Tom Parish
Mar 4 2010
I was recently asked who I interviewed at CISO for the EnterpriseLeadership.org show. There were two interviews last year with CISO employees and both were quite insightful. We focused on social media in the enterprise in 2009 and so the conversation with Marie Hatter was one I was looking forward to in hopes of seeing where CISCO is headed with social media internally and externally. Marie covers the topic in depth. Norman Jacknis talked about CISCO's mission to help other companies and municipalities with innovation uses of the Internet.
The thing I admire about CISCO is their drive to stay ahead of the Internet technology curve and their focus on people. You can tell this from the interviews. So if you want to hear more please visit these two page where a link is provided for the audio podcast.
1.
From Networking to Social Media the Cisco Way: Marie Hattar, Cisco VP
2.
Using Technology in Innovative Ways: Norman Jacknis, Former CIO of Westchester County, NY
See and download the full gallery on posterous
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Mar 4 2010
March 12th is right around the corner for those of us going to SXSW2010. It appears to be even larger then it was last year so now is the time to get organized else I'll feel overwhelmed with choice. I'm thinking about how to best organize my panel selections and backup panel selections and meeting times with so many friends coming into town. Oh and the parties ... my goodness so much to do at SXSW this year.
I noticed Friday is completely packed with panels - good ones. It used to be SXSW really didn't get going until Saturday morning so clearly the conference has grown again this year. My plan is to get over to the Austin Conference center Thursday afternoon (after 3pm) to get my badge and swag early. You do not want to attempt that on Friday with the crowds of people pushing in to get registered. To be fair SXSW has the registration down pretty well but it can seem a like a zoo for a while especially when you're feeling anxious to get to you first panels on Friday morning (versus waiting in line for your badge).
By the way, if you have an iPhone be sure to download the SXSW app because it's going to save you a lot of time while moving around the conference looking for panels and people. I think they finally managed to get the online calendar for SXSW done in a what that is not so confusing. This one is easy, fast and flexible to use and very informative.
I've received a number of requests to have conversations with old and to new friends. This is the most exciting part of SXSW I think - just networking like crazy with so many like minded people. Here is how you can either follow or communicate with me.
Twitter - tparish
Foursquare member
email tom.parish AT
gmail.com
Skype tparish
www.TomParish.com
Cell and SMS 512-497-5046
See you there!
Tom
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Feb 23 2010
These are the kinds of projects you just love to get. I did the soundtrack on this. The music is pretty dramatic but it fits.
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Jan 27 2010
Apparently Steve Jobs is more excited about this event today then he's been in years. Well we should expect excitement and some razzle dazzle hype but surely something more is brewing here that is more then announcing new hardware. Could it be the new we're on the edge of a new economy around buying and 'experiencing' information?
I don't think Steve Job's excitement is based solely one on a big staged reveal of the table as happened for the iPhone in 2007. He held it up and received ooohs and aaahs cause nobody had created something like that before. For a while it didn't really need apps as it was so novel and heck Apple wasn't know for being a cell phone company at the time. That was an exciting change.
Well the tablet isn't that novel - really. Apple's version will be unique - as always and become a very desirable device to own. But here's is what is more likely going to occur.
What Job's is excited about is what will happen as a result of the Tablet becoming popular (and copied widely no doubt). What's going to happen is a rebirth of the publishing industry. Parallel to this product announcement will be the relationships Apple has forged with so many news, media and educational publishers. The New York Times for example said next year they will be charging for their content. Rupert Murdoch and his publishing industry has been saying for some time he'll be charging for content on the web for his newspapers. See this interview of him where he talks about 'paywalls'. It's worth watching - all of it. All digital - all media - all now available for free or for pay. For pay though will bring greater personalized interaction with the media you buy.
