SilverBulleits

More Thinking Inside the (White) Box

As one who had mixed feelings about both candidates last fall, it's important I think to acknowledge budding accomplishments as I see them.  And, while I still don't subscribe to all of the new Administration's priorities, no one can question the Obama team's extraordinary fidelity to their platform and campaign promises as well as their pragmatic flexibility in pursuing them.

Yet another remarkable aspect of the Obama crowd is the energy and intelligence that they seem to be bringing to the job.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending some time with one of them: Associate Director, White House Office of Public Engagement--Matt Flavin.  Matt it seems is working hard to find ways to materially help "wounded warriors" and Veterans generally. And, I was of course thrilled to have an opportunity to present our Health over IP (HoIP) platform for consideration.

`more on HoIP in a future post...

One of Matt's questions involves a familiar concern over the Quality and reliability of Web 2.0 in general and UGC in particular.  Specifically, he asked, how much vetting could a service like HoIP have--i.e., one that relies upon end-users to help motivate and inform other end-users?

Not an easy question; and there are a lot of ways to address it (e.g., as HoIP does). But, in the end the answer lies in how much you want to Trust your users.  And, as Jeff Jarvis eloquently points out, the evidence is clear that Volume clearly flows to those [web services] that do.  And,with Volume comes "vetting", and with that comes Trust and Security.

I'm wondering, therefore, if the 3D orthogonal relationship (that I described previously a the "Bachman Factor") may be expanded further? Specifically, I'm wondering if Volume and Quality may be directly linked as well?  In other words, as Wikipedia and other sites have proved, the Wisdom Of Crowds is real!  The more people actively intreracting on a topic seems, uneringly,...unerring.

So, I suppose, the faux-math and accompanying illustration  may be edited as follows... What do you think?

Thinking INSIDE The Box

I've been thinking a lot lately about the Semantic Web in general and the pinnacle of its various protocols in particular--i.e., Trust.  Call it a blinding flash of the obvious, but it occurs to me that "trust" is one of those often re-licensed words that, accordingly, means a lot of different things: things that can only be fully defined within a specific context.

But, rather than digress further into the semantics of trust here, I was struck by another, truly blinding, insight as I read through Jeff Jarvis' excellent new book What Would Google Do? 

http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Google-Jeff-Jarvis/dp/0061709719/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242001215&sr=8-1

Specifically, Mr. Jarvis notes that, in the new Web world, Control drives Trust; in other words, participatory Web 2.0 types tend to flock to sites that seem to trust them (by yielding as much control as possible) and they flee from the rest.

This idea then completed another neural circuit in my limited-capacity brain, as it reminded me of a recent conversation with "the father of healthcare consumerism"--Ron Bachman

http://www.healthcarevisions.net/page/page/2641658.htm

And, as Ron pointed out, the inverse relationship between Trust and Security (i.e., the less secure we feel, the more likely we are to trust any leader that can convincingly promise to restore it) I suggested that there's orthogonal relationship here to control as well! That is, the same anxious individual will yield control (and freedom) as well. But, by the same token, an expansion of trust begets an expansion in both security and perceived control!

Thus, the counter-intuitive demi-discovery here (at least for me) is that effective web volume can be exponentially expanded (i.e., the sum of all three dimensions depicted below) with each incremental expansion of any!

I'll call it the "Bachman factor."  Think about it...and, drop a comment if you'd like

 

The Semi-Final Cut (on Web 3.0)

First, I'd like to thank everyone that sent comments; I was a bit surprised that most came off-line and/or by e-mail.  Some seemed to feel that the content was (or should be) a little too proprietary (to be published upon a publicly-accessible BLOG); others, I suspect, felt that their input may have come off a  little too critical.

For my own part, I was a bit taken aback by how some of the very same passages that some loved others hated; several suggested different directions altogether! For example, several folks would have liked a little more on more conventional Web 3.0 connotations (e.g. Semantic Web, Cloud Computing, etc) but others felt that that was a waste of space and we should have spent all our time on the "conflating communities" notion.

So, in the end, the paper hasn't changed that much; and, we'd welcome more input before putting a final draft of it on the shelf. PLEASE keep the "comments" (and e-mails) coming.

Anyway, here it is...

