The 101 on Content Syndication: Who, What, Where, When & Why

Creating great content is, unfortunately, just half the battle for small businesses. Because Google has put such a huge weight on quality content both on your site as well as on other sites across the web (and rightfully so), there is a lot of competition. You need to make sure you’re not only writing great content, but people are actually seeing this content amongst all of the choices a SERP offers. SEO is a huge part of this step, comprised of many different methods such as social media promotion, link building, content optimization, and many more.
One interesting tactic that is a little bit less popular: Content syndication. Syndicating your content is a great way to earn visibility on other platforms without having to put in any extra hours to write a great article. It’s too easy.

Content Syndication Basics for Your Small Business

Of course whenever you’re going to try any new content strategy, it’s important to understand all of the basics as well as some of the curveballs you might be thrown. Below explains the who, what, where, when, and why of content syndication (not necessarily in that order!):

The What

Syndicating your content means you’re publishing either a piece of content you’ve written or a video you’ve created onto a different website. Your content will be published on this website for others to share and comment; however it is imperative that you earn a link back to where the content was originally posted. You’re not allowing someone else to take credit for your work; you are simply allowing your content to be published with credit given back.

The Why

It is always better to offer a unique article to another website, but this is a quick way of getting your name out there in front of relevant audiences. While you do run the risk that someone might not read the part of the page where it says “this article was originally publish by…” it’s usually obvious and so you get that link back to your website as well as that visibility.

The Where

There are many different websites that actually focus on primarily syndicated content, so these are usually a good place to start. You can oftentimes just upload your RSS feed so that the website is alerted that you’ve published something on your site. Once the site checks out your content, they can choose to publish it and give back credit or do nothing with it at all. Where you can find these opportunities depends completely on your industry. Social Media Today is one of my favorite websites that works this way, and Reddit is one of the most popular for many different kinds of industries.
Other syndication options include paid as well as non-paid. When it comes to non-paid, it’s all about going out there and talking with blogs in your industry to see if they are interested in syndicating your content or getting an RSS feed (much the same way you talk with editors about a guest article). Paid options include websites that will syndicate your content for you on some very major sites like CNN or Time. Outbrain and Taboola are two of the most popular.

The When

It’s best to syndicate your content once you are very established on your own website. Publish on your website first so that you can iron out any issues you have with your goals or the tone you are striving toward. You need to make sure that you’re able to publish quality content frequently. Once you have this mastered, go try to syndicate your content and get the word out about your great website.

The Who

You should put your main content manager in charge of syndicating content. Be sure to just have one person in charge so that you do not have a lot of people trying to syndicate your content in the same place. This looks unprofessional and could confuse the websites considering a syndication partnership.

Content Syndication and SEO Considerations

As discussed above, syndicating your content is great for your SEO because it helps you earn links as well as visibility without having to write an entirely new and unique article. It saves you time and helps you establish ongoing relationships with different sites (which isn’t always easy to do when you’re guest blogging). There are, however a few problems that come along with syndicating content.
First, it is possible that another site could outrank you on a Google SERP. This would bring more clicks to the other website as opposed to your website. While you’re still getting that visibility, you might be losing out on your end goal. It’s usually a good idea to syndicate your content and then remove your RSS feed after you get a little bit of visibility before you lose out on any more clicks.
Second, you really need to be careful when it comes to duplicate content. You don’t want to syndicate your content with too many sites because Google doesn’t like to see a huge influx of links. This could get you penalized with Penguin, not to mention the duplicate content penalty. It’s important Google knows you are the source of your content through canonical tags and internal links in the article.
Have you syndicated the content on your website in the past? What did you find to be the most beneficial about this method? Let us know your story and your thoughts in the comments below.

