Plane Conversations

On January 25, Dan Robles suggested that Social Currency might be used to fight terrorism. Some of our friends on Linkedin joined the conversation. 

Greg Johnson, President, CEO and founder of OneSky Jets, says:

“I think there are a few interesting points of discussion in Dan’s latest post. The first relates to where we catch terrorists… Trying to stop them at the airport checkpoint is an effort in futility. Terrorists are a determined lot and as Dan states, they only have to succeed once. The answer lies in knowing more about everyone who elects to fly as personally invasive as that may sound.

The U.S. and other countries are already starting to collect more data from passengers…birthdate and place of birth in addition to name, even on domestic flights. There has been an ongoing debate about a federal ID card although my opinion is that an additional card would be redundant. The databases exist today to to give law enforcement a pretty decent ability to profile passengers and I only see that capability expanding.

The typical terrorist’s desire to keep a low profile works against them when they are attempting to blend in to an increasingly data-driven society. The absence of data or abnormal patterns will stand out.

I don’t believe that “social currency” on its own is enough. There are billions of peaceful people on the planet that are not actively engaged in social networking today. The fact that my Mother isn’t on Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace shouldn’t (on its own) subject her to an additional level of security screening, however a college student today without an online presence might throw a red flag or two.

Also, don’t think that law enforcement isn’t already leveraging social networks. I have an associate who has been involved in government facial recognition projects. When the government needed a database of names and photos to test this new technology, where do you think they went? The publicly available pages of Facebook!

So the net/net here in my opinion is that the publicly available data in social networks can and will be used by governments of the world as one facet in a multi-dimensional campaign to know who is flying before they get anywhere near the airport and in the big picture, that’s a good thing.”

Mike Osborne, Operations AME at Honeywell, shares this concern:

“How do you propose to ascertain their networks and claims? Either or both seem easy enough to falsify.”

My reply is:

“I believe that the idea is to go for a “preponderance of evidence.” Just as the lack of a credit report, utility bills or bank records casts doubt on the authenticity of an identity, the lack of social credit and social activity history casts doubt on the social interaction and perhaps even identity of the passenger. Certainly, just as false credit reports, etc. can be created to support an alias, false social backgrounds could be created to support it as well. I think the point that Dan Robles is making is that to create monetary history and social history that coincide is difficult and would make it more difficult for terrorists to support several believeable aliases.”

Kenneth J. Goldstein, President at KJG International Consulting, responds:

“No as left to their own devices, most would not provide a sufficient background to grant the rest of us security.”

What do you think?

Click on pen to

In my 19 January article, I argued that automobiles are economically more efficient than buses because they allow for more options in the quality of interactions that a passenger can choose as opposed to a scheduled service route alternative.

On the Contrary

In this article, I will argue the opposite point that people isolated in cars decreases the quantity of interactions that can often expose opportunities and more options.  Therefore, by eliminating these random interactions, the communities that support their social needs are in fact weakened.

Ironically, the point of contradicting myself is to validate the strengths and uncover the weaknesses of a business strategy for the Private Aviation Community.

For example:

We can validate that idea that highly-optioned, point-to-point travel is a key advantage of Private Aviation.  We also notice the curious absence of  the “community” of our clients in our calculus.   The assumption is that community is static whereas aviation is dynamic.

The paradigm shift is that aviation is static and community is dynamic

Jane Jacobs wrote extensively on the three following pillars of community:

1. Communities provide the resources that families cannot provide for themselves.

2. Communities consist of convenient and responsive commercial transactions.

3. Communities capture the speaking relationships among neighbors, acquaintances, and friends.

Strategy Revisions:

The strategic opportunity for Private Aviation is to look deep into communities that we serve.  What resources can Private Aviation provide that families cannot provide for themselves? How can Private Aviation make all commercial transactions more convenient and responsive? Finally, how can Private Aviation empower the speaking relationships among neighbors, acquaintances, and friends?

Expanding the market for Private Aviation may be as simple as expanding the definition of Aviation Community far beyond where the competition is contracting theirs.

Click on pen to

The commercial aviation industry in the United States, as a whole, experienced a net loss in revenue in 2008. The key metric to watch is the Revenue Per Mile (RPM) since the predictable behavior of the commercial airlines, individually and as an industry, will largely be in response to RPM.

Revenue Per Mile may be impacted by internal efficiency, modernization, and technological change. However, RPM may also be influenced by shifting cost back to the passenger in the form of lost amenities.

For the purpose of this analysis, we’ll call that shift a social cost denominated as a social currency. For example, charging extra for that oversized bag does not move from the loss to profit column of the accounting statement; rather, it is simply shifted to a social burden column which will manifest in social media as a future public relations nightmare, a poor review in a social network, loss of loyalty and goodwill, or learned travel behaviors such as denying the carrier of extra revenue by not carrying that extra bag.

At first, social costs will act as a liability against the offending carrier (such as the five hour tarmac tours). Over time, as tacit collusion among the carriers unfolds, the social currency liability shifts to the industry as a whole where the aggregate decision is to simply not travel, to bundle travel events, gang travel legs, or choose alternate modes of transportation.

