Aide-Memoire

It is fascinating to note on this International Women’s Day that one of our major newspapers has an article titled “Gender pay gap shows no sign of abating”

The gender pay gap can cost women up to $1 million over a lifetime

* Women earn 17pc less than men
* Pay inequality worth $1m over lifetime
* Women have more self-managed super

WORKING mothers and daughters can expect to be $1 million worse off during their lifetime, compared with fathers, as pay inequality and financial bias keep their incomes and assets low.

By Karina Barrymore
March 08, 2010 6:34AM

What does this tell us?

It tells us that even on International Women’s Day and even in Australia, the right of women to a fair go and equal treatment still has a long way to go.

It tells us that women’s higher participation in education still does to not pay off equally with men’s participation in education.

It tells us that women still need to strive together to achieve parity with men in many areas of life.

The recent Febusave campaign by ANZ also highlighted the need for women to take control of their financial destiny. Better finances are an important component of choice and freedom for women.

But these are all first world problems.

There are terrible and sad situations with women in many developing parts of the world. In those places women suffer physically and mentally due to oppression, violence and war.

On this IWD think about how we might help those women too. There’s microfinance ideas like Kiva or Unifem.

Why not reach and help a woman in developing world this IWD?

Spoke during the last session of the day at Media 140 Perth about realtime web and how it might evolve into an internet of connected people and things. Our evolution towards a networked and hyperconnected society is under way.

The slides might be somewhat opaque without the commentary but please feel free to ping me with any questions.

Nearly 9,000 women signed up for the Febusave 2010 campaign, for example:

• 2,307 pledged to give up buying lunch
• 1,118 pledged to give up treats
• 162 pledged to give up taxis

These might not seem like much; but little changes like this can make a real difference to your finances.

My pledge was to stop using the car to drive to work every day. The savings from that are now going into paying my mortgage. This means that it will be paid off several years earlier and save us thousands of dollars in interest payments.  I’m going to keep up this new habit of savings going even after Febusave is over.  It’s been a really good learning experience.

Some other great bloggers who have been sharing their journey All For Women, Inside Cuisine, Strawberry Communications,  Rainbowtatt, Liz and Jarrod, Little Lioness and Beautiful you by Julie

You can see what some of the other bloggers have shared via the #febusave hash tag on twitter.

Don’t forget! If you have registered for Febusave,  at the end of February simply complete the online entry form at the Febusave site and answer “what was your secret to achieving your FebuSave goal?” in 50 words or less and you could win $5000!

These questions apply for all kinds of technology decisions including hardware, software, or even social media and social networking technologies.

Business people do not want to spend money on unnecessary or unhelpful technology, yet are often ill advised when they make technology acquisitions or expenditure.

I often see businesses, both large and small, acquire unnecessary or inappropriate technology for which they will never achieve the projected return on investment. Or, even worse, the ROI is based on the capital costs alone without factoring in other costs such as staff time.

New technology is often proposed by someone you know – a friend or family member, or a business acquaintance or sales person.

Here are a few questions I always ask about new technology before acting:

1) What is it and what does it do?
With this question you can find out how much the person recommending it actually understands.  If someone can’t explain what the proposed technology is and what it does in plain English be very suspicious.  Seek alternative perspectives if they are unable to answer this question in a way that makes sense. I always say – “if you can’t explain it to someone’s grandmother so she can understand what it is and does then you don’t understand it properly yourself”.

2) How does it work?
Don’t be afraid to openly ask “Can you explain to me how it works?” It is similar to the previous question but digs in more on the functions that it can perform and how it does so. Uncovering assumptions – such as that the proposed technology assumes access to high speed broadband – is critical.  These assumptions generally add unanticipated cost to implementation of the solution.

This question also uncovers information about potential extra costs. For instance, if an application is hosted in the cloud (a.k.a. software-as-a-service or SaaS) then you will need likely need an extremely reliable and robust internet connection.

3) How does it make or save money for me?
This is an important question. Often the person suggesting technology for your business does not correctly understand its profit model.  The revenue model for your business in relation to the new technology needs to be clear, otherwise calculating the payback period is impossible.

4) How long is that payback period?
Strong and confident off-the-cuff answers to this question are invariably wrong. A sensible answer to this question will depend upon a number of variables, some of which are particular to your business, time and place.  I have seen more dodgy payback assertions than I’ve had baked dinners.  It’s worth digging into this question and doing a proper ROI analysis.

