Kaiser Permanente - Thrive

Disclaimer: As a reminder, the postings on this site are my own and do not represent Kaiser Permanente positions, strategies, or opinions.

I am happy to announce that early this fall (September), I accepted a role to help support Kaiser Permanente’s technology investment strategy.   This support will come mainly in the form of business and technology planning process development (but I may also sneak-in some of my technology management philosophies when appropriate).

Joining the health care industry, in many ways, is a departure from my technology industry experience.  I anticipate there will be many cultural differences.   While I have worked at large companies before, my support network (with some folks in the know) cation me that there are likely many  business style and etiquette differences between working at Kaiser Permanente and other large high-tech organizations (Sun or Cisco).

At the values level however, I have a found some refreshing similarities:

1. An organization wide commitment to a common vision: Providing the best health care to members at the most affordable price.
2. A value to leverage technology as competitive differentiators: KP HealthConnect; KP.org; Tele-Health; etc.
   
3. A passion for data and fact based decision making.
4. An entrepreneur’s instinct to rewrite old rules, listen to customers, and improve: Kaiser’s integrated Health Care model.
   

The health care crisis in America is profound.   It will take collaboration from many communities to reorganize the industry to meet our shared challenges.   I believe Kaiser’s successes (and failures) in leveraging technology within care delivery, patient engagement, and knowledge organization contexts, will be invaluable contributions towards building a next generation health care system in America.   I look forward to contributing to Kaiser’s ability to thrive as an organization.

CrowdVine - Meet Smarter

Earlier this year, I accepted an advisory and research position with CrowdVine.  CrowdVine is in the “white label” social networking business.  The company helps people in groups, associations, and attending events to meet smarter through their software solutions and associated services.  You can learn more about the current product features here:  http://www.crowdvine.com/home/features

I can’t believe my good fortune! It is an honor to work with and learn from CrowdVine’s visionary product team and their dedicated customers.  The company is viable and boot strapped.   My role is to help the CrowdVine community “cross the chasm” in pursuit of a sustainable social networking platform.

My thoughts on social networking, product management and community management will likely be organized on CrowdVine’s blog in the future and cross referenced here when appropriate.

Welcome to your Network!

The last day of conference treated attendees to some really good KeyNote speakers.   Here are the big ideas I that made an impression on my notebook:

• Cool new concept:  “The Adopter Class”  These people live on the bleeding edge.  Pros:  They love the new and the next and will willingly sign up for any new web 2.0 service.   Cons:  They love the new and the next and will willingly sign up for any new web 2.0 service, but will be eternally disloyal!!!   “Tech Cool” changes faster than hem lines, but for these people, that okay, they weren’t actually relying on your service as a viable or valuable part of their lives (except to say they were on it before everyone else) in the first place.   New companies need to figure out ways to segregate this user base and deal with them for what they are.  You can’t plan a business around a user population that wasn’t intending to solve a technical problem, but rather takes joy in the “singing up” process itself!  

• The main highlight for me today was watching Marc Andresson speak.  Marc writes one of my favorite blogs and on this day shared many insights into the founding of Netscape and great prospective on the impending Web2.0  “nuclear winter”:  

1. When designing the original netscape communicator, the team is surprised at how many internet browsing “paradigms” have stuck and been adopted over 10 years later, including:  backward/forward buttons; Javascript; amongst other.
2. Convergence is a natural progression of the computing.  Its not a a conspiracy, but rather, meme competition.   Paradigms shift.  Ideas get present.  Something sticks and the industry moves on.
3. Marc had plenty of great things to say about Microsoft despite being baited to attach by the interviewer.  He challenged the interviewer and audience to Imagine what this world would be without the Bill Gates driven personal computing revolution?  He then answered by stating, “The industry was not going the direction it went after Bill got involved.  For better and for worse, Bill’s push toward standardization and uniformity in the PC space is what seeded the opportunity for a rich internet by delivering rich users. “

• I will not comment Jonathan Swartz’s speech but only to say that  its apparent that he needs to find his Ed Zander and find him fast, lest the sunset continue.  Sun should be doing better than continuing to be the punch-line dot in .bomb.  
• Data Portability continued to be a topic discussed frequently though out the keynotes.  It inspired the following question in my notebook:  What is the middle-ware of me?  I believe there will be a GRAND opportunity to invent in the “middleware of me” space.  A tool that organizes, combines, and re-articulates the many messages (data bits), mediums (contexts), and messengers (relationships)  I develop across social media platforms could be extremely valuable.  I am not talking about a simple life-stream aggregator, but application more rich than that.  Facebook is trying to do that, but that’s about as safe as having your entire computing experience be delivered by MIcrosoft.  I need a personal Brio or Microstrategy to combine and re-articulate my “social media” data.   Is it open social, android, or even Firefox itself?