Author: Admin Page 8 of 23

Why This Bubble Is Completely Different

On July 5, 2011

I had a discussion with one of my partners that we need 2.5 million users and Social Flights will manage itself. The partner said, “You mean 2.5 million dollars”.

No, I said, “I need 2.5 million users”.

The partner said tersely, “No, I really think that you need dollars.”

Again, I replied, “I need users…. “

This went on for a while until we both got it: The value of Social Flights is contained within the users, not within the dollars. After that, the conversation could progress in a meaningful way, priorities found their place, and the teams found their roles – including the investors.

Nothing economic can happen until people get together to build something

Financial analysts are aghast at the magnificent valuations that social media applications are delivering; P/E ratios of 1000, valuations of 100 dollars per member, billions of dollars per billion time hours in game play – these are not the ratios that they teach in B-school. Is this crazy or does it make perfect sense?

The Great Rapture

While highly unlikely, suppose the Almighty Father called upon all good and pious dollars to ascend unto heaven in a glorious rapture of currency – on a single day, all money disappears from the face of the Earth. What would be left? What happens next?

At least for a little while, I’ll still be sitting in this café typing a blog post. The value of the education and social network of the person who I will be meeting for lunch will still be intact. The value of the roads, bridges, schools, and highways would remain intact. The value to teachers, firefighters, and doctors will remain. The sun will shine and gravity will continue to act on matter. The money may go, but a LOT of value remains.

No Such Thing As Free Lunch

Of course, things will quickly devolve when I tell the café owner that I can’t pay for lunch because my money has been raptured. Of course that would seem like a relatively minor problem given the fact that their money has been raptured too. In fact, so has their supplier’s money, and their Bank’s money. Obviously, there can’t be a bail out because the government has no money either.

Each of us would probably stare at each other for a few minutes until somebody asks the other, “well, then, what do you have that I can use?” Once that conversation is exhausted, we’ll move on to “Who do you know that has something that I can use?” Etc.

The mother of all hedge funds

If this were a game, the person that knows lots of people who do useful things would stand a greater chance of being served lunch than someone who is isolated and disliked – no matter how much money they once had before the rapture. Likewise, if you have a lot of money, what “Bank” would you put it in? What “Stock” would you buy?

This bubble is different.

It may be that the dollar is in a bubble and the true value of our economy is stored and exchanged in communities of people enabled by social media. Those magnificent valuations in social media companies may actually reflect true value and act like a huge hedge fund on currency in the absence of any other plausible financial instrument.

As our noble politicians continue to play their game of chicken with the productivity of honest, educated, and productive Americans, they fail to see the polarity shifting away from money and into “true value”.

The value is in the people, not in the dollars. now we can have a different conversation about how to manage ourselves.

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When The Customer, Supplier, And Competitor Are The Same

By Admin

On June 27, 2011

In General Information

NPR ran a story today about how drug companies are not the only ones making money inventing new medicines for the market. A man in Massachusetts has brought three drugs to market almost on his own.

His process is the same as the big drug makers, but he farms out each aspect of the process to independent labs and specialists. When the drug starts to succeed in trials, he sells it to one of the big companies.

Who competes with whom?

This is an example of how human infrastructure can replace physical infrastructure. The standard process for creating a new drug is to build a large building and fill it with smart people and expensive equipment and surround it with parking lots. The cost can easily exceed 60 million just to bring a drug to trials – the man in Massachusetts can do it of less than 6 million.

Mitigation of risk, waste, and social burden

Not only are market victories less expensive, but so are market failures. Hundreds of thousands of hours are saved in commute times and millions of miles stay off the freeways. “Independent Lab Specialists” are in fact, independent and don’t need to migrate from company to company chasing the next project.

As the article states, every step in the process for approving a drug is the same – without the unnecessary physical infrastructure. Sure, virtual work has been around a long time, the difference is when the corporate structure itself shifts to a series of small integrated corporations.

If virtualization can revolutionize the medical industry – it can revolutionize all industries.

Social Flights is attempting to revolutionize the Aviation industry in a similar way. Large Hub Airports represent physical infrastructure through which people and airplanes are sorted and matched. The majority of US commercial traffic passes through Hub Airports. Yet, the majority of passengers are forced to drive a substantial distance to reach a hub departure. Then they fly to a place that they have no intention of going only to transfer to another plane that also is not going where they intend to go. Finally, they drive a substantial distance to get where they really want to go.

The congestion and physical footprint supporting large airports is substantial. The burden on both the local and distant communities served by the hub airport is severe. Thousands of people and vast resources are deployed to support the infrastructure, not necessarily the value proposition to the passengers or the communities.

The Airlines need to understand that their customer is the community, their supplier is the community, and their competitor is the community. If they lose track of any one of these pillars, the system will become ripe for disruption.

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The Human Infrastructure Game

By Admin

On June 25, 2011

In General Information

Social media is emerging as a tool that may replace corporate and physical infrastructure of market capitalism. Social Flights is attempting to sort and match people, airplanes, and destinations with community organization and interaction rather than the massive infrastructure of Hub airports.

Social flight introduces a Community Leader to the “last mile of social media” who can interpret and manage Value Game data to drive social and financial revenue. In order to articulate this real-life gaming system we need to specify a baseline game scenario such that all future “real-life” scenarios will simply be some unique variation on the baseline game.

The Baseline Scenario

Consider a condition where 4 persons (group A1) from a metropolitan area (point A) self-organize to initiate a flight plan to another metropolitan area (point B). An 8 passenger jet is available at the local airport near point A. The group seeks to return 3 days later. Price sensitivity is high.

The responsibility of the Community Leader at Point A is to:

1. Deploy social media strategies to find 4 more people to fill the remaining seats.

2. Contact Community Leader at point B to notify them of the empty leg that will originate there (when aircraft returns to base).

3. Coordinate with Community Leader B to promote vendor attractions that influence 8 new travelers to fly the jet back from Point B to Point A.

Three days pass and Group A1 needs to return home from point B:

1. Coordinate with Community Leader at Point B to determine who will originate the flight plan and who will own the resulting empty leg (the passengers are agnostic as to where the plane originates).

2. In either case, Community Leader B will deploy social media tools to fill remaining empty seats if any.

3. In either case, Community Leader A will use social media tools to fill the empty seats if any.

Variables:

In this scenario; 32 seats must be filled to support a flight plan for two round trips in an 8 person aircraft AND the 3 steps outlined for each and every flight remain relatively constant – only their order may change. Most of the variables to the baseline scenario are factors of social influence and may therefore respond to game mechanics and rewards, i.e.; the number of initial passengers, social draw in each community, 3rd party vendor incentives, social influence of passengers, price sensitivity, traveler schedule, etc.

Re-introducing Human Infrastructure

Social Flights needs game data from which to match supply and demand of corporate resources. The Community Leaders need game data to match supply and demand of social influence. Finally, the passengers and support vendors need game data to match supply and demand of social value, etc.

By structuring the game around a baseline scenario and introducing “Human Infrastructure” responding to game data, we hope to increase our likelihood of replacing physical infrastructure in the operation of point-to-point air transportation.

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The Gamification of Air Travel

By Admin

On June 23, 2011

In General Information

Commercial airlines continue to astonish the traveling public with an ever-increasing array of new ways to charge extra fees. The newest scheme is to charge 5 dollars to have a customer service agent print your boarding pass. You can get around this by using your own printer, or using a free kiosk – which undoubtedly will not be free for long.