5) What are the indirect costs of this technology?
Often the focus is on the capital cost of the technology and little consideration is given to the total cost of ownership during the life of the asset.  Indirect costs include:

External costs: hardware and software maintenance (a good rule of thumb is 20% of original capital cost annually adjusted for CPI), additional support, ongoing minor enhancement requirements

Internal costs: this is usually the cost of time for staff to look after or use the technology; sometimes the technology adds new tasks that must be considered & often these tasks require some level of technical skill; also often overlooked is the possibility that you will need to take on new staff to run the technology

6) How updateable is this technology?
This is a big question. If there are improvements in the technology will you have to buy a new model or can the existing model be upgraded?  Given how fast technology innovation cycles move these days, being able to upgrade or expand the technology is key to having a decent useful life for the asset.

7) Who else uses it & how do they use it?
If nobody else is using the technology yet then there needs to be compelling answers to all of the other questions. Further, if there are no other local users (i.e. in your country) then the support infrastructure might not be there ready to offer effective support. There is nothing worse than the support help phone line being in a timezone that is opposite to your own.

The few times that I have implemented either a beta version or version 1 of a technology in business there was a bad outcome due a variety of problems. Usually this manifested itself in the form of cost and time overruns on the project. Consequently, unless there is an extremely compelling business driver, I tend to avoid betas or version 1 of anything.

I’m speaking at the National Growth Summit 2010 in Sydney this week about engagement marketing and running a workshop on Technology to drive Growth.

The line-up includes a number of international luminaries along with local experts, gurus and knowledgeable people such as: Mick Liubinskas, Stephen Collins, Mike Walsh & Stephen Belfer.

There’s also workshops available on day 2 of the conference – for a special discount on the Technology to Drive Growth workshop use this registration form (opens pdf)

I’ve been thinking about having an overarching theme for my blog this year and have finally decided on women in …

that is women who are doing interesting things like

• finance
• technology
• science
• engineering
• management
• innovation
• start-ups
• marketing
• media
• and whatever other interesting careers pop up

Women have come such a long way in a relatively short time regarding careers and choices. It’s worth sharing stories of successful women and finding out some of their secrets.

First post on this will a profile of a fascinating woman in finance.

If you think that there is an interesting woman others should know about please let me know.

Sound finances give women true freedom of choice, it is the key to giving women options in life.

When @fibendall approached me about supporting the ANZ Bank’s Febusave campaign I was interested because I have first hand experience of the challenges raised by poor money management skills.

I met with the ANZ people and asked why they wanted to run this campaign.  Our conversations revealed how secret and underground women’s financial lives remain. We share openly about relationships and other personal stuff but finances remain a taboo subject. I saw that there was a genuine desire to raise awareness about these issues and to use social channels to reach women. It was clear that if ANZ gets more women customers that is a good byproduct of the campaign. But it was also clear that this was not a direct aim of the campaign. And it was on that basis that I agreed to support it.

I met with Fi & the ANZ team and we talked about the kind of issues I would like to write about.  My focus is on sharing some financial lessons learned over the years. Some of the other bloggers were interested in focusing on different aspects of women and money.  It’s been really helpful to talk with the amazing group of women who are also supporting this campaign. The open sharing of real life experiences by these women is resonating with many people.

This campaign interested me because, while ANZ has clearly identified women as a target customer segment and they have a commercial interest in more women becoming customers, they have also been running their Be Money Confident site for several years. The Febusave campaign combines the social good of breaking a taboo about women talking about and taking action on their finances with the Bank’s goal of raising awareness in a key customer segment.

Febusave is a tool in raising awareness of the importance of good financial health for women. One of the reasons I support this initiative is that it sits under the be money confident banner.

Women face different financial issues to men.  Men are already well served by financial information and spaces to share information. Some key facts about women’s ability to store up financial resources remain:

• Women have not yet achieved pay equity with men & thus their baseline earning rate is lower over the course of their working lives.
• Women often have gaps in their key earning years due to time out for childcare, either not working or working part-time, and thus they do not amass sufficient superannuation for old age.
• Women often undertake elder care responsibilities in their later career, again impacting on full-time workloads and ability to add to their superannuation stores.
• Almost 50% of marriages fail and in 2006 87% of single parent families are headed  women & the ability of these women to participate in full time work is limited.

My pledge for Febusave is to catch public transport & save the money from not using my car. What are you going to do? Why not go sign up now?

