Will your privacy completely vanish? It depends how we use facial recognition

By

We recently launched our 12 Themes for 2012, shown below, in which the third of the 12 themes is ‘Privacy vanishes’.

2012: 12 Themes

View more presentations from rossdawson

One of the drivers of privacy vanishing is the rise of facial recognition. As the 2012 themes document notes, while Facebook has prominently launched its facial recognition technology, Apple and Google have facial recognition capabilities that they have not yet launched. The landscape is now changing.
Read more →

The realities of intellectual property and crowdsourcing: don’t hold on too tight

By

When you talk about crowdsourcing, consistently one of the first objections you hear is worries about losing valuable ideas and intellectual property to unscrupulous overseas contractors.

Our new book Getting Results From Crowds is designed to help people get the most value from crowdsourcing. Part of doing that is giving perspective on the challenges and opportunities of using crowds. In Chapter 4 on When to use crowds, embedded below, one of several free chapters available from book, we discuss Intellectual property and confidentiality and provide a ‘reality check’ on IP protection – see pages 24-25.

Getting Results From Crowds: Chapter 4 – When To Use Crowds
Read more →

Apologies! The rossdawson.com contact form has been down since late October

By

Not a good start to the day. Through a potential client following up on the phone and email after having not received a response to a message on the RossDawson.com contact form, I discovered that it has not been working since the end of October.

It is now working again. So if you have tried to contact me on the form over the last six weeks, could I ask you to get in touch again?

Very sorry! :-(

Launching my new book today! Getting Results From Crowds

By

Today we are launching my new book Getting Results From Crowds: The definitive guide to using crowdsourcing to grow your business!

This has been, in all, many years in the planning and making, and I’m extremely happy with how it has come out. It is definitely my most useful book, and while it’s hard to compare it with my other books as it has a distinct purpose and design, it is in some ways my best work.

I’ve believed in, followed, and worked with crowds for over a decade. My 2002 book Living Networks had many examples of what we currently call crowdsourcing, including being the first of many business books to describe the Goldcorp challenge, and mentions of Elance, InnoCentive, and Procter & Gamble’s Connect & Develop program, before any were well-known.

Today much of my work is around the future of work and future of organizations. The most powerful single force shaping work and organizations is the rise of distributed work, often drawing on crowds. I have used crowdsourcing platforms extensively for the last decade, and studied and learned how to get the best results from these. Our group business model is centered on the effective use of crowds.

The Getting Results From Crowds book website has a whole stack of resources, including:
Read more →

Many sensors + Imagination = The Internet of Things

By

Last week I gave a keynote at the National Broadband Network – what’s in it for me? conference in Bunbury, Western Australia, a town 2 hours south of Perth, the most geographically isolated city in the world. Not surprisingly the hunger for broadband in the region is enormous – you could feel it in the room.

My keynote on The Killer Apps of Connectivity roamed through through some of the killer apps of massive broadband, including work, health, education, media, and new business models. I also spoke about ‘Everything’, in which connectivity is applied to virtually everything around us.


Image source: Application of Cloud Computing to Agriculture and Prospects in Other Fields

One of the domains that is very relevant to the South West region where the conference was held is agriculture. The image above shows the dynamics of a study sponsored by Fujitsu that used rich sensor data to improve practices and yields in rice farming in Japan, while rich sensor data has also been used in wine making, where grapes are highly sensitive to temperature and humidity differences and changes.
Read more →

Tech-savvy children are driving the future of education

By

Last week I participated in and spoke at an Education Roundtable organized by Telstra, which brought together a small group of very senior executives in all layers of education in Australia. In the same way that I have been drawn into discussions on the future of government over the last 18 months, I am finding myself increasingly frequently asked to engage with decision-makers on the future of education.

There is much I want to share from my presentation and the fantastic discussion at the Roundtable, but for now I’d just like to point to the excellent Telstra White Paper launched at the event, titled Personalised Learning. The White Paper itself is the outcome of an Education Roundtable held a year earlier, and interviews with a variety of Australian senior educators and government officials.

The White Paper’s Executive Summary makes five points, in summary:
Read more →

12 Themes for 2012: what we can expect in the year ahead

By

Towards the end of each year I share some thoughts on what awaits in the year ahead.

It is actually a lot easier to look years into the future than just a single year, as while we can readily discern broad trends, the major events in a year are usually unforeseeable, though they may express the longer-term directions. However as the pace of change accelerates, it is becoming a little easier to see the themes, if not the specifics, of the year ahead. My Map of the Decade shows the 14 ExaTrends that are shaping this 10-year period. Today I launch my 12 Themes for 2012, in conjunction with Future Exploration Network.

2012: 12 Themes

View more presentations from rossdawson

Below is the text for the 12 themes, though they are better viewed in the slides above, as the images used are an intrinsic part of the themes. Alternatively download the pdf of 12 Themes for 2012 (10.6MB)
Read more →

Want to buy drinks for a bunch of Sydney entrepreneurs?

By

This is now the thirteenth year that I and some friends have organized the Annual Entrepreneurs and Self-Employed Xmas Drinks in Sydney. The reality is that many who are setting up companies, working solo, or running small businesses don’t have the kinds of Christmas parties that employees of big companies do. So we celebrate together, bringing our teams along.

This year we are running the event adjacent to a launch for my new book Getting Results From Crowds. In the end it wasn’t logistically feasible to run two separate events, and it made sense to do them at the same venue. The book is in any case highly relevant to entrepreneurs.

See the event page for full details, summarized below.
Read more →

Yelp leaps into the underserviced consumer review space in Australia

By

Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp, is in Australia for the launch of Yelp Australia. I was invited to interview him on Monday (embargoed until today) as part of a major media campaign to kick off the site.

Australia is the 13th country where Yelp has launched, with up until now all the action outside North America being in Europe. Stoppelman said that they are patient and take the time necessary to get quality data from the outset, so that users’ initial experience is positive.

In this case Yelp in July announced an exclusive deal with Sensis, the Telstra subsidiary that operates the Yellow Pages in Australia. This deal provides Yelp with the initial data to launch, plus a partner for monetization, with Sensis’ sales staff offering customers Yelp advertising options. Local search is a highly sales-intensive business, so the Sensis deal means Yelp can effectively build presence and monetize with limited local staff. It is in the process of hiring community managers in Melbourne and Sydney, where it is initially focusing.
Read more →

How technology is transforming events

By

One of my speaking bureau just asked me to provide them with a few quick ideas on how technology is changing events, as one of their key clients is having an internal meeting to discuss their future use of technology in events.

I only had 10 minutes free to write something, so it’s far from comprehensive, but I thought worth sharing here.

Before events:
– Connecting with speakers and others attendees
– Identifying who you’d like to catch up with at the event
– Arranging meetings with sponsors or other attendees
– Voting on content to be covered
– Surveys to gain insights into participants and their experiences and views
– Sharing content relevant to the event
– Getting recommendations for people to meet with similar interests, projects etc., using tools such as introNetworks
Read more →