Portals and KM

Photos from Oak Bluffs, Martha's Vineyard 2010

Here is a set of photos of the homes and buildings in Oak Bluffs. 

                            
 

Micro-Landscape Painting: Red #2

Here is a 16" x 20" acrylic painting. I dropped a colored napkin on a table and then looked for interesting close ups. 

 

My TEDxBoston 2010 Session Notes: Part Two

   Here is the second part of my notes from the TEDxBoston that occurred yesterday. I have heard a lot about TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) but have not attended before so I was pleased to see how it worked. Here are my notes from the second group of sessions. These are live notes, only slightly edited, so please excuse typos, etc.

Cesar Hidalgo from MIT began this segment by covering global economic development. He said that one of the issues is that diversity is not spread evenly. He introduced several principles to address global economic development. First how many capabilities does a country possess, rather than resources. He used legos to represent capabilities in his visuals.

Here is more on Cesar’s lego theory of development thanks to Eric Andersen. Typically, GDP is seen as a function of just a few inputs (i.e. different types of putty using Cesar’s imagery). These are capital, labor, and some kind of technology input. The types of labor and the types of capital are more or less interchangeable (just as putty is). Of course, economists know this is a massive simplification of the world, but it is useful in helping describe an extremely complex reality.

Cesar proposes a new approach that will help take into account a bit more of the complexity that's out there in the world. He calls it the "lego" theory of development. If we look at those countries that are wealthy, we see that they produce products that require many different types of inputs or legos. Further, wealthy countries don't specialize in one or two products (in contradiction to a simplistic interpretation of comparative advantage) they export many different types of goods. If a product is very complex, it can be best produced by the few countries that have all the requirements.  You need to match capabilities with product requirements for growth. How do you accumulate capabilities?

Another principle is having the capabilities centralized. The industrialized countries have a great concentration of capabilities in a centralized manner.  He showed how this increased concentration of capabilities occurred in Malaysia as the economy grew. Cesar feels that diversity of capabilities predicts growth more than traditional inputs. This would argue for increasing the diversity of capabilities through effective education.

Felice Frankel, a photographer, provided a session titled more than pretty pictures. Felice covered three main ideas. She said the process of making a visual representation clarifies an idea. This process requires decisions that encourage reflection. Second, the process of making a representation should be collaborative. Third, the process of making a representation teaches. This third principle is her real passion. I certainly agree with her points and there has been a lot of research on this concept.  Muhan Zhang next very movingly performed a Mongolian instrument.

John Werner and MacCalvin Romain covered learning out of the box. MacCalvin told us how his creativity was criticized in elementary school. However, he was shown that his interests could turn into a career through Citizen’s Schools. John discussed how US education is following behind the rest of the world.  He discovered that schools tried to keep the community outside of the schools. Fifteen years ago he and others started Citizen Schools to help expand the resources that students are exposed to.  John gave examples of bringing business teams into the schools to create more learning opportunities.  He said there is a lot of potential for people to help. Eight million people do jury duty each year, What if there was education duty?  If we just two percent of the scientists helped we would double the amount of science teachers available to our kids. Good ideas.

Bill Walczak shared more good ideas on education. His group started a charter school in a community health center in Dorchester. They involve students in the health care professions there. He said that Boston ninth grade students who do not go to one of the three prestige Boston public high schools have a 7% chance to graduate from high school. At the school in the health center they have achieved an over 70% success rate through the involvement in the community health center operations. This is a great model for integrating high school with the community and a growing professional field. Now it was time for lunch. More to follow in the next post.

This TEDxBoston session provided access to a diverse set of themes, some are not directly related to the major themes of this blog but I wanted to share with you how a TEDx session flows.  The common theme is thinking outside the normal and creating innovation. I felt that the message across most of the sessions was that innovation becomes effective when it involves innovative way people are engaged with new ideas and technology. I think this is very related to this blog.  I was pleased to attend and will be looking at the TED site for more. 

