The Ingenesist Project

The Next Economic Paradigm

A Radical Twist on Crowd Computing

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On September 13, 2011

In General Information

Social Flights is a Value Game. The objective is for communities to fill a private jet in both directions in order to achieve the best economics. This may be achieved through creative Game Mechanics where travelers, aircraft operators, tourism and hospitality vendors, and municipalities interact in their mutual best interest to perform a calculation in a radical twist on the concept of Crowd Computing.

But what if communities could organize themselves using their own data? This would introduce a great deal of innovation in order to solve a calculation that is otherwise performed by capital infrastructure such as structures, corporations, government, or in the case of Social Flights, a vast hub airport.

The Value Game is designed to be gamed by entrepreneurs where “True Value” is created through collaboration rather than competition.  

If Social Flights can create a game where people share an airplanes, imagine that the same game can be played with any shared asset from cars, education, health care, food production, and even public infrastructure.  Communities may perform the “calculations of economics” much like how traditional tribes allocate resources.  Enterprise lacking in “socially redeeming value”,  by definition, will fail.

So exactly how powerful are tribes?

As we all seen this year alone in the Internet Age, Social Currency can and does directly challenge dictators, militaries, financial systems, and governments across the globe.  People are performing Crowd Calculations – communities are Crowd Computing.  These ideas and many more will be highlighted by Innotribe at SIBOS 2011

Let me offer an analogy:      

The economy that is denominated by Money, is a system built on 5 pillars that are perform the calculations of finance and economics.  The pillars are integrated to support a financial system. These pillars are: a currency, an accounting system, vetting institutions, entrepreneurs, and consumers.

If any one of these pillars is broken, corrupted, oppressed or otherwise fails, the entire system falters. Enron presented a failure in the accounting profession. The mortgage crisis was the failure of the vetting mechanisms. Corrupt legal systems suppress entrepreneurs. Now the debt crisis is threatening the currency pillar.  The currency crisis will threaten the consumer.

Suppose that these five old economic pillars could be duplicated in a some different way and then integrated to form an alternate system for performing the same calculations.   It is no coincidence that many of the sessions at SIBOS2011/Innotribe correspond to the five pillars of such an economy.

Entrepreneurs: Social Data and Cooperation, Corporate Cultures 

Vetting mechanisms:  Banks for a better world

Accounting system; Big Data

Consumers: Digital Identity

Currency; Future of Money

Imagine this, if the organizations at Innotribe were to integrate to create a new economy that is only slightly more efficient the old system, they may become the mother of all hedge funds. Remember the dictator caught without social currency?  At least half the money in the world will convert, capitalize, and securitize in social currency.  We may not be that far off from that day.

The New Economies Track at SIBOS2011/Innotribe features the people and projects that are at the forefront of “The Big Integration” where the five pillars of a new economic system will integrate themselves to form a new economy to replace the old.  It all starts with entrepreneurs such as those featured at Innotribe 2011 trying to figure out new ways to integrate the five pillars of a new economy.

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New Economies; May The Best Street Win

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On September 7, 2011

In General Information

The great dream for new economies movement is that Wall Street has finally met its match from the vast interconnected social systems that now dominate communication, organization, and commerce.

The problem is that no matter what the New Economies Movement comes up with, Wall Street will capitalize it, commoditize it, securitize it, and sell it back to us for the price of our communities.  Then they’ll build derivatives and options around it and wrap it all up in a nice hedge fund that transfers all risk back to us.   The Street always wins.

So why can’t we do what Wall Street does?

At Social Flights we believe that we can provide 10,000 jobs across the United States by letting people sell options on aircraft seats.

How would this work?

The Hub and Spoke system consists of about 30 major airports in the US that act as hubs.  The rest are spokes and many smaller cities are barely served at all.  So unless you are flying between two hubs, you will always have to catch a connection, waste time, and incur social expenses.

For the price of a typical airport lounge bar tab, a traveler can buy an option to fly a private jet non-stop between their destinations.  An option is the right without the obligation to take a position in the future.  The option would be convertible, transferrable, and may even be exercised on a wide variety of schedules.

Calling all unemployed entrepreneurs 

Suppose that I saw a listing on Social Flights for a private jet flight from Boise Idaho to Colorado Springs taking place in three weeks and costing 300 dollars.  Since I know a lot of people in both cities, I can either use the ticket myself, or I have 3 weeks to sell it for, say, 500 dollars.

