With Yahoo Pipes and Anothr.com, I have just burnt a feed to show the updates about Wikimania 2007 conference. The feed can be subscribed with Gtalk/Skype/MSN messenger once there are any updates from Blogosphere(merged the search result from Technorati and Google Blog Search).
Inspired by Jianshuo, I spent this year’s “thinking week” early July in Kanas Lake, the top-left corner of China landscape. However, I really hesitated to take camera with me in annual “thinking week” because its reserved more for my inner meditation. Anyway, I took a camera with me this time because I was routed from Beijing to Kanas Lake after a business trip for my portfolio wealink.com. So there’s a chance that I took several pictures though reluctantly. The pictures are not the classical scene of Kanas Lake like those on Jianshuo’s blog, but a very special collection when I climbed up to Guanyu Pavilion.
Firstly, I found a rainbow in south-eastern sky(Mongolian border). The rainbow is changing with it’s size dynamically. So I turn my sight to the opposite direction to find the source of the rainbow.
Yes, I found another group of clouds in northern sky(Russian border). They are showering to the lake! I can even hear the sound of rain when they hit the surface of lake. I can’t help taking pictures of the amazing view. However, it seemed its too grand picture to fit into one picture. The great things can only be memorized. The feeling was not just enjoying, but a kind of bliss.
Kanas was not just simply magic of raining and rainbow though I never seen in urban life. When I happened to turn back to another side of the rainbow(south-western, the Kazakhstan border), I found the clouds painting on the grassland fastly. They ran very fast leaving different shapes of shadow on the ground. Interestingly, the speed of painting changed time by time that triggered your imagination there were someones manipulating the “pens” behind.
I don’t know how long I stood there to turn 3 different directions. But I’m sure I was breathless for right a while. I’m not sure if there are anyones else ever seen such fabulous view before. Could be different but same feeling and reverence to the nature?
I will be in Taiwan early August to attend Wikimania 2007 conference. It’s the second time I will be in Wikimania(last time Aug, 2005, Frankfurt). But it’s the first time I visit Taiwan. As there are still many constraints to mainland Chinese to visit Taiwan, I even don’t want to try those complex processes but seeking a tricky way to make the visit. It is impossible to share the “trick” this moment before it is proved feasible(That’s why it’s tricky, ;D )
I will speak the 3rd day of this year’s conference talking about “Knowledge Forming, Heredity, and Variation“. I will try to illustrate how Wikipedia is evolving itself like the nature with it’s own natural selection rules with gene(meme) heredity and variation process. And how knowledge can be improved in a vector adding way(not linear algebra). However, there are still many issues to limit the future development especially censorship in real world, e.g. GFW in China. Censorship strongly blasts the free creation of knowledge evolution same to the disasters in nature. Just in this week, many bloggers found that Zh.wikipedia.org can be accessed in China though still with “keywords” filtering. Anyway, if the reopening is permanent this time(users were cheated last year for temporary unblocking), I believe there will be huge creations in zh.wikpedia space. And will take further impact to the disrupting society in China.
What’s more in this global symposium? Let’s meet there and create it together, in a vector adding way.
最近用显微镜去看看了好几个公司的产品设计环节，发现的问题不少。有的是关联项目，有的是顾问项目。创业团队也非常聪明，大部分亲自投身于产品设计，这是创业的基因。但是产品设计需要用个人的头脑去面对社会性服务的诸多可能性，从我的观察看，未必所有的创业者都意识到了这一点。
产品设计中往往遇到选择的问题，很多产品设计者凭借自己的经验和使用习惯去框定用户的使用路径，这样的产品往往只有可怜的几种可能性。产品设计者可能很聪明，他会归纳出用户“最”有可能的动作和习惯（例如80%的概率）。但是这存在两个方面的问题：
1. 即使80%的用户使用路径如此，也必然存在20%的用户行为难以接受这样的框定而弃之，损失是立现的。在没有分析这些用户的后续影响之前，先别急着说“无所谓”。
2. 就算判断准确，也还存在20%的创造性空间，消灭用户创造的路径可能性是最大的潜在危险。大部分的成功结果可能都来自于未预期的设计。消灭了不确定性和可能性，就消灭了很多想象之外的成功概率。
VSM(Viable System Model) 中有一些非常有广普性的原理，其中之一就是“可生存系统的输入输出多样性量级是相同的”。应用到产品设计中，产品的使用路径要和用户的需求多样性的数量级相匹配，否则就会难以持续。即使喧嚣一时，也会因为多样性的不匹配而热寂。设计“可能性路径”，要在每个设计环节中增加用户可以选择的机会，而不是告诉用户“只能这样”。有了“潜在的可能性”(Emergent Possibilities)，不知道会发生什么奇妙的化学反应，那时候只要相信你的用户就好了。
这个原理对2.0服务更适用，因为长尾的多样性原则告诉我们：好的2.0 服务，是为了建立可能性，而不是建立控制性。Folksonomy(Tag)是可能性，Widget是可能性，RSS是可能性… 那些试图获取用户数量的长尾，而又试图消灭用户需求多样性的长尾其实是短尾思维，在产品设计中观察团队的思维方式是有趣的。所以我每次听到有的创业者对我说，“我们的用户群都不用… ”，或者“我们的目标用户群都是不懂互联网的人…”，我其实有点笑话他的，他们今天不用，明天也不会用吗？他们今天用了你的服务，明天一定用吗？