and each with a different value depending on the time of access. Example: an attorney researching a contract written in the past in accordance with the law in effect at that time would not benefit getting the latest version of the law – they want the historical one. Whereas an attorney drafting a contract today would need the latest version.

Creating Powerful Magnets
In the future, I hope we won’t be creating more needle stacks. Hopefully, we would do better than a brute force keyword search. We would use more delicate filters and have a better understanding of the needs of the ‘real’ users. We should definitely have our own platform and running on our own data centers, maybe design our own chipsets and devices to better suit our users. Above all, we must design our own software to go along with the content and make it convenient and pleasant to work with. The business model will have to change from just selling needles to delivering magnets. Meaning, better ways for professionals to get information instead of just repackaging more information.

There is an advanced way to find a needle in a hay stack and that is by using a really powerful magnet to pull it out. These simple solutions gave rise to the Industrial Age yet seem strangely elusive in the Information Age.

When will we start exploring magnets instead of creating needles?

  • Raymond Blyd

Cannibalism and 5 Special FX of Evolution
Cannibalism and 5 Special FX of Evolution 1920 1080 Raymond Blyd
Most of what’s happening on the information super highway – at accelerating speeds – is just evolution as genuine as Darwin. Yet, most are still determined to call it cannibalism when a “new” service or product threatens the established business models. But as the saying goes: there’s so sense in beating a dead horse…better to trade it for a car while it’s still alive.

 

Cannibalism / Evolution = Timing

On one of the earnings calls for Apple, an analyst asked COO Tim Cook: do iPad sales cannibalize their PC market? His answer in short: No, on the contrary, but if it would eventually happen it would be for the better.

It did not dawn on me until seeing Steve Jobs presenting the iPad 2, that Apple has already given up on the PC market they have defined since its inception, and are moving on to next thing. Mr. Jobs kept making the reference to the “post-PC era” and I could hear Bill Gates echoing in the background.

Most may have forgotten, but the ex-Microsoft CEO was an early champion of tablets and voice recognition. Yet Microsoft’s business model (or thinking) did not permit them to go full blown for marrying the hardware and software to make tablets a success. If the Amazon Kindle had not proven to Apple that the timing was right we might still be waiting for the first real tablet. This is an example of why timing is everything and it does not always mean you have to be first.

The taste of 3D

In a PC market disruptions are common and adapting is crucial, but to publishers both are unsettling. A business that hasn’t drastically changed since the invention of the printing press needs some time to digest it all. However, it is still a gamble what will be the “next big thing.” For instance, the film industry took an enormous bet on 3D and it paid off. We all know 3D isn’t new (and gives headaches) yet the film industry posted record earnings partly due to this technology. Still, most can argue that 3D is still a huge gamble for TV manufactures and PC makers.

What is the Pay Off? 5 Special effects:

1. Halo effect: Tim Cook called the effect of the iPad “a Halo Effect from Apple product to Apple product.” Similarly, any digital version (web or app) of a paper product will initially boost its predecessor and not kill it.

2. 3D effect: Technology doesn’t have to be “new” or “innovative” to work. It just has to be done right with the purpose of adding value to utility and design.

3. Darwin effect: “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment” (Charles Darwin). Adapting to a digital environment is having a fundamental understanding of its strength (distribution) and weakness (usability) and using both to your advantage.

4. Pricing effect: In my opinion, the biggest challenge for publishers is their business model: pay for content. This will be increasingly more difficult to justify because of the abundance of (free) information. Just ask the newspapers.

Cannibalism legalcomplex

 

I foresee the following evolution in business models:

  • Content is paid: Original print model still in effect today;
  • Content is paid – Service is paid or value adds: Struggling to come to terms with the web, variations of this models are being tried;
  • Content is free – Service is paid: Due to the mixing of proprietary, free and user generated content and integration with software, this model might be forced upon publishers;
  • 4th Model: Due to the abundance of competing for cloud solutions, a model must arise that considers both the value of content and service and replace the ad-supported model as the predominant model for the web.

5. Goodwill effect: This a bonus effect due to all of the above effects. The marketing is in the product itself.

Close Cart
Back to top
Privacy Preferences

We created a unique video to explain our privacy policy. We hope more would follow in our footsteps. Meanwhile, feel free to reject or accept any of the settings below. 

Click to enable/disable Google Analytics tracking code.
Click to enable/disable Google Fonts.
Click to enable/disable Google Maps.
Click to enable/disable video embeds.
Our website uses cookies, mainly from Google. Check our unique privacy policy video to learn more.