Jonathan Heiliger on Web Performance, Operations, and Culture

We were honored to have Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook’s VP of Technology Operations, as our opening keynote speaker at Velocity. Jonathan is one of the most accomplished leaders in our field, and is a master of the craft.

Here is his keynote in its entirety:

Note: Other videos from Velocity are being posted to VelocityConference.blip.tv

What Does It Mean To Be An Internet President?

FDR was our radio president, JFK was our television president and Barack Obama will be our Internet President.

Quietly at noon yesterday, as the world was fixated on the televised inauguration of Barack Obama, some obscure IT managers flipped a switch (metaphorically) and transferred Change.gov to Whitehouse.gov... While the inauguration spectacle was inspiring and the speech lived up to its promise, Whitehouse.gov is the herald of bigger changes. Government is entering the Internet age and Barack Obama is our first Internet president.

What does that mean?

Each medium has a unique signature (McCluhan would say it’s “message”); a set of characteristics that have a more profound influence on society than the content that flows through it. Television, for example is a capital-intensive broadcast medium requiring a passive viewer. These “pacifying” characteristics are one reason why Al Gore spent time during the Web 2.0 Summit to decry television’s corrosive effect on the democratic process.

Our democracy was constructed well before television (much less the Internet) in an era when the dominant technologies were the printing press and the horse-drawn carriage (Placement of district courts was based on a half-day’s horse and buggy ride to provide each citizen access to court services and the interregnum between presidential transitions took months in order to allow distant presidents to prepare and make the journey to Washington). These technologies invested themselves into every construct of our government.

So how do we re-imagine democracy in the age of networks, where the dominant metaphor is the hyperlink, and the printing press has yielded to the blog; where productivity (open source and crowdsourcing) and decision-making (idea exchanges, prediction markets, online voting etc.) has marked a shift in power from the core to the edge? We are at least a decade away from the answers. Here are a few general principles for democratic government to better serve us in the age of networks.

Listening beats Talking In the network - listening is a prerequisite to learning. It is the critical precursor of everything we do - the beginning of joining conversations, building trust, learning and developing relationships. In a networked democracy, good government (at every level) will need to find avenues available to listen and respond to its citizens. We saw some of this evidenced at Change.gov (where prosecution of torture was the foremost concern on peoples' mind) and in Tim Kaine’s video response to questions on the future of the Democratic party.

Open beats Closed There is more untapped talent outside any organization than inside (government included). Open beats closed points towards two fundamentals: (1) getting beyond a paternal sense of government (what government does for me) and towards a participatory model of government embodied by Mybarackobama.com and subsequent incarnations, and (2) open, standardized data that enable citizens to remix and add their creative energies. Washington D.C. is doing a great job in this arena. The other side of the coin are operations like MySociety and Frontseat.org that are looking to work with data that is already available to improve civic life.

Leadership Counts More Than Ever Although power has shifted from core to edge, vision and leadership counts more than ever before. Our generation’s notion of leadership will differ from the past (“Chainsaw” Al Dunlop anyone?). Consistent with the medium, leadership does not emanate from one highly leveraged point. It is a call to leadership at all levels of society. It is an open call to participation. In this regard, Obama has been a powerful model for a new generation of leaders ….

What do you think it means to be an Internet President? What do you think are other implications of the Internet and technology on Government and democracy?

Work On Stuff That Matters: Video Interview with Tim O'Reilly

Over the past few months I have been interviewing various people that are "on our Radar" so to speak. It recently occurred to me that we had never done a video with Tim. So last week Kirk Walter (bless him!) grabbed his camera and Tim and I took a walk behind the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol. We had a wide-ranging discussion (from Government to Cloud Computing) but started off with the theme that ran through many of Tim's talks last year; "Work on Stuff that Matters" These videos are a companion piece to Tim's recent blog post, of the same name.

We will be releasing the other segments over the next few weeks. They will also live on at www.thefutureatwork.com (where the video series has a home).

