Josh Dilworth

Who Can Name the Bigger Number?

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:22:00 -0500

This is the clearest and best-written intro article on math, computability and big numbers I have read, period (and it’s from 1999, by the way).

More importantly, once the author (Scott Aaronson, a prof at MIT/CSAIL, and someone, hehe, semi-famously at odds with my client Stephen Wolfram) makes his way through the Ackerman sequence, Turing machines and Busy Beavers, he makes several very worthwhile arguments about our cultural understanding of big numbers. This is a topic that I’m keenly interested in, as I’m in the business, ultimately, of bringing advanced, and often algorithmically and computationally significant, technologies to market.

Specifically:

Indeed, one could define science as reason’s attempt to compensate for our inability to perceive big numbers. If we could run at 280,000,000 meters per second, there’d be no need for a special theory of relativity: it’d be obvious to everyone that the faster we go, the heavier and squatter we get, and the faster time elapses in the rest of the world. If we could live for 70,000,000 years, there’d be no theory of evolution, and certainly no creationism: we could watch speciation and adaptation with our eyes, instead of painstakingly reconstructing events from fossils and DNA. If we could bake bread at 20,000,000 degrees Kelvin, nuclear fusion would be not the esoteric domain of physicists but ordinary household knowledge. But we can’t do any of these things, and so we have science, to deduce about the gargantuan what we, with our infinitesimal faculties, will never sense. If people fear big numbers, is it any wonder that they fear science as well and turn for solace to the comforting smallness of mysticism?

Definitely required reading, and thanks to @mrflip for pointing me to this piece.

Leaving Porter Novelli, and Jones-Dilworth, Inc. Is Born!

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:34:00 -0500

I’ve got big news on my end to announce – I am leaving Porter Novelli and starting my own agency – Jones-Dilworth, Inc. My last day in the office was today, and Monday is my last official day – Tuesday the 16^th marks the launch of the newco.

It turns out that when you work with entrepreneurs day in and day out for years, it is only a matter of time before you catch the bug yourself!

I am really, really excited. Thanks to all of you whose support has helped me find this new path and make it a reality.

Clients to start include Twine, Siri, Wolfram|Alpha, Swingly, Prefinery, Gelato, and a few other stealthy offerings and advisory roles yet to be announced.

Focus will be on “early” – early companies, early markets, and early/new media. The goal is to keep the team lean and mean for the rest of 2009, and then to take a hard look at 2010 and decide if and how we want to grow. I’ve already hired a few great people, but am also looking to add 1-2 more, so if you know of anyone…

It is definitely a bittersweet parting and I have (and will always have) much love for PN and PN Austin+NYC especially. It is an elite firm and it is the only reason I’m able to make the move that I’m making with a straight face. I am beyond grateful for the opportunities that I’ve been afforded along the way – they have been formative, and rewarding. And I owe my career largely to Laura Beck, who has been a mentor and a friend and the best boss I’ve ever had.

Bringing cutting-edge technologies to market is what I am passionate about, and I’ve wanted for a long time to build a company around that – the agency of the future is going to be rather different than what we’re familiar with today, and I hope to make significant new steps in that direction.

The new e-mail will be: josh [at] jones-dilworth.com (my PN e-mail will self-destruct EOD on Monday the 15^th). Phone # stays the same at 917-209-2956.

The new website is the works too, and will go live sometime next week – this blog obviously needs updating too, as do an infinite array of social networks – all in time. I’ve busy wrapping things up and making the transition, so all of the branding goodness is pulling up the rear;)

I’ll outline much more about the new agency in the inaugural blogs posts on Jones-Dilworth website. I will remain HQ’ed in sunny Austin TX, though — some things don’t change;)

More soon!

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:40:55 -0500

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:23:00 -0500

Siri starting to come out of hiding

Wed, 27 May 2009 12:14:00 -0500

Siri starting to come out of hiding:

Siri will give the first public demo of its virtual personal assistant tomorrow (Thursday) at the WSJ’s D conference.

In addition to the TechCrunch post, Elise Ackerman also wrote up an excellent piece for the Merc. And for even more info, video, and a mockup of a conversation with Siri, check out the MIT Tech Review’s profile from back in February.

I’ve been excited about Siri for a long while now, and it’s gratifying to open up and start showing the world what the team has built.

The vision is that everyone will have an assistant, a virtual agent that transacts on your behalf. Siri is focusing at first on “out and about” use cases, though they’ll certainly expand to other domains over time. Their app will enter private beta this Summer.