MacGraw Hill will move text books to the Tablet and add more intelligent interactions in the text books over time - greater value. What's about to happen I think is harmonic fusion of a number of trends - truly portable hardware that runs amazing applications easily like adding apps to your iPhone. And the addition of intelligent presentation of information on tablets that are easy to carry and share - like newspapers and books. Now you can search media, combine it, share it and have fun with media information. Newspapers you throw away or put at the bottom of you bird's cage. Tablet's with personalized media you use, share and refine because you enjoy the experience.
Now you'll be adding highly personalized information sources and these sources will have added value along by providing a smart application to give you your own unique cut on the news paper or whatever sources and topics you're monitoring. Applications that give you a highly pesonalized experience of engage with media like you do with iTunes only more - a whole lot more and not just with Apple but with many many many publishers.
If you notice in the Apple Store more and more apps are charging for the apps. These sources can be easily updated, expanded and augmented because there is no printing. What you're getting paid for is the information (or think curriculum) that they have crafted into digital form versus printed form. We're coming close to the age of digital information that includes free and pay. Now we have devices that are always on, always updating and intelligent enough to personalize to your needs and this is the DNA of the new economy.
Always on always updating provides an information provider with the ability to charge for the added value being provided by constantly improving application and high topic specific 'things you want to know' tailored exactly to your wishes. A person who owns and iPhone over time starts using and buying the free then the for pay versions of a dozen or more apps. I have roughly 30 but you know me. We'll see this happen with the Tablet as the apps can be shared and the tablet version will have greater sophistication with a larger screen and more powerful processor. Think about the apps you have and how they work versus two years ago - there is a lot of sophistication in them and this is only the beginning.
What's leading up to this new economy are the very low prices of iPhone (or any smart phone) applications - it's sorta like a ring tone only it's an app now - same prices. A low wall to get over. Often free at first. So like the iPhone with library of apps the Tablet will have similar apps (that you get free and you buy) that provide greater benefit with larger screens. These unique apps will provide a compelling way to digest information or any type of media (versus only music or only movies). We will willing to pay for these apps and these information sources and this this unique 'experience' of interacting and sharing any kind of media - this is part of the revel for the new economy of 2010. This is why Steve is brimming with enthusiasm and this is the beginning of a new economy that values experience with information versus simply delivering information.
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Jan 26 2010
Audio only version of interview - download link.
In this podcast from EnterpriseLeadership.org Vid Byanna, executive director of Accenture's internal IT infrastructure, talks about his company's and collaborative computing, and cloud computing initiatives. Each day the 177,000 employees at Accenture, a $19 billion global IT services company, must communicate effectively with 1,000 of customers in more than 120 countries. In fact, Accenture executives often find themselves looking for internal experts who can support specific customer engagements.
The traditional process has involved emailing one's network of colleagues to help with the search. Now these executives can use Accenture People, an internal version of LinkedIn, to search the company's global network of employees. Accenture People comprises Accenture Collaboration 2.0, a global set of technology initiatives to improve knowledge sharing, enhance communication, and allow for dynamic collaboration within the organization.
Technologies in this collaboration platform include social networking applications, greater search functionality, telepresence, and unified communications. Vid Byanna, the executive director for Accenture's internal IT infrastructure capabilitities and Web 3.0 initiatives, says that Accenture Collaboration 2.0 allows employees quickly to get access to the information from experts who can help resolve an issue, or kick start things that deliver value to customers better than through traditional methods. For example, 30 minutes after looking in Accenture People, an employee was holding a telepresence sessions with an Accenture expert on digital media communications."
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Jan 21 2010
Some rather amazing news has been released about Apple's intentions to put iTunes into their own cloud infrastructure. The TechCrunch article below talks about the impact on their bottom line as they increase sales of music and, of course, make it significantly easier for us users to access our iTunes library like we access our gmail or Google Docs – easily from any computer anytime. Means we don't have to keep it all locally and remember to back it up.
At the very bottom of this
TechCrunch article you see what Apple is doing in leveraging API access through their cloud to third parties like Pandora. Pandora and others like them essentially become sales outlets for people who listen to music and want to buy a copy. Pandora is all about sharing in a social space. Nice.
