Enterprise 2.0 and an interested Italian audience

Just back in the office after a long two-day conference, held in Milan, on Virtualisation and Enterprise 2.0. I run as speaker and chairman some of the sessions yesterday and the entire of today’s discussion on E2.0.

Admittingly, I have tried to get all speeches and presentations on Monday as a sort of preparation for today big show.. I trust it went real fine!!!

Virtualisation technologies and SOA strategies have, admittingly, set up the enterprise IT environment to dynamically absorb all potential changes stemming from the E2.0 evolution. Most interestingly, we run a small in-conference survey on SOA perception, and over 50% of respondents admitted SOA was a fundamental pillar to respond efficiently to any potential market change. Very little about the techology complexity mix, very little about the nitty-gritty details on virtualisation (despite an hefty presence of VMware…), a lot of attention and feedback on the implied strategic and business changes SOA may enable. Cool.

Today the event went even better.. the room was full of very interested attendees, and the conversation, thanks to the two opening speeches, was directed toward the Web 2.0 social impact and the aftermath within the enterprise environment. The Q&A session went on forever (had to stop it at the end, quite an unique occurrence, I dare say..), the audience was most interested into networking math theories, Barabasi, adaptive systems and the complexity theory… questioning was raising towards the panel (myself, the italian managing director of Viadeo, Pietro Gentile, vice president of Intermedia and journalist expert in 2.0 topics, Claudio Pasqua, SEO and an early enthusiast of social networking and evolutionary web theories) as to address all those issues, asking for some clarification on likely futures opening up in front of the business community, about personality “caching” and data security, the evolution of Second Life and synthetic worlds… honestly, up until yesterday I had in front of me an audience that, when listening to such topics, coupled with words such as “change”, “strategy”, “evolution” et alia, most time was head-shaking, smiling, doing all sort of body-language mix up as to say “rubbish”..

We have all being absolutely stunned by the response, the interest, the willingness to know more and act accordingly. I have also to admit, there is very little knowledge on the fundamentals of the complexity theory, small worlds and the rest of, say, Barabasi thinking are far from being well distributed and understood, and yet I trust there is a massive change in approaching the systemic evolution of the enterprise into a rather more performing, market aware and “discussion-driven” actor. These are good news, more to come as soon as I have gathered some feedback and organised my thoughts!!

NOW mobile operators start whinging about being “just pipes”…

Barcelona event is setting up an utterly dynamic environment for each and every mobile user; communication capability dramatically improve in speed and reliability, handsets are becoming the real next-big-thing with their “smart” declination, the outer Web has long since transformed in a social platform able to let you grow, learn, interact and ultimately “be” whomever you like.

In this terribly interesting ecosystemic shake off, mobile operators realise they have been hedged, or rather they are loosing client’s ownership, provided they ever had it…  quite rightly Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, stated that pundits such as Google or Yahoo have so far delivered a better “mobile experience” than operators’, which is altogether pretty weird, if you come to think to the starting points for both this industry conglomerates..

You know what??? I recall working with some of the big guns in the mobile industry, right at the verge of the UMTS era, say some five years ago, and the overall, consistent, solid approach was along these lines: “the network is my capital, so everyone has to pay to use it”, “clients are topping up and there won’t be much of a market share shake off” and, when presented with service strategy such as the Japanese DoCoMo or KDDI, thus based on an aggressive revenue sharing model (roughly speaking: you provide the service, I put in the network, every penny coming from this wedding will be shared accordingly..), I can still hear the words “no way” resounding all around the room…

Those very shortsighted managers did not even consider the possibility to act and plan in a systemic fashion, thus accepting the fact that the entire industry was not revolving just around “them” but there were some concurrent R&D and marketing strategy that were already shaping the marketplace, absolutely and indisputably well defined. By the way, I have a slide deck dated “2002″ proving the above…

So, now doomsday has come… and clients are slipping through the fingers of mobile operators in terms of “attention” and “equity” perception. The crisp money mobile companies did accumulate in the past years now is merely a remnant of what was once an empire.

Admittingly, that could possibly be slightly harsh and not quite accurate, but the message is all about “expectation”, “relative importance” and “experience”. In this sort of strange equation, users expect from mobile operators to have an always-on pipe, quite likely a fast one (HSDPA/HSUPA as tendency) and that is about the end of it.. ah, nop, one more: all-inclusive tariff plans. End of message.

The experience is about handsets ergonomy and usability (I told them, let me boast this!!!), multiple connectivity opportunity, and all the IP based services you can master, plus the media fundamentals, video-photo-sound, at the highest possible level. The rest (thus the pipe) is commodity, pretty much like expecting light when switching on a lamp..

The Vodafone payoff is “Life is Now”… may I remind that someone said that life is that thing happening whist you are busy doing something else, which is probably the case for some of the mobile execs in the recent past…

Mobile and smart, this is the future ahead!!

We have since long heralded these were times of changes, deep and systematic changes, basically an evolutionary step was taken before our eyes.

Yesterday the Barcelona Mobile World Congress slammed the doors open on a brand new future: definitely mobile and incredibly smart!!! All the major handset manufacturers have launched either brand new hyper-powerful phones or revamped massively some ol’darlings.

New specimens that are making all the technofans drooling are popping up about anywhere… SonyEricsson Xperia X1 is one heck of a smartphone, and please notice the nice add of HSUPA connectivity on top of the now-basic HSDPA.. users may start (where available..) enjoying uploading auto-generated contents at a decent speed and thus augmenting the mSocial experience level.. and somewhere there is a S-video connectivity…

Yep, there are the much awaited Gphone prototypes on the catwalk, they cracks open the very concept of “smart” and “phone” suggesting the future may have a simil-mobile-smart-phone form factor to add/substitute the laptop environment… particularly when considering that most of those smarties are yielding a smashing Wi-Fi capability to top connectivity up..

Also check a bunch of Samsung’s.. SGH-G810, a top of the range, feature-full smartphone, its sort of younger brother i200, topping the whole bunch up with the ever-so-gorgeous Soul, and Nokia N78, N96, and the list goes on (why not including the nice and crisp Garmin NuviPhone??)… (btw, thanks to Telefonino.net for the infos…)

You enjoy browsing around..