This isn’t HAL 9000 in the making, to be clear — Siri is all about tasks, tasks that we humans are not neccessarily particularly well-suited for in the higher-level cognitive sense — like making restaurant reservations, buying movie tickets, checking flight times, and guaging the weather, etc. Especially on mobile devices, the assistant metaphor makes a ton of sense.

I’ve been thinking a lot, though, about the bigger-pictrue ramifications of technologies like Siri. When everyone does indeed have an assistant, what industries will be entirely disrupted? How will the ecosystemm of API’s and services evolve? How will trust and ethics come into play?

Disclosure: Siri is a client.

Twine is growing up (and up, and up)

Fri, 22 May 2009 16:57:00 -0500

Twine is growing up (and up, and up):

A hearty congrats to Nova, Candice and the whole Twine team. This article in TechCrunch today is a great send-off for the long weekend.

Their meteoric rise has been well-documented along the way, and there are even better things to come with Twine 2.0 i.e T2.

It’s worth noting that Twine has a very strong and active core of maven-like read/write users, alongside a much larger number of people who use the site as a resource to discover and track information around their interests. The engagement for each group looks quite different. But these behaviors are symbiotic and in tandem are fueling the cited growth. In this sense, the model is a lot more like Wikipedia than Friendfeed in terms of how content is created and consumed. In fact, Twine and Friendfeed see each other as complimentary, not competitive.

One aspect of Twine’s success that doesn’t often get mentioned is community management. Twine’s users are passionate and vocal and more importantly, they’re very interested and interesting people.

Just check out the comments here and here for proof. The team has done an excellent job shepherding what has become an incredibly vibrant community. And accordingly, the Twine community itself deserves credit more than anyone.

Disclosure: Twine is a client.

Buzzstream launches link building product

Wed, 13 May 2009 14:35:00 -0500

Buzzstream launches link building product :

To quote SEO jedi Eric Ward:

“A shout out to BuzzStream. Any of you link builders who haven’t already checked out BuzzStream should head over and have a look. I’ve been impressed enough to become an advisor to them. It’s in beta and already made my jaw drop. For years in my head I have envisioned the perfect link building management app, and in BuzzStream’s first feature set I see evidence it can be exactly what I’ve imagined. Sign up fast, because I have a feeling the demand might be about to get crazy.”

‘Nuff said. Buzzstream rocks.

First Look: Swingly Alpha

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:49:00 -0500

First Look: Swingly Alpha:

I hereby pronouce April 28th to be International Search Innovation Day.

To top it all off, Andy Hickl has posted some very stealthy Swingly screenshots. It is going to be one heck of a summer, people.

Wolfram Alpha. Siri. MSFT/Kumo. Swingly. Watson. And much more…

UPDATE: ReadWriteWeb wrote up a very nice piece on Swingly here.

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:21:09 -0500

The Wolfram|Alpha blog has launched. And so it begins. . .

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:43:00 -0500

The Wolfram|Alpha blog has launched. And so it begins. . .:

Today’s preview at Harvard’s Berkman Center and the simultaneous webcast represents the first (public) unveiling of the technology, with launch only weeks away.

Congrats to the team for all of the hard work that it has taken to get to this point. Stay tuned to the blog for more information and context on what Wolfram|Alpha is and isn’t, as well as what can be expected from the company as a steward of knowledge.

Disclosure: Wolfram|Alpha is a client.

P.S. Check our IBM’s Watson project, and Google’s public data project, both of which were announced today. This is going to get interesting, folks.

Austin: Social Media Capital of the World?

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:10:00 -0500

Austin: Social Media Capital of the World?: Okay, so I’m not the first person to write this post (hat tip to Mike Chapman).

That said, David Armano’s announcement last week that he is moving to Austin (the culprit: the resistance-is-futile tractor beam that Dachis Corp. has spent the last 12 months building) has me stepping back and remarking that we’ve got a seriously amazing community on our hands, people.

SXSWi is bigger than ever. We’ve summarily recruited all of Boston’s social media talent to relocate to sunnier environs. Interactive Austin looks to be a great show again this year. Dachis and company are up to big things, but we’ve also got a bevy of smaller shops of national renown (Michelle Greer and Co., Connie Reece and Co., etc.). UT is churning out smart, social media-savvy students thanks to Paul Walker and others. Allen Weiner and Peter Kim are splitting time here, and there are a few big names bouncing around that I won’t mention now — but that I expect to make the move sooner rather than later. And we’ve got social media groups and events up the wazoo.

BUT more importantly, in my mind, we’ve got real meat-on-the-bone social media people — in Austin we’re all about rubber meeting road, and bigger-picture cultural changes, as opposed to tool-level conversations and the shiniest new toy. That is a huge and remarkable difference as compared to other social/digital scenes. And I think that it is a huge differentiator ongoing.

