Transcript: Meet the BioTeams Blogger

This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1692/meet-the-bioteams-blogger

Guest: Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Host: Robert Scoble - ScobleShow

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
So, who are you?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
I'm Ken Thompson, my name is Ken Thompson. I'm the Founder of the BioTeams blogs.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
BioTeams Blog.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
BioTeams is all about what we can learn from nature, in terms of how they organize their teams that would make our teams work better.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Yeah. Now, you don't sound like you're from San Francisco.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
No I'm from Sunny Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Wow and we're here in London.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yes, yeah.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
I'm at the Online Information Conference and you're here for another conference.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yeah. I am at a Leadership Performance Conference over in the West (Inaudible) the last two days.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Now, I just met you and you were talking to me about Swarm Intelligence and how are you -- explain what that is first of all and how you've been into this starting that?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Okay. Well I've spent a lot of time in my past life working in teams I met most people they didn't work very well. So, I've been in the industry for 25 years so I took sabbatical.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Doing software industry...

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yeah, I was a software engineer, done a lot of software engineering and I was in a lot of software projects that didn't know as projects (ph) desired outcome. So I thought that...

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
It was like Windows Vista right?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yeah. Rolling slippage was my specialty. So then I thought that after 25 years in the industry, I thought I earned a bit of sabbatical, so I started studying biological teams to see what we could learn from them, ants, bees, dolphins and more recently the penguins. Everybody is probably seen the march of penguins, where the penguins walk across the ice, to find a thick piece of ice, to lay the young and I ask people, how do you know where to go? Now, everybody seems to know there's no leaderand everybody nods and say, yes. So, how do they know where to go and most people generally haven't thought of that question and the answer is, no one of them knows where to go, but collectively they all know where to go and each one of them remembers a bit of the rout and the same thing applies to geese migrating.

They fly in leaf formation and everybody knows the leader always rotates because of slip effects, but what people don't realize is one of the reasons that leader stops as he doesn't want to go anywhere and they were kids, they've got collective intelligence and what struck me is really humbling is, humans are the only species on the planet, who trust in a single leader and maybe a small group random to know the way on behalf of a whole community. Nobody else uses that approach, all the other species rely on truly collective intelligence and now that would be popularized on what you call self managed teams and self manage teams have been popular for a while. We see them in sports teams as well. Everybody is a leader, but in certain demands and now self managed teams have been around for a while, but then the other thing I discovered about biological teams is, they use short messaging.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
What is that?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Short messaging, the simple messages, very little information content broadcast. It's either a threat or an opportunity and that's ants broascast chemical to say there is 'foo' or this food and then everybody else instantly gets up message including the predictors. and it struck me. That's very interesting because we're very smart humans. So, we've kind of lost that instinct. I call it the messaging instinct and we tend to have what you call a document instinct. So, we communicate by documents, which are very complex, but the people who have recaptured the messaging instinct are kids, kids and techno geeks using IM.

So, basically we've built a theory of Bioteaming around, self managed teams on short messaging, broadcast the groups and myself and Robin Good of MasterNewMedia wrote a Bioteaming manifesto that a group called (Inaudible) published and that was kind of the start of it. So, we had a whole theory of biological teams then quite a smart friends said to me, "Ken, this kind of behavior change is a big one," because the idea of everybody being a leader, the traditional approach to teams is command and control, we haven't told you what to do and if you don't know what to do, the safe thing stop, wait for order.

So, traditional teams have rather a lot of downtime and then traditional teams don't short message, they do big documents, stay in positions. So, that normal metaphor is a document, document, document, ... gets bigger. People move further apart off them as well all sorts of compromise. I've worked on standards bodies and the document gets bigger and bigger and bigger in the end they talk about was a philosophy. I am suggesting this message, talk, get agreement, short document. A totally different approach, so it's a big, big behavior change.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
And have you tried this methodology?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yes we've used it quite a lot, where it's been most successful as with small businesses. One of the problems with small businesses, they can't get access to the big contracts. So, we've developed an approach called a Virtual Enterprise Network, where a number of small businesses come together, to look and have the scale and reach of a big corporate. But they have the agility and cost base of a micro-business. We've done a lot of work in getting these businesses to work together, because these guys are -- the expression in the UK is 'Herding Cats'. These guys didn't know independent business (Voice Overlap).

