the ki work blog

Meet the new capitalists

Since the credit crunch started the phrase 'New Capitalism' has appeared with increasing frequency from the mouths of journalists, pundits and politicians. What does it mean? What are the implications of 'new capitalism' for ki workers?

From my research all I can say is 'new capitalism' is best defined as 'old capitalism'. Yep. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss, as Pete Townsend wrote.

The fate of the term was sealed at a meeting on 8 January which brought together French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and, er, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a politician as sorely missed as George W Bush will surely be. 

I'm sorry, but when three such enthusiastic supporters of unfettered free markets are suddenly converted to 'new capitalism' it brings out the skeptic in me. (And I should add all the views expressed are my own and are not necessarily those of ki work.) 

Out of gas

These politicians sound too much like the board of a car company trying to get another year's sales out of an aging model. So they add some chrome, different shaped headlamps and an upgraded stereo system. Now it's 'new'. But under the chrome it's the same old gas-guzzling, inefficient, outmoded vehicle.

'New capitalism' is a way of describing the desperate measures that are being applied to keep the sinking globalized economy afloat. The fond hope of Merkel, Sarkozy and that English bloke is that sufficient patches can be applied to the ship of market capitalism so that it will appear to sail as well as it did a year or so ago. Of course, there's no chance of that.

Their form of 'new capitalism' has as much chance of success as Mikhail Gorbachev's new communism a couple of decades ago.

As politicians they do have an impossible task. They cannot say what everybody else knows. We have no idea what is going to happen to the global economy. Change is the only certainty.

Corporate death

That's why I'm so enthusiastic about ki work and believe me I'm not one of nature's natural evangelists. I'm at heart a cynical old hack ready to see the worst in most things. But I do see the future of my livelihood is through flexibility, adaptability and low capital outlay. 

We may not know where the economic system is heading, but we can see some of the forces shaping it. I've been impressed by the work of Harvard's Umair Haque , Director of the Havas Media Lab. He talks of the change from symmetric to asymmetric competition. To over-simplify, capitalism used to revolve around competition between corporate behemoths. Think General Motors versus Ford. Brands such as Coca-Cola took decades to build. Then along comes Google, achieving its position of power and brand with next to no marketing and without attempting to destroy its competition.

I'm slightly disappointed that he chose Google as an example, not that it's inaccurate, but it is another corporation even if it has a very different structure and philosophy compared with its predecessors. Far more interesting to me is the way small businesses can now successfully challenge and beat the big guys. 

The strength of the old corporations lay in their size. Now that's what holds them back. Encumbered by debt, real estate and old working practices, they cannot compete with adaptable, flexible and relatively debt-free small businesses.

Join the revolution

That's where ki work comes in. A team of professionals each working from home, linked to colleagues anywhere in the world via the internet, has negligible overheads. As a result they can beat conventional bricks-and-mortar companies on both quality and cost. 

Visit ki work's main site and see how you can use our online marketplace to fulfill your project requirements or create your own virtual business as a ki worker. 

How Workforce Management magazine predicts glowing future for ki work

New year's the time for 'experts' to make predictions. They're all pretty gloomy. There's no debate as to whether the cup's half full or half empty. Instead optimists hope for a refill in 2010 while pessimists or, perhaps, realists expect a longer wait. That probably makes 'sobriety' one of the key words for 2009.

Fortunately ki work offers a home-brew alternative to fill your own (virtual) glass or better to share a pitcher. Who wants to work (or drink) alone? The good news is ki work's collaborative, work-sharing, guerrilla outsourcing model is finding friends everywhere, even if they don't know it yet.

The leading HR magazine and website Workforce Management lists 60 top predictions, most of which are in total accord with the ki work model. In fact there's so little to contradict the ki work philosophy that it makes my job hard. 

Normally I'd point readers to some small nuggets that back up my argument. This time I can only recommend you read the whole article. Believe me, it's fascinating.

Indeed, the one key prediction that writer Ed Frauenheim picks out to introduce the article is: "There will be more emphasis on collaboration and using technology to support it." Well, of course.