Not mentioned in this article is the following ...The Apple Tablet is coming soon (most likely) and this is going to be interesting to watch from both a product launch perspective as everyone has been yammering about and from a social change perspective. Yes there is a point to this. Hang on.
Here's what I know from years of experience: Tablet devices will always have limited memory locally because they rely on memory stored over the Internet. And more obvious a point is why keep multiple copies of your iTunes library on different machines when you can simply access your Library in the cloud from any computer? In particular, devices like a Tablet are designed to depend on the ’net for everything. They’re an extension of the always-connected, on-demand world we're making possible with these new enterprise cloud infrastructures. It's the basis of the new economy (more on that later).
Eliminating large amounts of local memory on the device gives the hardware manufacturer the ability to design devices with a different emphasis. Memory is typically one of the most expensive pieces of any system, next to the CPU and the display. If you can significantly reduce the cost (and maintenance) of large local memory devices, then you can allocate more of the design budget toward improving the user interface or spending more on a faster CPU or more advanced display technology.
Typical PC-based netbooks focus on a product strategy of lowest price points. If you can build a tablet computer with very little memory, you can sell the thing for less. Period. However, Apple takes a leap and says they'll invest that leftover budget money into making the device work differently – really differently – while still fitting nicely in their product line.
Over the next 3-5 years the new electronic mobile product space is simply going to be amazing with these new design trade-offs. We just can't fully see how radically different everything is going to be as we backfill so many business environments with social business strategies and IT infrastructures in the clouds, all interconnecting in ways we've never imagined possible. Think about things - consider video production or architectural design packages that are currently run as huge desktop-based applications, islands unto to themselves. They have no interconnection with accounting, project management or marketing and so forth. This will all change as application developers see how to interconnect these applications in the clouds to create a graceful pipeline of data exchanged between applications across different departments of a business. Now sharing information about a project is easier by a long shot. Making views of it touchable on a Tablet - easy enough now as the data accessible regardless of the device.
This sharing of information and personal sharing of hardware is the new direction for 2010. Software vendors from different systems never had a common, proven way to achieve this, much less a financial reason to do so. Now vendors will have both in thousands of business environments around the world. This kind of global change has never occured before - both a technical and social wave at once.
Think of it like this, we've been catering to the ME generation, and this is the move to the new WE generation. Why do you think the Nutendo Wii box has been so popular lately in a family/friends home environment? It's a game you share. More to come with this trend. Wait until you hook up Wii's in the clouds with other families ... or you place with others on Guitar Hero or maybe both games could interact with each other. See where this is going?
2010 is going to be quite an interesting decade of developments that impacts each of us as well as the ‘all’ of us.
(picture from
dynamicbusiness.com)
Tom
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Jan 20 2010
I'm personally excited to tell you about an iPhone app called BMC Today and you can
download it now.
To create this app I had the honor of being involved throughout the entire development process with Techendeavour. They are an both technically competent at building mobile apps for a variety of smart phone platforms and an extremely kind and fun group of people to work with. Special thanks to BMC Software to make this project possible and be willing to test the waters with this initial idea of making BMC news and technical media available in a mobile format.
The BMC Today mobile app is currently an Apple iPhone/iTouch application created to make it simple to monitor and filter BMC Software news, blogs, podcasts, videos and Thought Leadership white papers to the mobile user. This includes podcast and articles from the BMC sponsored site at EnterpriseLeadeship.org where there are some 500 interviews with CIOs, CTOs and CEO of enterprises. There are 10 very active bloggers at BMC that you can follow who talk about a variety enterprise IT related topics. The BMC Today app makes it easy to grab some interesting content on the go and listen to it later while on a trip.
This application is intended for use by IT professionals, enterprise executives, BMC employees and partners, customers, stock holders and students interested in products and services of BMC Software.
My most favorite feature in the app is the ability to create your on tags to filter the content so you only see what you're interested in topic wise. You can also share what you're reading with your own social circle of friends via email, Twitter and Facebook.
