About Val Skelton

I am the editor of Information Today, Europe. On the main site, we cover news and publish feature articles by information, research and knoweldge practitioners and thought leaders. On this blog, we aim to cover other topics of interest to our readers.

Author Archive | Val Skelton

Pirate Party’s success in Berlin

By on September 22, 2011 in Europe

For those who missed the story, the Pirate Party, dedicated to the freedom and transparency of internet traffic, has entered a state parliament for the first time.  The Party received almost 9% of the votes in the recent Berlin regional elections taking it comfortably over the 5% hurdle required to enter the city’s legislature.  The Party took 15 of the 149 seats available.

You can read an analysis of the political implications of this development on the Economist blog.  You can read more about the (apparently astonished) victors on this English language German news blog.

Cyber crime, cyber criminals and information professionals

By on September 16, 2011 in Post

In his new book Dark Market: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You, Misha Glenny identifies and explores three major threats posed by networked computing.

Cyber crime, which is very often high value/high-volume includes such criminal activities as card skimming and identity theft and represents in most instances the more low hanging fruit for cyber criminals

Cyber warfare, which has been recognised by the Pentagon as the fifth domain of warfare (in addition to land, sea, air and space).  Whether a nation state – and which one – was responsible for the Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear industry has been hotly debated.  Even if it is impossible to prove the original source, Glenny sees this as the start of a new arms race in cyber offensive weapons.

Cyber industrial espionage, which sees organisations targeted for extortion or competitive espionage purposes.  The problem is that, until it becomes compulsory to report such breaches, it is impossible to estimate the true cost of cyber industrial espionage.   Glenny quotes estimates ranging from $100 billion to $1 trillion per annum.

Fake malware – a case study

Speaking at the RSA this week, Glenny presented a case study which seeks to put this estimated value into context.  Based in the Ukraine IT company, Innovative Marketing advertised prize winning malware to its customers.  The hitch was that the prizes were not real and the anti-virus software being sold was both fake and liable to open up users PCs to viruses.  Many people took the company’s claims at face value, and failed to carry out even the most basic check – such as whether the top computer publications named really HAD granted prizes to the company.

Ironically, the company failed to address its own computer security and it was possible for someone to review its invoices and estimate that the company had made in excess of $500 million.

Who are the hackers?

Glenny is perfectly aware that the subject of data security might put many readers off (although it didn’t seem to put off too many readers of the Millennium trilogy).  In his book he features the people who are involved in hacking, reasoning that it is important to understand exactly what it is that motivates hackers.  Not all of them, for example are motivated by money.  Many of them are simply ‘ahead of the curve’ when it comes to applying internet technology.  The growth ‘carding’ websites for example enabled  the industrialisation of cyber crime on a massive scale.

The hackers Glenny encountered shared some common characteristics.   In most cases they were men and obsessive gamers.  Many – but by no means all – were lacking in ‘real world’ social skills and were easy prey to criminal elements.   The solution, Glenny suggests, would be to intercept such people very early in their hacking career, which in almost all cases happens in their teens.   It is important to understand the human element behind hacking, and to remember that financial gaine is not always the main driving force.

Fight complacency

Meanwhile, there are some pretty obvious lessons for the corporate sector.  The risk of cyber crime and data breaches should be on every organisation’s agenda at board level.  Reputational as well as financial risks must be taken seriously.  And as the story of Innovative Marketing in Ukraine proves, there is still much work to be done by information professionals in helping colleagues recognise scam sites and helping them to understand why, and how, they should check a website’s claims for its products and services.

Some CPD dates for the diary

By on September 14, 2011 in Post

Autumn is traditionally a busy season for conferences and professional development/CPD events and my diary is rapidly filling up.  Some highlights are described below and they show the range of topics, speakers and formats available.

First up is NetIKX’s September workshop, which Chris Collison will facilitate.  The event marks the two thirds point for the network’s ‘framework for seminars’ and provides the opportunity for delegates to consider future priorities for CPD – for themselves, their organisations, for NetIKX and the ‘profession’.  Chris is an excellent facilitator who will no doubt enable delegates to focus clearly on key priorities. 

Other events I have signed up for include the RSA lecture ‘Value-based social change’ which focuses on how India’s self-help movement is achieving sustainable social change amongst the poorest and most disenfranchised groups.  I am looking forward to hearing how such communities have been empowered and to exploring opportunities for other types of organisation to learn from such initiatives.

