Deborah Schultz

Hello. Welcome to my home on the web

This is where I've been jotting down random thoughts, observations and provocations on the impact of technology on people, society and business since 2000. I write a lot more sporadically than I used to , probably because I am out and about having great conversations and tweeting more.

The site has morphed a lot over the years, yet the main idea remains the same.  Technology is not an end unto itself, but a means for us to improve our lives, connect and create.  It empowers us to do things we never thought possible but can also cause some growing pains along the way.  Lately, my work and thoughts hover around some of the following ideas:

• How do we continue to innovate in a connected world?
• What do our lives look like now that we are interconnected?
• How do we create great products & services in a participatory world?
• How do we ensure tech fits into our lives and not the other way around?

I love technology and the web and have been called an "early adopter" but I am also a realist.  I look at everything through a lens of "people matter". I try to call it as I see it.  The brain is still the best & most agile computer we have. In the end its always about people.

I hope you find some inspiration.  You can find my most recent posts below or click on the archives by date or topic.

Thanks for stopping by.   

An Experiment: The psychic impact of our connected lives

During the past week I conducted an experiment in digital empathy.  

Background

As many of you are aware, I am obsessed with the potential of enabling and integrating our digital 1/0 lives into our human emotive sides.  

 

I don't just want a quantified self,  I want a qualified self.  

Giving me more numbers and graphs and charts can be helpful but providing me with more things to compete over does nothing to enhance my joy and presence with others or provide me with the tactile and unmeasurable benefits from getting a hug or whacking a table with a boomwhacker [as I recently observed when over 200 geeks gleefully demonstrated at YxYY].

We have a long way to go in how we think and design tech to enhance our lives, maybe it's a silly and impossible goal and we shouldn’t even try. However, as someone who loves, lives and breathes tech and believes that the stuff we can’t often measure is where the human spirit lives, I think it is worth a try. 

Situation

Three major events pulling me in a roller coaster of emotion.

Two weeks ago my Facebook feed become ground zero for demonstrating the psychic and emotional schism of our connected lives. My feeds where filling up with comments, conversations and reactions from three very distinct events: 

• YxYY: Enthusiastic preparations by over 400 geeks and creatives as they anticipated the second year of YxYY. As one of  the co-founders of YxYY, my heart swelled as I saw all the amazing projects and enthusiasm about to be unleashed over three days in Palm Springs. I was proud and excited and content.

• At the same time, the turmoil between Israel and Gaza was picking up and my friends and family in Israel were running for cover from rockets raining down on them. As I read each post, my heart sunk. I was angry, sad depressed and frustrated - feeling impotent in how to empathize from so far away with my second home and also filled with the stress and fear, anger and sadness that accompanies living in a state of war. 

• World Cup - a distraction an emotional release with a beginning, middle and end to each match - cathartic and global and physical and fun.  Particularly, because the matches this year demonstrated great sportsmanship between players and the best the sport has to offer the world.  There was even a running joke on the day of the Brazil vs Germany debacle on how ‘Israelis are calling Brazilians to see if they are OK’. 

Post YxYY the turmoil in Israel was a full fledged ground war and for every beautiful photo and post I liked and commented on from new friendships born at YxYY, there was another post on a funeral, someone called up to fight and the moral debates and toll of civilian deaths in Gaza.  My world had gotten very small and very dichotomous.  It was an extreme example and observation of what we all live in the midst of on a constant basis as we each deal with the mini "emotional yeahs and neighs” that fill our digital lives in a constant stream. 

Experiment

So, I did the least logical thing - I decided to jump into the deep end of the pool and I downloaded the Red Alert app.  [Red Alert was created for Israelis to warn them of rocket attacks. You can find plenty of stories about it around the Net].   I wanted to see if I could feel a different sort of empathy - an in the moment sense of what living under rocket threat and war feels like.  Could this app - stripped of the physical boundaries it was created for impact me and how?  For the past week, I have gotten all red alert notifications on my phone.  

Observations

• I was stressed.  At first, it was traumatic - every 30 seconds another notice - my stress level went through the roof even as I sat alone on my couch in San Francisco.  What would it be like if I lived in Ashkelon and had to physically run for my life this often? 

• Would an app like this be helpful to the media in this or other situations? It is always difficult to report on “non-events”  if reporters not in based in Israel had Red Alert would they understand the impact without the ‘death/injury numbers?