Source:  https://www.searchenginejournal.com/101-content-syndication/68590/

"We never open a website without a strategy"

Website Strategy & Consulting

We’ll Help You Develop a Clear Website Strategy to Identify Where You Want to Be and How You’re Going to Get There

Website Strategy & Consulting

We’ll work with both your company’s key stakeholders and target audience to help you develop a clear website strategy that will allow you to better:

• Identify your Key Goals & Objectives
• Understand your Target Audience’s Needs & Wants
• Identify your Road Blocks
• Assess your Competition
• Assess your Marketing Campaigns
• Identify & Measure the Correct Web Site Success Metrics (i.e. KPIs)
• Track & Improve your Lead and Sales Generation (i.e. Conversion Rate)
• Benchmark & Measure your Progress toward Meeting your Goals

Digital Analytics & Key Performance Indicators

Assumptions are very dangerous and can lead to disastrous results on the web. Gathering accurate (quantitative and qualitative) data allows us to validate or dispel assumptions of how people use your site. Using focus groups, surveys, web and campaign metrics as well as usability studies, we can develop a holistic understanding of how people use your web site. Then we combine our experience and current industry research with this data to determine the proper course of action to intelligently make incremental changes to your web site. Next we analyze the key performance indicators (see common KPIs below) to ensure that we have in fact improved the site and are trending in a positive direction.

Some common Key Performance Indicators based on web site type include:

• Ecommerce Web Sites – Overall Purchase Conversion, Average Order Size, Items Per Order
• Lead Generation Web Sites – Overall Conversion, Registration Process Dropouts, Conversion of leads into actual customers
• Customer Service Web Sites – Percent of support touches served online, average cost per touch, drivers to other support methods
• Advertising Based Content Sites – Visits per week, page views per visit, advertising click ratio, recency and frequency
• Subscription Based Content Sites – Conversion of non-subscribers to subscribers, active subscriber base, average subscription length
• Branding Web Sites – Page views per visit, average time spent on site, visits per visitor over a certain period of time

Usability Reviews

Too often websites are never properly tested before they launch. Are you too close to your site to notice the problems you have? It often takes a fresh set of eyes from an unbiased perspective to notice the small roadblocks that keep your site from reaching its optimal performance. We regularly perform in-depth usability reviews that cover a site’s design, messaging, pathways/information architecture, usability and usefulness in order to provide specific recommendations that can greatly enhance the usability and effectiveness of a site without a complete redesign.

Site Improvement Checklists

As part of any strategic or consulting service we provide easy to follow checklists. The action items can then be performed by your current internal or external web design team.

Key Tactics

• Website Strategy Development
• Marketing Strategy
• Usability Strategy/Heuristic Evaluation
• Project Definition
• Prototyping/Wireframing
• Business Process Automation Analysis
• Analytics & Reporting
• A/B Testing & Multivariate Testing
• Personas & Audience Segmentation
• Contingency Design
• Short & Long Term Planning
• User Centric Messaging/Copy Writing
• Site Management/Maintenance 
  
  Source: http://www.blastam.com/web-site-strategy

Data Driven - Experience, by Econsultancy

Many of today’s businesses find themselves overwhelmed by data. 

They are dealing with multiple data sets which are often collected separately, run in silos, and with huge levels of duplication. 
This data is mined on an ad-hoc basis by communications teams operating under antiquated marketing strategies, leading to loss of patience from consumers, as well as a lack of growth and differentiation in the business. 
Marketers are struggling to find the signal among the noise.
Resolving this mess requires a significant shift in both data and marketing strategy.
Unlocking the right data and making it available across your organisation gives you the opportunity to engage with your customers in a more meaningful way than ever before. 
It allows websites to move away from a one-size fits all, homepage-led website, to an individually tailored experience that responds directly to an individual’s specific circumstances, regardless of their point of entry.
The shift to data driven experiences is easier to make than you might think. 
The technological changes required are time consuming, but relatively straight forward. Surprisingly, the greatest challenge is not in new technology, but in the shift of mindset and business processes required to make the most of the data on hand.

Think people, not users

 
It’s not enough to think of customers any more, you must understand your customers as individuals.
But individual identity is a complicated, ever-evolving thing. 
Identities are personal, social, public and private all at once. They frequently resist definition, and although they seem knowable at first glance, they break apart with further inspection.