This is a bargain because there are no non-stop flights between these two cities and airline prices tend to increase as the departure date approaches.  The private jet can do the trip in two hours whereas the commercial airline would take 8 or more hours. I could buy an option on that flight for, say 30 dollars and resell the ticket for a $170.00 profit.   If I cannot sell the ticket, then I can use the ticket, convert it to another option, or lose my 30 dollars (just like the bar tab).

I am a Capitalist

In effect, I am rewarded for my size and quality of my social network.  I am rewarded for my ability to research in the Internet to find likely prospects who would seek to travel at a time savings.  I am rewarded for my knowledge, associations, professional skills, and ability to analyze data and organize people.   I am rewarded for finding arbitrage opportunities in an inefficient industry.  I buy low and sell high – I am a Capitalist

While this may not seem like a large impact, if 5000 – 10,000 people make their living trading Social Options, the market will shift.  If Social Options can be created for aviation inventory, they can be created for all inventory.  For the exact same effect as a Groupon, people can trade options on goods and services while hedging against Wall Street and restoring community Values.

Don’t just change the game, change the street that it is played on….

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New Economies at SIBOS; The Metacurrency Project

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On September 2, 2011

In General Information

The New Economies Panel at SIBOS Innotribe this year in Toronto represents the most important elements of a new economy which many people believe is emerging to replace the old one that continues to crumble around us.

The common message of New Economy movement is the vastly expanded definition for the term “Value’ – far beyond that which can be articulated with money.  Very few organizations hold this idea as explicit to their DNA as The Metacurrency Project.

Few can deny that the Sun delivers all value to our Earth.  The Mass of our Universe provides the rest; Gravity, Motion, and time.  In this context, money is a trivial device that simply articulates the relatively archaic things that humans can manage to conjure and horde from the vast natural resources that are delivered to us for free.

The idea that Energy can exist is many forms cannot be separated from the fact that Value can and must also exist in many forms.  The challenge that we face as a civilization is to build an economy that articulates all Value completely and truthfully.

The Metacurrency Project has become a Worldwide conversation expanding the definition of value and building systems to articulate such value in communities, companies, and society.

I had the opportunity to meet Art Brock at The Future of Money and Technology Summit in San Francisco earlier this year.  Art represents a very important voice in the discussion of new economies at SIBOS/Innotribe on September 19-23 in Toronto.

We look forward to seeing you in Toronto.  If not, then thank you for continued interest and participation in the important subject of New Economies.

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The True Economy, The True Value

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On August 31, 2011

In General Information

I am reading The New Capitalist Manifesto by Umair Haque in preparation for SIBOS 2011 where I will have an opportunity to join in a common conversation. I will be speaking on a panel called New Economies along with several other distinguished presenters (see Below).

New Economies = The Values

The most important thing about the discussion of new economies is the idea of Value.  It is essential that we define Value much more completely than just those things that can be articulated with money and shift to include all forms of Value in our entrepreneurship.  The Sun delivers value to the Earth. Parents deliver value to their children.  Communities deliver value to society.  A true accounting of all value is essential to the discussion of new economies.

The New Capitalist Manifesto is a hugely important book; Here are a few of my thoughts.

First; it provides a vital framework to begin accounting for what we call “True Value”; an accounting of real net value creation as opposed to borrowing, transferring, or destroying value that is not necessarily represented on a financial balance sheet.

Second; the new economy and emergent new accounting system will happen whether we like it or not.  There is little that people can actually do to avoid it. The new economy is a matter of survival – it will happen at the speed and drive of survival (hence “Capitalism”).   So make your choices now as these will define your future.

The third observation is that nobody is immune from the new economy.  The more one resists, the more it will persist.  The stronger that a country, corporation, or traditionalists hold to legacy ideas about linear value and forest-to-dump consumerism, the faster and more dramatic will be their demise.

So what does this have to do with Social Flights?

Social Flights is attempting to replace the horrific concrete wasteland of the command and control “Hub & Spoke” system with a Democracy.  Our premise is that people can self-organize around two points and efficiently share an airplane that flies directly between them from smaller airports.  In effect, we replace the infrastructure with cloud data to accomplish the same thing with a far superior customer experience, and therefor, greater true value.

