Joshua-Michéle Ross

Josh has spent over 15 years consulting on digital business strategy and is currently Director of Digital Strategy, Europe with Fleishman Hillard, a global communications firm. His focus over the last 6 years has been on applying Web 2.0 principles to deliver competitive advantage (from new business model development to customer engagement and communication strategies). Mr. Ross has been a guest lecturer at Harvard University and has spoken at conferences related to technology and digital strategy around the world. Key clients include Philips, Nokia, Best Buy, Autodesk, and Polycom. Joshua holds a degree with honors in Chinese Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Stimuluswatch.org; The Falling Cost and Accelerated Speed of Group Action

Stimuluswatch.org is a great example of how easy it is today for people to, as Clay Shirky says, “organize without organizations.” Stimuluswatch.org began after Jerry Brito attended a mayor’s Conference and posted this request: "Let’s help President-Elect Obama do what he is promising. Let’s help him “prioritize” so the projects so that we “get the most bang for the…

Security and Data Risk in the Age of Social Networks

Over the past four years we have seen an explosion in the volume of personally identifiable information (PII) online as social software and user generated content have allowed millions of people to create, manage and share their data in the cloud. While the rewards have been pretty clear (lower barriers to participation and collaboration) the risks have not been understood…

What Does It Mean To Be An Internet President?

FDR was our radio president, JFK was our television president and Barack Obama will be our Internet President. Quietly at noon yesterday, as the world was fixated on the televised inauguration of Barack Obama, some obscure IT managers flipped a switch (metaphorically) and transferred Change.gov to Whitehouse.gov… While the inauguration spectacle was inspiring and the speech lived up to its…

Work On Stuff That Matters: Video Interview with Tim O'Reilly

Over the past few months I have been interviewing various people that are "on our Radar" so to speak. It recently occurred to me that we had never done a video with Tim. So last week Kirk Walter (bless him!) grabbed his camera and Tim and I took a walk behind the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol. We had a wide-ranging…

Seeing New Possibilities in Existing Technologies: An Interview with April Allderdice of MicroEnergy Credits

This interview is with April Allderdice, CEO and cofounder of MicroEnergy Credits. MicroEnergy Credits has developed a mechanism using microfinance institutions and GPS cell phones to allow carbon credits to reach small households in the developing world. Until now the relatively high transaction costs involved in set up and verification of a carbon trade has made the market available…

Software for Civic Life: An Interview with Mike Mathieu of Frontseat.org

In this interview Mike Mathieu, founder of Frontseat.org, discusses how he is helping to build “software for civic life”. Using publicly available data and web services (many of their applications use S3 and EC2) Frontseat creates simple, highly functional tools like Walkscore (rating neighborhood walkability) and Countmore (helping students in the recent elections decide which state to cast their…

Zappos: If You Are Great at Something – Let It Go… (Or Resell It)

I am fascinated by what I see as Zappos' ongoing evolution from a simple, online retailer to a leading online innovator. A few months back I wrote about Zappos pioneering what I called “Experience Syndication" with their Powered by Zappos (PBZ) service. In brief, PBZ syndicates the end-to-end value of shopping with Zappos – from the online store experience…

Catch 22: Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Succeed

Hat in hand the U.S. Auto Industry lined up for their slice of government aid and it appears as of this posting that they will get the money they are asking for. These titans spent years hiding behind the “free market” shibboleth when convenient (the market wants gas guzzling SUV’s) and when punished by that same market we hear that…

“Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life” – A conversation with Kevin Kelly

Kevin Kelly doesn’t need much in the way of introduction to Radar readers. He is a big thinker looking at the intersection of biology, technology and culture. Kevin gave a great High Order Bit at the Web 2.0 Summit and I caught up with him afterward. This interview covers: The impact of the web on our recent elections The rich…

Online Communities: The Tribalization of Business

Recently I spoke with Francois Gossieaux of Beeline Labs about the role of online communities in the enterprise. Francois has been evangelizing the learning gained from his recent study “The Tribalization of Business” (see here for the Slideshare presentation). The interview is broken into three parts. Francois is a great storyteller, bringing case studies in to support nearly every point….