I've blogged about the current global recession's affect on innovation before. I have blogged many times about the waxing and waning of virtual worlds technology called Second Life. Now, I get to blog about both subjects simultaneously.
I recently attended a presentation in Second Life by Gene Leganza of Forrester Research, Inc called Six Trends for Enterprise Architecture Professionals in 2009. This presentation was held at a meeting space on Second Life owned and operated by a small business development networking brokerage firm called Unique Customer Service Approach International. It looked a lot like a proper lecture hall with some virtual world style embellishments like giant, floating question marks that you click on when you want to ask a question. The speaker used voice chat but you could use the Second Life Instant Messaging feature to ask questions. You also had to click on your chair to cause your SL avatar to clap.
The talk itself was very informative and well thought out. I have blogged elsewhere on the actual content of the presentation but the upshot is this. Times are tough so you Enterprise Architects out there need to actually start doing what you were originally hired to do which was to deliver software development process, methodology, and architecture that is optimized at increasing long term shareholder value. Please excuse my attitude but I am passionate on the subject.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
It's Not Your Daddy's PR Anymore
From the time I first heard it, the acronym PR has always had two different meanings to me. PR could stand for Public Relations or it could stand for Press Release. In what the Cluetrain Manifesto called The Long Silence (a.k.a. the days of the Mad Men), these two meanings weren't all that indistinguishable. In today's Wikinomics world, ruled by the prosumer generation, these two meanings are as different as night is to day.
In the old days, a PR group was all about selling media. How much broadcast time on radio and TV and column inches in magazine and newspaper print could you afford in order to condition your prospective clients to chose your offerings? That is still necessary but no longer sufficient in today's world. Now, a PR group has to also be concerned with establishing authentic conversations. Can your community managers effectively attract and keep people interested in interacting with each other around your offerings? Can you establish and maintain buzz? If you can't, then it will be quite a long time before that cat barks.
Your marketing message in the broadcast only world had to be broad and appeal to a wider audience. That won't fly with the prosumers. In addition to your broad message, you also have to develop lots of narrowly focused messages to appeal to a wide array of niche markets. Remember, they are no longer passively taking in your message. They now get to talk about your message with everyone else. So, give them something that they are interested in talking about. How do you create these narrow messages without becoming self conflicting? How do you do all of this on a tighter budget?
No wonder it's so hard to find a good PR group these days.
In the old days, a PR group was all about selling media. How much broadcast time on radio and TV and column inches in magazine and newspaper print could you afford in order to condition your prospective clients to chose your offerings? That is still necessary but no longer sufficient in today's world. Now, a PR group has to also be concerned with establishing authentic conversations. Can your community managers effectively attract and keep people interested in interacting with each other around your offerings? Can you establish and maintain buzz? If you can't, then it will be quite a long time before that cat barks.
Your marketing message in the broadcast only world had to be broad and appeal to a wider audience. That won't fly with the prosumers. In addition to your broad message, you also have to develop lots of narrowly focused messages to appeal to a wide array of niche markets. Remember, they are no longer passively taking in your message. They now get to talk about your message with everyone else. So, give them something that they are interested in talking about. How do you create these narrow messages without becoming self conflicting? How do you do all of this on a tighter budget?
No wonder it's so hard to find a good PR group these days.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Following the Heard Off the Precipice
I was fortunate enough to attend the 11th Annual Lynford Lecture at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU where GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham gave an inspirational and thought provoking talk called Career Risks and Breaking Bubbles.
The net of his talk is this. The true value of most markets (stock, real estate, you name it) is pretty flat. Every now and then, the market experiences a bubble where perceived value sky-rockets way above then plummets down below and eventually settles back on its real value again. On the ascending slope of these mountains of market inefficiency, you always find analysts who claim that we have finally figured out how to run the marketplace so the value is just going to keep going up and up forever. Even with the market wildly over-rated, people stay in it because of the truly irrational aversion to making less money than your peers. That is why the heard of stampeding buffaloes plummets right off the cliff.
He had plenty of charts from past bubbles to back up his claims. This was a most charming and lucid speaker on a fairly abstract topic to a room full of academicians and budding finance engineers.
He made some interesting points in the Q&A session afterwards. This four decade veteran of finance has a complete lack of confidence in the Bush Administration and is hopeful for the Obama Administration. With regards to the bailout of the automobile industry, he said something to the affect that those jobs were lost when the demand for cars plummeted and no fiscal stimulus would bring those jobs back.
