For more years than I can remember, I’ve advocated the position that all things social are inherent to our understanding of the world, making them unable to be bottled or packaged in any way that doesn’t automatically feel a little disproportionate to our understanding of them.

I’ll grab one old quote to illustrate this disconnect:

The two defining characteristics, from lago’s point of view, of an actual social network are that it cannot be compressible and that it would not be user-maintained. The notion of a self-organizing software mirror of the social network is very intriguing to say the least. The notion of compression carries back to the static visualization, wax museums, and other criticisms we’ve seen about these networks. Systems are already in place that are starting to become more autonomous, providing that automatic-user requirement. The question this raises though, however, is this: If software could mimic, and potentially predict the growth and interaction, in its entirety of a real social network, why do we need the nodes at all? It seems that the snapshots provide a context for evaluation that, despite the obvious limitations, can be leveraged.

Source: SocialTwister.com, “SNS: A Xerox of a Xerox” (March 04, 2004)

The crux of the matter is that we are incapable of not seeing things from a social perspective, it underlies all assumptions we make and frameworks we build.  This has been more and more on our minds here as we we work to flesh out of Practice Areas more clearly so we can communicate it to clients and peers.

Today, Umair Haque has a wonderful distillation of the secrets to Obama’s success – a testament to the strength of network thinking and social insight.  One particular bullet struck me, which inspired this post:

4. Maximize purpose. Change the game? That’s 20th century thinking at its finest – and narrowest. The 21st century is about changing the world. What does “yes we can” really mean? Obama’s goal wasn’t simply to win an election, garner votes, or run a great campaign. It was larger and more urgent: to change the world.
Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things – tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.

Source: HBS, Obama’s Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators

“Tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things”  It is this emergence of purpose that allows most people to “call bullshit” on the vast majority of systems and services unleashed on the unassuming yet early-adopting masses.

The greater and deeper the value we create, the stronger the purpose.  Yes, we can.

I woke up this morning to a surprise tweet point me to an article on the New York Times site.  As the page appeared, the title “Twittering from the Cradle” showed up and my interest was naturally peaked.  As I read through the article, I encountered the names of many people and products that I recognized well.

A natural disappointment swelled as I assumed that my beloved, Lil’Grams, had not made it into another piece covering a space we entered oh so long ago.  Then I saw it, and realized just how wrong I was.

Call it convenient. Call it baby overshare. But a host of new sites, including Totspot, Odadeo, Lil’Grams and Kidmondo, now offer parents a chance to forgo the e-mail blasts of, say, their newborn’s first trip home and instead invite friends and family to join and contribute to a network geared to connecting them to the baby in their lives.

“It’s an interesting model,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist for the Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Everyone can decide how much or little they want to know about a baby, which avoids the situation of receiving a few too many e-mails about someone’s wonderful child, and parents can decide how much they want to share — in minimal or maximal ways.”

Now I can’t tell you just how happy I am to be where I am right now.  Building Lil’Grams has been a challenge in a number of ways.  Professionally, it is a testament to our ability to understand a problem and create a solution that means something to the audience it serves.  Personally, it’s been a personal challenge filled with highs and lows, tears and fears.

We’re about a month away from the big reveal.  I’m looking forward to bringing our efforts out to the world at large.  We’re still making a number of important decisions about how things will work and what will be in the final release (we have more than we planned).

Until October 22nd, from Delhi.

After my long trip to New Delhi, I’ve been many things. Changed would certainly summarize how I feel. Having never really gone to India, it was an eye-opening experience. One reason, of course, is the striking difference between our lives here and the lives of people there. I won’t begin to describe that.

On the other hand, there’s also the awakening of development in India. I’ve worked with a variety of teams over the last 10 years – everywhere in the world, from India to Brazil. Managing a team of developers thousands of miles away is always a challenge. It wasn’t until stepping into the shoes of my team did I realize the difference in perception. Ironically enough, one of our team members sent a link today to a site that I’ve frequented many times in years past:

Of late, there are uprisings everywhere, emotionally among Programmers in many software companies. They are yearning to do something on their own, something out of the ordinary due to the increasing feeling of dejection. Many programmers want to get out of their routine monotonous coding which no longer excite them. Programmers are toying with ideas of moving out of some of th reputed companies, where they are like caterpillars climbing a wall without knowing how high the wall is.

Brajeshwar | Are you a Programmer or a Coder?

Looking back, and forward, this is definitely a distinction worth remembering – and understanding. As I consider the difference between the proverbial “programmer” and “coder”, I’m reminded that the difference, in my mind, resolves around one’s willingness to see and address problems. True problem solvers are not saatisfied solely with the answer but with the process of uncovering it. This quote seems quite apt:

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presentsitself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure.

KARL MENNINGER, “Take Your Choice,” This Week Magazine, October 16, 1949, p. 2.