Think about it; all of the world’s airlines are competing with each other in a race to the bottom around the Hub and Spoke system.  The two largest aircraft manufacturers are beating each other up around the strengths and limitations of the Hub and Spoke System. The whole system is limping along on razor thin margins. Yet, the vast majority of “true and complete” Value of travel is the human experience and the value of relationships, communities, and their actions together.  The only reason that Travel exists is being unceremoniously tossed out on the tarmac….

If you don’t listen to your customers, then at least listen to Umair Haque.

So, if you are a university, a corporation, government, or any institution dependent on physical infrastructure in order to match supply and demand while insulating yourself from competition, then you should be very concerned about the new economy.

New economies
Is money the only form of transaction value and wealth? What about social currencies? We will expose you to new thinking on new economies such as the trust economy, the intention economy, the relationship economy, the social economy and the ethical economy.

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Another Opportunity To Observe Social Currency

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On August 23, 2011

In General Information

(I am sitting on a panel at SIBOS 2011 in Toronto Sept 19-21st speaking on the subject of New Economies – this post represents the angle that I take on the subject)

With images of people rushing into the Libyan dictator’s compound like the current from a great tsunami reshaping the landscape in a matter of minutes, I reflect on the obvious metaphor.  A quick Google search on “Social Current” reveals almost nothing – except “Social Issues and Current Events”.  Well, close, but not quite…

I hate to break the news to folks but Social Current and Social Currency are the exact same thing.

For example, the ex-Egyptian President had plenty of money and plenty of oil, and plenty of guns  – all the markings of wealth and power.  Yet he was challenged and defeated by Social Currency. If there were a strict market driven conversion factor for Egyptian Social Currency, it would probably comp out at around 100 Billion dollars. So there is a conversion factor in case anyone is interested.

Will the real economy please stand up

Anyone who does not believe that social currency exists today and is actively traded, stored, and exchanged in quantities far greater than financial currency, is looking in the wrong end of their binoculars.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the economy denominated in social currency is far greater than the economy denominated in financial currency.

Dollar spelled backwards is….

In the past, I have used the word “Rallod” as a placeholder for all VALUE that is NOT directly articulated with Dollars.  In fact, we could say that the Sun delivers Rallods to planet Earth and humans harvest what are called “natural resources” which are then converted to Dollars for storage, trade, and exchange.  The problem is that Rallods don’t have a financial “system” of their own. Rallods have been invisible – until now.

Money can’t buy me Love…

Not to get too fluffy here, but try to produce an airplane, a sandwich, or a surgical procedure without intellect, creativity, compassion, empathy, ethics, social values, or community awareness.  None of these things show up on the typical Wall Street Financial report balance sheet.  However, the absence of these things can quickly shows up in the liabilities column when confronted by social current.

Syria is in the midst of a social currency conversion process as are Greece, Tunisia, London, Israel, and France, etc.  Not to mention Yemen, China, Iran, and quite notably, the United States.

The Challenge then is to articulate ALL value in an economic system.

I believe this to be the genesis of the next economy.  I can also say with quite a bit of optimism, that it is well underway, we have past the point of no return, it’s a done deal, we are all interchanging Rallods and Dollars every day.

People are learning how to store, and exchange Rallods.  They really are – in fact, that’s where the majority of innovation in the world is occurring today.

**************

New economies
Is money the only form of transaction value and wealth? What about social currencies? We will expose you to new thinking on new economies such as the trust economy, the intention economy, the relationship economy, the social economy and the ethical economy.

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SIBOS 2011 – The Power Of Tribes

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On August 16, 2011

In General Information

I am deeply honored to be asked to deliver a keynote at SIBOS 2011 in Toronto next month.  Normally, I would consider myself quite lucky to have 5-7 minutes to speak to the World’s premier financial services conference. However, I’ll be speaking against the backdrop of economic turmoil, political gridlock, and unprecedented strains on natural resources – across the globe.

The topic of the presentation is The Power of Tribes.  While I’ll be representing a business application of this subject, – again, the backdrop for the Power of Tribes is Egypt, Syria, London, Wisconsin, Juarez, China, etc.

Why would they care about what I think?

