Six personal qualities: generosity, discipline, patience, perseverance, insight, analysis

Description of how thses six personal qualities apply to the world of e-culture, the most successful killer applications and my personal activities. How do I personally cultivate insight ?Distinction between real generosity and generosity from sales generosity strategies.

These six qualities do apply to the world of e-culture : generosity illustrates e-culture because one the greatest characteristics of e-culture is to share and to give as much information and services as one can. Skype is of course a great example of this generosity. This leads me to the distinction between “real” ans “strategical” generosity. I would say that real generosity is more a personal matter, it is mostly what you share with other people in terms of ideas, passions, communication... though it can also be a concrete help that you provide to someone, while strategical generosity is more related to companies which take advantage of offering services or information, because the relation to customer always implies a joint-venture aspect, weather this is implicit or more explicit. To myself, generosity is the best way to establish enjoyable and rich relations with people and feel in harmony with people in such a hard world of competition and challenge. I recently discovered this photos sharing site : I think it’s a nice example of generosity: it’s a great sharing experience because it goes beyond the photos you make available : you also share your passions and personal motivations with other people.
I’m afraid I will lack time to discuss all six qualities we discussed in class. Therefore I will make the choice to pick one more that also is essential, that is insight. Indeed, it is very exciting to learn and to be contact with others, but sometimes we can easily forget the most essential : that is what is our personal purpose with sharing and learning. It’s not always easy, but insight helps to remind that’s there’s no need to ever run faster, we sometimes need to walk quietly and think of what we’re looking for, what we wish four ourselves and people we care for. I think that this insight can lead one to the real well being, and that it is a essential path to harmony. try myself (even if it’s hard these days ...) to keep in mind and develop the reasons why I’m here in the Celsa, why it is important to me to go into e-culture and what this will bring to me more generally.
Very clicky now, perseverance and patience are gold rules in every situation, and e-culture doesn't represent an exception to this principle. For instance at first it can take time to get familiar with online tools or use new applications – I think for example of personalizing a blog, adding photos etc. But the time that you spend at first rewards you twice at the end : you get the expertise to do things quicker, and you access to new opportinuties oeffered by e-culture.

Is e-culture pro-social or anti-social?

Does it isolate people and create bad habits or bring them together and generate pro-social trends?

Well that’s a difficult question to answer. I think that e-culture can be both pro-social and anti-social. It is pro-social for several reasons : first of all because it links people together, but also because of the transparency it produces. As a few students noticed, some employees have denounced their working conditions on their blogs. Because the news spread so fast on the web, companies are now forced to take into account the fact that their “emploggers” can quickly and easily tell the world about the company’s practices, as Estelle showed us with Ubifree.
But unfortunately blogs can also have anti-social consequences. First of all there can divide the world between users and non-users, depriving the latter from various opportunities offered by blogs. Anyone should probably try to drop its old habits and contract new ones. Still some people might not have the capability to take advantage of e-culture tools. There also can be a vast debate on the characteristics of e-communication…it can be argued that virtual communication kills real communication. Some experts studying e-communication consider that communication on the Net is extremely poor and superficial. They refer to so-called “weak (social) links”. Anyway I’m not even sure that blogs can fit into this analysis because again, they are so personal and intimate. I actually think that they are a mini revolution within the e-culture itself. On a larger scale, some association like Vecam are fighting to try avoid a deep seam between the connected and the unconnected world. This can be seen within a society or in the world, particularly vetween the northern and the southern countries.

Characteristics of blogs and blogging

How do blogs validate or contradict the principles and qualities of E-culture ?