Bottom line, the platform for a significant change in lifestyle is on, pretty much available to the everyday man, albeit an above-average, well off technofan for the time being, services are all converging into the mobile device to enhance and top up the users’ experience… it is still a matter of understanding where are the systematic users that will immediately shift communication paradigm to embrace the new tech (the posers are not interesting in the long term mobile services uptake..), and how these may eventually relate to the slower tribes/clusters… again, it is a matter of crossing the technology chasm..

One hurdle will be tariffing and data packages.. the easy answer is an all-inclusive monthly fee, plus an ecosystem of pay-per-use third party services, but the basics such as calls, Web navigation (down and upload) and a basic GPS navigation should be easily available and hassle-free… we will see…

Still, on top of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and lots of other such things, we are forced to include a Mobile 2.0?? Already done?? Dunno, but you got the overall idea…

Being “social” will pass through the mobile device in an empowered way, and as we said back in the early UMTS days, the mobile may actually become a super-hub of anyone’s digital lifestyle, able to connect and re-distribute contents and activities to the more bulky, less mobile items of our XXI century experience.. and yep, that includes our beloved laptop!!!

IMF estimates, the economy and that stuff..politics…

The new IMF estimates about the economic condition on a global scale are telling a story where the word “recession” may not be explicitly mentioned, but “subprime crisis” makes the headlines.

Overall, there is a contraction of 0.3%, from a former 4.4% growth rate to the actual 4.1% (and a 4.9% in 2007…), given the impact of the crisis from the “Gekko” dashboard to the real economy. The US economy, unsurprisingly enough, bears the premium of a further reduction, -0.4% over the latest forecast, to a mere 1.5% of, say, organic growth, which will be coupled with some “spill-over” from 2007 to rise the US economy by2.2%.

Europe will be massively hit by the crisis, considering a reduction from Autumn’s forecast by 0.5 percentage points, an overall 1.6%, and a sliding off path more marked during the last quarter (same thing apply to the US, for consistency purposes!!). China and all emerging markets will slow down a bit, the Dragon will slip back from an initial 11.4% to a current 10%, allowing some overheating pressure over the economy to ease, but more notably the African countries will augment their positive impact on a global scale, posting a nice 7% growth, one percentage point above 2007 results. We saw that coming, supported also by Far East investments and “petro-dollars”. However, the IMF notes that

the deteriorating economic conditions could exacerbate pressures on major financial institutions that have already suffered big losses from the subprime crisis.

A nice warning, but quite off-timing I dare say… we are all wandering what actually is the work done to align risk management practices to the Basel 2 requirements..

Still.. if we apply what happened in the US, and the potential spillover of the subprime crisis to the credit environment (potential??? The Amex results yesterday – 10% decline in net income and some “$438m set aside to cover bad loans” stated the Financial Times) are chanting that story for a supposed above-par marketplace, nevermind the rest…) is it possible that another financial black hole may open up in East Europe??

Quite interestingly, the current Italian political turmoil, according to the IMF, should not affect the overall performance, set over a “healthy” path and stressing that all political conditions are “a worry” but all forecast are made on a pure economic evaluation… as if the two aspect, in a modern ans systemic socio-economic ecosystem, are totally separated and with no area of cross-over and influence!!!

It is so incredibly short-sighted not to consider the “system” as the real ruler of all human interactions and the main pillar for a viable and “effective” future… we may need to see a shift in global power and importance towards the East and the South of the World before realising we have missed a chance..

OK, stepping into far too complicated realms to be addressed in a short blog post, yet if anybody is at all interested I am more than happy to take it to an higher level!!!!

Google..MyStuff, RE<C, maps… the Fantastic Duo wants to save our lives!?!?!

In Mountain View it seems that saving the World is currently taking a whole new meaning and a boost.. Google declares its intention to launch a “green” initiative, called RE<C or “Renewable Energies cheaper than Coal”, which should be supported by spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” to hire engineers and experts to study the issue and find a likely solution, first and foremost to cut down the company internal energy bill and, how kind, to distribute the amassed knowledge to the rest of the “common people”..

Furthermore, it is today’s news that the company is planning to launch a service called My Stuff (courtesy of Corriere della Sera and Wall Street Journal), which basically is a remote archiving capability, pretty much like the Yahoo service, but with easier access dynamics and, arguably, a significant amount of free space. Access to My Stuff should be allowed to any user terminal, from desktop to mobile phones and PDA, provided there is an Internet connection at hand, whether this will be supported by Wi Fi, cellular 3G networks (UMTS or HSDPA) is not further specified. Clearly, the service itself is a nice add, there may be issues on how to handle data privacy and compliance to different country regulations, also the Web connectivity is a plus and a drawback (poor coverage in some areas, connection that may go down, no connection at all – e.g. on airplanes – but I trust those issues have been or will be tackled accordingly. Personally, if I want to have infos always with me, I may want to use a multi gigabyte pen-drive, or a SD card, again it depends on the planned usage of the data…

Are those Google chaps going a bit too far, or really we may end up having a small, real small bunch of ICT players, a sort of super power-houses to serve us all???

I still have a Moleskine in my drawer with the most sensitive infos…

Vista, XP and that Apple over there…

As it seems, there are these days plenty of research, papers, articles and talks, a seamless flow of words about Vista and its inadequacy for the enterprise environment…

ComputerWorld US, leveraging an ad-hoc research (here), suggested that 90% of research participants are sort of worried about migrating to Vista, and 53% has no intention whatsoever to do so in the short time… the interesting bits are about 44% considering an alternative OS to Vista, and 28% quite keen in having an Apple environment around, which is a stunning statement considering Cupertino has never made such a great entry into the corporate environment..

Quite nicely added by someone else, Microsoft is releasing the Service Pack 3 for XP, which is supposed to boost performance for the old and stable (I thought it was already messy, but heck..) OS by a nice 10%. Apart from detailing what is all about this 10%, the argument is: why on Earth I have then to change over to Vista!?!?!? The panel, despite being 900+ strong, may not be significant in statistical terms as to pinpoint a flex in OS adoption trend, nevertheless, it is worthwhile considering it.

As for the home environment… I have searched the Vista-to-XP downgrade guide and it is now in my possession…

Definitely, US are a massive shopping centre!!!

