Crisis - Opening Future Opportunity Windows

Prior to the two-day conference #SUGermanySummit this year a tiny mockup of a project (not bigger than a shoe box) triggered my curiosity and caught my & our interest.

Rapid First Response Center@rfrc_eu

Mirko Bass, one of the two initiators of this idea, explained the purpose to me and what seemed abstract and small in cardboard became a powerful vision. Having an influx of foreign language speaking refugees also in Dresden a service providing real-time translation services via digital communication technology in a healthcare context. Over the course of the next months, I followed the progress of the project. As TEDxDresden approached in September 2016 in Dresden with the motto "The Social Turn", the idea of inviting Mirko and Harald (the 2nd mastermind of the concept and leading figure behind MLOVE) to Dresden (actually the sister city of Hamburg) came to mind.

What seemed like an obvious project, considering the partners (as seen on the picture on the right), was by no means an easy march through. Corporate projects always have a clear output, and financial return. This idea, as tiny as it seemed in the beginning, had neither. Being an employee at CISCO did not help much to bring it off the ground and visibility it now is attracting. Not only that the Krankenhaus Hamburg-Eppendorf caught interest, the Red Cross and the Dorit und Alexander Otto Stiftung (link to video documentation) but over time networking connections widened and the project caught interest outside Germany. It was Greece, and CISCO's country manager, that led to the involvement of Startupboat.  Soon enough the vision to bring one container to Samos (from where the founder of Startupboat comes from), just several hundred meters away from Turkish mainland, one of entry points of refugees to the European Community became reality.

Here the 'power of connection' becomes reality again. A week ago Mirko sent me notice of an event, as part of the #TLVweek (Tel Aviv Week) at Factory Berlin. Tuesday afternoon at 2pm I found myself in a small street in Berlin near U-Bahn station Bernauer Straße bumping into an arriving participant from Israel searching for the location.

Here you details to the event: Startupboat @ Factory

What happened then, overshot my expectations. Not only hearing about projects like ROC21, Institute for the Future, the Pritzker Prize, Park(ing) Day, Zaatari Refugee Camp (Jordan), National Day of City Hacking, Migration Work and more. Overwhelming to say the least. Connecting these dots, and enabling new developments and take adaptive moves to bring these early stage projects even more so forward into social impact and involving citizens and migrants alike.

Paula of Startupboat

Mirko of RFRC

Where there is a 

vision there is a way

... and doing a final #PresencingStatus on this experience last week:

• Good - new learning, new contacts, widening the scope
• Tricky - coping with a cold, power plugs for smartphone rare (as most often)
• Learned - take opportunities as they open up; Impact Hubs involved (also part of #ulab)
• Action - connecting people with people in my network (done!), #ShapersUnited (Dresden)

Industrie40 - Is Now, and Hannover Messe Ante Portas

Last week government of Saxony and Plattform Industrie 4.0 invited stakeholders involved in the changing landscape of business towards a digitally driven one to "Industrie 4.0 - Sachsen stellt sich auf" in Dresden. About 400 participants from across all possible stakeholder communities, from HR to politics to banks to chip manufactures, and ICT companies and CEOs of local SME followed the invitation.

As disruptive as it feels digital is nothing new in the business world, even outside chip factories or car manufactures, though everywhere there is vast room for improvement and valuable use cases and applications.

#Industrie40 is the German expression for IoT (Internet of Things) in a production and manufacturing context, one of the core industry field in which Germany is strong and world-clas to this day. It was coined and published during the 2011 Hannover Messe (article in German) by several ministries and engineering organizations (which are also the driving force behind the current activities at Plattform Industrie 4.0). This year's main topic at Hannover Messe 2016 will be Industrie 4.0 so it makes sense to extend the view towards the underlying technology platforms that will enable this transformation (and not just within the fenced properties of production plants).

However without the necessary technology there will be little to no implementation of the vision of digitalization in the manufacturing space. With having a major chip factory by GLOBALFOUNDRIES (formerly known as AMD Dresden) in Dresden it is worth to read into what an expert has to say:

IoT is Now! (PART I) • IoT is Now! (Part II)

by Rajeev Rajan

It is going to be an exiting future, and it is happening today. Why don't we take active part in it ourselves?

PS.: A first view on last week's conference #SachsenIndustrie40 can be found here.

Visioneer - Peter H. Diamandis

Be quick - till February 20, 2016:

#Visioneer is on Sneak Preview

h/t Jonathan McGuiness posting on Facebook this news 

The Emperor has no Clothes - REALLY?

It's been a couple of weeks since Nikola, a GSP11 alumni (as I almost did become; one week's notice to raise $ 25K was insane and so I did cover Amplifyfestival 2011 in Sydney that summer), shared his talk with the title The Emperor Has No Clothes: Socrates Deconstructs Singularity University.

