The Social Value Game

The value game is a social media business method developed by the folks at The Ingenesist Project in a dynamic application of social technology.

Most applications of game theory are controlled from in-house or deployed against a competitive landscape.  The Value Game is deployed external to the corporation and in a cooperative landscape where rewards are given to those who organize people around a “highly leveraged product” in valuable ways.

There are 5 elements to The Value Game

The first is what we call a highly leveraged product such as a conference, experience, convenience, ZipCars, or reunion – we’ll see that almost any product can be leveraged.

The next element is a secondary product vendor such as a hotel, restaurant, transportation, clothing, or equipment supplier – we’ll also see how almost any product can be deployed in the secondary role.

The third element is a consumer who seeks to minimize financial cost and maximize social value.

The fourth element is a 3^rd party entrepreneur who is able to organized people in social networks and leverage primary and secondary assets in unique combinations.

The fifth Element is a true value calculator called the Social Value Index (SVI).   The SVI is the scorekeeper that calculates the actual value of the leveraged product after all of the discounts and social value factors are counted.

The game starts when everyone joins the same social network underwritten by a mobile electronic debit card platform and sets their filters for what information can enter (and to block out spam).  The highly leveraged product in the middle acts like a ball in play whose value is dependent on the interaction of the other elements.  Secondary vendors will deploy incentives into the field.  Third party entrepreneurs will organize people around the incentives and take social profits.  The Social Value Index will keep score.

Example 1: A ZipCar costs about 8 dollars per hour; this business model does not encourage social activity; it encourages fast shopping. Suppose that a person pays for the ZipCar on their debit card.  Local restaurants will be made aware of the purchase and then deploy coupons against the ZipCar to the buyer’s debit card. Next, a 3rd party entrepreneurs may improve the SVI by organizing a ZipCar swap so that the person does not have to leave in the same ZipCar that they arrived in and can spend more time shopping.  Another entrepreneur may organize events for families and friends that increase the passengers in each ZipCar, or by capturing any inventory from the community such as movie tickets or family experiences to deploy against the ZipCar.  After the event, the SVI updates the net cost of the ZipCar from 8 dollars per hour to, say, 1.42 per hour.  This is 80% savings on the ZipCar and 33% savings on a day out with the family over using their own car.

In effect, the leveraged product buys itself in a convertible social currency

Example 2: Suppose that a popular aerobics instructor has 40 students.  The local health food store may authorize her to give away 1000 coupons for 5% discount on store products.  In return, the aerobics instructor gets 5% of total purchased.  The health food store already spends 10% of revenue on advertising. It is in the instructor’s best interest to give the coupons to people who are likely to spend the most at the store.  After all, if 1000 people spend 100 dollars each, she stands to gain 5000 dollars.  The health food store stands to gain loyal customers without advertising. The aerobics instructor may maximize her profits by joining with a health food chef to teach classes in healthy cooking.  Or, she may join with a caterer, wedding planner, or hotel to supply an entire event for which she will receive social and financial value.  She may give them to colleagues who also become authorized to give away coupons – and she negotiates for a percentage of their output as well. She will become knowledgeable about the products at the store and talk about them with her friends.  She may even sell the face value of the coupons for cash since it is likely that a high bidder would also be a large customer for the health food store.  The Social Value Index favors this store, this aerobics instructor, and this social network – higher than competitors.  SVI registers with Search Engines and bargain hunters seek the Aerobics Instructor for deeper information and services.

Millions of applications will arise limited only by the imagination of communities not Wall Street

Future of Banking

When I use the term “Innovation Bank”, people conjure up the image of a cheery place where anticipation reigns as starry eyed depositors arrange their intellectual property in neat cubby boxes, Patents are peddled like newspapers, and flush pocket companies troll the halls looking for a cure for their bottom line reflux disease.

This is not exactly what we have in mind, nor is it too far off either. An innovation Bank is simply a knowledge inventory that contains knowledge assets that exists in the format of a financial instrument between people’s ears and can be deployed for the purposes of increasing productivity. Oh, by the way, knowledge makes more of itself every time it is deployed …. Interesting?

The Assumptions

This is not much different than a financial bank. In fact, in the financial bank, everyone assumes the borrower has the knowledge to execute the business plan and the bank lends the money. Oh, by the way, the money makes more of itself (interest rate) every time it is deployed.

With the innovation bank, everyone assumes the entrepreneur has the money to execute the plan, and the seek to borrow the knowledge. Other than that, they can be considered identical. The key is in the scope, depth, and format in which the knowledge assets live in a community as well as the ability to track and preserve the creation of new knowledge in a community.

A Virtuous Circle

Together with the financial banking, these two system engage in the dance of the virtuous circle of innovation enterprise. Apart, they collapse into the swirling cesspool of eternal debt and infinite interest (pun intended).

image source

Ingenesist.com

Music by Phil Felicia

Mathematics Dysfunction Disorder

I am continuously astonished at the reactions I get from people every time I make a reference to mathematics, especially Calculus. Most people politely glaze their eyes over and stare at an inanimate object somewhere behind my head. Others launch into a diatribe of how the linear thinkers destroyed the world in the first place. Others will simply say, “I have [insert Deficit Dysfunction Disorder here]“

Puzzled by Limits?  Perplexed by derivatives?

The truth of the matter is that everyone already knows Calculus, they solve differential equations all day long – they just don’t know that they already know what I’m talking about.  If you take away all the strange terms, squiggly lines, and alphabet soup notation,….

Calculus is astonishingly simple

• The Banker does not care about money, he cares about the rate of change of money.
• The Stock Market does not care about risk, it cares about the rate of change of risk
• The Politician does not care about votes, they care about the rate of change in votes
• The Meteorologist does not care about weather, she cares about the rate of change in weather
• The Pilot does not care about lift, they care about the rate of change of lift
• The Gymnast does not care about motion, she cares about the rate of change of motion
• The Artist does not care about color, he cares about the rate of change of color
• The Doctor does not care about your health, she cares about the rate of change in your health
• The Baker does not care about dough, they care about the rate of change of dough
• The Farmer does not care about crops, he cares about the rate of change of crops
• The Scientists does not care about data, they care about the rate of change of data
• Google does not care about information, it cares about the rate of change of information
• Entrepreneurs do not care about knowledge, they care about the rate of change of knowledge
• Markets do not care about innovation, they care about the rate of change of innovation
• Our children do not care about our wisdom, they care about our rate of change of wisdom

When people can learn how to understand what they are really doing in instead of what they think they are doing, then and only then, will we be able to see, and subsequently, build the next economic paradigm.  That is why I use mathematics and that is when Social Media Becomes a Science

The Capitalist does not care about value, they care about the rate of change of value

In case anyone is wondering if Social media can drive Social Priorities  against Wall Street Priorities, they need not look any further than the cover of the New York Times. Here is a story from the August 31st edition about banks that step away from no-brainer money making business venture because of the social risks to their reputations and therefore, their bottom line.

It is obvious that new sources of energy will be hugely lucrative in the future – except when blowing up pristine Appalachian mountain tops or releasing vast CO2 emissions cracking oil from Canadian sands – both perfectly legal enterprises.

In the past, the struggle between those in favor and those opposed to, say, a coal extraction project played out largely in private and was heavily biased toward those with the deepest pockets. In the past, the developers had an advantage of vast money reserves to wage legal battles, political wrangling, and public relations campaigns against the lowly community action members. Now, this fountain of money may dry up in the future if banks step away, politicians become wary, and the public becomes increasingly informed of the true value of all alternatives.

