Brian Solis
Digital analyst, anthropologist, and author of X: The Experience When Business Meets Design
Discussion
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
Hello! I’m Brian Solis. I’m a principal analyst at Altimeter Group, a Prophet company. I study disruptive technology and its impact on business and society. I write reports and speak about all kinds of different angles on the subject around the world. I just wrote a book about experiences being more important than products and brand. I even made the book an experience. X: The Experience When Business Meets Design – xthebook.com.
Thank you everyone for spending time with me and sharing your questions and insights. I'm inspired!
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Teri Conrad
@tericonrad
How can we design meaningful hyper local experiences as small biz? So much of the contemporary advice is directed at big biz, hospitality and retail.
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@tericonrad OMG. I love this question. I have a post coming out about this soon with @google exploring small biz customer journeys and how investing in micro moments become the new marketing and CRM. Google anything I've written about with micro-moments and you'll see a Google Playbook link that should help get you started.
Teri Conrad
@tericonrad
@briansolis @google Well you know I'll be all over that! I do love the micro-moments as a theory but I see so many of my agents struggle with that. Thanks Brian :)
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@tericonrad @briansolis @google Can you expand on micro moments?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@tericonrad @google It does take training. Very little about digital and mobile-first thinking is intuitive to those who think analog first...."A magazine is an iPad that doesn't work." :)
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@ems_hodge @tericonrad @google Micro-moments are quickly fragmenting the customer journey and creating a new chaotic but efficient path to information and desired outcomes. These are mobile-first moments when someone has intent to Know, Do, Learn, Buy something or Go somewhere. They're driven by intent, context and immediacy. Typically when someone enters a micro-moment, they do so with their phone and they may or may not start the discovery process with Google. Understanding what consumers ask, where they go and why, what they're trying to do and what type of information/content/format they seek defines the future of customer experience design. http://www.forbes.com/sites/onma...
JJ
@outdreamer · Web Developer/Writer/Idea-generator
Hi Brian - thanks for taking time to do this. I was interested in the conversation prism breakdown, particularly the quantified self. It's clear there's a trend toward quantifying thought processes that we would previously group under intellectual property & converting those to currency, so that Likes, Favorites, Re-posts, & Mentions all have a measurable value. Where do you see the theory of those currencies heading?
As we quantify more and more of our cognitive processes, eventually we may have a market for thoughts, where we trade intuitions for insights, experiences for laughs, arguments for fallacies, as we do in conversations already but with a sense of their monetary value infiltrating the conversation.
Do you think this will interfere with the progression of language or do you think communication will benefit from having these clear monetary incentives associated with a particular comment or endorsement in any conversation, which is usually a layer of analysis only applied to statements from public figures? I think we might evolve communication tools faster if there's incentivized quality communication.
Also AI will start taking part in our daily conversations on a near-human level, and eventually we'll have the technology to store our personalities & decision-engines & memories in a program, so after death (or when we're busy) we can set the program to respond or vote in our place. Where do you see the future of communication going with respect to this level of automation, when it will be difficult to differentiate between conversations between identities stored in a program, purely AI automated conversations, or actual conversations between two living people?
We already incorporate the Internet cortex in our daily conversations with wi-fi & smartphones. Do you see the direction of control reversed, so that machines use us in their conversations in future, where we will be test environments for their theories and arguments?
Also do you think the social media data bank should be used to analyze the progression of ideas across communities in an attempt to identify their creation patterns & automate them? Do you think patterns make conversations boring?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@outdreamer OK. Wow. I really had to take my time reading this...
Paragraph 1: In re: to the conversationprism.com, I believe there are aspects of this that we don't, but need to, appreciate as real world currencies. If you don't mind some extra reading, I've researched and shared my thoughts here: http://www.briansolis.com/2014/1... here: http://www.briansolis.com/2010/1... and here: http://www.briansolis.com/2010/0...
ESPECIALLY THIS ONE: http://www.slideshare.net/Altime...
Par 2: There's an interesting startup called Ideapod that I think becomes a lower-level platform for intellectual currency. But I also like what you're thinking. I also see this as a platform of which I call the "Human API" - allowing technology to plug into what you're talking about to develop new products, services, networks, etc. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2....
Par 3: It's already affecting communication and language...we misuse words until they officially enter the dictionary. We invent new words based on trends and popular culture. We develop universal symbols to communicate emotions (emoji). It's also changing how we make connections through strong and weak ties. http://www.briansolis.com/2009/0... - there are also interesting aspects of conversational commerce that are starting to result in notification windows and messaging apps.
Par 4: BRB
Par 5: BRB
Par 6: BRB
Ps I just loved your comments/thoughts/questions. Love how you think.
