The Slow Hunch

One of my favorite ideas from the last 10 years is "The Slow Hunch" which my friend Steven Johnson popularized in his book Where Good Ideas Come From. Here is a good summary of the book, and the idea of The Slow Hunch is this:

"World-changing ideas generally evolve over time as slow hunches rather than sudden breakthroughs"

Great thinkers and inventors such as Darwin and Tim Berners-Lee used The Slow Hunch to process big ideas over long periods of time. A kernel of an idea takes root, but doesn't mature right away -- but rather, needs to bump around with other ideas and experiences over time until something profound clicks. In some ways, USV is like an ongoing Slow Hunch -- Andy likes to describe USV as "a conversation that's been going on for 15 years".

Back when I first read Where Good Ideas Come From, this idea of The Slow Hunch really stuck with me. It's been there with me for nearly 10 years and I keep coming back to it.

Today, I'm officially renaming this blog The Slow Hunch (www.theslowhunch.net). I've had these domains (and @theslowhunch) for some time, and have flirted with using them, but have never actually done it -- but today I'm flipping the switch.

This blog renaming coincides with a bunch of work we've been doing at USV on this general topic. Albert wrote the potential for and importance of tools for networked knowledge here. And "Access to Knowledge" is a pillar of our Thesis 3.0.

For The Slow Hunch to work, information not only needs to be captured, but also revisited and reprocessed over time. In WGICF, Steven talks about the Commonplace Book as a tool used by Darwin and others for this purpose. Like a notebook and scrapbook kept over time, but with the key feature being re-reading as standard practice to help connect ideas over time.

For the most recent USV book club, we read Steven's newest book, Enemy of All Mankind, and Steven joined us for our group discussion. During that conversation, we revisited the idea of the Slow Hunch, and in particular, how he thinks about the process of building ideas over time. He describes it in terms of turning ideas into "magnets" that can live for a long time, and "catch" other ideas, building up into snowballs over time.

For all the information we consume and produce on a daily basis, we are still lacking simple tools to assemble and package it in ways that produce real knowledge. To give idea fragments the potential to become slow hunches. It's a huge need and also a huge opportunity.

I first wrote about the need for this kind of thing back in 2010 (Wanted: An Open Commonplace Book). What I pointed out then, and what is still true now, is that our current information universe is fragmented (google docs, email, notion, evernote, browsing history, social media, etc), and what's really needed is a tool that can help package this all up in a way that's useful.

Today, tools like RoamResearch and Walling are pioneering connecting old information with new information (a network "graph"). And tools like Memex are indexing your browsing history. (as an aside: all of these require an enormous amount of trust, as networked personal knowledge is both valuable and dangerous)

To me the most promising idea here is user experience and user interface innovations that make it easy, intuitive and fun to link old information to new information, and to revisit it over time in a way that makes sense. Unlocking this at scale will have massive implications not only for personal productivity (and happiness), but for networked knowledge much more broadly (research, news, corporate innovation).

With that, hitting publish on the next chapter of The Slow Hunch here on this blog.

#knowledge#meta

Saying Sorry

As I turned to write this, I was in the middle of reviewing a document a friend had asked me to look at a little while ago. In somewhat typical fashion, I had not done it right away, and had basically forgotten about it until he pinged me again, and even then I didn't get to it right away.  

I feel terrible about that, and as I reflect on things as part of Yom Kippur today, I realize that one of the things I feel the worst about over the past year is being a bad communicator. I have let things drop and haven't been responsive.  At the end of the day, it's a matter of respect and I have not done a good enough job.

So for the many of you out there (including readers of this blog -- notice no new posts for about 5 months...) who I've done this to, I am sorry. I will do better.

