I am still stunned, that within a month I with the help of some friendly neighbors was able to bring 20+ musicians and helpers together to rehearse three times and then march and play in the 4th of July Highlands parade. Sweet proof of how the internet can bring us closer together.

Almost 2 years ago we moved to the San Mateo Highlands [map] an Eichler community of about 550+ households. There are two centers to the community, the Elementary School and the Recreational Center with pool, small gym, playground and preschool. These community engines are the reason why we have our own 4th of July parade.

This year it almost got canceled. It needed a call for volunteers and thank you Mozique Daviel and others for stepping up and making it really beautiful with the red wagons and balloons. Check out Bowling Alone if you want to learn about why these things are so rare these days.

Last year for the first time I watched the little parade. Liked it a lot and as someone who loves music and dabbles with many instruments, I was hoping and waiting for at least one marching band to come by, but there wasn’t one

I started to ask around why and people said: The kids are out of school for the summer, therefore there are no High School bands available.

The backbone of any local community are the mothers. In the highlands there not one, but two active lists run by mothers, the Highlands Parents Google Group and Highlands Parents Yahoo Group.

I got active on both of them, first to find out whether there is general interest and then to announces the rehearsals. I also told everyone I met about it, in the playground, at the pool, the garage sale, …

Myself I have never played in a marching band, of course I omitted that fact when I started to recruit musicians. How hard can it be? You agree on a couple of simple songs and play. Only later I realized, that it is essential to have sheet music especially if you don’t have a lot of time to rehearse together.

What made it additionally tough was, that some of the instruments are tuned in Bb, but others in Eb or C. We needed the sheet music transposed. What makes marching band music interesting is when not every instrument plays the same note, but when the music is arranged with small variations and harmonies in different sections of the band. I was able to find a program that transposes the simple songs, but arranging a song for a marching band is way beyond my reach.

But not out of the reach of Stephen Bell, who is an elementary music teacher who joined for the first rehearsal and was then literally instrumental to the arrangement of our songs: Chasing the star, America the Beautiful, Rock-A-By.

David Solomon also joined us for the second rehearsal. He is a veteran marching band drummer and boy does that make a difference. It gave us structure and time to breath between songs.

I was also super glad that the Chen family came out in force. Father on the clarinet, daughter on the sax, son playing the trumpet and the mother Judy organizing a lot of the logistics including making and carrying our banner.

Coming back from LA, I almost missed our last rehearsal, where for the first and only time we created a formation and marched around in the Elementary School Yard. That fun we had that evening alone was worth every hour that was spent leading up to it.

The last week I practiced the songs  so that I could play them without needing any sheet music. I still hit wrong notes here and there, but was able to enjoy the parade a lot more.

On the day of the parade we had 5 trumpets, 4 clarinets, 3 saxophones, 2 drummers, 2 euphoniums, 2 banner carrier and 1 flute player (hope I didn’t forget anyone.). It was amazing and we sounded amazing too, for having only been together for 3 rehearsals, actually a couple of the players joined us that morning.

It was the greatest to play sweet music together with friends and on the way bring smiles to your neighborhood.

As rehearsed we stopped in front of the Rec-Center. When the announcer heard that we are going to play America the Beautiful he advised everyone to get up for it and people did. We played our best, people cheered and we marched on.

Our enthusiasm must have even reached the Jury and we got awarded the best of parade. My only regret is, that we didn’t make a picture with all the musicians that were still around when the winner was announced.

The whole event was one of the most fun and rewarding thing I ever did. There are 51 weeks left until the next 4th of July, enough to dust off your instrument that is buried somewhere in your garage, or even pick up an instrument at our local shop: B-Street Music and start from scratch. By June next year you will be good enough to play with us. Looking forward to it.

If you want to know what is going on or when the next gig/rehearsal is happening, please join the Highlands Marching Band Facebook group. There you will find additional links to pictures from this year’s parade.

San Mateo Highlands, my hometown has it’s own 4th of July parade plus Fireworks already on the night before. It’s like a small town in the middle of the Bay Area. I love it

I am on a mission, not from God, but for maximum fun for the most people involved. I am trying to get a Ragtag Marching Band together for our parade on the 4th of July.

Remember: Music self-played is happiness self-made. That happiness is squared when you make music with your neighbors with the goal to entertain all of them at the down to earth local 4th of July parade.

SJSU marching Spartan trumpet player signed up. That made my day. You can join too.

Picture taken by Mark & Marie Finnern.