“We’re taking a much closer look at a much broader variety of issues, not all of which are captured under state and local laws,” said Stephanie Rico, a spokeswoman for the environmental affairs group at Wells Fargo.

These dynamics are converging on something called a “True Value” Calculation. The True Value Calculation is the expanded ROI of a business venture which includes the positive and negative impacts on a much wider body of stakeholders in the sum total of viability. In the very near future, we may find that the True Value Calculation will become the rational basis of our democracy as social media aspires to the role of social vetting mechanism and politicians become increasingly irrelevant to anyone but each other.

]]> http://www.ingenesist.com/general-info/the-true-value-calculation.html/feed 0 http://www.ingenesist.com/general-info/an-ipo-for-humanity.html http://www.ingenesist.com/general-info/an-ipo-for-humanity.html#comments Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:52:50 +0000 Dan Robles http://www.ingenesist.com/?p=3855

The term IPO conjures images of empire-making where a hot young company with a great product offers pieces of its future-self for sale to the public as a means of raising money without incurring debt.  The money is then used to create the next titan whose new jolt of growth is shared with all who participated.

Today, every annual report to shareholders touts the great team of people whose social, creative, and intellectual capital make it all happen, the worthy and stoic investors whose vision drives sound decisions, and the legions of happy customers who make it all worthwhile.

Essentially, an IPO is people buying into the productivity of other people.

Yet, the IPO is a strict and complex legal and regulatory maneuver that establishes property rights on these small pieces of future productivity – represented by “stock” in the company.

There are underwriters (usually a bank), battalions of lawyers, the securities and exchanges commission (SEC), brokers, insurers, re-insurers, institutional investors, private investors, and retail investors.  There is a full infrastructure supporting the facts of incorporation, disclosure, accounting, and proper management of internal “inside” information.  And, of course, there is a media /PR campaign.  All are integrated to keep the game fair, yet viable.

In the Age of Social Media

I could be wrong but it seems that such vast infrastructure appears a bit awkward if the end result is simply for people to buy into the productivity of other people.  This happens everyday in Social Media.  At some point, we really need to ask; why can’t an individual or a group of individuals raise money without incurring debt like corporations can?

In Social Media, people own and deploy their relationships,  communities, motivation, their knowledge, creativity, intellect, mentorship, leadership, teamwork, their network, and even their ability to form corporations – people own their time.  Social currency is backed by the scarcity of time and the availability of surplus knowledge.

All of the structural components of the financial system are appearing in an analogous form in social media; social vetting, social gaming, aggregation, influence, knowledge inventories, communities of knowledge assets, local social, global social, tag search, deep search, semantic search, stream of consciousness search, geolocation, mobile computing, multi-media, and many more innovations are being created and deployed everyday which literally serve the functions of banks, lawyers and legislation in an invisible economy.

The Ingenesist Project tries to string this all together with just enough specificity so that an alternate financial system will jump start itself and become both visible and available to everyone.

We’ll hold an IPO for Humanity

All of the infrastructure and the potential for people to produce things would remain intact regardless of what happens to the currency.  Think about what would happen if all the dollar based money system evaporated. The only safe haven for the storage and exchange of value will be in people and their communities.

The only thing missing is a system that can articulate social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital instead of land labor and financial capital.  This system can be built today.  Please Vote for our presentation at SXSW 2011.

Sure Bro…Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin are great for broadcasting across the Ocean, but how good are they for meeting your neighbors? As wonderful as all this global chatter appears, nothing tangible happens until the rubber meets the road.

Don’t Worry, Be Neighborly…

Nothing “Economic” can happen is Social Media until real people get together to build things. Sure, Marketers are trying their hardest to penetrate the last mile, but communities are trying to defend it too. This is the final battleground of Social Media. The end game must be as follows: Social priorities must ultimately drive Wall Street priorities – not the other way around. That is the only sustainable thesis for the next millennium.

The following video describes how the components of the next economic paradigm must act locally, but share globally. For anyone wondering what to do next or where the great opportunities are, think about building out the Last mile of Social Media.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns of the future consequences of social media and networks, and the vast amount of personal data that users put out there on the Web.

The article goes on to describe how Google is looking for what is next – that is, a world where the Google Icon no longer dominates the center of our lives.  He warns future societies about creating a “future” by documenting the past.  A future president, CEO, or just a job hunter can be haunted forever by the words and images that are becoming indelible in social media today.  Mr. Schmidt insists that information is social currency.

Actually, I do not believe this to be true.  I believe that is more likely than not a severe disruption is on the horizon which will deeply impact social media, Google, and Facebook, etc.  This disruption will alter the course of the future that Google predicts.

All it would take is for humans to step up one more rung on the evolution ladder.

Think of it like this:  a dollar is used to store and exchange value yet it is completely anonymous – you don’t know very much about it’s past or future – you do not need to know much about the exchange device in order to carry out the transaction.

Google is an information company, not a knowledge company. The next economic paradigm will be based on the creation, storage , and exchange of knowledge – not necessarily information.  Knowledge exists only between the ears and once it is made tangible, I will not need to know where in the past that knowledge was excecuted – college keg parties included.

Neither Google or Facebook have indicated that they realize how value can be created, stored, and exchanged while maintaining anonymity if the public knowledge inventory were properly coded. Likewise, billions of people who use Social Media are dismally unaware that nobody else needs to posess any of their personal information to execute a knowledge transaction – seriously, noone.  In fact, not only is relative anonymity a possibility, it is an imperative to market efficiency in Social Capitalism.

The “next Google” will, in fact, filter out irrelevant “information” as a means of creating time. Time is the real currency. For more on this please see http://ingenesist.com/introduction.

Google needs to figure out how to get the most worthy knowledge surplus connected to the most worthy knowledge deficit in the shortest amount of time.  Information brokering alone can’t do this, so it’s Armageddon for whom?

***

Please Vote for The Ingenesist Project to present at SXSW 2011

The Ingenesist Project specifies an Innovation Economy built on a platform of social media as the next economic paradigm.  60 minute solo presentation in the advanced technical track.  Your help is deeply appreciated. All comments welcome.  Material based on video series here

Throughout the articles and videos on this blog, I try to make a direct and rigorous analogy between Market Capitalism and Social Capitalism because there are two characteristics that no Social Currency can approach, yet which define the very nature of Capitalism: capitalization and securitization.

Capitalization

refers to the ability to consider the present value of predicted future earnings as if it were, in fact, tangible. This is the factual basis of the U.S. Dollar. In finance, this is called debt. If done correctly, debt is an extremely effective tool for economic development responsible for huge productivity gains in the last century.

Securitization

refers to a structured financial process that collects all those debt payments into a big pool of money and then chops that pool of money into smaller pieces called securities, which are then sold to investors. Risk is said to be diversified away because it is unlikely that all debtors would default at the same time – so if a few of them fail, the investment in the securities remains relatively safe.

This is very important because in the video series on Social Capitalism, we have described a structure that allows us to capitalize and securitize knowledge assets in a social currency representing real productivity.

For example. The knowledge inventory tells us the probability that a collection of knowledge assets can execute a business plan. Applying WIKiD tools, the rate of change of knowledge is a proxy for innovation. If we can predict the fact and value of innovation with The Value Game, we can estimate the risk adjusted value of the corresponding future productivity gains.

Now, the cash flows of many communities of knowledge assets can be aggregated into a diversified pool of value and chopped up into securities. Since the securities represent future productivity, they are readily convertible to Dollars, Yen, or Euros and sold to investors.

