We have just launched the Future of Media Predictions Markets, run in conjunction with the Future of Media Summit 2008. These will tap the collective wisdom of participants at the Summit in the US and Australia, as well as other media leaders globally. Anyone can participate in the prediction markets.
The predictions will be used during the Summit itself to help generate more pointed discussions and specific views, and to garner international attention and coverage for the Summit.
For those who haven’t come across prediction markets before, they mimic financial markets to aggregate a large group’s opinions on what will happen (see Wikipedia definition and Prediction Markets Cluster). Specific questions are posed on what will happen, and participants place bets on the outcome by buying and selling in the markets.
Our partner for the Future of Media Prediction Markets is Inkling Markets, one of a handful of commercial providers of prediction markets. Their clients creating public markets include CNN to predict the 2008 presidential elections, while many companies such as Cisco, Chrysler, O’Reilly, Procter & Gamble, and Wells Fargo are using their prediction markets for internal applications such as product development and sales forecasting.
In the Future of Media Prediction Markets we have just launched five markets:
* Which IPTV channel will generate the most revenue in 2009?
* Will Yahoo! exist as an independent company at the end of 2008?
* When will the New York Times stop printing on paper?
* What will global digital advertising revenue be in 2010?
* Will The Bulletin be relaunched in Australia by 30 June, 2009?
If you have opinions on any of these topics, go to the Future of Media Prediction Markets and make your opinion heard!
Register on the site and you will be given $5,000 to place your bets on the markets. Either buy or sell whatever predictions you think are mis-priced. As the markets move with further participation (and maybe changing circumstances), you will make or lose money. As the markets evolve you can trade actively by buying and selling positions.
Let us know if you have suggestions for prediction market topics other than these initial ones. We’ll be expanding the range of questions as more participants join.
See you in there – may the best media futures trader win!
What do you think will happen in media? Participate (and win!) in the Future of Media Prediction Markets!
By Ross DawsonWe have just launched the Future of Media Predictions Markets, run in conjunction with the Future of Media Summit 2008. These will tap the collective wisdom of participants at the Summit in the US and Australia, as well as other media leaders globally. Anyone can participate in the prediction markets.
The predictions will be used during the Summit itself to help generate more pointed discussions and specific views, and to garner international attention and coverage for the Summit.
For those who haven’t come across prediction markets before, they mimic financial markets to aggregate a large group’s opinions on what will happen (see Wikipedia definition and Prediction Markets Cluster). Specific questions are posed on what will happen, and participants place bets on the outcome by buying and selling in the markets.
Our partner for the Future of Media Prediction Markets is Inkling Markets, one of a handful of commercial providers of prediction markets. Their clients creating public markets include CNN to predict the 2008 presidential elections, while many companies such as Cisco, Chrysler, O’Reilly, Procter & Gamble, and Wells Fargo are using their prediction markets for internal applications such as product development and sales forecasting.
In the Future of Media Prediction Markets we have just launched five markets:
* Which IPTV channel will generate the most revenue in 2009?
* Will Yahoo! exist as an independent company at the end of 2008?
* When will the New York Times stop printing on paper?
* What will global digital advertising revenue be in 2010?
* Will The Bulletin be relaunched in Australia by 30 June, 2009?
If you have opinions on any of these topics, go to the Future of Media Prediction Markets and make your opinion heard!
Register on the site and you will be given $5,000 to place your bets on the markets. Either buy or sell whatever predictions you think are mis-priced. As the markets move with further participation (and maybe changing circumstances), you will make or lose money. As the markets evolve you can trade actively by buying and selling positions.
Let us know if you have suggestions for prediction market topics other than these initial ones. We’ll be expanding the range of questions as more participants join.
See you in there – may the best media futures trader win!
Web 2.0 and human resources – who should drive Web 2.0 initiatives in the organization?
By Ross DawsonThe UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has recently launched a discussion paper titled Web 2.0 and human resources, designed to help HR professionals to understand what Web 2.0 is and to contribute to organization’s activities in the space.