Part One:

Part Two:

Getting Web 2.0 right: The hard stuff vs. the harder stuff…

I had a powerful conversation recently in Europe with one of the top executives of a major industrial company. They have 100K+ employees in over 50 countries. When he joined five years ago their business was struggling and in need of major transformation; their stock was at two dollars a share, they had ethics issues and product quality problems - you name the malady, they were suffering from it…

Fast forward to 2008 and now they are one of the most extraordinary success stories in Europe - stock is over $28 a share, great profits, growing operations, well regarded in the business community etc. When you fly through a European airport they are everywhere.

I asked him how they were able to turn such a large, multinational ship around.

He told me most executives talk about “the hard stuff” vs. “the soft stuff”. Their focus for success in the organization is on the hard stuff - finance, technology, manufacturing, R&D, Sales - where the money is to be found, where costs savings are to be made. The soft stuff - leadership, culture, change and implementation - is there in rhetoric but not in reality (e.g., “people are our most important resource”). But the truth is that it is not the “hard stuff” vs. the “soft stuff”, but the hard stuff vs. the harder stuff. And it is this “harder stuff” that drives both revenues and profits by making or breaking a decision, leading a project to a successful conclusion - or not, and allowing for effective collaboration within a business unit or an organization - or not. He told me it was a consistent focus on the harder stuff that allowed them to turn their company around.

This is an apt description of the problems we face in bringing Web 2.0 into the enterprise. Web 2.0 is a game changer - it holds the potential to turbo-charge back office functions, foster collaboration and transform every business unit in the enterprise. Yet the resistance occurs when it comes down to implementing Web 2.0 because it represents a series of shifts that challenge traditional business culture and models of leadership. How often have I heard the knee-jerk reaction, “we can’t let our customers talk to each other” or “we don’t share our data” or “we are going to upgrade to a new platform - we are on a three year plan to get it done” (I keep a list of these reactions so please help me add to it). If developing a web 2.0 strategy is the hard stuff - moving that strategy forward is the harder stuff - and the bigger the company I work with - the harder the harder stuff is.

Understanding Web Operations Culture (Part 1)

“You don’t choose the moment, the moment chooses you. You only choose how prepared you are when it does.” - Fire Chief Mike Burtch

(Note: I became a Firefighter-1 and EMT in 2000. My experiences in the fire service profoundly influence my efforts in technology. Much of my work over the past few years has been translating and distilling my knowledge from these two worlds, teaching others, and finding ways to apply it in the service of both.)

Last week I came upon a truck vs. scooter accident on my way home. I could hear a woman yelling in pain from underneath the truck (a good sign!) and could see a guy in the cab looking panicked and touching his controls. I stopped my car and “surveyed the scene” looking for things that might kill me (traffic, hazmat, downed power lines) or make the situation worse if undetected (additional victims, deflating tires, fires).

It looked like the driver was about to move his truck, which would have definitely made things worse. I used my ‘command voice’ to yell “Put it in park! Stop your engine! Set your brake! Get out and wait!” as I approached the truck.

A city crew came over, and one of them told me “We’ve called 911 and they are on their way.”

I asked them to handle traffic control as I approached my patient. I then introduced myself and asked her if I could help. (I have to obtain consent before assisting an injured person, and a response means I know they have still have their Airway, Breathing, and Circulation intact.)

Her legs were entangled in her scooter which was trapped underneath the truck. While she probably had broken her leg, it didn’t look all that bad. She was still wearing her helmet and it wasn't seriously damaged which meant her head was probably okay too. I did a quick check for bleeding and other serious injuries and did a “mental status check” by asking her name, where she was (“on my way to school”), and what had happened (“I was riding and that a**hole RAN OVER ME!”). This meant she was alert and oriented, which was good.

Now that I was sure there weren’t any other life threatening injuries, I prepared to hold her head for c-spine stabilization. (Once you start holding stabilization, you cannot move again until you are ready to put the patient on a backboard.)

As I positioned myself on the ground and took hold of her head, I explained “I’m going to hold your head now to protect your neck and back. Once the fire department gets here, they are going to get your legs unstuck and then we’ll get you on a backboard. Your job is to keep still and keep talking to us. There will be a lot of commotion and noise around you, and that’s okay. Everyone will be watching out for you and so there is no reason to be scared. We’ve got you.”

(continue reading)