I proffer "benign observation" to "snooping"

No harm intended.
Just curious about your process.
I am always wanting to understand how things work.
To learn how things come to be.
How they all fit together.

Shame on you - evesdroppers!

Steff writes that she and Critt have been snooping into a blog I am using to augment communications with the team at ManyOne. It is important to note that the architext blog is a fairly personal journal process and thus not expected to be very relevant or useful beyond the borders of the ManyOne exec team.

However, since you know where it is, I guess I can't hide - but you may find the process of keeping up with architext a bit too much for people busy with more pressing priorities and not needing to follow the flow of my daily musings.

I am using Architext to archive the M1 related thinking between meetings, emails and phone calls. I have been investigating other tools for supporting virtual collaboration, and expect to have a password protected, secure site for ongoing collaboration within the next two weeks. The site will enable a much more structured approach to taking concept to action than is possible with the blog approach, and may be used in conjunction with it.

I will try to bring the topic list you and Critt have posted here into a Mindmap which I find a useful way of keeping all the moving parts in some semblance of integration and "order". When I have done the map I will send you a copy.

Finally, don't be surprised if you continue to evesdrop on Architext if some of the thinking shows "fuzzy' logic - since many of the highest level perceptions may start from very indistinct beginnings, and if useful work their way into more structure visualizations and documents.

Sometimes the ideas may just be floated and not gain traction, in which case they will fade from the radar screen of my attention.

Revenue Streams

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

This topic focuses on revenue streams for the business model.

See also:
Tools and practices

Design and Deliver PC-based Powerpoint Briefings

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Tools and Practices

This topic focuses on "Design and Deliver PC-based Powerpoint Briefings"

For example:

Consulting, trainings, curriculum development

What else?

Program, System and/or Organizational Analysis

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Tools and Practices

This topic focuses on "Program, System and/or Organizational Analysis"

a. Consulting, trainings, curriculum development

What else?

Strategic Visioneering or...

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Tools and Practices

This topic focuses on "Strategic Visioneering or Thinking Systematically About the Future or Long-Range Strategic Planning"

For example:

a. Presentations, speeches, briefings
b. Consulting, trainings, curriculum development

What else?

Delivery of Analysis on the PNM

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Tools and Practices

This topic focuses on "Delivery of Analysis on the PNM", the post-9/11 security environment and the future of globalization.

For example: Presentations, speeches, briefings

What else?

What overall creative strategy supports our brand?

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Branded Portal

This topic focuses on "what overall creative strategy supports our brand?"

Steff writes:

We will also need to work together to develop the overall creative strategy – the graphic design, the logo, and the “look and feel” – that surrounds our brand. These elements alone do not create the brand. However, they do support it and certainly can help accelerate recognition, speeding up the branding process.

To support the message of our brand of “A Future Worth Creating,” we will need to develop the above-mentioned supporting elements … Dave, I imagine you have folks on your side that can do this … and certainly I would so appreciate the opportunity to be in the loop on that process.

How can we be consistent?

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Branded Portal

This topic focuses on "how can we be consistent?"

Steff writes:

The third principle we need to discuss is how to be consistent with our communications. We want to deliver our “A Future Worth Creating” message in a tone that becomes recognizable as our voice, and that communicates our brand's values to our specific audiences every day, week after week, month and month, and beyond.

This consistency extends to every aspect of our brand's communications strategy. We are working to ensure we target our audiences with customized but similar messages, and that everything we prepare and disseminate personifies and conveys the same values, and appears with the same vocabulary, design elements and graphics.

On which audience(s) should we focus?

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Branded Portal

This topic focuses on "which audience(s) should we focus?"

Steff writes:

So we are offering “A Future Worth Creating,” but to whom do we communicate this value?

There are multiple audiences with whom the TBCG must communicate. We could say, “the whole world” … but clearly that’s a bit broad. So far, based on Critt’s traffic reports, I have identified the following target audiences:

1. Government and military entities
2. Financial and investment corporations
3. Universities, research think-tanks and other educational entities
4. Defense industry corporations
5. Information technology companies
6. Others?

What do we want our brand to say?

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

Reference: Branded Portal

This topic focuses on "what do we want our brand to say?"

Steff writes:

I now agree with Dave fully that our consultancy/brand is “Thomas P.M. Barnett” … so whether it’s “Thomas Barnett & Associates” … “The Thomas Barnett Company” … “The Thomas Barnett Consultant Group” … “Thomas Barnett Consulting” … “The Thomas Barnett Collective” or “Sir Tom Barnett and His Merry Band of Future Creators” … our name/brand revolves around Tom’s identity.

As for what we want our brand to say … we must ask ourselves what we want audiences to think of when they perceive our brand … what impression do we want it to leave in the their minds after exposure … and we also must ask ourselves “What are our brand’s values?”

The idea I keep coming back to is “A Future Worth Creating.” This could also be our tagline.

The Thomas Barnett Consultant Group (TBCG), as I imagine it, will be an integrated team of many expert contributors, and when it is performing optimally in its core competencies, then quite literally it will be offering “A Future Worth Creating” across many vertical markets.