Download Web 3.0 D2.1comp

p.s., If you're not inclined to read through the whole paper again, you may want to turn to the last page "Idea In Brief"

Download The Web 3.0 Idea In Brief2

www.III: Winds of (Web 3.0) War--Section IV

Attached is the last remaining section of the First Draft.  I've got a busy Easter weekend planned; but, I hope to compile all the suggestions within a Second Draft by early next week. Following the advice of several comments, I'm also considering a somewhat different and more condensed one-page Exec Summary. And, of course, I'll post both (the 2nd Draft & Summary) as soon as I can pull them together

Thanks so much for the help thus far (and don;t be reticent to offer more comments any time!

www.III: Winds of (Web 3.0) War--Section III

Picking up the pace a bit, attached is Section III: www.III's web 3.0 Thesis.

Comments so far (still mostly off-line) have been consistent on one point: "shorten it up a bit." As it happens, the chart contained in the last page of this section could easily drive pages upon pages of narrative of its own.  Indeed, it could be viewed as the "money slide" of the entire paper (i.e., an analysis of each cell of this 3x3 matrix could inspire its own paper).

But in the interest of concision, it doesn't.  What do you think?

In any case, tomorrow night, I'll publish the last remaining unpublished section: it will attempt to cast foregoing assertions within real-world experience.

Please say tuned; and thanks for following along this far!

www.III: Winds of (Web 3.0) War--Section II

Well, the response to sections I & IV was heartening (albeit mostly off-line); there were a number of encouraging messages and several suggestions upon how to sharpen the Intro & Next Steps message.

But, rather than get off schedule (and re-draft/republish previous sections first), attached is the first draft on the next--Section II.  As you will see, it continues along a more-or-less abstract plane; and, its purpose is primarily to ground the www.III thesis to follow: i.e., in sound management principles as well current experience from the highly-relevant open-source movement.

Please don't hesitate to comment below and/or by messaging me privately. 

Thanks again for all your interest in this project

www.III: Winds of (Web 3.0) War--A White Paper

Attached is the first and last sections (I & IV) of a White Paper that I'm working upon and which I'm looking for more input.  It deals with "Opportunities & Threats Gathering Within Conflating Community Storms"; and, I think, it shines new light on an aspect of the next epoch in web-based commerce--one heretofore largely overlooked by many.

In the coming week, I'll successively publish drafts of the intervening Sections followed by an Executive Summary.  I would welcome any and all comments at any/all points along the way.  And, if you'll drop me an e-mail, I'll make sure to send you a final draft incorporating your and others input (of course, you can also follow the discussion on this site as it develops).

Thanks in you advance for your thoughts; they will be instrumental to the successful completion of this project!

Doug

Goverment's Role In Healthcare

Paraphrasing the old cliche on the weather--you know, the one that goes `everyone talks about it but do nothing to change it--attached are a few healthcare consumerism and other decidedly-biased thoughts.

Also, inasmuch as I've not posted to this BLOG in some time, I wanted to make sure it still works.  For, in the next few days I'd like try a new approach (for me at least) to White Paper composition.

Please stay tuned...

[the attached is  a MSFT Word doc]

Download US Healthcare

New (or not-so-new?) Business Models

Healthcare in '07: A year of living dangerously - FierceHealthcare - Healthcare industry, Healthcare news, Healthcare company, Healthcare trend

Continuing the discussion of "new business models", it occurs to me that, perhaps, an important clue to the future of Healthcare Consumerism may be on the other side of communities: we've all  heard plenty about social networks at the individual level; but, what about the natural communities of service vendors that form the nucleus of an individual's health plan?  Physicians, pharmacies, insurers, disease managers, etc., ALL play integral roles; but rarely are they integrated in eye of the end-user.  How does the individual, trying to optimize a consumer-driven-health-plan, know what  her options are. Are they covered? Are they cost-effective? Which is best? Etc.

In much the same way that retailers of most other things have located near one another -- e.g., car dealer parkways, jeweler blocks, shopping malls, etc -- healthcare product and service providers will need to find ways to array their complimentry and competitive offers in juxtaposition to one anothers.

 

New Year: New Business Models?

health insurers

Though not particualrtly original, the article above ticks off a list of trends that, collectively, imply big things in store for `08.

The last thing I'd "imply" is that these a "trends" are incorrect or overwrought; on the contrary! It's my educated guess that the changes ahead are even more non-linear: in other words, I'm betting that American healthcare is on the verge of leapfrogging participatory Web 2.0  "trends" and form the vanguard of 3.0.

Specifically, I'd be MORE than interested in any/all ideas on how next-gen Social Networking and Search technologies are likely to converge with Consumer Driven Healtcare Plans (CDHP).