The net of his talk is this. The true value of most markets (stock, real estate, you name it) is pretty flat. Every now and then, the market experiences a bubble where perceived value sky-rockets way above then plummets down below and eventually settles back on its real value again. On the ascending slope of these mountains of market inefficiency, you always find analysts who claim that we have finally figured out how to run the marketplace so the value is just going to keep going up and up forever. Even with the market wildly over-rated, people stay in it because of the truly irrational aversion to making less money than your peers. That is why the heard of stampeding buffaloes plummets right off the cliff.
He had plenty of charts from past bubbles to back up his claims. This was a most charming and lucid speaker on a fairly abstract topic to a room full of academicians and budding finance engineers.
He made some interesting points in the Q&A session afterwards. This four decade veteran of finance has a complete lack of confidence in the Bush Administration and is hopeful for the Obama Administration. With regards to the bailout of the automobile industry, he said something to the affect that those jobs were lost when the demand for cars plummeted and no fiscal stimulus would bring those jobs back.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Lively No More
I have blogged earlier about the coming of massive, multi-player, virtual on-line worlds before. Permit me to recap here.
Part of the excitement in this space was the fact that other, fairly big, players were starting to join it. Well, today, one of those players announced that they were leaving the space. Google announced that they were pulling the plug on their version of this space now ironically called Lively.
I never participated in Lively so I can't speak to what the experience was like. Some say that the place was a ghost town. Others say that the performance of the client software was terrible. If you have used the service, then please leave a comment here as to your thoughts about it and any possible reasons why Google made this decision.
Feb 2009 Update:The NY Times mentioned this in piece entitled How Google Decides to Pull the Plug. It was not very in depth. Basically, Google pulled the plug because it wasn't popular. It didn't try to attempt to answer the question as to why it wasn't popular.
- Think of it as a 3D version of the web where you can see and interact with other viewers on any page/room.
- Think of it as a cartoonish version of telepresence on a budget.
- It's a natural fit for an artificial economy or other operant conditioning systems for rewarding desirable behavior.
- It might have entertainment possibilities like a more interactive form of television.
- Obviously, the role based, game playing versions of this have been very successful.
Part of the excitement in this space was the fact that other, fairly big, players were starting to join it. Well, today, one of those players announced that they were leaving the space. Google announced that they were pulling the plug on their version of this space now ironically called Lively.
I never participated in Lively so I can't speak to what the experience was like. Some say that the place was a ghost town. Others say that the performance of the client software was terrible. If you have used the service, then please leave a comment here as to your thoughts about it and any possible reasons why Google made this decision.
Feb 2009 Update:The NY Times mentioned this in piece entitled How Google Decides to Pull the Plug. It was not very in depth. Basically, Google pulled the plug because it wasn't popular. It didn't try to attempt to answer the question as to why it wasn't popular.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Innovation During a Global Recession
I read in the previous Sunday edition of the NY Times an opinion piece called It's No Time To Forget About Innovation.
Author Janet Rae-Dupree uses material from the following two books to further her advice not to completely stifle innovation during these economic hard times; Closing the Innovation Gap by Judy Estrin and Strategic Entrepreneurism by Jon Fisher.
According to Janet, Judy posits that the following core values need to be in equal balance in order to foster innovation; questioning, risk taking, openness, patience, and trust. You may have heard of this as failing fast, From the Outside In, and the long tail. She also advocates "green thumb leadership" where gardens of new ideas are permitted amidst the factory farms.
Contrast this with Jon's position that innovation must be embedded in the daily operation of the rank and file. Entrepreneurs should plan their start in a highly creative and innovative environment then sell the business to a larger, more established company in order to scale up.
I think that what most of these people are trying to say is that innovation, by and of itself, is not optimized for making money; however, innovation can open the door to profitable markets in the future. It would seem to me that the best time to focus on not making money is when there is not that much money available to be made. So, the best time to innovate is during a global recession. It's not like your competitors are going to raise their market capitalization by improving their profitability while you fritter away in the lab.
Of course, I'm not saying that you should throw huge amounts of money at it. Innovators work best when they are hungry. That's another reason why this is a good time to innovate. Think Guy Kawasaki's boot strapping.
