nuance intelligence

“Email is where information goes to die.” nuance partner Bill French, co-Founder of MyST first said that to me sometime around 2002. He was talking about the evolution of wikis, RSS and more collaborative forms of web communication.

Last week at the I/O conference, Google’s Open Social guru Kevin Marks told me that young people — those using the more culturally-foused mega social networks like MySpace — only use email to communicate with their parents, but that they are using social networks as their primary web communications platform.

If you need proof, look no farther than the sociology research Danah Boyd is doing at UC Berkeley. In a nutshell, she’s got the research to support what Kevin and Bill suggest.

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I’m just back from Google’s I/O developer conference. Look for deeper thoughts in coming days and weeks, as the REM cycles process all the new info. In the meanwhile, here are some top-of-mind impressions:

1. I’m always on the lookout for corporations (like Google) to fall from grace. As near as I can tell, it’s just not happening. All the people I met have been focused, authentic and intent on their goal of opening up the web as a collaborative environment. At this event, that translates to enabling developers to build more interesting and integrated apps. The Googlers are all smart, authentic and interesting. There is a pretty high weirdo factor (which is to say Googlers are not dronish), and the T-shirt-to-khaki ratio was about 25-to-1.

2. Google leadership is doing a good job of pairing mature leaders with young engineers in technical presentations. This demonstrates a lot of trust in their teams, and provides these (relative) youngsters with great experience in working with their peers in the developer community.

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People who are leading a business, non-profit or other organization instinctively know that “online social networking” will, can, and should have a big impact. But during the busy business day, week, or month, it’s hard to find the time to translate this notion into practical strategy and performance metrics.

Although the development of functional tools have trailed transformative vision during the early stages of this important evolution, an important change has happened in social networking technology in the past six months. At the end of 2007, Google announced a standard for the exchange of information between and among social networks. OpenSocial was announced late in 2007, in partnership with the other major social networks, save Facebook, who released their own competing standard several months prior.

Last week, Google annoucned their own framework and mini-applications for integrating OpenSocial tools on almost any website, called FriendConnect.  These simple widgets are installed on any site to “socialize” it (and release your inner Stalin).

What’s the nuance?

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Leave it to the Brits. Small towns all over the UK have begun to follow the model developed in Totnes, in southwestern England, for living in smaller communities in a world of constrained oil and other resources.

CNN has reported on it. Over 50 cities in the UK have signed on to the framework, which emphasizes a step-by-step plan to get to zero carbon emissions and a dramatically reduced reliance on oil, increasing local food production and generally localizing the economy.

Boulder, by virtue of the efforts of Boulder Going Local, is the first US city to be accepted into the program.

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I’ve been pounding on the difference between viral and organic this whole spring, both on this blog, and in pretty much every meeting that talks about web-based marketing.

Although I know it’s not particularly endearing, I love it when my predictions come true. Back in March, I wrote:

An organic campaign nourishes the hosts (or network nodes), and gains the social ‘word-of-mouth’ hyper-growth as the result of its direct benefit to the host. In fact, organic is not just about a marketing campaign, but should be integral in the design of the product in the first place, reducing the need for flashy or creative marketing.

Take Facebook and LinkedIN as examples. Whether I’m reading the digerati or talking to close colleagues, professionals have become weary of widget spam on Facebook, because the widgets are noise, not signal. But new features from LinkedIN actually provide benefit to professionals, and are therefore quickly adopted. In this comparison, Facebook is viral, LinkedIN is organic.

And now, it turns out, advertisers agree with me. In a post on AlwaysOn, John Shinal wrote,

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(note: here’s a version of a piece I ran over at AWhere’s new blog. Check it out for good info on 2008′s biggest trend in business intelligence (BI).)

TechWeb published the Executive Summary of Ventana Research’s new benchmark survey on the impact of location and geo-analytics on business intelligence practices in the enterprise, calling it one of the major corporate trends of 2008.

Essentially, it demonstrates a strong business case for the deep integration of location intelligence and geo-analytics into business analysis in the growing field of BI, though it’s important to notice that it was financed by two of the largest providers of location intelligence software.

Beyond the bromides, there were some interesting revelations that buttress the benefits location intelligence provides.

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What recession? The Colorado small business economy is vibrant and growing, with a more dynamic mix of industries and sectors than we have seen in decades.  From biotech to energy, web 2.0 to nano, and an overriding mindset towards sustainability, there is a counter-cyclical boom in small business growth happening here on the Front Range.

If you want to learn more, you should really come check it out.  Here are some of the many ways to connect into this thriving community:

• New Tech Meetup.  Hundreds of geeks, entrepreneurs and cool new companies every month.
• Clean Tech Meetup. Cool ideas and innovative solutions for energy, transportation and more.
• Founders Meetup. Entrepreneurs coming together to help create great businesses.
• Colorado Capital Conference.  Hosted by the Rockies Venture Club next week, you can meet some of the best up-and-comers across a variety of sectors.
• TechStars. Cool summer program for aspiring web jockeys aspiring to become business people.
• Business Catapult. Online matching service for entrepreneurs and investors. Note: I’m one of four owners here, which makes it even cooler
• Angel Capital Summit. Annual fall investing fair, although their site has not been updated since last fall.  Look for more information in coming weeks.
• And there’s more.  Much more.  Comment here if you’ve got questions, thoughts or other interest in connecting into Colorado’s great entrepreneurial scene.

NOTE: Here’s a reprint of the piece on BCorporations that I wrote over at eCo Times. Please check that site out, they’re good folks doing the right thing.

Historically, progressive business leaders had a few different ways to create companies. The Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), ‘S’ Corporation, and ‘C’ Corporation are the most common legal forms of business. Some of the most socially minded business people have chosen to start ‘earned-income non-profit corporations.’ Without devolving into a Latin-laden deconstruction of these choices, each of the existing options includes some major flaws for this generation’s greatest heroes, the social entrepreneurs.

Our friends at B Lab have set out to change that, with the formation of the B Corporation (B Corp). The ‘B’ here stands for Beneficial. B Corp provides a comprehensive ratings system and certification to help both businesses and buyers distinguish “good companies” from “good marketing.” Founding B Corporations include eConscious Market, Method, Seventh Generation, and Dansko. We spoke to Andrew Kassoy, one of the B Lab founders, who explained their purpose as a way to support “the power of business to create benefit, and to ‘be the change.’” Continue reading

We went live today.  It’s an exciting milestone.

Today we whisper.  Tomorrow we shout.

Although we’re not known to report on every SEC filing in the known universe, the recent news that Digital Global filed for an IPO (the first in many steps before they go public) is interesting on a couple levels:

1. It’s been a while since a Colorado technology company went public, so this is another indicator of a thriving entrepreneurial economy in the state, counter to the national trend toward recession, and a depressing outlook for Silicon Valley VC investing.
2. It’s a good indicator of the value of location-based services, which includes friends at local companies including Virtual Earth and AWhere.  Read more about what these local leaders are thinking about.

What do you think about their prospects?  Would you go public today?