Do you solve problems or wait for the answer. If you do, we just might have a job for you.

technorati tags:programmers, coders, software, people, problem+solving, brajeshwar

I’ve been hard pressed to find time to report back on all the exciting things happening here at Blue Whale Labs – New Delhi. Once I return I’ll do some reflection on just how I feel about being in India, but for the time being, I’ve posted a quick update on how our first Developer Pod (ya know whales travel in pods, right?) is doing:

Today, the first Developer Pod (each class of recruits) entered the Aquarium (our New Delhi office). There’s something very exciting about a new group of energetic, excited, and undoubtedly nervous developers preparing to try something new. And new it is, indeed. As might be expected, Blue Whale has its own way of thinking about application design and development. In many ways, we’re quite outside the norm for traditional software development in India and there’s a mild learning curve to get inside the process.

Blue Whale Labs

technorati tags:bluewhalelabs, new+delhi, developer+pod

Ranvir and I have been waiting at the airport in Amsterdam for the last 4 hours. We’re on our way to New Delhi to meet with the team and give our India operations a kickstart.

It’s difficult, to say the least, making this trip out here.  Somehow, you end up having an entire day evaporating out from under you.  We left Newark yesterday at 4:40pm and we’ll be landing in New Delhi at 11:30pm local time – the next day.

We’re here for a couple of weeks and it looks like an exciting time, to say the least.  Right now we’re plotting a number of work and social related activities for the team – including a mini Super Bowl party.  Of course, in New Delhi, that means getting up at 7am on Monday morning to catch the kickoff.

technorati tags:bluewhalelabs, ranvir+gujral, greg+narain, new+delhi

I’m happy to report that Blue Whale Labs are growing in leaps and bounds. We’ve been adding clients to our roster is expanding much faster than we initially expected. Of course, with rapid growth comes the always-difficult growing pains. Despite our own super-human powers, we’re starting to get more and more worn down (in a good way, of course). More importantly, we are always eager to provide better experience and specialized knowledge to our clients.

To that end, we’re on the hunt for more mammals to add to the pod. Stowe’s crafted the main piece of this:

Here in the US, we are tryng to attract a few good mammals (whales aren’t fish, you know) to join us in growing our exploding consulting service. We are interested in bringing aboard some more folks who are interested in the things that obsess us, like social applications, user experience, application design, product design and management, social media, and helping us to reinvent the way that software consulting works.

[...]

Do not send us a resume. Collect the ten most important posts on your blog (You aren’t blogging? You’ve got to be kidding!) and write a blog post entitled Why Blue Whale Labs Should Care About Me (or the like), and tag it “a few good mammals”. Send us the link. Let’s see where this goes.

If you are shy, you can send it as email: mammals@bluewhalelabs.com.

Source: Blue Whale Labs, “Blue Whale Is Looking For A Few Good Mammals”

So that’s the official word. We’d love to know who you are – just follow the rules ;) If you know someone who you think is a great fit, please send them a link or e-mail.

technorati tags:bluewhalelabs, a+few+good+mammals

I’ve quickly posted some thoughts on the increasing trend towards parallel entrepreneurship over at the Blue Whale Labs blog. Read The Rise of the Parallel Entrepreneur.

Since I’ve moved out to San Francisco, I’ve made it my personal mission to try and bring as many people together as possible – mostly just to see if I can. To further that agenda, I’ve been working with my partners at the Lab and good friend Brian Solis to organize something new and interesting.

The Crawl will take place on November 10th, 2006 at 5pm.
Here’s the details:

The Bubble-Free Bar Crawl is a celebration of our sacrifice. This event is for everyone toiling late at night to launch their own startup and take a piece of the pie. Most importantly, it’s a time for you to bring all those who are supporting you out for a good time and a thank you.

The Crawl will focus on the emerging tech corridor in downtown SF. There seems to be a huge number of startups cropping up and down 2nd Street. We’re starting at the Embarcadero and moving our way towards Market.

We’ll be hitting these places:

5:00 pm – Web 2.2 Conference / Citizen Space Open House
6:00 pm – Momo’s
6:45 pm – Nova
7:30 pm – Bacar
8:15 pm – Thirsty Bear
9:00 pm – House of Shields

We welcome anyone and everyone, just bring a friend, a happy disposition, and be on time.

Hope to see you there. RSVP here.

I’m happy to announce my newest venture, Blue Whale Labs. The Lab’s goal is to provide “Strategic consulting, design & development for innovative social applications.” Although this is a new venture, it is more a formalization of the services I have been providing for the past few years. I am still working furiously to launch SocialRoots as quickly as possible and the lab will provide me with a better launch pad when all is in place.

Most importantly, though, is I am solidifying my relationships with my co-founders. I’m working with both Stowe Boyd, our CEO, and Ranvir Gujral, a fellow entrepreneur. The notion of the lab emerged from some discussion we were having several weeks ago circulating around the challenges we’ve faced building out socially-enabled products (both Ranvir and I are launching soon).

Stowe made the official announcement yesterday at Office 2.0 as well as on his blog. Expect more soon.