Few people realize that Social Media itself is a competitor to commercial air travel.  Today, groups of people can integrate and coordinate more tightly, ultimately reducing the need to travel or organizing their travel more efficiently.  Meanwhile, business travelers are adopting a host of technologies that keeps them informed and connected virtually.

The commercial airline response to financial strain may, in fact, lead passengers to alternate modes of transportation; physical and virtual.

While commercial and private aviation is reacting to RPM denominated in dollars, the customers are responding to a social currency.  Private aviation has accurately identified the burdens imposed by the commercial airlines industry to distinguish itself as a viable alternative.  Now, the challenge is to express this as a social currency denominated asset prior to converting back to dollars denominated ticket price, not after.

Click on pen to

(Author’s note: The following is meant to engage new ideas rather than promote any specific scheme or ideology)

Given the events of the last few months weeks, it’s time to for the aviation industry to get serious with Social Media. This article demonstrates how an alternate currency can be used to severely reduce or eliminate terrorist risk in commercial aviation. Think I’m kidding, read on.

Obviously an airline will not let you board an airplane if you don’t have the financial currency sufficient to buy ticket. Why should an airline let you board an airplane if you do not have social currency sufficient to fulfill your social obligations while in the air?

People with extreme social currency deficiencies are routinely stripped of their rights by a jury of peers and isolated from society for a period of time (where they would not board an airplane anyway). While there are many systems in place to manage the various degrees of social currency deficiency, none appear to be able to identify a terrorist without also violating the rights of non-terrorists.

Human Writes

However, many people are willing to share information about themselves to associates with whom an economic benefit is shared or exchanged. This happens a billion times per week on Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter – why not among fellow passengers? After all everyone is already connected by six degrees.

What would a terrorist’s Facebook profile say about them? Do they have a lot of referrals on Linkedin? Do they post great work on Flikr? Is their community orchestra featured on My Space? Are their posts popular on twitter?

Should a social currency credit score become imperative to social transactions as the financial credit score is for financial transactions?

Banks and Insurance companies already rely on a highly invasive “Credit Score” to establish financial risk profile as a means of protecting themselves and their other clients. Why wouldn’t an airline use a social credit score to establish a social risk profile as a means of protecting themselves and the lives of their other clients?

Ruse and lose

Sure, the bad guys can adapt to social media as they have adapted to all other measures. The problem is that the greater the size and scope of their social media ruse, the more difficult it is to maintain the ruse. A threshold score could be set to nearly eliminate this possibility. Those folks can then simply opt into the full body scan.

The Paradigm Shift

As the saying goes, the attacker needs to be successful only once, while the defender needs to be successful every time. The concept of a Social media credit score flips this paradigm on it’s head. The attacker’s social credit score needs to be successful every time. The defender needs to be successful only once.

Click on pen to

The market is never wrong; cars are more efficient that buses.  Otherwise most people would not spend an average of 7000 dollars per year to own and operate a car instead of buying a yearly bus pass for 400 dollars.  So why hasn’t private aviation taken off?

ROI (Read Only the Index)

On the basis of ROI (return on investment), bus economics are superior to car economics. But not so obvious in this equation is the freedom for diverse interactions to occur between people, institutions, conversations and ideas.  With car economics, more targeted ideas are exchanged, more transactions executed, more high-value productivity is delivered, and greater access to socially valuable options is assured.

Options are assets

An option is defined as the right, without the obligation, of executing a business objective.  Yes, stopping for a gallon of milk on the way home from work is a business objective.  As Warren Buffet so famously said prior to the fiery dot com tailspin, “if stock options are not a liability [balance sheet line item], then what are they?”

A Balancing Act

Also not so obvious is that some types of human interaction have been accelerated by an astonishing rate in just a few short years due, in no small part, to social media.  Yet, other types of human interaction remained static, regulated by the availability of travel options.  This increasingly upset balance that will drive something…maybe even a jet.

With a standard ROI model, private aviation costs too much. However, with options analysis, the business case improves. Options are the new financial system and variance is the new financial instrument. People are now in a position to demand immediate results.  Time, conversations, and experience are the new currency.  They value the right, but not the obligation, to change their minds.  The financial crisis has taught them to collect assets and reject liabilities – human contacts are an asset and trivial encounters are a liability.

Anatomy of an option

A financial option has several important parts: a strike price, an exercise price, an expiration date, and settlement terms.  The difference between the strike price and the exercise price reflects the variance (volatility) of the product.   High variance commands greater difference in price of the strike and the exercise price (either buying or selling).  This is what people are trading among themselves in social media – they are trading options.

Read the rest of the book

The value proposition of private aviation is likely due to private aviation’s inability to articulate financial products other than ROI.  The marketing of private aviation must be done in a manner that is very different than how the major airlines advertise their travel products.  The distinction will surely be fought in the ROI vs. Options domain.

Click on pen to