This new security, called the innovation bond, will become the basis for a new social currency.

Please Vote for The Ingenesist Project to present at SXSW 2011

The Ingenesist Project specifies an Innovation Economy built on a platform of social media as the next economic paradigm.  60 minute solo presentation in the advanced technical track.  Your help is deeply appreciated. All comments welcome.  Material based on video series here

I often make the point that a currency is simply a social agreement. People need to agree that a monetary unit represents their productivity so that they will use it to trade their productivity with the productivity of another person. The test question for any so-called currency (coined by Jay Deragon) is: “Yeah, but can you buy groceries with it?”

I am now seeing a SHARP increase in the social interest for an alternate currency to the dollar. The dollar does represent productivity – albeit future productivity in the form of debt – that’s why it is still exchanged for the work that we do. My suspicion however is that the social agreement regarding the dollar is, in fact, increasingly becoming a social disagreement.

People have a deep seated unease with what the dollar is and what the dollar represents. To escape the dollar is to escape a tangle of influence that impacts everything we say, do, and think about ourselves and about each other. It almost seems that to escape the dollar is to escape ourselves.

That’s just the idea that came to me after watching this video about a soldier questioning the occupations. He is saying something very interesting:

War is simply the soldier’s willingness to fight it. It is a social agreement.

I came across an interesting business model for the deployment of a social currency. Stock Harmony, quite simply, sells itself to interesting people. Those people then interact with each other adding social value to Stock Harmony. The more social value is created, the more the original shares are worth. The more the shares are worth, the more interesting people will join further increasing the value of the shares. From that position to deploy social value, Stock Harmony can amplify the voice for social priorities over Wall Street priorities, effectively re-allocating factors of production.

Actually, the same thing happens all the time in typical social circles, networks, affinity groups, and political action committees. However, I am not certain that anyone has yet been successful (ethically) in using social circles as a way to store and exchange value. That is why Stock Harmony is interesting.

It sounds so simple, right? Well, … not really….

It’s all about structure. The way that a process or system is structured determines how people interact with it. Structure also determines how governments, markets, laws, politics, and even public opinion interact with the process or system as well. Interestingly, the structure of facts often keeps secrets tight. In short, structure shapes human behavior and human behavior shapes structure.

Companies sell shares to raise money. Per SEC regulations, the “sale of shares” must comply with certain disclosure and accounting standards. The SEC regulates companies in the sale of shares as a means to safeguard investors.  In other words, it is illegal to sell shares without government oversight.

Raising Money

The possibility that anyone can sell shares in themselves or their private enterprise as a means of raising money is, by default, relegated to the banking system. A person essentially sells shares on their productive time on Earth to buy a house, a car, or a business, etc. The structure begins to crumble when the employment contracts begin to crumble. As people leave the old system, they take their value with them and tend to create new ones. This is where Stock Harmony treads.

What if the shares are issued in non-dollar denominations?

Today we see many non-dollar denominated structures arising apparently at the same rate that the financial system is failing. Google secretly invests 100M in Zynga – a gaming company with a common gaming currency. Facebook established a system of currency-like Credits. Groupons deploy social currency to incite monetary discounts, etc, and PayPal stands ready for the next killer currency app. Any of these transaction systems are poised to hold a black market currency if fiat currencies fail. If the fiat currencies fail to recover, the black market becomes a gray market and ultimately a legitimate market. So, there is a lot at stake.

Currency must act as a proxy for human productivity;

So this is what makes Stock Harmony interesting. The successful “next currency” will be the one which best represents human productivity. Only then will someone be willing to trade their productivity for that of another person using a currency note as an exchange mechanism. This is where other alternate currencies fall apart and where Stock Harmony shows greater strength. After all – what would you rather accept in exchange for your services – Farmville gaming currency or a currency backed by the harmony and productivity of real people in real community?

It will all come down to structure.

It should be fairly obvious that there are some extreme financial anomalies on the Global Horizon.  That legendary, but long-in-the-tooth social system affectionately known as Market Capitalism, is up against the ropes as the debt monster gobbles up everything in it’s path faster than any austerity measures can ever keep pace.  Take note that debt can reach infinity but austerity measures can only reach zero … you can do the math on a postage stamp.  If there ever was a need for a secret weapon, it is now.

The following 4-minute story-board video is part 3 to the series called “Will Social Capitalism Replace Market Capitalism?“.  The video introduces an important futures methodology and algorithm called WIKiD Tools for the management of Social Capitalism.   The next few videos will define WIKiD tools more fully while introducing a segment called “The Knowledge Inventory”.   Next, the SC>MC series will lay out scenarios for the capitalization and securitization of knowledge assets. Finally, we’ll revisit the Airplane Game to wrap it all up.   In other words, within the next few weeks, I should have published a fairly explicit set of functional specification for the next economic paradigm answering the question “What comes after Market Capitalism?”

Hold on to your hats and thank you for joining us on this wild ride.

I recently received an email from a major on-line publication collecting “Letters To The Gulf”.  I wondered, What would the Gulf Say to Us?   That question sounded familiar so I dug through some old video tapes looking for that long-lost club gig from my days in the Hollywood Rock Band Circuit back in the Late 1980′s.

This piece is called Song For the Sea and it was written shortly after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and amid controversy over illegal long net fishing practices.  Lance McCormick is playing Bass and Keys, I am on Drums, and Phil Felicia is on vox and axe.  It is pretty interesting how timeless this theme is.

Interesting features:

Phil uses a can of Tuna as a slide to make the sound of expiring whales and sea life.  His guitar solo is an enactment of a tuna fish thrashing in it’s final moments of life.  I remember that I could barely contain myself, it was so funny to watch – I almost fell off my seat in hysterics every time Phil did the part – but it was powerful imagery especially in later shows after we worked out the shtick a little better.  I think we all took stabs at the lyrics. Keep in mind that this was 20+ years ago in Hollywood California – the objective was to be offensive, shocking and controversial so don’t get too riled up over our choice of words. On the other hand, they do contain an interesting historical perspective from a bunch of kids (transcribed below) in the late 80′s.  The band was called “Rage In Eden”, affectionately named after Gulf War 1

So here is a blast from the past in loving dedication to BP and the gang
***STRONG LANGUAGE ADVISORY***

Song For The Sea

Welcome to my Universe
Once the mighty sea
Turned dumping ground
for all the pigs to see

Now I’m left here in your waste
drowning in your own disgrace
(let’s do it)

Spilling Toxins in my Sea
My putrid flesh bears the stench
of your rotting soul

So I put it to you
Mr. Politician Man
Whatever Gave you the right
To come and punish my world

With your – (indiscernible) – high and low
All I live for in my life
Is just a paycheck to you

So I put it to you, Mr. Businessman
Whatever gave you the right to Punish my world

Dogs dig in my shores
Dollar Whores
I need you to taste the decay and waste
we sold you, yeah

So I put it to you, Mr. judgment man
What ever gave you the right
to punish my World.

This video describes a set of predictions for 2020 based on an entirely new form of capitalism whose velocity and voracity will take the world completely by surprise. Nothing is sacred and nobody is immune, not Facebook, not Google, not Wall Street, not even Governance itself….

Part 1

Part 2:

Many arguments rage because of poor definitions to terms. If people cannot agree on a definition, they will not agree on much else. A definition should be definitive – here I will tackle 5 of the most elusive definitions that are at the center of much, if not all, global controversy: Data, Information, knowledge, innovation, wisdom

To state the obvious

It should be obvious that data, information, knowledge, innovation and wisdom are related. The test is simple: if you corrupt one of them, all the others become corrupted. The question becomes; how are they related?