Or, at least, that’s what Arab investors currently see when  facing westward…Haven’t we said this already??? Thing is, will the still-virtual money fund an energy flow into US companies, or will that be sort of an unnecessary overtreatment?

The US are becoming a business venture reservoir??? AMD gives a stake to Abu Dhabi..

Some time ago, the unthinkable.. a Chinese company bought the PC business of IBM (with I guess mutual satisfaction and different luck..), today the even-more unthinkable actually happens: a company from Abu Dhabi, Mubadala Development (owned by the Abu Dhabi government….) bought a stake in AMD, the US-based chip manufacturer, who clearly does not give a damn about the geo whereabouts of the investor, and happily goes with its new inflow of cash (“Pecunia non olet” used to say the Latins, aka “the money does not stink”…).

Globalisation is a factor, here, and funnily enough US government tries to control the oil business with the Army, and the oil business might eventually control the US “jewel of the Crown”, the Valley, with the dollars it gets from selling oil… who will be the fastest?!??!?!

PS… a short note on the go, before leaving!!! Report on the Banking Forum due on Monday!! Zopa was there, and a bunch of other interesting people…

Silicon Valley, the dollar and innovation capability

Whilst browsing I bashed into this article/post on the current and future role of Silicon Valley as a centerpiece for evolution, innovation and new companies venture, given the present macro-economic and financial scenario.

Interesting reading, punchy comments too… there are few arguments here that would nicely make for discussion, yet there is a point here: culture.

Quite understandably, the appeal of a lowering dollar as the entry door into the Valley wealth of experience is on the shiny side, and yet it is like playing a game with someone else’s rules. The present measure for business speed, rise and fall, success and failure, and the ability to resurge from ashes into a new flaming phoenix is something you cannot buy at all with money.. my point is each and every country economy is a systemic balance of severely complicated variables, the product of which is the most visible part, the icing on the cake or the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Roughly speaking, China has got a dominant position in labor cost (up until today at least..) particularly when considering the manufacturing industry and some sectors within it, India is the World service provider, main US wealth is the business culture of the “frontier”, the hazard, sort of “danger management”, which is function of the necessity to be at leading edge, in a dominant position, in constant quest for the “strategic power” of waiting for enemies on top of a hill. You don’ get that simply by moving around the Valley.

Moreover, innovation in this context is taking the acceptation of Web-related advance, and this is another systemic variable to consider: not all countries are Web-centric as US are, most of the developed Western systems are Web-dependent, the hot growing economies are Web-prone (at best), but very few countries are centered on the Web. If they are, social canvass, religious heritage and cultural imprint are different, and thus most of those systems use massively the Web, but are not rotating around it.

You may be able to buy a strong mathematician or an engineer at lower price in Bangalore, who will be able to transfer knowledge.. but how would you transfer attitude? And at the speed required to be in a sustainable business strategic frame?

An Android and Google meets the market (with an Asimov flair!)

Here it is.. the long awaited move Google was expected to make to enter the mobile communication industry is clear on the chessboard… albeit somewhat odder than forecast..

Android will land on Earth, and everyone may benefit from meeting the creature… So far, the Open Handset Alliance, the other outer-space creation to build up the perfect landing spot for Android (check here) has signed up companies such as KDDI and NTT DoCoMo, Telecom Italia and Telefonica, T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel. The masterplan is focusing on development, or how to spread the software development kit to anyone interested as to increase the apps production and, basically, the service level required to appeal to already-in-the-know 21st Century customers, which are the less loyal bunch of buyers in the World ever! Yep, ’cause Android is a software platform to build apps upon and not the longed handset the market was murmuring about!!

Mind you, the entire operation resounded of ol’ skool iMode market entry… I give you (developer) the technology, you develop, we share some of the revenue, I own the network and the billing process.. a fairly simple business model aimed at expanding the user base, and it led companies to sign up in 2002 millions of users in a matter of a quarter.. a win-win position…

However, open means.. open, and there are already a number of OS environments in the mobile space Android has to fight for market share and yet are necessary to create a community-based approach: nobody in my peer group, regardless of handset/software/OS has to be cut off from experiencing “me”. So, superior applications, nice features, potentially new handsets and an “ecosystemic” compatibility to ensure global communication capability… Hopefully the Android will follow the Three Laws..

Becoming a “de facto” standard, the most wanted, the sought-after will fit the bill only partially.. there is still the carrier side and the tariffing issue to sort out.. nobody apart from some tech enthusiasts will jump on using Androids apps if the experience is too costly and it reprises some “already seen” features or capability.. beware of the “communication overload” after the “information overload”.. never outguess the market, never..

On the other hand, having the “imprimatur” of carriers and handset manufactures could do a great deal towards positioning Android and its application portfolio into users’ habits set.. the issue is whether maximising the return in the short term or bet on a longer lifecycle and thus aim at permeating the marketplace.

Google generally wants to change the World and make money in the process, I would expect a “farming” strategy to start with.. Steve docet, Apple’s everywhere, you have to face it in any possible digital space, sometime you win, other times you loose, but the battle is against a set enemy.. Google would possibly follow suit, and move from solving a problem to provide an experience.

Whether you like it or not is up to you.

China hottest IPO??? Nope, World’s largest IPO!!

China got its financial champion!!! It is largest than Exxon and General Electric, the two biggest companies in the World and symbols of a certain economic and corporate power, it grew 160+% on its first trading day, to reach the stunning level of £1,000bn, you put down all the necessary “zeros” .. PetroChina blasted the financial community!

So, the Celestial Empire has got its necessary muscles, there should be plenty of cash (the IPO raised $9bn, another record..) to foster and support further “deals” across the World, and we should expect some subtle geopolitical imbalances.. China, as already mentioned, represents for part of the World a substantial threat, a problem, an economic conundrum to some, a natural hazard, a menace.. mainly, it is rather a physical formula that makes China something to watch out for, kinetic energy

OK, the physicists amongst you will immediately surge in disgust for my using this formula in such an improper context, but bear with me, the idea is about a great mass taking up unprecedented speed… it will be difficult to stop, as it will be to direct it to a spectacular and sustainable growth path. There are some structural variables of the Chinese phenomena which are not yet displaying their full potential (either supportive or destructive, it depends) but, considering the size, those variables will play a massive role in setting the pace and the faith of the Asian giant and furthermore the destiny of the geopolitical balance of the area (if not considering it could be a global influence we are talking here..). Wealth imbalances, working conditions, energy supply, environmental hazards, financial stability, coherence with social standard at global level, and above and beyond civil rights and freedom, those are aspects that the Chinese bridge commanders have or will have to analyse pretty thoroughly.. and sort out properly.