If you want to improve your presentation skills, there is no better way than going to weekly Toastmasters meetings. I am at awe how well run that organization is.

Table Topics is one of the key elements of a Toastmaster meeting The Table Topics master usually prepares some theme and has little papers filled out with topics covering that theme. For example the theme is vacation spots and the little papers contain: Paris, Milan, Hawaii. Participants come up to the podium and select a paper, read the topic and talk 1-2 minutes about it. More details directly from the Toastmaster site.

I try to avoid having to prepare these pieces of paper, so one time a brought in a bunch of fortune cookies and every candidate cracked one open, read his fortune and talked about what she is going to do with it.

When I saw SlideShare Karaoke I was intrigued to try it out in the next Toastmaster meeting.

The tag I selected was “presentation” as “Toastmaster” didn’t bring back any slide decks. A candidate would come up to the podium, I hit the random button and like magic a couple of slides show up and are ready to be improvised with for 1 – 2 minutes.

The whole audience was electrified, some even terrified, as it turns out that it isn’t easy at all to talk coherently to a deck of slides that you haven’t seen before. Try it out in your next Toastmaster meeting.

Here some tips on how you can survive or even shine at SlideShare Karaoke:

• Welcome the audience
• Tell them that you don’t have time to go through all of the slides, just a couple of highlights,
• Flip through the slides and stop at one that draws you in, where you may have a story to tell. Tell that story.
• Jump to the end of the deck, often the last slide is “Thank You” or “Questions?” go to the slide before and it may be the summary. Use it. If not summarize it yourself
• Thank the audience

It was a lot of fun and I think we should do it more often. Even if you are not part of a Toastmaster group, I am convinced that SlideShare karaoke is a great way to lighten up long days of meetings.

One early example was Summize a search engine that Twitter acquired and is now part of Twitter.

Yesterday it hit me thinking about how different the world would be if Craigslist had the same attitude to third party hacking.

Yes, there is the famous HousingMaps mashup of rent and real-estate listings with Google maps, but not a lot more. Craigslist doesn’t have an API (that I was able to find), so the mashups are done using screen scraping tools.

I posted my thought on Twitter and Craig Newmark the founder of Craigslist responded:

finnern: @craignewmark Where could we be if Craigslist would be as open as Twitter with APIs and use of data. Way beyond http://www.housingmaps.com/

craignewmark: @finnern maybe, what do you have in mind? anyone in general community asking for that?
about 3 hours later from TwitterFox · Reply · View Tweet

finnern: @craignewmark the beauty of Twitter attitude is: We don’t know all the things that the general community is asking for: Surprise us.
about 6 hours ago from TwitterFox · Reply · View Tweet

I have met Craig a couple of times at events in the Bay Area, but I don’tthink he remembers which I totally understand, he can’t remember all his admirers . He isn’t after the big pot of gold, just look at his Twitter bio: Customer service rep & founder for Craigslist.That is what he is first and foremost a customer service rep. Love it. He has the benefit of the general community in mind and is cautious toprotect the simplicity of his service.

After Craig challenged me to tell him what I have in mind, I did a little research and found ListPic a visual classified browser. Let’s say you want to adopt a dog. If there would be one page to go to, where all these cute pairs of dog eyes lock back at you waiting to be rescued, the adoption rate from animal shelters would shoot through the roof.

Craigslist banned ListPic from using their service citing bandwidth problems, which I am certain there were. Of course it also doesn’t help that 2/3 of the ListPic front page is a monster Google ad. (Twitpic has also intrusive ads running on their service, I am actually using itless because of that. How can one selectively send pictures to Flickr and only these get forwarded to Twitter? As soon as I figured that out I am off Twitpic.) The sad thing regarding ListPic is, that in theQ&A Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster is hinting that they are working on a visual browser too. That was in 2007 and it is still not available.

What else would be great to see?

• View into sale statistics including history: Craigslist Index is one solution working in that space. What is the going rate for an iPhone 3g right now: $400. There is room for so much more.
• What concert, theater tickets are available close to me. Two data points: Close to me regarding venue and close to me regarding pick up of the ticket. Now if you mash thatup with Facebook or Upcoming to show me the ones first that my friends are going to, that would be golden.
• Matching books for sale with the reviews on Amazon, or any product with product reviews.

