The Ingenesist Project

The Next Economic Paradigm

Tag: social flights

The Reality Platform

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On May 10, 2012

In General Information

Today, we do not have a financial problem as much as we have a value problem.  The challenges that face our civilization are far too great to be solved on an “Advertising” platform.  Whatever happens next, it must start with a Reality Platform.

2012: A Space Odyssey

Back in the railroad days, a platform referred to the surface upon which passengers stepped in order to enter or exit the train.  Later, the platform became a computer operating system.

In 2012,  the “platform” refers to one of the big four space stations on the Internet; Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.  On the backend, they each sort products and people into their appropriated categories.  On the front end, they deliver the consumer to the product and vice versa.  Everything is done electronically; wherever possible, even the product is electronic.

A Platform for Reality

Compared to the Big Four – which collect data behind secure walls, analyze with proprietary algorithms, then serve up  content that is most beneficial to the platform (not necessarily the user) –  The Value Game is revolutionary. In one application of the Value Game, a company called Social Flights collects four separate streams of data, converts the data to a single usable form, then shares the data back to the separate streams.

For example; an airplane operator submits data regarding the inventory of their aircraft.  The hospitality industry submits data relative to their inventory of support services,  Travelers submit data relative to their likely destinations, and event organizers submit data regarding their events.

Music is a combination of rhythm, sound frequency, and timbre

Social Flights captures all of these streams, organizes the data and feeds it back to the market in a more usable form.  Aircraft operators learn the optimum use of their aircraft resources.  Hospitality and tourism learn how to best allocate their inventory.  Event planners  learn to access their markets for attendees. Finally, Travelers learn the exact door-to-door cost AND TIME to achieve their objectives.  All the connections are made WITHOUT advertising.

Social Value is literally “manufactured” because it is in the best interest of each player that the other Players are successful.  Communities become vested in each other – not unlike an ensemble.

Advertising extorts passion

Today, nearly all social organization is now funded – and influenced – by advertising. People do not wake up in the morning aspiring to follow the Kardashians. If left alone, people aspire to follow their friends, to pursue their natural interests, and develop their natural talents.  The sole objective of the advertiser is to convince people to do something other than what they aspire to do naturally.

Manufacturing Social Value

The Value Game is a real and valid social value manufacturing engine. The same system deployed to aviation can also be used for any shared asset or experience; cars, roads, infrastructure, corporations, education, and even government, all with the New Value data platforms that are under development.

The problem can never be the solution – we need a new platform.

***

*2001: A Space Odyssey is a story that deals with a series of encounters between humans and mysterious black monoliths that are apparently affecting human evolution,

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New Value And The Future Of Money

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On April 25, 2012

In General Information

The 3rd Annual Future of Money and Technology Summit was held in San Francisco on April 23rd, 2012.  This was my 3rd appearance at the Summit and I must say that #3 was one of the most profound experiences that I have had a conference.  FOM&T is possibly one of the most important conferences of its kind.

Lunatic Fringe

Several years ago, many ideas that are now becoming mainstream were fringe topics at best.  At one time, the very idea that intangibles may in fact be immensely tangible, drew razor shards of broken glass from the KM community toward anyone who ventured toward such a claim.  Then, modern events such as Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street demonstrated a direct challenge to very tangible “guns and money” brought by new ways of organizing communities around intangible assets.

The fringe questions of today become mainstream questions tomorrow

Now, what happens if we turn that concept into a means of producing the things that people really need instead of producing things that people don’t really need? What happens when people interact around a shared asset – either tangible or intangible – will they work to preserve the asset or consume it?  What if an economy arose where the Earth is the shared asset?  What if an economy arose where the individual was a shared asset? what if Both happened?  What would that look like?

A Value Game

The New Value Movement Panel came together around those ideas.  When I set this panel up, I created a value game – each of the people has something to gain from the success of the others on the panel.  This  panel shared an intangible asset in the form of a conversation.

The outcome was movement – a new value movement. Please watch this video and contact me with your thoughts – I am deeply interested in your interpretation of what happened here.
Thank you.

