Category: society

Misunderstanding Chinese growth

It’s best we get developing economies into perspective.

When I first visited China in the late 1980s, I was amused at all the adverts for Rolex watches and Luis Vuitton handbags lining Shanghai’s Bund and the streets of Guanzhou; “how many Chinese can afford these goods?” I asked.

The response was usually along the lines of there are a billion Chinese and if only one percent can afford these products then that’s a huge market.

Over the years since we’ve seen consumer brands pour into China only to find the markets for Western style consumer goods aren’t what they expected. Many have left with their tails between their legs.

The New York Times looked at this in their weekend story “Come On China, Buy our Stuff.”

What many misunderstand is that while there are some millions of well heeled Chinese who can afford a Rolex, the vast majority simply cannot afford a Western style consumer lifestyle.

The average Chinese income in 2010 was $4,270 per person according to the World Bank. For the United States, average income was over ten times China’s at $47,000. The average across the Europe Union is just over $32,000. India’s was only $1,330.

So any business selling into the PRC expecting to find a consumer society like those of Northern Europe, Japan, the United States or Australia’s is in for a disappointing experience. Chinese households have neither the income or access to the credit lines that drove the Western consumerist societies over the last thirty years.

For economists hoping that Chinese and Indian workers can pick up the world economy’s slack by becoming consumers on a level similar to European and US workers, they are deluded; this is at least a generation away.

According to the Nation Master web site, the US had a similar average income to what China’s current levels in 1900. While there are clearly some differences in measures, we can say today’s Chinese workers are – in wealth terms – around a century behind their US colleagues.

It may take a century for Chinese workers to catch up with Europe and North America, but it won’t happen as quickly as businesses and economists hope.

Those hoping China will take up the slack left from the excesses of the 20th Century credit boom are going to have to look for a plan B. It may be up to the rest of us to find what’s going to drive the world economy for the next twenty years.

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Book review: The Information Diet

Clay A. Johnson describes how to manage information overload

We all know a diet of fast food can cause obesity, but can consuming junk information damage our mental fitness and critical faculties?

In The Information Diet, Clay A. Johnson builds the case for being more selective in what we read, watch and listen to. In it, Clay describes how we have reached the stage of intellectual obesity, what constitutes a poor diet and suggests strategies to improve the quality of the information we consume.

The Information Diet is based upon a simple premise, that just as balanced food diet is important for physical health so too is a diverse intake of news and information necessary for a healthy understanding of the world.

Clay A. Johnson came to this view after seeing a protestor holding up a placard reading “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Could an unbalanced information diet cause a kind of intellectual obesity that warps otherwise intelligent peoples’ perspectives?

The analogy is well explored by Clay as he looks at how we can go about creating a form of “infoveganism” that favours selecting information that comes as close from the source as possible

Just as fast food replaces fibre and nutrients with fat, sugars and salt to appeal to our tastes, media organisations process information to appeal to our own perceived biases and beliefs.

Clay doesn’t just accuse the right wing of politics in this – he is as scathing of those who consider the DailyKos, Huffington Post or Keith Olbermann as their primary sources as those who do likewise with Fox News or Bill O’Reilly.

The rise of opinion driven media – something that pre-dates the web – has been because the industrial production of processed information is quicker and more profitable that the higher cost, slower alternatives; which is the same reason for the rise of the fast food industry.

For society, this has meant our political discourse has become flabbier as voters base decisions and opinions upon information that has had the facts and reality processed out of it in an attempt to attract eyeballs and paying advertisers.

In many ways, Clay has identified the fundamental problem facing mass media today; as the advertising driven model requires viewers’ and readers’ attention, producers and editors are forced to become more sensationalist and selective. This in turn is damaging the credibility of these outlets.

Unspoken in Clay’s book is the challenge for traditional media –their processing of information has long since stopped adding value and now strips out the useful data, at best dumbing down the news into a “he said, she said” argument and at worse deliberately distorting events to attract an audience.

While traditional media is suffering from its own “filter failure”, the new media information empires of Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon are developing even stronger feedback loops as our own friends on social media filter the news rather than a newsroom editor or producer.

As our primary sources of information have become more filtered and processed, societal and political structures have themselves become flabby and obese. Clay describes how the skills required to be elected in such a system almost certainly exclude those best suited to lead a diverse democracy and economy.