Consider the following definitions

Allow me to provide the following 4 relationships:

1. Information is derived from the productivity of data

2. Knowledge is derived from the productivity of information

3. Innovation is derived from the productivity of knowledge

4. Wisdom is derived from the productivity of innovation

These relationships are very useful.

1. They include everyone, they exclude no one.

2. They are personal enough to reflect individual value system yet discrete enough to not contradicting the value system of another.

The question now resides in how we define productivity, that is a much simpler, more efficient, and far wiser problem to be arguing about. Besides, a singles solution solves 4 problems.

Cory Doctorow in Seattle sponsored by The Stranger (Newspaper)

Activist, Science fiction writer, and blogger Cory Doctorow spoke at in Seattle to a full house at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. He performed a reading from his latest book, “For The Win”. Cory has an interesting sense of abstraction. He’ll spot a trend – or collection of trends – and extrapolates them into the future dutifully revealing all the complexities of the human condition.

For The Win

His reading centered on the “exploitation” of young adults who are hired to play online games where they work to achieve levels, rewards, virtual currency, and game status which is then sold to rich Western players. Some players become highly valued for their knowledge inventory of game world monsters, strategies, power points, and the uncanny ability to assess the knowledge inventory of their opponents who’ll get suckered into a virtual dual with predictable consequences. The kids literally “mine gold”. As always, gold corrupts the most innocent hearts resulting in situations and behaviors at least as strange as the game itself.

The Activist

Cory has long been an activist for digital publication rights and rules. Not surprisingly, the Q&A was dominated by privacy, security, and exploitation of information issues. Cory recently closed his Facebook Account which caused quite a stir in the blogsphere. Ironically, every big name in world-class privacy violation had recently been in the news for Mr. Doctorow to eloquently spit roast on an open flame. It was quite entertaining.

There is a reason that it’s called Monetization

While Mr. Doctorow did not specifically mention this, what struck me most was hearing him talk around this emerging battle for control of people’s information. While this idea is not new, the reasons behind it may be new. As Money is losing it’s capacity to store and control value, human knowledge is increasing it’s capacity to store and control value – this is hugely accelerated by social media. The desperate attempt to control people’s information is really a proxy for the desperate attempt to control knowledge, therefore to re-control the value that money once represented.

Unfortunately, controlling information also destroys value.

People actively participate and share on social media to achieve levels, rewards, and status which is then sold to corporations in the form of predictive marketing by third party aggregators like Facebook. Some people become highly valued for their knowledge inventory of real-world game perils, influencers, and social mavens and become celebrities of the craft. Many develop the uncanny ability to assess the knowledge inventory of their opponents who get suckered into a virtual dual with predictable results.

Suddenly the News started sounding like one of Cory’s Science Fiction Novels…

Event Sponsored by: The Stranger

(Editor: I’ll be speaking at the following event on June 4th. If you are in the area or blogging issues in this genre of ideas, let me know and drop by. Look up the other speakers and you’ll find an extraordinary group of visionaries preparing to make this PM Cluster Summit a truly enlightening event.)

Enterprise Prediction Markets Summit:
Leading Enterprise Prediction Markets

Friday, June 4 2010 8:00am – 5:00pm

EVENT LOCATION: The Boeing Company: Integrated Aircraft Systems Lab Building 2-122, Conference Room #102L2 (Conference Center) 7701-14th Avenue South Seattle, Washington 98108 USA

EVENT REGION: US –Pacific Northwest

EVENT PURPOSE: This summit is for executives, directors, mangers, users and practitioners having immediate needs to apply collective intelligence networks and enterprise prediction market mechanisms to advance business outcomes through mastery of collective wisdom.

EVENT SPEAKERS: Dennis P. O’Donoghue (Boeing), Sharon Chiarella (Amazon.com), Arik Johnson (Aurora WDC), Dan Robles (The Ingenesist Project), Dr. Richard O. Zerbe, Jr. (Evans School of Public Affairs), Christel Alvarez, ConsensusPoint, George Neumann, George Daly Research Professor of Economics, (Iowa), Olav Opedal (Microsoft, Internet Security)

EVENT COST: $99

EVENT WEBSITE: http://pmclusters.com/Prediction%20Markets/SEA10.htm

EVENT CONTACT NAME: Jennifer Hulett

EVENT CONTACT PHONE: 714-784-0754

CONTACT EMAIL: Jennifer.Hulett@pmclusters.com

MUST ONE RSVP: Yes! No on-site registration

ATTIRE: Business Casual

BUSINESS CARDS: YES – Bring Business Cards

EVENT NOTES: The conference sessions are focused, practical and conversational. They are for executives, directors, mangers, users and practitioners having immediate needs to apply collective intelligence networks and market mechanisms to advance business outcomes through mastery of collective wisdom.

ORGANIZATION NOTES: The Prediction Market Clusters, founded in 2004, are the global industry commons and open community for prediction markets and collective intelligence networks worldwide. The open, agnostic network is a focused collaboration of vendors, academia, traders, users, developers, markets, regulators and stakeholders. The goal is to provide awareness, diffusion, adoption and pull-through for enterprise and consumer prediction markets. The Prediction Markets Cluster is the worldwide Next Practices network for collective intelligence networks practices, tools and theories.

PM Clusters

Prediction Market Clusters
http://www.pmclusters.com

Money is a convenient way to store and exchange value. Unless the world enters into a free trade agreement with Martians, Earth is the physical boundary of all existing value.

No matter what a monetary currency is called or how it behaves in the financial system, by definition, it can never represent any more than the value that exists on Earth.

Value is reflected by  ”Market Capitalization” of corporation, Roads, Bridges, infrastructure, armies, education, food, real estate, and all so-called tangible things. Intangibles such as human resources, public assets, and shared natural resources are only valuable to the extent that people depend on those resources for survival. Not surprisingly, “tangible” means all things that can be controlled and “intangible” means everything else.

However, if you look at how all value is created, it all eventually boils down to human knowledge.  All control and influence over human knowledge boils down to the individual. All Value on Earth is stored between our collective ears.  In order to fully assess the global financial system, there must be a corresponding global inventory of human knowledge.  There is no body of any influence in the world proposing this as a means of defining solvency.

Meanwhile, the social media revolution is slowly introducing a global knowledge inventory to financial markets with effects that are becoming increasingly profound. In case you have not noticed, money no longer represents value, it represents the control of value.  Social media is disrupting who, what, when, where, and how all the value can or cannot be controlled.

With every new exotic financial maneuver, the monetary currency becomes increasingly divorced from the value of human productivity.  With every new advancement in social media applications, human productivity is becoming less controlled by money.  Watch the news – the battle fields are all about who what when where and how someone can control what is between your ears.

Not surprisingly, governments, marketers, advertisers and even academia are the first and most public victims of losing control of their message.  Their message is being re-written by forces outside their control.

This is serious – Don’t let anyone try to convince you that the value of social currency is not hedging the value of financial currency.

Today, we are on the cusp of the greatest revolution that the world has ever known. The control of money may go to the banks but the control of value will not.  It will happen when people decide it will happen.  Perhaps they already have…2012 anyone?

