Steps to becoming a successful technology pundit

bobreb — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:57:00 GMT

First, study the hype-curve for all it's worth.

(http://static7.userland.com/oracle/gems/reynolds/hypecycle.png)

There, that should be about all it's worth -- useful, but no longer a new idea.

Now here's the formula:

When you find an idea gaining early mind share -- talk it up. You can afford to back a number of horses here, as long as you couch everything in phrases like "it's still early" and "potential to change you business" and "a new paradigm", or "2.0 or 3.0 anything".
Next, you wait until one or more of your darlings starts gaining majority attention -- usually shortly after Business Week spots it. Not too soon -- you need to bask in the "I-told-you-so" glow. But shortly thereafter, you start to back off. It's important to use phrases like "drunk on kool-aid" and "repeating history" and "another bubble" and my personal favorite "echo chamber". At this point you're going for sober, reflective, and cautious.
Here's the best part, once you've been cool as the edge guy, then cool as the mature-risk-adverse-guy-with-the-historical-perspective, you can be cool yet again with the "this is how it will actually play out gig". In fact, having some evidence that you've been through the first two can give you clout for the third phase. (Cautionary note hopeful technology pundits, this is also the place where all the "ignore it it's all crap" people turn into "we always believed it, we'll take it from here" types and crash your party. They can cramp your style.)

The theme is probably obvious, but I'll spell it out: technology pundits always challenge the late majority. When they don't believe, you believe; when they get excited, you sober up; when they become disillusioned, you cheer them up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Want a great recent example? Check this out:

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture
by Andrew Keen

Read more about this title...

I read it a while back and it left a bad vibe. It's not that the author doesn't make some fine points, he does. I suffered because it was so obviously a book from a marketing minded guy with an agenda unrelated to the point of the book. I don't believe for a minute he buys his own argument -- not a minute. I know he knows that what has value will survive and what does not will not. "Culture" is not at risk -- that is absurd, and frankly, not even possible. I am confident he was trying, and for a time succeeded, in capturing the anti-web20 chair at PMU (Popular Mindshare University -- which I hope does not actually exist). I admit, part of me wished I'd thought of it.

I've not heard much about him lately, so I suspect he couldn't sustain it. Why? Because he's being joined by so many other capable "mature-risk-adverse-guys-with-the-historical-perspectives". And, of course, they're just waiting for everyone to join in that chorus/dirge, and then they'll change their tune again.

Now, go forth aspiring technology pundit.

Epilogue: The unreasonable men make bets and move early; the fearful change direction in the downturn, or in the face of any apparent challenge; and the real explorers press on up the "slope of enlightenment". Fortunes come and go. Good technology pundits profit at every phase.

Tier Three Design

bobreb — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:06:40 GMT

Lots of really fascinating stuff is happening in my world lately. Some of it is a bit unusual. For instance, my wife now refers to me as the Hannibal Lector of Microsoft -- I'm not going to pursue that other than to report that I don't actually bite.

Anyway, half of what I've been working on is what I've come to refer to as "Tier 3" design. From this perspective, what we sometimes think of as Web 2.0 is in part the next level of abstraction of the internet: from physical; to content; to people.

The diagram might look like this:

It might not look like much of an insight, and perhaps it's not, but the ramifications are significant. For instance, if this is accurate, then MSN Spaces would not be Microsoft's consumer social networking offering. All of MSN/Live would be our social networking "solution". The same could be said for Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0.

In other words it means a re-visioning of online experience generally.

The question then becomes, how do we accomplish this re-visioning? I'm keeping some cards to myself for the time being, but I will share this, when we applied this thinking to product support and troubleshooting we came up with a much different solution than we see in place today, or hear discussed, across the industry.

Process of Change : web20

Steps to becoming a successful technology pundit

Tier Three Design