At the beginning of November I will be attending Axiell’s two-day Rethinking Libraries Symposium in London.  Hosted by the London Libraries Consortium, the event will focus on new opportunities for libraries including new forms of partnership and new user groups.

Before that, of course, I will be attending, and blogging and tweeting from, Internet Librarian International 2011.  During the conference last year ILI2010 was a Twitter trend!  A year in social media is a long time, and the growth in the number of Twitter accounts and traffic makes it unlikely that a niche event could trend this year – but you never know!  Please make a note of the hashtag (#ILI2011) now, and let’s see what we can do!

Putting a value on ‘search’

By on September 9, 2011 in Post

In the latest in a series of reports investigating the impact of internet technologies, McKinsey sets out to assess ‘the far reaching value of search technologies’.

Focusing on Brazil, France, Germany, India and the US, McKinsey analyses nine activities that create search value and then sets out to analyse the impact of search in 11 sectors/constituencies.

According to McKinsey, traditional analysis of the value of search tends to focus on three activities:

  • Time saved – search can help facilitate quicker decision making
  • Raised awareness – brand awareness, of paid and natural searches
  • Price transparency – benefit to consumers but also to reduce consumer uncertainty

In their latest research, the McKinsey team also analyses the impact of:

  • Better matching – search helps guide ‘consumers’ to the most relevant information, products and services and helps providers find the right audience/customers
  • Long-tail offerings – search facilitates the sale of ‘niche’ items of interest to relatively few people
  • People matching – both business and ‘personal’
  • Problem solving – challenging to place a value on but likely to big one of the biggest source of value
  • New business models
  • Entertainment – (30% of total web searches relate to entertainment)

The report also analyses how 11 sectors/constituencies (including content creators, entrepreneurs, health, government, consumers and education) derive value from search.

Focusing on 2009, the research ‘conservatively’ estimates that search was worth $780 billion globally, the equivalent of $.50 for each search.

You can register to download the report on the McKinsey website.

Doing a digital detox

By on September 1, 2011 in Mobile Devices

Susan Maushart withdrew digital media from her home (and her three teenagers) for six months and wrote a book about it.  The gloriously entitled Winter of our Disconnect was published at the beginning of 2011 – and received much media coverage.  It was featured on BBC Radio 4 and the author was interviewed and featured in many broadsheet papers in the UK and around the world.  Meanwhile, an experiment was featured on a BBC TV programme.  A family of six were taken back to the 1970s to experience the changes that technological developments made on family life.

News now from the US.  The Marriott Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel is offering a weekend break from the ‘always-on’ lifestyle.  Guests checking in must hand over their digital devices.  The rooms have no televisions, telephones or docking stations, but they do have a supply of literary classics.

Sounds fantastic.

‘Serious gamification’

By on August 30, 2011 in Post

Game designers, business executives and academics were brought together for a conference hosted by Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) to discuss the opportunities of applying gaming techniques to a number of sectors.

The website captures some of the outputs of the conference and also features transcripts of conversations between some of the key speakers as they discuss their own experiences and consider the implication of gamification to all types of organisations.

Although gamification is not the same as gaming, it does take some key elements from it.  Organisations are looking to enhance online experiences and to encourage certain types of behaviour, whether this be making a purchase, taking out or renewing a subscription, clicking on a link or simply returning to the site more frequently.

According to one of the speakers Rajat Paharia (founder of Bunchball), gamification is not particularly generational and should not be thought of as something of interest only to ‘generations X/Y’.  Other speakers agreed.  Gamification can address a number of human needs including the desire for self expression, or competition, or status or even altruism.  The key for organisations is to understand the complexities of motivation.

Gamification can also be used to motivate people inside an organisation just as much as it can be used to engage customers and potential customers.  One of the speakers was Daniel Debow from Rypple which uses social gaming techniques in its performance management system.

The non-profit organisation HopeLab is using gamification to tackle teen obesity in the US and there are other examples of gamification being used to educate and involve children.

You can read more about the conference, including the key themes of individual sessions here.

 

 

Top management articles 2011

By on August 25, 2011 in Professional Development

Emerald’s Management Review is 50 years old this year.  This database contains over 280,000 abstracts of articles published in the world’s top 300 management publications.  For the last 15 years, Emerald has run its Citation of Excellence Awards, announcing the most cited and influential articles of this enormous mass of content.

