How to: Work on Stuff That Matters
Tim O'Reilly spoke tonight at ETech in San Jose, on a theme he has been talking about for the past 6 months or so: working on things that matter in the web world. In this talk though he went into a lot of actual examples, as well as strategies people can deploy to work on meaningful things.
O'Reilly began by saying that we're in a bubble - but not an investment one, a reality bubble. The financial crisis was top of his list, but he also referred to health, climate and so on. However, he said that working on stuff that matters doesn't necessarily mean working on non-profits or social ventures. He said that the world's great challenges are also the world's greatest opportunities.
As at the Web 2.0 Expo last year, he quoted the Rilke poem The Man Watching for inspiration.
Examples of Stuff That Matters
As examples of 'big thinking', he spoke about Shai Aggasi's better place - a company that is aiming to build an "electric car network". Another example is 1366 Technologies, which wants to make "Solar at the cost of Coal." Another company, Makani Power (a company started by his son-in-law) wants to create a low-cost energy alternative from high-altitude wind energy. All of these companies attract people who want to work on "hard problems", rather than perhaps doing it just to get rich. O'Reilly also pointed at the NASA-Cisco climate project to flash 'Planetary Skin'.
As for examples outside the environment and energy (which are particular passions of O'Reilly), he pointed to Brewster Kahle's Internet library and Carl Malamud's project to put government public data onto the Internet - the Yes We Scan! project. O'Reilly applauded Barack Obama's choice of a CIO, Vivek Kundra - formerly CTO for the District of Columbia, which created the Digital Public Square. O'Reilly used this opportunity to announce a new conference from O'Reilly Media and Techweb, Gov 2.0 Summit. He said that using the Internet to change the government is one of the biggest opportunities right now.
Choose Your Own Adventure
O'Reilly then spoke about 'the long now', which he said has been a big influence in his life and business. He explained that we should look at the long view, not just the 'right now'.
O'Reilly noted that scenario planning is a very useful method of plotting the future. It encourages you to think of the future not as a linear trend, but as a bunch of things that may cross each other. With scenario planning, you map out the extreme possibilities - then build out "robust strategies" to cover those eventualities.
O'Reilly said that we've entered an era of "choose your own adventure". He himself is big on energy/environment and government, but he said others are passionate about education, health, and so on. Whatever you choose to focus on, he advised to work on something that means more than money - making note again that many Facebook apps being built are meaningless (he had mentioned 'sheep throwing' on Facebook earlier in his speech).
Another piece of advice he had was to think about how to "create more value than you capture". One way to do this is to create a simple system and let it evolve - the WWW itself is a great example, but also more recently Twitter. He also advised to "be friendly to people who extend you" - he noted that Google has done this very well.
This was an inspiring keynote by Tim O'Reilly and there were some very useful examples and strategies in it. Let us know in the comments if you are working on 'stuff that matters' and if so, what was/is your primary motivation?
UPDATE: Video of Tim's presentation is now available via YouTube, as are the slides on Slideshare (both embedded below).
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Comments
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I am thankful to work for Intuit, a company built on the foundation of working on stuff that matters. In these tough economic times, we are more committed than ever to helping our customers save and make money. It makes me proud that along with our QuickBooks, Quicken and TurboTax products, we have a founder and an army of employees committed every day to serving and delighting customers and creating new, innovative solutions.
We think that Cloud Computing really matters. Why? Because it has the potential to change the way entrepreneurs craft their business plans and how they conceive of spending money on buildouts and growth plans. Doing business in the Clouds provides a different basis for leverage and like social media, allows an entrepreneur to position himself to knock the ball out of the park. Only a few years ago, you had to be a major household brand like Coke or Pepsi to hit a home run, today, because of tools like Cloud Computing and Social Media, Joe the Plumber (Whether real or fictitious ;-) can be an almost over night success. That really matters!
Good article.
It's good to step back and take a look at the big picture every once in a while. What will really be useful to the world, the web, and will sustain and grow our company well into the future?
At BlastCasta, our main goal is to try and make popular something that just isn't taking off like we imagined and hoped: the use of feeds, whether RSS or Atom.
We've got an array of services that we made to appeal to all sorts of publishers: combining, filtering, sorting, and translating of feeds, embedding them as news widgets or tickers, and even creating them from scratch. And although we could go above and beyond and create enterprise-level services, it's not so useful until there's wide understanding and usage of these cool endpoints we call feeds.
We just keep thinking, brainstorming, trying, and measuring repeatedly until we get results.
Great post! I've been working the past few months on social media publications for mission driven organizations. The first is Hot Dish, a climate change publication on Facebook with Grist.org to engage younger readers in climate issues online and offline.
With news readership in decline and social networking skyrocketing, we're working with University of Minnesota researchers to figure out how to leverage Facebook to make a difference in young people's lives and communities with news and current events.