Another couple of quotes I'd pick out are:

"The talent market will look a lot more like eBay than Monster or Yahoo HotJobs."

And:

"The concept of offshoring will cease to exist. Talent will exist globally and companies will go where the talent is. The purpose will not be to get the lowest-cost labor, but rather the highest-quality talent."

There are a couple of key points where I think the article is fundamentally wrong because it assumes most conventional business organizations will be agile enough to cope with the seismic changes that are taking place. I believe that most current business models will prove unsustainable. (But then if I was writing an article for HR professionals I'm not sure if I'd want to be the one to tell them their profession was on the verge of being swept aside by the tide of history.)

My other disagreement with the Workforce Management article is it's postulating these changes ten years away in 2018.  The dramatic shifts in the way we work are going to happen an awful lot sooner than that. Sign up free for ki work and see how you can be part of the work revolution.

So what have gorillas got to do with business process outsourcing?

Image via Wikipedia

So what is ki work "virtual business process outsourcing" (or VBPO for short)? Is ki work "collaborative capitalism"? Is ki work "guerrilla outsourcing"? (That's as distinct from "gorilla outsourcing" which is monkey business.) Or is there a better way to describe ki work?

I know you might say: "It's all just words. What matters is the ki work concept." But words are very important to me, not just because they're how I make my living.

Say I meet somebody in a bar, a cafe or whatever and they ask me what I'm doing. I reply that I'm editing a blog for ki work. They'll ask: "What's that?" I could say: "Oh, it's a platform for virtual business process outsourcing." Maybe it's just the company I keep, but instantly the by-now uninterested party would suddenly remember an urgent appointment, spot somebody they just had to speak to or develop an impossibly weak bladder.

Do you see my difficulty?

The erstwhile CEO and founder of ki work Michael Wolff tells me this isn't really a problem as people in the world of outsourcing talk of nothing but BPO or VBPO (obviously that's "business process outsourcing" or "virtual business process outsourcing). Apart from the way it doesn't make outsourcerers sound as if they're the most exciting people to spend time with, the terms and acronyms are probably as clear as mud to the average ki worker. Hey, until a few months ago my eyes would have glazed over.

Michael and the other top ki workers have come up with a couple of other suggestions, most recently "guerrilla outsourcing". This is actually a very descriptive term for ki work.

Guerrilla warfare involves small groups of lightly armed, highly mobile combatants challenging better-equipped, but less mobile, conventional armies. Ki work enables small organizations of highly-flexible online workers to take on large corporations and win. 

While I can absolutely see the parallels, there's something on an emotional level that I find slightly uncomfortable about the phrase "guerrilla outsourcing". The problem I have is that I don't feel as if I'm some sort of successor to Che Image via WikipediaGuevara as a I sit banging away at my keyboard. 

In the same vein I always laughed behind the backs of people who called themselves "road warriors". A software salesman - not many women want to class themselves as "warriors" - dressed in chinos and a polo shirt is not Mad Max. Ditch the laptop and the mid-range Ford, get a spear and a chariot, then I'll believe you're a "road warrior".

As I said, my reaction is totally emotional and irrational.

This brings me to the other description of ki work as "collaborative capitalism". I've blogged before about how ki work represents part of the future as old-style managerial capitalism falls apart.  

I love the idea of the internet providing new ways to work where we collaborate online, across national borders, to undercut and replace traditional corporations. Certainly big isn't always beautiful any more. 

The benefits of economies of scale are disappearing in the digital world. Who needs a big office building with a sophisticated computer network and thousands of employees when your big business can be undercut by a bunch of homeworkers linked by the internet? 

So again, "collaborative capitalism" offers a good description of ki work, but as a term it comes with baggage. What I mean is, in a strangely contradictory way, some people seem to believe that if you talk about "capitalism " you must be a communist. It's nonsense of course, but it's hard to escape the emotional subconscious impact of words.

So how do we describe ki work: collaborative capitalism, guerrilla outsourcing or virtual business process outsourcing? Perhaps you can offer a better suggestion. I'd certainly be interested to hear what you have to say.

