My Web 2.0 Trip

I went to New York for the first time in my life last week to attend a conference on Web 2.0 called AJAXWorld08. New York was probably as I expected it. In some parts you could smell the money, whilst in other areas it was obviously lacking. Amidst the very thoughtful layout of streets organized into a grid system (almost Milton Keynes like in its logic) one encountered examples of transport networks that appear to have evolved organically, untamed by man.

I have to say the conference was well organized. There was a rich tapestry of Web 2.0 speakers and a great many brave young start-ups. But the focus of the conference was deeply technical and appeared very light on corporate interest. Where were all of the end-users? It points to the fact that the IT industry is very good at convincing itself about the next big thing but can leave the business world behind. This absence of ‘business context’ left me naturally feeling like the proverbial square pin surrounded by round holes.

At NDMC we only ever think about technology in terms of the business context. Perhaps this is because Nick and I are not ‘gadget’ people. Given the choice we would both probably use a paper diary and print our reports unless there was a good reason why not to. I like paper (there, I confessed!). I think there are many examples of technologies that are NEW but do nothing to move forward the usefulness of computing to organizations and consumers. Take for example Windows Vista. Sure, it does more things than Windows XP, but XP is reliable and works reasonably well. I don’t think Vista has improved my user experience or saved any time. It has probably cost me more time with drivers not working and applications failing to execute. It hasn’t fixed any of the usability failings I would identify in XP.

I would argue that we all need to be more critical of technology. We should all expect more. (Would Captain Kirk be happy if his people spent an hour a day working on spreadsheets? I never saw that part of every day life in Star Trek when I was growing up in the 1970’s.) Where did we go wrong? Do we assume that Microsoft is cleverer than the rest of us - and so if they don’t offer it, we can’t have it?

When I attended AJAXWorld08 I was expecting to see some revolutionary technologies. Perhaps I did see some ‘small steps’ that might one day morph into giant leaps but in the micro-minutiae of technology presented over the 3 days it was difficult to filter out the business drivers from the technology pitches.

And I suspect that’s why the corporations weren’t in attendance. They don’t get it yet. What’s the story on Web 2.0 in terms of banking more business, reducing operating costs and achieving cashable efficiency savings? The messages are far too detailed at this stage in its evolution; the technology is much too young. Corporations need it packaging up into easier to eat chunks. And they want to see proof. Perhaps this is what we will see at AJAXWorld09 - Web 2.0 becoming Enterprise 2.0.

But of the people that attended this event in a blustery New York in 2008, which of these people – the adventurers of our generation - will become the software billionaires of this Century? Somewhere in the crowd I am sure these people were there - in which case we will say, “We happy few…”

Frictionless IT

I spend most of my time in board rooms helping management teams to develop an understanding of their customer value and golden threads that will focus the energy of their enterprise towards its success. Through a series of workshops I work with leaders to reach a small number of objectives and key performance indicators that will form the basis of a sustainable method of managing performance.

When the time comes to try to find the data to populate these KPIs, it is at this moment for management teams that the challenges of getting information the last mile really start to hit.

So we have a meeting with IT. They tell us that some of the information exists but it has never been brought together in that way before so it might ‘be difficult’. They say that for some of the newer KPIs the data has never been gathered before. Then one of the department heads says that he has some of the information on a spreadsheet. Another department head says the same. Then as we finally reach the end of the list we find that there is a requirement for new information systems to capture the data that doesn’t exist at the moment.

By the time we get to the end of the sheet our timescales for the change programme are in tatters. We are facing a serious risk of all the momentum of the strategy communications programme, the energy and vibrancy that we started with on the first day spent with the management team plotting to take on the world with their great customer offer, all of that ebbing away.

I should like to introduce to you a new paradigm called ‘Frictionless IT’.

Frictionless IT describes a theoretical information management environment where all costs and restraints associated with aligning information systems to emerging business needs are non-existent.

Let me recap and describe precisely what I mean: I’m talking about a situation where people networks – collaborative groups of information workers who share a common goal or outcome - are able to train their information systems to always fit their changing information requirements.

In the next 5 years we will see Frictionless IT become a reality. But for Frictionless IT to happen you need what I call ‘Rubber-Walled IT’.

In our management meetings we used to use the term rubber-walled building to describe our requirement for office space which, as a fast growing business, always needed to be sufficient for the people that we employ but not excessive so that we were paying for space that we don’t need.

Unfortunately, most buildings don’t have rubber walls so the choice for tenants is to estimate the size of office space they think they will need over the next 3 to 5 years and hope that they guess right.

We’ve come to apply the same terminology to describe the needs of organizations for their information systems. Rubber walled IT is the ability of an information management system to always fit the needs of the organizations. It describes an information management platform that expands and contracts in a similar way to our rubber-walled building.

The technology to power rubber-walled IT exists today. Technology that enables your key workers to serve themselves with the information they need without having to make do with inappropriate tools like Excel and Word to use as information management tools?

What I’m talking about is what people are now calling situational applications. (You see the difficulty with new technologies is knowing how to describe them! Thankfully IBM did a great job in providing terminology to something that we’ve being doing for a few years now but never really managed to explain it. Thank you IBM!)

As organizations experience change, small groups of users find themselves requiring new information management needs. Products like ENCANVAS – our own software – exist to create these applications as new requirements emerge.

Situational applications typically have a short life span, and can be created within the group where they are used, sometimes by the users themselves. As the requirements of a small team using the application change, the situational application continues to evolve to accommodate changes. Any significant changes in requirements might lead to abandonment of the application altogether as with agile software tools it’s often easier to develop a new one

The fact is, most IT service providers and internal IT departments have a truck-load of small IT project requests to deal with that are either too difficult to justify so they sit on the shelf, or they don’t have time to action; so there is a huge pent up demand for situational applications.

The ultimate outcome of situational applications software like ENCANVAS is the creation of a rubber-walled information management platforms that deliver Frictionless IT.