In short, and that has come to my personal understanding is that:
1. Singularity University (SU) is not about the Singularity
2. Singularity University is running a traditional business model, not focused on exponential
3. Knowledge is not publicly shared as in announced in the first announcement at TED 2008

Even though I have to admit that I go along with many of Nikola's points he has made in his speech and the following Q & A I'd counter answer as the situation is quite more dynamically complex than it seems at first sight.

I will draw on the three points I have stated above.

ad 1. 

When Ray Kurzweil, chancellor and co-founder of SU, at his TED talk 2008 "A University for the coming Singularity" he stated the following:

"Its students and faculty will study these technologies, with an emphasis on their interactions, and help to guide the process for the benefit of humanity and its environment"

... per se the "Singularity" is not the focus.

Additionally, SU is not a "traditional" university, though it makes sense to use the known term that is well understood by the public, as the curriculum is constantly in development (much faster than a university department normally changes the syllabus, even from year to year).

SU is rather about technologies and how they can be applied (yet missing out the social innovation part at large in the curriculum to what I see, and know) to solve the world's greatest challenges. As the TED talk came up, and I was in the phase to create a smaller version of SU AKA LockSchuppen here in Silicon Saxony's capital Dresden, we did manage to collaboratively translate the talk into German using the back than official TED translation tool dotSUB, in order to make it available for local business folks, and SMEs, as well as politicians and educators.

ad 2.

Concerning the business model, this was publicly outlined by Salim Ismail at the Foresight Conference 2010 (see the last presentation which includes slides and video on the schedule). This alone per se is quite unique as you seldom see this openness on how the business model is supposed to work in other companies.

As I found out myself ("the hard way"), building a business model on openness and exponential technologies (especially communication tools) the "normal" business world does not understand the implications of exponential technologies in its total impact (also on their business models, and economic future). Therefore, it makes sense to keep the "money for service" paradigm within SU for some time. As over time, the demand was growing this resulted even in raising the tuition for the Executive Program. Probably on one side to lower the overarching demand that could not fulfilled in the wished quality - I remember a workshop on lean manufacturing in 2005 that had allowed in twice as many participants (for the same price) than the year before, only to become overcrowded, crappy, and not recommendable anymore; the People Express Airline story how lowering prices can become fatal). On the other hand this "entrance barrier" forces potential participants to think more about the topic of exponential technologies, and get their grip on MOOCs, local communities such as XPRIZE Think Tanks and learn about it outside SU.

In both cases favorable.

Not to forget in this context is that Google now sponsors the tuition for the yearly 80 participants of the GSP program, meaning you don't have to raise the $ 25k but still there is the challenge to write the essays for the application, and do the video - which in itself is quite a challenge (I have done it three times, once in 2011 even successful)

Of course, this shouldn't the last step on the "ladder of progress", and SU is progressing in this as well being present at other conferences as in Hamburg at the ZEIT FESTIVAL Smashing Ideas (photos, own review on the event (in German)) in Hamburg in February or even doing the first SingularityU Germany Summit.

ad 3.

When SU started in 2009 with its first GSP cohort and the executive program it was intended to share the video lectures in public. Some of which especially in the early days became public such as "The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Create it Yourself" (by Peter Diamandis) and "Bob Metcalfe discusses the Enernet" by Bob Metcalfe (both talks have become real inspirations for my own work)

Some great videos which were already out on the web even had to be taken down due to copyright issues, or lectures probably who didn't want their talks to be freely available to everybody.

Over the years, however, this has also become "better". As many of the attendees of the GSP-programs (#GSP09, #GSP10, #GSP11, #GSP12, #GSP13, #GSP14, #GSP15) are on social media, especially Twitter and the hashtag #SingularityU.

Rather than sharing the information with the organization itself, providing the context for participants to share ideas, information, knowledge, and connections themselves openly on social media so others (even outside the programs, and not paying thousand of dollars to attend) can become engaged, inspired, and pulled into taking action themselves.

During the GSP14 program, Angela Incampo (my co-initiator of HTxA - HighTech x Agency) and I decided to partner with Eventifier to bring the shared knowledge from Silicon Valley to a broader audience. Here our interview on the Eventifier blog and the one Angela did with three passionate and crazy attendees of GSP14 on the HTxA-blog.

... and finally, a great way to learn more about the protagonists of SU, and exponential entrepreneurs this series by Alison E. Berman is worthwhile.

Finally, the future is not there yet. A lot is ahead of us all. Becoming aware of our own mental models and how innovation, business models, and making a living in an exponential world is the first step the  #MoonshotThinkers we are all probably are once we become aware of our capabilities!!

My #PresencingStatus on the issue:

1. Good - glad Nikola had the courage to bring the issues to the table

2. Tricky - quite challenging to keep the emotions calm and see, and become aware of  the facts

3. Learned - technology is by far not enough to make the world a better place: social comes along

4. Action - PRESS RETURN to make these thoughts available for the conversation & dialogue

Yours, Ralf