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
We say that in Redmond too.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yeah. So, basically we got the manifesto, which had 12 principles on it. And then somebody said if you want the people to adopt it you got to give them a tool. So, the manifesto was Bioteams, which is really full leadership. Although the last year we've been building a tool called Swarmteams, which is a messaging system for groups that integrates the mobile phone messaging with Internet messaging and email and RSS and actually embodies the basic principles of Bioteaming. We launched that about six weeks ago. That's kind of what my time's going into. We're really a start-up venture.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
How has that gone?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
It's gone really well. Last week we just signed a big deal to take it into Asia. We don't intend offering the product directly to the customer. We think other people will re-brand our product. So, the big deal in Asia with a Telco entrepreneur, who is taking the product and offering it into his market. Asia is the place to be for messaging. Everybody does text messaging. Its community oriented, so they work in groups. So, it's been a roller coaster as every startup is -- you think, the things are going to work, don't work. And, the things you didn't think were going to work, do work.

So, we're looking pretty good. We've also raised some venture capital as well. So, we've enough petrol in the tank for about a year, to try and take it farther Telco's market. The other market is media. If you look at media subscribers, one way to look at them is a big fat on engage crowd. We're using Swarmteams, you can honeycomb the crowd with lots of small sales. All of whom are more intimate and engaged more better with each other and are more loyal less likely to the fact. So, one of the other markets is the media sector. I've been trying to take the crowds of subscribers and turn them into engaged small communities, all interacting together.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Wow. How do you -- I still (Inaudible) get how you would do that with media subscribers. You're talking like a newspaper subscriber or a ...?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yes. Basically, there's a law that's became popular a few years ago called Reid's Law. Basically, it says the value -- a network that allies ad hoc of group formation is more valuable and more rich than a network that doesn't. So, that's one principle. And the second thing is, you provide mobile (Inaudible). If you look at sale of the social software, a lot of people are using social software sitting in their bedroom. They'd really be rather down in the pub with a coffee. So, mobile (Inaudible) and there's two ways to do this.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Wait a second. (Voice Overlap) Geeks rather than could be in a pub? Well, maybe.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
well, there is a chance it could be a dating site. They're just sitting and -- there's two ways to do it. And Robert, one way is take the application and put in on a 3D phone. Now, the latest research says only 10% of people access Internet on their 3D phones. So, I don't think that's the only solution. Our solution would be, the application sends text messages to you when you are in the pub. So, we use standard text messaging. No downloads to the phone and available globally anywhere in the world. So, the idea is keep it as open as possible. One of my passions is; we do some work in the Third World, the developing world. If you go to the developing world, the only technology that -- only communications and computing technology really there is mobile phones. So, that's why we went away from -- we don't download any Java applications or anything like that, because, it's a very democratic technology, and it's pushed. That's the other thing that makes the difference.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
So, if you're a worker in one of these software projects, what's my experience going to be that's different from what I'm doing today? What would I notice right away that this is a different...?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Well, one of the things you'd notice is team intelligence. When I worked in software projects, at the start of the project, everybody was looking out for everybody. And then something went wrong and everybody went under pressure. Then, people just started looking for themselves. So, at the start of the project, if I find something that was important to you and you were in my team, I would tell you about it, but, after I'd been beaten up a bit, by the project manager and the deadline approaches, I won't be bothered anymore. So, what I find in software projects is something called the invisible line. At start of the project, we're all working for collective success. A line is crossed somewhere in the project and I'm no longer working for collective success. I'm working for the avoidance of individual blame.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Interesting.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
The project manager is beat up down, the project manager has used his meetings to track progress and people have been blamed for various things. And, the other people who haven't been blamed go away saying, "That's not going to happen to me." So, what the software project does is, some point it turns off its early warning system, then it's flying blind. Software projects are brilliant at flying blind. I'd been in software projects where the project continued for a month after the users decided they didn't want it anymore, but, nobody thought to tell us because, software projects are not good at looking out.