Tara Hunt; Future of Money and Technology Summit 2010

In 1999, Cluetrain Manifesto flipped everything we knew about online behavior on it’s head. The integration of information being published on the Internet reached a tipping point indelibly articulated for all time by Doc Searles: “Markets are Conversations”

The Whuffie

In 2003, Cory Doctorow published Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom where he introduced the concept of Whuffie as a form of reputation currency that accounts for social value in a fictional future society. In Cory’s thesis, people who produce things that represent social value were awarded Whuffie. People who produce anti-social value were punished Whuffie. The twist was that everyone has equal say as to who is awarded Whuffie and who is punished Whuffie. In retrospect, the concept of Whuffie, stands today an important metaphor marking the beginning of the social media revolution.

The Whuffie Factor

In her book The Whuffie Factor (2009), Tara Hunt identifies the facts of a reputation backed exchange among real people, communities, companies, and social interactions – with all their associated human complexities. By the gift of wisdom or intuition, Tara’s choice of the modifier “Factor” is an important distinction. In mathematics, a “Factor” is a multiplier against some other quantity.

Social Capital

In Tara’s book, Whuffie is roughly synonymous with ‘new’ social capital - a hugely complex financial instrument that is currently emerging before the eyes of all practitioners of social media. In 2010, everyone still struggles to articulate social capital with a 1999 vocabulary of new conversations living in old financial markets. There simply is no word for the phenomenon of social media daily manifesting in so many new and valuable ways – it’s just too new.

Yes, Tara has critics, but most I believe are short sighted. The term “Whuffie” is as good a word as any, so deal with it. The term “Factor” is what Tara is really talking about, so lets move on.

Love ‘em or Hate ‘em, Whuffie is a Derivative.

From Wikipedia: a derivative is any agreement or contract that is not based on a real, or true, exchange ie: There is nothing tangible like money, or a product, that is being exchanged. For example, a person goes to the grocery store, exchanges a currency (money) for a commodity (say, an apple). The exchange is complete when both parties have something tangible.

If the purchaser had called the store and asked for the apple to be held for one hour while the purchaser drives to the store, and the seller agrees, then a derivative has been created. The agreement (derivative) is derived from a proposed exchange (trade money for apple in one hour, not now).

Infinite Possibilities

In short, the current value of the relationship is backed by the past and future value of the many other relationship(s) formed. The twist is that social media has vastly equalized people’s impact on the true value of relationships – this remains consistent with Doctorow’s thesis. Tara takes us a step further where the underlying asset can be generalized as simply “value” where the Whuffie Factor is a derivative against this value. This is consistent with Searles’ thesis.

Social Currency

In my opinion, The Whuffie Factor will become one of the seminal books of its time period. Indeed there are many excellent books in the genre of collecting, building, engaging, storing and exchanging trust, reputation, or influence in Social Media. What sets Tara’s book apart is that, like Doc and Cory, she had the guts to call it something real.

Elevate the conversation or get out of the way

Tara Hunt effectively nails this profound abstraction to the floor so that the rest of us can now walk through to define and articulate the Holy Grail of our generation; a true Social Currency. Bravo Tara, Bravo

To Accelerate Serendipity, that’s the Whuffie Factor.

Photo Source/Credit; Jesse Lara

Micki Krimmel, CEO; NeighborGoods

When I moved to LA out of college (many years ago), I would always pick up a magazine called The Recycler. The Recycler was a used-stuff magazine localized by proximity in a vast and complicated City of Los Angeles. I bought my motorcycle, skies, concert tickets, furniture, and tools – all at incredible savings.

After a while, I began to notice that most of my friends – the people who I rode with, skied with, went to concerts with, and shared hobbies with – were in some indirect way connected through The Recycler. I soon began to strategically use The Recycler to buy, sell and trade stuff for the sole purpose of meeting interesting people.  I was finding parties, events, and communities that I would never have been exposed to otherwise. When the Aerospace industry crashed, I turned to my community for employment. It flat out worked and I experienced a remarkable transition into … etc.

Good Neighborhoods start with good interaction

My new favorite social networking concept is from Micki Krimmel, CEO of NeighborGoods, LLC. I had the pleasure of meeting Micki at the Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco. NeighborGoods is a brilliantly simple concept where people in a neighborhood can list items that they are willing to lend or rent to others. This application is scaled to a highly localized community in our social landscape otherwise scaled to the automobile, commercial centers, and the Global Internet itself.

The Social Media Imperative

It has long been my contention of Social Media that nothing happens until the rubber meets the road; where people get together to actually produce something. In fact, the ‘corporation’ is an example of a hyper-local environment. It is also my prediction that as financial constraints sever the ties of traditional corporate structures, many of the functions of corporations and government are shifting to social media.

For this reason, applications such as NeighbborGoods will serve – no, they must serve – a greater role in unifying communities. I know this sounds really clinical, but Micki’s work is supported by urban theory luminaries such as Jane Jacobs, Richard Florida, and Robert Putnam.

NeighborGoods from sparky rose on Vimeo.

GNP: Gross Neighborhood Product

The problem is that outside the construct of a corporation, there is no accounting system for the social value that strong neighborhoods produce. There is no measure in America’s gross domestic product for the value generated by unified communities. There is no line item on the balance sheet of industrial and corporate concerns for active, diverse, and well-balanced communities.

Yet, tangential evidence abounds.

There are plenty of data that suggest that vibrant and unified communities attract active and productive people. Companies locate jobs to productive communities. Home prices are more stable in these communities. Crime and delinquency is reduced. Silicon Valley itself is cited as a perfect mixture of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital in it’s communities. The best way to decrease the size of government, create jobs and create wealth is to unify neighborhoods.

Use it or lose it

While the dollar-denominated monetization of NeighborGoods may appear modest, however, the true social value that NeighborGoods brings into a community is off the charts.

Every municipality, chamber of commerce, economic development agency or anyone claiming to politically liberate or conserve anything in America should be looking at solutions designed and developed by visionary social entrepreneurs and community leaders like Micki Krimmel and NeighborGoods.

]]> http://www.ingenesist.com/general-info/neighborgoods-good-neighbors.html/feed 0 http://www.ingenesist.com/general-info/future-of-money-and-technology-summit-non-quantifiable-exchanges.html http://www.ingenesist.com/general-info/future-of-money-and-technology-summit-non-quantifiable-exchanges.html#comments Sat, 08 May 2010 09:00:26 +0000 Dan Robles http://www.ingenesist.com/?p=3206

The above video playlist consists of the full 6 parts of the expert panel discussing non-quantifiable exchanges as recorded on April 26 2010 at the Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco. The complete video is about 55 minutes. I encourage you to watch it because very few discussions about the future of money approach the subject with as much experience, introspection, and clarity as this historic panel has.

This is not another doom-gloom room – but a truly optimistic model of a future financial system built on a platform of social media. These panelists represent some of the top thought leaders, visionaries, and practitioners in the area of “Local Social” – where nothing happens until the rubber meets the road. It was a great privilege for me to be a part of this esteemed group.

Panelists:

Tara Hunt; Social Media Strategist, Author: The Whuffie Factor
Daniel Robles, Director, The Ingenesist Project
Micki Krimmel, CEO; NeighborGoods
Chris Heuer, CEO, Social Media Club

Moderator: Tara Hunt

The future of Money and Technology Summit is one of the most important conferences to emerge as a result of the accelerated innovation and organizational re-structuring forming as a result of increasing constraints on the global financial system. We all look forward to another excellent conference next year!

There are two sides to the Social Value Equation – the creation of social value and the destruction of social value. There are countless examples where innovation destroys the value of prior technologies. There are also many instances where “progress”, perhaps in the form of a freeway or public structure, divides a community where strong social bonds once acted.