Your schedule or theirs?

Meanwhile, the different prices that people pay for the same trip continues to fluctuate wildly. There are very few products whose price defies supply and demand or actually increases as it approaches it’s expiration date.

People who book 4-6 weeks in advance have the highest probability of getting the lowest fair – as long as the don’t buy the ticket on a weekend. Buying a ticket on a Tuesday morning 4 weeks in advance can yield a 50% discount of the person who bought their ticket 2 weeks in advance on a Saturday afternoon.

Obviously, there must be some net average cost for a seat, per mile traveled with all services restored, so why can’t we save the drama and loss of productivity and use the average price? An “average revenue per seat mile” price is good enough for Wall Street Annual Report – why not the rest of us?. Another nagging question: why can’t I use frequent flier miles to buy lunch on the plane or carry extra suitcase? What, they don’t accept their own currency…?!?!

Are You Gamed by FlyVille?

The airline industry has been gamified and people are hard wired to play along – of course they complain, but they also learn to behave in a manner that they perceive to be in their own best interest, but actually is in the Airline’s best interest. Tacit collusion among airlines can now play out using frequent flier miles, copycat fares, and lowered customer expectations. How much time do people spend playing this game?

This is also the environment where a competitor can emerge with a “counter-game”.

Social Flights was launched a few months ago with a very simple data landscape; a means and manner in which people can meet to ride share on private aircraft. Currently, the amount of time required for a social flights customer to execute a flight plan – that is, organize people in their community with shared flight intentions – may still be greater than the time and harassment of just going through the flow of the commercial airline abyss. Over time, however, this will change.

Frequent Influence Miles

Suppose that Social Flights deployed frequent flier miles? Suppose these could be awarded for organizing a social flight plan to a social network? Suppose miles could be redeemed for discounts on hotels, car rentals, and ground services (think AAA)? Restaurants, entertainment and events routinely pay commissions to concierge referrals, why wouldn’t they also redeem Social Flights Flier Miles in the same manner?

What if Social Flights frequent flier miles could be earned and redeemed without actually flying, but by simply organizing communities until your perfect trip comes along? What if a person with high Social Flights Frequent Flier Miles represented a better social influence predictor than say, a Klout score or Twitter follower count? Would vendors want to know who these magical people are? Will vendors compensate them for their influence in a community? Wouldn’t the community then define the ads that get pitched?

What’s the end game? Let’s transform the industry together. Seeking game designers to build the next generation of air travel

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The Art and Science of Social Sudoku

By Admin

On June 3, 2011

In General Information

It’s been a few months since Social Flights entered the market with our February 28^th Soft Launch. Since then we have grown at an amazing rate after getting picked up by a series of important news publications. But for this article, I would like to talk about what we learned.

He who hesitates, iterates

Learning is a critical element in any organization. The iterative process is a series of intentional steps that a group of innovators must invariably endure. The iteration process requires a strategy for introducing new variables to a product or process in such a way that the experimenter can isolate the effects of each change.

Social Flights was very much launched with this in mind. We prioritized the rollout of game features in order to form a player priority profile that will drive this Value Game. Nobody can simply invent such a thing, it must be observed empirically. This means that the right conditions must be in place to reveal the right data without bias. The data can then be used to improve the incentives that drive the game.

Resistance is futile

One of the most daunting challenges has been to identify the skill set for what makes an effective community leader. The Value Game is a value-based economy that is modeled after the mirror image of a dollar-based economy. It’s like driving on the left hand side of the road for the first time. Of course, you need someone who can drive a car – but in a very significant way, you need someone who has never driven a car. In either case, resistance is fatal (figuratively) and futile (literally). The willingness and ability to iterate is essential.

We do expect the results to surprise us. We went through many candidates for our social media distribution and engagement office before we found the right skill set; not in a marketer, or in an MBA, or in social media guru – we found the skill set in a Linguist. This makes perfect sense now – but we did not know that before we started the iterative process.

Easier Said Than Done

A travel community leader needs to solve a simple equation. Find 18 people to share an 9 – passenger jet (9 flying in each direction) within a certain span of time. This is much easier said than done – in fact, it’s like trying to solve a big Sudoku puzzle where all the rows, columns, and regions need to add up to the same number with no duplication. Of course the puzzle gets easier as more people join the community because the probability of finding 9 people that want to go to the same place improves. But still, someone needs to be on the ground to solve the puzzle.

Help us find the gamers

With that, I invite our readers to help us imagine what skill set would be the starting condition for an iterative process of finding hundreds of entrepreneurial community leaders that can solve this puzzle in diverse communities. I am leaning more and more toward the Gaming community on sites like http://gamification.org to find this skill set. Any thoughts? Thank you.

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Are We Hard Wired?

By Admin

On May 31, 2011

In General Information

Hardwired Control Matrix

It has been a challenging month at Social Flights. Our soft launch story was broken by FAST COMPANY, then it was quickly picked up by THE NEW YORK TIMES, BLOOMBERG TV, FORBES, INC. TECH, WASHINGTON POST, and MASHABLE, then picked up by various other magazines and bloggers across the web.

Huge Interest in The Business Model

Social flights picked up tens of thousands of hits and several thousand members within a very short period of time. We also received almost a thousand RFQ’s for charter service and our web traffic rank according to Alexa.com is under 20,000 – better than any other private jet broker in the country, including NetJets.

I personally communicated with dozens of 3rd party entrepreneurs that want to plug into our value proposition and we are discussing multiple high value partnerships in North America and around the world.

Are We Hard Wired?

Introducing such a radical approach brings many challenges, especially in the area of customer expectation. People are hard wired to schedules, and lines, and pat downs, and waiting, waiting waiting. Social Flights was never conceived to dictate on a market how they should fly and to where. Social flights will certainly not take people someplace where they don’t want to go – like an airport hub for transfer. Social Flights will never hold a passenger’s dignity hostage behind some hidden cost or irrelevant regulation.

Losing The Hard Wire

We estimate that Social Flights will optimize at about 2.5 Million members – or roughly 5000 people in each of 500 locations across North America. At that point our service model will begin to “simulate” the selection and convenience of the commercial airlines. Keep in mind – this system will “simulate” scheduled service except without hard wires.

5000 people X 500 places model

This is the point where there will be a high likelihood that 8-10 people will all want to go to the same place from the same place within reasonable intervals of departure times.
This is the point where fluctuations in price and schedule such as de-icing costs, landing fees, fuel cost, or seat cancellation policy can be absorbed across the whole system rather than an individual passenger load.
This is the point where ground support vendors will commit substantial discount incentives to controlled bundles of passengers.
This is a point where the data that is generated by The Value Game and held solely by the players becomes valuable enough to predict the outcomes of future Value Games.

Not An Easy Puzzle to Solve:

Social Flights is attempting to do something that has never been accomplished in social media with such high value shared assets. We seek to answer the question: Can people organize themselves around the concept of “Value” much like we have organized ourselves around the concept of “Money”. Based on our earliest readings, the answer is that people are not as Hard Wired to money as those who control money would like us to believe. Looks like they’d jump the first plane out of Dodge if given a chance.

