Anthony Bradley

This very interesting post by Aaron Swartz examines who actually adds the value to Wikipedia. It is very worth the read, as are the comments. He takes issue with the assertion by Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) that it is a small set of core (less than two thousand) knowledge experts that add the most value to Wikipedia. This sounded hard to believe and counter to the Web 2.0 nature of Wikipedia. How could less than two thousand volunteers create the Wikipedia behemoth?

Jimmy Wales’s position is that the Wikipedia process is more like a conventional encyclopedia effort than a Web 2.0 mass collaboration phenomenon.

Aaron Swartz’s investigation unveils that indeed a small core contributes the vast majority of edits and formatting (a large number of small contributions), but the bulk of Wikipedia content is written by peripheral and occasional contributors (a small number of substantial contributions).

My faith is restored.

It’s ironic that Aaron defends the Wikipedia phenomenon against its own founder.

A post in my colleague Tom Austin’s blog caught my attention. It is a quick take on Andrew MacAfee’s E2.0 Bullseye Model of strong and weak ties.

In my experience there are a few big flaws in his bullseye model. First, it is an oversimplification (which admittedly fits well in a blog post and easy to digest graphic) of relationships. There should be a mention of unbalanced relationships (which should be a goal of many E2.0 implementations). For example, with my blog I hope to build strong ties between them and me (meaning they feel they know me well) but a very weak tie between me and them (I may not know them at all). This delivers the coveted leverage that E2.0 can deliver. It also doesn’t distinguish between direct and indirect ties and the different behavioral dynamics of interactions (familiarization, handoffs, positioning, shared contribution, transactions, etc.) which have a greater impact on delivering an effective social solution. Third, I have not seen an exclusive relationship between the nature of the technology and the nature of the tie. The relationship is more between the nature of the implementation (purpose) and the tie. 

I’m struggling to find the utility of the model. If its utility is to help enterprises choose a social software technology based on the strength of the tie then I think it significantly misses the mark (pun intended).

I also responded in his blog but it is moderated so I’m not sure if it will see the light of day

Malcolm Gladwell is one of my favorite business book authors. He has a fantastic way of making me look at things differently or gain deeper insight into what I naturally took for granted. The beauty in the latter is that I often learn things that I can apply in many situations. In some instances when reading his books I have actually said aloud, “I wish I knew that 5 years ago.” Outliers is no different. It is a very entertaining (in an epiphany sort of way) look at success. We all know that success is a combination of talent, hard work, and opportunity (some might call it luck). This isn’t news.

His main assertions, in my words, is that talent is less important than hard work and opportunity. His research unveiled a 10 year-10,000 hour prerequisite to true outlier success. This means that to achieve true outlier expertise you must practice (i.e., do something with the express purpose of getting better at it) for an accumulated 10,000 hours within a span of 10 years. I found this fascinating and it puts some real metrics around one of my favorite sayings, “If you want what most people will never have then you must do what most people will never do.” My Dad always told me that hard work pays off but I wish he gave me the 10 year-10,000 hour rule.

But Gladwell spends most of the book deeply exploring the “opportunity” side of the equation and he squeezes the luck right out of it. Culture, timing, and upbringing, he argues, are the primary determinants of opportunity. His stories are compelling.

Although I didn’t walk away with as many applicable “lessons” from Outliers as I did from “The Tipping Point” (which should be mandatory reading for those interested in social applications) it was a very interesting and enlightening book. I definitely recommend it.

A client just asked about the utility of the “A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution” multi-author project. Although I have not read the recent book, I have gone through the Web site.

I would say that the movement has yet to hit many organizations since this is the first client interest I’ve seen. The cause is noble;

"Our "pattern language" is a holistic collection of "patterns" that can be used together to address an information or communication problem. Each "pattern" in this pattern language, when complete, will represent an important insight that will help contribute to a communication revolution."

I guess with such a lofty goal you are bound to disappoint, at least initially. In my opinion, they use the term pattern loosely. It is basically information on a very large challenge and some ideas on how information and communication technologies (ICT) might address it. The solution statements provided are not even close to adequate in the pursuit of a materiel solution. I would state the content as “Things to Consider When Applying Information Sharing Technologies and Practices to a Particular Challenge or Domain.” The information is very high level and barely scratches the surface of what needs to be accomplished to build social collaboration solutions for these immense challenges (e.g., Global Citizenship, Health as a Universal Right, Anti-Racism). I hope it evolves over time to something more useful because the goal is laudable. But right now it is little more than an interesting and thought provoking read.

How useful do you find these patterns?

I watched CNN’s Planet in Peril show yesterday and it left me in a state of depressed anger at how people (and companies) are destroying parts of the earth and some of its most magnificent inhabitants (sharks, gorillas, and elephants). Here is where the potential power of social software solutions becomes apparent. I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. Traditional media (such as the CNN show) stops at awareness. I can’t participate in that show. I can’t comment. I can’t get more information. I can’t take any action whatsoever. I can only sit there and feel powerless. I must go elsewhere to have any impact. Secondly, it is ephemeral and static. When the show is over, it is over. A persistent place for collaboration is required for action.