My TEDxBoston 2010 Session Notes: Part One

 I was pleased to be invited to today's TEDxBoston. I have heard a lot about TED (Technology, Entertainment, design) but not attended before. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized. This one honored “local innovators who have the passion, curiosity, and tenacity to change the world with their revolutionary ideas.” They wanted us to unplug from our technology but I want to take notes so I can remember what happen and share it with you. I did, however, unplug any competing technology. I only recognized one person in their highlighted presenters, Larry Lessing, so looked forward to seeing a lot of new faces and hearing new ideas.  These are live notes, only slightly edited, so please excuse typos, etc.

I went to the simulcast room so I could use my laptop to take notes. The intro talked about how this is a local event just using the TED branding and format. The session Economic Growth through Crowd Sourcing Dave McLaughlin is listed as the first event, a topic of interest for me lately, but it started with some drummers, the Marcos Santos Group, to get us stoked up. Crowd sourcing is an obvious starting point for an event like this. Meanwhile the drummers are good. Next there was a quote from John Adams, one of our local revolutionaries, and revolutionary ideas is the theme of the day.

The introucers discussed the diversity of the audience including eight dozen CEOs and high school students. I am humbled to be here.  Dave McLaughlin began with a discussion of horizontal relationships between vertical grouping for cross-fertilization of ideas.  Boston has invested to seed these cross-fertilizations for local economic growth through Boston World Partnerships.  For example, what is essential infrastructure is being rethought. Horizontal relationships have become the new connectors.

Susan Avery from Woods Hole next discussed our global ocean and its role in how the world functions.  The ocean has only been systematically studied for 150 years. Now since WW2, technology has evolved rapidly to further this exploration. The hydro-thermal vents are one new discovery that are places where life forms emerge and were life likely started on this planet. This study is very important as human impact on the ocean has greatly expanded. 

We have entered a new geological era with humans as the dominant impact on the globe. For one thing the ocean is becoming more acidic because of our carbon emissions.  This can greatly impact sea life such as shell fish.  We view the ocean as a limitless resource but it is not. The fish at the top of the food chain have decreased by 90 percent since WW2.  The ocean is also used as a garbage dump but there are limits here also. There is a lot of plastic in the Pacific that ends up in fish. If we eat these fish we eat our own garbage. She also addressed the oil spill in the Gulf. Each spill is unique so the result is not predictable.

Seth Priebatsch covered the efforts toward Building the Game Layer on Top of the World.  It is already happening but the market is cluttered. Game dynamics are already in play but many are poorly designed such as credit card promotions. Seth said we can build better applications of games using game dynamics. He said this is important as we have been building the social layer but that is done. He said Facebook has won this one. How it is time for building the game layer. It said the game layer will be more important than the social layer so it is time to think about it in a open way.

He showed four game dynamics. First, there is the appointment dynamic. People have to do things at a set time and place.  Happy hour is one example.  Farmville has more participants than Twitter and you have to return to water your virtual plants at a certain time.  Second is influence and status.  People want to be cool and status is a great motivator.  School is a poorly designed status game. We could better use game dynamics to improve participation in school. Third is the progression dynamic. You have to go through certain granular steps. His firm is working with businesses on applications of these dynamics to create loyalty, engagement, and revenue.   Fourth, there is communal discovery. Everyone works together to solve problems. Digg had a leader board but it was too successful and had to be taken down. He closed with the concept that game dynamics is the next frontier.

Mary Gunn discussed two problems and one solution.  Her organization, Generations, Inc. pairs older adults with kids in prompting literacy. It helps both sides and she offers results.  I can believe this. A group next covered the digital fabrication of homes so you could design homes in an automated way. Then the specs are sent to a factory to produce the materials in a more cost effective manner using compressed wood chips.  This also produces less waste, uses smaller trees, and get homes up quicker. You can more easily do curves.