Blogs are undoubtedly a powerful illustration of e-culture qualities we discussed in class. One of these qualities is impermanence, which blogs illustrates because they are extremely volatile, like most of the web content because they are extremely volatile : new blogs are constantly created while other vanish at the same time. See how our bloggers community has quickly emerged this year. Blogs also clearly shows how e-culture lead people to drop old habits or, let’s say, how they quickly adopt a new one when it is meaningful and offers precious opportunities. The explosion of the blog practice shows this very well. This trend might concern especially young and culture oriented people, but as we saw in class, blogs are gaining field in the professional world too (employee’ blogs, corporate blogs, job research. A lot of recruiters now look for candidates on the web and examine their blogs to make a primary selection.
As far as transparency is concerned, I’m almost willing to say that blogs are almost transparency themselves. What is more transparent than presenting oneself to the world, in a totally free expression space ? Blogs are pioneers in a new type of transparency on the web. They are a totally new way of communicating, which might partly explain their wide success. As Christine showed us warblogs are (quite sadly) another kind of illustration of how blogs can promote transparency on the web.
Blogs illustrate precious opportunities because they offer people the opportunity to share their thoughts, passions, laughs and tears. Blogs are very personal, therefore the communication which takes place between people is a very precious dialog as well as a precious opportunity to communicate with anyone all over the world. They also connect people through specific communities and can sometimes bring unexpected opportunities, as Max revealed us with his personal experience.

A taste of nature...

Get rid of spams !

A good idea to avoid spams when you are required to provide an email address to register to a website in order to access its services : the disposable email address. Kasmail offers your to create a free temporary email address : for a set period of time all messages sent to your disposable address are automatically forwarded to your regular address. The antispam address automatically expires after the chosen expiration date.

More about blogs

Flourishing meta-blogs

Deepblog is one of the increasing number of "meta-blog" sites which provide lists of blogs and information on them. They are blogs about blogging. Deepblog consists in a guide and portal that connects readers to established blogging sites by areas of interest such as political, religious, technology, cultural...
The idea is to make it easy, listing the best bloggers and making their sites easy to find.

Irony...

Friendster is a US company specialized in connecting people through networks of “friends of friends”. Quite ironically for a company dedicated to creating online social networks and promoting self-expression and communication, Friendster has fired an employee for her personal blog…
But irony can also turn against Friendster… as shows this parodical site.

More about motivation...

More flexibility in sharing ideas with all kinds of people

Another motivation with e-culture is the opportunity to communicate with people, whom you wouldn’t meet through your circle of friends, relatives or professional relationships. Community tools like blogs, forums or chat rooms offer a chance to discuss topics and share views or experiences with many different people from everywhere. This creates perhaps a new type of relations which are not subjected to external spheres of influence like social context and surrounding environment.

My personal motivation

Keep my eyes open...

My motivation for this class is to develop awareness regarding the evolutions of e-culture and to have a better general understanding of the trends of information and communication technologies.
I'm at a turning point in my carreer and that it is all the more important for me to have an acute understanding of the stakes of tomorrow. The more you can think ahead, the more you get opportunities to "be in the aircraft carrier", as one of our teacher says. Blogs tehmselves are a good illustration for I didn't know much about them before I entered this class though they are a major phenomenon in communication with great effects in business and social relationships. For those interested, there is a "Blog's day" this saturday in Boulogne-Billancourt....

E-culture versus O-culture

E-monitoring vs old-monitoring

I’d like to present my former job, which offers a good illustration of the change from old culture to e-culture. So-called monitoring companies, among which Presse+ in France, BurellesLuce in the US or Accesso in Spain, are dedicated to filter, select and analyse information for mainly large corporate groups, enabling them to optimise their communication and business development decisions. When I first joined the company in 1994, people used to read the newspapers, select relevant articles, cut them with a cutter (how many nicks have I had myself some drowsy mornings at 4:00 am…) into columns and stick them with glue on A4 pages. Then they would make photocopies and classify the articles by relevance, before the press review was delivered by messenger to the company’s headquarters.
Time has gone. Within a few years cutters and glue sticks have vanished, replaced by huge scanners and advanced software applications. The articles are being selected either by humans or even through OCR tools using association of keywords and subjects. The newspapers are digitized or sometimes directly received as a feed from the editors. Once identified as part of a client’s selection, articles are “clipped” on A4 pages with a dedicated software application, automatically classified and then put at disposal on the client’s Extranet. The fleet of scooters has joined the cutter and glue sticks in the attic of old-culture tools aimed at producing press reviews.