• Can we design other apps that enable empathy and catalyze people to action in other ways?

• This experiment was also a cautionary tale. By the end of the week, I started to get a bit numb - with no real impact on my life, the alerts became an annoyance [of course part of this is the design of the app - needs more finesse - even my israeli friends had to turn it off. 

• The app highlighted a need for those from afar to connect to thos e in stress.  I want to be able to connect and reach out to specific friends, people - to engage them during hard times not just empathize alone on my couch

Takeaways

What does all this 'connectedness yet oddly disconnectedness' do to us on a regular basis -  this may be an extreme moment in time for me personally, but we are all constantly managing this state of being - no wonder we often feel stressed and at odds.  This is not simply about ‘Information Overload’ or 'Getting Shit Done' or 'Inbox zero' - it is about the type and nature of the information that flows passed us.

• When news and information are not just an intellectual exercise, how do we handle it?

• Are we psychically wired to deal with so much and such radical shifts in our emotive state?

• How can we build better tools to help us deal with this in positive proactive ways?

• Can we build these tools with a knowledge of not just empathy but action and emotional connection and support?

Ironically, during my experiment, I read that the Yo! app built as a joke [think of it as a global internet based “poke”] that I often made fun of as a sign of social media jumping the shark - is potentially integrating with Red Alert.  Amazing.  The fact that a lightweight joke app designed to ping a friend can integrate with a practical highly functional app like Red Alert so that I can send a supportive note to a friend thousands of miles away in a bomb shelter, is a good sign indeed for the future of our psychic connected selves.

In emergencies my coping mechanism is action, I am a problem solver and a doer and it helps me deal with the emotion - I need to act. This experiment had given me pause to think about an entirely new area of apps - call em - digital empathy catalyzers.  These tools not only enable us to connect but perhaps to feel and act.

I am hopeful.  I have no other choice.

 

[Note: This post is meant to take a look at emotional dichotomy and its impact on our digital lives, it is not a forum for political discussion.  As I have stated online numerous times, I rarely post about Israel because the situation is complex and I don't think the Net is the best place to have civil dialogue on a complex topic fraught with emotion And yes, I am conscious of the irony of this as it relates to this post]. 

Code, Shmode - people trump algorithms! Tummeling for success

I was privileged to be invited to speak at StartupFestival Montreal this month - great city, great event, great team [thanks Alistair]. My favorite time was spent meeting with startups. At one point I found myself in the advisor tent with three companies' founders chatting tech, culture, politics, business models and global scene.  Amazingly these founders all grew up outside North America - Singapore, Ethiopia, Norway, Hong Kong and Brazil.  And each had spent a significant time living outside of their native countries. They all run virtual teams but place equal importance on meeting face to face to build their companies.  They understand the importance of the human side of success and are driven not by money or selling their companies to Google or Facebook but want to build something innovative and lasting on their own terms .  That's why we all got into this game to begin with, ey?![nod to Canada!]  

These are exciting times to launch a startup - Internet focused or not.  Technology is quickly becoming a means to an end rather than an end to itself. The way it should be.  We can start building companies that put people and human behavior at the center rather than forcing us humans to alter our behavior to fit the tool.  With that in mind, I spoke about the importance of the people side of tech and your business.  Algorithms alone won't be your differentiator.  Unless you're in bio-tech the tech won't differentiate your company.  The User Experience, Features and understanding of human behavior will be where we are seeing the true differentiators.  A good point in case is Path [see Brendan Mulligan's recent piece] and Nir Eyal's work at Stanford on human behavior.

Here's my talk - enjoy.

Code, Shmode - people trump algorithms. Tummeling for success from deb schultz

Code, Shmode - people trump algorithms. Tummeling for success from deb schultz

Ten Years brings perspective

This year, more than any other, I feel incredibly protective over the memory of 9/11.  I have been surprised by a feeling of anxiety and dread during the drumbeat leading up to today and have found myself getting angry at the inevitable media reflections and documentaries that were to come.  

But, as I woke up this morning, something interesting happened, the anger had vanished.  I am sad but, I also have a sense of calm.  As I reflect on today and the ten years that have passed,  I've come to realize that 9/11 and my experiences downtown have shaped me in ways that I am only now beginning to understand, it is a part of me, how I view the world and how I choose to lead my life.