Before the first break John Harthorne discussed starting a startup renaissance. John said that our economic crisis can drive innovation. He started Mass Challenge to run a one million dollar global competition on innovation. The finalists get funds, advice, and free office space nearby at Fan Pier. He said why Boston for this?  Boston is number one on many innovation measures: more investment per capita, more VC firms per capita, more universities per capita, etc. than anywhere, even California.  This ends the first group of sessions. 

My Fast Forward Posts for July 2010

Here is the monthly listing of my Fast Forward blog posts. I find it helps me with an archive and hopefully is also useful to you. There is a separate category for these summaries in my right side column on this blog. There will be more in August.

Enhancing Product Development with Enterprise 2.0

Operating at Strategic Speed by Engaging and Empowering Employees: Some Useful Guidelines for Enterprise 2.0 Adoptions

eDiscovery Market Consolidates but Integration Remains a Challenge

Empowering Your Employees Through Enterprise 2.0

Twittering Less, Kissing More

The Learning Layer Takes Aspects of Enterprise 2.0 a Step Further

Convergence Between TV and Web Already Happening

 

Here is a topic I continue to be intrigued by (see category in the right column). While many firms are competing in the race for the single box solution to TV Web convergence, Mac Slocum at O’Reilly Radar reports that new data from Nielsen suggests they're all headed in the wrong direction. “In the last quarter of 2009, simultaneous use of the Internet while watching TV reached three and a half hours a month, up 35% from the previous quarter. Nearly 60% of TV viewers now use the Internet once a month while also watching TV.” 

I am doing this right now as I am watching TV while I write this post.  This is usually an easy multi-task. Mac notes the differences between television's lean-back experience and the web's lean-forward positioning. Competing manufacturers did to consider this difference with the Web’s pull potential and TV’s push.  

The Nielsen report also said that that Americans watch network programs online when they miss an episode or when a TV is not available. Online video is used essentially like DVR and not typically a replacement for watching TV. Mac adds consumers are supplementing their consumption with online video, not replacing it. This is where I liked the On Demand options to see TV shows when I want to. I used this extensively for the Treme series that came on too late. It also helped me watch each episode at least three times.

Now Mac takes this data to an interesting conclusion. He writes that it matters if content is consumed, not how it's consumed. Much effort has gone into bridging the web and TV worlds through brute force into a single box. However, the most successful cross-media efforts are the ones that let consumers interact through the tools they already use. This is why many enterprise 2.0 collaboration platform vendors enable their users to interact with their tools through email. What makes more sense: integrating Twitter into a television's hardware or helping users tweet during a show? I would choose the latter. 

OpenSpan Accelerates the Automation of User Processes

Here is a software innovation that is potentially transformational.  I have long been interested in providing support to knowledge intense business processes. This was my first exposure to what became knowledge management in the early 90s and the concept behind many useful enterprise 2.0 implementations. Now OpenSpan is going beyond mashups to provide quick to create interconnections between applications to automate many aspects of business processes. As a result users have more time to focus on the decisions within these processes.  These automations can also create substantial time savings to drive significant ROI.

I recently spoke with Rick Marquardt and Francis Carden of OpenSpan about their offering. OpenSpan's User Process Management software provides an intuitive visual design environment for automating user processes within and across applications without requiring APIs or changes to the application's code. They have figured out a way to get inside the application even if it does not contain an API for this task. Developers have the ability to integrate Windows, cloud/SaaS and custom legacy applications, which enables organizations to improve user efficiency while extending the ROI of existing applications.

With OpenSpan organizations can go inside any application a user accesses, monitor user interactions to understand how power users operate and then automate processes to streamline these actions. Building these automations to connect applications is a drag and drop process as Rick and Francis demonstrated to me. Below you can see an example of making connections between a CRM application and an Order Entry system. This can eliminate the current out dated practice of cut and paste between apps to automate fill-ins.