I hope to see you all at the next Future of Money and Technology Summit

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Encouraging Customer Self-Organization

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On February 25, 2012

In General Information

TrendPOV

Here is a repost of an interview with myself by Dr. Amy Vanderbilt at TrendPOV.  I like Dr. V for her ability to really draw out the best in people.  Here she tackles a topic of great complexity and makes it feel like an everyday conversation.  If you ever have an opportunity to work with Dr. V you will be deeply rewarded with the outcome.

On a side note, I felt so comfortable that I forgot that I was on air – you can see my eyes wandering, yikes.  Next time I’ll tape a sign on the ceiling that says “Look Down”.  Anyway – it’s an interesting topic so please watch and let me know what you think.

From Trend POV

Social media is no longer just a way to reconnect with friends; it has become an integral part of daily life that is rapidly gaining traction in the business world. Social media now provides a format for customers to self-organize in a way that creates a competitive market for goods and services where both the customers and the vendors can benefit. The depressed economy has brought people together to share advice and zero in on great deals through group buying.

As defined on Wikipedia.com, “Group buying, also known as collective buying, offers products and services at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers would make the purchase.” Originating from China, group buying, called tuángòu grew from the practice of haggling and has now infiltrated the online world in many parts of the globe. Notable sites include Groupon, LivingSocial and MyCityDeal.

Unlike China’s deal strategy that is self-organized and executed, most of the group buying in Europe and North America is done using online intermediaries who charge vendors fees that can be as much as 50 percent of the deal. Group buying has been gaining consumer popularity for three years now; however, group buying in the business sector is still in its infancy. Despite Groupon having over 100 million subscribers that had bought over 60 million Groupons by September 2011, skeptics suggest the trend will not last.

Consumers may be getting saturated by email overload from deal sites competing for their attention. China is struggling amidst accusations of selling fake goods; almost a fourth of the 6000 group buying Web sites shut down in 2011 and those still operating are losing money. But group buying is probably not yet dead. As Dan Frommer said on businessinsider.com, “The future of group buying is on mobile devices. Why? Because they’re always with you, can identify your location via GPS, and can access a network of real-time, instant deals.” If businesses can engage customers and retain loyalty, group buying may have a bright future.

To turn this trend into an advantage for your organization, consider the following. Customer self-organization is going digital. Selling to groups can increase profits. Use social media to drive customer self-organization. Group-selling is not for gaining new customers. Instead, try group-selling for exclusive products and services and rewarding loyalty.

 

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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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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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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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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 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?

By

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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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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Collaborative Consumption Is Here To Stay

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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

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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Can Advertisers Curate Themselves?

By

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 Plays The Valley Game

By

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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The Value Game Cracks the Monetization Paradox

By

On February 20, 2011

In General Information

The Value Game is becoming increasingly generalized as more entrepreneurs seek to learn how to apply it to new economic realities.  The first company to launch is Social Flights.  Quickly funded, in full operation, booking jets and signing contracts, the Social Flights success trajectory has been truly remarkable.

The Ingenesist Project is deploying several more applications of The Value Game.  Our next venture is to develop Reputation Management for High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI).  Here’s how it goes.

The Social Influence Game:

Player 1: At some point, the government is going to stop supporting many very important social programs such as schools, health care, child care, retirement benefits, and possibly even close the charitable tax deduction.  In order to survive, social causes will need to come up with new forms of support or fund themselves with a new form of currency.

Player 2: Many politically and financially influential people in communities are finding that their “Google Results” often tell a story that is less than flattering.  Some have old lawsuits, unpopular business associates, or just too much personal information that presents a skewed picture of how they actually feel toward their community.  It is risky, difficult, and expensive to change Search engine results and it is nearly impossible to “control” what other people say.

Player 3: Legions of Social Media Gurus have long learned to aggregate and influence markets using social media platforms.  They have learned to match knowledge surpluses to knowledge deficits as a means of building their own online reputation and influence.  Many Social Media Gurus have achieved a strong Social Media Presence, which supports book tours, lecture series, personal brand image, or corporate clients and sponsorships. They constantly seek new content.

Converting Political Currency to Social Currency

The Social Influence Game will match HNWI with Social Causes where the HNWI can exert their political and Corporate currency in exchange for Social Currency.  Many HNWI have a powerful lifelong network of other influential people from whom they can find advice, mentorship, assistance, or discover goods, services, or physical inventory that may become useful and available to a struggling social enterprise.