I have written before about my experience Downtown as a volunteer in the days after 9/11 as well as reflections in the year's since, but I have always felt a bit strange about highlighting my experience.  I have told myself that my experience was not that unique.  After all, I was just a volunteer that arrived on the scene that evening.   I watched the buildings collapse from the safety of my rooftop on the Upper West Side and thankfully did not lose any immediate loved ones.  I spent most of my time as a volunteer a few blocks from the Pile [the actual burning carnage at the center of the relief efforts].  Over the years, I have honored the day quietly in my own way always with a feeling of sadness. For the past few years I did not even post my thoughts as I had in the years immediately following - I simply tucked them away.  

However, today, with perspective and a greater willingness to look inside myself, I realize that for the first time in ten years my primary feelings around 9/11 are not about sadness or grief or what was taken away but about what the events of 9/11 have given me and taught me.   As strange as it may sound I considered and consider myself lucky to have been able to volunteer Downtown. It  gave me a sense of purpose and a place to focus my shock and grief.  On the evening of 9/11, I began the first of many 12 hour nighttime shifts as a Red Cross volunteer working with first responders -getting them to eat, take breaks, change clothes and talk.  As the work on the pile "normalized", I did weekly shifts with a group set up to outfit firefighters for the 30 day tours of duty that continued for months [the NYFD could not afford to keep re-outfitting the teams as they wore out their gear too quickly].  My experiences  enabled me to witness first hand the incredible essence of humanity at its core ; when people perform acts of bravery and dedication and come together to do what's right, even at great risk to themselves. My experience was not the horror and chaos in the moments that followed but of dedication and seeing the best of who we can be.  

 There are many specific moments that stick with me to this day; the family in a pickup truck from Ohio that pulled up in front of our post at 3am with piles of socks and boots, t-shirts and food; the cliche macho Fireman who after 48 hours on the pile looked me straight in the eye and collapsed in my arms as he dragged me to the ground sobbing after I simply smiled at him; the chaplains and clergy who toured the site and performed their sacred duty with compassion and respect; the camaraderie of sharing a 12th cup of coffee with fellow volunteers as the sun rose over NY; getting a lift up the West Side Highway to my apartment and the rows of cheering people and signs that lined the route; the restaurants below 14th street that stayed open for weeks round the clock to feed the volunteers; the massage therapist who smartly realized she would be needed and dragged her table downtown and seemingly never left; how the NY tech community, came together to provide much needed hardware and software  to help process the thousands of people who lined the Red Cross wanting to donate blood and volunteer.

There was a unique atmosphere in this hobbled together group of people from all walks of life, economic status, races and religions.  None of these people were seeking fame or glory - they simply showed up because there was work to be done.   

I realize now that these experiences and others down at Ground Zero informed many small and large choices I have made in my life.  In many ways the seeds of my passion around Tummeling and the Social Web were fueled during the days and months that followed.  Peter Merholz posted my initial thoughts on his blog [my first unofficial blog post]. I spent almost two years launching and running a community center in Lower Manhattan focused on revitalizing downtown using many new technologies to galvanize community, I worked on the first Personal Democracy Forum conference and I moved to San Francisco to join Six Apart.  Sure, I was interested in community and tech before but I had proof of the power of emergent communities and individual people to make a real difference and --well-- this faith has stuck.

Anniversaries exist for a reason, they provide us with milestones and opportunities to honor those who are gone and hopefully to find perspective.  On the Jewish calendar 9/11 comes out during the month of Elul. This month is set aside prior to the start of the Jewish New Year for reflection, accounting for the past twelve months and preparing for those coming. As I set aside time today to reflect on 9/11, I have mixed emotions as I do every year, I struggle with how best to think about my experiences; and 9/11 in general; am I overdramatizing or not acknowledging enough?  This year,  I now know that although my boots and hard hat are tucked away in a storage unit in Manhattan, I carry with me always the lessons I learned Downtown and I am blessed to have been given this gift of first hand knowledge of the best we can be as people.  I try to live from this place. 

Catalysts = Tummlers

This is most definitely a new favorite quote.  I have added Theodore Zeldin to a growing list of sociologists and historians I need to read.  This one seems particularly apt for our time and my work on Tummeling:

"To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction."    - Theodore Zeldin