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.
Technology, Politics and Democracy
Recently I spoke with Jascha Franklin-Hodge, CTO and co-founder of Blue State Digital about how technology is affecting politics and democracy in the U.S. Blue State Digital was born out of Jascha's experience helping Howard Dean’s seminal run for the White House in ’04. and is the technology and strategic services company powering Barack Obama (and many other Democratic leaders…
Wikitecture - Radical Collaboration in Architecture
Many of the precepts that began with Open Source (collaboration, shared IP, crowdsourcing etc.) are migrating from software development into a series of ever more surprising disciplines. Today old-school institutions like Proctor and Gamble go outside of their own R&D teams to innovate new products while Best Buy opens APIs to allow outside developers to build on their catalog…
A Star is Born? NY Times syndicates outside blogs but that's not enough
Recently the New York Times announced that it will be syndicating content from three well-known blogs, Read/Write Web, Giga Om and Venture Beat. The New York Times is using these blogs as an extra-sensory organ; they can dial into what is happening in the tech sector (and particularly the West Coast with this trio) without allocating a lot of internal…
Customer Service is the New Marketing: Interview with Lane Becker
The Internet changes the power relations between companies and customers. Social technologies like blogs, social networks, ratings and reviews etc. allow customers to share experiences; good and bad to the 1.4 billion people on the Internet. Zappos exemplifies the positive benefits of extraordinary customer service while Comcast shines a light on the perils of getting it wrong. Lane (co-founder of…
Getting Web 2.0 right: The hard stuff vs. the harder stuff…
I had a powerful conversation recently in Europe with one of the top executives of a major industrial company. They have 100K+ employees in over 50 countries. When he joined five years ago their business was struggling and in need of major transformation; their stock was at two dollars a share, they had ethics issues and product quality problems -…
Open beats Closed: Best Buy’s new APIs
Best Buy is a pioneer when it comes to unleashing the talent of their own staff; from the Loop Marketplace that allows employees to submit ideas for Digg-style ranking AND funding across divisions (for example an HR manager can fund an idea from a customer service employee) to their use of prediction markets and their support of the employee-driven social network, Blue Shirt Nation.
Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle discuss the upcoming Web 2.0 Summit
Beginning on November 5th, 2008 a wide array of thought leaders and practitioners of Web 2.0 are converging on San Francisco to attend the 5th annual Web 2.0 Summit. This year’s theme, “Web Meets World” reflects how much Web 2.0 has evolved over the past five years. I recorded an informal conversation with co-chairs Tim O’Reilly and John Battelle to discuss that theme, highlighted speakers and how to get invited to the Summit. Whether you plan on attending or not, the discussion provides insight into the state of Web 2.0 today.
Experience Syndication: Powered by Zappos
I have been thinking a lot about the new Powered by Zappos service. According to Zappos: Powered by Zappos (PBZ) is a feature Zappos.com offers to its partners where we design, host, fulfill and own a partners web site. Our goal is to provide Zappos customers as well as our partner's customers with the best possible service experience. By building…