 
Open Span can also monitor user activity to help determine which processes to automate and what applications to connect. In addition to reducing steps, this can also reduce the number of windows on a user’s desktop. Using the OpenSpan Events desktop monitoring technology, you can record every step in every user’s workflow, 24x7x365. It is no longer necessary to conduct sample time and motion studies or view screen recordings to try and guess what's happening. You can get the user’s detailed desktop interactions in real time for accurate monitoring. This can both help target where to automate and then track the ROI from these efforts. I have been involved in a number of call center monitoring efforts so I have first hand appreciation of the value of this capability. Below is a sample screen.

 
OpenSpan is now offering a free download of their IDE, OpenSpan Studio or the Plug-In for Visual Studio. Built on an embedded version of the Microsoft Visual Studio Framework, the plug-in can be used with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and makes OpenSpan functionality available for the first time via a .NET API. This means that developers can now access all of OpenSpan's runtime capabilities directly from code and mix and match .NET and OpenSpan projects in a single executable. OpenSpan has decided to make the tools available free and focus their commercial fees on providing the run time to support automations the developers create. I think this is a smart move. It reduces any financial risk until a solution is created that demonstrates value.

To further support developers OpenSpan has created the OpenSpan Developer Community. It offers  extensive resources, including a code gallery, knowledge base and forum for collaborating with other developers. This is another smart move as the objective is to empower developers with increased capability to create applications that use the OpenSpan runtime. The OpenSpan Developer Community is seen below.

 
I asked how this goes beyond mashups as they have a similar objective. Mashups generally only draw data from multiple sources. While this is certainly an improvement in application development, OpenSpan also can perform transactions within these applications by getting completely inside the applications. This can even work with third party applications. I watched OpenSpan connect a FedEx tracking system with an internal order processing application with only the requirement of gaining user access to the FedEx Web app, not developer access. Rick said that their clients have seen dramatic improvements in business process execution. I can believe this. As I said at the beginning this could be transformational. 

Will TV Web Convergence Lean Toward TV or the Web?

I have been writing a bit about the convergence of TV and the Web (for example, see Will Google Succeed with TV Where Apple and Microsoft Have Fallen Short?). One of the remaining questions remains: will the Web TV convergence lean to the TV side to the Web side?  According to New TeeVee, while Google is planning to have its integrated TV and web offering available on Sony TVs and Blu-ray players, as well as Logitech set-top boxes, in stores by the holidays. However, TiVo says you can already get similar functionality on its existing products and this has been able to do so for years. TIVO claims it revolutionized television by creating the DVR, and later, added search functionality to make it easier to find the content that users wanted to watch, long before others offered this capability.

TiVo VP of Marketing Tony Lee is quoted, “We haven’t just entered a new era of TV and Web convergence that era started years ago. We believe the defining theme of this era is about making all the content you want television-centric, in one single approach.”

However, TeeVee notes that TIVO’s current search model is not robust enough for the broader global web. It wonders what consumers choose: TiVo’s walled garden approach, where they have access to a few, pre-chosen content sources, or Google’s open web model. With Google TV available by the end of the year, the votes will be counted soon and this will help to answer our question, will the Web TV convergence lean to the TV side to the Web side?

 

 

Photos from Martha's Vineyard 2010

Here a number of photos from Edgartown and the south shore of Martha's Vineyard.

                                  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Painting of Light Yellow Pitcher and Apple on a Blue Cloth

This is an 14" x 18" acrylic painting of a light yellow brown pitcher and a red apple resting on a blue cloth. I liked the contrasting colors of the three objects. Like many of my works, it is available for sale at Artsetter.com. 

  

GE Crowdsources Green Ideas Through its Open Innovation Challenge

The  Open Innovation Challenge is designed to mine ideas that can help solve some of our environmental challenges. It is sponsored by GE, who has partnered with some well-known venture capital firms including Emerald Technology Ventures, Foundation Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and RockPort Capital to provide up to $200 million in resources. The goal is to move closer towards implementation of the most promising ideas on how to create the next generation electric grid. Top voted ideas will be automatically routed to judges and venture capitalists for more in-depth evaluation.

The Open Innovation Challenge uses the Brightidea Platform.  This platform covers: proposal submission, voting and collaboration, team submission with public and private fields, routing and prioritization via subject matter experts, private collaboration rooms for idea development, sharing and promotion of Ideas on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, integration with Google Maps, and an iPhone app.