Tools and Practices

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

This topic focuses on tools and practices that can put PNM ideas to work.

Initial list of suggestions -- from Steff:

Delivery of Analysis on the PNM

Strategic Visioneering or...

Program, System and/or Organizational Analysis

Design and Deliver PC-based PowerPoint Briefings

Business Model

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

This topic focuses on the collaborative co-design and evolution of the consulting practice business model.

See also: Tools and Practices | Revenue Streams

KDMP Infrastructure

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

This topic focuses on a knowledge development, management and publishing infrastructure that can support high-level consulting engagements and provide clients with a strategic decision support system that can allow for collection,synthesis and presentation of wide range of data sets that can serve to illustrate the Core/Gap concept and a mapping tool for simulation of alternative scenarios and gaming.

Branded Portal

Branded Portal | KDMP Infrastructure | Business Model

This topic focuses on a "branded" Portal with world-class GIS mapping and presentation capability that can be used to enhance Tom's present thought leadership positioning and extend his reach and impact as the "rainmaker" for a strategy consulting business based on his thought leadership.

For brand-building discussion, Steff offers the following four principles:

1. What do we want our brand to say?
2. On which audience(s) should we focus?
3. How can we be consistent?
4. What overall creative strategy supports our brand?

A suggestion for a communication style for Future Creators

My primary intention in setting up this blog was to provide an "inhouse", editable and archivable conversation medium to augment what Critt was already doing, and to eliminate from our "meta-level" conversation things like the traffic report he just posted.( I have asked him for permission to delete this post and any like it, since it just clutters up the process Iwas trying to simplify.

Tom already has a very public forum for his own postings and commentary on the Barnett Weblog and more detailed background and information about Tom on the PNM website. I request that we keep the future creators(FC) blog for the big picture of designing and implementing an extension from where Tom has already positioned himself towards a entrepreneurial strategic consulting business model which I believe we have the capacity, experience, resources and need to buil.

I would hope that most of our early discussion will be directed toward :

(1) A "branded" Portal with world-class GIS mapping and presentation capability that can be used to enhance Tom's present thought leadership positioning and extend his reach and impact as the "rainmaker" for a strategy consulting business based on his thought leadership

(2) A knowledge development, management and publishing infrastructure that can support high-level consulting engagements and provide clients with a strategic decision support system that can allow for collection,synthesis and presentation of wide range of data sets that can serve to illustrate the Core/Gap concept and a mapping tool for simulation of alternative scenarios and gaming

and (3) collaborative co-design and evolution of the consulting practice business model.

Tom can continue to use the existing Weblog, and Website as you have been doing to keep the "buzz" about the book ongoing for as long as possible. I would like to save this blog for the "rest of the story" In PNM parlance, the book has created a surprising system perturbation, but it's half-life is likely to be short unless we augment the buzz with some real tools and practices that can put his ideas to work in the organizations and institutions we need to change to help make a future worth creating.

Your comments are welcome.

Dave Davison

A brand new funding mechanism for our work and a world class GIS expert joins the PNM team

At the end of last week, ManyOne established a new funding mechanism in partnership with the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley - a highly credible (50 year old) foundation which administers the acceptance of funding donations and the grant funding process for a large group of wealthy Silicon Valley folks.

We have established a directed-grant program for defining and funding special projects which match the mission of ManyOne's Earth Coalition Partners. This mechanism gives me access to funding resources that will augment ManyOne's development resources needed to design and implement a demonstration version of the Pentagon's New Map which we can use to extend and enhance Tom's ability to deliver his powerful message.

In conjunction with Tim Foresman,an advisor to ManyOne and an international leader in GIS applications, I am preparing a development project based on PNM which I will share with you in the next few days. Tim is based in Maryland, and I will arrange for you to meet with him soon to help accelerate the co-creation of the presentation Portal that we have been talking about. I have ordered a copy of PNM for Tim to read, but he is already on board with the concept of the mapping application and its direct relevance to what he and his team at the Earth Coalition have been developing over the last year.

I have also scheduled a VentureDesign process event at ManyOne this coming Thursday morning which will be dedicated to working out the details of the PNM GIS project and the Portal delivery system. I think we will have the first draft of the project/budget/funding plan in place by next Monday, and will get it to you for review and collaboration.

Because Tim Foresman is not only a clued-in member of the ManyOne team and the catalyst for much of the GIS conceptual development of the Earth Portal, and because he is physically located in your Zipcode, he can serve as a local bridge to our co-design and implementation of the project.

Also on Thursday, we will attempt to flesh out the basic elements of the Future Creators consulting practice business model and will share it with you forthwith.

I am operating on the basis of an implied "contract" with Tom to do the right thing and to accelerate our development process on Tom's behalf, in spite of the physical distance that separates us, and the fact that we have not yet met in person. We WILL bridge that gap and soon.

Looking forward!!

synthesis of future Creator comments to me

Critt Steff and Tom have all commented on using or viewing the blog as a commons to allow us to archive our progress and provide an alternative to the jerky email process we have been using so far.

I am running a parallel blog with the ManyOne folks and with the WorldLink TV folks just to keep the tracks in separate buckets until it becomes useful or necessary to integrate them.