Getting to know someone well takes time and effort. Whenever a first meeting takes place, a lot of questions are asked to understand who this new person is and how best to relate to them. 
Social context provides many cues for us, but it is only as a relationship deepens and shared experiences are created that the nuance of individual personalities reveal themselves to us.
In our personal lives, our identities coalesce around our names. We might know something about who John is, but if we work with him, do we really know who he is when he's at home, at a bar with his friends, or what’s really going on in his mind?
The digital world gives us a new way in which we can play with, explore, and share our identities. 
The main way we do this is by way of our active digital identities. These are distinguished from passive digital identities in that we control what we put out there. 
 
We actively display our digital identity to the world in a variety of ways:

• Our profile and posts on social networks such as Facebook
• Our tweets
• Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn
• Blogs
• The photos we choose to share on photo-sharing sites such as Instagram
• Selfies
• The fantasy identities we take up in gaming and virtual realities

However, we are also passive bystanders, producing a conglomeration of information about ourselves, discoverable through search engines. This acts to create a passive online identity.
 
Examples of passive online identities include:

• The results that arise alongside our names in Google searches
• Photographs and comments that others post about us on social networks
• Information about us (accurate or not) that is collected and compiled by online aggregators
• Information about us that is placed online without our knowledge or consent
• Personal information outside our control that appears online in a variety of ways 

Active interrogation and passive observation

 
It is critical that a relationship offers the right level of intimacy for the known identity of the individual. Knowing too little will result in wasted effort and misguided messages, knowing too much risks alienation.
In many respects, the level of individual understanding which is achievable through data is directly analogous to the information perceived when a customer walks into a store. 
The shopkeeper profiles the individual. They may know them from previous visits, sees who they spend time with and may even count them as a friend.
Now imagine that the same shopkeeper followed you out of their store and down the street. And that they then stood outside of your house with a pair of binoculars, looking in through your windows, or went door to door asking your friends and neighbours about your interests, likes and dislikes.
You’d find that more than a little creepy. In fact you’d probably call the police.
The difference here is between active interrogation and passive observation. Observing how an individual engages with your product and acting accordingly is very different to actively mining their complete data set. 
A permissive, transparent approach is needed, where by you take steps towards a more complete understanding of the individual, only on the back of deeper user engagement.
Once you have established the right approach to data collection and use, you will need to ensure real time availability. 
This means real time data processing and an approach to infrastructure that places both content and user data on an equal footing at the heart of your business.
If you can do this, you’ll be in a position to deliver on the promise of data driven experiences. 

Πηγή: http://goo.gl/N7tkVp 

Γύρω από το Παιχνίδι της Ζωής!

Αγαπητοί μου φίλοι, σήμερα θα ήθελα να γράψω για το Παιχνίδι της Ζωής, μία πραγματικότητα που βρίσκει γόνιμο ενδιαφέρον σε επιστήμονες υπολογιστών, φυσικούς, βιολόγους, βιοχημικούς, οικονομολόγους, μαθηματικούς, φιλόσοφους, επιστήμονες και άλλους οι οποίοι παρατηρούν τον τρόπο με τον οποίο πολύπλοκα συστήματα μπορούν να αναδυθούν μέσα από την εφαρμογή εξαιρετικά απλών κανόνων. Κάποιοι θα πουν ότι έτσι ο Δαρβινισμός περνάει κρίση. Ζωή πολύπλοκη να προέρχεται από απλούστερες μορφές ζωής μέσω της μεθόδου της φυσικής επιλογής.. Αυτή ακριβώς όμως η φυσική επιλογή μπορεί να ολοκληρώσει κάποιες πτυχές που δεν μπορούν να ολοκληρωθούν μόνες τους με βάση το Conway’s Game Of Life! Πρόκειται για την υποκειμενική μου αντίληψη. Σας παραθέτω κάποια αρχικά με βάση τη Wikipedia:

“The universe of the Game of Life is an infinite two-dimensional orthogonal grid of square cells, each of which is in one of two possible states, alive or dead. Every cell interacts with its eight neighbours, which are the cells that are horizontally, vertically, or diagonally adjacent. At each step in time, the following transitions occur:
1.    Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under-population.
2.    Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
3.    Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.
4.    Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
The initial pattern constitutes the seed of the system. The first generation is created by applying the above rules simultaneously to every cell in the seed—births and deaths occur simultaneously, and the discrete moment at which this happens is sometimes called a tick (in other words, each generation is a pure function of the preceding one). The rules continue to be applied repeatedly to create further generations.”