I thought it was funny, that Craig would ask me via Twitter: anyone in general community asking for that?On one hand he is right, to wonder whether this is just the geek echo-chamber wishing for more mashup playground. Is the general public that Craigslist is serving really interested or benefiting? On the other hand, Tom O’Reilly has built his empire on following the alpha geeks,the ones that tinker take things beyond the original boundaries and create something new and interesting. Most of that tinkering leads to nothing and you may even have to ban some that are hogging your bandwidth, but out of the thousands of ideas comes one, like a visual classified browser, that is really beneficial and game changing.

We don’t know what is in the long tale of Craigslist mashups, some may only be useful to a handful of people, but by creating an API with a generous cap on bandwidth whole new applications can blossom and create the oh so needed new jobs and livelihoods for people with ideas.

As a Community Guy I am of course fascinated by all that. I got invited for a neighborhood party to do some phone volunteering. You bring a computer and your cell phone, a short introduction and off you phone. I thought it would be at 4pm, but the party started without me already at 1pm It was after three when I realized my error and Nina had just fallen asleep.

I thought I missed out, but if the Obama folks are so clever, I should be able to do it on my own. I went to Obama’s website and there was the phone, a little sign up no more than you do for your typical web 2.0 site and you can select which swing state you want to put your full weight behind.

New Mexico didn’t have any phone numbers at the moment, so I selected the battleground (talking about framing) state Ohio. They assigned me 25 numbers and with one click I had a popup with name, number and a little script of what to say in front of me and off I went. From selecting Obama’s website to calling the first number in less than 5 minutes without any human involvement. Smooth and super scalable.

From the neighbor I know that the main goal is to find undecided voters. You don’t try to change their minds, that is much more effectively done via a face to face visit of volunteers on the ground in Ohio. My slightly British accent is similar to the Dean volunteers with the orange hats four years ago, just not convincing

Oh the experiances of a Telemarketer: Hi … this is Mark Finnern a volunteer from the Obama Campaign <click>

O.K. next one. All you have is Name, Age and City they live in. So I get Ruth (not her real name) on the phone. The call was apparently for her husband:

Ruth: He is not here and he is a Republican. I am a Democrat. But I am not going to vote democrat this election.

Me: May I ask why?

Ruth: Well, I didn’t vote for him in the primaries and I am white and I am not voting for a black man this time around.

> I was stunned, quickly checked my calendar, yes it is 2008 not 1958. Arrg.

Me: (almost mumbling) So you want another 4 years of failed politics, same old … > I realized that it is a lost cause. Thanked her and hung up.

Wow, I guess I am living a sheltered life here in the Bay Area. It was my first experiance of open racism. I was saved by Nina waking up and we took off to the community pool. It left me feeling really sad.

Thank God I saw the picture of the 100.000 at the Obama rally in Missouri. I will call more when I find the time. The whole process seems to be implemented flawless. The potential is there to tab into all of these volunteers once Obama has won, to really make a change. Let’s work towards that.

Update: Today I got an email from the campaign with a little video of Joe Biden’s wife Jill Biden talking about the importance of phone volunteering and how easy it is. She comes across as very likable. I didn’t know her before and it is a great way to introduce her.

So go out and – no wait, stay at home and make some phone calls.

With InnoCentive we at he SAP Community Network have introduced a new way to innovate. At the same time and place SAP TechEd in Las Vegas, ESME was introduced that is built on a different innovation model.

This blog is trying to look at the two models and what the consequences are if you choose one over the other.

Just to be clear, both innovation models have their advantages. Therefore depending on the problem at hand one should be selected over the other.

What I want to work out in this post is the nature of the collaboration that is derived from the two models. With that knowledge we then are able to make better decisions which way to go when we tackle our next problem.

The InnoCentive model is straight forward. There is a task that needs to be done or problem to be solved by a certain time. The task and it’s goal is described and a prize is set for the first one to reach it, or if more than one solves a problem, there is a selection process to determine the best solution.

This kind of innovation in my opinion works best, when there is a very specific goal with a clear definition when it is reached, as it was for the original X-Prize:

US$10,000,000 prize for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.

Big upside potential of getting $10M and very clear criteria for everyone to see when the goal is reached.

Competition is an excellent motivating factor. Most games, for example the whole Olympics are based on that motivation. It is a winner takes world, I like to call it Gladiator Innovation.

Picture from Wikipedia:Pollice Verso (“With a Turned Thumb”), an 1872 painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, is a well known historical painter‘s researched conception of a gladiatorial combat.

No matter how many people worked on solutions and may have gotten very similar results, one is selected and the rest gets a rock like Charlie Brown at Halloween.