According to Friedman’s theory of the Golden Arches

No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s

China and US should be going along if not nicely, at least in a bearable fashion, but as already pointed out there is an issue here about the notion of war… economic, cyber, political, social… are all new forms or permutation of the old mankind sin????

My argument is about the viral destructive power wealth unbalances may have in an unprepared social system, particularly when supported by an increase in communication and permeability to “inputs” on “how it should be” (aka knowledge).. to sustain growth a system has to increase the level of preparedness and thus approach the “capitalist” factors (including productivity, innovation, financial strength) and leverage on those.. but the more you dig into being a capital fortress, the more you older system values crumble down to be replaced by the newest.. if transition is not perfectly driven by the “governors”, an uneven social fabric may be the breeding ground for system instability. This seems to be the case of China, as of today.

From a Western standpoint, the PetroChina IPO is a stunning event, from a geopolitical observation, this is a potential new nail into some unspecified coffin… but the slamming of the hammerhead is quite distinct. And it is unclear who’s working it.

Hang around and work in Japan!!

Creativity is such an overrated word these days, but sometimes it is more than applicable to everyday’s touch of genius.. This is, roughly, the situation (courtesy of Joy Ito): youngsters in Japan have become some sort of hang-around-and-see-what-happen group, with very little inclination in sorting our their lives and hunt for the proper job, standard life.. the World is mutating so fast, life is a big swirl of occurrences and possibilities and, as the drunken man leaning on a lamp post with his home key in the hand and “if the world is swirling sooo fast, sooner or later my home will pass from here”, they wait and see, doing almost nothing.

So, some businesses may have trouble in finding a decent workforce, or even a workforce altogether… so, the sparkle of genius comes in.. you may know this already, I did not (cannot have a God-like, all-embracing knowledge.. can I???), but here it comes Otetsudai Networks (if you have any Japanese language skill click here)!!!!

The “thingy”, run by Mr Sunagawa, basically puts together demand and offer, nothing new, here but, wait..

Say you need someone to help out your car-wash given the recent sandy rain..you hit ON, in which you put down your request (someone to help washing cars for four hours….), people that are connected (subscribed) to ON will actually see you ads, and will apply to the “position”, if they want, if they need some cash, if they have some spare time, if, if, if…. Now the icing on the cake.. people will be on GPS, thus will see and will let you see the entire picture: where is the job, how far from my position, and for you how many people applied, how far they are and which sort of experience they may have…(in washing cars, yep, you know..). This “referral” is actually applied also to the job advertiser (how good the owner-manager is, the pay, the actual workplace…).

You choose the right chap/lady, and there you are, problem sorted for the car-wash and some cash changes hands, allowing the kiddie to spend it, and having it circulating, and so, and then, and the rest…

Why it is interesting?? Clearly it makes the most of the tech available: mobile networks, GPS, some Web 2.0 features (mashing up sites with location-aware information), the amazing array of mobile devices scattered allover the place (and people living in full symbioses with them..ring any bell, Italy???), but most importantly it is designed after analysing in full details a young tribe that is populating a modern city, the service has leveraged a modification of the social canvass to deliver a win-win solution for all parties involved. Most effective I dare say, and without starting a social debate on temporary jobbing, the condition of the youngest in large urban conglomerates and blah blah, but solving a rather simple equation: problem, solution (in this case good enough..). Add to the recipe some flexible work regulation (I believe..), and above all acceptance of social changes and there you are, a modern city-society problem solving activity. No questioning on whether this is good or bad, and furthermore that is private and not governative (who cares…), if it solves a problem or augment recrudescence, I am just stressing the effectiveness of social and urban tribes analysis. With very little talk on innovation, evolution, case studies, round tables and so forth.. it has been simply done.

Would like to see it happen closer to home..

iPhone, then GooglePhone, now what? The iSkyphone???

Nevertheless, here is another contender!!! Skype wireless phone is going to be launched “by late October” in Europe.. considering that most EU citizens, and most of all Italians are “mobile based” rather than PC-based, I guess this could be a “see-what-happen” kind of situation. The phone will be equipped with a “Skype” button (something along this line..) which should trigger a proprietary application, developed by iSkoot (sounds very much like a viking word, which is all the best for a mobile company..), that will magically connect the little thing with the immense Skype friends’ community everyone’s got these days..

The fact that will be under the “3″ umbrella, as already cited into the BizWeek article, should actually lead to a rather complicated tariffing scheme, like you have to call your favourite number in New Caledonia more than once a day to get a 15% rebate on each and every SMS you send to people more that 250Km away that, ultimately, will build up against your free calls to… ….. ….

Still, it is a nice option, as if we didn’t have aplenty already, into the “mobile experience” slaughter arena…

More to come (I am afraid!!!!)

A day at SMAU!

Just back from SMAU… right, what the heck is SMAU, for those of you that are not Italian??? Simply, that is (should be..) the largest, most famous and historical ICT exibition / convention in Italy, held in Milan and generally in October. The event went through a roller-coaster, somewhat hard times: it once was the reference for anybody in IT (ICT, later..), it was submerged by schoolboys in desperate quest for the latest gaming/pc/whatever cool gadget from, say, end of ‘90 to mid Naughties, then went a bit downhill and then, supposedly, resurged in the last couple of days.. supposedly, as to avoiding the screaming hordes of hormonal youngsters crazy for bytes and bums (companies’ stands swarmed with hostesses..), SMAU became a business-only game… quite sad indeed, to be honest..

The excitement buzz was lost, no perception of technology riding the tidal wave of innovation, no feeling that ICT was out of the basement and into everyone’s house and life… it is back to be a trite and sparkless affair for boring attempted-pin stripes suit wearers … nevertheless, I went.

