Class of Thursday 6 April 2006
Entered by Gio Wiederhold, updated 9, 14, 25 Jan 2004, 1 April 2005, 7 April 2006. Links are still be added.
Understand how the Internet-linked business world -- which will be your world when you graduate will look a few years hence. The term business has a broad interpretation, and covers also government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and certainly health care and education.
Generate on-line documents that will help a reader navigate this world. Content is more valuable than being cute.
Learn to write for readers of the future.
We started with the question: when would books as we know then disappear? The answers ranged from never, to 10 years, to 200 years. When there is such a divergence, it is useful to partition the topic, because in a narrower domain more useful answers may be possible. Remember, we want to be useful, and the initial range provides little of use for the reader.
So we consider the divide-and-conquer approach. For each of these publication types the answer should have a narrower range :
(generalization: can printed material be trusted, or not?)
On-line publications have potential advantages: links to prerequisite information, links to detail, ability have dynamic material Graphs that represent equations, web cams, .... .
There is an economic interplay between writers and readers. The writer spends time and effort in writing, the reader spends time and effort in reading to gain a benefit. If writing is done well, the reader's cost for the same benefit is reduced. Then there will be more readers, and the authors benefit (fame, fees) increase.
Not yet discussed was, but to be considered in any project: How the project be sustained. Choices are
In each case I'd like to see a business plan.
The essence of a business plan is to state what the costs and benefits (could be income) if your project proposal are. Most business plans do that for many periods into the future, because initially there will be losses, only after sometime benefits.
Even if fame is the benefit you seek, you should evaluate what it will cost you to maintain your work over some period, and when you will derive fame, and what that fame will do for you.
During the years that the course has been given, the Internet world and our view of it has changed drastically. For instance, the first time it was taught the question was: would people buy things from vendors on the Internet.
Then we had the dot.com boom. We had people like Larry Page come and talk about their plans for Google. Now they don't have time anymore to come.
Things heated up: a slide from an early class summarizes the prediction and the explanation that became necessary to explain the dot.com bust.
We will continue to look into the future. A common problem of predicting the future that people tend to overestimate what will happen in the short term and underestimate what will happen in the long term [Source-of-quote].
Your background, interests, goals, passions.
Your colleagues: go to the classlist for their email addresses
These notes, linked from the class schedule web page.
A note on How to write for the web.
For your classmates your colleagues, use the classlist
Gio Wiederhold, Shirley Tessler <tessler@aldo.com>, Avron Barr <barr@aldo.com>. Joyce Moser <moser@stanford.com>
You can find more by going back to the description page for this class, and follow links for earlier years. They are similarly organized, but not maintained.
Mutual discussion; understanding what's going on; analysis; business trade-offs, making predictions, but not telling what the future will bring.
Student participation: reading, arguing, writing of Web pages for an enterprise, the CS73 Internet Website, for a wiki.
Reach me by email, am often on travel.
Select your topic as early as possible, but make sure you have an outline by the midterm.
Topic discussion will be driven by interests. Areas: Retail Commerce (B2C), B2B, G2C, Education, Healthcare, ...
Wide variety of backgrounds, expertise, goals. All
names and emails should be on the classlist,
please check it. Pictures?
If any participants are not or wrong on the classlist,
let mailto:gio@cs.stanford.edu know
soon.
Please report to us when you find errors on the current class web pages. We can't fix all errors on web pages from prior classes, but let us know that too.
The grade fully depends on your final creation.
But you won't have a great final creation if you don't
1. Think early about your project
2. Collect the resources needed
3. Write and provide incremental updates, as shown in the schedule
4. Present around midterm time your project, its motivation and its sustainability to your peers and to us
5. Have time to create, edit, review, and get feedback about your project
Final: a web page report that could be actionable information for someone who wants to benefit from use of the Internet:
a) If its a business make a specific business plan
b) A general analysis, but not so broad that it has no depth
c) An exposition of current or expected technology, laws, social changes, ... that will affect such businesses
All of the grade depends on it, so think about now, give me a draft at midterm time.
Read how to write for the web.
We'll discuss proposals in class,