Getting women to think about their finances, to plan and save more is important. The better control we have over our finances the more choices we have in life.

Why not click the badge below and join us for Febusave?

Each year, instead of making new year resolutions, I pick a theme for the year. That way when I get sidetracked (as often happens) I can simply return to the theme. Also with a theme there are often many different things I can do to support it.

For 2009 my theme was simplicity and frugal living. The results here were pretty good on the whole. A big reduction in my carbon footprint; using public transport wherever possible; and living local as much as possible.

The idea for my 2010 theme came to me while traveling home via train from a lovely dinner with @mpesce – the words reinvention and reinvigoration popped into my head.

It seems to me that this is something that needs to happen on both a personal and societal level. We need to re-imagine the way we work, we need to reclaim healthful approaches to living, we need to find sustainable ways to exist.

The next step is to consider which areas of my life will be the starting point for reinvention and reinvigoration.

Recently I had the honour of joining Mark Pesce & Ross Dawson on Mark Jones’ podcast The Scoop where we discussed the The future of the Web.

It was a fascinating discussion – so many interesting ideas to consider:

What happens when our real and virtual worlds collide? And how will we live in this hyper-connected world? In part three of our “Future of” series, The Scoop is joined by Mark Pesce, futurist and ABC New Inventors judge; Kate Carruthers, a business and technology strategist; and Ross Dawson, futurist, author, speaker and chairman of Advanced Human Technologies.

You can check out the podcast here

The very smart Vint Cerf sharing some of the things he’d change about the internet (via Fora.tv). Fascinating stuff.

I had the pleasure of running into Jim Shomos the other night & he was telling me about his latest project – Mordy Koots.

This project is amazing in the way that it brings together so many of the threads of film, gaming, web and social computing. Lots of the ideas that people have discussed, such as the shifting consumption patterns for new media, are realised in this project.

Mordy Koots uses a different approach to telling a story. There are 10 x 3 minute action packed episodes delivered via web and mobile in partnership with NineMSN. It stars the very funny & endearing Shane Jacobsen (of Kenny fame) and is directed by Clayton Jacobsen.

This has not been launched yet, but Jim kindly gave me permission to use the clip. Check it out.

I suspect that this is a glimpse into the future of entertainment led by some Aussie ingenuity and the constraints of making feature films in smaller markets.

Today is Blog Action Day 2009 & the topic is climate change.

“Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees.

Given the urgency of the issue of climate change and the upcoming international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December, we think the blogosphere has the unique opportunity to mobilize millions of people around expressing support for finding a sustainable solution to the climate crisis.”

http://www.blogactionday.org/

As a somewhat sceptical individual I’m not bought into the idea of global warming nor of a coming ice age.  But as a rational thinker it seems prudent to be a good steward of the place where we live & which sustains us.

While I do not want us all to return to hunter-gatherer times and eschew modern conveniences, it does seem like a good time to direct our substantial collective intelligence towards find better ways of doing things.

In Australia we are already seeing the effects of climate change.  The recent devastating bushfires in Victoria appear to be a mere harbinger of what is to come.  We can expect to inhabit a much dryer and more fire-prone environment in some parts of the country.  While in other parts of the country we are seeing increasingly bad storms and cyclones.

To me this seems like a very big problem.  But all very big problems seem daunting unless they are chunked up.  This is a great case to apply the old maxim

Think global! Act local!

Here are some simple things some friends & I have done:

• tweet about Blog Action Day 2009 on Twitter – use the hashtag #BAD09
• leave the car at home whenever public transport is viable
• carpool with friends when going out
• plant a vegetable garden
• try to eat locally produced food & support initiatives like Live Local #livelocal
• lobby my local member of parliament to support action on climate change
• write a blog post about Blog Action Day 2009
• talk to people about Blog Action Day 2009
• start debates with the people at work about climate change
• start a neighbourhood project & blog about sustainable living like my friend Inderjeet & his Healthier Neighbourhoods – A Community Project to Reduce Carbon Footprint
• sign the petition asking President Obama to act on climate change

Social Networking – Past & future

Looking back to 2007 – and it seems so long ago now – social networking was just starting to get a bit of buzz happening.

Some of the social networks that we were talking about in 2007 included Bebo, MySpace, Second Life, and YouTube. Back in those days we were all talking about Second Life, and pondering how it might revolutionise business. Ross Dawson’s Impressions of Ad:tech Sydney 2007 gives a good flavour of some of the buzz at the time.