Social Media Gurus who make these connections will blog, comment, and promote their ability to match power surplus to power deficit.  Internet Search results will redraw the Social Graph.

Holiday Shopping For the New Millennium

In practice, HNWI can “Go Shopping” for social causes.  When they find one that suits their talents and passions, they will be able to see what that organization needs; beds, food, heating oil, legal advice, CEO mentor, someone to lean on the land lord or even exert a position with the local government, etc.  The HNWI then will pull out their lifelong Rolodex of powerful persons and exert their influence in favor of the social cause through the interpretation of the Social Media Guru.

Winning The Game:

After a short while, Google will start pushing the old search results of the HNWI farther and farther down the page as the tweets, comments, and blog posts accumulate.   The Social Media Guru will find gold in their own backyards instead of Corporate Astroturf.  Social Causes will achieve their mission while managing new resources and earning important new friends.

Perhaps most importantly, the HNWI community will collaborate in order to sustain their Social Currency in the community.  They will begin to bias their personal and professional actions in favor of social priorities over Wall Street priorities.

In Short, everyone acting in their own best interests benefits the interests of everyone.  This is Social Capitalism.  If it works well enough, maybe we can finally put those pesky social causes out of business.

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Crowdsourcing The Brokerage House

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On February 15, 2011

In General Information

The broker/trading model is a familiar class of business methods.  The broker advertises the availability of someone else’s inventory of assets but withholds information from the market as a means to control the transaction.  The broker does whatever is needed to pay the supplier as little as possible while also charging the customer as much as possible. The Broker  can then collect a fee for producing absolutely nothing of value except control over a transaction.

The Value Game introduces a new class of business methods that disaggregates the broker/advertising model by increasing information delivery to a community rather than withholding it.

The Value Game Revenue Model

For example; Private aircraft charters are held under the weight of a powerful Broker Industry that scrapes 30-40% of the value of created by thousands of hard working professionals who actually operate the airplanes. By deploying The Value Game,  Social Flights was created as a new air transportation company that organizes four types of communities and enables them to interact with each other around a shared asset (an airplane).  During this process of interaction, complete information is provided to each party, rather than being withheld, and everyone plays towards their convergent goals rather than divergent goals.   As a result, the Social Flights application creates Social Currency, which is then readily converted to money.

Social Flights Revenue is derived from the interaction of four communities:

The Travelers

The Operators

The Partners

The True Value Data

Traveler:

Social Flights brings travelers of similar intentions together in Travel Tribes to share flights at wholesale market value.  Air transportation is deployed to the social graph rather than the airline hub & spoke system. Communities that are underserved by commercial airlines are now empowered to interact in new ways.

Operator:

In the past, an aircraft operator would pay a listing service, a Broker, and a marketing department to sell charter services.  Instead, an operator would simply reallocate some of their marketing budget to Social Flights in return for a high volume, reliable, and risk free marketing venue.

Partners:

The cornerstones of the value game are 3rd Party entrepreneurs who scour the community for inventory of hotels, entertainment, recreation, business opportunities, and anything else to support travelers playing the game.  Not unlike Groupon, Social Flights facilitates the application of discount coupons that can be applied to the passenger’s itinerary corresponding to their normalized travel intentions.

True Value Data:

Social Flights creates a valuable and unique form of business intelligence defining how much value, in dollars, that people place on their time.  This results in a conversion factor between social currency and financial currency – something that has never been achieved before. Such data will induce a huge amount of innovation as time/money currencies fuel new Value Games around many other shared assets.

Winners and losers

  • The traveler wins with complete information, point-to-point time travel, and an empowered community.
  • The operator wins with less overhead, less risk, and steady cash flow.
  • Thousands of social entrepreneurs are empowered to deliver support inventory to a new community market.
  • All communities win as such information about the time-value of money helps people reallocates their intentions in the emerging new economy.
  • Social Flights earns their revenue by empowering communities in Social Currency.

OK, so what exactly does the Broker Produce?