I am aware that it’s unlikely that the financial industry will awaken some day and say:  “Wow, those kids who marched for equality and human rights in the 80”s were right all along!”.  “Yes, Yes, in order for the rich to live like we do, the poor need to live like they do and that’s not fair”. “Oh Gosh, let’s consult our engineers”.  Uh, not a chance.

They want a mountain of New Gold to appear on the Horizon.

The financial services industry is looking for new Value – something to prop up the Old Value that money is struggling to articulate.   As soon as I grab the mic, the audience will be saying to themselves “Ok, big guy, show me the money”.

Maybe I’ll suggest that Hosni Mubarack had no shortage of money or guns yet he was defeated by social (current) currency.  I could build a metaphore of a world where social currency directly challenges financial currency, political institutions, and even military strength.  Others have tried this path, so why would they believe me?

Perhaps I’ll speak through the reflection of a familiar mirror.

The financial industry is build on five pillars.  If any one of these five pillars is corrupted, the whole system fails

1. “Currency” exists for the purpose of storing and exchanging “Value”.

2. Value of currency is verified by vetting institutions.

3. An accounting system articulates inventory of Value

4. A business model such as “buy low and sell high”

5. Entrepreneurs do the fuzzy math and accept risk

It is not hard to track any failed economy with one or more of these pillars collapsed, nor is it difficult to see the cracks in the walls of the remaining economies.

The Power of Tribes

What many people do not yet realize is that as the old economy weakens a new one is emerging in lockstep.  The five pillars of a capitalist economy are being replicated in the social media movement:

Let me start in reverse:

5: Entrepreneurs do the fuzzy math – Search Engine Optimization

4: The business model is buy low, sell high – communities elevate social priorities

3: An Accounting system – trust, reputation, family, community, and influence

2: vetting institutions:  Twitter, Yelp, G+, Quora, and many many more

Only after these components have developed to a sufficient degree and become integrated with each other, a social currency will emerge.  It is wrong to say that a social currency comes first and all the rest will follow.

1. The new currency will come AFTER the integration of Social Media.

Convertible with money:

Keep in mind that dollars were once backed by Gold.  Eventually, the need for gold convertibility became obsolete.  Likewise, this social currency will be convertible with money, and eventually the need to convert to dollars will become obsolete. That’s the end game on the dollar

That’s also the Gold Mine on the Horizon…that’s The Power of Tribes

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People Are Corporations Too

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On August 13, 2011

In General Information

Wow what a week. I though that I heard it all until Mitt Romney said “Corporations Are people”. Actually, I admire Mr. Romney but I do struggle with this interpretation for his sake and those who he represents – and possibly an opportunity lost to rise above the noise.

In a way, Mitt provides us with a looking glass into the fundamental differences between the rich and the poor. The rich see themselves as the proxy for the prosperity of the poor. Meanwhile, the poor see themselves as the proxy for the prosperity of the rich. Neither side admits that they need each other, but I won’t pretend that I can solve this argument any time soon.  However, allow me to suggest that the winner of the debate will be the one that can evolve above the paradox.

The following video discusses how many components of a corporation – and government – are being duplicated in Social Media. The beauty of is that this great social innovation is available to anyone including the rich, the poor, the corporations, and the government. Oh, but wait – if the UK shuts down social media, they will effectively shut themselves out of the paradox, not evolve from it…Ooops. Be careful, Mitt.

So here is a video I made last year which, in a way, validates much of what we see playing out before us in politics, business, and social media.

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OWN Your Travel Game

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On August 1, 2011

In General Information

Social Flight is unique in its purpose of organizing communities of people into powerful collectives who can influence markets, vendors, and especially prices. This opportunity arises because of extraordinary inefficiencies in the airlines, but also in advertising, communications, marketing and every industry where a broker stands between your intentions and a market for goods and services.

Why Google Plus?

It may take a while for most people to catch on to what Google already knows: nothing economic can happen until people get together to build something.

Suppose you set up Google Circles by Geographic location.  Essentially, collect your home town friends, your college friends, your family branches, your company headquarters, etc., by geographic location.

Of course, each place where you have been has it’s own set of circles for things to do, places to go, and events to attend.  Each place that you go is a market of goods and services that is willing to accept your patronage as well as the patronage of people in your circles.

Now suppose you overlay your data on your personal “interests” data: 

This data set can include National Parks, affinity conferences, your Alma Mater “away” games, and seasonal recreation, for example.  This affinity data may also include concert tours of your favorite bands, speaker tours of your favorite authors, sibling birthdays, or promotional campaigns for your company, etc.