Dhananjay Yadav
@dhananjay_yadav · Founder, Comiclegion.com
Hey Brian, It's a privilege to have you here. If you had to start a Digital Magazine from the scratch, on which Social Media Channels would you invest the most Time and Money ? Also, what would be your Digital Strategy to increase the visibility of the content ?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@dhananjay_yadav Wow Great question. Depends on the company and the audience. I'm a big fan of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube of course plus other communities depending goals, etc. I'd also invest in #micromoments
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
Hey, What do you think some of the biggest disruptive industries will be from 2016 and onwards?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@bentossell I assembled a list of 26 disruptive trends here. http://www.briansolis.com/2016/0... on @slideshare It also has a link to another list of 25 I published last year. Does that help?
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@briansolis @bentossell @slideshare can you share your biggest or top 3 here?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@ems_hodge @bentossell @slideshare I'm paying attention to AR/VR, Conversational Commerce, Wearables/IoT, and the On-Demand Economy. But honestly, I'm following so much more. Here's an overview of how I'm expanding my focus: http://www.briansolis.com/2015/1...
Erik Torenberg
@eriktorenberg · Former Product Hunt
Yo Brian! What's something you used to believe that you now see as fundamentally misguided?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@eriktorenberg That Twitter needed to be a conversational network...I now believe it has value in broadcasting, conversations and just listening.
Jeff Kell
@jeffkell · Founder, Digital Piece of Mind
Your book is outstanding. I really enjoy your outlook on business and the convergence of technology. What's your biggest technological struggle to date? Did you ever struggle to find your voice or your niche within these conversations?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@jeffkell Honestly, I struggle to be on all of the platforms, consistently or at all, to connect with people whom follow my work or need to. I have run everything solo without a team to stay true, authentic and plugged-in but I'm not Gary Vee and that's what I am grappling with. I've hit a wall :)
Stephenie Rodriguez
@digitalgodess · Founder | CEO of JOZU for Women.com
@briansolis @jeffkell Stay authentic Brian. Quality over quantity.
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@digitalgodess @jeffkell You got it.
Clint Schaff
@clintschaff · Advisor, PERI, Inc.
Social and tech have fostered new levels of community and collaboration. What are 1-3 of your favorite examples of brands/org collaborations and what do you think was a key to their success?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@clintschaff What's up Clint! I still love the Coca Cola Facebook example of when it engaged the consumer hosts of the original (un sanctioned) Coca Cola page. Honestly, I still love Apple Forums as a way of asking/answering important questions. More so, I'm watching how communities such as Southwest or JetBlue are forcing the cross-functional collaboration between social and customer service. There's more of course, but what about you?
Ian Greenleigh
@be3d · Head of Brand, data.world
Hiya, Brian. What is the primary role of data in experience creation?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@igreenleigh It starts with the questions you ask and the problem/s you're really trying to solve. Then you also have to take a step back (at the beginning actually) to think through the experience you wish to deliver, how you want people to feel, how to activate the senses, and what outcomes you want to have unfold. It's really about experience architecture and design and using data to help you bring it to life in ways that are meaningful today, in every moment of truth, and tomorrow. Understanding aspirations and frustrations are important too. Data helps you become more empathetic...more human.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
Hey Brian - Thanks for being here today! 🙌What does it mean to be an anthropologist in this tech oriented world?
annebot
@annebot · CEO, CircleClick
@ems_hodge My degree is in anthro, great question :)
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@ems_hodge I have studied how to become a digital anthropologist to observe how society evolved as a result of disruptive technology and the resulting norms, behaviors, values, etc. associated with evolution. I now also study enthography and other social sciences to plug into what I call the Human API :)
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@briansolis what were some of your conclusions from your study?
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@ems_hodge It's ongoing. My conclusions have inspired each of my books to date as well as research reports. Some of the things I found was that we tend to look at generations as audiences, i.e. Millennials. Instead I documented Generation C where the C stands for "connected," a generational group organized by behavior, interests and aspirations and not age....psychographics over demographics. Additionally, I found that decision-making changed, values too, which resulted in how people buy/ don't buy, subscribe,/unsubscribe, etc. to conventional aspects of life such as music, idols, tv, brands, relationships, etc. I also found that consumers were becoming accidental narcissists and that because they were placed (through tech and apps and resulting engagement and relationships within each realm) that they're now expecting everything to work like Uber, Tinder, Facebook et al. There's so much more, but hopefully that helps.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@briansolis Thanks Brian!
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Brian Solis
@briansolis · Principal Analyst, Altimeter Group
@ems_hodge It is I who should thank you :D