Clay’s strategies for improving the quality of the information we consume are basic, obvious and clever. The book is a valuable look at how we can equip ourselves to deal with the flood of data we call have to deal with every day.

Probably the most important message from The Information Diet is that we need to identify our biases, challenge our beliefs and look outside the boxes we’ve chosen for ourselves. Doing that will help us deal with the opportunities of the 21st Century.

Clay A. Johnson’s The Information Diet is published by O’Reilly. A complimentary copy was provided as part of the publisher’s blogger review program.

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Successful Sources Will Not Be Paid

The free myth is biting us in many ways

The whole world wants a freebie, and many of us are giving our ideas, intellectual capital and service away to online magazines in the hope of getting a link or a little bit of publicity.

Bringing the idea undone is the unfortunate reality that web is awash with free pointless material that adds little value. Your contribution, however valuable, gets lost in the static of PR driven articles and SEO optimised fluff.

This is why Google are trying to tie social recommendations into their search results, although it’s hard to see how your cousin’s LOLCat posts are going to add any more value than the generic garbage served from services like eHow.

Yet every day there’s more callouts for  free content – desperate journalists and publishers beg for our ideas or labor in return for some ‘exposure’.

And that ‘exposure’ floats away into the ocean of noise and irrelevance filled with the rest of the ‘free’ content.

Giving stuff away for free isn’t working well anymore and for those of us who are trying to build a business around that model, we’re struggling to get found or heard in the morass.

Along with the wasted time, the danger is we start giving away our best, most valuable work in order to get attention and then we have nothing left to sell.

Consumers are waking up to this and beginning to focus about what they read online. We should too.

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Rules

Too many rules can kill your business

Three recent examples of rules from web based organisations.

Example 1

“Your article does not adhere to the following Editorial Guidelines:

Issue 1 (Section 3.f.i.c)
http://EzineArticles.com/editorial-guidelines/guideline/3f#i-c

Issue 2 (Section 3.f.i.a)
http://EzineArticles.com/editorial-guidelines/guideline/3f#i-a

Example 2

Hi,

Please don’t include a URL in the question text. Links should go in question details, preferably labelled.

Quora content team

Example 3

Account suspended. Make sure your listings meet the quality guidelines.

Why rules can be a problem

Rules are necessary in any society though if you’re trying to build a community one sure way of killing it is to welcome new users with a wall of rules and a bunch of “leaders” inflexibly enforcing them.

An interesting thing all three of the above services – Quora, eZineArticles and Google Places – have in common is they need free content from contributors to build their communities and realise their business plans.

It’s one thing to give power hungry moderators and administrators control when you’re in a position of power, but it’s silly when you need people more than they need you.

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Who the hell do you think you are?

The romantic delusions of managers and entrepreneurs

“We have a startup ethos,” proclaimed the manager of a huge organisation funded by the government.

It was the third time this month I’d heard about a “start up ethos” from managers of ventures backed by government or corporate money and it’s interesting that this thinking like a cash hungry startup has become a badge of honour among those who have never really lived or worked that way.

At a time when we’re glorifying twenty something entrepreneurs it’s understandable a middle aged manager of a large, conservative and bureaucratic business might want to grab some of that glamour.

Where does this idea of being a start up take an organisation that is anything but entrepreneurial?

The entrepreneur myth

Right now we’re obsessed with the cult of the entrepreneur; many people are getting rich on selling the idea if liberate yourself from the corporate cubicle and buy your doughnut franchise then in a few years time you’ll be sipping daiquiris with Richard Branson on his private island.

For most of us, the tough reality of a building a new business is we are going to work very hard and the odds are stacked against us succeeding; that’s the risk-reward equation that underpins the free market economy – you take the risks and if you’re successful you reap the rewards.

Many people though don’t have the appetite for taking those risks; they are happy working for a wage, paying off a mortgage and getting a nice safe pension at the end of their career. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Similarly, the majority of business people have no desire to be the next Richard Branson – most are quite happy for their doughtnut franchise, computer repair company or dog walking service to create a decent living and saving for their family. If the business is worth a few bob when they retire that’s a bonus.

Bureaucrats matter

The success or otherwise of a society depends upon the mix of established institutions and the ability of entrepreneurs to realise new ideas, take the balance too far either way and you have either an inflexible or unstable economy.