Scope was to attend a conference (more a workshop as it turned out to be..) on Web 2.0 business opportunities…

A good two-and-a-half hours blew in the wind of Second Life and geomarketing “a la GoogleMaps”… incredibly boring, to be honest, particularly for a couple of issues:

• the SL part, albeit well documented with infos and numbers from the usual sites, including Second Life Insider and KZero, was poorly organised as to give out some new insights on what is business in/with/via SL (if any.. ) and focused on the end user experience guideline (how to fly, why to fly and some other amenities..).. the only biz remark was about the SL potential to extend relationships and create some sort of improved customer care, supposing your customers are actually in..
• nobody stressed the cultural impact of approaching SL to enhance and empower the organisation, that including training, virtual conferencing, interactive product / feature demonstration, workgrouping and so forth.. in a country (Italy) where it is scarcely adopted even the “remotisation” of a workplace, or at least is not as widespread as it should be, I trust it will be hard to explain your boss “I am actually working..” when interacting with a fish called Wanda …

Plus, there were some other statements and pearls of wisdom which I thought were superfluous for those already within a VW and totally out of place for those who are not yet in (remarks included something along the “people buy stuff for the avatars and not something to take back to real world..” lines).. the approach was either druidic or “we and the Others” kind of patronising tone. A big no-no altogether.

There was a nice notation on all of the above: the absolute high percentage of female attendees in the audience. Now, before you start with pub-style comments, it is interesting to notice how an usually male populated area (girls, IT WAS boooooring !!!) today was sort of 50-50.. you give this a nice explanation, I believe it could be due to information technology being increasingly embedded into everyone’s life, with some cool declination quite recently and, more importantly, it is no longer a technical affair but it could well be placed amongst the “humanistic” topics…. (which I rather..)

The interesting presentation from Microsoft about its Virtual Earth application was somewhat too quietly digested by the attendees, I was expecting a rain of questioning, how that could go against Google Thingy(es) and similar amenities, whilst all went out with a mild clapping of hands, unheard it went in the overall buzz-chatty sound of the hangar-like compound SMAU is in..

Some missing companies: Microsoft itself, nobody from the mobile comms industry apart from RIM and Telecom Italia (partly mobile, ok…), none of the networking giants (Cisco and bros..), PC manufacturers went AWOL apart from IBM and a neighbour such as Lenovo, absolutely nobody from the Web 2.0 industry, whatever that may be… if someone of the above was around, either its stand was real tiny or it was placed nearby the toilet area, which I did not explore at all.. furthermore, gadgets were horrible, I ended up with a c@#p yellow yo-yo… poor me, what a day…

So, end game was not so exciting as I supposed it could be, and that is remarkably sad, considering the wealth of innovation and buzz that is going on today all over the World.. and that is scary, for you need to have a stronger grasp and a better picture of ICT as the main change agent at your disposal today, if you want to have an healthy country system, ready to ramp up. I better go to my feed reader and see what is going on…somewhere else??!?!

Oracle is adding at the shop cart!! and BEA goes in..

I trust Larry went mad at the announcement SAP was putting Business Objects under its belt, so there we are, he proposed Oracle to buy BEA Systems … talk about industry consolidation.. Question is: the Fusion project may end up with too many software atoms to fuse into a coherent new enterprise energy??

More to come I guess…

OK, time to go really… enough is enough!!!!

UPDATE: somebody said “no, tks” to Larry!! Something like Luna Rossa did earlier this summer in Valencia…

Wi Fi in the Park, and Milan goes on air..

You all know that I am not staggeringly in love with Milan, which I believe is somewhat living and pretending way above its current status of second-tier European city, however, “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” and there we are.. there is, for the not-in-the-know, a lovely park in the middle of the city, Parco Sempione, which should actually be considered as the local version of NY Central Park or London’s Hyde Park (sort of..), and it is packed full with the usual fauna of joggers, mums with going-to-be-famous babies, some execs and other city parks’ paraphernalia. The whole community will enjoy the beauty of Wi Fi connection across the park!! Well, most of the park…

There is a “strategically positioned” antenna over the Torre Branca, sort of in the middle of the park, and some smaller antennas in four other location. The tricky part is the access, which is actually going via a “card” that the WiFi surfer should collect in dedicated “outlets” nearby the antennas (as the Corriere della Sera points out), and the card will guarantee access for three hours to be spent throughout the day. The card is free, seemingly for now…. Ah, forgot, to get the card you have to leave your full name, no nicknames allowed , and an identity document number.

Now, that is particularly ludicrous, even for an over-rated city like Milan. Could you actually think about how to complicate something that should be “free” in the first place a tad more???? Why do I have to give out all those info??? To protect who from what?? Do come along….

The nice thing is that the local “assessore” (someone in charge something, at municipality level) for the urban layout stated “the parks are our top priority” when considering the Wi Fi implementation, and the very chap claims “so that we will allure a larger number of people to go about the park to study and work” as if I rather be stuck in the office if I had not my boss checking for my whereabouts.. rubbish, utter rubbish and sounds very much like “parrot talking”…

And yet the entire plan, which entails the coverage of the urban territory by 2009, via more than 4,000 access points, is a nice step forward to the fuellest coverage to be available by 2015 for the “Expo” to be held in Milan. It is interesting, it is a nice way of pushing forward a city that may have lots to offer to residents and tourists alike, but the feeling is, again, that Milan is playing like it were a much larger and much more important city. And it is playing way too bad!!!

It has already been mentioned a “feasibility study” to be prepared in collaboration with the local Polytechnic, which I trust would lead to proving the project will have massive returns for the parties involved.. when, not too long ago, the city of San Francisco (!!!!) had some trouble justifying its project of Wi Fi cabling… SF, at the very heart of the tech evolution!!!

Guess if that rings any bell ….

In the meanwhile, it has already been stated that the wireless coverage of the city will not be free for surfers, and furthermore there will be a public tender to award the project… that would allow an immediate cash back into some pockets, with very little creative effort.. so, nevermind people would eventually pay for some contents, nevermind the fact that the municipality could use the widespread capability of being in touch with a range of potential “customers” via laptop or, increasingly, mobile devices to push for entertainment offers (info, tickets, discounts, coupons…) that may create a flow of activity and opportunities for a plethora of commercial actors (which would pay, say, for advertising… isn’t that the model of all the top flying Web companies today???)… and you could go a long way along these lines… why on Earth hindering the overall uptake of such a nice opportunity just to make money the easy (potentially) way??? That’s silly… (for the project itself, not for the pockets that may benefit from sheer stupidity..)