Με μία προσεκτική ανάγνωση των παραπάνω δίνοντας έμφαση στους απλούς κανόνες, μπορούμε να βγάλουμε συμπεράσματα για το κατά πόσο το Παιχνίδι της Ζωής με τα μέχρι εδώ, μπορεί όπως γράφεται να λειτουργήσει ως συστημική σκέψη αλλά και ως διδακτική αναλογία σε μηχανισμούς μεγαλύτερης κλίμακας. Αν με βάση την κοινή λογική η απάντηση είναι καταφατική, τότε οδηγούμαστε στα παρακάτω συμπεράσματα:

Α. Το παιχνίδι της ζωής εξαρτάται από τον τρόπο με τον οποίο εξελίσσονται οι γειτνιάσεις και αυτό γιατί ο διχοτομικός στην περίπτωση πληθυσμός {0,1} είναι που δίνει ή δεν δίνει μέτρο στην κάθε κυψέλη και κατεπέκταση μεταβάλλει το αρχικό κυψελικό αυτόματο.
Β. Ο δημιουργός ή επιστημονικός συγγραφέας που εμπνέεται από το Παιχνίδι της Ζωής θα πρέπει να βρει μεθόδους και τρόπους εφικτούς αλλά και δόκιμους, αν θέλει να εφαρμόσει το παιχνίδι σε μία μεγαλύτερη σε όγκο και δεδομένα πραγματικότητα. Μέχρι τώρα βλέπουμε πώς η συγκεκριμένη προσομοίωση, μπορεί να επιστρέφει στον αρχικό της κύκλο ή απλά να μεταφέρεται πχ από τα αριστερά στα δεξιά. Όχι όμως πώς εξαπλώνεται. Έτσι λοιπόν ο επιστήμονας ή ο συγγραφέας που λειτουργούν με βάση ένα αρχικό δίκτυο από τελεστές, κυψέλες, κόμβους, θα πρέπει να αποφύγουν την επιστροφή στο αρχικό δίκτυο μιας και αυτό σημαίνει ότι σφυγμομετρούν αντιδράσεις. Η σφυγμομέτρηση αντιδράσεων με δεδομένο ότι το παιχνίδι έχει μία χρονική αρχή, είναι άριστη και απόλυτα θεμιτή σε πρώτο χρόνο, όχι όμως σε εξελιγμένες μορφές του συστήματος.
Γ. Το Παιχνίδι της Ζωής με βάση τις κυψέλες, κόμβους που ενεργοποιούνται, εκδηλώνει μία σχέση έσω-έξω στο δίκτυο. Ο δημιουργός ή ο επιστημονικός συγγραφέας παίζοντας στην ουσία ένα παιχνίδι με μηδενικούς παίκτες καθώς προκαλούν ένα αρχικό configuration και στη συνέχεια παρακολουθούν την εξέλιξη, πρέπει να ξεκαθαρίσουν με βάση τη δομή των αρχικών input κατά πόσο το παιχνίδι, η ζωή, παύουν να επιστρέφουν στον αρχικό κύκλο. Το παιχνίδι για να έχουμε Big Data πρέπει να εκδηλώνει φαινόμενα  colonialism (αποικιοκρατίας).
Δ. Αν το παιχνίδι είναι σχεδιασμένο για να εξαπλωθεί, κρύβει το ρίσκο του ότι ο δημιουργός, ο παίκτης, ο συγγραφέας, πάνε να εμπλακούν σε κάτι που δεν θα αντιμετωπίσουν. Το τι συμβαίνει 5 κυψέλες παρακάτω δεν αφορά τις αρχικές σχετικές γειτνιάσεις, θεωρώντας απαράδεκτη ξανά τη σφυγμομέτρηση αντιδράσεων.
Ε. Όλα τα παραπάνω καθιστούν ξεκάθαρη για παραπλήσιους λόγους τη μέθοδο αλληλεπίδρασης ανθρώπου-υπολογιστή. Πρόκειται για μία συνεχή εξωτερίκευση των σημάτων, προτύπων συμπεριφοράς, είτε έχουμε να κάνουμε με εφαρμογές οικονομικών, επιστημών, υπολογιστών, είτε με το systems’ thinking και τη δραστηριότητα, του δημιουργού, του επιστημονικού συγγραφέα.