Here is tomorrow's news

Image via Wikipedia

The demise of newspapers will be a sad loss for local communities, democracy and journalists. (Okay I know the last is a little selfish but it has been my profession for too long so I have a vested interest.) But seriously, papers at their best do hold local politicians to account and they provide some sort of social cohesion. Without them it'll be difficult to find out what local sports teams are up to, what's playing at the multiplex and even who has died in the neighborhood.

Although as I said in my last ki work blog posting I believe traditional printed newspapers cannot survive or even reinvent themselves I do think there's room for a new type of local news source which uses traditional skills. To show how it could work I'm going to develop a theoretical model here.

Local news reinvented

We'll start with a journalist called Jack who has been laid off when the newspaper he was working for closed down. Fortunately he's got a bit of cash in the bank from his final pay-off to cover not so much the start-up costs of his new business but to enable him to eat while he develops revenue streams.

As a reporter and a resident he'll have developed good local contacts including with the police, churches, schools, politicians, shopkeepers and all the people who keep a community running. He might not have a printing press, but he does have a PC and an internet connection so putting their stories online is pretty simple.

Using blogging software he creates a local website covering the same things as his old paper. It is a great deal of work as even so-called 'user-generated content' has to be chased and often delicately rewritten. He can't afford to alienate contributors.

One thing he probably won't have to worry about is search engine optimization. As his audience is geographically focused publicizing the site is a combination of word-of-mouth, flyers and ads in stores. In that context Google ranking doesn't matter too much.

Undercutting the corporations

The central point about his whole operation is that it's cheap. He already has a PC and broadband. Hosting his site costs less than $10 a month. His investment isn't cash, but time. It's a sea change from his old newspaper with hundreds of staff, expensive offices, printing and distribution to pay for. Image by ~jjjohn~ via Flickr

But old papers face one challenge in common: finding revenue. The easiest way to monetize a site is through contextual advertising such as Google's AdSense. There are also thousands of affiliate schemes which give website owners a percentage of sales income from the likes of Amazon. These are simple schemes to set up, but they're unlikely to give Jack a living wage.

A more effective way of earning money is to sell ads and sponsorship to specific businesses. This is not an easy task for a journalist. The problem comes in retaining any vestige of independence when speaking to a local business. Is it advertising that he's after or a story? And will an advertiser get editorial preference?

The ki work model

Image via Wikipedia

This is a completely different form of organization from that which controls most newspapers today. Instead of a few companies with a large number of employees it is a network of skilled individual entrepreneurs. In many ways it's a return to the way newspapers used to be locally owned and run.

The solution is to hire somebody to sell advertising. That person does not have to come from the neighborhood. All that's required is for Jack to supply a list of the right contacts and phone numbers. And, hey, we've got the beginnings of a ki work virtual business selling ads for a number of these news microsites. Advertisers can then be offered packages covering several areas. But the whole thing's flexible unlike a newspaper with its fixed staff and other costs.

There are other ways for Jack to develop his virtual business across the internet. Resources can be shared. He could strike a deal with a movie site to provide reviews for the shows at the local multiplex. Both sides will gain traffic. In ki work terms it represents a form of collaborative capitalism where small businesses are able to undercut large corporations. Big may be beautiful, but in the online world it's not always financially viable.

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• A Few Ways To Fix Newspapers

How collaborative capitalism could reinvent newspapers

I'm convinced that ki work's platform for collaborative capitalism is part of the future. Why? Partly bImage via Wikipediaecause I can see how it could be at the heart of successors to the newspaper industry which has provided me with a living for most of my life.

Believe me,  newspapers today are not a good business to be in, as I'm sure you'd be told by Sam Zell owner of Tribune Co which includes the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and other dailies. His company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday at the same time as the New York Times was attempting to renegotiate its debts with its bankers.

The credit crunch might seal the fate of these once great institutions, but they were dying anyway. It's a sad time for me. This is the family business which is receiving the last rites. Both my parents were newspàper journalists. Printing ink runs through my veins.