The challenge started on July 13, 2010, the site will remain open for submissions and voting until September 30, 2010. Formalized agreements will be announced in November 2010 and continue into 2011. This is another in a series of crowdsorucing efforts that are emerging. I have written about Cisco’s i-prize on several occasions (see Cisco Launches Second I-Prize Competition). Their first winner was also about smart energy management. 

SuccessFactors Extend Its Enterprise Capabilities Through CubeTree Acquistion

I have written about CubeTree several times. The most recent was Cubetree engages its user community in product development. I also met a number of their executives at the last year’s Enterprise 2.0 conference so I was interested to learn that they have recently been acquired by SuccessFactors, another firm I have covered (see SuccessFactors: Bringing Web 2.0 to Talent Management). SuccessFactors is one of the world’s most widely deployed cloud-based business solutions. It is used by more than 8 million people within over 3,000 companies.

Recently, I spoke with Carlin Wiegner, the CubeTree CEO, about the impact of this acquisition and how CubeTree will fit within SuccessFactors.  First, he said that this move is opening a many more doors for them given the large installed base, new use cases in areas such as learning, and a larger sales force that SuccessFactors offers.  There is also great synergy between the two offerings. SuccessFactors has recently broadened their offering with the BizX performance management system that offers more robust support for knowledge workers.

The addition of Cubetree can take this BizX support to the next level with its many collaboration features. Individuals can quickly create rich profiles and begin engaging with others in their organization to get work done, find co-workers who can help, and share insights as they happen. Teams can make use of workspaces that enable groups to immediately gather around a project, collaborate, share documents and perform work tasks. Ciubetree also provides executive dashboards that offer insights into how a company is executing on a day-to-day basis. 

CubeTree will remain a separate brand as SucessFactors wanted CubeTree’s capabilities to both extend its own offerings and as an independent, but well aligned, offering.  For example, the SuccessFactor employee profile will now have CubeTree’s related communication and collaboration activities embedded within it.  Other aspects of CubeTree will findtheir way into the appropriate SuccessFactors offerings. The CubeTree micro-blogging feature will be embedded within SuccessFactors but also remain a separate free offering. 

Below is a sample screen from the micro-blogging feature. In this case you see a status update "in progress" where an employee is letting his co-workers know that he has wrapped up his current project and where he will be if they need him for the rest of the day. The CubeTree micro-blogging capability also integrates with Twitter. Below we see the same employee sending a notice about the release notes post to a customer who had a question about new features in this weeks release. By adding a custom hash tag (#cubetree) to his Twitter update it is posted to his CubeTree feed. He then adds a comment back that he is pushing it live on the blog.

CubeTree provides micro-blogging as a free feature and the other capabilities comes in a commercial package. I think this is a smart move as micro-blogging is the perfect way to introduce your offerings within an enterprise. It is easy to install and does not require integration with business process to obtain initial benefits. It can then be spread virally throughout an enterprise to quickly demonstrate value.

I also asked Carlin about what new features that CubeTree has introduced since our last conversation. They do frequent releases for continuous improvement but one of the main areas they have focused on is more robust email integration. CubeTree can work with any email client as it is not a plug in. Instead it sends messages that appear to the email client like any other message. This allows users to stay within email for many CubeTree activities. You can also have very robust email alert settings that can be easily turned on and off. Below you can see some of the robust email settings.

To complement the email integration there is also very robust mobile capabilities. Below you can see a message on a mobile device. The user is replying to an instant notification and posting it back to CubeTree

I like this combination as SuccessFactors and CubeTree nicely complement each other without bring redundancies to sort out.  Carlin said they sorted through several possible mergers. I do not know the other possibilities but I think they made a good choice. 