In the presentations that I give, I often cite the value of a bridge over a waterway. The bridge may cost 50 million dollars to build and maintain, but it increases human productivity by 50 billion in the life span of the bridge. We often cite a factor of 1:1000 for the valuation of the dollar to social currency.

Contrary to that, Jane Jacobs (renowned urban theorist and community activist) may argue, the bridge (and roadway) may divide a community or neighborhood. Where the community may once have been scaled for foot traffic, the new boundary may require a car to circumvent. The new road may divert old commercial traffic in many ways that are bad for a community. In such a case, the social capital destroyed by the bridge is in fact the dominant financial outcome.

So here I am, I just destroyed my own best analogy to demonstrate a point. Without vetting the complete transaction in the form of social currency, net “progress” of any kind is as easy to leverage backwards as well as forward at a rate of 1000:1.

Communities that seek to stop a disruptive development program will often organize to protest urban development decisions. Unfortunately, they are usually up against a calculation of economic impact that is dominated by dollar denominated currency. Without a “Social Currency” of their own, quantified and convertible to dollars, communities are doomed. Law suits will play out in the same manner where damages are non-quantifiable, and therefore non-existent.

Jane Jacobs also writes that a community that can place a value on their social currency – although I do not think she explicitly called it that – and can act to preserve value or increase value by their actions. Many communities from Greenwich Village to Boston have thrived under a social currency diverting projects away from sensitive communities. The Big Dig went underground in Boston much like the The viaduct replacement project will do the same Seattle. Granted, the Seattle project mainly preserves water and mountain views for million dollar condos, this concept, in fact, would be more critical to poorer communities than wealthy ones.

Obviously there is no way to impede progress. All innovations destroy prior value in the creation of greater value. The danger is when Wall Street priorities can dominate Social Priorities. Capitalism, for all the greatness it creates, is amoral. Capitalism is committed to dollar currency, and devoid of social obligation except to the degree that obligation is profitable – that is where social currency converts to capital currency.

Through the magic of the fractional reserve system, Banks create money backed by debt vs. deposits at a factor of 1:1000. Therefore, the convertibility of social currency with a capital currency at a similar factor of 1000:1 is essentially the only effective way to convert Social Priorities into Wall Street Priorities.

It seems ironic that people are using Facebook to urge others to quit Facebook. If they take their own advice, they would no longer be able to give their golden advice to others. If we took their advice, we would not be able to heed the advice of others in this matter.

Is Facebook too big to fail?

The human race is becoming a super-organism of connectivity. Companies like Facebook are duplicating the functions that governments have performed – by various methods with diverse consequences – since the dawn of civilization. There is nothing new about Government organizing society and pandering to corporations. There is nothing new with people protesting governance. There is also nothing new with forms of governance being replaced by an evolution of human consciousness.

The Next Wave of Innovation in Social Media?

First; Facebook itself has no value other than the value of the people and their networks. As such, Facebook behaves like a financial derivative – it is not the actual item of value, it is simply a utility contract representing value.

Second; Facebook can only deal in information – it cannot deal in “knowledge”. Your information is a derivative of your “knowledge”, not the knowledge itself. The real value of a social network is in what lies between the ears of the members. Therefore, one way to encrypt the information is to encrypt the knowledge.

Third; Suppose that your “resume” were coded as a list of numbers and operations representing the quality and quantity of the things you know. Suppose the people in your network were also coded in a similar fashion. As such, your network, would be a combination of these codes. If you really “know” someone, it would be easy to find them. If you don’t know someone, it would be impossible to find them.

Fourth: The game changes because the incentive now is to “Mind Meld” with real people. Marketers can only then profit by telling the absolute truth about what the product is and the affinity that the product serves – anything else defaults to a “no-sale”. The person can then set filters to be notified of products and services that can make them more productive in pursuing the things that they love and care about – their community.

An Emerging Evolution

Many People cite Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) as the start of this higher consciousness. Cory Doctorow introduced a concept currency called the Whuffie (2003). Tara Hunt, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Seth Godin, Clay Shirky, Jay Deragon, and many others expanded the idea of trust and reputation in the formation of social capital and associated social reorganization. As these ideas are reconstructed, especially in a form that is independent of the construct of the Corporation, Social Capital is emerging as a highly complex instrument – not unlike a derivative.

If not human knowledge, then what?

Now we notice that Facebook, Whuffie, and Wall Street Dollars are all built on derivatives where the underlying value is human knowledge. That is where all the man-made value on Earth is stored, period. The value stored by Human Knowledge hedges all bets. Nobody has a monopoly on it, but everyone is trying to figure out how. To do so would be to destroy it.

Code knowledge to set it free.

Despite all of the grumbling about Facebook, Wall Street, and all issues Political, there is a clear path toward a higher purpose in all of this. We should ponder this and be quite grateful.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the Future of Money and Technology Summit 2010 was Paul Revere. There were many innovations that seek to change banking as we know it using a new denomination called social currency. This article (and more to follow) will identify the difference between two business methods – one that squanders social currency, and one that liberates social currency.

m-Via, is a money remittance company focused on allowing consumers to use any mobile phone to make international money transfers. m-Via focuses on the huge flow of remittances from the US to Mexico. I am personally directly aware of the challenges related to money transfers across international borders specifically Mexico; bank fees, extra ID, teller costs, time, risk, conversion fees, etc.

It is obvious to me that M-Via is looking very closely at how, why, and when people interact with a the banking system. The Banks are doing the same thing. The difference is that Banks seek activity thresholds and then design limits that seem to trigger artificial and exorbitant fees. Instead, m-Via seeks to reduce the friction in the transaction to meet the lives, schedule, priorities and concerns of the customer.

m-Via is trading in social currency

Banks are squeezing the least deserving by charging hidden fees for services that cost them nothing. For example; most people transfer small amounts of money on a steady cash flow schedule. Most people can’t spend the time to travel to a western Union on one side on each side of the transaction where travel expenses and security issues may be a constraint. Money is often redistributed among family members once in the target country. This is the reality of people, not an opportunity to set artificial thresholds to drive profit.

Paying money to a bank for the privilege of paying money to the bank…what?

m-Via drives a social currency by reducing risk, increasing yield, and helping people organize in the manner that suits their reality – not that of the banking industry. Most people who need money, don’t necessarily have the ‘money’ to absorb high transaction costs of time, risk, and inflexibility. Current banking practices extol a high social currency cost that amounts to “negative” interest rate against the consumer – in other words, people need to pay the bank in order to pay the bank to use the bank.

m-Via is already seeing a week over week growth of 15% in participation. I expect this growth to continue especially as many other technologies arrive to build out the infrastructure of transactions and business methods that are supported by a social currency.

Disclosure; m-Via was a sponsor to the Future of Money Summit and Technology but has no formal relationship or position in the Conversational Currency Blog.

What is a Non-quantifiable Exchange?

The term “Non-Quantifiable Exchanges” was the title of a panel session that I attended at the recent Future of Money and Technology Summit. In researching the subject, it appears that a “non-quantifiable exchange” is more notable for what it is not rather than what it is. Case in point – after the precursory Google Search, the term and a modern definition does not exist – but the room was full !?!?!

With all of the talk about cloud sourcing economies and romantic notions of emerging organic currencies, it would seems that people could just get along fine without a central mechanism for storage and exchange of value. Instead, each individual would assess the value of the transaction in terms of what it means to him or her. Currency could then take the form of a person’s reputation, productivity and general usefulness for assessing value and helping others to do so in their community (reference)

If it’s not an asset…or a liability, then what is it?