«Conway chose his rules carefully, after considerable experimentation, to meet these criteria:
1.    There should be no explosive growth.
2.    There should exist small initial patterns with chaotic, unpredictable outcomes.
3.    There should be potential for von Neumann universal constructors.
4.    The rules should be as simple as possible, whilst adhering to the above constraints.» (Source Wikipedia)

Ο Συμπαντικός Κατασκευαστής Von Neumann είναι και το μήλο της έριδος στο παιχνίδι του Conway. Πρόκειται για μία μηχανή που αναπαράγεται αυτόνομα χρησιμοποιώντας πρώτες ύλες του περιβάλλοντος! Πρόκειται για μία μέθοδο αυτό-αναπαραγωγής με τρόπο ανάλογο με αυτό που συναντάμε στη φύση! Μία κασέτα από κυψέλες, κύτταρα, κωδικοποιεί την ακολουθία των δράσεων που θα υλοποιήσει η μηχανή. Πρόκειται για γενετικές οδηγίες που μπορούν να υποστούν μετάλλαξη και έτσι το παραγόμενο αντίγραφο μηχανής να είναι πολυπλοκότερο του αρχικού, πχ να πάρετε και μία ζωγραφιά με ένα λουλούδι. Η φυσική επιλογή της μετάλλαξης είναι αυτή που θεμελιώνει και το Δαρβινισμό, τόσο ως προς την εξέλιξη της ζωής όσο και ως προς την ανάπτυξη της πολυπλοκότητας.

«The concept of a universal constructor is non-trivial because of the existence of garden of eden patterns. But a simple definition is that a universal constructor is able to construct any finite pattern of non-excited (quiescent) cells.»

«Conway’s game can also serve as a didactic analogy, used to convey the somewhat counter-intuitive notion that "design" and "organization" can spontaneously emerge in the absence of a designer.» (Source Wikipedia)

Αυτά είναι και τα μήλα της έριδος του Von Neumann Universal Constructor. Δεν μας ενδιαφέρουν απλώς τα αντίγραφα και η μετάλλαξη αλλά η εξάπλωση και η αποικιοκρατία. Δεύτερον, μία εκδοχή εξαιρετικά πολυπλοκότερη της αρχικής, από τη στιγμή που μιλάμε για αυτό-αναπαραγωγή θα δημιουργούσε κάτι απλά ανέφικτο. Αν δεχτούμε όμως ποιοτικές αναλογίες με όρους κοινωνικής δικτύωσης, με όρους καθαρά gaming, συγγραφικούς, επιστημονικούς και άλλα, αυτό σημαίνει ότι υπάρχει εξωτερικό χέρι που κάνει το configuration με τον κατάλληλο τρόπο. Παγκοσμίως, δεν νοούνται υπολογιστές χωρίς άτομα που κάνουν το Data Entry.. Από την πιο απλή μέχρι την πιο προχωρημένη επιχειρηματική τεχνολογία και αν αγοράσετε, κάποιοι πρέπει να κάνουν εισαγωγή στοιχείων. Ή αν θέλουμε να έχουμε συζήτηση με τους όρους του conflict και των interactions ανάμεσα στους replicators, ή ο Von Neumann Universal Constructor είναι εξαιρετικά εύθραυστος όπως γράφεται ή κάποιοι σκόπιμα (configuration τώρα) εισάγουν παραποιημένα στοιχεία.

Αν μπορούσαμε όμως να απεμπλακούμε από τον Von Neumann και τους υπολογιστές και βλέπαμε την αρχή της συζήτησης, μιλώντας για το Παιχνίδι της Ζωής, ένα zero player game με αρχικό configuration, στην πραγματικότητα μπορούμε να δημιουργήσουμε διαφορετικά versions σε ολόκληρο το content management, όπου τώρα σημασία θα είχε το version control!