Let’s take for example the InnoCentive Video Challenge 2008. The one for 2009 just came out:

For this Challenge, InnoCentive seeks a marketing video to be used for the recruitment of new InnoCentive Seekers. This is the second annual InnoCentive marketing video Challenge with the goal of communicating InnoCentive’s mission, business model, and benefits. This video is targeted specifically toward the InnoCentive Seeker community. There will be two winning videos: one chosen by InnoCentive and the other selected by the InnoCentive Solver community. Both winning videos will be used in future marketing campaigns.

It looks like, but is not explicitly stated, whether the two winning videos have to share the $5000.

Let’s say I create a video that is compelling, is in the round of last 8 that are selected and shown on YouTube for people to vote on, but just doesn’t make the first place.

I would be a bit miffed, that after all my effort I got close, but didn’t get anything. My work is used to promote InnoCentive, as the video got watched over 1000 times during the competition run and continues to be on YouTube for everyone to enjoy. A fairer mechanism would be to give out smaller prizes already for the ones that make it to the final round.

Now let’s look at the approach for the ESME innovation. It’s the 21^st century the elevator pitch is too long. Here is their Twitter pitch:

ESME in 140 characters

ESME is a secure and highly scalable microsharing platform that allows people to meet and discover one another in a business process context.

The ESME’s origin are described by Elizabeth Millard for the Baseline Magazine:

A few months ago, a handful of SAP Mentors were enjoying a casual conversation about application development on Plurk, a social networking site. The Mentors are in the company’s Community Network and are usually people who are prolific contributors to technical topics, but also have special expertise in defined areas, according to one Mentor, Dennis Howlett.

The chat turned into an idea that soon became a full-blown social networking project, called ESME (short for Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment), with an alpha release about 3 months later.

The collaboration practice is one of inclusion. People that like a idea and want it to happen join in, find out what is needed right now and do their part. I was involved in finding a NetWeaver hosting solution for them. I wish I had more time to be involved, but am following the emails closely and join a scrum call here and there.

This kind of collaborative innovation where everyone chips in to his or her own ability and time availability is similar to the old tradition of barn raising.

Barn raising image: Ian Adams (c)

As there is no money involved and usually no direct competition, it is relatively easy to call on others when the expertise in the group is not enough and they are happy to help out.

If I am not mistaken, for the Demo Jam at TechEd in Las Vegas, the connection to the event messenger within SAP NetWeaver was programmed the morning of the Jam with the help of Thomas Jung who isn’t in the core ESME team.

How different would the collaboration have been, if ESME was started as an InnoCentive Challenge? There is actually one out there at the moment that is looking into the space from SAP:

Social Networking for Enterprise Applications
SAP is seeking ideas for novel uses of Social Networking to enhance business applications in corporate computing environments. Read more.

If you read the description of the challenge, it is about ideas and how to implement these in an enterprise environment. ESME team is actually developing the solution. The early stage of the project when ESME was starting and use-cases were written, it would have worked.

If I am innovating with the goal to win a competition, I am reluctant to reach out to anyone else, as they all could be competition, or want to get a slice from the pie.

You want me to help you win this competition? What’s in it for me? That means, that it is unlikely, that an optimal solution is found for a complex problem. It was really amazing to experience how quickly solutions were found for obstacales in the way to the ESME solution: “I know someone who can help us out here”, and often the next day it was solved. z

The problem with an Barn Raising innovation is, that it has to be compelling enough for people to collaborate, for them to part with their precious free time. ESME is clearly riding the Twitter craze. If you are working on a problem like the municipal tax code in the US, you better have some chocolate or an InnoCentive challenge to motivate people to create a solution.

With the Gladiator Innovation you also get a clearer timeline, a better planning horizon. You set the deadline date for when the solutions have to be in. Over time we will know how likely solutions for a given problem are produced and you can plan accordingly.

You can focus with your core team on the top 20% of customers and problems. If you have budget, the next problems that you otherwise wouldn’t get to, you can create challenges for and expand your throughput, or if interesting for a broader audience, ignite a community project.

Crossposted at SAP Community Network

Add more information into your follow notifications.

Example:

Subject: daddymoomy is now following you on Twitter!

Hi, Mark Finnern.

daddymoomy (daddymoomy) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out daddymoomy’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/daddymoomy

You may follow daddymoomy as well by clicking on the “follow” button.

Best,
Twitter

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Let’s look at the message. The only information that Twitter gives us about our new follower is the Twitter ID: daddymoomy

In this case it is actually something I can work with. I am a dad, therefore first part of the Twitter ID is interesting, but then moomy? Was daddymummy already taken or was it to morbid as in mummified daddy?