Traditional valuation systems for businesses immediately start tugging at a host of standard assumptions for measuring “performance” – many of which are no longer meaningful. Land, Labor, and capital cannot be deployed to the same efficacy whereas social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital are being liberated to social media with astonishing results.

Nobody can produce an accurate ROI for social media, however, social media presence is becoming a substantial factor in the valuation of a company.

Likewise, reverse access to personal information about customers on Facebook is both the lifeblood and poison of new engagement marketing. The general public have become “external intangibles” to the business plan – where the heck is that on a balance sheet?

Goldman Sachs claims that those who bought their worst subprime products were sophisticated investors whose obligation it is to understand the quality of the underlying components. Their defense is that the customer failed, not the system of disclosure.…what? How long would Dell last if this had been their response for poor quality?

Cloud Economics or Inversion System?

Vapor is quantified by the balloon that contains it. A cloud is quantified by the weather system that surrounds it. The atmosphere is quantified by the mass of the planet and it’s proximity to a sun, and so on. Therefore, the term “non-quantifiable”, and the word “exchange”, are mutually exclusive. If there is an exchange, there is quantification.

Suppose I was to suggest that value stored in social currency may exceed the value stored by financial currency. The paradigm shift now becomes, who quantifies whom?

I had a personal breakthrough recently at the Future of Money and Technology Summit. I sat on an excellent Panel discussing non-quantifiable exchanges for an audience of about 70-80 very intelligent people.

Non Quantifiable Exchanges
Moderator: Tara Hunt, The Whuffie Factor
Chris Heuer, Social Media Club
Dan Robles, The Ingenesist Project
Micki Krimmel, NeighborGoods

I will write a post for each of these incredible panelists in the near future because each are building out the infrastructure of the new economy just by doing what they like to do most.  Soon everyone will be doing the same.

My experience

For one hour, we engaged in a remarkable conversation together. For me, it was a watershed event – I grew personally, socially, and intellectually.

Throughout the 16-year history of The Ingenesist Project, my challenge has always been to explain and demonstrate how the simple act of a conversation among informed people does, in fact, create value in a process that extends back to an intensely complicated production system. The value contained, stored, and exchanged by people is a direct result of their accumulated past and the interaction with their own environment. Until this summit – those two ends would rarely meet.

For example:

Reaching into your wallet and pulling out a dollar bill to purchase a can of tuna fish may seem like a very simple transaction. It is, in fact, intensely complicated from the funding of the fishing vessel, compliance with international law, packaging and distribution, all the way to the creation of the dollar in your wallet amplified through the miracles of the fractional reserve system. It is deeply complicated.

When we bite into our tuna sandwich, we take this complexity for granted. We are in fact, consuming the strenuous articulation of a financial system disguised as the simplicity of the checkout stand, the application of mayonnaise, and aroma of toasted wheat bread.

Similarly, for any meaningful conversation, the events prior and the effects after the conversation, for bettor or worse, reinforce the system through which future conversations will be shared.

While it would have been inappropriate to deep dive on this panel – I was able to transact effectively in this conversational currency system. I was able to come closer to communicating this comparison between the financial transaction and the knowledge transaction in a public forum than likely ever before. For this, I am deeply grateful.

No matter how you slice it:

1. The vast majority of value of an exchange has a history far greater, and future effect far longer lasting, than the transaction itself.

2. When the production systems become more integrated with markets value is created, huge shifts in value can be transferred.

3. Conversation is currency

This, I believe is the future of money and technology

The subject of privacy and anonymity are again rising up with the latest move by Facebook to integrate updates across the Internet onto the Facebook platform.

Conspiracy theories about Facebook and the CIA continue to flourish.  Meanwhile, the marketing and advertising industry seems poised to reboot their dwindling influence under a new cloak and dagger of social media data hustling and predictive demographics rather than playing by new rules of engagement.

Money is one thing and value is another.

I am astonished that people willingly and freely give up huge volumes of information about themselves when they really don’t have to.  In earlier times, marketers and advertisers would pay a great deal of money for far less information that people give them for free.  People do not understand the value that is stored between their ears or how easy it would be to set up an alternate economy that trades in social currencies.

If advertisers can pay someone to cold call me, to graph my data across the web, or sneak around my social networks, then they can certainly pay me to answer the phone.

The Ingenesist Project specifies an Innovation Economy built on the platform of social media.  While that thesis is extensive, let me summarize that the primordial soup of the Innovation Economy is called the Knowledge Asset Inventory.  Think about it as your resume represented in “code” not unlike the Dewey Decimal system represents the contents of your High School library.

Anonymous assets

One essential element of the new economic paradigm is the ability to combine knowledge assets so that innovation becomes predictable and therefore capitalized. However, a side effect is that such code makes the individual containers anonymous.  Marketers will have to pay you to find you.  here is why:

Now think about it this way – if you remove 20-dollar bill from your wallet to buy a Latte, you do not know (nor do you care) whether the last transaction performed by that 20-dollar bill was a donation to a charitable cause or a drug deal.  The dollar bill is anonymous – but you, as an asset, are not.

Social Currency is a Social Imperative

Dollar denominated money is a system to control social currency at a leverage factor of 1000:1.  Take away the dollar currency, and the leverage disappears.  Add a social currency and the national debt disappears.

Almost as a bonus, it is an absolute impossibility for marketers and advertisers to store and exchange value denominated in a social currency without extraordinary changes to the way they engage their clients….like, uhm, …don’t waste our time.

If we are smart, we can shut down the privacy issue in a hurry – anonymity of knowledge assets is the key.

Brian Zisk; Producer of the FMTS

I was invited to present at the Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco on Monday April 26. Representing The Ingenesist Project, I’ll be seated on a panel with two very important futurists; Chris Heuer and Micki Krimmel discussing non-quantifiable exchanges. The ever esteemed and respectable Ms. Tara Hunt will be moderating the session.

From the FMTS website:

The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution providers, service providers, and organizations who work with them at the convergence of cash and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving money ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment.

What I find especially interesting is the incredible collection of technologies for the storage of value and the amazing group of entrepreneurs corresponding to the exchange of value in future markets. The definition of currency is something that is used as a medium for the storage and exchange of valuable. As such, it would be quite the understatement that the FMTS will be a valuable experience.

A great deal of thought, planning, and money has gone into these ventures and now they are together in one room. This can only be attributed to the increasing inability of the current financial system to function as an equitable means to store and exchange value that drives entrepreneurs to new conclusions.

When I witnessed the Mexican Devaluation, the social reaction was to empty out the local WalMart. Those “goods” such as clothing, appliances, and furnishings became an intermediate currency that stored the prior day’s peso value for exchange with tomorrow’s market. The same is true for most financial crises with significant devaluation events in recent history.

The clear and present difference is Social Media.

We now see people busy at work to replace the old currency with improved systems and tools for the storage and exchange of value before the actual calamity arrives. In effect, the new systems are hedging the old one.

It will take many years for the implications and importance of events such as the Future of Money and Technology Summit to make it into the case studies of the major B-school curricula. Ironically, that does not mean that real history is not being made – or shall I say, old history is not being re-made.

So please consider joining us at the conference (details). If you are attending, please, please, please, find me and let’s talk about everything. As always, thank you dear reader because ultimately you are the only reason that people want to talk to me

The interior exterior:

Force Field Analysis in Social Sciences analysis reflected on how things are accomplished or hindered by the way that people internalize external experiences in the process of their own psychological development.