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Social Currency Derivatives Trading

By

On December 13, 2010

In General Information

The New York Times published an article yesterday about derivative traders being controlled by 6 powerful banks whose influence serves to keep out competitors and decrease the transparency of transactions. What struck me was the graphics that the article used to demonstrate both the problem and the solution for derivative trading:

The Problem:  Murky Market – no transparency

The Solution: Introducing a clearinghouse for transparency and correct pricing

The second diagram demonstrates how the introduction of a vetting mechanism inserted directly at the spot of least transparency greatly increases socially valuable attributes such as transparency, true pricing, reduced risk, open sourcing, elimination of conflicts of interest, and increased sustainability, etc – many of the attributes demanded by the new generation of activists seeking their place in the discussion that they struggle to understand. Hedge funds are indeed important tools for reducing volatility if, and only if, they don’t themselves introduce new risks.

The Value Game:

The second diagram looks a great deal like The Value Game developed by The Ingenesist Project for the monetizing social currency. By introducing a leveraged asset in the middle of a series of transactions, true value of the whole transaction system can be established eliminating volatility and reducing systemic risks.  The Value Game works in a manner quite similar to a hedge instrument.

The Airplane Game:

The Airplane Game deployed by the new start-up called Social Flights, for example, introduces a jet airplane transaction as a clearinghouse for the balance of the transactions in the game of door-to-door travel.  When all the players put their money down on a jet flight, they convert the financial currency to social currency, the true value of the transaction can be established when compared to an alternate market such as commercial airline, driving, train, etc. – not necessarily to dollars in the bank.

Financial Currency is a derivative of social currency

It is not surprising that social currency will become a hedge instrument for financial currency in markets.  After all, nothing economic can happen until people get together to build something.  Nothing of any significance can be built unless people exchange social currency. Only after all of that, can it be converted into money.

Intrinsic Banking

As such, every broker in every market can be replaced by a Social Value Game providing intrinsic banking services.  Can you see it?


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Social Currency Takes Flight

By

On December 6, 2010

In General Information

Private Aviation is the first of several industries planning to launch a new class of business methods built on a “Social Value Game” developed by  The Ingenesist Project .  Social Flights is a virtual airline which aggregates communities according to their interests, knowledge assets, and social graph.  Social Flights matches people with mid-distance transportation options that deliver them exactly where they want to go in a shortest period of time and the least amount of harassment.

By the time you factor in Social Value, the price of private air travel becomes highly competitive.

In this variation, The Airplane Game has 4 players; (1) A traveler, (2) accredited private jet operators throughout the US, (3) travel services vendors, and (4) a 3rd party entrepreneur.  The objective of the game is for each player to act in their best interest to ultimately produce a door-to-door cost of traveling between two geographic points on a private jet equal to or less than the cost of making the same trip on comparable modes of transportation. The true door-to-door cost will be denominated in social currency and then converted to financial currency to establish a par value.

The Airplane Game scheduled for departure in 2011

The game starts when a traveler states a anonymous intention to geolocate between their zip code and any distant zip code.  This intention will be sent to a private jet carrier who will establish a price for each seat based on a full plane.  Next, vendors for products and services matched to the traveler’s intensions – such as ground transportation, hotels, restaurants, interests, and tourist attractions at both zip codes – will assign a contingency coupon of known face value against the airfare of the private jet seat thereby lowering the cost of the seat.

Enter Social Entrepreneurs

Next, 3rd Party Entrepreneurs will use social media to locate seat inventory to put in play.  Then, they will locate product/service inventory to put that into play.  Finally, they will locate “Social Inventory” in each zip code to fill the jet and drive down the ticket price even further in what amounts to social arbitrage. The Social Flights Algorithm will compare the social value such as time savings, carbon footprint, airport congestion, and experience quality against the comparable modes of transportation, such as car/bus/train/commercial aviation, and provide a par value for each option.

Social Value Conversion Factor

Social profits can be maximized where people are empowered to travel point to point consistent with their social graph rather than car, train, or hub and spoke commercial aviation modes.  Decreasing social friction increases social profits.  This launch further demonstrates how any asset, from jets to zip cars to public infrastructure, can be leveraged to create abundant social value.

The aggregate effect of such businesses will  establish a conversion factor between social currency and financial currency from which any number of social productivity applications can be built and monetized.

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