Awareness is an important but small part of the solution. Social applications deliver awareness as well as participation and persistence. Awareness is key to social spectating, whereas the two latter are the key ingredients to social action.

JackBe, a leading boutique vendor of enterprise mashup technologies recently announced a new $5 million round of funding.

Mashable.com had a good article titled "RockYou Spits in Recession’s Face, Secures $17 Million in Funding" that covers some 2008 investment in public Web based mashup companies.

I expected 2008 to be the year of the enterprise mashup. Early in the year it looked like I would be right but enterprise mashups have not escaped the economic slowdown. Mashups are still exploding on the Web. TechCrunch listed some numbers in their article "Pageflakes Acquisition Confirmed."  Additionally, mashup vendors report to me that their sales are still growing (though not at the exponential rate they had hoped). Earlier in the year, Gartner’s annual SOA survey (which had some mashup questions in it) had about 12% of respondents working with mashups and another 15% planning to do so in 2009. Of course, these numbers have likely changed.

The mashup investments, web growth, and vendor sales (as reported by them) all indicate that enterprise mashups will live on. Although the explosive growth has curtailed, mashups may be one of the areas of innovation that continues to do well through the economic downturn. This makes sense as organizations looking to save dollars may look to mashups for a quicker and cheaper approach to integration and new app development. Vendors are already morphing their marketing messages around "Mashups for Cost Savings."    

Alright, I am in the midst of working on 2009 research agenda planning for myself and rest of my team. I cover social application architecture and best practices as well as enterprise mashup composite applications (as a subset of Web 2.0 for the enterprise). My team also covers SOA, WOA, EDA, app infrastructure, and information architecture.

Here is your opportunity to influence the Gartner research process (at least my small segment of it). What do you want to see more research on? What questions do you want answered? I know I have readers out there so here is your chance to get what you want (or at least ask for it). It is Christmas after all.

You can also throw in what you would like me to do with this blog (be nice).

Last week we wrapped up the Gartner Application Architecture, Development and Integration (ADI) Summit in Las Vegas. This is our SOA flagship event. By many attendee accounts the summit was a great success. I’d like to wrap up the fall conference with a few bottom lines (this may look familiar to those who saw my opening keynote) that deserve gleaning.

SOA is indeed a journey and in the keynote I used a personification analogy of building a strong relationship between SOA and IT. Therefore, sticking to the analogy, I asked the audience to think of the conference as a three day relationship building retreat with the keynote as the initial counseling session to kick off the retreat. I played the role of SOA and asked Sue Landry to play the role of my relationship partner IT. I also asked Roy Schulte to join us as our relationship counselor. We then put on a little "play" addressing the major relationship challenges between SOA and IT. We talked about the following IT/SOA relationship challenges:

1. I Don’t See What I Get Out of This Relationship with SOA
2. IT Isn’t Ready for This Relationship
3. SOA Does Whatever It Wants (I Can’t Control It)
4. IT Has Too Much Baggage
5. IT Won’t Change
6. I Don’t See a Future in a SOA Relationship
7. IT Is Trying to Move Too Fast in This Relationship

The Bottom Line takeaways that goes with each of these challenges are:

1. Build SOA business cases and measure success
2. Actively mature your organizational SOA competency; don’t simply deploy SOA technologies
3. Use governance as the guardian of SOA success
4. Capitalize on SOA as a reason for and path toward IT modernization
5. Instill new application development thinking and behaviors to realize SOA agility and shareability benefits
6. Explore SOA’s evolution to augment your road map and derive deeper value from SOA
7. Employ an SOA road map to grow SOA incrementally as a key part of your applications strategy

I’m reiterating these because they are the major messages of the conference and the 70+ presentations, workshops, and round tables were all about working on improving these competencies.

I hope the conference was a productive and enjoyable experience. See you in June at the next ADI summit!

I just wanted to point my readers to a recent post by Luis Derechin CEO of enterprise mashup vendor JackBe. Luis does a nice job of pulling together some of the movers and shakers in the enterprise mashup space. I think this is a valuable list for those who wish to track the evolution of the technology and are looking for good sources.

Kapow hooked me into lunch today at the AADI conference (where I am presenting for the majority of the week). They hooked me by showing me a mashup for the iPhone they had built (using their technology) that scrapes the Gartner AADI conference site to deliver a handheld based Gartner agenda management application. I’ve got to admit, it was cool. You can plan your agenda, search the agenda, and if you are in a session that isn’t meeting your needs (which I told them rarely happens) then you can hit a "Now" button to see other presentations going on at that time if you want to jump over.

The conversation progressed to the emergence of "Operational Intelligence" and its merger with mobile technology so workers can be sensors (remember my blog post mentioning "every soldier a sensor") and receivers who rapidly assemble a situational awareness and initiate an appropriate response. All from the comfort of your palm. This is yet another example portending the emergence of sense and respond systems. In this example Kapow mashed up Gartner AADI Summit content with an iPhone viz app. This is also a testament to the native mashabilty of WOA.