To that end, I invite all innovators to join a newly formed and emerging community devoted to innovation on a budget. Code Roller is a place where entrepreneurs and engineers get together to produce the next generation of great applications for the web. Code Roller is a collaborative software development project life cycle management solution that combines time honored, best-of-breed deliverables and work flow with state-of-the-art techniques in social networking and crowd sourcing to deliver custom software faster, cheaper, and better by accelerating discovery. The use of Code Roller is free.
Author Janet Rae-Dupree uses material from the following two books to further her advice not to completely stifle innovation during these economic hard times; Closing the Innovation Gap by Judy Estrin and Strategic Entrepreneurism by Jon Fisher.
According to Janet, Judy posits that the following core values need to be in equal balance in order to foster innovation; questioning, risk taking, openness, patience, and trust. You may have heard of this as failing fast, From the Outside In, and the long tail. She also advocates "green thumb leadership" where gardens of new ideas are permitted amidst the factory farms.
Contrast this with Jon's position that innovation must be embedded in the daily operation of the rank and file. Entrepreneurs should plan their start in a highly creative and innovative environment then sell the business to a larger, more established company in order to scale up.
I think that what most of these people are trying to say is that innovation, by and of itself, is not optimized for making money; however, innovation can open the door to profitable markets in the future. It would seem to me that the best time to focus on not making money is when there is not that much money available to be made. So, the best time to innovate is during a global recession. It's not like your competitors are going to raise their market capitalization by improving their profitability while you fritter away in the lab.
Of course, I'm not saying that you should throw huge amounts of money at it. Innovators work best when they are hungry. That's another reason why this is a good time to innovate. Think Guy Kawasaki's boot strapping.
To that end, I invite all innovators to join a newly formed and emerging community devoted to innovation on a budget. Code Roller is a place where entrepreneurs and engineers get together to produce the next generation of great applications for the web. Code Roller is a collaborative software development project life cycle management solution that combines time honored, best-of-breed deliverables and work flow with state-of-the-art techniques in social networking and crowd sourcing to deliver custom software faster, cheaper, and better by accelerating discovery. The use of Code Roller is free.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Where Angels Fear to Tread
The stock market continues its downward spiral as fears grow that the U.S. recession is taking on a more global scope. Companies of all sizes hold on to their cash, batten down the hatches, and prepare to ride the storm out as they curtail new growth opportunities and slash costs.
That's too bad, really, as this is the best time for opportunity. Ask anyone in finance when is the best time to buy stock and they'll most likely tell you to buy when everyone else is selling. Why? Because stocks are under valued in a bear market. The key to profitability is to buy low and sell high. It's pretty simple, really. However, that time honored strategy takes nerves of steel as you are most likely not going to buy in at the bottom. So, you get to watch your investment lose money and hope that it turns around before it's too late. No one said that the market is for the weak or the timid.
The same is true for any venture into a market and not just for the stock market. The time for any company to enter into a new market is when everyone else is leaving. Why? Same reason as for the stock market. The market is undervalued when everyone else is leaving. Now is the time to get good deals. Also, you will have a lot less competition as you gobble up market share.
Easier said than done, of course. You see, there's this little thing called cash flow. It's no good to dump a lot of cash to enter in to a market if you end up not being able to make payroll before you get your ROI. You still have to be prudent. You still have to make every dollar count. The best time to enter into a new market is the worst time for you to spend money which is precisely what you have to do in order to make your entrance. So do it but do it tight fisted.
That is why it behooves good company officers to reconsider out-sourcing to local startups.
This may seem counter-intuitive but start ups are in the best position for growth during a recession. Their costs are already low and, with fewer commitments, they are in a better position to cut costs even more so their pricing is more flexible downwards than their more established brethren.
It's not prudent to use any startup, of course. Some will not be able to weather the storm. Before out-sourcing to a start up, you've got to evaluate them to see just how recession proof it is. Some startups even thrive in a bad economy.
So, look for opportunity in crisis times. It may not be easy but the rewards can be great to those who are quick on their feet and willing to change the way they do business in order to adapt to the times. Remember to leverage the little guy who is hungry and more willing to make a deal happen.
That's too bad, really, as this is the best time for opportunity. Ask anyone in finance when is the best time to buy stock and they'll most likely tell you to buy when everyone else is selling. Why? Because stocks are under valued in a bear market. The key to profitability is to buy low and sell high. It's pretty simple, really. However, that time honored strategy takes nerves of steel as you are most likely not going to buy in at the bottom. So, you get to watch your investment lose money and hope that it turns around before it's too late. No one said that the market is for the weak or the timid.