Useful Guidelines and Metrics for Speeding Up Your Organization

Here is a very timely book from several thoughtful people at The Forum Corporation, Strategic Speed (Harvard Business Press) was written by Jocelyn Davis, Henry Frechette, and Edwin Boswell and recently released.  Forum has shown great longevity. It was founded in 1971 and I competed against it in the 1980s when I was with a long since gone learning firm. 

I could not agree more with their basic orientation. It is time to engage and empower employees rather than simply fine tune processes and continue to do things to people in the outdated mode of Fred Taylor.  The authors use a nice image of the college campus with paved walkways and barren short cuts across the lawns. You can try to regulate what people do but they will go against the grain if it makes sense to them.

Enterprise 2.0 provides us with better tools to empower and engage employees and enable them to set the proper pathways that better align with actual business processes.  Technology is not the focus of this book but it offers an approach that will work very well to guide enterprise 2.0 adoptions.

The authors did extensive research in creating this book. They looked at hundreds of examples of accelerated and sluggish businesses, created 18 in-depth cases examples, and surveyed 343 senior business leaders in n both fast and slow companies. From this work they abstracted four critical leadership practices than enable strategic speed and conceived of two key metrics: reduced time to value and increased value over time.  I like the value part as too often ROI has focused on speed issues without tying them back to the bottom line.

The book begins with a useful chart of ten differences between fast and slow companies. The underlying themes for fast firms include collaboration, reflection, transparency, flexibility, coordination, innovation, and alignment. These are all issues that are better enabled through proper use of enterprise 2.0 technologies.  Consistent with these themes are three basic principals the authors found in fast firms: clarity, unity, and agility.

They note a bit later that business collaboration is the main driver of unity. In contrast, when there is a culture of internal competition projects and strategies get derailed. I have certainly seen this latter problem first hand. For example, when managers are asked to rank order their teams in performance reviews that is an invitation for counterproductive competition.  This approach can put individual goals above team and company goals.  The authors offer a number of examples where learning activities went across divisional and, even company, boundaries to create greater collaboration and unity.

They also introduce a strategic speedometer to enable you to better measure your company’s efforts on the three fronts of clarity, unity, and agility. Again, this score card can be a very useful metric in evaluating enterprise 2.0 adoption with such measures as the translation of strategy into clear and measureable goals, presence of cross- boundary collaboration, and evidence that people capture and communicate what they learn from initiatives.

I certainly recommend this book for anyone undertaking an enterprise 2.0 adoption, as well as those who simply what to effectively speed up the efforts of their company.  There are many useful examples and practices to achieve these goals. 

Enterprise Search Summit in Washington DC for Fall 2010

I plan to attend this the Enterprise Search Summit this November in Washington DC. I was at the last one in NYC in May and the one before in Santa Clara in November 2009. It is a great conference and I look forward to the next one. This session will meet at the same time and place as KM World 2010, just as did last year in November. I will be moderating a day's set of sessions at KM World and writing about both conferences. 

My Darwin colleague Thierry Hubert and I also enjoyed the May 11 - 12 Enterprise Search Summit held in New York. We presented on presented a session, Deriving Order From Chaos Through Discovery and Awareness.  Here is a series of posts that covered some of the points we made in the session (Rising Above the Over Quantification of Content). Here also is a summary of my Enterprise Search Summit 2010 notes on other sessions I attended. 

The organizers at Enterprise Search Summit have give me a $200 discount to pass on to you. Use this link to sign up. Hope to see you there. 

How Will Search and Social Media Converge?

I read an interesting interview recently. Steve Rubel is senior VP-director of insights at Edelman Digital discussed the convergence of search and social media. He makes a nice distinction between the two. “Search is an intent-driven medium, where users seek out what they want. Social networking is where the content finds you through the lens of friends. Those two are separate, but I think we'll see a real convergence here where search will get a lot more social and social will get a lot more searchy.”

You can now search your friend’s content. For example, with Google you can bring in the results from your social connections via the Google address book. At the same time you can go into Facebook and search your friends' content.  As a result Steve predicts that push and pull will merge. We will become more media-agnostic through an aggregator like Google News, along with a social stream, where we go in and out.