Wishing for a swift demise

Now part of me wishes papers would just hurry up and disappear. Newspapers may be dying but the global appetite for news is alive and well. What remains will be a perfect candidate for virtual organization, for collaborative capitalism, for the ki work model.

To explain this I'm afraid I'll have to look a little at newspaper economics. Don't worry this isn't too complex, but I need to show how this isn't a business which is going to re-emerge from the other side of the recession.

As I've said, demand for news is not in decline. The audience is generally increasing. It's just that in developed countries the growth is online or for rolling TV news channels. Newspaper circulations are falling, but not at a speed that explains the catastrophic state of the industry's finances.

The central problem is lost advertising revenue. And you don't have to look far to see what's gone wrong. In the US it's craigslist that's most clearly wielded the newspaper-killer's knife. It's stolen the biggest newspaper income stream - classified advertising. It might sound as if I'm accusing craigslist-founder Craig Newmark of robbery and murder, but it is really closer to euthanasia.

Where have all the ads gone?

Before the likes of craigslist came along anybody wanting to fill a job vacancy, sell real Image via Wikipediaestate or rent an apartment would almost certainly have turned to their local newspaper. Individually, the classified ads they paid for might not have cost much, but together they represented a very profitable business.

Unfortunately any industry that's too reliant on one source of income is vulnerable. A large proportion of classified advertising has moved online and it won't return to newspapers if and when the recession ends. But ironically the readership for many newspaper titles is larger than it has ever been. It's just the audience is visiting websites rather than buying papers from newsstands.  And nobody has yet figured a way of sufficiently monetizing news websites. In reality they're all losing money.

The only way a newspaper can claim to have a profitable website is through an accounting trick. The cost of news-gathering, administration and real estate has to be stripped out. Newspaper websites are really no different from the leech-like news-related blogs which simply comment on stories that have been tracked down, researched, written or broadcast by 'traditional' media. Running a newspaper is very expensive.

It all sounds hopeless, but I remain optimistic that although newspapers are dying, something different and better can take their place. The future is virtual. Strip out most of the costs of real estate, printing presses, management, computer networks and administrative infrastructure, then you've got the potential for a sustainable news organization.

In my next blog posting I'll outline how I think a virtual news organization would function.

UPDATE: Robert Peston, the BBC's economics editor, has an interesting take on how a different form of capitalism might look. Read his view on New Capitalism here.

How to hire a blogger for your business

So you're convinced that a blog would help your company improve its relationship with customers, boost its brand and lift it up the search engine rankings. Great. But where do you go from here? Who will do the work?It's a challenge because blogging is so new and every business has a unique combination of skills that can be applied to it. Maybe everything can be done in-house, but there are powerful arguments for outsourcing at least some of the functions. The question is: what sort of person should you be looking for if, for instance, you were to post a project here on ki work or on some other site?

Maybe what's required is a blog consultant. Together you'll be able to develop a strategy that will optimize the value of the blog for your business. Amongst other things a consultant can help with design recommendations, sourcing content, key word selection and developing a liaison structure with your PR and marketing professionals. In other words they'll enable you to get your blog ball rolling.

Maintaining the momentum is the next challenge. It's easy to lose the initial enthusiasm especially if blogging isn't anybody's specific responsibility. It doesn't look good if a blog attached to your business hasn't been updated for months. That's when you might think of looking for a blog editor.

This isn't necessarily somebody who'll do all the writing for you, but they will make sure that somebody does. This is a vital job. At the start everybody will promise to contribute regularly. It won't be long before they need somebody to pester them with a deadline. Believe me, user-generated content doesn't just appear without effort.

Whatever you do there will be some people who cannot or will not produce words for the blog. Unfortunately some of those non-writers will be the very people that everybody wants to hear. We could be talking about the boss. This is where you might think of employing the services of a ghost blogger.

The idea is to work with the CEO to create blog postings that capture his or her tone, style and ideas. That could be achieved through an exchange of emails, phone conversations or even second-guessing what the boss would have said. It depends on the relationship between the boss and the ghost blogger.