Bureaucratic managers, their processes and their established procedures have their role in a modern society, as do the risk takers, the business buccaneers and even the snake oil merchants selling dodgy ideas to frustrated corporate employees.

The danger of business delusions

Misunderstanding who, or what, you and your organisation fits into this spectrum is a risk in itself; the manager of a big corporation or government agency who thinks they can pivot a business the way a start up can, is probably risking their own career and by falling for the romance peddled by snake oil merchants they are risking their savings.

Similarly the small business or real entrepreneur that acts like a government department is probably squandering their market advantages by being slow and unresponsive.

In many ways, seeing a manager in a big corporate environment indulging in Walter Mitty like fantasies of running a start up is somewhat touching – the real danger for those bigger organisations is when their leaders start believing they are something they aren’t.

Romantic delusions are never a good asset when managing a business.

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Reaching connected communites

How do associations and clubs make sure they are visible on the web.

As our homes and communities become more connected, people are expecting to find all their information online. How do associations and clubs make sure they are visible on the web.

This is the transcript of the opening keynote to the Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association’s 2011 conference. The accompanying slideshow is available on Slideshare.

Reaching Connected Communities

Thank you very much for the kind introduction and the opportunity to open Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association’s 2011 conference.

We’re in a time of history where all of us have the planet’s information at our fingertips and the ability to broadcast our own views and beliefs to the world.

Increasingly our roles as productive members of society are determined by our access to that information and our ability to use it.

Seniors computer clubs have a critical role in ensuring older generations have the opportunity to contribute to the connected society of the 21st Century.

The problem for clubs is that all of us struggle to be heard through the noise of the online world. This morning we’ll have a look at what tools computer clubs can use to stake their claim on the Internet and be found on the web.

It isn’t just clubs affected by this, many of the traditional models of media and business are struggling with these changes and this presents opportunities for computer clubs and community organisations.

Underlying the use of these tools there are the principles that I call the four C’s –community, collaboration, conversations and communications.

Communications

Of the four, communications is the most traditional area. We need to be talking to those who need our assistance.

We have to be telling people how we can help them, what our services are and of course when and where the clubs meet.

In a traditional way, we advertised, or had articles put into the local papers and other publications. These channels are evolving in the digital era and are important to clubs as the people you want to reach out to are those who aren’t using the web effectively.

We also have newer communications platforms in local search, mobile apps and social media.

All of these channels complement each other and allow us to post relevant and timely messages that keep members and the public up to date with key issues.

With search engines and social media now the main ways that people research and find information, it is more important than ever that clubs have a legitimate online presence.

Communications isn’t just about getting the message across, it’s also about working together and many of the cloud and social media tools like Google+, GoToWebinar and Webex allow us to have conversations with the housebound and dispersed groups.

Conversations

Traditional broadcast methods of communicating do not encourage conversations. If you want to have your voice heard in the local paper you have to write a letter to the editor which may take weeks to be published, if at all.

In reality there was no conversation. The owner of the printing press or broadcasting licence controlled the message and who was allowed in the discussion.

Today’s online tools today allow us to talk to our audience. This is a great advantage for community and volunteer groups.

This is something that big companies and governments, with respect to the minister, struggle with and it is where computer clubs and other community organisations will increasingly carry out an important role.

Collaboration

One of the traditional problems with volunteer groups is that much of the work fell on one or two individuals. The cloud computing tools of today mean groups can collaborate far better and take the load off key members.

Tools like Google Docs, Dropbox and WordPress mean that the load can be shared among a group and no longer has to rely on one person to update the website or complete meeting minutes.

These cloud computing tools allow clubs to work together better internally, improve efficiency and engage more effectively with their communities.

Community

The most important part of clubs is communities.

One of the problems we’ve seen in the 20th Century is that the rise of the motor car and broadcast media fragmented our communities.

Online tools, particularly social media, will work to bring communities back together, a process that’s going to accelerate as the era of cheap credit ends and the limitations of government are going to become apparent.

The tools

So what are the tools we can use for our clubs. I’m going to run through some basic ones. This is by no means a definitive list and you may find alternative tools that suit your organisation’s needs better.

These are listed on my website and at the end of my presentation I’ll give the web addresses to this presentation online so you don’t have to write down the scripts.