#meta#personal

Internet meets world: rules go boom

Since 2006, I've been writing here about cities, the internet, and the ongoing collision between the two. Along the way, I've also loved using Tumblr to clip quotes off the web, building on the idea of "the slow hunch" (the title of this blog) and the "open commonplace book" as a tool for tracking the slow hunch over time. Today, I'm launching the next iteration of both: Internet Meets World. On IMW, I'll be tracking the big questions, like:

I'll still continue to blog here, but will syndicate certain posts -- those specifically digging into the macro / legal / policy / societal issues created by the collision of the internet and the world, on IMW.   In addition to collecting my own posts, I'll also be collecting other articles from across the web, and will move my quote clipping from tumblr into Medium. I'm also looking for one or more co-editors for IMW.  If you're interested, shoot me an email at nick [at] usv [dot] com, including a handful of links / quotes that you think really capture the essence of this conflict / opportunity. Onward!

#cities#meta

Failure is the tuition you pay for success

I couldn't sleep last night, and was up around 4am lurking on Twitter.  I came across an old friend, Elizabeth Green, who is an accomplished and awesome education writer -- you've probably read some of her recent NYT mag cover stories, and it turns out she has a new book out, Building a Better Teacher.  I know Elizabeth because back in 2008 at OpenPlans, we worked with her to launch GothamSchools, which eventually spun-out and became Chalkbeat. I said to myself: oh yeah, that was such a great project; I had totally forgotten about that. So awesome that it is still up and running and thriving.  And I dutifully headed over to update my Linkedin profile and add it to the section about my time at OpenPlans. During my nearly 6 years at OpenPlans, we built a lot of great things and accomplished a lot, and I'm really proud of my time there.  But it's also true that we made a ton of mistakes and invested time, money and energy in many projects that ranged from mild disappointment to total clusterfuck. Looking at my LinkedIn profile, I started to feel bad that I was only listing the projects that worked - the ones that I'm proud of.  And that's kind of lame.  The ones that didn't work were equally important -- perhaps more so, for all the hard lessons I learned through doing them and failing.  So rather than be ashamed of them (the natural and powerful response), I should try and celebrate them. So I decided to add a new section to my LinkedIn profile -- right under my work history: Self.Anti-Portfolio.  Projects that didn't work.  I started with things we did at OpenPlans, but have since added to it beyond that. Here's the list so far:

  • OpenCore (2005-8) - a platform for organizing/activism. Hugely complex, too much engineering, not enough product/customer focus, trying to be a web service and an open source project at the same time and basically failing at both. (now http://coactivate.org)

  • Homefry (2008) - platform for short-term apartment sharing.  Seemed like such a great idea. A few friends and I built a half-functional prototype, but didn't see it through. Maybe a billion dollar mistake. (more here).

  • Community Almanac (2009) - platform for sharing stories about local places. Really beautiful, but no one used it (http://communityalmanac.org)

  • OpenBlock (2010) - open source fork of everyblock.com, intended for use by traditional news organizations.  Stack was too complicated, and in retrospect it would have been smarter to simply build new, similar tools, rather than directly keep alive that codebase (https://github.com/openplans/openblock)

  • Civic Commons Marketplace (2011) - a directory/marketplace of open source apps in use by government. Way overbuilt and never got traction.  Burned the whole budget on data model architecture and engineering.

  • Distributed (2014) - crowd funding for tech policy projects. Worked OK, but we discontinued it after brief private pilot.

Looking through this list -- and there are certainly ones I've forgotten, and I will keep adding; trust me -- what I noticed was: in pretty much every one of these cases, the root cause was Big Design Up Front - too much engineering/building, and not enough customer development.  Too much build, not enough hustle.  Another observation is that these were mostly all slow, drawn-out, painful failures, not "fast" failures. I thought I learned these lessons way back in 2006!  That was when I first read Getting Real, which became my bible (pre-The Lean Startup) for running product teams and building an organization.  The ideas in Getting Real were the ones that helped make Streetsblog and Streetfilms such a big success. And they are what helped me understand what was going wrong with the OpenCore project, and ultimately led me to disassemble it and start what became OpenPlans Labs. But it turns out the hard lessons can lurk, no matter how much you think you've taken them to heart.  Perhaps tracking the Anti-Portfolio in public will help.