It is also of interest to note that some of the questions raised back in 2007 included: identity protection, growth of personal branding, how to do SEO & online marketing, how to incorporate social media into marketing plans. Funnily enough we are still searching for definitive answers to most of these even today.

Darren Rowse (aka ProBlogger) has a good summary of some his thoughts and concerns back in 2007 in his archives.

For me 2008 was the year of microblogging with a bunch of new betas, e.g. Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce. By mid-2009 the clear winner in microblogging so far is Twitter, but it has also been interesting to watch the evolution of Friend Feed.

Again, this marked a shift in the way people were using the internet. There was a move away from static web 1.0 mindsets, where the chief consumption mode was passive consumption, into a more active and collaborative co-option of technology to each user’s own purposes.

This was a seismic shift in how ordinary people used the internet and applications. For me this is borne out by the Hitwise UK email v. social traffic statistics that showed social network traffic surpassing web email for the first time at the end of 2007.

[Source: Hitwise]

This trend arises, not because people suddenly stopped emailing each other in 2008, rather it is simply easier to send messages from within Facebook (or whatever social network they were using) than to open up an email program to send a message.

In any case, this phenomenon signifies a shift from the old utilitarian world of email to that of the integrated social network.  Where the integrated messaging and online presence was enabled without the need for users to purchase expensive unified communications platforms.

Looking forward

It is hard to predict the next big thing in particular (who could have predicted Facebook or Twitter in particular).  Rather it is probably safer to identify some trends that are driving technology innovation.

We are at a stage in the evolution of devices and bandwidth that will enable location based services to come into their own.  Their rise has been predicted many times but never at a time when the iPhone and its various competitors is a commodity product.  With the game changer of the mobile computing device (a.k.a. mobile phone) location based services are finally viable.  I suspect that we are going to see many contenders and it will be hard to guess which ones will win.  New products like FourSquare , Google Latitude are considered contenders in this space.  This trend especially taps into how teenagers use technology to stay in touch and find out where their friends are right now.

The other trend that is accelerating is video on demand.  This is another area that will continue to grow.  Where all the growth in the past few years has been in text based social computing I think we are about to see video based social computing and communication take off.  Again, this has been predicted before but the bandwidth and hardware were insufficient to support it.  Now though we have many devices that are ready to support high definition video over high bandwidth connections in the hands of ordinary people.  The usage trends show how significant this trend is– for example the growth of Hulu and the continued strength of YouTube.  Also international news services like the BBC and Australian Broadcasting service are seeing publication of video content as a public service with their iPlayer and iView services respectively.  Already this trend is impacting on television viewing figures and we can expect that to continue.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”.
Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

It is easy to look at a statement like this and poke fun. Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

But as I have said on many occasions – innovation always comes unexpectedly & from the periphery. Very often the innovation is not a completely new technology, rather it is a new way of using or applying existing technology. The iPhone is a good example of this phenomenon – it is still a mobile phone, yet it changes the very playing field for mobile phones & computers in important ways.

But Watson’s quote shares a common feature with many technology predictions. Based upon then current knowledge of existing business models, technology and applications those predictions are often right at the point in time they are made.

For example, how many people in the world really needed a computer at home that looked like this one?

When Thomas Watson made his comment regarding the number of computers in the world, he had no mental map of a world where a computer could fit into your pocket or be used on your lap while watching television.

For Watson the computer he referred to was something like the British Colossus computer or the American Harvard Mark 1 – these were physically huge machines that were designed to assist with decryption of coded messages during World War II. Machines of this kind were not needed in large numbers across the world, and their cost to build, use and maintain was very high. Thus Watson’s statement from1943 was apt for its time. And he was unable to imagine some of the future improvements in technology, like transistors, that enable us to have computers in every home (and soon in every pocket or handbag).

Predicting technology futures is a funny old thing to do. When an innovation is revealed it often seems obvious, except that it was not obvious until you saw it.

The other challenge with predicting technology futures is that people change in their expectations of what is helpful or desirable. If we had explained Facebook or Twitter to an ordinary person back 1997 they would probably have thought it a completely mad idea. And, with the technology available to us in 1997, it would likely have been a bad user experience too.