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Control The Information And Control The Game

By Admin

On May 9, 2011

In General Information

Social media is progressing in a direction where the SM application controls your information – not you. This is a game that you cannot win unless they let you win. Social Flights changes the rules by letting you control your own information. As such, we are growing in popularity among entrepreneurs who are looking for a game they can win playing by a new set of rules.

Social Flights is comprised of 2 components; Social Flights Corporate and Social Flights Travel Tribes. The corporate application provides vertical integration while the Travel Tribes provide horizontal integration. Each is hugely dependent on the other, but the travel tribe is where the value is.

Vertical Integration involves information technology; the collection and formation of system data. This is the information that helps groups stay in contact with each other giving the origin community a portal into the destination community (and vice versa) for a given flight. This helps airplane operators schedule flights, and it helps communities become attractive to entrepreneurs and other communities.

The horizontal integration is where information originates and terminates. The Travel Tribe disseminates information on the ground at both the origin and destination. What happens in a Travel Tribe, stays in a Travel tribe.

The most important aspect of data and information control is the ability to restrict it from communities who are not part of the transaction. Nobody else can know where you are going except you and the airplane operator – that’s what makes the game private. Nobody needs to know how much you are paying for a hotel room or travel service except you and the service provider – that’s what makes the game valuable. Nobody needs to know what you are doing on the ground except you and your friends – that’s what makes the game social.

A Value Game depends on the control of information. If someone else controls the information – they control the Value and there can be no game. They also control the use of information and the information technology. Don’t take this point likely; whoever controls the use of the information also controls the technology (vertical integration), not the other way around. Technology is deployed to the game – the game is not deployed to the technology. So, if you control the game, then you control the usage and the deployment of the technology; i.e., you control the value.

(Diagram credit and reference: Seven Faces of Information Literacy in Higher Education by Christine Bruce)

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How To Use Data Correctly

By Admin

On May 5, 2011

In General Information

There is a raging debate about data usage, privacy violation, and even epic technology data hacks. The reason is simple – data has value. Ultimately, data are convertible to value – in some form or another, including money. That means that data are a convertible currency. This is not necessarily bad, however, there is a right way and a wrong way to convert data into value.

The wrong way is to steal it from it’s rightful owners

You and I, by our motions, movements, communications and the pursuit of freedom and happiness create a huge amount of data. This belongs to each individual. When two or more people interact with each other – the data they create belongs to them, and nobody else. This is a very powerful relationship that others seek to exploit. Equally culpable are those who don’t protect their data and the data they share with people around them.

The right way to use data is to play a game

If you observe any game that people play – from children’s games to sports, and even gambling – they all have one thing in common. Each player has the same information as all the other players. The game is largely the ability to influence the information with data. Kids know the probability that a they will be tagged and influence their strategy accordingly – but they all play on the same field. In a basketball game, gravity behaves exactly the same for every player on the team. Poker players know the probability that their opponent will draw a flush – there are only 52 cards. Stealing Data is like slanting the playing field, stealing cards from the deck, or changing the influence of gravity.

Fair Market Value is a Value Game

The underlying assumption of market capitalism is that everyone has the same information. Two people holding the same Carfax report can have a rational and fair negotiation about the value of that used car. As such, the used car market is efficient. Package labeling, truth in advertising laws, and pharmaceutical disclaimers are an attempt to keep a market efficient so that the market can arrive at a “Fair Market Value”.

The Value Game

The Value Game being tested now at Social Flights is a real life game where real people fly to real places to do real things on real nice airplanes. There are no badges, tokens, little pink cows, wiggly worms, mayorships, or leader boards. The Value Game is a real economic game built on real data that real players create, own, and share only with other real players.

How to use data correctly

The Value Game will process a great deal of information to make Social Flights operate efficiently. Data must be normalized to calculate the probability that a flight will fill so that everyone can make a rational decision about price. Normalized data can be used to create a seat cancellation insurance policy to reduce price volatility. Normalized data can help travelers buy an option on game 7 of the World Series, before game 5 has ended. Normalized data can be applied so the player knows exactly how much of a discount to require from a vendor for accepting a coupon. Etc.

The Value Game does not need to know your name, address, phone number, or credit score to compile useful information. The Value Game does not even need to know such information about your friends, family, or professional relationships. Nobody needs to know your private information – unless they intend to use your data incorrectly. After all, thieves need to know who to restrict your data from – you.

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Data: The Ultimate Shared Asset

By Admin

On April 29, 2011

In General Information

People always ask me how The Value Game will work and how The Value Game will scale, and how The Value Game will make money. These are great questions, albeit straight from the b-school crib sheet; good questions nonetheless.

At first glance, The Value Game as we are deploying in Social Flights looks like a rich kids party barge. The idea is that people can share an airplane just like they did with that stretch limo on prom night. Yes, the idea is the same – the jet is a shared asset and status on prom night is special.

The Value Game also produces a lot of very important data that is owned by the players. So when the passengers arrive at their destination, their data can now transform the hotel into a shared asset. As such, a new Value Game plays again. If the players own their data, and they only share it with the other players in the associated Value Game, they can command substantial value for the collaborative purchase of hotel rooms – or any shared asset.

Likewise, the players will need restaurants, tour guides, golf courses, concert tickets, entertainment, etc. Their data – if they own it – is their discount coupon…like a Group Coupon, except relevant to the need and exercisable on-demand. By the time the trip is over, their Value Game data can result in hundreds or thousands of dollars in discounts for the individuals in a travel tribe if, and only if they own their data.

The next time they want to take a trip, their data is not only a discount coupon; it becomes a passport to opportunities that money cannot buy. In the End Game of the Value Game, data are the shared asset. This works if, and only if people own their data and they can share or restrict it from view of others.

Seriously, think about that for a minute.

You give your data away for free. Companies collect this data and they have no intention of sharing it with you. Data is a multi-billion dollar industry. Why?

Aren’t most life lessons about figuring out who is NOT playing The Value Game and avoiding those people and situations?

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Lead By Getting Out Of The Way

By Admin

On April 27, 2011

In General Information

By giving people power and observing what they do with it, a leader can learn a great deal about available opportunities. The problem is in getting out of their way, and consequently, getting out of your own way.

Human capital refers to the set of skills and knowledge that can produce an economic value. Everyone has distinct combinations of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital, which they deploy uniquely. The entrepreneurial spirit in indomitable.

Likewise, the education, experience, and abilities that people deploy to their communities, employers, social organizations, and for the economy as a whole, are hugely valuable; unless you try to contain them – then they become volatile. So, no matter how proud you are of your own accomplishments, it’s probably not a good idea to get in the way of others’.

As we build out the Travel Tribe Leader functionality, we do not attempt to model the community leader after ourselves or any archetype, instead, we seek to model Social Flights around the human capital of the community that the leader represents.

Then, Lead by Observing

As we develop Social Flights, we listen to a great diversity of ideas from our extraordinary Board of Advisors. The hardest part for some of us on the executive management team is to stay out of the way as these brilliant people tear away at our own creations, preconceptions, biases, and even our hopes and fears for the outcome of our work. This is not easy to watch yourself getting in you own way.

We give our advisory board the power to criticize us. We give them the power to change us. We give them the power to hurt us and we give them the power to make us better. We watch, and we learn and we are grateful to them because we will give that power to travel tribes. This set’s up a very powerful incentive to play The Value Game.