This year’s list has been compiled using Professor Anne-Wil Harzing’s ‘Publish or perish’ software program which maps citation data from the last three years.   The 2011 top 50 articles feature articles originally published in 2007.  This longlist of articles was sifted by an Editorial judging panel – their final choices are listed in full here.

The list includes an article written by KM guru Dave Snowden and originally published in HBR.  Also featuring are this article about a KM success model and this about knowledge governance models.  Also of interest is this article about ‘social sources of information’ for entrepreneurs.

By far the most intriguing title is this one ‘It’s all about me: narcissistic chief executive officers and their effects on company strategy and performance’. Emerald comments that this article adds to the ‘limited research’ in this area.

‘The promise – and peril – of personalisation’

By on August 18, 2011 in Post, Search, Web Technology & The Cloud

One day, Eli Pariser (an online organiser) logged onto Facebook to find out what people with less liberal opinions than his own were talking about.  He couldn’t find them.  Based on his past search and click behaviour, Facebook had simply edited them out.

Since then, Pariser has gone on to write The Filter Bubble: what the internet is hiding from you.  Speaking recently at the RSA in London, he spoke about his concerns about the filters and algorithms that shape the way the internet is presented to us.  The internet, it seems, is not as ‘connective’ as he once thought it could be.

Companies recognised that there was money to be made in helping people sort through enormous data torrents.  This led to a focus on ‘relevance’ as manifested in, for example, Amazon’s ‘if you liked this, you might like that’ concept.  And these filter algorithms do more than that.  They can make inferences from seemingly unrelated data and are responsible for creating a ‘web of one’ in which results are no longer ‘universal’ but rather based on our own search history.  This ‘filter bubble’ feeds our human confirmation bias by presenting to us the world as we already see it.

The problem is that in our personal bubble views, we don’t know what we are missing. It is relatively easy to know the editorial or political slant of a newspaper but not the unseen filters of social media.  And this matters when social media is driving approximately 50% of the traffic to online news sites.  It’s easy for challenging stories to be lost from view amongst the stream of ‘likes’.

We need to move on from narrow relevance and be challenged in our world view.  It’s not easy to achieve this but the first stage is to be aware – and to make others aware – that this filter bubble exists.

Social media and rioters

By on August 16, 2011 in Social Media

The “free flow of information can be used for good, but it can also be used for ill”.  This is what British Prime Minister David Cameron said in the aftermath of the riots that spread across England last week.  He went on to state that “we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

In the aftermath of the riots and the debate about causes and solutions, it is the use of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) that has featured highly in the debate about the use of social media by rioters to communicate.  BBM offers free texting, via the internet, for its users and is growing in popularity especially among young people while SMS usage is declining. The network is not ‘public’ and is therefore more difficult to monitor in real time.  The messages are also encrypted, and unintelligible to casual observers.

As can be imagined, the statement by the Prime Minister has been received with some consternation by observers from across the political spectrum.  Who would decide what consititues ‘criminal’ usage of social media?

Knee-jerk politicians would do well to read Phil Bradley’s post in which he likens the banning of social media to the banning of roads.  And let’s not forget that communities have used social media to regroup after the riots.  The ‘broom armies’, for example, were mobilised to action by a simple Twitter campaign @riotcleanup.

Travelling on the technology curve

By on August 12, 2011 in Post, Trends and Statistics, Web Technology & The Cloud

The theory of how new ideas, innovations and technology are spread is something we should be well aware of.  In our own organisations, we know it pays to identify those who are ‘early adopters’ or members of the ‘early majority’ – and who are influential.   And we also know that sometimes it’s as unhelpful to be too far ahead of the curve as it is to be behind it.

This week, ReadWriteWeb reports on the latest changes to Gartner’s HypeCycle.  HypeCycle seeks to map technological innovations along a timeline from ‘technology trigger’ and through key stages including the ‘peak of inflated expectations’(!) to the ‘plateau of productivity’, when innovation can be seen to be truly impactful and has been adopted by 20-30% of the potential audience.  The latest additions to the service include ‘big data’ and ‘gamification’.

Technologies may follow the curve, but each travels at a different speed.  HypeCycle places eBook readers beyond any disillusionment and at the beginning of the ‘slope of enlightenment’ and big data climbing up towards the ‘peak’ (and likely to do so quite rapidly).

You can view images and read the reseach summary here.