#meta#personal#projects-portfolio#strategery

Coming Back Up for Air

The past three weeks have been really busy. First a trip to SF with the USV team, then to Austin for SXSW to put on We Heart Wifi, and finally to Iceland where we have been helping establish a new institute for internet policy at Reykjavik University. So as is typically the case, I have fallen behind on everything — email, blogging, seeing my kids… But I am psyched to be back home and to have a few weeks free and clear to recenter and get organized. The busier my life gets, the more I’m impressed with folks who are able to keep their heads above water despite ridiculous schedules and fractured time.  It’s not something I’ve mastered yet, but I’m working on it. For the past two months Frannie and I have been taking yoga, and it’s been incredible.  Totally changes my outlook on everything.  We are lucky to have a really great studio and instructor very close to our house.   Perhaps the thing that has stuck with me the most is the idea that the practice of yoga doesn’t end when the session is over.  That, with practice, you can bring the yoga with you wherever you are, to whatever you’re doing.  Sounds hokey, I know, but it’s pretty profound.   Anyway, the point is: I think there is something in there — about how to keep calm and carry on and stay disciplined when things get hectic.  Easier said than done - but a worthy goal.

#meta#personal#strategery

This is kind of a cop out, but...

As part of my goals for 2011, I'm trying to blog more regularly -- once a week, right here, to be precise.  As I mentioned, I don't quite have the rhythm down yet.  This is evidenced by the fact that I'm sitting in bed at 11:30pm on Sunday night writing this half-assed post, just so that I can get it in before the week ends... So, in order to stick to my guns and my schedule, here's a bit of a cop out, in the form of a brief list of things I've been thinking about and want to get down on paper at some point soon:

  • The Enterprise End-Run -- servicing enterprise users without working with enterprise clients.

  • Where OpenPlans is headed -- what's on tap for 2011.

  • Listening to the Internet -- if you feel like no one is talking to you, chances are you're wrong; you're just not listening correctly.

  • There's a man in my inbox! -- it's all about the inbox, and I want a little man in there helping me out every day.

  • My dad's start up story -- thirty-two years ago, my father started a company from nothing, and is still in business today.

  • The adjacent possible -- why this is such a neat way of thinking about new ideas.

There are a handful of other ideas swimming in my head soup as well, and I will try and keep those flowing to the Exobrain in near real-time. And, with that, I will hit publish and see you next week.

#meta

Tumbling on

Most of the action is happening on my Tumblog these days.  For some reason I can't stop posting there, and I can't start here...

#meta

New theme, and it's slightly less simple

During Theo's morning nap today, I updated this blog's theme.   I'm going to attempt to start using the blog more regulalry, as sort of an "open lab notebook," and (in the true spirit of procrastination) figured I'd start by updating the theme. So here it is; I've ditched by previous Undesign for more of a design design.  I took the very nice looking Simplicity theme by Digital Visions, and adjusted it a bit for my purposes.  The resulting theme is available here if you're interested. Voila!

#meta

Welcome to the Undesign

Over the past two years, I've redesigned this website about 5 times, but never finished. Talk about frustrating. Eventually, I realized that I was getting nowhere, and that instead of a redesign, what I really needed was an undesign. So that's what I did. Welcome to wrkng -1.0, my first undesign. Lately I've been getting the blogger's itch (is that like athlete's foot?), so this undesign is more blog-oriented. Maybe one day I'll get around to making an Actual Design, but I have a feeling this will suffice for a while. If you like it, you can download the Undesign Wordpress theme. As you can see it's pretty simple, and there are some known shortcomings: no support for pages (in terms of navigation), and support for tags but not categories. Basically, what you see here and nothing more. Enjoy!

#meta#projects-portfolio#site#undesign#wordpress