Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

2014 Year in Review

A few days ago I shared my compilation of posts from Conversation Agent on Google+ with the following line: Admittedly, my preference is for looking forward - also why I tend to spend little time resting on my laurels. Someone asked what laurels are. Figures of speech are one of the ways you can tell whether you mastered a new language - do you get the nuances within it? My doctoral thesis consisted of a translation of short stories by Richard Brautigan called The Revenge of the Lawn. Short stories leave little space for guessing from context, I learned. Especially... Read more →

Best of Conversation Agent for 2014

A few themes emerged at Conversation Agent this year. This year we explored how to organize online experiences to experiment, learn, adapt, and evolve brand stories through interactions with audiences. The point of any experience whether in real life or digital proxies, including social networks, is to learn and pay off the need and desire to connect with others. We are inhrently social creatures and will invest our time (or spend it, depending on how you look at it) doing things that give us something in return. Articles that resonated most this year Content is now an end in itself,... Read more →

When Tech Fades into the Background: Strategic Business Moves

Making Sense: Gaining a better understanding of tghe mechanisms at work online will help us develop better experiences and create stronger security. Two eras of the internet: pull and push. Chris Dixon: We are currently experiencing a positive feedback loop between social networks and media publishers, analogous to last decade’s search + information feedback loop. Lessons from the Sony Hack. Schneier on Security: For those worried that what happened to Sony could happen to you, I have two pieces of advice. The first is for organizations: take this stuff seriously. Security is a combination of protection, detection and response. You... Read more →

Merry Christmas

[One of the wonderful creations by local pastry chefs, Modena, Italy.] +++ Valeria is an experienced listener. She designs service and product experiences to help businesses rediscover the value of promises and its effect on relationships and culture. She is also frequent speaker at conferences and companies on a variety of topics. Book her to speak here. Read more →

Taking Days ON

We are fast approaching the end of the year and the Christmas holidays. Many are already on vacation or planning to take days off. I'll be traveling to Europe, where I will see many places I call home and reconnect with family and friends. Despite the long absence from everyday life, my friends are more numerous on that side of the pond, where dealings are less transactional and more personal. Partly due to worldviews -- I have often said with people like us, relationships are forever, and yes, that may also mean we do not forget slights easily. Partly due... Read more →

What is Creativity?

Creativity has been one of the core themes in my work past, present, and future. I could not imagine a more valuable lens through which to bring ideas to life and build on them than the creative process and its expression. From writing to prototyping, research and analysis to service design, creativity helps widen options and play with ideas to drive better decision making. I consider it an essential ally and a subject of intense fascination. Some posts I wrote this year you might find useful. 1. Creativity is a Learned Process [The post also contains the transcipt with the... Read more →

Business at Web Speed, Stopwatches, and Top Guns

Making Sense: When we change the way we look at things, what we look at does change. This has implications both for us as individuals and as organizations. Why You're Wrong about TOP GUN - Maverick Was a Phony. Geek Tyrant: Maverick wasn’t actually a tough guy in the the story, he was just a scared kid who was trying to be a tough guy. Designing Change. Esko Kilpi: Change starts often with recognition between new people with different views and different approaches, evolving into a creative, complementary sense of consciousness. Designing change is sometimes about new connections, new people... Read more →

Making Connections Visible

In the early days of blogging we used to link a lot to each other. Individuals welcomed different points of view, voice, and style, and peer bloggers. Memes were fun ways of revealing yourself to others. This is not just just some nostalgic thought about how we were, it is a data point in the conversation about how connections stimulate creativity and expand our thinking. Which in turn shows up in the quality and variety of the work we do. Is it possible to each contributing three slides to a deck and call that collaboration? When often one team has... Read more →

An Outside In View of Complexity

Tackling a topic like complex systems in simple terms is a worthy challenge. Because the reward is understanding. When we understand an issue and are able to break it down into its components we can begin to tackle it productively. Bud Caddell uses a thought experiment to explain what complexity is, why it is important to meet it with rigor, and how to analyze it to do interesting things like predicting the future and adapting. What are complex systems? Complex systems are a network of things that are connected... that get to do really interesting things like anticipate the future... Read more →

The Inside Out Power of Storytelling

Good storytelling is a multi-sensory experience because it engages your imagination, gets and keeps you your attention with emotion, while it follows narrative conventions, even when it breaks them. Pixar excels at the craft, and this time it looks like they have outdone themselves by bringing together the character-istics introduced in countless stories to create a new adventure from the point of view of some of the emotions themselves: joy - she's glowing, isn't she? fear - a slim version of a fuller form anger - all action disgust - defiance personified sadness - true blue I watched the trailer... Read more →