Έτσι θα πρέπει να δίνεται η δυνατότητα, η δυναμική στο παιχνίδι, κριτήριο 3, όχι απλά να δημιουργήσει κάτι που προηγήθηκε της ανακάλυψης της δομής του μορίου του DNA, δηλαδή έναν Von Neumann Universal Constructor, αλλά μία πύλη στην προσομοίωση του Σύμπαντος και νέων μαθηματικών προτάσεων γύρω από τον Κώδικα της Φύσης, που ούτως ή άλλως θα μπορούν να παρουσιαστούν είτε ως game simulations, είτε ξεκάθαρα ως επιστημονικές ιδέες με βάση την πραγματικότητα του 21ου αιώνα. Με άλλα λόγια πρόκειται για τη δημιουργία μίας νέας πλατφόρμας για την επιστήμη. Καλή εβδομάδα σας εύχομαι!

The Building Partnerships Canvas, An Interactive Game by XPLANE!

Object of play: The partnership canvas is a tool that enables visualization of current and/or future partnerships. It can also be used for early testing of the value creating potential of a partnership between two partnership candidates. The tool’s purpose is to define your business priority for partnering, and empathize with your partner to explore whether there is potentially a match. The partnership canvas can be used as a stand-alone tool, but comes to full strategizing value when it is jointly used with the business model canvas.

Bart Doorneweert & Ernst Houdkamp www.valuechaingeneration.com

Number of players: This can be done by yourself, but preferably with 2 teams of max 5 people representing each side of the partnership. Alternatively, make multiple pairs if there are more people.

Duration of play: (60-90 min):
- Step 1- Define intent (15 min)
–Step 2- Design partnership (15 min/sketch)
–Step 3- Bring teams to the negotiating table (15 min)
–Step 4- Evaluate the negotiation results and define next steps (20 min)

How to play
1. Define intent
a)    Describe the aim or goal of the partnership for your business
b)    List what would be ideal partners to work with and why. Organize a post up. Select a top partnership candidate, or multiple candidates.
c)    Create (multiples of) 2 teams; 1 representing your business, 1 for a potential partner’s business.
2. Design partnership
a)    Each team identifies their desired assets in their respective partner’s business model
b)    Teams sketches out a partnership canvas from their own team’s perspective using stickie notes to define each building block
3. Bring teams to the negotiating table
a)   Each team presents their partnership canvas
b)   Compare the two partnership canvasses by mirroring the partnership perspectives. Compare between  value offers of one team, to desired value of the other team, and whether there is mutual understanding of the transfer activities. Check for a clear fit.
c)   Create agreement on the created value for each partner. Adapt partnership canvas and iterate step 3 if required.
4. Evaluate the negotiation results and define next steps
a)   Do the elements of created value provide clear added value to each partner’s business?
b)   Define next steps to effectuate the partnership

Mirroring Partnership Perspectives

Strategy: The partnership canvas can be used to explore the idea of engaging in a partnership. A team can use the canvas to prepare for an upcoming conversation with a potential partner. Alternatively the session can be conducted jointly with a potential partner if there is already a mutual interest to explore partnering possibilities. The tool can firstly be used to determine whether there is a technical fit between two businesses. By working in teams and negotiating certain rivalry is always invoked, and teams can also get a sense of cultural fit between two partnering businesses.
In order to obtain full strategizing value from use of the canvas, it is advised to integrally work with the business model canvas. In the end, the partnership discussion is a key step in business model innovation

Gamestorming by XPLANE!