A Game of Derivatives

On of the biggest complaints of the gamefication movement is that people will always figure out how to game the game. by contrast, at social Flights, we intend for the players to game the game. This is the fundamental backdrop of The Value Game. – it’s a game of derivatives not unlike many types of financial derivatives, except in an alternate currency.

This does not mean that we’ll fly blind and vulnerable. It means that the value of Social Flights will be a direct reflection of the value that people create in communities organizing themselves around Social Flights. This is a different type of business method and a stark contrast to the way that market capitalism holds people in boxes, surveys their private information, and places roadblock in their path trying to influence there every turn.

Try that with your battleship.

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The Flight Of The New Entrepreneur

By Admin

On April 20, 2011

In General Information

Structural Folds: Generative Disruption in Overlapping Groups

Entrepreneurship is the invisible hand of Capitalism. Basically, this means that you can have all the Land, Labor, and Capital in the world, but unless you have entrepreneurs to interact with it, you don’t have much of an economy.

Social Contract Broker

Most social contracts are made today by Brokers who have the ability to connect supply and demand. Brokers, for the most part, gain their influence from the natural or unnatural divisions that may normally restrain information from the supply side to the demand side, and vice versa. “Social Brokers” are extremely important for exchanging information across different parts of a community that do not normally intermix. However, such “Trust Economics” depends on a closed system where community accountability is strong.

Trust economics and an open economy are mutually exclusive.

In an open economy, the job of the broker shifts to the job of administrating social accountability – a completely different animal. The moral hazard, of course, is that communities with great entrepreneurial potential are instead brokered for profit. Many “special interests” have crept up through the years in everything from banking, real estate, second-hand markets, international trade, airlines, politics, and even corporate M&A activity – that protect broker interests. As a result, brokers create structured holes at the expense of social inter-cohesion.

A Different Approach

At Social Flights, we take a different approach. We unite several completely different communities; travelers, vendors, and airplane operator around a shared airplane asset. In the middle, we place a community leader – an entrepreneur who is enabled to see all the diverse connections and combine information in new and useful forms.

Instead of forming better brokers as a principle driver of economic growth, Social Flights introduces a Value Game that forms a greater degree of intercohesion among disparate communities simulating a closed economy within an open economy.

The Social Flights Manifesto

We know that there are millions and millions of entrepreneurs in our communities who can create tremendous value if they are given a game that they can win – or not get ripped off. The underlying entrepreneurial force is that people will always combine several old ideas in new ways to create the new ideas that incite new actions. We depend on entrepreneurs to drive these ideas and drive these actions. For this reason, it is in our best interest to set them free and keep them free.

The Social Broker’s Commission: Social Profit

We create an environment where it is in the best interest for communities to share deep information in a closed economy where trust dynamics can take effect. Then we provide a way to transport their trust economy into the open economy. But it goes much farther than that – it goes as far as an airplane can take you.

(Note: this article was inspired by segments of two wonderful papers titled: Structural Folds: Generative Disruption in Overlapping Groups, by Bala ́zs Vedres Central European University and David Stark Columbia University and Structured Holes Versus Network Closure as Social Capital – By Ronald S. Burt, University of Chicago)

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Tricking The Debt Monster Antibody

By Admin

On April 16, 2011

In General Information

The last post “How To Kill a Debt Monster” ended with the following line: How do you inject the debt monster in the head with New Value antibody without messing everything else up? Hint: stop whacking it in the foot.

Of course, this is a silly analogy but still quite fun to riff on…

Many of the brilliant ideas in the New Value movement are too rich to ignore. The problem that many face is that these efforts can only be articulated as grassroots start-ups or single entrepreneurs battling in the morass of relative anonymity against the titans of convention. The Debt Monster Process Manual states explicitly that those not pre-ordained must work their way up from the bottom of the food chain where resources are scarce and economic forces are harsh.

Then, when one becomes successful, the debt monster assimilates the innovation into it’s fortress of influence. Get too radical and the debt monster will squash you, bury you, or slander you. So, we can’t beat this thing by whacking it in the foot, we need to go for the head.

Collaborative Consumption At The Top of the Food Chain?

So why am I designing Social Flights? Social Flights is a social media application that helps people fly on corporate jets. A corporate jet burns more fossil fuel in a hour than I’ll burn all year in my car. Private jets are the most visible display of excess for the wealthy, powerful, and exclusive members of society who can afford to isolate themselves from the huddled masses. Private jets are extremely expensive relegating huge amounts of capital to sit in waiting for their master to beckon them to the tarmac. Why would I be doing this? (disclosure: I love airplanes and the majority of my professional career is in Aviation and Space Transportation)

Electric cars were not sexy until Tesla built one that smokes a Ferrari – albeit, 23 minutes at a time.

The answer is simple – applications of the New Value Movement need to be introduced at the top of the food chain not at the bottom. Social Flights is a collaborative consumption game based on the The Value Game. It takes an inefficient industry and makes it less so – at a profit. Travel Tribes essentially convert inefficiently allocated capital into more efficiently allocated capital – and take a profit for doing so. If you look closely, this is a reversal of the direction of most culprit Capitalist flows, yet it remains entirely Capitalist – at a profit.

In fact, The Value Game is so similar to the de-Value Game that it will go unnoticed by the Debt Monster’s immune system and therefore not generate a defensive attack. Millions of dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneurs will quickly identify new ways to create profits without fully realizing that they are, in fact, dismantling the old Capitalist system piece-by-piece (and in the proper reverse order) and replacing it with a corrected version.

Social Flights impacts the Airline Industry, The Advertising Industry, The Travel Industry, and Information Monopolies, and sends them back to school – all for profit. The same can be done with any shared assets and their associated corporate captors.

The Value Game creates real and fungible profits that articulate social value, human capital, a shared biosphere, collaborative production, and ultimately a higher order of expression for the things that people create, store, and exchange together.

That’s why we start with Jets.

Note to Debt Monster: we’re coming after you.

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How To Kill A Debt Monster

By Admin

On April 14, 2011

In General Information

The quickest way to kill the debt monster would be to create a source of “New Value” and inject it into the monster’s head.

Let me explain:

Suppose someone discovers a new form of energy that is free for all to use with no negative environmental impact. Suppose that another person creates a device that allows people to communicate telepathically. Suppose someone discovers an anti-gravity machine that can transport people and objects cheaply and rapidly. Suppose someone invents high-yield perennial food crops that don’t need to be replanted every year.

Each would deposit huge amounts of economic value while simultaneously wrecking havoc on the financial system. Oil companies would go out of business, telecoms would go bust, transportation industries would cease, and agribusiness would fail, etc. Millions would lose their jobs and mortgages would collapse, etc.

The New Value Movement

But that is exactly what may be happening with the introduction of vast new sources of value playing out in the voices and actions of people around the world. However, this New Value is only now being articulated as such.

For example:

Mary Adams at I-Capital Advisors calculates that huge stores of intangible value – as much as 70% of GDP – may be unaccounted for on the corporate balance sheets.
The Metacurrency Project from Art Brock suggests that there are many dimensions of value intrinsic to economic activity that money fails to articulate.
The sustainability movement, Greg Wendt, [posits that] “the biosphere must be regarded as the meta economy from which all others are derived”.
The Symbionomics Project by Alan Rosenblith and Jay Standish demonstrates that cooperation is the dominant economic mechanism in natural systems, not necessarily competition.
The collaborative consumption movement being applied by award winning start-ups like Neighborgoods, demonstrates how people sharing an asset would seek to preserve the asset rather than consume it, thereby multiplying the utility of resources.