3D versus timeworn desktops

One interesting thing is the creation of 3D graphic desktops by software publishers. Sun Microsystems developed its “Looking Glass” project, which aim is to bring 3-D windowing capabilities to the desktop. These 3D interfaces will enable users to manipulate around objects from their computer screen, windows displaying applications are viewed in a 3D environment and manipulated as 3D objects. In a way the 3D desktop brings us beyond the boundaries of old environments.

No time, no geographical borders

Internet Time is an “e-way” to tell time, which fits into to e-culture rather than o-culture. The concept was invented and marketed by the Swiss watch company Swatch. is based on two key points of the Internet : the lack of time zones and of geographical borders. Instead of dividing the day into 24 hours and 60 minutes per hour, the Internet Time system, called Biel Mean Time, divides the day into 1000 ".beats". Each .beat is 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. The time can be seen on the World Clock. It is the same everywhere, so everyone in the world has the same reference : no more need for time zone conversions.

Twelve principles of Killer Apps Design

These are qualities of certain specific Internet applications, called "Killer Apps"

Reshaping the landscape

Outsource to the consumer:

We can take as an example computerware or household appliances, which you can buy through the Internet services of stores like Darty, which also turned to the Internet to sell their goods. Instead of going to the store where you asked the salesman to provide you information about a product, you can get many information on the product's description and charateristics from the site. You can choose a selection of products of the same type and get a detailed comparison between them. In brief, you get tools at your disposal that help you making your choice. Then you fill in your “basket” virtually from home, pay for your goods by credit card and get the product delivered at your personal address. The user has achieved the whole process by himself until he gets delivered.

Profiling / Personalizing:

One other example is job research. A great number of sites like Apec, Monster, Cadremploi... enable the user to create a personalized profile containing relevant criteria like function, level of studies, job location, salary, type of contract… The user can save his profile and also get alerts in his e-mailbox according to his wished frequency.

Cannibalize:

One example is PAP (Particulier à Particulier), a French real estate media company that connects private individuals willing to either rent, sell or buy a property good. They have a very good notoriety through their weekly print magazine that comes out on Thursdays. They launched a consultation service on Internet which is very comprehensive, more convenient and totally free, and it is likely that it harmed the sales of the magazine. In other words the Internet service may have partly cannibalized the magazine. But it was probably a higher priority for the company to be present on the Net.

Create communities of values:

The alternative site Indymedia, constituted of independent media organizations and journalists, who want to provide readers with a different information in the wake of the altermondialist movement. Indymedia describes itself as a non-commercial collective sharing values focused on democracy, environmental issues, human rights activity, political transparency. Anybody who wishes can post an article on the site. Through its specific stand and business model Indymedia represents a community of value gathering people with common values and interests.

Building new connections

Replace rude interface with learning interface :

One illustration can be to get documents like a car registration book or a driving licence. The police administration lists on its internet site the required documents to provide and the steps to follow to get your licence. Information forms are also at disposal to download on the site. This enables you to gather all documents in advance through of user friedly interface, and to save time for you only have to go once to the police administration to get your official document transmitted to you.

Ensure continuity for the customer:

The weekly magazine Courrier International used to publish on a yearly basis a special issue containing an comprehensive review of newspapers from around the world. This informartioh is now at disposal on the internet site, free of access and regularly updated. In this sense the continuity of the service has been successfully maintained and even improved.

Give away as much information as you can:
For example we can notify Mappy, the map and itinerary internet free service. It offers the user to consult maps and get personalized itineraries on screen and in printable format. You can consult as may maps and itineraries you wish, not only in France but also in about twenty other European countries. You can also have access to informations on hotels, restaurants and filling stations in your selected location.