So, one of the things is, ongoing collective intelligence. Anybody finds anything that's to the value of the team. They communicate it in a meaningful way, throughout the whole project. So, I think that's one of the big things in software projects. Usually, somebody in the team knows something's wrong but, it doesn't directly affect them. And then, you come to the last month before implementation. And, all that stuff that people have swept under the counter all comes out.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Now, how do you convince people to make that kind of switch or start working in this new way?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
It's not easy Robert. The great thing about working with businessmen is, they want to make the switch because they want to make more money. So, generally, what I do is, we've got a two kind of techniques. You don't show them all the techniques in one go. You find a problem and solve one with the technique, just in time. And after a while, you tell them. I used to show them the whole road-map, but, then their eyes glazed over. So, I think you fix problems one at a time and after a few months, say, look how far you've come. So, it's kind of experimental at the minute. These 12 principles, only the first six have been proved. The remaining six, we haven't yet proved them yet.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Why not?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Because, really the first six are fundamental principles that you have to have them placed first. Treat every member of the team like a leader. That's a huge change for most teams. Communicate everybody to look out for team intelligence and communicate it instantly. So, those principles actually need to be embedded in first. And the other more advanced -- one of the more advanced principles is; nature's teams learn by experimentation. They don't do an awful lot of planning. In the software world we call it constant prototyping and learning by engagement with the customer. Spending two month's time specifying it, doesn't really matter, because you're not in the real world. Minimum speck, get it in with the customer, find a way that'd reduce the risk and as early as possible that (Inaudible). A lot of interesting stuff for software teams.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Wow.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
So, people say what's unique about us. First thing people say unique is you're the only people who spam the Internet messaging and text messaging. So, people using Swarmteams can switch on a button that says, "Smart Messaging." Any messages sent to me, the system will look to see if I'm online at first. If I'm online it will ping it to me. If I'm not online, it will text me. So, that actually saves message costs. The second thing people say is, unique about us is, a lot of systems allow broadcast one-to-many. People say we're unique in that we allow many-to-many interactions. Anybody in the team can contact everybody else in the team. It's not just the leadership function. So, we say there's two types of teams; star teams, which is everybody maybe just knows their leader, and those are kind of command and control teams. And then, peer teams. We have a kind of slider on the software that lets you start off start and move it a bit forward, but basically, if the guys don't know each other, you don't want them broadcasting to each other.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Right.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Because, that's not going to stick that'll damage your reputation.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Interesting. If somebody wants to learn more about this kind of methodology, where do they go?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Well, there's two places. The methodology is on the blog www.bioteams.com.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Bioteams.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
And that's been there for the last 18 months. There's 350 articles. So, we're quite prolific on -- I've written most of them, but we've a number of guest authors. Biologists as well, so, it's not just techy guys. And to find more about the product then, you go to www.swarmteams.com, which is a group messaging system that centers around mobile phones rather than the Internet.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
You don't have an example here, do you?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yeah, we've lots of examples.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
I mean do you have a demo on -- I can see on your phone a message would look like or.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
I've got a few messages yeah; I could show you on the phone, yeah.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Okay.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
And people can sign up for a free trial and play out right with it. There's a Web demo as well.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
OK. Very cool.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yeah.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Anything else I should know about in the Swarmteams or Bioteams?

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
No. I can't think of anything else. Just that Robert it's been a pleasure talking to you.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Yeah. Thank you very much.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
Yes. That's fine too.

Robert Scoble - ScobleShow
Thanks for dropping by.

Ken Thompson - Swarmteams Ltd.
No problem.