These form your intentions:

By far the most powerful business intelligence data is for the product that you will buy next, the person who you will talk to next, the place you will go next, and the impression that you will receive next.  This data belongs to you – like physical property – and YOU should be able to determine who sees.

YOU OWN your intentions data. 

Now overlay your intentions over a map of services and vendors such as hotels, or NASCAR races any other Goods and services that someone may want to sell to you.  Today, these vendors are paying a great deal of money to advertise their message to people who may never buy the product or create an unnecessary, and possibly negative, impression on those  who would not use the product in the first place.

$400 Billion dollar yearly advertising spend

These vendors pay and extraordinary amount of money on business intelligence, Groupons, and social media campaigns trying to discover YOUR intentions data.

They want to know where you are, but NOW, you know who THEY are.  You have every bit of information that you need about them to sell them YOUR product: your intentions.

Now you can simply ask them to bid for your intentions data and bid for your business – this is exactly what a print ad or TV commercial hopes to accomplish. 

Who is ready to build these applications with us?

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How Can Startup Fundraising be Gamified?

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On July 27, 2011

In General Information

This was a question recently posed on the website Gamification.org.

The interesting and hugely important thing about the folks at Gamification.org is that they are trying to bridge the reality chasm between entertainment games and economic games.  This, I believe they are rapidly learning, is yet another game.

So, sure, I’ll play…

The questioner asks that the respondents keep in mind the things that matter when raising money.  These are called the initial conditions:

  • Traction
  • Team
  • Technology
  • Validation

The hypothesis is that the way start-ups raise money today is out dated, inefficient and a huge time sink for entrepreneurs. Perhaps there is away the process could be made more fun for all parties, waste less time and still demonstrate traction/team/tech and validation.

No new game here. 

These are the same initial conditions of the game that is currently failing many great entrepreneurs (ostensibly, gaming entrepreneurs).

Ask any child to create a game and they will almost always modify the initial conditions.  If a playground game of tag is mismatched, they’ll play ball tag or introduce a boundary instead.  If the ball won’t go through the hoop, they’ll change the ball or the hoop.

If you can’t win a game playing by the rules, don’t play the game or change the rules

Likewise, I believe that a great deal of the problem with start-up funding has to do with the astonishing absence of a knowledge inventory system – that is the first thing that needs to be built before we can approach a new answer to this old question.

A company like Boeing (for example) has an inventory of every rivet, panel, and wire that goes on an aircraft and they nurture that inventory with intensity. The objective is the ability to predict the likelihood that an aircraft can be built given the set of parts that exist in the inventory. The real problem is largely in predicting the likelihood that the knowledge inventory exists to turn all those rivets, wires, and panels, into serviceable aircraft.

This is not the way startup fundraising – or even the question above – is formatted.

A computer hardware engineer can look at an inventory of computer parts and tell you the specifications and/or range of devices that can be built. They can also tell you what parts they need in order to increase the probability of success and they can tell you what parts will be left over unused after the devices are created.

The analogous condition is that a fundraising effort would look at a set of knowledge assets in a community and predict what ventures can be executed successfully given the inventory.  We should also be able to determine what knowledge assets are missing which would increase the likelihood of success.

An Idiot’s Guide to Probability and Statistics

The beauty of predictability is that these new enterprises can not only be capitalized, but they can be securitized and risk may be diversified. That is, they can be gamed.  That’s the definition of money and that, I believe, is the objective of the question.

Build the knowledge inventory and all the money in the world will have no other place to go. That’s the game that we need to play right now.

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Virtual Hub And Spoke System

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On July 26, 2011

In General Information

The Hub and Spoke system is a time honored formation of commercial aviation. People accept hub and spoke as the most rational way to organize people and planes much like they accept the corporation as the best way to organize production of goods and service.

Meanwhile, social media is challenging every assumption that we hold dear to our hearts as new applications role out which steadily increase the ability for people to organize their selves.

The newest applications such as Google + show us that people are the hub and their various forms of social networks are their spokes. A person has a group for their family, one for their friends, their colleagues, their schoolmates, etc.  While G+ fatigue may wear in as people get tired of classifying their casual contacts, the real value of G+ may arise in the intentional Organization of people for social and financial efficiency.