So, the overall idea of “virtual streets” in Milan along the old, real ones comes to a price.. for the users to pay… guess most of the people will keep on browsing the nice cafes and shops in the Triangolo della Moda and will be oblivious of Wi Fi.. apart from the typical Milanese posers, but that is another story..

PS By the way, if the municipality wanted to measure the citizens’ satisfaction for such a service, first should have not bother everyone with that data collection via crucis, and secondly, should have potentially launched the project not at the very doorstep of the autumn rainy season and winter cold… talking about stupidity…

Virtual worlds and the gold rush..

Long time ago, my mum bought for an unknown reason a book titled The Sword of Shannara. Admittingly, I had not read any fantasy before that one (no, not even the Lord of the Rings..), but I quite fell for the plot, the adventure, the…everything.. and I thought what an amazing movie that would be, or what a smashing game it could become..

I sometimes believe that quite a lot of our inventions, creations, and to some extent evolutionary endeavors come from the way we grew with our dreams, what we wanted to do and what we liked when we were free to play.. thus I like to think that the current hype and the explosion of the virtual world frenzy could also stem out of other than business opportunities.. it is like traveling in spaces and realms made by our imagination, and more interestingly composed by the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people like us..

The child in us is constantly in charge..

Then, incidentally, dreams are valued for what they are, the food for anyone’s soul, and thus monetise that is quite an easy and most interesting task.. in the recent times the VW environment has gained traction and a wealth of venture capitalists have decided to inject fresh capital into the dream theatre, according to Virtual Worlds Management that amounted to an hefty $1billion.. more on that here..

Given that there is no philanthropy involved, I have to assume the entire operation yields some sort of return (apart from cashing the venture capital by the VW owner..) .. ads??? No way, we have already discussed about the potential fallout of extensive ads campaign into originally-free worlds..eBiz? Perhaps, but not in the immediate future, again for the very reason the VW existed in the first place, connection amongst dreamers, and thus very little inclination in spending frenzy here..(maybe at a later stage..). So, where’s the beef? Lateral return? As in brand equity, standing, fit or anything intangible?? That would actually make some sort of sense, since you may operate in an “intangible” world…

Discussion open, in the meanwhile dream on!!!

UPDATE: and, to put it straight, investments in VW should also leverage something like this Metaverse Market Index, due to be launched at the San Jose convention, October 10th … gosh…

Emerging Technology… why not…

The World is no longer the place it used to be!! This is a nice one I heard few days ago at a meeting, and beside the obvious silliness of the remark (if you have read “Siddhartha” you know already that you cannot bath twice in the same river…), it is interesting to keep track of changes and what technology may represent as evolutionary driver.. not solely to try and guess the future (nice quote here … Niels Bohr..) but to enjoy the possibility of multiple future waiting for us ahead..

A nice factor to consider is the actual social cost and planetary distribution of tech advances, and whether these shows may actually make the press in a six-months-time as they move from talking to doing.. which is what we need most to be on this Planet (and possibly on the surface..) when one of those future may come true. More to come, I believe..

Northern Rock, sub primes, USA and the systemic approach to life…

I have been told, quite recently, that probably my way of approaching things and the way I do try to look at problems is way too exaggerate, somewhat too broad, far too high-fly.. fine..

However, as it seems, the world is massively entwined in a strong systemic fashion, and truly you cannot avoid but looking at the whole picture, top-down, bottom-up, left-to-right or whatever is the way you want to wander around things, but broadening your view is never ever a redundant effort!!!

Several times we have discussed and approached issues and ideas from a challenging position, considering the “System” as the main entity… now we are facing with a massive crisis, mainly fostered by “panic” into that herd of people that has been gathered around the myth of an “accessible-to-all” financial realm… and forced, to inject fresh energy into the system, to access a stack of “wealth” that, in real life, was not in their normal reach.

This is far from being a “caste” based approach to life, is solely related to the simple truth: most people today are living way above their real financial status. We could open up a massive discussion on whether this is morally correct or not, whether this is necessary or not, whatever, bottom line is: the entire system is somewhat living “above par” but with no real skills for doing so, it is a fake position, it is a deceit.

When, every now and then, part of the system does not align immediately with a modification stemming somewhere else, or simply when the change velocity in some of the systems dynamics is faster than the one needed to “spread the news” and upgrade the other parts of the systems, there we are: Northern Rock style crisis.

Another reason behind the brutal reaction to a maybe not so virulent occurrence is the high empowerment of scarcely literate (in financial terms, clearly) masses, easily herd around via news, hypes, credos.. when this mass gets scared, it reacts running a stampede.. you better keep off its path!!

An entire country system is currently living above par and its global influence is far too massive.. I do hope there won’t be any hard wake up call in USA, should China go about as all the Northern Rock “creditors” are doing these days.. the fall out would not a nice thing to see, particularly if you are windward..

Conversational marketing.. or you rather shut up????

The advent of that “social networking” stuff lead us to believe that interactions would have been the next hard currency, it makes everyone believe that opening up to the “others” would have been beneficial to whatever-I-am-supposed-to-do in my life, personal space or, yep, business…

Now, that would actually be sort of true IF interactions, and thus all the wording, commenting, talking, sharing would not turn into a sour soup of scorning, disdaining, despising, loathing and such niceties… that’s the trick…

So what??? Companies start thinking about “conversational marketing” as a potential way (tool, idea, unconscious thinking…??) to interact, interlude and flirt with potential customers and maximise the so-called (by someone..) “relationship economy”… personally I believe we are talking about a “referral economy”, if we really have to put a tag on it, therefore it is not the link that matters, but what is the message content flowing amongst links (people, mind you).

That is a risky business… artificially augmenting the information flow or number of forced links amongst users may, yep, increase positive brand perceptions and spread the word, but also a massive blunder may resonate like a screaming child in a small car.. pretty disturbing, I believe..

And, most of all, the above will gain speed proportional to the “mass” involved… the more, the better/worse..

