Update, a Unit and Coffee

The Imaginary Unit

Last year I gave a couple of tries at getting back into blogging, not super successful so far but I’m trying again, starting with another update.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am now going forward with a new service offering, which is slow going but I closed 2014 with a couple of good contracts and I’m having some interesting discussions about potential opportunities. It’s a new version of the site, which is more focused on technology and is a first step in giving a better idea of how such a service can help organizations. (Right this moment it’s only in English so I can iterate a couple more times, I’ll then put another up to date version in French, désolé.)

“I study and make sense of near-future emerging technologies and their impacts on society, culture and business” is the simplest oneliner and it mostly translates into;

  1. What I call “strategic support” which means helping with direction and strategy but from a knowledge and understanding angle. Strategy should “come from within” as my friend cfd puts it.
  2. Written briefings covering what business leaders should know about that “beat” in a given period, as well as research reports on a specific topic.

The Imaginary Unit

I mention it again because the copy is now clearer, as I said earlier, but also because I’ve joined up with my friends Alex Deschamps Sonsino and Peter Bihr and we are launching a new product (service?) called The Imaginary Unit. It’s a monthly paid for emerging tech[1] trends report. Look at our profiles on the site as well as both of their about pages, you’ll see we cover quite the breath of topics and interests and read / study an insane amount of things every month, we are distilling that into a monthly quick read. As Alex mentions; this should help some of those senior executives struggling to understand the internet of things.

If you’re wondering how my services and TIU fit together; the latter is specifically tech, short and the same report goes out to all subscribers. The former are customized and generally longer form, sometimes delivered as presentations.

Please share the info with your c-suite friends and ping me if you have questions.

 Coffee

While I’m writing, I might as well throw this out there too and make myself commit to it. Shamelessly copying Matt Webb’s Coffee Mornings (example) which he calls “Hardware-ish,” as well as Igor and Johanne’s fatnine coffee, I’ll be launching a “Sociotechnical-ish”[2] coffee meetup. The first one will likely be Friday the 27th of February. I’m considering Laïka (for space and old times sake) or perhaps Code Black across the street. Other ideas more than welcome. As Johannes says:

Anyone is welcome to come by and join the conversation. There won’t be any prepared talks, pitches, specific topics, hashtags or Facebook events. Just coffee/tea and conversations.

I’ll give final details early next week. See you there.

[1] Alex says IoT, I say emerging tech but with everything becoming connected, we’re both right. ;)
[2] By which I mean the intersection of society and tech, not the approach to complex organizational work design.