Another variation is the in-house blogger. There are advantages to having somebody who is part of your organization yet able to step back and report what they see. It can be hard to see yourself as others see you. In March 2008 eBay adopted the idea when it employed Richard Brewer-Hay to run its eBay Ink blog following intense criticism of the online auctioneer's lack of transparency.

The point is, a blog will almost certainly help your business, but not if it prevents people doing vital work, especially if they're not that good at expressing themselves in writing. It is then perhaps worth hiring somebody to launch, maintain or write a blog for your business. And ki work could be the starting place.

What's the point of the ki work blog?

In fact what's the point of any business blog?

I believe every business should have a blog. Of course I would say that. It's my job. But even Joe the Plumber could pick up extra customers with a little help from the internet. Seriously though, there aren't many companies that wouldn't benefit from improved communication with current and potential customers.

Before looking at the benefits I'll briefly point out the pitfalls of blogging for business. The key thing to remember is that a blog is a public representation of you and your company. If it is badly written, sparse and out of date it will reflect badly on your brand.

The problem is that it's easy to start a blog, but rather harder to keep it going. It takes considerable time and effort. That's why a business could benefit from employing a professional blogger or an editorial team who will ensure that the blog is regularly updated and of a quality to show your business in the best light. This could cost a lot less than you might expect.

Let's see how your business might benefit:

1. A blog helps you to develop a personal relationship with customers and, perhaps, employees. Partly this is a result of the informal first-person style of blog writing. More importantly they're interactive. If there isn't a public response mechanism, it isn't a blog.

2. A blog will promote your corporate website. As any search engine optimization (SEO) expert will tell you, the way up the Google rankings is through links and current content. A regularly updated blog will provide both. But do make sure your blog is properly integrated with your main business website.

3. You'll attract better job applicants. The best people want to work for dynamic businesses that are passionate about what they do. And where do potential job applicants look first? Google. Then your website and blog.

4. Blogging can help to develop internal team spirit. Communication is not always perfect for any business with more than a handful of employees, not to mention freelances and contractors. A blog provides an informal repository for information about the business and a place where people with a direct stake in the business can interact.

5. A blog can improve your media profile. News events don't always happen when we want or can control them. Competitors make announcements, governments introduce legislation and accidents happen. Journalists need quotes and expertise. Where do they turn to first? The web and Google. If a person's not immediately available the informal style of a blog makes it the next best source for a quote. And when your blog's been used once journalists will come back for more.

6. Blogging increases your intelligence. No really. I don't mean it'll boost your IQ, but a good blog links and reacts to other blogs and news sources. The whole process of creating an informative online resource is a valuable activity in itself as an objective for research.

7. Your products can be improved by blogging. A blog provides the ideal place for customers and employees to offer suggestions for improvements and new products. Just make sure somebody's responsible for keeping an eye on the interaction. A blog entry followed by a whole string of complaints is not a good advertisement for your business.

8.  Blogging gives your business authority. Everybody who runs a business is an expert on their sector. Putting your name to regular blog entries that display that expertise will boost your image, credibility and stature as a business leader and by extension that of your company.

Whatever the combination of reasons, a well-maintained blog will benefit your business. And if you're looking for a professionalto run your blog you could do worse than posting a project here on ki work .

Blog Action Day - Virtual fishing rods for economic growth

For Blog Action Day 2008 ...

People have long accepted the Chinese proverb: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." (Not this similar quote here) It sounds great, as long as you are not the owner, shareholder or worker on a factory fishing ship. Then the newly-trained fisherman could be seen as a threat.

This isn't just being trite, taking people out of poverty isn't an isolated action that will have no impact on the rest of the world. My example of industrialized fishing isn't accidental. Here's a frequently brutal use of technology that provides us with cheap food, but can also be blamed for destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people and cultures.

There are alternative routes to development such as tourism. Ibiza, the island where I live, used to be the poorest place in the poorest country in Western Europe, Spain. In 30 years Ibiza has become one of the wealthiest provinces in Spain, a country which now has among the best living standards in Europe. And the root of its prosperity are the invisible exports represented by tourist foreign-currency spending.