The same is true for any venture into a market and not just for the stock market. The time for any company to enter into a new market is when everyone else is leaving. Why? Same reason as for the stock market. The market is undervalued when everyone else is leaving. Now is the time to get good deals. Also, you will have a lot less competition as you gobble up market share.
Easier said than done, of course. You see, there's this little thing called cash flow. It's no good to dump a lot of cash to enter in to a market if you end up not being able to make payroll before you get your ROI. You still have to be prudent. You still have to make every dollar count. The best time to enter into a new market is the worst time for you to spend money which is precisely what you have to do in order to make your entrance. So do it but do it tight fisted.
That is why it behooves good company officers to reconsider out-sourcing to local startups.
This may seem counter-intuitive but start ups are in the best position for growth during a recession. Their costs are already low and, with fewer commitments, they are in a better position to cut costs even more so their pricing is more flexible downwards than their more established brethren.
It's not prudent to use any startup, of course. Some will not be able to weather the storm. Before out-sourcing to a start up, you've got to evaluate them to see just how recession proof it is. Some startups even thrive in a bad economy.
So, look for opportunity in crisis times. It may not be easy but the rewards can be great to those who are quick on their feet and willing to change the way they do business in order to adapt to the times. Remember to leverage the little guy who is hungry and more willing to make a deal happen.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
jQuery and Microsoft
Technology is to software architects what stock is to traders. You are constantly on the lookout for changes in the marketplace to take advantage of an under valued but rising offering. What's that old cliché? Buy on rumor and sell on news.
You would had to have been in a coma for the past decade to have missed AJAX which is an approach to writing web applications that mitigates the disorienting page refresh of the server round-trip by having the page get the new data through a Java script call instead of reloading. To a coder, the heart of AJAX is the XmlHttpRequest object. There are lots of Java script libraries out there that abstract away the web browser differences in using this object, thus simplifying your Java script.
jQuery is one of those libraries. It competes with lots of different offerings such as Prototype, YUI, MooTools, and Dogo. Yesterday, jQuery got mentioned in a rumor that is sure to boost perception of its value over its competitors. On a promotional blog site owned by Microsoft, it was announced that Microsoft is adopting and supporting jQuery in its ASP.NET AJAX components and integrating support of jQuery in its flagship IDE VS.NET
Why does it really matter which technology to choose? After all, each and every technology mentioned here does a great job of doing AJAX. From a technology perspective, you can't go wrong; however, there are more aspects to choosing a software architecture than technology.
A smoother developer experience should accelerate the implementation phase of any project. So, with this announcement, jQuery becomes a more compelling choice for Microsoft development shops. In any work environment, you have to think about turn-around. How long does it take to replace an employee who is leaving? That means being competitive with other shops on a lot of things including pay, benefits, and how desirable your technology is. Using popular technology makes it just a little bit easier to attract and hire good candidates. Popular technology can also be a compelling sell to your customers whose I.T. departments might want to evaluate what technology you use.
You would had to have been in a coma for the past decade to have missed AJAX which is an approach to writing web applications that mitigates the disorienting page refresh of the server round-trip by having the page get the new data through a Java script call instead of reloading. To a coder, the heart of AJAX is the XmlHttpRequest object. There are lots of Java script libraries out there that abstract away the web browser differences in using this object, thus simplifying your Java script.
jQuery is one of those libraries. It competes with lots of different offerings such as Prototype, YUI, MooTools, and Dogo. Yesterday, jQuery got mentioned in a rumor that is sure to boost perception of its value over its competitors. On a promotional blog site owned by Microsoft, it was announced that Microsoft is adopting and supporting jQuery in its ASP.NET AJAX components and integrating support of jQuery in its flagship IDE VS.NET
Why does it really matter which technology to choose? After all, each and every technology mentioned here does a great job of doing AJAX. From a technology perspective, you can't go wrong; however, there are more aspects to choosing a software architecture than technology.
A smoother developer experience should accelerate the implementation phase of any project. So, with this announcement, jQuery becomes a more compelling choice for Microsoft development shops. In any work environment, you have to think about turn-around. How long does it take to replace an employee who is leaving? That means being competitive with other shops on a lot of things including pay, benefits, and how desirable your technology is. Using popular technology makes it just a little bit easier to attract and hire good candidates. Popular technology can also be a compelling sell to your customers whose I.T. departments might want to evaluate what technology you use.
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