The Monetization Paradox

Each one of these movements, and undoubtedly there are many more, have the potential to introduce extraordinary amounts of New Value to an economic system – most likely exceeding the value of the monetary economy many time over. However, such value acts against the very system that is required to bring them to wide scale markets. In fact, the act of “going to market” can often negate the value that these innovations create.

But ‘ders Gold in ‘dem Hills

In the old days, gold was carried around in sacks for exchange for goods and services. Soon the gold was replaced with a pieces of paper that “represented” the gold, but was not actually made of gold. After a while, it was no longer necessary to use gold as the medium of exchange because everyone carried around the pieces of paper. Soon, paper currency was divorced entirely from the gold standard. Yet, money can still be buy gold and vice versa.

Likewise, The New Value movement could be represented by dollars, but not actually be made of dollars. Eventually, people would not necessarily need to use actual dollars because the New Value currency adequately represents dollars. As soon as the New Value currency can be divorced from dollars, so goes the debt monster. Of course, New Value Currency should be able to be exchanged for dollars and vice versa, as needed.

So here comes the tricky part: how do you inject the debt monster in the head with New Value without messing everything else up? Hint: stop whacking it in the foot

See my next post for more clues.

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Collaborative Consumption Is Here To Stay

By Admin

On April 8, 2011

In General Information

There is a persistent myth that a “financial deficit” is looming to destroy all that fall in it’s wrath. The only deficit is the inability for Money – as we know it – to articulate the value that is created in and by communities.

Social Flights is a new venture that combines cutting edge social technology with the universal truth that collaborative consumption of even the most complex system increases the efficiency of that system.

Social Value as a financial instrument

Social Flights attempts to demonstrate the inevitable – social value can and will be convertible to financial value. Social value can and will enter the balance sheet. Social Value will not only impact the bottom line – it will become the bottom line.

The Invisible Hand of Social Capitalism

Social media is emerging as a dominant force behind economics, global politics, innovation, and community organization. Meanwhile; it is the art and science of finance that has failed to keep pace with technology. Social Flights introduces a new class of business methods that can close this gap.

Social Flights sorts people and airplanes with data, not financial infrastructure. The Value Game provides incentives for communities to organize themselves around travel and transportation assets. So instead of forest-to-dump consumerism, a shared asset is preserved by a community for the greatest service life possible. Social Flights demonstrates this with an airplane; however, a hotel, car, tour package, or a trade show/convention are quickly pulled into their own value game cycle given the airplane game playing out in proximity to them. In fact all “assets” – social, intellectual, creative, or financial – can be pulled into their own value games in response to those acting around them.

Travel: An Ideal Benchmark Industry

We are starting with travel. Specifically, air transportation because of it’s complexity, high profile, and significance to most people and industries. Furthermore, corporate jets are beautiful, awe inspiring, controversial, and conjure the image of power and grace. Most importantly, travel is pivotal enterprise and the best system for the diverse high-value transfer of new ideas to occur.

Nothing economic can happen until people get together to build something

The value of most commercial activity may ultimately become dependent on the quantity and quality of the data emerging from the millions of Value Games playing out in communities across the globe. Any and all shared assets – from public infrastructure to money itself – can be shared collaboratively in hugely profitable Value games.

New to the Public Domain

Nothing like this has ever been put together before so there is certainly much to learn. Many people will fail to recognize where we are going with this. However, the rewards will be high and the implications will be vast if we are successful. There will be an extraordinary amount of knowledge to be share to the public domain.

Collaborative consumption is here to stay because it represents a higher value economy than forest-to-dump consumerism. The financial deficit is simply the inadequacy of Money to articulate Social Value – not the inadequacy of people to be happy, creative, and productive in their communities.

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The Reality of Social Networking

By Admin

On April 6, 2011

In General Information

Nothing Economic can happen until people get together and build something, period.

Social Network services are not that. Social media gives people the impression that they are getting stuff done – but they are not. Nothing economic is happening on Linkedin or Facebook or Twitter. Rather, the impact of these services is derived only from what people accomplish in reality.

Yet so many social media services sell advertising. The objective of an advertising site is to keep you in your seat where you can view more advertising. The objective of advertising as an industry is to influence you to do something other than what you already want to do. Each of these things impacts people’s activities, and therefore, much of the crap that people share on social network services.

Race to the bottom

This self–depreciating cycle does not actually create very much nor does it arrive at anywhere interesting or important. The content that keep people coming back to Social Networks is produced by a relatively few number of entertainers – people who separate themselves from consumption of the medium and instead produce content for consumption by the medium – instead of “For” the medium. Again, the objective is to keep people in their seats watching more advertising.

Did I mention that nothing economic can happen until people get together and build something?

We are in the middle of creating a different type of social network in Social Flights. We are billing it as “The Social Network where people actually do stuff” because the objective is to get people out into their community looking for other people who can help them build something. We’re still experimenting so please be patient if it still seems a little clunky.

The Last Mile of Social Media

The idea is to form travel communities in relatively small geographical areas and enable them to share an airplane to anywhere where there is another travel community. We call the The Last Mile of Social Media – empowering neighborhoods not Hollywoods.

There is no advertising on social flights; however, local vendors are encouraged to place discount coupons in direct response to a community travel objective. There is no airline schedule because the objective is for people to share an asset – the airplane. This means that the passengers tell the plane where to fly and when, not the airline.

In the end, Social Flights rewards people, venders, and aircraft operators for interacting with their communities in real life and real time – instead of their computer screens in virtual time. Now, the social network, laptop, or mobile device becomes a real productivity tool.

Back to economics:

Most logical people will ask “where do I get the money to travel to new places with new people? The answer is simple: “That is precisely why you need to travel to new places to meet new people”

Nothing economic can happen until people get together and build something, for real.

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The Future Of Money And Technology; Monetizing Intangible Capital

By Admin

On March 30, 2011

In General Information

The following video series was recorded at the Future Of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco on February 28, 2011. The name of this panel is Monetizing Intangible Capital. The speakers are Mary Adams (moderator), Art Brock, Greg Wendt, and myself. All six parts are posted below (8-10 minutes each) for public distribution, comments, and review.

I found this panel to be extremely interesting and especially valuable since these panelists represents an important cross section of professionals who are actually doing the hard work of designing, testing, developing, and producing specifications for the creation, storage, and exchange of what could represent a large percentage of the value in our global economy. This discussion is not insignificant by any measure.

Mary Adams opened the panel with a remarkable statistic that 80% of our economy exists in the form of intangibles that do not necessarily show up in the balance sheet of the global economy – which is notably in crisis at this time. Mary offers a working definition of Intangible Capital as consisting of 3 primary components: Intellectual Capital (the stuff between people’s ears), Relationship Capital (degrees of connectedness to a social network), and Structural Capital (tools, processes, and data). Then, Mary adds a fourth category called Strategic Capital which includes planning, formulation, and scenario testing.

Mary then brilliantly guides the audience and the panel through 50+ minutes of high quality interaction addressing some of the most pressing issues of our time from the uprising in the Middle East, to Healthcare, Global Warming, Organic Food Production, and even the Internet Kill Switch – all these subjects become interconnected and relevant in this domain.

Art Brock introduces a set of very important ideas about how there is a vast amounts of “Value” that is not, and many never be, adequately articulated by a “monetary” system that exists today. It is therefore necessary to capture value in a completely different manner involving higher forms of expression which, in turn, introduce a new “value system” that would better represents social priorities and the fair distribution of resources and associated wealth.

Greg Wendt introduces his work related to articulating the planet Earth as the “Meta Economy” under which the financial economy is merely a subset. When accounted in this manner, humans are spending beyond our planet’s means to replace resources consumed. As such, we cannot expect to arrive at a “Balanced Budget” by anyone’s definition unless we include a full accounting of Earth’s productivity.

I, myself (representing The Ingenesist project) suggest that there is a small flaw in market economics that can be corrected where the factors of production include a “knowledge inventory” rather that a material inventory of land, parts, and simple labor. Such a knowledge inventory, if articulated in the correct format, can act as the basis of a social currency that may compete admirably with, if not fully replace, a vulnerable dollar based economy.

I was deeply impressed at how four highly recognized experts can approach a similar problem from four completely different directions and environments yet arrive at fully complementary set conclusions and subsequent solutions. I encourage the viewer to watch the entire series as this is truly a rare meeting of minds.

Monetizing Intangible Capital Part 1/6

Monetizing Intangible Capital Part 2/6

Monetizing Intangible Capital Part 3/6

Monetizing Intangible Capital Part 4/6

Monetizing Intangible Capital Part 5/6

Monetizing Intangible Capital Part 6/6

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The Mashup of Gamification and Collaborative Consumption

By Admin

On March 25, 2011

In General Information

I found an interesting article by Kim Gaskins at Sharable.net titled: Where the Game Layer Really Counts: Sharing & Peer Communities.

I sensed some resigned frustration from her as she reflected upon a somewhat trivial nature of current innovation in this new social genre called “gamification”. Predictably, in the end, Gamification amounts to little more than feeding the advertiser’s insatiable addiction to that extra dose of personal data coursing through the veins of unbridled consumption capitalism.

She is not alone.

In reading her article, I was, however, stuck with a particular stroke of clarity. Kim provided the following diagram showing the intersection of Social, Economic, and Environmental reality that she calls the best gaming opportunity for business and societal benefit.

This is a very important observation. Kim identifies the intersection of three “communities” and suggests that a game opportunity may exist. Even though the article appeared in Sharable.net community blog, she stopped short of saying “This is where you put the shared asset”. So I’ll say it for her:

This is where you put a shared asset.

At the Ingenesist Project, we developed something called The Value Game that we are testing in several different business models. The value game is very simple: Three communities are brought together to interact around a shared asset. Each community interacting with each other, while also acting in their own best interest, would be acting in the best interest of the asset. The result, we expect, will be the preservation for optimum utilization rather than forest-to-dump consumption.

Meanwhile, the fact of interaction between these communities creates “social currency” that articulates the true social value of the asset. Where social currency is readily convertible to financial currency, the paradox of market capitalism is broken.

Kim’s observation is important – she is talking about a marriage between collaborative consumption and gamefication. People need to watch this mash-up very closely and we must innovate in this domain very rapidly. We will need millions of value games playing out in communities across the world if we are to hedge the inevitable implosion of financial currency while also preserving our most valuable shared asset for future generations.

Thanks Kim – you are on to something very important.

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Can Advertisers Curate Themselves?

By Admin

On March 18, 2011

In General Information

Get Real by Playing for Real

At the end of the day, any ad campaign needs to get real people to take real and tangible action. Ideally, the advertiser wants to see the real effectiveness of a campaign in real numbers.

The Value Game is applied to a new jet charter start-up called Social Flights and offers an opportunity for advertisers to become part of the experience of the traveller, rather than a distraction to everybody. Instead of paying a website for click throughs, the vendor can pay the traveler directly to “click through” a catalog of products. As long as your product is relevant to the travel experience, the traveller will be interested and engaged.

The Game is to be relevant and this is where Social Flights helps create the playing field.

Social Flights will collect data about a travelers intentions in a fully open agreement. Travelers submit this data to the game with the explicit understanding that vendors will compensate them with relevant discount coupons. Data are normalized so that the traveller is anonymous in every respect while still providing very rich intentions to the vendor. Vendors can now target their value proposition with great precision.

What’s a Travel Trader Game?

This sets up a game where the traveler, when presented with many options, will plan their trip and influence their friends based on the perceived value of the options presented to them – it’s like holding properties on a Monopoly(TM) Board. As the travelers play the game, the vendor is being discussed, researched, and propagated all across the web in real time and in real context with a tangible experience as the travelers decide what activities to pursue.

Win twice: Let People Game the Game

When someone “clicks” on the vendor proposition from their “experience environment” of travel, their intention to be interested, informed, entertained, and fulfilled by your product is much higher than in a off-experience “forced” impression. When they compare, and even trade, coupons with their friends, a negotiation happens which influences a group of people. These negotiations lead to discussions all across the Internet. These discussions mean different things to different people so a fresh pool of customers is always on tap for the next round of play.

Why let Facebook own YOUR game when you can own it yourself?

Social Flights allows travelers to sell their data to vendors who, in effect, compensate the traveler with discount “option” that can only be exercised if the traveller (and their friends) makes a purchase. Advertising is essentially FREE until the traveler exercises their discount option. Even then, the advertiser has all the information that they need to determine the quality of the effectiveness their campaign and the effectiveness of a competitor’s campaign. No matter whether you are the traveler or the vendor, how you play the game becomes YOUR intellectual property. Patent that Facebook!

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The Value Game

By Admin

On March 16, 2011

In General Information

The Value Game (TVG) introduces a new class of business plans that will help communities to articulate social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital toward the production of goods and services. The earliest versions were developed in a international education project in Mexico under NAFTA (1996-1997), and at The Boeing Company (1998-2008). More recently, Social Flights deployed TVG in 2009-2011, and CRManage in 2011-2013.

TVG is a multi-agent algorithmic game comprised of a shared asset and a collection of diverse players (agents) in whose individual best interest it is to preserve the asset (sustain play) rather than consume it (game over). The proper selection of the asset and the proper grouping of the players defines the game incentives and payouts (sources and sinks). Collaboration yields higher profit than competition.

General Form:

The following video describes an early version of The Value Game beginning with the Airplane Game and then generalizing the idea to include all shared asset communities. Please note the final slide in the video inrtroduces the genesis of Curiosumé – or the Personal API that would be essential to automate The Value Game as a multi-agent algorithmic game.

Case Studies:

The Ingenesist Project has tested The Value Game in several industries ranging from the Aviation industry to the Construction industry.

Aviation; Social Flights

Our first project called Social Flights was a ride sharing system for private aircraft. The goal was to incentivize the self-organization of communities around available seats in private airplanes that were located anywhere in the US at any particular time. Constraints included weather, crew scheduling, aircraft availability, and daunting FAA/DOT regulations. Social Flights was acquired in 2011.

Construction Remediation; CRManage.com

The second project was called CRManage.com which organized condominium owners and their surrounding community (banks, insurance, contractors, HOA, and extended community) around a multi-million Dollar renovation project. It was set that all players had it in their best interest to converge on a successful project rather than diverge into dysfunction. CRManage was acquired in 2013. A case study can be found in this article published in an influential Insurance Industry Website. The Value Game; A New Class of Business Methods for Condominium Reconstruction.

Generalized Value Game:

In a generalized Value Game, each of the players in the game would be replaced by the personas of players using the Curiosumé platform. Since the personas represent the intentions of a player relative to the shared asset in a digital form, they can then be processed by the WIKiD Tools algorithm in order to arrive at valuation. As collections of communities interact in value games preserving many assets, the combined value can be aggregated into a single financial instrument such as a community bond which may underwrite the modern community currency.

Specifications for building The Value Game:

The Value Game Spec UX copy

All comments welcome. Material based on video series here

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The New Definition of Innovation

By Admin

On March 16, 2011

In General Information

Innovation is most often defined as a good idea that has a favorable economic outcome – in other words, you know it when you sell it.

I have seen Corporate executives glow red in the face shouting down top talent barking out; “It’s not innovation unless you can show me the money!”

In reality, you can’t see the money unless you can first see the innovation.

Nobody can solve one equation with two unknowns, i.e., what’s a new idea? and what’s an economic outcome? The trick is to identify the new ideas and direct them to the appropriate economic outcome, not the other way around. Many companies live in a silo where many good ideas can’t find a place to be profitable, so they are scrapped. This is not the fault of talent or the idea, but invariably both are lost.

An Innovation economy built on a platform of social media will collect the ideas existing in a community, outside the construct of the corporation, and distribute them to the most worthy economic outcome; maybe a corporation or maybe not – that’s not the point, Boss.

The existing definition of innovation is insufficient for use as a way to identify innovation in the present. There is no way to build an innovation economy upon a flawed definition and unpredictable value of innovative activity. This new interpretation will allow innovation to properly behave like a financial instrument.

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Can Communities Curate Themselves?

By Admin

On March 15, 2011

In General Information

The transportation industry encompasses all modes of travel, including air, rail, road, and water. But if we take a more practical look, transportation systems simply collect randomized objects and sort them into collections of similar objects. The transportation system then moves those collections to some other location and curates them back into randomized collections at the destination.

Now, let’s really tell the truth

Look at transportation again; something is removed from the hands of one person and placed into the hands another person. That’s it, everything else is sorting, moving, and curating. An airport, connecting hub, baggage claim, destination terminal, parking garage, taxi pick-up, hotel shuttle are all in place to sort and curate packets of humans. Multiple stations means multiple sorting or multiple curating. People standing in line are just waiting to be sorted and curated – only to wind up scrambled.

What if the packages could sort themselves?

: A nice bacon quiche for the holidays

What if people could sort themselves into the right collection already curated for their destination? They could then be transported directly without the massive infrastructure of sorting hubs, stations, interstate highways, and rental cars. Social media applications are tremendously powerful tools that are only now becoming sophisticated enough for people to sort and curate themselves.

Often, people like to think that scheduled airline flights are convenient and they are willing to get in line to be sorted. But at the end of the day, the same people are going to the same locations. If the entire airline system were self-sorting, then the proper sized aircraft could be deployed to the proper sized market instead of artificially constraining supply and demand to meet the size of the airplane. In fact, scheduling will improve without the friction of institutional sorting of people and planes.

Space, the final frontier

Social Flights is pioneering the concept that people can self-organize around their own communities and municipal airports without the need for hub terminals.

Social Flights is pioneering the concept that airplane operators can self-organize to bring the right airplane with the right performance characteristics to the right market flying point-to-point without the massive capital investment in infrastructure, gate contracts, and market scarcity.

Social Flights is pioneering the concept that communities can self-organize to accept travelers at the destination with their own businesses and services without the massive Wall Street fueled invasion of national hotels and portfolio managed services.

Collaborative Communities

Social flights is built on The Value Game where communities of people collaborate to share an asset. Community transportation is an asset that people can gather around, that they can own, and that they can sort, curate, and create profit for themselves. Join Social Flights in this important new mission. Call us to see how we can help you, your travel tribe, or your destination community arrive at a common and lasting goal without subjecting yourself to the “sorting machine”

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An Ode To Japan

By Admin

On March 12, 2011

In General Information

A Familiar View From a Familiar Land

I was deeply moved by the events in Japan over the last several days. I have spent many weeks over several years in that country from my work supporting All Nippon Airways with Boeing. I have also experienced several earthquakes in Japan, obviously nothing like the most recent.

Throughout many of my writings, I talk about the integration of of knowledge assets, the integration of markets, and the integration of communities. Yet here I reflect that there is likely no country as tightly integrated as Japan. This is the reason why they are so resilient and will arise successful despite any adversity that they encounter.

Several years ago, I was in downtown Tokyo during a magnitude 5.4 Earthquake. The central subway loop closed down and the feeder trains kept pouring people into the station – the streets filled to standing room only.

As the account manager for All Nippon Airways, I was amazed at the astonishing reliability that they achieved with the aircraft fleet. Reliable airplanes are essential because transportation is tightly integrated; if the plane did not leave on time, the trains would keep dropping people off at the airport and it would quickly fill up to, again, standing room only.

I have worked with dozens of Japanese engineers. They are an amazing group in themselves – they design for two or three levels of fault tolerance in all of their decisions because when things go wrong in Japan, they go very wrong. Their airplanes are impeccable throughout despite severe service requirement. Airplanes leave on time or they are replaced, but they always deliver on their promise of safety and security. Many of the buildings are sacrificial; meaning that they may may no longer be useful after a big quake, but they will not fall. The train station may fill up, but the trains won’t crash.

This mindset has permiated into all of their products. Where Americans may see obsessive compulsive drive to higher degrees of quality for no apparent reason, the Japanese see solutions to problems that don’t yet exist. They take deep personal responsibility for failures that are two or three levels deep in unlikely probability.

It is not surprising that the casualty numbers so far, while deeply tragic, are not what one would expect given the magnitude of the event – the Earth was knocked off it’s Axis by this temblor, but the Japanese were not.

I extend my deepest condolences to my many friends and colleagues of Japan and stand ready to help in any way that I can.

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A Grand Central Value Game

By Admin

On March 7, 2011

In General Information

Few people realize that there is nothing new about the Social Graph. Facebook did not invent it – in fact, Graph Theory is a branch of discrete mathematics that was first developed back in the 1700’s by a Swiss Physicist named Leonard Euler.

Likewise, Zynga did not invent Game Theory. Again, Game theory is a branch of Applied Mathematics with origins dating back to the 1700’s in a paper by James Waldegrave.

A Graph Theory and Game Theory Mash-up

It follows that The Ingenesist Project is not the first to mix graph theory and game theory to form A Value Game. While I cannot pinpoint the first example of this, I did recently find an article in American Heritage Magazine Invention and Technology magazine about what appears to be an excellent early example of A Value Game.

Not So Grand Central Station

In the late 1800’s, New York City’s Central Train Station was clearly not so grand. It amounted to a huge surface train depot with dozens of parallel lines and platforms covered by a huge structure that filled with smoke from the old steam engines. The train yard bisected 17 blocks of neighborhoods where soot and ash rained everywhere. The station created widespread urban blight and health issues for dozens of city blocks surrounding the terminal.

Politicians and the Railroad Companies tried to correct the problems but every proposed solution created ten more problems. Too many trains, not enough land, technological struggles, funding, traffic, property values, pollution, safety, collisions, politics, noise, fires, were only a few of the problems in conflict.