I like this prediction as the Darwin Awareness Engine (TM) can serve the same aggregation function as Google News but with more robust features. The Awareness Engine allows you to spot trends through a combination of content, including your friends’ content or their content choices.  It will be interesting to see where this goes. 

Essex Connecticut on a Summer Day

Here is another great Connecticut River town, Essex, on a summer day. 

                                  
 
 
 
 
 
 

Red Micro-Landscape Painting #1

Here is the second in my first series of abstract paintings. It is painted from a close up view of a portion of a red napkin I tossed on a table several times until i got the right folds. It is a 16" x 20" acrylic.

 
 

My Favorite Tweets for July 1 - 15 2010

Here is the twenty first in a series of posts that provide access to my favorite tweets that contain links to useful information.  Some of these I did to link to things I found useful and others are RTs that I want to save for the same reason. Since Twitter archiving is an oxymoron, I am now going to post my favorite links for the month so they can be easily accessed later. I will repeat this once or twice a month depending on volume.

I spot tested the reduced shortened urls and they all should work. I hope this is also useful for you.  Let me know your favorite tweets for the month.

Also see the Darwineco favorite tweets

Top Execs Discuss Social Media Strategies http://bit.ly/cnIbrD via @SBoSM  July 14

Review: Clay Shirky and Cognitive Surplus by @jmcgee http://bit.ly/cg6Hkf July 14

RT @DearingGroup: Enterprise Social Software: Second Coming of Enterprise Portals? http://bit.ly/bEdMj3 by @LeHawes July 13

RT @DearingGroup: Microsoft Crams Facebook Into Outlook With Outlook Social Connector // http://bit.ly/cfofqk July 13

RT @SmartDataCo: When Federated Search Bites http://goo.gl/fb/S2n9k #cloud 3:53 PM Jul 10th

High Speed for the Sparsely Wired http://nyti.ms/bxFHi9 NYT July 10

RT @mfauscette: IDC: Hot Spots in Overall Collaborative Applications Market Help Offset Economic Decline| http://tinyurl.com/2f8krz2 July 10

RT @socialmedia2day: Why passion is vital to be a successful Community Manager http://goo.gl/fb/gqUNh #sm  July 9

RT @marciamarcia: Get yourself a copy of 10 years in KM, the best of @DavidGurteen http://bit.ly/gurteen Great knowledge sharing July 9

via @elsua ESP-NED in social media! :-) http://bit.ly/aRLiy7 #wc2010 now let's add Spanish > yes silly to just do it in English July 9

RT @eric_andersen: good lesson on why 140 chars should not be used for controversial issues http://j.mp/bMpHli  Jul 8th

RT @CommunispaceCEO: 34% of Facebook users say it's 1st thing they do in am -- before brushing teeth. http://bit.ly/bBGmZ6  Jul 7th

RT @roundtrip: RT @olivermarks: http://bit.ly/cxpLvZ 'Open Enterprise 2009' Winners One Year On @meganmurray  Jul 7th

RT @VMaryAbraham: Survey: Many #SharePoint Implementations Lack Clear Goals, Policies http://bit.ly/dCV83f #KM  Jul 6th

RT @alora: Yahoo's Style Guide for online writing: http://ht.ly/27Qa0 > thx July 6

RT @JimLundy: My recap of my firm's participation in E20 Boston. http://bit.ly/avX1wK #SabaSoftware July 6

RT @thoughtfarmer: Making Biz Case for Intranet: Penn State Outreach http://bit.ly/TFbizcase #e2conf by @gordonr  July 6

RT @juneholley: Nice slideshow on collaborative learning http://bit.ly/dt1Y0C  Jul 5th

RT @ariegoldshlager: The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused): http://nyti.ms/C5Zlp  Jul 5th

RT @skemsley: The Future of Social BPM http://j.mp/dC2fQ1 #c2  Jul 4th

Great notes from #e2conf by @rickladd via @elsua http://bit.ly/biBCVw  Jul 4th

via @SameerPatel: Insightful post by @rotkapchen, Infrastructure for Synchronicity http://ow.ly/26PMX  Jul 4th