There is an extensive FAQ page and a dedicated BMC Community group for the app to help you and provide a way for you to provide feedback so we can make it better.
Let me know your thoughts and what else you'd like to see the app to make it more useful for you.
Tom
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Jan 19 2010
Assuming this upcoming Apple event January 27th is actually about the so called (mythical) Apple Tablet then yes I have a sense we may feel disappointment. Why? Partly because there is so much wild speculation and expectation surrounding this charming yet mythical new device. I remember seeing devices like this at Disney World where there was a display of the future home. People sitting around with some kind of thin electronic tablet being entertained in some way. Talk is cheap, mockups are easy. Creating a real product that does things we've never done before - well that's the kind of legendary design work Apple is known for and so often the source of unbridled speculation.
Surely some things seem possible at this point if you connect the dots. Apple is interested in being a catalyst for other companies to publish e-books and e-magazines and in doing so make their Tablet the next iPod of print media as it did with traditional audio media. Reading a lot content on an iPhone is an act of faith and carrying around a laptop all over the house just becomes weirdly impractical with a laptop. Yes we all do it but, it’s not ideal. I have chargers scattered around the home as a result. Devices like the Amazon Kindle are portable with long battery life but who wants a black and white e-reader only. Hence all the excitement about Apple's mythical tablet device which would be more fun, have video, utilize touch gesturing controls and capitalize on Apple's ability to get big companies with lots of existing content to feed content into it. We're hearing hints of this all over the news starting to emerge before the launch. So yes I want more though then a dedicated e-book reader and a larger screen then an iPhone to read news, browse the Internet and enjoy video. With audio there is no issue as Apple has the user interface designed to our liking.
Truthfully I too have my hopes and desires for this mythical tablet because I'm thinking of it as a device for sharing content (print, audio, video, Internet sites) more seamlessly from desktop to laptop to iphone to my theater room and with others around me. But I can see regardless of how amazing the device may be, it's going to fall short of all the hyperbolic speculation that bloggers seem to endlessly want to write about and likely mine too. There will be disappointment.
Reminds me of when I was a kid thinking about my birthday. Once it came and it was over somehow the feeling afterwards wasn't nearly as fun as the build up and the presents though nice just didn't match my hopes. We'll have this let down too. There will be things we want it to do that will just not occur. As much as I love Apple I'm sure there will be some weird thing they do that you just go ' huh' what the heck? Like the first iPhone with that absolutely stupid decision to use a non standard headphone adapter. Remember? You couldn't use your headphones with it. Bet you forgot about that. There is always something.
The deal is Apple does so much right you forget about those little design clunkers. I'm sure there will be a few here. On the dreamy side of things the final design of this mythical device will not do things we hope it might. For example, give you the ability to sit in your living room and have the tablet work seamlessly with your TV in some fashion (assuming there is some kind of wireless base station for it). I want the tablet to be a kind of handheld wireless window(s) on the the Internet which acts like an AppleTV only you can pull whatever kind of content you want from the Internet using your fingers and have it play on the TV and also be a kind of remote control for the TV. Or better have two or three of your friends in the same room each with a tablet and be able to switch back and forth between yourselves as you easily place movies and websites on the TV while talking about the media. Now we are talking real power of collaboration and some real fun. Reminds me of the days you took pictures and came home and passed around those things called prints. Remember how easy that was? Why can't it be that easy with a computer? What a hassle it is in a conference room to hook up your laptop, get it going, bring up a browser, get the video to play, make the Internet work and don't even TRY to share content with others in the room. If you could seamlessly share whatever is on your screens from one person to the next on a single projector then you could actually have a real multimedia type collaboration process. And be able to pass the content around from device to device like you passed around printed pictures and write on notes on the the back.