We’ll look at social media platforms, web publishing services and local search. First let’s look at the collaboration tools that help clubs deliver a better message to the community.

Google Apps

Google Apps, which is free for organisations with less than ten users, is a really handy service that offers basic word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software.

Its great strength is the ability to share those documents, spreadsheets and presentation with other users who can all work on them at the same time.

Google Docs also has a form feature which allows you to setup quick and ready surveys, feedback and booking forms.

Other similar tools are Zoho and Office365 which both offer collaboration and sharing features.

Dropbox

Dropbox, and its competitors Box.net and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, are great tools for sharing files between computers and collaborative teams.

These services allow you to create folders on an Internet service that you can then securely share with other people. It makes working on projects very easy and eliminates the shuffle of email attachments around groups.

If you are using these tools you don’t need to be converted about them.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is the sanity saviour of small businesses and community organisations wanting to get newsletters out.

Managing a mailing list is hard work and these services take the hard work out of them as well as make sure your organisation complies with the spam act.

The service offers templates and sophisticated management tools so you can see who is opening your newsletters and what links they are clicking.

Survey Monkey

Survey monkey helps organisations keep in touch with their members and understand their needs. It’s a great tool for measuring customer satisfaction and feedback.

Google Apps has a more basic survey function built into it as well.

Both are excellent ways of keeping your membership in the loop when it comes to agreeing on new ideas.

Local Search

Local search is changing the way we do business.

Consumers using local as they abandon phone directories and classified ads as the net is a quicker more effective way of searching.

These local search results not only appear at the top of the page but they also feed into the popular social media services.

All organisations, local or otherwise should be listing on these not just to improve their search results but to also appear on other services and on devices like GPS systems.

If you have a relative or friend running a business I’d urge them to list on all of these services as this is an area that is seriously changing the business landscape.

Google Places

It is essential to be listed on Google Places as this will appear at the top of a local search and feeds into other social media and services like street directories and GPS navigators.

Ensure you fill in as many fields as possible, especially the times and days you are open and contact details.

Use the custom fields to improve your keywords and give a richer description of who you are.

You can also upload photos and videos which will improve your search results along with give visitors more information about what you do.

True Local

News Limited’s answer to Google Local ties into News’ local newspaper network.

True Local charges for some functions that are free in Google Places and offers additional free services like the ability to upload Word and PDF documents.

Sensis

Sensis is digital roadkill, the most common complaint with the print edition now is that it’s too small to read and the phone book doesn’t make a good monitor stand anymore.

However, Sensis’ free listing is important as it feeds into NineMSN’s search which is the default on Windows computers.

You’ll also receive a free listing in the printed Yellow Pages for what it’s worth, which to be fair is probably where the most digitally challenged folk will find you.

Social Media

In recent years we’ve been lead to believe that social media is something bigger than the industrial revolution that will cure various tropical diseases, rescue broken business models and make a cup of tea for you in the morning.

The reality is social media is changing the way communities and markets communicate. It’s the 21st Century’s town square or village tavern.

Social media services are great for driving traffic to your site and excellent for listening to trends, monitoring news and talking to your community. They are also the greatest driver for people getting online.

Facebook

Contrary to stereotypes, the fastest growing group among Facebook’s 800 million users are seniors.

This is the biggest opportunity for clubs as the late adopters – the sceptics who’ve resisted going online are now doing so, if only to talk to their grandkids.

There’s a view that Facebook, and most other social media services, are for teenagers putting up pictures of cats and talking about what they did last weekend. That’s wrong on many levels as the service cuts across all demographics and groups.

Facebook Pages

Like a Google Places page, a Facebook Page is free and vital to clubs and businesses. If you have relatives running a business, they should also sign up for a free site.

Increasingly this is where the public goes to online and we have to be there. You can also add events and publicise them through these pages. Your community can contribute and share to your page.

Get 25 members to like your page and you can claim the full name as well.

Google+

Like Facebook, Google+ has a free pages function for community groups and pages. However it remains to be seen how much traction Google+ will get as the service develops.

Google itself seems to be confused about what Google+ actually is, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, calls it an identity service rather than a social media platform. This confusion of what Google Plus actually is doesn’t fill me with optimism on the service’s future.