Creativity and invention has long been seen as a “black box.” As business people, we don’t typically try to understand this process. We fully expect that when designers, inventors, and other creative people go into a room with a goal, they will come out with more or less creative discoveries and results. Although when we watch them at work, we can observe some combination of sketching, animated conversations, messy desks, and drinking. But the fundamental nature of what happens in that room remains mostly a mystery.
It’s easy to leave creativity to the creative types, and say to yourself, “I’m just not a creative person.” The fact is that in a complex, dynamic, competitive knowledge economy, it’s no longer acceptable to take this position. If you are a knowledge worker, you must become, to some degree, creative.
That may sound a bit scary, but the fact is that successful creative people tend to employ simple strategies and practices to get where they want to go. It’s not so much that they employ a consistent, repeatable process that leads to consistent creative results. It’s more like a workshop with a set of tools and strategies for examining things deeply, for exploring new ideas, for performing experiments and testing hypotheses, to generate new and surprising insights and results.
So we set out, much like the brothers Grimm, to collect the best of these practices wherever we could find them, with a special focus on Silicon Valley, innovative companies, and the information revolution.
Many of these practices emerged from a kind of “Silicon soup” – the deeply interconnected network of Silicon valley, where ideas and people cross-pollinate like bees in a single massive hive. The practices live in a mostly oral culture, passed along from person to person by word of mouth. For example, a consultant uses an approach with a client, and the client begins to employ that approach internally. Over time, as more people employ a method, it evolves into something quite different, and over time the source of the original idea or approach may be lost. Sometimes methods are written down and sometimes, like folk tales, they exist in many different versions in many places.
We chose to call this practice “Gamestorming” because it seemed to come closer to describing the phenomenon than anything else we could think of.
Our goal with this collection was to find the best of these tools and practices and bring them together into a single place.
It is our hope that you will contribute games based on your personal knowledge and experience, that you will help us clarify the history of the ideas and practices, and that through your comments you can help us all better understand the complex and fascinating history of games at play in creative work.

Get the Book by Amazon!
Company source: http://www.xplane.com/

All About Philosophical Platonic Realism..

Platonic realism is a philosophical term usually used to refer to the idea of realism regarding the existence of universals or abstract objects after the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 427–c. 347 BC), a student of Socrates. As universals were considered by Plato to be ideal forms, this stance is confusingly also called Platonic idealism. This should not be confused with Idealism, as presented by philosophers such as George Berkeley: as Platonic abstractions are not spatial, temporal, or mental they are not compatible with the later Idealism's emphasis on mental existence. Plato's Forms include numbers and geometrical figures, making them a theory of mathematical realism; they also include the Form of the Good, making them in addition a theory of ethical realism.

Plato expounded his own articulation of realism regarding the existence of universals in his dialogue The Republic and elsewhere, notably in the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, the Meno and the Parmenides.

Universals

In Platonic realism, universals do not exist in the way that ordinary physical objects exist, even though Plato metaphorically referred to such objects to explain his concepts. More modern versions of the theory seek to avoid applying potentially misleading descriptions to universals. Instead, such versions maintain that it is meaningless (or a category mistake) to apply the categories of space and time to universals.

Regardless of their description, Platonic realism holds that universals do exist in a broad, abstract sense, although not at any spatial or temporal distance from people's bodies. Thus, people cannot see or otherwise come into sensory contact with universals, but in order to conceive of universals, one must be able to conceive of these abstract forms.

Theories of universals

Theories of universals, including Platonic realism, are challenged to satisfy certain constraints on theories of universals.

Platonic realism strongly satisfies one of those constraints, in that it is a theory of what general terms refer to. Forms are ideal in supplying meaning to referents for general terms. That is, to understand terms such as applehood and redness, Platonic realism says that they refer to forms. Indeed, Platonism gets much of its plausibility because mentioning redness, for example, seems to be referring to something that is apart from space and time, but which has lots of specific instances.

Some contemporary linguistic philosophers construe "Platonism" to mean the proposition that universals exist independently of particulars (a universal is anything that can be predicated of a particular). Similarly, a form of modern Platonism is found in the predominant philosophy of mathematics, especially regarding the foundations of mathematics. The Platonic interpretation of this philosophy includes the thesis that mathematics is not created but discovered.