Now, suppose that an individual goes out and influences social situations in their community.  Also suppose that social media could amplify the persons exterior impact – this would likewise impact internal psychology, etc., setting up a form of polarity between two positions.  The greater the difference (diversity) in those positions, the greater the potential (energy state) of the outcome.

The “Local Social” Force Field

I met with some old friends yesterday.  He’s an professional engineer and she is a psychologist.  They are also winemakers and very active members of the local Rotary club. She sits on 3 local boards from children’s museum, to local hospital, symphony, etc.  He is a tireless volunteer for several charitable organizations and runs a Haiti Earthquake relief project.  At least one of them is mentioned in the local paper several times per year.

They Show up.

These types of folks constantly cross paths in a small city and become friends and collaborators. They buy each other’s raffle tickets and auction items at the fund raisers.  They laugh easily and heartily.  They are generous with their time. They always have something interesting and insightful to say.  They are constantly offering to make a connection, facilitate an introduction or offer a up tidbit of inside information to the newcomer.

Now, they are slowly migrating to Facebook.

What the heck do they need social media for?  They don’t need to expand their reach.  They don’t need to market themselves.  They don’t need to build a community – they are community.  They don’t need to have a blog to establish themselves as experts or sell a “10 steps” book, or insulate themselves from public opinion.

Something entirely different is happening.

Social media is about to enter a new phase called “local social”.  The hyperlinks that bind the web will become the hyperlinks that bind a community.  The difference is that hyperlinks in “Global Social” environment converge down to specific information, Hyperlinks in Local Social will diverge up to diverse knowledge assets.

For example; The local engineer’s blog will share links with the winemaker’s blog, the community college blog, the mayor’s blog, the chamber of commerce blog, the dentist’s blog, the insurance agent’s blog, the banker’s blog, … etc.

Social media will produce extraordinary results in “Local Social” by picking up where the traditional economy is faltering.  Local social rewards high integrity and punishes low integrity. Local Social will drive fraud prevention, security, job creation, innovation diffusion, asset allocation, wealth distribution, community activism, entrepreneurism, and social services. The Local Social forcefield creates, stores, and exchanges real value.

This is not a social networking event, oh, no, no, no.  Nothing ever happens until people get together and build something.  The new economic paradigm is not a social network, it’s a social forcefield. Get in it or stay out of the way.

I don’t often run a full repost from other people on this blog, but this post by Seth Godin was just too rich to leave alone.

I have been posting a lot lately on the irony of social media devolving to spammers spamming spammers, especially the recent Twitter plan to charge advertisers for jumping to the front of the line by exploiting data provided voluntarily by the users (Twitter Me Elmo).

All of this tells us that Social Media is up against the ropes on the monetization plan. As a result it is starting to consume itself. This may be the first indication that the Dollar is NOT the currency of trade in the social media space, it’s a yet unnamed Social Currency. This definitely tells us that something new must happen soon.

Of course, The Ingenesist Project specifies an alternate financial system that can accommodate a social currency, but the lure of the almighty dollar remains strong enough to blind the choir itself and out-pitch the humble whisper new economic paradigm evangelists.

Anyway, here is Seth’s post in it’s entirety. Buy his books and read his blog, get his feed for daily email enlightenment. Seth, I apologize in advance for posting without your explicit permission…etc…just trying to “keep the convo rolling….”

*****

Cannibalism and spam

By Seth Godin:

So, these two cannibals are eating a clown, and one says to the other, “does this taste funny to you?”

We don’t often have conversations about cannibalism. We don’t trade recipes or talk about health issues. That’s because it’s off the table, not permitted, inconceivable.

Marketers should feel the same way about spamming people. Spamming them by email, by text or yes, by calling their cell phones with a robot, repeatedly, just because it’s cheap and because they can.

If anyone should know better, it’s the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. And yet, not only did they spam thousands of people by phone, they want us to “keep the convo rolling”. And when I spoke to their Executive Director, she had a hard time understanding that what they were doing was spam.

Spam is unanticipated, impersonal, irrelevant junk I don’t want to get. Not only that, it costs them less to send it than it takes me to figure out what it is and deal with it. That doesn’t scale. In fact, it destroys the medium.

Why would anyone join, pay their dues, go to their meetings or want to engage with an organization that’s willing to cross a line like this? Even once? (and then brag about it!) Maybe I’m getting cranky, but the relentless march of marketers into our lives is really getting to me.

In case you missed the first part of our show, the future of marketing is based on permission. It’s based on sending messages to people who want to get them, who choose to get them, who would miss you if you didn’t send them. It’s not easy and it’s not cheap to earn permission, but so what? This is my attention, not yours, and if you want to use it for a while, please earn the privilege.

PS If I ran Twitter, I’d build my new ad service about a socially acceptable way for corporate users to build large lists of followers, people who would give permission to get news and discounts and insights from advertisers. Twitter knows who likes what and they have permission from users to be a bridge between the user and those that might want to talk to them. That’s a powerful place to be.

Using cheap technology to spam people is not.

Dorothy the goldfish is imagining Elmo reading his Twitter stream… and what would it say? Who would he follow? And who would follow Elmo?

Elmo; “Computer, who’s following me on Twitter? Starbucks, Microsoft, and WalMart? Hey wait, Twitter is selling advertising. What’s up with that? Let’s ask Mr. Noodle.”

Mr. Noodle (in mime) “Everyone is promoting something on Twitter otherwise nobody would use it.”

Murray Monster: “Hey, I thought that Twitter was supposed to give everyone an even playing field. Otherwise, nobody would go to school to learn how to actually produce anything. Ovejita!!!

Ovejita (translated from Spanish): “Yeah, everyone spends time and energy building social capital in their community. Now Twitter lets rich guys can come along and just buy access. Why then should the rest of us work so hard?”

Big Bird: “Sponsored Tweets allow Brands to buy a seat at the head of the line. What about my Tweets? Does this build or diminish my social equity?”

Grouch: “Yeah, isn’t that great, Twitter is built on social currency. Now you don’t have to produce social capital, you can just buy in. Watch the social currency devalue!!”

Count Von Count; “ah ah ah, I can count the people leaving Twitter, ah, ah, ah… 50, 40, 30, 20 million,… ah ah ah”

Abby Cadabby; “I’m comfortable with who I am in a pink dress and can just cast a barrage of nasty Tweet spells on those unfair Tweeters”.

Baby Bear: “The only ones who really benefit are National and International Brands – what do they care about what happens here on Sesame Street, let alone in the forest where grandpa bear still lives?”

Grouch: “Quit complaining, the big Twitter moments will be revolutions, airplane crashes, assassinations, natural disasters, celebrity indiscretions, political extremisms, etc. I know that only the most respectable Grouchy brands will jump into any trash can that’s burning with eyeballs….can you say Voyeur?”

Burt and Ernie: “Who said Voyeur?”

Gordon the Shopkeeper: “Then there is the subject of conflict of interest. Can a brand dispel, displace, or disproportion negative Tweets by purchasing out the social media space? Will Mr. Hooper’s store have to buy tweets just to be stay in business?”

Elmo: “Thanks guys. If Twitter makes a little bit of money and goes public, they will eventually want to make more money and more money and more money until people are fighting over the next Christmas Toy Craze. Will this invite a competitor, a disruptive technology, or speculators? Let’s ask a Baby.”

Baby: [confused look]

Elmo: “Thanks baby, What does the future hold? Even Elmo has to worry about profit margins on character marketing. It’s only a matter of time before I will Tweet and my tweets will be followed – but the question becomes; by whom?”