Other countries are using the money sent back by emigrants to develop local economies. For instance, when I've visited Silicon Valley I've always been struck by the numbers of South Asians. Most I've met have been sending money home to India and dream of returning to set up their own businesses. On a lower-paid scale the labor camps of the Middle East are teeming with building workers with similar plans.

The problem with all these methods of regeneration is they're not exactly appropriate when the world's economies are in turmoil and we're confronting global warming and other potential environmental catastrophes. Most of all, migrant working will tend to improve the economy of the place of work, rather than the countries of the families left behind.

The internet however, offers a route to both education and paid work, without the need to travel. The technology and infrastructure available, which is steadily becoming more accessible, could provide millions with the equivalent of 'virtual fishing rods' - not just aid, but the ability access work from anywhere in the world without having to travel.

Access to telecommunications is improving everywhere, both in the developed and the developing world. For instance, the Common Services Centres (CSC) project run by India's central government is bringing 100,000 telecenters across rural areas as the first stage of a 600,000 telecenter program. 

Of course this won't make India's population of over a billion instantly literate, but it will give millions of the country's knowledge workers access to world markets. That could mean giving western corporations access to a huge source of cheap intellectual labor or it could be used for something fairer.

Through an online marketplace such as ki work, colleagues can collaborate across national boundaries to bid for outsourced projects. It's 'fair trade' because the bidding process is transparent. Instead of working for a local outsourcer or a western corporation people are working for themselves to create businesses and, of course, spending the proceeds locally.

Of course, It can't be denied that this represents a threat to the better-paid knowledge workers of developed countries. Currently outsourcing frequently means companies simply firing more expensive employees and replacing them with cheaper alternatives. But it also offers opportunities.

The ki work platform (and there are others) enables those who could otherwise be thrown on the scrapheap to use their local contacts and specialist skills in areas such as project management, communication, IT and web development to create virtual businesses online. Potentially this is a great win-win situation. Every individual can make the most of their combination of skill and price no matter where in the world they are.

This post was written for Blog Action Day, "an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. [The] aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion." Over to you...

Cloud computing: future model or fashionable fad?

In the world of technology you have to be quick to use the latest terminology. Wait too long and the useful phrase morphs into jargon and meaningless sales-speak. That's what seems to be happening to the term 'cloud computing'. I used to think I knew what it meant and saw how it could link with the ki work model. Now I'm not so sure.

I certainly would not want to disagree with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. (Well I'd certainly think twice before arguing with him  face to face!) According to the Wall Street Journal's Business Technology blog this is how he recently described cloud computing at Oracle's analysts' day:

"The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than womens' fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

“We’ll make cloud computing announcements. I’m not going to fight this thing. But I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing other than change the wording of some of our ads. That’s my view.”

Maybe Ellison's right. It is often the latest buzz phrase that marketing departments apply to products that last week used to be called software as a service (SaaS), webware or just about anything that can be manipulated through a browser. Funnily enough much of this sounds rather similar to the 'thin client computing' Ellison used to champion a few years ago.

He probably hates the way 'cloud computing' lacks a precise definition.

But that lack of clarity rather fits with the idea of something big, slightly opaque without a clearly defined shape. I certainly see the cloud that way and if it's really SaaS, webware or something else, frankly I don't give a damn.

What I'm looking for are services that enable me to run a business from anywhere I've access to a browser. I want to have corporate-style software, but without the financial outlay. It never ceases to amaze me, but that's what I'm getting. For instance, I'm writing this blog using Writer, part of the Zoho suite of software. This started as an online alternative to Microsoft Office, but it's gone way beyond that to include modules such as CRM, invoicing and even HR. And almost all of it's free to small businesses. I don't care if it's not strictly cloud. It's what I need.

In fact it doesn't matter to me if the services I choose to run a business are even software. There are facilities that were recently only available to businesses of a certain size with a physical office. Now there are online services to transcribe dictation  or virtual assistants who can be found through ki work. These are services provided by human beings.