Forms

Plato's interpretation of universals is linked to his Theory of Forms in which he uses both the terms εἶδος (eidos: "form") and ἰδέα (idea: "characteristic") to describe his theory. Forms are mind independent abstract objects or paradigms (παραδείγματα: patterns in nature) of which particular objects and the properties and relations present in them are copies. Form is inherent in the particulars and these are said to participate in the form. Classically idea has been translated (or transliterated) as "idea," but secondary literature now typically employs the term "form" (or occasionally "kind," usually in discussion of Plato's Sophist and Statesman) to avoid confusion with the English word connoting "thought".

Platonic form can be illustrated by contrasting a material triangle with an ideal triangle. The Platonic form is the ideal triangle — a figure with perfectly drawn lines whose angles add to 180 degrees. Any form of triangle that we experience will be an imperfect representation of the ideal triangle. Regardless of how precise your measuring and drawing tools you will never be able to recreate this perfect shape. Even drawn to the point where our senses cannot perceive a defect, in its essence the shape will still be imperfect; forever unable to match the ideal triangle.

Some versions of Platonic realism, like that of Proclus, regard Plato's forms as thoughts in the mind of God. Most consider forms not to be mental entities at all.

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Disruptive Innovation by Wikipedia!

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in a new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.
In contrast to disruptive innovation, a sustaining innovation does not create new markets or value networks but rather only evolves existing ones with better value, allowing the firms within to compete against each other's sustaining improvements. Sustaining innovations may be either "discontinuous" (i.e. "transformational" or "revolutionary") or "continuous" (i.e. "evolutionary").
The term "disruptive technology" has been widely used as a synonym of "disruptive innovation", but the latter is now preferred, because market disruption has been found to be a function usually not of technology itself but rather of its changing application. Sustaining innovations are typically innovations in technology, whereas disruptive innovations change entire markets. For example, the automobile was a revolutionary technological innovation, but it was not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower priced Ford Model T in 1908. The mass-produced automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market. The automobile, by itself, was not.
The current theoretical understanding of disruptive innovation is different from what might be expected by default, an idea that Clayton M. Christensen called the "technology mudslide hypothesis". This is the simplistic idea that an established firm fails because it doesn't "keep up technologically" with other firms. In this hypothesis, firms are like climbers scrambling upward on crumbling footing, where it takes constant upward-climbing effort just to stay still, and any break from the effort (such as complacency born of profitability) causes a rapid downhill slide. Christensen and colleagues have shown that this simplistic hypothesis is wrong; it doesn't model reality. What they have shown is that good firms are usually aware of the innovations, but their business environment does not allow them to pursue them when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from that of sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). In Christensen's terms, a firm's existing value networks place insufficient value on the disruptive innovation to allow its pursuit by that firm. Meanwhile, start-up firms inhabit different value networks, at least until the day that their disruptive innovation is able to invade the older value network. At that time, the established firm in that network can at best only fend off the market share attack with a me-too entry, for which survival (not thriving) is the only reward.
The work of Christensen and others during the 2000s has addressed the question of what firms can do to avoid oblivion brought on by technological disruption.

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Παρουσίαση του βιβλίου "Μαθηματικά Μοντέλα"

Το βιβλίο αυτό αποτελεί μία πρωτότυπη ιδέα, με πολλαπλούς στόχους:

• να αναδείξει τον τρόπο με τον οποίο συγκεκριμένα μαθηματικά εργαλεία χρησιμοποιούνται για τη μελέτη εξειδικευμένων εφαρμογών
• να προωθήσει την ανεξάντλητη ποικιλία των θεμάτων στην οποία βρίσκουν εφαρμογή τα μαθηματικά μοντέλα
• να διακριθεί για την αθωράκιστη αλλά και πειθαρχημένη αποκαλυπτικότητά του

Στο βιβλίο αναπτύσσονται θέματα οικονομικών εφαρμογών, φυσικής, εφαρμοσμένων μαθηματικών αλλά και βιολογίας. Δόθηκε έμφαση στην προσέγγιση των παραπάνω ενοτήτων με τη βοήθεια του μαθηματικού μόντελινγκ. 'Ενα βιβλίο προορισμένο για να δηλώνει διαχρονικά την παρουσία του στο ευρύτερο κοινό, στο οποίο και απευθύνεται.