The Greater IBM Connection Blog

Who is the IT superstar of the year? You, of course!

Imagine your friend or colleague opening their morning email today and finding out that they are the "IT Superstar of the Year".  Just plug in your friends' names and email addresses and they'll be the star of the show. 

Enjoy!

<posted by Ethan McCarty>

AI: Analytics Innovators Series Video

This web video series features examples of groundbreaking companies, services and products that epitmize the age of smarter analytics, pervasive computing and new intelligence that IBM's new Business Analytics & Optimization Services was created to advance.

See more BAO content and clips at the Global Business Services New Intelligence Video Studio.  Know of other analytics innovators we should feature? Share in comments here!

Episode 2:

• RecycleBank a kind of "frequent recycling" rewards program
• Earthmine a 3D city mapping service based on Mars Rover technology
• FitBit Tracker a $99 wearable health monitoring device that measures your bodily activity and sleep patterns

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Analytics Innovators: txteagle, Mobile Metrix and Pachube

As IBM is building its new Business Analytics & Optimization consulting group, we wanted to highlight or showcase some examples of small companies, startups and organizations who are breaking exciting ground on this frontier: turning mobile phones in Africa into connected work tools (txteagle), building the open infrastructure for an "Internet of Things" that can help instrument the planet (Pachube, pronounced "Patch Bay") or starting to measure and count the billions of virtually invisible people in the developing world that have no official records (Mobile Metrix.)

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Smarter Planet Widgets: Analytics, Healthcare, Cities & Energy

We've developed a set of widgets on key Smarter Planet topics that you are welcome to add to your site, page, or blog, or share with your contacts and network.  Simply copy and paste the embedding code that works for your site.

 

We've also made these widgets available as Facebook applications.  Please feel free to put these to work and enable our community to function as a social media catalyst.

Smarter Healthcare Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/smarterhealthcare/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/smarter-healthcare

Smarter Cities Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/smartercities/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/smarter-cities

 

Analytics Album Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/analyticsalbum/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/analytics-album

Smarter Energy Widget

• http://apps.facebook.com/smarterenergy/
• http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/smarter-energy

Jack Mason, Strategic Programs & Social Media
IBM Global Business Services
http://smarterplanet.tumblr.com

Building the Smarter Enterprise with Business Analytics & Optimization

IBM's new service line Business Analytics and Optimization is capturing information and turning it into intelligence. It's identifying patterns faster, pulling insights from noise, converting data into action, analyzing, optimizing, mitigating, finding and preventing. Business Analytics and Optimization is helping people predict with greater confidence.

For more, see the Smarter Enterprise channel on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr.

Jack Mason, IBM Global Business Services
Strategic Programs & Social Media

Business Analytics & Optimization Services: IBM's New Consulting Organization

Can you predict and respond to opportunities and threats? Optimize operations to capitalize on new sources of revenue? Proactively manage risk while ensuring efficiency? IBM Business Analytics and Optimization capabilities are your most powerful ally in the new economic environment.

In addition to this overview on this new business analytics focus -- helping to build smarter enterprises -- you can follow developments through two new social media channels:

• The Smarter Planet Network on Tumblr
• IBM Business Analytics: Twitter ID, ibmbizanalytics

Jack Mason, IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs and Social Media

Igniting the New Intelligence, on the Building a Smarter Planet Blog

This week's topic for the Smarter Planet initiative is big, and thought-provoking. It is all about big data and the big breakthroughs that can result from the new insight and understanding of it.     

Read the post: How the "Deep Web" and Petaflop Power will Put the Smart in Smarter Planet 

And while you're at it, you can see the latest on the Smarter Planet site on Tumblr, which features multimedia posts on developments across the Smarter Planetscape. We've recently added "channels" of topic-specific content so that you can sift through the Tumblr site's growing archives. First up, the newest channel featuring posts that relate to the frontier of New Intelligence.

Smarter Planet: New Intelligence
Smarter Planet: Retail
Smarter Planet: Energy
Smarter Planet: Broadband

Jack Mason

IBM Global Business Services, Strategic Programs

2.0 Means Give-to-Get

I've been living in a kaleidoscope of "2.0"s recently: web 2.0, enterprise 2.0, government 2.0. I know some of those are already shedding 2s in favor of 3s. But I wanted to reflect on the core tenet of these 2.0 visions: give-to-get.

First, let me give immediate credit to the folks at the Greater IBM Connection, who put the phrase in my head at a recent summit. Those who have studied pre-2.0-history, may recognize give-to-get as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I don't know of any other precept that has achieved such a universality across cultures.

What does give-to-get mean in the context of these 2.0 approaches to technology?

Web 2.0:

• Blogs where readers' comments become even more valuable than the original posts.
• Sites that send users away when they can't meet users' needs themselves.

Enterprise 2.0:

• Application architectures evaluated based on their ability to play well with others.
• Professional conversations increasingly taking place openly, outside company firewalls.

