Sleeping With Technology Paper

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Open publication – Free publishing – More always-on

Content and persuasion

Last week I was at DocFest, Sheffield UK, doing a session on Digital Influence. The speaker after me, really had a very nice story about digital infuence in practice. Lucy was not aware that she was applying the dragonflyeffect, (focus, grab attention, enable people and take action), but she really succeeded to use the social movement at its full potential.

We all know that content is super important, it has to be high quality, and it needs to be focused, so it is simple to understand and to follow. This lady Lucy Cooke, is a filmy maker, writer and froglover, but I think she now also loves sloths 🙂

Lucy wanted to to a documentary on Frogs, but didn’t got the money together, so she decided to just leave and do her thing,  I always admire that with people! And this is how the endearing story came a lvie about saving animals and how things can go really fast in a virtual world, if you communicate well and have interesting stories to tell. 

I’m not gong to repeat her blogpost, but you can read all about Lucy here and the story of slothville, it is a fascinating story, how Lucy got a contract to film a serie now on sloths and how she got contacted by Simon and Shuster to write a book! Enjoy the story!

 

Meet the sloths from Lucy Cooke on Vimeo.

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Facebook the new Microsoft?

A curious week, the launch of IPAD 2, and the commotion on the Apple app store and terms that Apple sets to publishers, the new rules of facebook in selling profile information. 

What have these 2 in common. Yes a walled garden. Remember the digital tv discussions in the mid 90’s (interactive tv), a lot mediacompanies saw their potential in the walled gardens. But it didn’t really happen then. Now the telecom parties take that over, Belgacom TV and Telenet have their own walled garden in a way. And maybe we are going back to this system.

I’m not fan of a walled garden, and more for open systems, but having a few meetings in the creative sector this week, I feel that there is a lot of material for debate. On one hand these walled gardens give opportunity to gain money on what you offer there, finally. Let’s face it, the app store from Apple is really working, and a 1 euro app is bought fast. The open model might return to a free model as the internet is.  

Remember the days when Microsoft delivered Explorer in their operating system, and all the commotion around that. Wondering if the EU can know say that Apple need to change its model.

And what about Facebook, the most powerful social network of all, with ‘places’ active all over the world, will  foursquare and gowalla have a long live, maybe if they can keep one step ahead or have an more added value then Facebook places. If you want to do something online, and want to connect with the connected, Facebook is your place to be right. It forces itself in your professional or leisure life either way. Together with LinkedIn they rule. Will Facebook stay? Well it might not, but the social netwok will, maybe in other model in the future.

All excited things to think about, and curious how it will evolve.

Some figures about facebook

Measuring the Impact of Facebook http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=measuringtheimpactoffacebooktravel2dot0-110301150603-phpapp02&stripped_title=measuring-the-impact-of-facebook&userName=tthompson

View more presentations from Troy Thompson

QT VR in 1997

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TED talk – How sleep makes you more productive, and creative.

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Good sleep leads to a better life.

I’m using ZEO since the end of August. The ZEO device made me even more punctual on my rytmes during the day, and stimulated me to track my activity during the day and evening.

What is ZEO

ZEO gives you an analysis of your sleep, and reports in ZQ. ZQ is the sum of your light sleep, REM sleep, DEEP sleep, times in wake and how long in wake. You can score higher ZQ by optimizing REM and DEEP, and total sleep in general. You lose ZQ points with times in wake.

How does this works

ZEO consists of a headband and a ZEO device, which are wireless connected to each other, during the night data is transfered to the ZEO device by tracking your brain waves. I usually upload my data every week and then check where I need to optimize my sleep. Because the tracking is an enabler to optimize your sleep. On the website myzeo.com, you can set your goals and start working on your sleep fitness program.

Sleep fitness

A lot of people came to me, since I’m using this, talking about their sleep, and telling that they don’t sleep well. There are a lot of sleep disruptives possible, and mostly you know them of course. It is about changing habits and create discipline to work on that. The Zeo together with the online personal sleeping coach helps you define the disruptive elements, and make you really aware about them every day, also because the daily reporting (ZQ) on your ZEO device tells you are on your way or not, and really shows you what is going on, and when it is going on.

Sleep is very personal?

Sleep might be very personal for people, especially if you don’t sleep well. There can be tons of reasons of course, you might worry about family, work, have anxiety or have crying babies (but that is hopefully temporary), or snoring husband or wife. Posting your sleep data to a website may go a bit far you might think, but by doing this, you get lots of more info, also from other people, and you can start talking about it, and share exepriences, it will create a sence of community feeling ‘not being alone’ with your sleeping problems or habits. We will learn form each other to get a better life.

So far my findings:

ZEO helped to measure my sleep, and to get to know what is going on at night, I must say I always have been fascinated about this. I like to sleep, have wonderful dreams, sometimes a bit weird, but I like dreaming. And when I have long DEEP sleeps I really feel it! I don’t use any sleep medicine, I sometimes smoke a joint, and it highers my REM a bit, but in general it does not have a high impact on my sleep. Where as alcohol is really bad for sleep.

My friend and I are exchanging ZQ scores, and we talk a lot about our sleep, this makes it also fun! We exchange our dreams and so on. To share this with someone more intimate, stimulates to really work on it, and make it kind of a competition.

ZEO made my schedule more rigid, I try to go to bed at the same time, and get up by the same time. I did this before ZEO as well, but not so conscious. 

Exercise regurarly: practicing Tai Chi twice a week, and cycle or run once a week.

Work related exercise:

– Try to avoid annoying people, who irritate you, try to stay happy and constructive (this is also for your private life, filter on people you spend time with)

– Avoid stress, if you do have stress, exercise more, this always helps for me. Try to find out what makes you stressful, and do something about it. It might be little things.