If we get worried about privacy we can protect this blog with password protection - but since it is not published into the blogosphere, I thinkwe can run with as an "internal" sharing mechanism.

I remain open to ANY suggestions you have for improvement/augmentation.

More Portal/Consultancy thoughts

Thanks so much for the invitation, Dave.

If I may begin my Sunday morning thoughts with a quote from Almost Famous ... Penny Lane: "We are not groupies. Groupies sleep with rock stars because they want to be near someone famous. WE are band-aides. We're here for the music." Or in this case, a future worth creating.

Funny, when I read the paragraph in PNM where Tom's says, "As I went off to college in 1980, determined to become a Soviet expert and join the struggle of our age, I couldn't help but curse my generational timing. I wanted to be Dean Acheson or Paul Nitze. I wanted to become one of the 'wise men.' I wanted to be present at the creation." ... wow, did that ever strike a chord within me.

Always on my path, I have wanted to be "present at the creation," of "dreaming a different dream" ... my first resume had the quote on it, "Do not go where the path may lead ... go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

And while I may not be one of the "wise (wo)men," (yet?) I know my role is to help them communicate better with their intended audiences ... I'm like BASF ... I don't make the carpet, I make it better.

Okay ... so that said, I can share some other thoughts of mine.

First, Dave ... I must comment on what an amazing offer you have tenderly put on the table for study. I, like Critt, can see what you have in mind for "what's next" and it does excite me very much.

Already, I have one main question about your proposal ...

The Portal effort, as you say, "would be sponsored, operated by and funded by ManyOne, [et al] ..."

You then discuss the current ManyOne technology platform, which as you suggest, "can be used as the virtual nexus or think tank ... the communication platform to link 'event-driven' F2F contacts between [Tom] and audiences ..."

My question: Must one have downloaded the ManyOne browser in order to view and experience our Portal?

If so, I will have several additional questions/concerns ... if not, I say carry on.


Second, Tom ... just as you have dreamed of a new grand strategy in the PNM, you must dream of a grand strategy and vision for yourself/your family/your path now.

You have said that offers and options are flooding in, and no doubt this can be overwhelming. If you create your own personal grand strategy, this becomes the intention by which all potential routes are evaluated. Dave, I believe you voiced something similar not so long ago based on your experience.

In my memo from a few weeks back, I spoke of a facilitated "visioning process" to assist in the refinement of Tom's vision.


Third, if we as "Future Creators" (and others?) are indeed to serve as some sort of core (pardon the pun) of the new Portal/Consultancy, A Future Worth Creating, I believe we should meet in person (or F2F as you say) and soon.

Tom needs to feel completely comfortable with us (moreso Dave and I since Critt has established credibility already), and know that we understand him and his vision well enough to accurately and appropriately represent him in any matters that arise. For Dave, this means in any business negiotiations ... for me, this means in any potential publicity or organizational connections (apt audiences for speaking engagements, presentations, etc.)


Dave, I may have pre-empted some of your thoughts, given what you say you will share with us sometime Monday and if so, I think it just shows how similarly we are all approaching things.

Please let me know what you all think.
Steff

Future Creators - Getting on the Same Page

I am inviting Tom , Critt and Steff to join me in this private blog devoted to exploring how we can work together as Tom's "groupies" to advance our collaborative process of co-creating and implemting a process that extends and leverages Tom's ability to design a "future worth creating"

I have named our team process "Future Creators"

You will all be invited to use the blog as "members" allowing your to post or comment on the blog as you wish. Although this is a private, non published blog using a free process provided by Google, we can further refine the process to be a private, password protected archive if we find this method of communicating beneficial and want to secure it from unauthorized access.

Benefits:

Reduce the flurry and lack of structure to our email exchanges, which by now are beginning to bug me.

provide an archive editable by any one of us to record our "progress"

give us a platform for converting or expanding this communication channel into something more structured and permanent as we learn what virtual communication method(s) suit us best.

If your need help in accessing or using this blog please email me and I believe I will be able to help you get started easily. Your comments and questioins are welcome

Lookng forward!!

Dave Davison

Suggestions for first time users of the Future Creators blog.

there are two ways for you to use the blog.
1) you can add comments to my postings which show up in the comments section ( not visible until you select "comments" at the bottom of my posts - if there are comments the number of them will show in the comments area - if not the number will be zero)

2) as a member you can also add your own posts - and this puts the latest post at the top of the stack chronologically and provides the ability to distinguish to post by adding a headline -- posts then can be commented upon The post will carry the name of the poster, data and any reference you may have.

To post your own messages ( not comments) scroll down to the bottom of the Future Creators webpage and click the "I Power Blogger" bug Blogger: Dashboard
. This will take you to a page called the "dashboard" which has a posting and "change settings" box. Please don't change the settings, but post all you want.

Because the blogger adds any postings messages to the top of the stack, anything you want to put in front of everything else should be posted rather than commented. Comments seem to be best when you are replying to my posts or vice versa.

this service is free from Google, and if we do not publish it to the web, can stay a private messaging medium for us to use as we see fit.

Regards


Dave