the power of the network Archives

I’ve been working my way through a backlog of books, and finally moved onto Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success, which is a look at those people who stand out for their achievements, whether online or in the sporting world, for example.

He explores the possible reasons that contribute to such success – for example, the age cut-off for selection into sporting programmes – and shows that being born in a certain month gives you an advantage which is then amplified by being selected into more intensive training. Or the fact that in addition to the talents of Bill Gates, the fact that he was probably the only 13-year-old with access to an advanced computer (at the time), meant that his success was one of timing and opportunity in addition to his own skill.

I can understand why Gladwell comes in for criticism – his anecdotal style can hide the fact that Outliers certainly uses a reasonable amount of data to back up his observations. And as a parent, the insight into what can contribute to scholarly success certainly caught my attention.

Funnily enough, I actually observed something similar (I suspect it’s still languishing on my Blogger account amongst some posts which didn’t automatically transfer here) about the sudden appearance of Web 2.0 business successes under 30.

The reason they were all around a similar age (aside from possible fraudulence), was the situation they were in – old enough to be ambitious and educated at a time when Web 2.0 technology came available, in places where they were able to find equally interested developers, not tied down to mortgages and commitments etc, and generally in a University setting where they either had the free time to experiment, or could find it by missing classes!

The one thing that’s possibly missing is a message to absorb and use what you can learn from Outliers whilst still remembering that exceptions occur and not using it as an excuse.

The other book I’ve finally found time to sit down and digest is David Cushman’s The Power of the Network.

I’m probably not in a position to critically review his work (Dave is a former boss, colleague and friend of mine), but I can certainly see why Chris Thorpe wrote about the power of print after reading it.

It’s a collection of material and white papers Dave has already published on his blog, FasterFuture, and as such it’s material I’m fairly familiar with – but the fact that he frames it with discussion of Moore, Metcalfe and Reed’s Laws means that it benefits from a little bit of time and attention – which is too easy to avoid doing when skimming through RSS feeds during a busy day. Plus, as Chris points out, having the extracts collected means that certain themes become more apparent through the material Dave has picked out.

Plus at 98 pages it’s the right length to communicate the ideas without dragging on, and being self-published via Lulu, it’s also ‘cost-effective’ at £4.98 for print and £0.49 for a digital download.

Just to finish off, one of the books I’m currently keen to get hold of is What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis – which is available in print, but also as a video book if you’re in the U.S. You can watch a non-region specific excerpt below:

Well, you’ll be glad to know I’m home and back online after my break, despite the fun on flying back to the UK during some strong winds – I’m sure at one point the plane was trying to land sideways!

I had a really good time introducing my son to his extended family, and having my first offline break of more than a couple of days in about as long as I can remember – I had the occasional twinge, but aside from uploading pictures to Flickr, I only logged in once to check my emails!

Side street in Malmo, Sweden — A small side street in Malmo, Sweden from my holiday…

Instead I wrote down any ideas and inspiration in a storage device which I believe is called a ‘notebook’, made of paper, and using a stylus which dispensed ink onto the paper, thus preserving the content. And I even had the chance to releax and read something called a ‘book’.

In a rush for the plane, and experiencing physically shopping for something to read for the first time in ages, I ended up with Richard Branson’s Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur on a bit of a whim, and I’m glad I did. I’d never spent much time considering the Virgin brands until now, and it turns out they’re an excellent case study for many of the principles the social media world are espousing. And considering Brand has build 8 billion-dollar companies from scratch, there’s some pretty persuasive proof!

And on the book topic, while I was out of the country, my former colleague Dave Cushman has published a collection of his white papers of social networking, media, and communities via Lulu, with any money going to charity. See more on The Power of the Network, here.

Anyhoo, the entire family is suffering with various strains of the traditional ‘return from holiday with an illness’ which seems to happen so much, including it’s most junior member. Plus I’ve got a few hundred emails to filter, 1000+ RSS items to clear, and various other things to update, upload and file – including some better sorting and tagging of my Flickr photos. I’ve finally invested in a Pro account, so I should really make more use of it. Maybe the final excuse I need to start upgrading my travelling kit with a smart phone with a decent camera?

I’ll start going through ideas, news, and picking out some of the most relevant Branson examples over the next couple of days as I get back up to speed. And in the meantime I’ll be continuing to learn how hard it is to administer a syringe full of medicine into a baby’s mouth without seeing the contents end up everywhere but inside the baby!

And now one last pic to retain the feeling of relaxation you get in a small town in Sweden when everyone else is at work – and it’s not exactly busy during rush hour!