Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Why Learning is as Important as Teaching

In a recent TED Talk, Bill Gates shares this compelling statistic: “Until recently 98% of teachers got one word of feedback: satisfactory.” We all need feedback. With no feedback, says Gates, no coaching, there’s just no way to improve. Learning is as important as teaching, if not more. As he says in the talk, even great teachers can get better with smart feedback. Teaching doesn't happen only in the classroom Mentors, coaches, and peers who are willing to provide constructive feedback enrich our opportunities to learn more about what works. In the absence of deliberate feedback, I recommend signing up... Read more →

Switching Sides

This past Monday, author, consultant, and friend Peter Shankman, the man who found himself on the receiving end of Morton's Steakhouse greatest customer experience, invited me to the experience the 3D IMAX Theater premiere of Star Trek in New York City. That's for the man behind the connection. As for the man behind the reboot of the Star Trek franchise, J.J. Abrams, he succeeded in creating a compelling story. I'm not normally too much into 3D, and IMAX can make me dizzy. However, this movie was well done. It was like being part of the action. The best scenes are... Read more →

New, More Social Google Maps

Google is out on a changing spree. A new Google+ that looks a lot more like Facebook pages and Pinterest mashed together responsively (that was the commentary last night), and more dynamic and social data rich maps. In the last couple of weeks, the Interwebs were filled with news, commentary, and reviews of Google Glass. Although little was said at the Developer Conference#. Google Now app updates, too. How about those Google driverless cars#? All this on the heels of changes to Gmail UI, and the announcement that due to declining use it will be retiring GReader in July#. And... Read more →

How Leasing and Renting Led to Sharing

A primer to connect some recent thinking about sharing economy, digital products, and marketplaces. By far the most popular post I published recently was about calculating the lifetime value of the sharing economy. And with good reason. Following a small trend among mobile workers and their families which began to develop in the U.S. about ten years ago (and that has remained fairly consistent in Europe), the number of individuals who chose to rent and lease by choice has increased steadily. And by "mobile", I mean upward mobility, as well as the availability to commute long distances during weekends to... Read more →

34 Ways to Spread your Ideas with a Blog

When you think about it, social media is like sharecropping -- you help build a network with your content and it uses it however they see fit. What happens if they delete your account or the network changes its terms and conditions? It could be an unintentional glitch -- and now your data is gone. Both Flickr and Facebook have given us examples in the last couple of years. The effects of those actions have been devastating for the people who had put time and care into building a presence in social networks with their content. Which is why I... Read more →

Calculating Life Time Value in the Sharing Economy

Many new technologies have brought products and services to market ever since I published my thoughts on the semantic Web almost five years ago. Points 1-3 evolved quite a bit, yet we have not cracked the code (completely): Dealing with data Both at personal level with one sign-on/identify we can carry across the Web and at business level, although many have made strides with integrations of personalization engines with CRM systems. In addition to grappling with disparate legacy systems that do not speak to each other resulting in operational difficulties, we have quite a bit of core data disconnects --... Read more →

Building Resilience and Equity

New evidence, new capacities, new rules, and new stories are four catalysts with world game changing power. On April 3-5, IFTF and the Rockefeller Foundation invited people all over the world to join the Catalysts for Change Foresight Engine game and imagine thousands of paths our of poverty with the aim to create real and lasting change. More than 1,600 people from 79 countries responded, and after 48 hours they had imagined 18,160 ideas for ways to catalyze change in poor, vulnerable, or marginalized communities. You can find the game website by following this link, and the Catalyst for Change... Read more →

What Makes us Feel Good About our Work?

Dan Ariely's TED talk on what makes us feel good about work highlights several points that are often raised in conversation with other pros and practitioners, especially in the last couple of years. most of us thrive by making constant progress and feeling a sense of purpose when we put effort into something, we like to see it realized, or at a minimum share it with others ignoring people's performance is almost as bad as shredding their effort in front of their eyes Watch the video to learn which experiments Ariely used to answer: What motivates us to work? This... Read more →

Blogs as Tools for Listening and Signal

Before I started Conversation Agent in 2006, I was writing regularly on the community section of FastCompany.com and engaging in threads with global participants in a network (started in 1997) that at its peak reached 42,000 members (2000). Remember, this was pre-LinkedIn (2003), pre-Facebook (2004) and pre-Twitter (2006). We wrote posts to engage in discussions with other people on the network, and to connect on topics of interest. The online activities were extended offline through regional and local events -- in Philadelphia we reached about 500 members and organized around 100 (free) events. Many of the posts we made went... Read more →

How Environment Shapes Our Decisions

I came across this quote in a long-ish interview Robert Redford gave to Esquire magazine. It summed up nicely several conversations we've had at work recently on culture. Context, technology, and social networks are part of our vocabulary. We can discuss at length the merits of tweeting before breakfast, and yet often neglect to see how small changes in posture and environment have profound effects on the growth and development of the human taxonomy. Tim Kastelle reminds us how cooking lunch can be a business model innovation. Preparing a meal and eating together are two inherently social activities and I... Read more →