Government 2.0

• Information sharing factoring into government employees' peformance reviews.
• Efforts by intelligence agencies to replicate the communication style of consumer social networks.

Some people who are far more expert than I have written about this stuff:

• Jeff Jarvis's Golden Rule of Links
• Dan Woods's work on Mesh Collaboration

What I hope is clear is that, despite the overplaying of "2.0" as a buzzword, the real value of this trend is in promoting one of the cornerstones of our success as a species: enlightened altruism.

And, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I'd like to call attention to my own efforts to give credit where it's due on this blog. I've consciously reduced internal linking, only using it to refer to earlier posts. But, as you'll see, this "altruism" is quite self-serving. I've been delighted to see folks link to this blog in order to cite its ideas.

Because what 2.0 is ultimately about is better information sharing for all of us. And for that, we all have to give to get.

Note: this was originally posted at The Noisy Channel.

Twitter's Twist on the Attention Economy

I am a long-time LinkedIn user, and over time I've accumulated over 1,000 connections. Most of them are people I actually know or at least have interacted with online beyond "connecting".

You might think that's a large number of people to have as connections, and that I could afford to have a more selective velvet rope. And, as you may have noted, I know only most of my connections; some of them are link spammers whose connection requests I nonetheless accepted.

But, you see, there's no incentive for an individual to reject a spammy connection request. Link spammers do reduce the relative value of legitimate links, and as a result devalue the LinkedIn network as a whole. But it's a classic tragedy of the commons. Why should I personally sacrifice the reach of my network if I gain nothing? As far as I can tell, this problem applies just as much to Facebook and other social networking platforms.

Twitter is a different beast. Granted, Twitter and LinkedIn may not even see each other as competitors, but that is beside the point. They are competing for people's social networking cycles, and all of today's social networking platforms / applications are surely keeping their options open as to what positions they will ultimately stake out.

In any case, what most differentiates Twitter from LinkedIn is their attention economics. On LinkedIn, you incur a benefit--at no apparent cost--from the size of your network, up to degree 3. In contrast, all that matters in the Twitter "social graph" are your immediate links. You don't get any direct benefit from connections at distance greater than 1. Moreover, the connections are asymmetric, as are their costs and benefits. Following people is an investment of your attention, where the return is access to information (in a broad sense). Being followed is an investment of their attention, and hence an opportunity to exert influence. The asymmetry of Twitter connections is most evident for celebrity influencers, who have far more followers than followees.

While Twitter, at least in my view, is a work in progress, I think they have done well to align their model with attention scarcity. I'm most keenly aware of this scarcity as I decide whom to follow. Accepting a connection from a LinkedIn spammer costs me nothing, while following someone on Twitter who updates on every inhale and exhale would render the service completely worthless.

As a result, connections in Twitter reflect real value. They correspond to investments of attention. Someone with many followers is much like an author with many readers. While I'm sure this metric can be gamed (e.g., by creating bogus Twitter accounts and having them follow you), at least Twitter has the model right in principle.

Speaking of which, if you're interested in following my tweets, you can find them here.

Note: this was originally posted at The Noisy Channel.

RECOGNIZING POTENTIAL IN GREAT IDEAS

Recently, I was talking to long-time colleague, Dr. Alex Pattakos, founder of the Center for Meaning and author of Prisoners of Our Thoughts. We had a great chat about my experience of the Greater IBM Connection and the potential so many us see in this business and social networking IDEA. He immediately saw the possibilities for meaningful innovation by connecting all that IBM talent across the world.

Then he followed it up by saying, "You know, I have a connection to IBM, too!" He went on to tell me his story about how one of his creative ideas was showcased by IBM in a special program called INNOVATION IN ACADEMIC COMPUTING over 20 years ago. In the mini-podcast below, Alex shares his story of IBM recognizing the potential in his forwarding-thinking idea called the "Electronic Visiting Professor" that he brought to the University of Maine. Using IBM PCs, he was able to bring in faculty members from around the world into the rural campus in Orono, Maine, expanding the learning experience through technology. Alex also shares his perspective about the Greater IBM idea after hearing about it and visiting our blog and website.

My Talk with DR. ALEX PATTAKOS

download MP3

IBM's eye for recognizing the potential in a great idea isn't new. This is a quality I've learned to more fully appreciate as I've seen and experienced its reach over the years --- and it continues here at Greater IBM and in other initiatives. One of my personal favorites is the Global Innovation Outlook, where IBM is joining together with leaders from business, academia, and politics from around the world to create new opportunities for business and society.

Do you have a story to share from your own experience past or present?

debbe

Debbe Kennedy
Contributing Author
Greater IBM Connection
Founder, President & CEO
Global Dialogue Center and
Leadership Solutions Companies
www.globaldialoguecenter.com
author, Putting Our Differences to Work (Berrett-Koehler June 2008)
IBMer 1970 - 1991 L.A.; Anchorage; Seattle; San Francisco