What's Next in Tech
An afterthought… I don’t think we’re ready for Wiki Wars yet, but having top drawer investors pays dividends in many ways.
Consider JotSpot’s investors, Redpoint Ventures and The Mayfield Fund and SocialText’s Draper Fisher Jurvetson and SAP Ventures. You can be sure, these firms will be successful with all doors open, as investors are not ready to repeat web 1.0.
With this “Guild of Friends,” the success of these Wiki firms is nearly guaranteed.
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It’s Halloween, so my time is limited on what I can post today. Sorry.
Today’s leading news regarding JotSpot being acquired by Google is more validation of the sector. Tomorrow, I’ll post my interview with Kraus. You can read an excellent analysis of the acquisition here. I’m sure there will be more to come.
Lots of good indicators moving forward in the Enterprise 2.0 sector lately. In the past few weeks, several major vendors have made announcements regarding incorporating web 2.0 technologies into their platforms. According to Internet News,
“Software vendors such as Oracle, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft are increasingly seeing the value of shifting their traditional portal and applications offerings to an integrated platform to reflect the trickle down of Web 2.0 technologies to the enterprise.”
Yesterday, SocialText announced SocialPoint ™– a wiki solution for Microsoft’s Sharepoint. You can read Dan Farber’s take on it in his blog post yesterday. Boothby also provided a good analysis.
Also, yesterday, I was able to convince Computerworld, the “Voice of IT Management,” to let me write a freelance story on the Enterprise 2.0 phenomenon. With these announcements and developments, it’s clear to me that Enterprise 2.0 is saddled up and ready to ride, but will this dark horse turn out to be a winning thoroughbred or a trojan horse? The pace of industry adoption is accelerating; yet how, when, and why users adopt these tools will make for interesting news… no doubt.
I’m assuming last night’s event went well. Check out this slide show.
Just in time for Halloween– it’s no trick, but a treat from the founder of Dabble DB, Andrew Catton, “co-founder and co-CEO of Smallthought Systems Inc., the Vancouver firm behind Dabble DB, an innovative web-based data management tool.” This is an excellent opportunity for anyone in the Vancouver area to listen to VCs and CEOs discuss the latest in Enterprise 2.0. Check it out: Enterprise 2.0 How Business Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Web
The seminar is tomorrow night, October 24, at 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm in Vancouver at Science World, 1455 Quebec St.
There I said it. Can we move on now? (I hope this blog isn’t getting streamed into the Crispy News aggregator yet. But blogging is kind of the HBO of published media, isn’t it? We can get away with the occasional bad word. IDG did let me write “bitch” once, though. I thought that was pretty brave.) I’m not one to use offensive language, but I’m done of bemoaning the web 1.0 crash and its band of thieves, especially in the B2B sector. The best quote I heard on the subject was Harley Manning from Forrester who said, “After irrational exuberance, there was irrational pessimism.”
I’m excited and not ashamed to admit it about web 2.0 and startup Enterprise 2.0 companies. I’m once again making stock deals with my clients. I’m thinking about the potential of a re-energized IPO market. Let’s hope second time is a charm for all of us that wiped out on the first killer wave.
What’s your take?
Thanks to the creative talents of Rod Boothby, the Enterprise Irregulars have a new logo image. The Irregulars are an incredibly smart and experienced collaborative team who group together on the web to try and solve the mysteries of the future of Enterprise Software in the Next Net world.
I’m going to post here a point I made to the Irregulars a few weeks ago. I received excellent comments on it, and would like to solicit more feedback, if possible.
Talking ’bout Y-Generation
Web 2.0 is not all about us, sorry. I have no hard statistics on this,
but I’m thinking that many of the developers that are building it are a
generation behind us. Adoption is coming in the enterprise because the
next-generation office-worker is psychographically predisposed to it.
It’s what Jerry Bowles refers to as the “MeMedia” generation, not sure
if that’s original from him. We need to keep this in mind when we’re
thinking about defining the sector.
In other words, it’s the ‘tude, man. My kids would be rolling their
eyes if they saw me trying to type cool. Yet I feel compelled to put
this on the table. We can argue the enterprise software
deletion/inclusion debate like the EU trying to establish its European
Constitution for months, maybe years… but there is an entire
generation of nextgen hotshots building applications that will find
their way into the enterprise. Will we be ready?
Take a look at this presentation from Molecular*, a consulting firm part
of the Isobar network of Interactive Agencies. Isobar with its massive
reach, has G2000 customers. They are raising awareness and generating
excitement on a global scale.
*Sorry, the presentation is not widely available. You can contact Molecular directly to get a copy of this 100-slide deck.