Juliet Waters's Open Salon Blog

New York Times to partner with Byliner and Vook

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:12:31 -0500

Some very interesting news yesterday from Digital Book World. The New York Times is partnering with Byliner and Vook to produce a series of e-books.

I first heard about Byliner about a year an half ago when I spent a month at the Banff Centre, hanging out with Robert Boynton, director of NYU's literary reportage program. We were part of a group of eight literary journalists spending the month working on long projects. We Canadian journalists were feeling dour. 2011 seemed another grim year in the slow death of newspapers and magazines. All around us, at the Centre, were young dancers, musicians and artists, all working towards their dreams. I can't speak for everyone, but I felt like we were the last dinosaurs in a slowly rising ocean of busy fish indifferent to our impending extinction.

Robert, however, was upbeat. All kinds of things were happening, he insisted, in the world of long form journalism. He pointed to byliner as an example. The San Francisco startup was building a digital magazine that worked almost like a cross between Amazon and iTunes. Commissioned digital journalism was linked up with traditional long form journalism to create something close to a bookstore which would prompt people towards long essays in subjects or by writers they enjoyed. It was hard to tell at the time if this was something that would break the worsening glut of undervalued high quality journalism, or merely one more project that would only contribute to it.

Vook on the other hand, I already knew about This was a digital publisher that creates special interest books by combining print and video. A few months before I'd bought one of their most popular titles for my son, Tae Kwon Do for Kids. It was an ingenious book/app that combined both text and video demonstrations of basic moves. For someone who struggles with co-ordination like my son, it was an invaluable resource alongside his regular Tae Kwon Do classes.

At the time I saw more potential for the Vook than the Byliner model. But in the last year I've started to notice more and more magazines (in Canada, The Walrus is one example) head out on the e-book production trail.

It's beginning to sound a little more like Christmas. Which is probably more because it's ten days before Christmas. But for now I'm going with the flow of possibility.

Code Year--The Intention Economy

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 11:09:09 -0400

"Doc Searls On Becoming Part of The Intention Economy," Fast Company, May 3, 2012.

This is part of a series I started in April, back when I made the decision to embark on Code Year, a year long course in computer programming. Over time this has blossomed into a year of levelling up my tech skills and knowledge.

When my mom was starting our busy protoyuppy family, back in the 60s, one thing was easier. She had relationships with saleswomen at a few downtown department stores. "I could call one up and say, I need some back to school clothes, and she'd just put together a couple of outfits for you guys. And that was it, we'd just go down, take a look at them, buy the best option and I was finished."

Think of all the time we spend now, comparison shopping, and all the energy and money that goes into convincing consumers that they have some kind of special relationship with a brand.

Imagine if the web could bring about a mass return to the kind of economy where buyers had real sustained relationships with vendors. That's a possibility put forth by Doc Searls in a book I started reading last week. The Intention Economy grew out of an article he wrote for Linux Journal back in 2006. Much has changed since then, but the kernel of his argument seems to be even more possible. What if the current trend of vendors using technology to track and prompt buyers, shifted instead towards encouraging buyers to simply state their buying intentions up front? What if this brought about a more direct, open and respectful relationship? Wouldn't almost everyone profit?

For instance, imagine you have an app that enables you to list the things you intend to buy in the near future. On this app you put: a new car, a reconditioned Ipad for the kids, a coffee table that would match the living room you posted on pinterest, a grocery list that you don't have the time to check against the latest flyers. Let's say this app has enabled you to form a network of trusted vendors. Over the next days you receive bids, offers, helpful information from various sources, a calculation of what your groceries would cost at three different stores. Some of these vendors have sold to you before, so they're willing to cut you a better deal as a trusted, known customer. Let's add some bonus features, like a terms of service contract overseen by a good consumer protection group. A contract that the VENDOR clicks the agreement button on. And a seriously well insured way for the buyer to pay that doesn't make her vulnerable to identity theft, or credit card hacking.

Imagine the money saved on advertising and marketing for the smart vendors who adopt this early. In a couple of years small to medium sized businesses could build a steady web of reliable clients in a stable, sustainable economy.

Everything is moving towards mobile technology, but I have yet to come across a market evaluation that doesn't predict mobile technology is going to be even tougher to monetize than the web. In the the olden days that would mean that the mobile app bubble is about to burst, big time.

Unless it's not. Unless vendors start using mobile technology as a way to bypass the high cost of adverstising, marketting and branding altogether. Unless buyers (and yes I'm talking to you women, whose brains are fried from the responsibility of making most of the small purchasing decision in your household) start using mobile technology to find new ways to recover the authentic power they once had.