Congrats to David on the move. I’m very interested to see who is next. I think we’re very close to the proverbial tipping point.

I’ve also put together this Google spreadsheet to track digital/social talent here in Austin. I’ve only just started it this morning and will add as I go — so please don’t take offense if you’re not on here yet. Help me figure out who am I missing?

[This list will NOT be used for recruiting purposes, and will remain freely available at this URL. If you’d like to be added as a contributor/editor of the list, just let me know. The idea of the list is merely to a.) entertain my penchant for list-making, and b.) merchandise Austin’s expertise to the rest of the world.]

(Via FriendFeed) A private note to PR people - Scobleizer, Louis Gray

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:43:00 -0500

(Via FriendFeed) A private note to PR people - Scobleizer, Louis Gray:

I am adamantly of the mind that well-behaved PR people are more Kaiser Sauze than attention whore (and poof! He’s gone…)

Some kind words that were said about me and others at the link above, and I am very grateful. But I am still keen on getting feedback on the following thesis, which I proposed in the comments.

Is the problem that some of the people best suited for PR (and marketing generally) do not typically self-select for PR (and marketing generally)?

I look at myself and Louis as examples — we are nerds who somehow fooled people into letting us do marketing;)

I keep a Google doc that is what I call “the Bo Jackson list” – i.e. people who can play football AND baseball. And when we hire new people, we’re not looking to the typical crop of candidates for new talent.

Agree/disagree?

Update: to be clear, if you DID self-select for marketing, I am not saying that I think you are not right for the job, or that I don’t want to hire you or work with you! What I’m curious about is whether, as an industry, we can do a better job of purposely introducing a diversity of skill sets and perspectives (and accordingly, whether some of PR’s ills can be attributed to, broadly taken, groupthink).

via www.toothpastefordinner.com

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:28:45 -0500

via www.toothpastefordinner.com

The Inner Beauty of a McNugget - A Cultural Scan -- NYT

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:42:37 -0500

The Inner Beauty of a McNugget - A Cultural Scan -- NYT: This is really, really cool. That is all;)

@PN_ATX at SXSWi — love you guys;)

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:38:35 -0500

@PN_ATX at SXSWi — love you guys;)

Hehe — gapingvoid: hello from sxsw

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:16:00 -0500

Hehe — gapingvoid: hello from sxsw

Wolfram Alpha is Coming -- and It Could be as Important as Google

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 15:34:00 -0500

Wolfram Alpha is Coming -- and It Could be as Important as Google:

Update: I’ve now seen the demo — it is ridiculously awesome. I can’t imagine that they won’t have at least some growing pains and/or scaling issues, but that concern is moot — the product itself is groundbreaking and moreover real — they’re not at risk of anything Cuil-esque.

Nova posted some major scoop over the weekend — he and Stephen are good friends. Wolfram Alpha has some truly breakthrough capabilities that you’ll be hearing more about soon.

I first encountered Stephen’s work in college re: chaos theory – my professor Jerry Gollub is “the” expert on fluid dynamics. It was a physics class for non-majors (me=Philosophy+English) but the concepts introduced therein have stuck with me.

The appplication does indeed bear something of a likeness to the Austin-based Cyc project, as Nova points out.

For those of your who care about the relationships of Wolfram Alpha to cellular autoata, Nova writes:

“This is not to say that Wolfram Alpha IS a cellular automata itself — but rather that it is similarly based on fundamental rules and data that are recombined to form highly sophisticated structures. The knowledge and intelligence it contains are extremely modularized and can be used to synthesize answers to factual questions nobody has asked yet.

The questions are broken down to their basic parts and then simple reasoning takes places, and answers are computed on the vast knowledge base in the system. It appears the system can make inferences and do some basic reasoning across what it knows — it is not purely reductionist in that respect; it is generative, it can synthesize new knowledge, if asked to.”

Disclosure: Twine and Nova and Wolfram Alpha are clients.

DEMO conference — (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com.

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:50:00 -0600

DEMO conference — (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com.

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:50:00 -0600

DEMO conference — (CC) Brian Solis. www.briansolis.com.

SXSW 2008 Schwag Analysis

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 17:21:00 -0600

[From Michael Cote]:

What makes the best schwag? How about crap schwag? While at SXSW last year, Coté, Josh Dilworth, and Lauren Sell go booth-to-booth to not just check out the schwag, but analyze and comment on it. Does it work? Where’d it come from? Would you want to get it?

After touring through the booths, we get outside and see the kind of schwag the press gets.