RT @SmartDataCo: Actionable Information Management Principles: People http://goo.gl/fb/jpw4I #cloud > nice look forward to more  Jul 4th

RT @jonhusband: "The HyperSocial Organization" .. new book by Francois Gossieaux, published one month early ... http://bit.ly/cWafs2  Jul 3rd

RT @researching: 10 hot hulu hacks / who needs tv anymore / power tips rock too ... #haiku http://bit.ly/96XFTt July 3

Social BPM: Business Process Management Enters the 21st Century from joemckendrick http://bit.ly/b4scx1 July 2, 2010

'Activity Streams' Will Be the Glue of Your Online Life http://bit.ly/a8RxJG  July 2, 2010

How to recognize and reward your brand's top fans http://bit.ly/dr31q6 July 1

Top ten ways social media is teaching us to be human again http://bit.ly/aKMunR July 1

RT @SBoSM: Today's SBoSM Buzz: How going social helped LEGO find an important niche http://bit.ly/b4GC8m  Jul 1st

Tech Spending Is Coming Back. And It Might Even Stay

I recently wrote that collaborative applications market remains strong. Here is more good news as Businessweek reports that IDC predicts that global tech spending is set to rise by 3.8 percent, to $1.5 trillion this year after falling by 4.2 percent in 2009. In addition, Gartner predicts a surge in worldwide personal computer shipments—which are on track to rise 22 percent this year.

In my last post on collaborative applications I mentioned the potential success of best of breed players. The Businessweek report suggests that large players, Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, Adobe Systems and others have all reported strong earnings. Microsoft has sold 150 million copies of Windows 7 since its debut in October, making it the fastest-selling operating system in the company's history. Despite this Apple recently pulled ahead of it in market capitalization, at least for the moment.

In another survey by KPMG, tech executives indicate excitement over the newer, high-growth areas such as mobile computing, cloud-based software, and applications that can smartly analyze reams of data. Part of the growth is coming from newer markets. Sixty percent of tech executives surveyed by KPMG said they expect China to contribute more than any other country to their revenue growth over the next year.

Let the good news keeping rolling in. 

Collaborative Applications Market Remains Strong

I frequently speak with vendors in the collaborative applications market as I cover this space for the AppGap blog. Many of the smaller best of breed vendors have been reporting strong revenue despite the economic down turn. They have been helped by the need for tighter budgets as they are often seen as a lower cost alternative.

A recent IDC report supports these observations. As reported by Tekrati (see IDC: Hot Spots in Overall Collaborative Applications Market Help Offset Economic Decline), IDC research shows worldwide revenue for the collaborative applications market was $7.6 billion in 2009, representing a decline of 0.3%.  The top 3 vendors in 2009 (based on worldwide revenue) were Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco. These vendors accounted for 55.8% of the market total. However, that leaves 43.2% of a large pot.

IDC found that some of the largest year-over-year growth came from the emerging social platforms submarket. Erin Traudt, research director for IDC's Enterprise Collaboration and Social Solutions program is quoted,"IDC believes that with a minimal decline during a very tough economy, the worldwide collaborative applications market is poised for a positive rebound in 2010 and that key submarkets such as social platforms, conferencing applications, and team collaborative applications (TCAs) are helping to sustain the market as customers continue to benefit from the enhanced productivity and lower costs associated with these solutions,"

I am very pleased to hear these observations as I think this is growth market as these tools are part of the core of enterprise 2.0. I am glad the market continues to like these options. Here is more good news. When IT professionals were asked by IDC if they had to choose between best of breed versus the collaborative applications from their current vendor, 64% of respondents indicated best of breed would make the strongest business case.

These results are also consistent with growth in the technology job market that was reported by the Wall Street Journal (see Region Leads Rebound in technology Jobs). This article indicated that Silicon valley was the leader here and many of the best of breed players are located there.