Imagine that. Or better, why don't we start forming a collective intention to make that happen.

At the Montreal Maker Faire

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:08:12 -0400

The best thing I did at the inaugural Montreal Mini Maker Faire last weekend was solder my very own LED pin. My son, Ben, didn't want to go anywhere near that soldering iron, and I'm glad I didn't cajole him into it. He has wonky fine motor skills and I burned myself at least once. A simple little flashing pin took me half an hour, after I'd fixed up all the goopy metal. And even then I kind of got it wrong (I slotted one of the conductors backwards). Still, getting a concrete sense of the labor that goes into making stuff we throw away without thinking, has really been an eye opener. As was sitting around a table with a group of first world mothers and their daughters, and thinking of all the families around the world that actually do this all day for a living.

A sobering thought. Good thing there was a bar right next to the soldering tent.

Kidding. I don't drink and solder. But there was a bar. Our Montreal Maker Faire was an afternoon event that preceded a music festival at the Olympic Stadium. We overlapped by a couple of hours.

The main tent had some very cool exhibits. Videogames hacked in all kinds of bizarro ways, hooked up to playdough, skin sensors and voice sensors. There was the usual array of 3D printers, eggbots, steampunk, robots and innovative DIY toys. I liked tweletype, an old fashioned teletype machine hooked up to twitter.

On the upper level there were quadracopters, camera obscura, home made bikes, and the Concordia women's engineering department reconstructed a replica of the brooklyn bridge out of K'Nex.

But Ben's favourite event was the Quidditch workshop, overseen by the McGill Quidditch team (current national champions!). Here's the golden snitch, giving the kids a pre game rundown:

The game ends when someone grabs the tennis ball from his tail.

Good times!

Code Year--week 32, Hackasaurus

Wed, 8 Aug 2012 11:08:40 -0400

For a while, Ben and I parted ways on our coding adventure. I understood. Nothing destroys the cool of coding quite like your mother learning it. As I got better in JavaScript I started developing the annoying habit of delivering helpful tutorials. It wasn't going well, so I decided to pull back. I pointed him in another direction, and promised I wouldn't touch Ruby for a year.

Then last week codecademy started lessons in Python. We decided to give it another shot.

First I needed to stop being so parental, and do what I could to get back in touch with my inner eleven year old. So, yesterday we took a break from code learning, and had some fun with the "x-ray goggles" at Mozilla's Hackasaurus. This is a great little tool that helps kids learn HTML and CSS by allowing them to mess with what they see in their browser.

X-ray goggles allow you to scan the different sections of the page, see the HTML/CSS code, and change it right there on the spot. The first exercise is to download a url for an image and change the Hackasaurs girl for a Serious Cat.

Once you've done your first hack, you can drop the goggles into your bookmark bar and head out onto the web and mess with other websites. Ben's first choice was the official webpage of Lady Gaga :

I felt Usher could use a little serious cat treatment too:

And it was inevitable that Ben would start hacking the family website:

Fortunately only what's in the browser gets altered. The actual website is safe.

Imagine a web where cats could learn to code....that could get serious.

Code Year: Codecademy scores $10M and features my skills

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 15:06:32 -0400

So, six months ago Ben and I signed up for Code Year, with Michael Bloomberg and about 400,000 people. Back then the two of us didn't even really know what coding was. Codecademy was just a five month old puppy of a start-up.

Yesterday Codecademy announced $10 million in their second round of venture funding (a big chunk of that from Richard Branson). But notice who's mentioned in the small list of accomplished students. Yes that's us,"Juliet Waters and her son Ben." That's a list of four students out of an estimated global wide sign up of seven million. So, yes, we are proud.

I haven't been blogging as much lately because I'm deep into Human Computer Interaction, a free five week online course given by Stanford through Coursera, another high quality free education startup. There I'm designing my first web/app and getting rigorously vetted by my online peers. But I'm still keeping up with my Code Year. More than ever, I'm going to need all that JavaScript to get it functional.

If that weren't keeping me busy enough, last night I went to a first meeting of organizers of Montreal's inaugural Mini Maker Faire, which will be at the Olympic Stadium August 25-26.

One day soon, I will come up for air and describe my exploits in HCI and Maker Culture in more detail.

But for now if I've discovered one thing it's this:

Learn to code and you may never have a free minute again for the rest of your life.