Structure every transaction as a JV:

Free services can bring a strong notoriety to a company if the service is of good quality. Let's have a look at Dromadaire, wich offers to send e-cards for free on the internet. If the company gets a good reputation there will an increasing number of people visiting the site and the company will be able to increase its advertising prices. Dromadaire has also a virtual shopping area on its site where it sells cards with specific applications like business cards. In fact the user contributes to establish a JV relationship either simply by using the service for free, or by purchasing other products from the company.

Redefining the Interior

Treat your assets as liabilities

Nissan was able to increase its UK Sunderland plant production by 30% without any additional costs, thanks to the creation of a "virtual" third production line. This was enabled by an optimisation software developed by ILOG, the world's leading supplier of software components. ILOG Solver allowed Nissan to build three car models on two lines, generating substantial savings of a half billion dollars from not having to build a third production line. This could made the Sunderland plant, already considered as Europe's most efficient automotive plant, even more productive.

Destroy your value chain

Gioie.it describes itself as the world leading e-commerce company dedicated to the trade of italian jewelry through internet. The company explains that freeing itself from the traditional distribution network, it has been able to reduce its costs to the minimum and to offer extremely competitive prices to the final consumer. Thanks to a very advanced computer systems, Gioie.it is also able to ensure real-time availability of its products and to deliver customers within 24 hours.

Manage Innovation as a portfolio of options

Free can perhaps be a good example of a company having a portfolio of innovations. Innovation projects constitute a portfolio of possibilities, among which some will be realized and others won’t. When all favourable conditions are there (right time, right strategy, right technology…), success projects can come out : Freebox is an example. Free will soon officially unveil the launch of a new project, Armageddon, a high-speed Triple Play service, while the “Ring Back Tone” project is being postponed. Other innovation projects still in the portfolio are the a new Freebox compatible with HDTV and a Video on Demand service.

Hire the Children

The US company BellyWashers has created a Kids' Board made of 15 kids aged 8 to 12 years old, that work as a mini business unit for the BellyWashers marketing team. Board members are selected every spring and serve on the board for one year. They help Belly Washers to develop new product lines and participate in community service projects to help less fortunate kids. At the end of the term, the most active panel member wins the BellyWashers Best educational scholarship.

Illustrations of E-culture qualities

Impermanence:
One illustration of impermanence can be the rapid growth of open source Mozilla's browser Firefox, which established itself as an alternative standard to Internet Explorer. The US Magazine Forbes itself described it a few months ago as the best browser so far. The success of Firefox certainly reflects the general development of freewares on the Net, but it also shows how a market leader on Internet can be easily challenged by a new one !

Open mind, drop old habits:
One exemple could be my recent use of peer-to-peer applications notably kazaa or emule to download videos and music despite some hesitation to use those file sharing services. Of course there can be a justified reluctance concerning illegal downloading (softwares), but there shoudn't be for legal downloading. Probably it is just matter of "not being used" to do it, like fearing that it will be time-consuming to understand how it works, whereas it is quite obvious that it is accessible to most people considering the great number of users.

One other exemple of changing habits is also to send e-candidatures for jor application instead of traditional mail, which implies to change the presentation to take into account the codes of e-candidatures. The French National Employment Agency ANPE recommends the e-mail as "the ideal tool" to apply for a job.

Transparency:
Apple computer filed a lawsuit against an American student, Nick Ciarelli, for publishing company's trade secrets, notably the existence of Mac Mini just two weeks before its launch on the market last december. The information was released by the student on his Internet "Mac enthusiastic site" Thinksecret, and spread immediately through the web as well as in the print medias. The student's attorney now filed a special motion to dismiss Apple's complaint.

Precious moments:
We can think of anti-spam efforts made both by Internet providers and anti-spam technologists on the Net. Google recently adopted Yahoo's anti-spam system domainkeys, and there are also many companies selling various anti-spam systems on the Net. Of course providers fight against spams because the traffic generated on their servers costs them a lot of money as studies recently highlighted. At the same time they might also be willing to protect and retain the users, who don’t want to waste time checking dozens of spams in their e-mailbox everyday. Among the multitude of information circulating on the Net everday, they want to get the right, useful, desired contacts and news in their e-mailbox !