The similarity between the airport and G+ Hub and Spoke is not a casual coincidence.  There is a very real and physical connection between the way people organize themselves in social media and the way they organize themselves in corporate production and the way their organize themselves in air transportation systems.

Suppose we make the analogy that the person in the center is the customer, the circle that they belong to is the market, and the person in the market is a client.  The analogy hold when we try to “preserve college friendships”.  College is the social market and the friend is the mutual client relationship where the currency is a social currency.

The analogy is still very young, but it is truly profound.  This way of thinking will drive a form of social organization that may rival corporations, government, and even international boundaries.  It is also no coincidence that Social Flights has been modeling this analogy for the 2 years since we first started developing our business plan.

Today, Social Flights is working on some important concepts for defining Travel Tribe Leader functions.  The objective is to duplicate the function of a “concrete” hub and spoke system denominated in dollars with a virtual hub and spoke system denominated in social currency.

Network Characteristics of Travel Tribe leaders:

  • Each Travel Tribe Leader is responsible for 10-20 city pairs from their own location.
  • Two travel tribe leaders for each city pair (one located at each point)
  • Travel Tribe Leader creates revenue by matching people and places
  • Builds tribal/shared knowledge
  • Redundant, opportunistic, and fault tolerant
  • Ideally suited for Twitter, Google + and Facebook Distribution Channels

Conclusion:  The organization of people it figuratively (with G+) and literally (with corporations) is the exact same thing.  This will become obvious when people discover the necessity to organize their selves into productive communities in the absence of corporations and government.  But why wait – we can, and we will use social media to form a new system of social organization.

Citation: http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-network-v2

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BizDev with Cascading Info Game

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On July 18, 2011

In General Information

Social Flights is a complicated game.  Aviation is a complicated business.  This makes Social Flights a challenging business model as much as a great opportunity for those who can figure it out how to play for keeps.

The Challenge

The challenge is to bring on as many as 5000 independent Travel Tribe leaders distributed broadly across a wide geographic area.  Their task will be to strategically build flight plans for private aircraft in their communities. Community leaders will be compensated financially for driving revenue … much is common to a traditional sales channel.

However, each of these community leaders will have already accumulated a vast set of strategic knowledge and experience that can benefit Social Flights across the system. Likewise, Social Flights needs to bring each of them up the ladder of domain specific knowledge in the aviation business.

For compensation, Social Flights offers a tiered affiliate program that pays out various levels of commissions on flights booked according to the affiliate’s tier.  One concern is that this strategy may not create an incentive to share information broadly if one is protecting their own tier standing or their own order of influence.

Cascading Information

Another approach would be to use a cascading information system.  This is a gamification theory that suggests: information should be released in the minimum possible snippets to gain the appropriate level of understanding at each point during a game narrative.

Initially, information would be released by social flights in our initial training program.  Later, other players of the game can release information to each other in specific packets defined by the flight scenario.  Such packets of information can be rewarded with other packets of information – or access to more scenarios. The Cascading information theory promotes loyalty, engagement, influence, and time involved in the game of building flight plans.

Gaming the game:

From the onset, Social Flights encourages gaming the game.  This means that we expect to learn a great deal about our business by watching other people play it.  There are far too many scenarios and permutations of business strategies for us to predict how and where they would apply.  All we can do is specify a baseline game scenario form and watch the ways the game is gamed.

In a sense, Social Flights would also be subject to the Cascading Information Theory, thus demonstrating how a corporation would enhance their own engagement, loyalty, influence, and time-quality in the communities where they operate.   

(reference: Gamification.org – wiki; Cascading Information Theory)

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The Raw Material of Social Org Games

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On July 14, 2011

In General Information

Fibonacci Trust Curve

Trust Scarcity?

This article is a loose argument related to trust scarcity in social organization games.  Rewarding trust in a social game is a difficult thing to do unless certain agreements and institutions are in place.

The Social Value Game

Social Flights will be introducing some game mechanics to provide incentive for people to interact with each other to form  specific flight plans  This will also include vendors and operators who would support their travel intentions with goods and services.

We want to dis-aggregate the incentives from a specific flight; in other words, a player does not necessarily have to be on the flight in order to receive a benefit from organizing it.