The paper is built around the key elements of my Web 2.0 Framework, which they nicely attribute me for, though also brings in a number of new elements, and wraps up with three case studies, including Pfizer’s Pfizerpedia, UK government departments’ use of forums, and T-mobile’s use of social networks for recruitment.
As I see and work with many organizations grappling with how to respond to and take advantage of Web 2.0, one of the challenges is that there is no one obvious place in the organization where these initiatives should reside. IT, HR, marketing, strategy, risk management and other functions all need to be involved, and the reality is usually none of them individually have the capabilities to successfully drive the full breadth of the potential across the firm. In successful organizations, often individuals who implicitly understand the issues help to define activities, and very importantly communicate across the wide variety of stakeholders.
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Mark Scott, Managing Director of ABC, at the Future of Media Summit: thoughts on the future of media
By Ross DawsonThe Future of Media Summit 2008 is designed to have a far broader reach and impact than for just those who attend. Part of the way we do this is to get contributions from the speakers beforehand on the Future of Media blog and websites, setting the scene for deeper discussions on the day, and providing context for those who can’t make the Summit.
The CEO Panel on predictions for the future of media will be held at 1:20 – 2:00pm in Sydney, just before the Unconference session, and will be the final session at 8:20 – 9:00pm in Silicon Valley, over drinks. Panelists for this session include Mark Scott, Managing Director of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Mark’s pre-event contribution is two papers:
* A recent op-ed on the role of the ABC in 2020 that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald.
* The ABC in the digital age – Towards 2020, about the ABC’s shift to digital media.
The ABC shares with a few other organizations such as the BBC and CBC the special issues of public broadcasters in a rapidly shifting world. The papers describe the evolving role of publicly funded media in a world awash with information, and the steps the ABC will take to fulfill that role, including the new digital channels it will implement.
Below are a few excerpts from the papers that are particularly worth highlighting in the lead-up to the Future of Media Summit:
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How Web 2.0 creates value
By Ross DawsonBelow is the sidebar I wrote in for BRW‘s Web 2.0 feature, accompanying our Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list. The reason I was most pleased about getting the list into a mainstream business magazine is that it is a significant step in getting the broader business community to understand the value and transformative power of Web 2.0 (or whatever you want to call the participatory web). While the geeks and early online adopters are swimming in this world and engage in continual conversations with each other about what’s happening, it is critically important that the messages spread beyond this community. That is central to what I’m trying to do.
Another sidebar in the report written by Technology Editor Foad Fadaghi on Start-up challenges is available online (though that’s all – the rest is subscriber only :-( ).
Web 2.0 for business
The many applications of Web 2.0 in business include increasing employee productivity with collaboration tools and better access to information, gaining insights into consumer attitudes and behaviours, engaging customers in personal relationships and providing personalised customer service.
Web 2.0 for consumers
Some consumer uses of Web 2.0 tools are to communicate with their friends and family, find out what products and services others have liked and manage their lives more effectively.
Web 2.0 for creators
Creators of art, video, photos, music, writing and more can share their creations, collaborate with others in developing them and get rewarded for their creativity.
Web 2.0 for investors
Through Web 2.0 start-ups, investors can access the fastest growing sector of the economy, establish low-cost trial ventures and reach global markets.
Web 2.0 for innovation
Web 2.0 tools help innovators to collaborate across boundaries and connect their ideas to the global marketplace. They are central to Australia’s integration into the rapidly growing hyper-connected economy.
UK and Australia lead the world in online advertising per capita
By Ross DawsonTechcrunch has just published a very interesting analysis of valuations of social networks. Here is its methodology:
I have charted the figures of interactive advertising spend per Internet user from this data below.
Source: Techcrunch, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Comscore
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What marketing executives think about your privacy
By Ross DawsonAn article in Forbes titled What Privacy Policy? quotes data from a study by the Ponemon Institute, summarized below.
What it shows is distinctly fairly different attitudes and perception from privacy and security executives at large organizations, compared to those of marketing executives.
At the Future of Media Summit 2008 held in mid-July in Silicon Valley and Sydney we’ll be looking at the future of privacy and targeted advertising. Broad behavioral advertising requires either dominant players that have the breadth of relationships that they can serve relevant advertising to many viewers wherever they go on the Internet, or sharing of detailed information and profiles between market participants.
