Tag Archives: conference

Enterprise Convergence: CRIM Crystal Ball 2010

Posted on April 8, 2010 | 5 Comments

Today I had the privilege of joining a number of distinguished speakers on the slate at the CRIM Crystal Ball Conference, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec.

My topic was what I chose to term Enterprise Convergence: or, how consumer technology is changing the way we work. The pendulum has swung the other way from the past – previously, email was used in academia and by corporations before it gained mass adoption; now, mass adoption of social networks, virtual worlds / 3D Internet and always-on and pervasive connectivity are driving the ways in which enterprises have to adapt their models of operation internally.

My slides are on Slideshare (and I created a SlideShare event to collect others). I’ll try to add some commentary shortly, because they are largely images and may not make a huge amount of sense without the words to back them up!

As usual I get excited and animated and could have gone off in all kinds of directions when asked to speak on a topic like this – I envied a few of the other presenters and could have jumped in to add to some of their commentaries, too! A few references and reading suggestions if you are interested in learning more around the subjects I was covering:

  • Everyware by Adam Greenfield. One lady asked me afterwards whether this book is still worth reading as it was published in 2006. Absolutely. It’s a great read. Actually I reviewed it here on my blog back in 2007.
  • Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins. This is interesting in terms of media convergence and the blurring of the lines between different types of media and connections. Not an essential read, but it’s where I got inspiration for my title!
  • The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. At least one other speaker mentioned this at CRIM 2010 and it’s really a great read, thinking about trusting employees and daring to be different in management and business models.
  • Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott. I lose count of the number of times I’ve recommended this. Read it. It’s awesome and will likely change the way that you think of the generation entering business in the next few years. Trust them. Innovate with them.
  • Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Everything is social, live with it, use it, embrace it.
  • Andy Stanford-Clark’s infamous Twittering automated home
  • If you want to keep up with trends in technology like those I outlined in the talk, you might want to subscribe to the weekly podcast that I co-host, Dogear Nation
  • IBM Social Computing Guidelines – publically available to read and review, and there’s a nice video too.
  • INNOV8 Game – IBM’s Business Process Management simulation game
  • IBM Lotus Connections – a modular social software platform for the enterprise
  • IBM Sametime 3D – virtual collaboration
  • IBM WebSphere Cloudburst – provision private cloud servers
  • Unity3D and Layar
  • David Helgason from Unity on Gamification and 2010 trends

Finally, you can find photos from my first trip to Quebec here and photos from the event in the event photoset on Flickr.

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Poken are growing up?

Posted on June 2, 2009 | 5 Comments

Poken Me! It seems like just a few short months ago that I discovered Poken – neat little USB keychain devices which you can touch together when you meet someone else with one, in order to electronically exchange social network IDs and contact information. Actually… it was only a few months ago – we talked about them on Dogear Nation episode 88 in February, and in an example of serendipitous discovery, I picked one up a week later at Twestival in London. I immediately thought the idea was cool, but I was disappointed to discover how much they cost, and how few people had them.

I mentioned Poken in my presentation at SOMESSO a couple of weeks ago. Whilst I love the idea, I simply haven’t come across enough people who have a Poken to have made it worth my while. My basic comment at the time was that I felt they needed to make themselves more widespread in order to be useful. Since then, I’ve continued the discussion in comments on a couple of blogs. To quote myself:

However, I think there are a few issues…

  • [they] cost more than most people are prepared to pay for what is essentially a small capacity but cute looking memory stick, and they are not very readily available;
  • the cuteness factor can also be off-putting to some people, particularly those with a business purpose in mind and the disposable income to buy them;
  • too few core connectors and salesmen have them (see Gladwell’s The Tipping Point), IMHO they should seed more;
  • the value-add of the site (which actually manages the contacts) is low, so the business model is presumably centred on selling the devices.

I had yet another conversation about Poken at a tweetup in London last week, and again heard comment that they were too toy-like for business users, and too few people had them.

Well – things appear to be changing. For want of a better phrase, it seems as though Poken are going slightly more corporate.

In particular, I was delighted to discover that they are being used in a much broader context at IBM’s Information on Demand conference this year – shedding the cute image, and hopefully becoming a bit more widespread.

This is all great stuff. I engaged with the idea of Poken as soon as I heard about the concept, and I hope that I’ll be able to share and manage my information more easily in future. Maybe Poken won’t be the answer, but I’m glad to see the idea broadening out, and hopefully reaching a wider audience.

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Double vision – videos from SOMESSO

Posted on June 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

You wait three weeks for a video, and then two turn up at once. No wait… that was buses.

The video of my talk from SOMESSO London 2009 has been made available. Unfortunately I’m not able to embed that here on my site, so follow the link if you want to see it. It’s about 20 minutes long.

You can also watch an interview I gave towards the end of the day.

You’ll sleep better tonight :-)

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Some audio from SOMESSO

Posted on May 19, 2009 | Leave a comment

Couple of things:

  • I added a c. 20 min audio commentary to my deck on Slideshare – hopefully it will make the slides a bit more meaningful!
  • Here’s a snippet from Susan Kish’s summary of the day, where she mentions my talk:

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SOMESSO summary

Posted on May 16, 2009 | 1 Comment

The nice folks from AudioBoo caught me for a quick interview after my presentation yesterday and you can hear the short summary of what I talked about on their site, or by playing the embedded audio here.

I was also interviewed on camera by Daniel and Eduardo Vidal (hope you feel better soon, Eduardo!)… and my whole presentation was recorded as well, so those should appear over the next couple of weeks.

Oddly I seemed to spend a lot of time discussing Poken after the talk! I guess my use of Poken as a prop at the start of the presentation raised a lot of interest. My mention of Home Camp and sustainability also generated some additional conversations. I also detected a lot of interest as to how IBM had achieved the cultural changes required to adapt to a social web (answer: I’d argue that openness has been in our corporate DNA for some time now), and also in how we put together our Social Computing Guidelines. Again, I would draw attention to one paragraph in the guidelines which I think sums up the approach and background:

In 1997, IBM recommended that its employees get out onto the Internet—at a time when many companies were seeking to restrict their employees’ Internet access. In 2005, the company made a strategic decision to embrace the blogosphere and to encourage IBMers to participate. We continue to advocate IBMers’ responsible involvement today in this rapidly growing space of relationship, learning and collaboration.

I thought the SOMESSO London event was just superb. A series of short (15-20 minute) presentations from some smart people who I was quite frankly honoured to be on the same bill as; and I really didn’t think that there was anything superfluous, it was just great content and information. The Emirates Stadium was a great venue, too… once I’d found my way into the conference centre in the morning, avoiding the queue of contestants lining up for X-Factor auditions! If my camera battery had lasted I would have posted a lot more to Flickr, but I’m afraid there are only a few shots up there.

Thanks to Arjen Strijker, Mary Harrington, Susan Kish and others for putting the day together. On the basis of yesterday’s conference, I highly recommend future events in the series, and would also encourage you to get involved in the SOMESSO community if you are at all interested in social media in the enterprise. I’m really looking forward to following up all of the new connections I made yesterday.

Finally, some links to some of the books I referenced in my talk or during the backchannel conversation:

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