The argument here is about effectiveness: if I ask for information, ideas, perceptions, whatever, am I able to act upon it, when I do receive a massive flow of data, directly from the very heart of the market? Would a company be able and fit to react to whatever direct market response it may receive??? Otherwise, that two-way (clearly is two-way…) conversation is pretty much like the one you generally see in politics: someone protest, the others change, change, change and change to change nothing at all in the end.

Now, you may actually not throw a full political system down the drain (you can’t??? Really??? That’s a pity…), but clearly you can shift your spending power, disposable income, cash, MONEY, somewhere else..

Since, the most important currency today is not “interaction”, we have aplenty, is “attention”. And that is scarce, when you may have nothing interesting to say or, worse, you are not able to listen…

Get it right, mate…

Just give me a Gcall….

I wonder… sometimes it seems there is a personal affair in trying to limit Apple in any possible way or, otherwise, piggy back on Steve intuitions and follow suit …

We are not yet accustomed to have the next mobile experience in our life (I mean, iPhone…) and there is already a (juicy???) contender, coming directly from the Fantastic Duo… is the Gphone a reality coming our way??? Quite nicely, and considering the “hardware” skill Apple has got (plus undebatable design prince, Jonathan Ive), Google is betting its mobile fate on software rather than anything else… not exactly software-software, as the “intelligence” behind iPhone is pretty sharp edged anyway, but on a cluster of apps and, why not, some “pluses” such as mobile payment systems… actually, they patented a Gpay… no, well, Gbuy, as to avoid misunderstanding.. and a GPS antenna to pester us with geomarketing initiatives, plus the GMail…

Nice load, I guess, and yet I am wandering whether it is still that time when you wanted to be branded from head to toes (limiting your experience???), and furthermore, where is the advantage I got in having all that, which is basically exactly the same I have on a nice smartphone nowdays …. are we still back to tariff???? Has Google got a strong-enough brand equity as to leverage it into the mobile communication space????

We’ll see…

iPod revolution on its way??

Or the event that Apple will held in San Francisco next Sept. 5th is just a “keep the pressure steady” on the market after the earlier launch of the alluminum-look iMac???

Still, every single time Stevie goes on stage, people start trembling, either in excitement or in terror..

Few things in the rumors are quite interesting, though… first, the possibility to have an iPod with full-screen features, then to have it packed with Apple OS, furthermore to have that injection of intelligence into more traditional, click-wheel based models, and last but not least the possibility to see a new iPhone, the iPhone Nano, whatever that means…

Most interesting of all is an alleged  declaration Steve Jobs did in an earlier company meeting (mind you, if the declaration is out in the press, that was not exactly a company meeting.. nevermind..), pointing at the possibility to auto-cannibalise product revenues with other product lines revs, than having that done by competitors..

Now, that seems to me, with all respect for such a genius, something like common sense … so expect the expected and, as someone says in the linked  articles, also the WOW…

Apple strategy is all about excitement, and as the most adventurous amongst you may know, adrenaline wears off pretty quickly, so it is a matter of keeping that up, and transform it in awe!!

Life is great, isn’t it..?

China…bloated, blasted or booming?? Or controlled…??

In a recent BusinessWeek article, China has been finger pointed as …what, indeed? A bloated economy, a blasted opportunity already or, yet, a booming system?

I believe it is about a mix of all three, for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, you may teach me that “economy” is not a one-man band show, but it is a systemic condition and a set of actions, distributed evenly across the social system and the resources portfolio, to foster balanced and sustainable growth and wealth. Now, as it seems, the fast forward mode the Chinese economy has taken since a few years has completely forgot about the above, leaving behind significant parts of the system, both physical (e.g. the inner mainland, the quality control system, the financial canvass….) and cultural (aka laws and regulations, some sort of ethics.. as Westerners could say something about it, but nevermind..) to make the growth a systemic condition, thus a de facto and furthermore sustainable overtime.

What you see is not what you get, in case of China, it is rather what you believe you see is what you always wanted to get…

Secondly, it is important to notice that the surge of such an economic powerhouse, or whatever it is considering the above statements, has a massive impact over the geopolitical balances of the influenced area. Now this is interesting, since that bit of Far East has always been one of the most interesting counterparts of the US global power display, leveraging masses of people, a rather effective cultural approach to any given challenge, pretty much able to respond to the Calvinist US approach to life in general, since the respect and worship of a “higher” something (emperor, the party, the hierarchy, the company…) moved masses of energy and people in one coordinated direction. Now, that power is somewhat challenged by “modernity”, and I believe that Internet (May the Google be with you!!!! No, thanks anyway…) is playing a massive role as a “propaganda” machine that undermines the oneness of such societies, thus minimising their inertia. US may somewhat rejoice???? Open to arguments, here.

Loosing inertia, loosing momentum does favor a weaker geopolitical influence and strategy effectiveness, since the other leverage, economy, is linked to the above, and war is (thanks Whatever God) no longer a viable option (at least not in such a format that can impact the entire Far East area…).

Still, China may have been overrated or badly analysed in a systemic fashion not to preclude the “new kid on the block” kind of effect, and it may have not entirely exploited its geopolitical role (yet), but it definitely remains a factor and an opportunity. A factor because its very existence causes an interesting turmoil on a plethora of different subjects, from energy global strategy (what will keep the Chinese engine work? Middle East oil?? Boff, although Iraqis may need some cash to exploit their seemingly spectacular oil fields, but what about the Marines???…African and other bad-boys countries one??? Maybe so…Gas from the Asian plains?? Not considering the infrastructure plans apt to move gas from east westward.. Nuclear??? What to see that at UN council…Coal??? What about the entire planet getting pissed off???) to financial equilibrium (Chinese cash is still financing a good quarter of the US debt, isn’t it??? And Western financial institutions are buying shares of Chinese banks, right?) to cultural standpoints for the next millennium (that 1.6-whatever billion people may have a saying on culture, poetry, literature, science or not????).

I am thus curious to see the evolution of all this, and although we kept it to a small-scale bar (pub, for some of the AngloSaxons amongst you) chat, thus inaccurate in its details, yet there is a lethal weapon the “rest of the world” may use to hinder and guide the evolution into a giant with feet of clay: well distributed amount of power and a dollar rain in the right pockets.

That will stop every evolution.