Likely this kind of capability isn't going to happen. But what will occur is something close I predict (well ok I'm wishing). Let's face it the only practical thing that will occur January 27th is Apple will announce a new version of the iPhone OS - version 4.0. They need to do this to blunt the advancement of Google DNA phones that are slowly gaining in popularity and capability. And Google is Apple's only real threat now not Nokia which has sadly fallen back to the worst trick in the book when you get behind your competitor - sue the competition. Clearly a sign of problems for them. Blackberry is so set in their approach that I don't seem them affecting the growing popularity of iPhone popularity anytime soon. But Google has nothing to [ 'lose' (you typed loose, like a loose shoe lace ], everything to gain and a willingness to fail until they get it right - with multiple versions from different companies. It's tough going against that kind of competition.
What I see happening is Steve Jobs coming out to talk about the 4.0 iPhone OS update planned though we will not get to use it for a couple more months I assume. Lots of goodies there including sharing of content more seamlessly with your macbooks and desktops is what I'm hoping for. A more seamless connection would be nice so you're not always going through iTunes and a host of little iPhone app vendors to reach inside the iPhone. Maybe so, maybe not, we'll see. More likely iPhone OS 4.0 will have a lot of more control over how use contacts as the center of your universe and a better form of multitasking for at least the 3Gs and whatever is the next iPhone. Whatever we’re seeing on competing smart phones will likely quickly be available on iPhones and possibly more. Though that niggling issue of real multitasking of applications on the iPhone is not likely to happen until the next generation. But on the mythical tablet well that could be reality for now until the next generation iPhone.
So this iPhone OS 4.0 update will be the basis of the new Tablet. The question of why have a tablet if it's just a big iPhone? Well if there is a seamless, wireless screen type sharing connection of content across your desktop and your Tablet then you would have a better reason to have both. If there was a way to run multiple applications at the same time with multiple windows on the tablet - that would get my attention and transfer calls possibly between the devices. There is the opportunity to have some real synergy if the content sharing idea I'm talking about was possible. You can just swipe and move any kind of Internet content between the devices without retyping URLs to see the same thing. Have you used the Magic Mouse? Use one for about 15 minutes and you just can't keep your hands off it. A lovely device that just works so well with your fingers. Imagine having one that allows a finger swipe to move content easily between your tablet and your desktop. Now imagine having your Tablet and saying wow I want to work more with this content and with a few swipes of your finger(s) it just slides back over to your desktop (or laptop). Likely this is what iLife 2010 and or iWork 2010 might make possible (for now).
Add in the ability use a bluetooth keyboard and voice commands and a webcam and yes, I could see owning this mythical tablet. But just being a jumbo iPhone that runs the same apps only bigger - I don’t think so.
Likely Jobs will get a great deal of attention from the Apple crowd during the introduction of the Tablet and I’m hoping to see some of these things in my overly excited state of expectation. These are the kinds of product features that make sense to me and create a unique synergy between all your Apple products and if Apple does it right with Windows PCs too. And these are the kinds of features you buy Apple products for and give the competition heart ache.
Or maybe we'll all be heart broken when the reality of what is shown somehow doesn't actually match up with our expectations. We'll see soon enough.
What do you think?
Tom
image by Adam Benton
www.kromekat.com
Commissioned by MacLife magazine.
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Dec 15 2009
As host and overseer of the http://www.EnterpriseLeadership.org community I'm making some end of year changes to get us going for 2010. One rather fun update is building a Twitter list list of 21 amazing individuals who have been interviewed by me and Elizabeth Ferrarini. The Twitter list widget sits on the home page and updates every 5 seconds and cycles through Tweets from 21 people we've interviewed. Special thanks to Elizabeth for pulling all the Twitter addresses together from our community of interviewees in 2009.
Enterpriseleadership.org is a thought-leadership forum to help Global Fortune 1000 C-level executives improve their business impact of information technology in delivering products and services to customers and other constituencies; enhancing improved business processes, and enabling of individual productivity and group productivity. The audience also includes IT executives from government agencies, healthcare organizations, large not-for-profits, and academic institutions.
Happy Holidays
Tom
See and download the full gallery on posterous
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