Apart from the social aspect, Google+ has some interesting collaboration tools such as Hangouts, that allow ten people to work together. If you have a webcam installed, and most new systems come with one, you can set up a group for training or collaboration.

Along with Google+ there are other webinar programs such as GoToWebinar or Webex and Skype’s conferencing feature does a very job at this as well.

Twitter

As a conversational and listening tool Twitter is excellent, although it has been largely mis-sold by the social media business community as a marketing and PR tool.

Twitter allows you to be ahead of the news cycle as most journalists use it to find stories. My own use of Twitter is as a news source.

It’s a good way of keeping up to date on what is happening in communities and with connecting with individual journalists and opinion makers.

Own your platform

The website is your site and your property. Overlooked the dangers of not owning the space you are publishing on.

Websites have become easier to use and build. It you’re using a service like Blogger or WordPress you can get a site running for as little as seven dollars a year and you can be delegating access to various members of the group.

Your website is the centre of your online presence and your home base in the digital economy.

Blogger

Blogger – Google’s free blogging service – is a great tool for getting a website running.

Easy to use, with dozens of templates and plugins for services like e-commerce, newsletters, social media and events it’s an effective and quick way to get a website running.

You can also use your own business domain name for free. Which means you can get online for under $50 a year.

WordPress

WordPress is the most popular web content management system. Offering a vast number of templates and plug ins with the advantage of a big community of developers to support the product.

The software also allows an easy upgrade path to other services like Drupal.

Not business as usual

This is not business as usual.

Many of our business and political users are locked into 1980s ideologies and business models that are rapidly being challenged.

In the media we have a whole generation of journalists who are seeing their careers being twisted out of shape by forces they don’t recognise, something that has already happened to the record industry that thought it could use the old business model of developing new technologies that would extend their playlists in the way the LP had in the 1970s and CD in the 1980s.

We see this in the consumer goods industries where old business models are being challenged.

Earlier this year Bernie Brooks, the chief executive of Myer, signed a deal with one of China’s biggest contract manufacturers to make Myer’s homebrand clothes.

The problem with this is it’s the 1980s model. Today consumers can research these things and they will quickly figure out that Myer’s $200 branded shoes are made in the same factory and little different from those you can by for $50 at Target or Lowes.

This mindset illustrates the problems of established businesses and it’s no problem that Coles and Harvey Norman are campaiging to obstruct online shopping in an environment where the informed consumer is able to circumvent the old distribution and retail models.

In many ways these are modern equivalents of the stagecoach operators and it’s no co-incidence that a hundred years ago this year that Cobb & Co went broke. This is risk that any business runs when it is unfortunate to have managers who ignore trends.

Addressing the digital divide

Seniors computer clubs have an important part in today’s society.

The real digital divide is not across age, it is not between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”, the real divide is between those who are prepared to understand and use these online tools and those who won’t.

Those who won’t are going to be increasingly isolated from a world that is going online. At a time where we’re seeing the NBN rolled out, the launch of 4G networks and increasing use of the web by business and government agencies it’s going to be essential to have some knowledge of the online world and the tools to use it.

Being on the wrong side of the divide will make it increasingly hard to access services and information.

The role of groups like the local seniors’ computer group is to help people remain valued and productive members of our community in today’s connected society.

Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas this morning on how to carry out the important role you have in this decade of great change.

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The digital inheritance

Our online possessions are valuable and now matter.

Our digital footprint – what appears about us online in websites and social media services – is becoming more important as we’re judged by what people find out about us on the web.

As what we store on the web becomes more important, the need to plan for what happens to that data when we pass away becomes more important. “Generation Cloud”, a survey in the UK by hosting company Rackspace and the University of London looked at how Britons were dealing with these issues.

Information left online can cause problems as social media sites will send suggestions and reminders which can distress others if the suggested contact has passed away.

Equally, a web site or Facebook page could even serve as a memorial. The final blog post of Derek K. Miller is a particularly touching memorial.

To create a “digital tombstone”, for your loved ones to remove inappropriate posts or just to access your digital personal effects like email or photos stored on a cloud service, they will need your passwords.

In the Generation Cloud survey, 11% of the participants planned to leave their online account details and passwords in their wills and half considered some of their ‘treasured possessions’ are stored online.

Once again we’re finding our online data has real value that’s worth passing down. It’s another reason to guard your data safely and not give it away lightly.

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