The Obvious?

Bye bye bankers?

I have used Zopa, the peer to peer banking system, at the end of my presentations for a number of years now as an example of what is possible when you start to see the world in more "social" and connected ways. Looks like I was right to be interested as Gartner are now predicting that "ten percent of all retail lending and financial advice services will go to social banking applications"

All my own work ....

The iPhone is generating “unheard-of levels of mobile Internet usage,” according to Vivek Dev, COO of Telefónica O2 Europe, the sole carrier of the device in the United Kingdom. Web browsing and e-mail are two of the primary purposes of the iPhone, and O2 customers have unlimited use under current plans. Traffic is said to be so high in fact that it is straining O2’s network.

The Apple Phone Show

Ooooh goody, goody, goody

RebootX is happening 5th and 6th of June with the topic, for the moment anyway, of "Free" - can't wait.

Oh I do love Gia ....

Off to Italy tomorrow ...

.... to take part in a conference being run by my friend Paolo Valdemarin and others in Udine. Be good to see Ross Mayfield again and it is nearly six years since I last spent any time with Dave Sifry so looking forward to that too.

Who do you think you are ....?

Before Christmas I did a keynote at Online Information which I called Real Work. In it I pushed back at some of those in business who dismiss social computing as not being "real work" and compare it unfavourably against their assumptions of what makes business businesslike.

I am currently enjoying reading Alain De Botton's Status Anxiety in which he explores our concern with status generally, but which I relate very much to the status ridden atmosphere of the work place. The section I am reading at the moment concerns itself with how the perceived sources of status change over time and in fact can be deliberately changed within a generation.

The following paragraph struck me as particularly relevant to those of us seeking to bring about change in the world of work:

When ideas and institutions are held to be merely 'natural', responsibility for suffering must necessarily lie either with no one in particular or else with the pained parties themselves. But from a political perspective, we are given leave to imagine that it might be something in the idea, instead of something in our character, that is at fault. Rather than wondering in disgrace 'What is wrong with me [for being a woman/having dark skin/no money]?, we are encouraged to ask 'What might be wrong, unjust or illogical about others for reproving me?' - a question not asked from any conviction of innocence (the stance of those who us political radicalism as a paranoid way of avoiding self-criticism) but from a recognition that there is more folly and partisanship in institutions, ideas and laws than a naturalistic perspective allows us to imagine.