Fullstop.

UPDATE. About the opportunity thing,  guess it is all down to the fact that, to be part of a club, you need the most appropriate outfit and gear… that the club itself does produce… you make the math and get over the details….

Finger food (2)

‘Morning everyone…

Last eve ended up being a very nice way of welcoming Summer ‘07: gym, turkish bath and aromarium, a lovely hang out with some new and old friends in a cocktail bar not too far from home in Milan, had the opportunity to discuss about Japan and some work too (by the way, if someone of you knows a good IT professional in Milan, able to set up a new IT layout for a fashion SME, just give me a shout…), had a late dinner and back home under the stars and a steamy night!!!

There we are, simple but effective way to build up a nice morning after…

And it is Friday, and I thought why not going on and about the “finger food” format, some nibbly news, such as:

• virtual goods are here to stay, above and beyond the lindendollars..
• a “printed electronic book” or the past can be enhanced by the very future it contributed to create (quite nice the argument about the importance of tradition, is it something we are all oblivious about???);
• from Dolly to artificial life… and some movie plots may actually become reality!! My asking “why” sounds pointless…
• the nicest today! Back in the ’50s, style is back on, slow-living and the beauty of art, la Ville Lumiere, all in one move: back on the bike!! Love it, absolutely!!

Plenty more, lots of stuff, such as the fusion, or better still the MashUp of Google Earth and SecondLife, that meaning flying over the “real” world and interact with it, or the fact that Sao Paulo has stripped off all advertising from its walls, opening up debates about the financial impact (on small biz…), or the fact that you allow people to see “how ugly the city really is”, or argumenting over the art form that advertising is (some, maybe, but most of the stuff is utter rubbish…)…

So, there we are, end of the week, things happens, talks make the day, we are potentially all retreating from the noise, sit down and relax. At least for a couple of days!

Enjoy the weekend, Summer is here, let’s celebrate!!!!

Much ado about …. nothing???

The hype, the hype!!!

Millions of newly-born Spielbergs, tons of Oprahs, zillions of dumbs and dumbers made telcos a nice place to be, again.. BizWeek underlines that the traffic generated over the 2.0s sites have made like Jesus to Lazarus.. which is nice, still we are counting endless amounts of money, startling statistics over the creation of a huge stack of rubbish, which is most of the stuff going around the Web today. Yet, there are “intangibles”, aka the super-conscience, the ultra-society that is creating and revamping itself over the Internet, which cannot be valued or measured in evolutionary terms.

So, please welcome the iPhone and the consortium against iPhone, or “Apple vs. Rest of the World”, and cheers to  big guns such as Google, Intel and Yahoo going to battlefield to gain a slice of wireless spectrum, and kudos to the Italian “La Repubblica” newspaper that today distributes the Official Guide to SecondLife, so that all Italians from today onward may get a decent life in virtual world and forget about the current real one..

Someone, sooner or later, will start questioning about the value of all the hyper-kinetic of these days….

Some “finger food”…

Some little things to nibble around (from “La Repubblica Affari e Finanza” newpaper)..

• The Italian WiMax seems to be finally something like an opportunity, also for small TLC players;
• Neural architecture has been overshadowed by Cogito, as it seems the closer a machine can get to the Turing hypotesis;
• The new Web is the kingdom of search engines (by the way, got the invitation to Spock beta test, thanks guys!!!)….
• … plus few more amenities over Google, advertising, Citizendium (Wikipedia under control), on line travel agencies and the rest….

Decision time: is all this stuff occupying space (Web and on paper) or again is a small fragmented forecast of a future of even-more hyperconnectivity, hyperintelligence and the rest of us behind all that, trying to find our way out??

Shepherds, do not forget it…

Did I make myself clear??

This is the new trend in corporate communication strategy!!!

Wired published an article about the potential of “opening” the company dirty clothes box to the public and the effect this may have over company positioning and customer “retention”..

You may have already guessed that I am strongly about men being generally mean, particularly when there is a money matter, so.. did US had to take a strong stand against lies, freaking lies?? From Enron to Iraq we have witnessed a massive flow of blunders.. a system can bear up until a certain point, after which there is a confidence collapse and systemic reactions may become uncontrollable.

Nonetheless, it is rather nice to see top managers (albeit it may actually be their comm department.. ) use stuff and tricks belonging to a new universe to sort out issues that are sprouting from ol’ fashioned  company troubles…

Or, conversely, is it the fact that the World outside is today able to spot a lie, putting together a strong, global conscience via blogs, wikis, social networks et alia, thus forcing even the most reluctant to mold over this state of things?

The Internet has inverted the social physics of information.

Rather true, isn’t it?

Yet, I would like to see it taking up in Italy!!!! We are as waterproof to transparency as a titanium wall…

Have a nice weekend you all, back on Monday!!!

Gyro theory….!!!

The PA (or Gyro Theory) follow the theory related to the inertial navigation systems which, in simplify terms, a gyro apparatus maintains the direction of the vector upon which is mounted, adapting the movement to the mutation (predefined or random) of the reference system in which it moves.

For instance, a missile with inertial navigation system is able to maintain its route and speed keeping fixed reference points with the ground and the orography it may encounter along its path.

It is thus possible to extrapolate a reference model of some business environment behaviors apt to pinpoint which is the Point of Anchorage (PA) to the marketplace (the flight plan, in essence), the route and speed to follow, and the likely reaction to mutation within the environment the Business is operating in. It is thus very interesting to understand which may be the PA, that is to say the set of values that underpins the company’s performance and its positioning.

Cleary, the company is not only made around the “PA”, but it keeps its equilibrium via the coordinated movement of “satellite values” that, as the gyro rotor, are actually determining its speed and angle as to respond effectively to each and every mutation, and keeping steady and unchanged the first and utmost principle, the PA in fact.

Shifting strategic weight across satellite values impacts and profoundly modify the overall company behavior. It is thus mandatory to know perfectly well the movements of the environment, the strength and applicability of the PA and, if at all possible, the PA sets of the likely competition. There we are…. gyro approach to the markeplace in a time of turbulence… ready to roll???? Keep asking…

By the way, do not look around, the theory is mine, but the inspiration comes from here (needless to explain for the few ones in the know)!!!!!!!!