A Grand Central Value Game

Today, Grand Central Station is a model of ingenuity resulting from a brilliant and engaging solution to a complex problem. A remarkable Engineer named William J. Wilgus had created something that looks a great deal like a modern Value Game.

Three Dimensions to A Value Game

His first challenge was to pay for the construction of a new station. His second challenge was to build the station without closing the existing station. His third challenge was to not use any more land.

His solution was to bury the station. He made the walls of his underground structure strong enough to support large buildings (now skyscrapers) above. He then used the huge real estate market gains to finance the project

Grand Central Valley Game:

In this case, the very important railroad station was the shared asset. Player 1 was the community (politicians) surrounding the station, player 2 was the real estate market, and player 3 was the railroads. Each acting in their best interest collaborated to arrive at a solution to what was considered an impossible problem.

With the advent of Social Media and collaborative gaming technologies, “Value Games” may be created to solve many of the world’s most complex problems while also releasing vast amounts of value to a social system simply by reorganizing the same players on a three dimensional playing field interacting around any shared asset.

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Model For The Mobility of Engineering Professionals Under NAFTA

By Admin

On March 4, 2011

In General Information

I published the following paper in 1996 as part of my participation in the negotiations for mutual recognition of Engineering Professionals under NAFTA. We had just completed a program that ultimately sent close to 200 Mexican Engineers to the U.S. NCEES Engineering Board Exams with the support of CETYS Universidad and The State of California BORPELS. In short, the performance of Mexican Engineers on this exam was extraordinary. Their pass ratio was comparable in every way (especially when language disparity was removed), to US engineers who took the same exams.

Model For The Mobility of Engineering Professionals Under NAFTA – Please follow this link for PDF: INCNE596

This work is highly significant because it represents original research toward what was likely one of the first modern attempts to trade ‘human knowledge’ like a financial instrument. The idea was that Mexican, American, and Canadian Engineers would be allowed to practice engineering in the exchange of services across all three borders. The hope was that the financial structure that supported the American and Canadian engineering profession as a vetting mechanism [for the technical risks details associated with major infrastructure projects] would transfer into Mexico.

Comparative Education

It is also significant because this may be one of the largest comparative education projects between the Mexican Education system in Engineering and the US engineering education system as measured by an established standard examination. For example, data clearly showed an advantage in Mathematics for the Mexican engineers but a disadvantage in physics and chemistry – likely correlating to the cost of producing such education (labs and equipment) between the two systems.

Relative States of Development

It is abundantly conclusive that Mexican Engineers, and therefore the Country of Mexico, is highly capable of development and technology enterprise based on the education criteria in which America measures itself. So when looking at the relative states of development between the two countries, the question arises; if the difference is not in the quality of engineers, then where is it? Of course, the answer does not surprise us when we see political turmoil as the source of most wealth disparity metrics.

Language Disparity

Finally, on a relatively minor discovery, this research measured a language disparity of approximately 15% in the speed that the engineer from Northern Mexico can accurately interpret an engineering problem expressed in technical English. This is useful when planning timed exercises such as examinations where language differences are difficult to remove from the sample set.

Epic Value Game FAIL

As it turned out, the Mexican Negotiators did not accept the author’s recommendations presented here in stead adopting an MRD strategy that was highly restrictive to both the mobility of engineers and the vetting requirements of financial institutions. America literally handed Mexico the Knowledge Economy on a silver platter and Mexico refused.

This author argued in 1996 that Mexico would compete in the future with emerging economies such as China and Vietnam in the the low-value labor market rather than competing with, say, India for the highly valued knowledge market. It is unfortunate that they chose the former. I’ll leave my opinions as to why, for a future post.

Model For The Mobility of Engineering Professionals Under NAFTA

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The Value Game Plays The Valley Game

By Admin

On February 26, 2011

In General Information

(The following is a draft of the unveiling presentation for The Value Game at The Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco on February 28th 2011)

Hello;

The Ingenesist Project is developing a new class of business methods that convert social value into financial value, and vice versa. The premise is that when people cooperate to do useful things, they can also create an amazing amount of social value.

Historically, we have seen how each of the great eras of human civilization was derived from the prior era when the tools of that prior era became integrated. Like when the wheel, wedge, and pulley integrated to become the printing press. Great social transformation followed.

So it is that integration of tools that we are most interested in.

Today, we can see this drama playing out across the Globe as people integrate the tools that were created over the last 30 years. People are reorganizing and in doing so they are directly challenging the power of financial currency with equally powerful social currency.

So it is inevitable that a conversion factor between social currency and financial currency will arise. And that, we believe, will mark the next economic era.

So we developed something called The Value Game that we believe will help build the social infrastructure for the creation, storage, and exchange of social value.

The Value Game is a new class of business methods designed to specifically create social value. The rules of the Value Game are very simple. The Game Starts and Ends with money but all of the new value created in the game is denominated in Social Currency.

A Value Game is created by assembling 3 or more communities around a single shared asset in such a way that their interaction with each other relative to the asset creates social value. In this form, social value can then be more readily converted to a financial value.

To demonstrate this, we helped launch a new company called Social Flights. The objectives of Social Flights are to aggregate a large fleet of Private Turbine powered Aircraft and deploy them to the Social Graph instead of the Hub and Spoke system used by the Commercial Airlines.

The Shared Asset is the jet. Player 1 is the traveler community. Player 2 is the community of private aircraft operators. , Player 3 is the community of entrepreneurs at the flight destination. The True Value Calculation compares the true door-to-door cost of using Social Flights versus other alternatives such as commercial airlines.

For example, flying between two smaller cities like Bellingham Washington and Vail, Colorado. A Commercial flight would take close to 14 hours traveling through two hubs. A fully utilized private flight would cost about twice as much but can make the flight in 3 hours. So right off the bat, the True Value Calculation issues a par value between alternatives. So if your time is worth less than, say, 70 dollars per hour, you are better off taking commercial airlines. But if your time is worth more than 70 dollars per hour – for whatever reason – then you should take the private flight.

Now, a hotel in Vail may say – wow, here is a group of 10 people staying 5 days. They can divert advertising budget and issue a 100 dollar “discount coupon” to everyone in the group. Now the par value of the private flight is reduced to 60 dollars per hour. Next, Ski slopes, restaurants, bars, and services will deploy Coupons against the airplane lowering the par value toward closer to middle class incomes and certainly well within the business class of a commercial airline.

Things will get really interesting as people start gaming the game. The more demographic information that the traveler provides, the greater the likelihood that more and more vendors will issue them a discount coupon – which they can even resell on Craigslist.

In effect, why would someone let Facebook sell their information when people can sell it their selves? Why would vendors pay for advertising when they can find the perfect customers directly? Why would a manufacturer pay a retailer when the community can sell it for them? Here we see a great deal of financial value can also be articulated in a Value Game.

Theoretically, we could build a Value Game around any shared asset from zip cars, public infrastructure, energy production, education, natural resources, even the totality of human knowledge, etc.

But for now, let me introduce Allen Howell, Chairman of Social Flights who will discuss how this new business method is developing in practice.

Social Flights should be very interesting to many of the people here because it integrates several of the hottest properties in the Valley; Travel, Coupons, Gaming, and Social Media. Each of these communities have seen astonishing valuations lately so it will be interesting to see what happens when they, in fact, become integrated.

So please welcome Allen and I can take questions while he sets up.

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