As the game develops, all players will simply keep an eye out for travel opportunities for trusted others in their social media experience.  By helping their social circles to find travel opportunities, they will receive rewards which they can use when their own “perfect flight” begins to form.

Technology is not yet here, but getting close…

I would like to think that the technology has arrived which will allow people to form flights in social media, unfortunately, this is not the case.  The problem is that big data has become big business.  Social media platforms are funded with Data Dollars – that is, organizations who capture, combine, sell, or otherwise exploit personal data and trends in exchange for money.

Spiral of trust

When a person states their intention to fly to a distant place, this creates immensely valuable data.  Such information is highly specific and even quite intimate because people share their hopes, dreams, and aspirations when they meet, travel, learn together. For this reason, Social Flights game data will be scarce, remain private, anonymized, or normalized so that it can remain in play indefinitely.  There needs to be a great deal of trust in that network and, in fact, a disincentive to casting a broad public net.

Trust as Raw Material: 

  • Social Flights has an internal social network that allows people to communicate anonymously
  • Travel Tribe Leaders are trusted members in a community who operates with trust, integrity, and respect
  • Game mechanics can dis-aggregate intentions from specific flights
  • Game data will normalize outcomes into “probabilities” that mask mask social data as numerical data for future games
  • New Social Media applications allow users to form travel circles of trusted persons with whom they are willing to share flight plan intentions
It is fairly easy to see that no single social network device will serve every requirement of a social economy – nor should their be. Instead, the integration of several devices which identify, create, and deploy trust as the raw material, will allow people to go wherever they want to go and build whatever they want to build together.

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The Game and The Counter-Game

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On July 7, 2011

In General Information

The term “Gamification” is pretty cool, except that it is meaningless.  Anyone who has ever worked a day in his or her life knows that the World is already gamed.  Anyone who follows politics and world events sees the game playing out constantly.  Everyone, including the winners, know that the game is stacked.  The last thing anyone needs is another game layer.

If you are like the majority of people on Earth, you are given a game that you can’t win playing by the rules.  If you are like the majority of people on Earth, you would do anything for a chance to play a game that you CAN win.  Imagine the value of an IPO for a gaming company with that prospectus.

What is a Counter Game?

Wikileaks – love them or hate them – is a Counter Game because they turned the lights on a game that was being played in the dark.  Bloggers play a Counter Game because media was editorialized by powerful interests.  Twitter is a Counter Game because it drives the narrative instead of being driven by it. In fact, any place where there is a broker – someone or something that benefits from you NOT having complete information – is an opportunity to introduce a Counter Game.

An astonishing array of Counter Games is forming in social media and the brokers are falling out of the sky like hailstones.  Power brokers, mortgage brokers, energy brokers, media brokers, even Google is gamed by Counter Gamers.  The better they get at hiding information; the better the Counter Gamers gets at rooting it out.  The harder they try to control a message, the better the Counter Gamers gets at disclosing the truth behind the message.

The game creates the Counter Game.

Likewise, to kill the game is to kill the Counter Game. As such, the only way to kill the counter-game is to kill the game. Think about that for a bit…Do we really want to do that?

The Holy Grail of the Counter Game is the global monetary system. Money is supposed to represent human productivity; otherwise people would not go to work to make things that everyone else needs.  The Game has caused Money to become increasingly divorced from actual productivity.  People who produce the most value are exploited while those who produce the least are most grandly rewarded.  The Game is stacked with money.

The Holy Grail of The Counter Game is to replace monetary currency with a True Value Currency.

The financial system stands on 5 pillars: currency, inventory, vetting institutions, entrepreneurs, and value arbitrage. All of these are slowly being replicated, mimicked, or duplicated in Social Media.  When the 5 pillars integrate in social media systems, a new currency will emerge.  People will use it to store and exchange the value that they create through their work. It will be a no-brainer

The Value Game

The Value Game is outlined in this short video using the now proverbial “Corporate Jet” as the turning point in the global economic paradigm.  The Value Game does not kill the Financial Game, rather, it challenges, corrects, and improves it.  The Value game has reached a critical milestone – it has been funded in dollars by investors.

This is not insignificant.

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Why This Bubble Is Completely Different

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On July 5, 2011

In General Information

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

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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

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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

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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

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On June 3, 2011

In General Information

It’s been a few months since Social Flights entered the market with our February 28th 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?

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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