But that is all the information I can derive from your letter. To really get to know more about daddymummy I have to click on the link: http://twitter.com/daddymoomy

In the beginning of Twitter, there was the tweet. At that time you wanted and needed to lure us back to your site and once there let us explore or may be even post. But Twitter, you pointed the tip, you sharked the jump, we are hooked. We spent too much time on your site already, and even though you let us down again and again, we are coming back. With just a small adjustment the Twitter experience will be a little smoother. Put more information into your follower notification, like this:

Subject: daddymoomy is now following you on Twitter!

Hi, Mark Finnern.

daddymoomy (daddymoomy) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Location: Cleveland
Web: http://www.godzil…
Bio: My own great blog
Following 1,953
Followers 77
Favorites 5
Updates 2 Last 3 tweets:

 

I am new..can’t u tell

 

1 day ago from web

All new people should get together..i have no idea what i am doing.. 10:10 AM August 11, 2008 from web Check out daddymoomy’s profile here:

http://twitter.com/daddymoomy

You may follow, block or mark daddymoomy as a spam user.
Follow: http://twitter.com/daddymoomy/follow
Block: http://twitter.com/daddymoomy/block
Spam user: http://twitter.com/daddymoomy/spam

Best,
Twitter

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Turn off these emails at: http://twitter.com/account/notifications

Immediately I would see that this Twitter shark is fishing for followers and not offering any content. It would give me just a little satisfaction to help out my fellow Twitteraties by marking that user as a spammer. It would be up to you what to do with this information besides blocking of course.

On the other hand, if daddymoomy would be a daddy with nuggets of child raising tips: How to best handle the temper tantrum of a strong willed 2 year old.  I would be so happy to follow back. Please give me the information to do that right in your follow notification.

Three days ago I get the following email regarding our Wildfire Haze picture. The text reads interesting, NowPublic looks like a citizen journalism site :

:: Your California wildfire photo Hi Mark & Marie Finnern, Here’s a personal note from <name withheld>: _____________________________________ We’re running a news story about the wildfires in Northern California, and your photo would be a great addition. Would you be interested in sharing it? In case you haven’t heard of us, NowPublic is a participatory news website. The requested photo(s) will appear as thumbnails when you follow the link. Please let me know if you have any questions. Take care, Rob please click on this link – where you can approve or reject its use:

____________________________________________________________

NowPublic is a news sharing community that uses stories, photos, & videos from sources like you.If you would like to learn more about this request, and the context in which your photo might be used, click on this link: http://www.nowpublic.com/import/4868164c2addb7.62822270

If you do give your permission, your photo will always remain your property, and whatever license you have specified will follow its use on NowPublic.com If you have any concerns about this, please contact our Quality Assurance Coordinator at quality@nowpublic.com ———————————————————— Picture taken by Mark & Marie Finnern.

Now our licensing is a Creative Commons one: Attribution & share alike aka link back to our picture on Flickr when you use it.

Of course I felt flattered, so I clicked on the link. First frustration instead of just a link to agree that the requester can use the picture, you get a sign up sheet. Grudgingly I filled it out, having been around the internet block for a while I should have stopped right there, but I was curious, wanted to know how the whole process works.

NowPublic used my information to create a Mark & Marie Finnern account on their site. If you look at the profile it shows the two pictures that were requested as uploaded by us. That is of course not true, someone from the NowPublic network has requested to use the picture in a story, that is different than me going around uploading my pictures to different sites.

Second problem is, that there is no link back to our flickr page, at least that I could find. If you click on the picture you get a run around and get back to our NowPublic account. A clear violation of our original creative commons copyright.

Third there is no mention of the copyright settings of our pictures, the big claim:

If you do give your permission, your photo will always remain your property, and whatever license you have specified will follow its use on NowPublic.com

Is a hollow promise, as no copyrights are shown.

All that left me frustrated. I think the concept Citizen Journalism is an interesting one and NowPublic has most of the elements in place: Rating, voting, top contributors, rookie separation, … But the way they suck you into their site and their not so clean UI will keep me away, especially far away from contributing anything.

P.S. One thing they did good: They asked whether it is O.K. to post a comment that links back to their story on the pictures that they have choosen:

NowPublic says: Thank you for sharing your photo!This photograph appears in a NowPublic news story:Firefighters in stalemate against Calif. fires.
Posted 4 days ago. ( permalink | delete )