Until recently I would have seen this combination of downscalable software and human-driven services as a way for small businesses to compete with corporations. That was an underestimation. In reality many new small businesses actually have an unfair advantage over 'traditional companies'.

If they are virtual businesses they won't be saddled with the debt, expensive real estate and old ways of working which can hamper their older, larger competitors. Through the cloud, or whatever you want to call it, collaborative online ventures have access to productivity tools which are often as powerful as those used by major corporations.

No wonder big business CEOs (and that includes Ellison) are nervous. Once knowledge workers start to organize themselves  there's a real threat to the corporate model.

It's already happening. Mozilla's Firefox has taken a substantial share of the browser market, despite Microsoft's dominance. Linux continues to grow in popularity as an operating system. And millions of small retailers earn money through eBay.

We have the tools so all that knowledge workers require is a platform, a place on the internet where they can work together to develop businesses and sell the output. Take a look at ki work and see how virtual business outsourcing can work in practice.

How I was fired from The Scotsman for blogging

As I was writing what was to be a new blog entry on the difference between ki work and freelancing something happened to me for the first time in my life. I was fired. Yes, I've lived through recessions and been made redundant before, but I've never been sacked for any sort of misconduct, real or imagined.

The story of my sacking has been covered in a few places including: The Guardian's media website, Roy Greenslade's blog
and UK Press Gazette. You can also read the original article and a follow-up on allmediascotland's website.

In my words here's what happened and it's a sad example of the way old organisations can react as they face being swept away by the digital tide.

Until this week I wrote a weekly gadget column for The Scotsman. I've had a relationship with the newspaper for more than a dozen years as a staff member and freelancer. Throughout the dotcom boom of the 1990s I was the paper's technology editor, with sole responsibility for its weekly supplement called 'Interactive'. Later I was part of the team that launched the award-winning scotsman.com website. And I continued to write for the paper after I left to start my own business penpusher.com in 2000.

Last week I wrote one of my regular blogs for allmediascotland. As you might imagine it's a fairly specialist website for media types in Scotland. The theme of the article was how communications technology would make newspaper offices and some types of job obsolete. In fact, I was describing how something along the lines of the ki work model could be applied to newspapers and their associated websites.

In passing I mentioned how all but one of the estate agents I had talked to about selling my Edinburgh flat had told me not to bother advertising in The Scotsman. I didn't think there was anything remotely contentious about reporting these conversations. In fact at the end of August the paper carried an article about the company that owns it under the headline Johnston Press hit by house market woes as property advertising slides.

Most newspapers have traditionally made the majority of their income from advertising, not from the cover price. And the most profitable ads are recruitment and property. Partly that's because they can charge more from a page full of small ads than a few big ones. More importantly, perhaps, local newspapers operated a de facto monopoly. Until a few years ago, for instance, I would have had no option but to advertise my flat for sale in The Scotsman because anybody wanting to buy property in Edinburgh would look at the paper's property supplement.

Now the logical place to go to is the web where potential buyers can search according to criteria such as price, location, number of bedrooms and so on. Unless a property is unique and photogenic advertising is probably a waste of money. It's the same with recruitment. Most jobs can be broken down into fairly simple criteria of location, qualifications and salary. A simple online form will lead job-seekers to what's available.

A few years ago newspapers had the opportunity to use their brand recognition to grab the online property and recruitment markets. It would have been a bold move to offer free advertising on their websites. But they were scared this would cannibalise their income so they left the door open for craigslist, Monster jobs and others to take the markets for themselves. The newspaper industry hasn't been uniquely shortsighted, its behaviour is little different from the music business which is also being destroyed by its determination to protect its short-term position.

So far this blog posting has been somewhat negative, looking at the economic forces that are destroying newspapers. I like to think that some of those same forces can be harnessed to produce something better. I don't mean a world where bloggers replace all other news sources. I do believe there are skills in written journalism that go beyond the ability to type. Wikipaedia has shown that collaborative editing can produce quality writing. I'll look at how I think that model could be developed for news journalism in a future ki work blog.