– Keep things in control and be organized. This might be for everybody different, but running different projects, it is easy to lose control, and stay organized keeps my life easy and manageable.

– Keep a balance between private and work. Not always easy, but challenging.

– Go with the flow, things just happen sometime, and sometimes you can do something about it and sometimes not.

What’s next:

– Predicting my sleep analysis. 

– Optimizing my DEEP sleep. 

– Keeping my total sleep hours (min 8 hours a night)

– My average ZQ is 75, would like to be in 80’s.

ZEO device is now available in Europe trough Amazon.co.uk.

Interviews with some speakers on Design For Persuasion

http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Design for Persuasion 2010 Afterthoughts

Visit to San Francisco and Silicon Valley

My August visit to San Francisco had 3 main purposes, a wedding party, partner deal with Plug and Play tech center, and preparing a second business mission for Belgian companies. And of course some vacation in between.

As it is really hard to get in touch with startup companies n San Francisco I decided to contacted Parisoma, Parisoma is an innovationloft, with a concept as the studios that I’m running in Belgium. We will work together on an event where we invite several new fresh companies, to meet up with our Belgian companies. The List is pretty long, and the highlights are Twitter, Flowtown, Klout, Crowdklout, Kyte, blurb and airbnb, myTown, some other geo location concept companies. Because location based services and entertainment is getting really big. Mind you that we already discussed this in 2003, but I guess it was to early then 😉

Download now or watch on posterous

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We also met with Cassie Phillips, webwallflower, who is highly connected in the young startup scene in the Bay area, we most probably will also do some event with her as well. A welcome party or something in that style.

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VID00052.AVI (13606 KB)

During this period, the Belgian Government (IBBT) signed a contract with Plug and Play tech Center in Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale. This contract gives a lot of opportunities to Belgian companies, who are interested to explore the US market. In addition Plug and Play, is now also a gate to venture capital, we will organize a big event there, with junior and senior entrepreneurs, Belgians who already made the leap forward. And have round table discussions with local venture capitalist who work together with Plug and Play.

In addition we will also have some meet ups there, which are really big in Silicon Valley of course, so the companies who join us, will have a good view on what is happening, how it is happening and how they can proceed to make things happen, I’m pretty excited about the program. And we might also have an opportunity to talk with the Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has great ideas about the city, and changed already quite a lot and is apparently very ambitious.

While in San Francisco, I also spent some time with BJ Fogg to prepare our conference Design for persuasion, which was great! On my ride to there with Neal Burns, I had an interesting talk about digital media and advertising. Neal worked together with some colleagues on an Ebook on that specific topic, which Im keen to buy and read. It just came out. The lunch and 2 hour ride with him was definitely no waste of time. He also had some intteresting projects he wanted to discuss with BJ, concerning young people to change their eating behavior in schools and attitudes towards safe sex in the East Palo Alto area (some schocking news there). Being in these meetings was really stimulating for me, and made me think to start these services in Howesttowards the Digital media space. So many things to do.

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IntroD4P.m4v (7326 KB)

How small the world can be, on Tuesday I had a meeting with Martha Russell, from Stanford University, who works on global entrepreneurship, and doing a lot of research in that area, and also guiding Media X lab, which organizes a lot of workshops and seminars on social media and personal media. After talking 1 hour with each other, we realized that we met at BJ Fogg his Persuasive technology lab, and that Neal Burns is her husband, I mean really 😉

It was as always, an inspiring trip, and full of new stimulation.

And this will be our super guide during the business mission!

 

Looking back (2008) and forward (2012)

While I was going trough some archives this week, and came across a video I did on MipTV 2008, it was interesting how fast things can change. That edition of that MipTV conference was all about social networks and broadcasting/tv industry, connecting it together, the other hot thing was Mobile entertainment and development especially in Asian markets and development countries. At that time Bebo got acquired by AOL Time Warner, and mySpace hooked up with Fox/News Corporation. Both of these networks lost a lot of market share these days. Bebo lost it because AOL didn’t pay any attention to the local aspect of the network, which was mainly popular in the UK. And mySpace just lost his sexy image. Bebo is a perfect example of what happens quite a lot with acquirements. If you read the press releases about these acquirements, wheter it is a company or a platform, it always says ‘there will be a lot of synergy’ (which is really a joke), and the other thing ‘nothing will change’, well everything changes, so if you plan on selling your business or platform, you better not get to attached to it! 

In 2008, Facebook was not yet in the picture (not in Europe), but if you look at now, it is the 3rd population if it would be a country, that is really amazing, the growth it goes trough right now. Facebook is the perfect broadcast model for the everyday user.  It connects very easily, and the reach can be professional or leisure. Which makes it very powerful. Together with Google they practically dominate the world.

Remember Open ID, Open ID should allow you to login with one username and password, to all the different networks and social media platforms, I don’t know if you noticed, but nowadays, you can login with your facebook account specs (facebook connect), right substituting Open ID. Another aspect that makes Facebook an added value.

Just yesterday we had this little micro conversation on Iphone versus Google Android. While Google Android is an OS, it slowely takes its market place, and who will win the battle. If we look into the past, being open and transparent always made it versus the closed environments (if this is better or not, that is a different discussion), and then there is also the price issue of course. Will the Iphone become like an Apple Macintosh (in the 80’s the cost was 5000 euro) versus a PC Windows (1500 euro). This was one of the reasons that Apple stayed in an elite and did n’t make it big in the ’80’s early 90’s.

Curious how it will evolve in 2012! 

Still got one at home 🙂