Deborah Schultz

Code, Shmode - people trump algorithms! Tummeling for success

I was privileged to be invited to speak at StartupFestival Montreal this month - great city, great event, great team [thanks Alistair]. My favorite time was spent meeting with startups. At one point I found myself in the advisor tent with three companies' founders chatting tech, culture, politics, business models and global scene.  Amazingly these founders all grew up outside North America - Singapore, Ethiopia, Norway, Hong Kong and Brazil.  And each had spent a significant time living outside of their native countries. They all run virtual teams but place equal importance on meeting face to face to build their companies.  They understand the importance of the human side of success and are driven not by money or selling their companies to Google or Facebook but want to build something innovative and lasting on their own terms .  That's why we all got into this game to begin with, ey?![nod to Canada!]  

These are exciting times to launch a startup - Internet focused or not.  Technology is quickly becoming a means to an end rather than an end to itself. The way it should be.  We can start building companies that put people and human behavior at the center rather than forcing us humans to alter our behavior to fit the tool.  With that in mind, I spoke about the importance of the people side of tech and your business.  Algorithms alone won't be your differentiator.  Unless you're in bio-tech the tech won't differentiate your company.  The User Experience, Features and understanding of human behavior will be where we are seeing the true differentiators.  A good point in case is Path [see Brendan Mulligan's recent piece] and Nir Eyal's work at Stanford on human behavior.

Here's my talk - enjoy.

Code, Shmode - people trump algorithms. Tummeling for success from deb schultz

Code, Shmode - people trump algorithms. Tummeling for success from deb schultz

Tummeling - the art of creating active social spaces

Cross posted from my weekly Tummelvision podcast - where we explore the art of social engagement in business, society and tech

Part of my passion surrounding Tummeling stems from my desire to explore and highlight the dynamics of what is needed to create engaged  social spaces online.  Recently Kevin Marks and I led a session at the recent O'reilly Open Web Foo Camp where we intro'ed the concept to our beloved geek community.  We had a great discussion with a number of  folks including Dale Dougherty [who runs the world of Make], Sarah Novotny [program chair of OSCON] and others.  As Tummlers themselves - they commented on the need for better tools for curators,  creators and catalysts to help them connect with their community and for their community to connect with each other.

The intersection of our human selves and tech were popping up in many conversations and many sessions throughout the weekend.  We are definitely at a unique moment - where the once binary web is just starting to recognize the need to evolve into a more organic entity that better reflects who we are and how we behave - a more reflective  representation of our offline selves.  Let's face it, we take ourselves with us wherever we are.  In one of the sessions led by Brady Forrest we discussed the need for Social Bots - sounds scary - but really it could potentially be about making us smarter about ourselves and our interactions - these bots could help us maintain our social relationships across many groups, sites, and tribes.  They could even be a personal data stream to report back to me analytics about my life in meaningful ways.  But therein lies the rub - as soon as we start heading down the "manage my life" track - it starts getting complex very quickly.  We  need to ensure that in our effort to create a more open web we provide for the likelihood of ever changing connections and the ability to set permissions and identity as we choose.

As both Elizabeth Churchill [Ep 7 Guest] and Shelly Farnham pointed out, not all of us want 100% transparency all the time.  This leads us into many complex and complicated issues of privacy, identity, control, permissions etc.  We are seeing them played out daily - everywhere - and though computers can do a better job of helping us filter and manage some of these complexities it will ultimately be up to us - the humans and the Tummlers to make it all work seamlessly and organically.  The human brain and heart - are still the best at managing the nuances of our social selves.