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Mapping newspaper layoffs – where will the journalists go?
By Ross DawsonErica Smith of Graphic Designer has done some great map mashups of US newspaper layoffs so far in 2008 (4,490+) and in the last seven months of 2007 (2,185+), as below.
While you can pick out trends from the maps such as a big rise in layoffs in the North-East, this is more about underlining the trends in newspaper jobs.
One of the key topics at the Future of Media Summit 2008 on July 14/15 will be the future of journalism. I absolutely believe that journalistic skills and training are immensely relevant in the economy today. However many current newspaper journalists will have to adapt their skills to new jobs and roles, often outside traditional media. We will explore, among other issues, how this transition might happen.
US newspaper layoffs: 2008 to date
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Review of the Top 100 web apps launch, event, and coverage
By Ross DawsonSome quick thoughts on the Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications launch and event last week:
* Everyone seems to have had a good time at the launch event – I certainly did! A great bunch of people
* For me the primary reason to create the list and get it into BRW was to help link the tech entrepreneurial scene in Australia with business. I think that mainstream business is starting to recognize the many ways Web 2.0 is extremely relevant and important.
* This space is – I hope – at some kind of tipping point where it has reached critical mass and will surge from here. Expect plenty more activity from me and others in helping this along.
* The big themes that came out of the panel discussions on the day for me were about the role of these kinds of applications and entrepreneurship in the economy (see also link to Elias Bizannes’ thoughts below).
Will be back soon with some thoughts on what we can learn from the list about the global Web 2.0 space.
Online event coverage:
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I belatedly enter Twitterland – participating in a cross-section of human conversation – this is true “micro-messaging”!
By Ross DawsonI set up my rossdawson Twitter account this morning. I know I’m very late to the party, but will now be exploring this space.
I’ve followed Twitter and its peers from the beginning as well as I can as a non-participant. My attitude has always been that my primary online presence is my blog – everything flows out from that. I don’t have enough time to write anything near as much as I’d like on my blog, so I felt that starting to Twitter would take away from the little time I have to devote to blogging. I do have a very intense schedule almost all the time, with major events, speeches, and deadlines succeeding each other in rapid succession, on top of a stack of travel. I consider it my top priority doing my client work and events as well I possibly can, and while creating content is a core activity for me, it can’t take over other things (for now).
Clearly momentum has built over time in my intent to get onto Twitter, and have been playing with the idea for a while. I actually decided to get on after last catching with Shannon Clark in a San Francisco café earlier this year. He told me that Twitter was at the center of his life, and gave a compelling description of the benefits to him in being across and in the conversation.
However I’ve been so busy that I never quite found the time to get it going. I’ve certainly been active on FriendFeed, and using tools such as AlertThingy in fact has given me much of the functionality of Twitter, in allowing messaging across my activities, following Twitter feeds, and responding on FriendFeed.
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Living Networks – Chapter 5: Distributed Innovation – Intellectual Property in a Collaborative World
By Ross DawsonDownload Chapter 5 of Living Networks on Emerging Technologies
Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.
For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.
Living Networks – Chapter 5: Distributed Innovation
Intellectual Property in a Collaborative World
OVERVIEW: Innovation and intellectual property increasingly dominate the economy. As technology advances, no firm has the resources to stand alone, and collaboration with others is becoming essential. This means that new business models are needed for developing intellectual property and sharing in its value. Open source software provides us with valuable lessons that can be applied to many other aspects of business and innovation.
This chapter on innovation and intellectual property was one of the most important in Living Networks, I thought, and is absolutely as relevant today as five years ago. Innovation is the source of the majority of value-creation in a networked world, and how we deal with intellectual property can either enable or block human progress, on every level.
The nature of the intellectual property landscape is that the structures are highly rigid, by definition being set by legislation. However attitudes are rapidly changing, and new approaches such as Creative Commons have gained enormous traction over the last years. Certainly innovation is seen more today than as something that happens across boundaries, though most organizations are still hesitant to open up. The critical next phase is in innovation in innovation models.
The chapter begins by explaining a few basic shifts:
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