Enterprise Convergence: CRIM Crystal Ball 2010

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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