I really like the phrase 'the long now' in contrast with the 'right now'. It helps to see things not as linear, but as everything influencing each other. It has always been like that of course, but now you can just watch it happen on the Web, especially with something like Twitter.
Nice capture of Tim's words. I was there at etech and yet I got a lot from / enjoyed your full view of talk. Inspiring really to hear about gov 2.0 summit.
Hi Richard,
At Lollicode (the startup behind twitscoop), our motivation with every product is to try and change the world and solve little problems one step at a time.
If you take the twitscoop example, the idea came from the fact that when we first signed up on twitter, we didn't get it. We didn't know who to follow, what the conversations were like, and generally what twitter was all about. That's why we created twitscoop as a window on this new WWW that some people call the real-time web. For sure there was something big there, but we didn't know what. So we created twitscoop as a way to better visualize this new phenomenon, in real-time. And when we started to run our first version of the application, we saw this big tag cloud which actually *had some meaning*. And then we realized that we needed to work on it for everyone, because it mattered for us that everyone understood the disruptive nature of the real-time web, and contributed to it.
Very good article. Tim did missed few other imp. stuffs that matters. Yes lot of FB apps are useless or meaningless, but then you have to agree that they are intended that way.
@Pierre twitscoop - seriously that's your stuffs that matter?
@BlastCasta feeds - really? haha:-p
@GoEverywhere Cloud Computing matters but telephone cos. are and will be the biggest obstacles. It definitely rox but lot needs to be done.
Thanks for the article. Having followed and been part of the tech world for many years now, it has become obvious that many of the things that smart people are making right now and putting their valuable time towards are more about novelty or "because I can" than real progress. Sometimes reading the top tech blogs and the companies they cover can be frustrating these days. Not to mention the daily triple shot of Twitter apps and add-ons. Anyway...
Right now, I'm working on two projects myself that I believe fit the definition "create more value than you capture." In fact, I think that if a company doesn't fit this description, it is bound to fail. It's basic economics.
The first is an application suite for small businesses to better manage their client relationships. We will offer it for free, completely. Most CRM systems and other enterprise software products are way overpriced. It's hard to believe that with computing power and storage so cheap these days, enterprise software alone still eats up over $200 billion from business, and that's mostly large companies.
The second product we're developing is an email client designed to help curb email overload. Information overload is said to be a $650 billion drag on our economy - maybe more. Email alone accounts for 8 hours a week of wasted productivity for the average user. I'm sure for you, Richard, it's more like 20. Our plan is to first reduce that productivity deficit, and then move on to what we believe is the stem of part of the email problem: the 20-year old SMTP protocol.
@DJ since you preferred to remain anonymous, what matters to you apart from unfunded criticism ? We'd love to hear about something you built that matters to you, maybe we could learn a thing or two...
The promotion of democracy and respect for human rights is a central aspect of development around the world. Censorship is detrimental to the fundamentals of our values and our freedom as individuals to choose and think for ourselves. Stumpedia's moto of "Search For the People By The People" is powered by the very people that use it.
Our new internet advertising model will create a level playing field for all advertisers both big and small and empower every individual to be an entrepreneur.
@Pierre ...ouch did that hurt you:-p As a Consumer of Internet technologies I have right to criticize nonsense (in this context Twitscoop)
p.s. I did visited Twitscoop and you owe me 5 precious minutes:)
@DJ Don't worry I don't take things personally. I thought you'd have interesting comments, suggestion or criticism to provide us with (and in that case what matters to us is the real-time web, not only twitscoop). That's obviously not the case: so *you* owe me 5 minutes (of not so precious) time :-p
Finally, I am sure (or at least hope) you are much more than just a "consumer" - what do you produce ? What is the stuff that matters to you ?
Doing stuff that matters is important. Enabling others to do stuff that matters is just as important... and maybe even more so.
So for the folks here who are helping to build collaborative web applications and online communities, it's worth your while to ask:
Your mileage may vary, of course, but those are the questions that have led to my most satisfying projects.
Richard,
Umair Haque has been writing about this topic for years, check out his Harvard Business blog:
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque
You should help him get wider distribution for pieces like "The Smart Growth Manifesto":
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/01/davos_discussing_a_depression.html
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. "
John F. Kennedy - September 12, 1962
Entreprenuerial venture booms is what should be supported cause these small businesses provde needed services in society. Moreover their products are often viable to common people like the plumber Joe :)
http://www.deskaway.com
great article
http://www.dmsolar.com
I think it is very complex ideas about the value of knowledge
”that working on stuff that matters doesn't necessarily mean working on non-profits or social ventures”
http://www.vcao.net
Tim remains the visionary he has always been. The video isn't working anymore, seems like I'm going to have to find it elsewhere.