But in 2009 Facebook seems like a completely reasonable thing for many ordinary people to use on a regular basis.  I keep wondering what the next big thing will be – I’ve got some ideas.  But my suspicion remains, that like Twitter, when I hear of it first it will seem either stupid or irrelevant.  Then, only gradually will it dawn that this new technology is changing the way we think and behave, or that it is shifting our expectations of technology and people in everyday life.

It is very easy for young, well-educated urban women in Australia to think that we have achieved equal rights both here and overseas.  Consequently one often hears comments like ‘I am not a feminist, but of course I believe in equality’ – and the speaker often genuinely  believes women are equal.

But it is within living memory in Australia that women were forced to leave their jobs immediately upon marriage.  It is also within living memory that women were paid substantially less than men for equivalent work.  And, even today, women in Australia have not achieved wage equity.

Women’s childcare responsibilities also create inequities in ability to generate income and superannuation; while divorce and family breakups damage women’s prosperity more significantly than that of men.

At least, for the most part, Australian women live in comfort and something close to equality.

Australian women have many choices, mostly based on our access to education and work.

But equality for women in large parts of the world remains a distant dream – some examples include:

• Progress
• Lack of Progress
• Women Work More Than Men But Are Paid Less
• Gender discrimination throughout a lifetime
• Feminization of Poverty
• Women, Reproductive Rights and Population Issues
• Women and children: the double dividend of gender equality
• Women and the Media
• Women, Militarism and Violence

[Source: Global Issues]

There is still much work to be done that builds on the foundations laid by the feminists & suffragettes who fought for – and won – the rights and liberties we enjoy here today. Women should still be proud to be called feminists. It is an honourable label and one that I’m proud to wear.

Some will argue that this is all just about human rights.  But the fact remains that women have less access to basic human rights than men.

The informal slogan of the Decade of Women became “Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, receive 10 percent of the world’s income and own 1 percent of the means of production.”

— Richard H. Robbins, Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism, (Allyn and Bacon, 1999), p. 354

 I remember that two years ago the we were all fussing about MySpace. Then last year we were all abuzz about Facebook.  And this year the big thing is Twitter.

What this means for most of us is that we ought not fall in love with a particular social networking platform.

I don’t know what we’ll all be talking about next year yet.  But I do know that it will be something new.

At this stage I have a glimmer that Google Wave might be part of the next big thing (Chris Penn’s got some interesting thoughts on that). But I’m still waiting for my Wave beta invite so not sure on that personally.

One thing is certain, those who cling to brands & platforms in this space rather than focusing on good enough functionality, community, and just enough utility will be disappointed. Sometimes the product that captures the zeitgeist is not the best product (remember VHS versus Beta?).

An interesting lesson from Twitter is that not the best platform won. There were several similar competitors (e.g. Pownce or Jaiku) that had arguably better functionality. But they have fallen by the wayside.

What is important for businesses & individuals is how we can ensure that moving our data – relationships, contacts, information and messages – to the next big thing is not only possible, but relatively easy. Perhaps it’s time to think about that?

Since the early days of the internet revolution and web 2.0 I’ve been watching & participating in various ways.

And over the past few years I’ve seen its powerful properties of network amplification working in practice. My friend and colleague Mark Pesce has recently discussed these properties in his Big Ideas talk.

But with all of this I’ve also observed how the internet has amplified our anxiety as well as amplifying goodness.

For example, on Twitter over the past 12 months, it has morphed from a casual communication and community platform into a sales and spruiking platform, with increasingly desperate multi level marketing or affiliate schemes.

It seems to me that much of what we do as humans merely seeks to assuage anxiety, and the internet is the latest place to manifest that anxiety.

So much of the activity that I see online now reeks of desperation and striving to sell, be successful and rich. But it seems that we have the opportunity to create a different kind of world with this technology and its ability to connect people beyond borders and barriers.

Never before have we had technology that supports openness, collaboration and sharing on such a broad scale.  We have the opportunity to use this technology to do good & creative things – like Action Aid’s Project TOTO that I’ve mentioned before, or the recent Live Local Challenge.

Perhaps one way to assuage this anxiety is to use up our personal energy (and use the technology) to change the world for the better in little, local ways every day?  We could choose openness over constriction, expansiveness over constraint, collaboration over competition, sustainability over wanton waste.

Here’s Dr Timothy Sharp – who’s also known as Dr Happy – from the Happiness Institute talking about the Future Summit and why he took time out to attend.

Here’s Daniel Almagor from Engineers without Borders talking about why he thinks the Future Summit is important to help us “engineer a better world”: