Stardust Global Ventures

For some readers, this post will feel like scraping the asphalt, then rubbing rock salt in the wound. If it feels that way, you might want to get used to the feeling. It’s here to stay.

I’ve written about communications technologies for many years, from every angle. But that isn’t all I do. While I’ve worked in small startups, unlike many of my colleagues, I’m deeply entrenched in enterprise architecture at the Fortune 100 mindset too. I see things from more than one angle. Working as the advising technical architect to a very forward-thinking CTO of one such company, my views of the enterprise embrace new technologies like cloud computing, mobility, netbooks and the iPad in different ways. Hanging with my enterprise architecture colleagues sometimes heightens the chasm I see between emerging technologies and reality. Hence, this rant.

Enterprise 2.0 is bandied about far too often these days and I want to debunk it. Enterprise 2.0 is the Johnny come lately, gotta get on Web 2.0, geez we’re so current mantra that’s overly popular in some circles today. So let’s be clear. Web 2.0 is dead. It’s last decade. It was nothing but fantasy to begin with. Web 2.0 is PR spin for keeping current with technology. Keeping current with technology isn’t forward thinking. It won’t future proof your business. Keeping current is not rocking the boat while you’re motionless in calm water.

The real next generation enterprise never uses the phrase Enterprise 2.0. They’re too busy building the next generation. They’re impatient. They’re agile. They’re looking to run major project initiatives with a lean team of a handful of people, re-architecting global networks in shortened time frames. And they’re succeeding. They’re doing more, more quickly with a team of 6-8 people than they used to do with project work teams of 40 or 50. And they’re improving the bottom line while they do it.

This isn’t the enterprise where your daddy worked for 30 years. And neither will you.

This next generation enterprise is a lean and mean behemoth. Sounds like a contradiction, but it isn’t. It’s made up of a hundred thousand people. Not employees. Contractors. Oh sure, there are maybe a thousand core employees, but the new enterprise doesn’t lease or own office space. They contract with cottage workers around the world. They know timeshifting and placeshifting work to where the talent is leads to lower CapEx, lower OpEx, higher margins, and more profitable business. They know the best and brightest aren’t interested in moving to BFE to work on some boring account-focused project. These people want 12 projects at once. They are nimble, intelligent, proactive and aggressive.

This new enterprise understands cloud computing for what it really is – yet another buzz phrase that means something or nothing different to everyone, but has some key values at its core.

• The data center can be anywhere or everywhere. It doesn’t even have to exist. The data center can be web services connected to a server here with a database there. Anywhere.
• People can be anywhere and everywhere. And they are. They don’t have to work for you permanently. They just need to give you the right slices of their time and talent.
• The cloud can be anywhere. It is. It isn’t a cloud. It’s a network of clouds. It’s the Internet – a network of networks. It’s the same story we’ve been selling for 30 years, but it’s real.

Cloud computing is not about putting data centers in the cloud really. It’s not about putting services in the cloud either. It’s about the ubiquitous access of the cloud. I can get to the cloud from any device, any time, wherever I choose to work. That, my friend is cloud computing. Access to anything and everything. And that’s the real power behind openness. Not risking your data, but enabling the people who need access to have access. Cloud computing isn’t about the core of the cloud, but the access to the ends, wherever they may be.

Often the ends will and do exist inside the cloud. That’s what makes them most accessible.

In this new enterprise, things like this will happen:

That’s what Lotus Notes replication might look like on an iPad. Say what? Yeah Notes on the iPad. Or iPhone. Or netbook. Or anything that you use to access the cloud. From anywhere. Any time.

How? The cloud baby. It’s in the cloud. It’s called desktop virtualization and it’s spreading across those old enterprises in prototypes, beta tests and early implementations right now. Sure you hear about server virtualization, and it’s a big deal. A really big deal. It’s the green initiative those enterprises are talking about. But you know what? They don’t care about green, they care about money. And for a big enterprise with multiple data centers that green is the color of money. They’re reducing electricity costs by millions with server virtualization.

Desktop virtualization is green money colored too. No longer will the enterprise sign a master agreement to buy new laptops every 3 years from Dell, HP or anyone else. Why? They don’t need to. They won’t have to. Businesses hate that relationship and this is a profitable way out. It’s as green as a thousand dollar bill. A shipping container full of them.

There’s another green effect in play. Employees require real estate. In the old enterprise, they have to have a place to go. It’s where check boxes get checked. Attendance. Tardiness. Vacation. The old enterprise, The dying enterprise. The model that’s quietly starting to fade.

The new enterprise employees are mostly teleworkers, but even that term holds less meaning. Mobile solutions deliver cloud connectivity to the resources. Today’s teleworker may spend several hours a day at a coffee shop. IM, SMS, VoIP telephony, online video provide more than just alternatives to cubicles and travel for meetings. Today’s worker is either a digital immigrant or digital native. For us it’s the preferred method of work. It’s incentive. It makes a job more appealing. It’s so very now.

For the aging worker, it’s not an invitation to leave. It’s an invitation and incentive to keep working. Companies are finding this truism every day. They call it retention of institutional knowledge. It’s a powerful, valuable tool in hanging on to the older workers who know the business details because they helped build it from the ground up over the past 30 years.

Where do these virtual workers go if they don’t have a cubicle to call their very own? Home. Starbuck’s. Portugal. Ireland. The beach. An island. Any place they like. Where they are doesn’t matter. Place shifting lets them be wherever they like. I say virtual workers because teleworkers don’t need to be employees. They can be contractors. Many are. Many more than you probably think. Pick a number. Think higher. Higher. You’re close. But it’s a growing number and the pace of adoption for this approach is accelerating.

Desktop virtualization will lead to the desktop being whatever the enterprise chooses for tools. The workstation? Whatever that contracted employee chooses to use, or within some supported set anyway.

Enterprise 2.0 as a Web 2.0 carryover? It’s not dead. It was never born. It’s just spin doctor hype from enterprises trying to gain some attention and hang on to relevance. There are many of these. BUT, there are many enterprises that are well into the migration toward the real future. In The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler laid out the vision of the electronic cottage back in 1980. Toffler looked at early personal computers and saw into the future. That future is here, and our electronic cottage today may be as small as a Blackberry or iPhone. The choice of personal computing tool is filled with options.

As for employer, who do you work for really? Your father’s company? Your employer? Do you go report in every day to your cubicle just so they can verify you’re still alive? I work for me. For my family. I work to make our life better. That might mean long hours, many projects, bureaucracy and BS. But it doesn’t have to mean imprisonment in an 8×8 cell so a supervisor can watch me to make sure I’m still breathing.

More and more, the power of business, from very small companies to the biggest global enterprise is the value of human resources. The staff. The talent. The brains. The engineers, sales pros, writers, designers, relationship managers who really fuel the stream of money. Not employees, but people who receive value in pay for providing value. The value proposition of permanent staff employees is changing. The equation is changing. The balance of power is changing.

It’s happening right now. Every day. In more major enterprises than you probably think. Why do I think this? I live there, and I’m helping make it happen. I’m changing the world of work for me, and by extension for you. Get ready.

Something to keep in mind when reading this, I didn’t do a technical review. If you want that, you’ll have to wait for Ken to write something. These are personal experiences and feelings from a pseudo geek.

You’re probably aware of the queries both Ken and I have thrown out about iPhone stuff. We’ve been such strong proponents of RIM, I’m pretty sure most of you can’t fathom us switching sides. We didn’t, at least not exactly.

We got iPhones.

I know, that’s got to be the big shock of the year. So how come I said we didn’t switch sides? To switch sides implies we are no longer rooting for the other team, and no longer view them as quality and that simply isn’t the case.

We took a little road trip this last weekend and our friend Dameon, aka @phoneboy called while we were in transit. Something I thought about while talking to Dameon was how much I still loved my Blackberry. My Blackberry Bold found a new home with my son who swears it’s the best phone ever – that coming off the Nokia 5800 Xpressmusic phone which we loaned him a year ago and he LOVED.

What I loved about my Blackberry.

Both the Blackberry curve and bold are impressive devices. They thread messages wonderfully, their messaging service works almost flawlessly, to send both text and mms is super simple, and the apps for basics like twitter and facebook work better than their native platforms work most of the time.

I also loved typing on Blackberry. Typing on a qwerty keyboard is so much easier than a non qwerty, and when I say that I mean it beats hands down my use of the iPhone. If I had to say one thing would make me think twice again it would be that feature, or lack of a feature that could cause me to rethink.

The Blackberry messenger service was incredible. The iPhone may have over 100k apps but nothing I have found touches what Blackberry messenger could do, from basic messaging, one on one, to group messages, as well as file and picture transfers I simply don’t see anything in iPhone that comes close.

Multi tasking is yet another feature the Blackberry does well. With the Bold I was able to have multiple applications running at the same time, and did. I could have a call up, apps running, all while web browsing, something I’ll talk about later.

There are a few apps on the Blackberry that I miss but the truth is, if I were to shift back to that device I would miss some apps from the iPhone. Still, worth a real mention here is an app that I used in beta called socialscope. There has not been another mobile app that remotely functions the way socialscope does. That one app is a struggle and why it took me a while to buy the tweetie app on iPhone, something I wish I hadn’t purchased because I don’t find it better than anything else on iPhone that’s free. I remember hearing how fabulous it is and all I can say is, those who said that never had socialscope. ‘Nuff said.

Now web browsing. If all you’ve ever had is basic browsing like those non-smart phones offer, the Blackberry browser wouldn’t seem bad at all. I know because that is all I ever had pre Blackberry. However, once you have experienced other types of browsing you quickly see that RIM has a lot of catching up to do in order to provide a comparable experience. I’m not sure they can, actually. It’s unfortunate because so many things about the blackberry are actually superior to the iPhone. The appstore and browser make all the difference in the world. So let’s talk about that.

Experiencing the iPhone.

Many of you know that about a year ago Ken and I both got an ipod touch. Why that matters is because getting an iphone meant we already had a clue how to use it. Using the iPhone isn’t quite like using other phones or pda’s. It simply behaves differently, has a unique interface, which ultimately anyone can use because you don’t have to tell someone what to do to use it, it’s incredibly intuitive. It functions and works so easily and that is one of the great things about it.

We spent a year using ipods yet were pretty hesitant to get an iphone. There wasn’t any one straw that broke this camels back, it was many things.

First, while we don’t much care for the typing experience on iphone, something I’m sure we will eventually not have is a keyboard. Certainly not in the way we have them in current iteration of computer systems. I think touch, and ultimately voice will be our interface. We both think it likely.

Second, we are growing more and more mobile. Down sizing if you will. We want a device we can use in more ways than just to text or im and talk on the phone. Certainly I was able to watch youtube on my Blackberry, but if you put the Blackberry screen next to the iphone screen you can quickly see that there’s much better ability to see things on the iphone. I don’t have to squint as much and that is a big deal as I rarely have my glasses. Ken wears bifocals which also makes the iphone much more user friendly!

Third, the browser. There is not enough white space to talk about how brilliant the browsing experience is on the iphone. I LOVE the browser so much! It is the BEST browser on any mobile device I have ever used, and I have used several. I like that you in essence get tabbed browsing, and so far I haven’t found a limit to the number of windows I can open.

I love the ability to both pinch the screen to make it smaller or bigger, depending on need. The way I can scroll so seamlessly across a page not optimized for mobile browsers.

I don’t like the way my messages are threaded in the message box. It has made it impossible to respond to pokes much of the time. If I get a poke from someone and immediately following get a message, the message can be addressed, the poke can not.

I also don’t like that I literally have 3 different inboxes for mail. They all fall in the mail section but are separated there into 3 different boxes. It is more tedious and  I don’t care for it but it’s certainly doable.

The appstore, that’s incredible. If you’ve tried to use an appstore for any other platform you can appreciate a simple click and install process and how nice that would be. Blackberry appstore would like to be good but it isn’t. It’s a real pain.

Itunes on the other hand makes everything awful. I do NOT like itunes. Now, I will grant you that maybe I don’t use it to it’s best advantage, so that could be user failure. But many people I talk to despise the itunes interface and I wish it wasn’t so annoyingly cluttered, or processor intensive. I also wish there were better directions for how to prevent your non DRM’d media from becoming owned by itunes. I know how to do it should I need to, but it is a non-intuitive process. Funny how all the rest of the things about the iphone just work on an intuitive basis but not itunes. Not sure what happened there but someone clearly dropped the ball.

The sum of the total…

I wish I could tell you all that I wouldn’t change back, but that wouldn’t be fair. I probably would in the right circumstances. But for now, I’m an iPhone user and it’s not that bad. It’s not perfect, but I’m still learning. I’m sure I’ll have more to say as time goes by. I’ve only had it for a couple of weeks and I have a lot to learn.

Gosh people get so upset about a gadget that not only isn’t in their hands but isn’t supposed to replace current devices. This is supposed to be a new category of device. Why are people so tied to knocking a product or putting someone else’s opinion through a meat grinder?

My first thoughts on the iPad hold. I think it’s COOL! I want it. I can’t wait to own one. I would definitely be a first generation owner if I can justify throwing some money at it.

I think there are some perspectives missing from this whole discussion. Mr. Jobs said this is not a netbook, it’s not a phone, it’s not a pc, it’s something in the middle. A whole new way of doing stuff. Maybe not to the iphone user, though from all things I read and heard yesterday, there will be new things for those of us who already are familiar with that device.

I was on someone else’s site responding to comments yesterday about how I don’t think we should undervalue this new device. It seems to me, this is the future, not the past and to compare the two is not possible. They offer different strengths.

Ken made some great points to me this morning. He said this isn’t a computing device this is a connecting device. I hadn’t thought of it quite like that but that’s worth some consideration.

What about other possibilities? How about a holder that will keep it protected in the kitchen while you look up recipes? Or in the workshop where you might need to know what tool you need to do something? How about sitting on the coffee table so you can read the newspaper or as the remote for your home theater system so you don’t have to shell out 200 bucks for a remote to run it all? How many 200 dollar gadgets can it replace in an all in one new device that also happens to do some other really cool things?

Where are the futurists? We aren’t going to be sitting with a keyboard and mouse the whole rest of our lives. We’re going to be changing and evolving. We are going to be swiping screens and using our voice to do things that to now were just possibilities on the horizon. Tomorrow we’ll be doing a wide array of things we can’t even fathom. The iPad is a step toward it and a step away from where we’ve been. Am I the only one who sees that?

And another thing, to loosely use one of Steve Jobs statements, the processor in this new device was not meant to compete with a 3.8 hyper-threaded or quadcore anything. It is a different animal altogether. It is apparently as fast as anyone has seen anything run. I say WOW and COOL because it won’t heat up at the same rate as a traditional computer, won’t need the cooling system attached, and will in general require less power to run, which is FABULOUS!

Like many other people I sat on my sofa watching as patiently as possible for what was coming for Apple. Having recently switched to an iphone from a Blackberry, I had high hopes and great expectations. And I also made the assumption that many others did that there would be a tablet on their horizon. I wasn’t wrong but that wasn’t the big deal. Not in my opinion.

140,000 apps at your fingertips. From day one.

Right now, iPad can run almost 140,000 of the apps on the App Store. It can even run the apps you’ve already downloaded for your iPhone or iPod touch. Learn more

That is certainly a big deal. It’s super cool, and I’m probably more aware of how cool it is having used my new iphone for a couple weeks. But that’s just the beginning. The new iPad Also has the ability to dock to a keyboard. If you haven’t paid attention to me ranting about this in the last year, you won’t know one of the big reasons we didn’t choose an iphone sooner was no physical keyboard. I do miss it and this makes me really happy. Productivity will begreatly enhanced with this.

Watch out Kindle!

Another game changer from my perspective is iBooks. A beautiful, easy to use virtual bookshelf, the book reader and bookstore ‘just works’. Kindle over priced themselves, making their devices more expensive than many netbooks, and consequently their lack of extra abilities will make it impossible to compete with this new device. It’s unfortunate that they will be collateral damage but they will and so will all other book devices.

Unlimited 3G Data? YES!

If I had to pick a single part of the Steve Jobs News Cast this morning that really turned our world upside down, it has to be the 3G data plan for $30 a month, no contract, cancel anytime! I won’t repeat it but do think this will change the future landscape of mobile computing because this one statement invites competition that we haven’t seen for a long time. Competition will be good for our pocketbooks.

Now you’ve seen some of the neat pictures, I’d like to ramble for just a minute. I love this device. This is a device that in my mind is just about the coolest thing I’ve seen, since the pc. I was practically drooling, largely because I see how much this will change the future, our future.

Of course with the good comes the bad, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple of things that are lacking or outright missing. There is no camera. You can’t do video. You can watch it but no creation. Also, the storage ability, or lack there of makes it impossible to make this a primary computing device.

All of that said, the iPad has so much potential for putting something that was typically a tool associated with mac centric geeks in the hands of everybody. It will force us to change our computing behavior thereby creating acceptance of new ideas to further enhance our lives.

I’m so excited!

Technorati Tags: iPad, Apple, Steve Jobs, Kindle

My 2 cents, for what it’s worth. I don’t get all this hub bub about how scary it is to share your location with the world. We used to put our addresses in the phone book. OH NO! Who hasn’t been ’stalked’?

Just today I saw no less than 4 posts about the geolocation craze. I’m in it and loving it. My favorite quote comes from Euan Semple.

Euan wrote:

I am always surprised when people write as if they were victims of technology rather than in control of it – I guess it is a bit like email!

Why do I like this? It points out that with technology we have more choices and more options to control what we take in, or to better filter things. Expecting everyone else to accommodate us is a little arrogant. Certainly we should try not to be too disruptive, but we really do need to better handle what we take in and stop expecting others to handle it for us. Filters are a key component to our sanity in a world where we are inundated with too many choices and too much noise.

Just a little piece of my mind. I won’t be leaving too many lying around. I need them.

Technorati Tags: geononymity, sheryl breuker, filters

Ripples of shock went through the Twitterverse last night when I said I was sleeping on the idea of an iPhone to replace Blackberry as my next mobile phone. Rest easy. All is well and harmony has been restored to the universe. But there were enough comments from friends and colleagues that I thought I’d explain why the consideration, and why I’ve eliminated the iPhone yet again as the phone for me.

First, why consider an iPhone?

Like most people, I’m impressed by the application platform. More importantly, I’ve been considering doing some development work again; something I haven’t done for many years. The iPhone is a far easier platform to develop for than other mobile devices. RIM has been my platform of choice, but frankly, I don’t see doing RIM development as being worth the headache and heartache it involves. Developing an iPhone/iPod app is doable, and could lead to other new things.

But, I have an iPod Touch. And most of the apps in the app store are garbage. I don’t want to create more garbage. Still, that isn’t what led me to back away from the iPhone.

What kills the iPhone for me, is the iPhone itself, in a number of ways, partly coupled to the Apple culture.

1. It’s a 3G device, but I live in a 2G community. 3G won’t be here before 4G hits much of the US. I haven’t seriously been considering a 3G device because they suck power when there’s no 3G available, and battery life is a big concern for me.
2. The iPhone is quirky and unreliable. I only say this based on how many times I’ve seen my friends and colleagues complain that they lost this or that and had to do a complete, tedious restore process. Or they were off to the Genius  Bar. That’s nice, but the nearest Genius Bar is a 6 hour drive for me. I won’t go there. Ever. So any failure of that sort, means shipping my phone into space and doing without until it returns; not a good solution.
3. Battery life is at a premium. My Blackberry has the best usable battery life I’ve ever seen. It’s better than my iPod Touch, every Nokia since the N73, my older WinMobile Treo. And it’s easily swapped. The iPhone doesn’t have good, let alone stellar battery life from all I’ve read. But at least if the battery in the iPhone dies, I can go sit and do nothing. A non-swappable battery is simply stupid beyond belief.
4. External memory is a concern. Sure the current 3GS has a 32G option, but there’s no microSD support, which seems terribly shortsighted and something that can’t be fixed without a new iPhone. Not good for me.
5. The keyboard on the iPhone isn’t really a keyboard. I’ve used my Touch for a year and hate it. Yes, I’ve learned I can get used to it. Getting used to it and liking it are personal things. I don’t like the iPod keyboard and I don’t believe I ever will. The Treo, with it’s combination of touchscreen and keyboard were my favorite solution. Maybe one day the iPhone will incorporate a slider keyboard. That would make me reconsider.
6. Contract lock. I’m already an AT&T customer, but I’m not under contract. I’d like to keep it that way and an iPhone means signing a 2-year contract. I don’t have to do that.

No, I don’t expect to do dev work on any mobile platform at this point. The iPhone is the only one I was considering, and if I don’t use an iPhone, why bother? It was a nice idea, but that motivation is gone for the time being. Maybe it will resurface at some future point.

Reality is that my work is largely in enterprise network and communications space. And government space. And security space. Areas where the mobile of choice is a Blackberry. The iPhone hasn’t penetrated my core target client base, and it isn’t on track to any time soon.

Windows Mobile hasn’t penetrated anywhere really. Except Redmond. There are pockets of use, but it’s simply not the OS for me.

Nokia has deeply penetrated the cheap phone market. Standard mobile phones, a new model every week. Some weeks every day. But in the high end, and the enterprise space, they’re a non-event in my target client base. The E series might be big in European enterprise markets, but in the US, it doesn’t exist. The N series seems to only exist in the die hard Nokia lovers segment. While I can get an E71 at a reasonable price, even cheap with a contract, why would I? It’s a phone that’s at de facto end of life just by virtue of how Nokia rolls out new ones. Nokia doesn’t make sense for me.

My opinion of ‘droid phones and Android is already well known enough. Not for me.

To be fair, I do love the iPhone browser. I love some apps, but not all. But the Touch is enough. There’s plenty of WiFi. It’s a great sofa computer for casual computing. The iPhone would be too. A great computer, but not a great mobile phone as a single device for my personal requirements,

Blackberry. Simple, obvious, and expected. And the choice is pretty easy for me. There’s either the Curve 8900 or the Bold 9700. The only differences I can see are the Bold comes preloaded with OS5. I may have to load that by hand on an 8900. And the Bold is a 3G device in my 2G world. I already know my Curve 8310 gets better battery life than Sheryl’s Bold 9000 and 3G searching for network is one big driver. The other is WiFi, which both the models I’m considering have. But I manage WiFi pretty judiciously on the N95 when we use it. I learned how to do that without even thinking about it when I  started testing the Nokia N series phones.

Winner – Blackberry Curve 8900. The biggest changes and enhancements for me? WiFi, 3.2MP camera and a faster processor that my older 8310. All things I want and need.

Interesting that over 6 months after picking the 8900 as my next phone, I’m still sticking with that decision. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’m running out today to part with money and buy one. My 8310 is on its last legs, but it’s limping along and gets the job done. It’s my primary device for communications of all forms for about 14 hours a day.

When’s the last time you got 14 hours use out of your iPhone without plugging in to keep it alive?

We’ve been big fans of location based services for quite some time now. We both think they’re a vital part of the future, but we’ve also had plenty of reason to think about the reality of LBS in our world, privacy concerns, and a number of factors that tie into the general concept.

We were early adopters of Brightkite a long time ago.  We had a few moments of “do we really want the world to know what restaurant we’re at” thoughts. While it’s a bit of a no-brainer for me, as a woman, Sheryl has the random whackaloon stalkers that show up every now and then. I remember an instance in particular that gave us pause to think about how we use those services, and how public to make the information. Brightkite never gained enough critical mass to really catch fire. I was seriously frustrated with it on our recent trip to DC, and have pretty much lost hope for its ongoing success at this point.

Before we move to the others, there’s a sidenote on privacy to consider. The devices we carry, from iPhones and Blackberries, to those we drive, and many we carry are all easily trackable. And these tracking devices can be used for a number of purposes beyond what we’re sold as consumers. For example:

• Did you know your EasyPass toll booth token can easily be used to issue speeding tickets? It tracks the time you pass toll gates, and if you exceed the speed limit, this information is easily passed to law enforcement. Yes, I’ve actually been in conversations where law enforcement agencies talked of this in terms of fully automated revenue generation that the consumer pays for.
• Your cell phone is a GPS device, and it tracks to a pretty fine granularity on the planet. And while the paranoid of the world rant about the boss knowing they’re on the golf course when they’re claiming they’re working, other uses have been explored. The automotive insurance industry has invested a great deal of consideration into mobile phone tracking for the purposes if dynamic insurance rates. Imagine exceeding the speed limit and having your coverage costs go up because your carrier monitors your location in realtime.

Privacy. It’s an illusion. You have no right to privacy. It’s not in the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights or the Constitution. We have no right to privacy. It is an illusion. It’s a courtesy, non an inalienable right. The question with this sort of privacy, and Internet privacy in general is not whether or not we can be seen. We can absolutely be seen. The Internet sees all. Whether or not we’re being watched is a more interesting question that I’ll leave for the conspiracy theorists among us.

The reality is, our location provides good information to the world about us, and sharing it opens the door to the world giving us good information in return.
(more…)

I knew a WP app was coming for Blackberry, but somehow I missed the actual release. It’s in beta, but for people as reliant on mobile solutions as Sheryl and I, this is a hot product.

As a beta product, not everything works just yet. Notably the app ’s camera photo and video support for my Curve isn’t here. When we get a chance, well install it on Sheryl’s Bold to test there too.

As someone who’s blogged conference sessions, and given our extreme mobile life, I’m looking forward to this! Very cool stuff for us Blackberry lovers.

That’s right we’re moving again. Our friends know we’ve had our fair share of moves in the past year or two. Now it’s time for one more move. When we came to Spokane, it was for a job that looked really awesome for Ken; and it was for a while. But the company ran into some financial troubles and our life changed.

Sheryl’s Incidental Interviews have really gained momentum in the past few months. They’re a labor of love that Sheryl’s very committed to. Interviewing people for podcasts is one of her passions. One of the things she loves about them is the ability to do them from anywhere.

Ken recently joined forces with Lee Dryburgh as the Director of Conversations (and Marketing for you old skoolers) for eComm, the hottest conference in the communications industry. One of the things he loves about this role is that it can be done from anywhere.

Are you sensing a theme? Remember the old New Yorker cartoon that said “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.” Well on the Internet, nobody knows where you are really because geography has zero impact. Zero.

We’re moving this weekend to Walla Walla, WA. Some of you may think that sounds farther off the beaten path than Spokane, but you’d be very wrong. Walla Walla is a stable and thriving community with two prestigious colleges, a great symphony, wonderful performing arts, and is home to 90 wineries. Walla Walla is the secret wine country in Washington, and it’s been growing steadily for the past 12 years.

We’ve worked with winemakers on digital media and social media tools in the past. Walla Walla, while home to some vibrant tech companies, isn’t entirely up to speed on Internet digital tools. But the connectivity is there, the interest is there, and the market is there. We’re going to bring social media to the region, and the great people and businesses of the region to social media. It’s an area we see as full of opportunity.

There are a number of other personal reasons, but the heart of it is that we’re thrilled to be getting out of Spokane, and we’re really jazzed to be moving to a community we both think is fantastic. We’re planning on moving this coming weekend, so we’ll be in and out online as we take care of packing, working and getting ourselves moved. Like always, even if we aren’t at the computer, we’re only a Blackberry away. We’ll be as involved as ever on Twitter (@SherylBreuker and @kencamp), and checking in on everything we’re working on.

And then we’ll be taking Walla Walla by storm.

It’s fairly common knowledge by now that I’ve joined eComm as the Director of Conversations supporting the thriving and growing eComm Conference and Awards. I thought this was a good opportunity to give a perspective on why I joined eComm.

There’s an old adage that says “Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way.” There’s another that says “Unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes.” The traditional telecom industry really needs to wake up and take those two saying very seriously. They are rules to live by in the current communications market. And those who don’t live by those words need to prepare to exit the competitive playing field.

One of the things I love about eComm, is that following and getting out of the way simply are not options. eComm is all about leadership. eComm is thought leadership at full volume; no holds barred driving toward the future. I’ve been to hundreds of industry conferences in my life, but eComm embodies one of the most important mindsets of our time – disruption.

I’ve openly talked about the arguable death of VoIP, because I see VoIP as standard infrastructure today – something I call plumbing. I do not see VoIP as disrupive today. VoIP is a vibrant, sustaining technology that isn’t treated as new, emerging, or frightening any longer. It’s simply part of the voice services infrastructure.

I also drove some conversation with my premise that Telco 2.0 is a bad idea. That the paradigm of a telco is obsolete and must be redesigned. I feel that’s true in many ways. Thetelco paradigm of the past and mindsets like those of the old Bell System are dead. They’re not gone, but they are dead. There is simply no place for that sort of thinking in today’s communications industry

eComm began with the premise we’re going into a post-telecom era. For me, this becomes more true every day. eComm is about distruption, innovation, and creation of something new. That makes eComm stand out as a premier gathering of the best and brightest in the networking sector. Whether it’s voice, data, Internet, wireless, or mobility, eComm is the vortex of innovation.

Make no mistake, when we speak of emerging communications. we are embracing and encompassing an array of communications tools:

• Voice services
• Data and communications enhanced business processes (CEBP)
• Video – all video from video calls to collaboratio to YouTube to Hulu
• Blogs and wikis. Every form of online community.
• Instant Messaging (IM) and SMS texting
• Presence tools – Twitter, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Google Talk and Googe Latitude (and yes, impending tools like Google WAVE)
• Social Media of all kinds (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace)

These are all communications services and they are all emerging rapidly right now. Today.

eComm is the world’s best, and most highly regarded communications conference and brand. More and more people understand and respect its core mission. Every day in conversations today, I see people articulating the eComm vision in their own words across many business sectors. I see it in Twitter and FriendFeed conversations and blog posts. People who we think of as primarily social media leaders are saying the same things eComm members have been saying for years.

I confess I like being a disruptor. I love being in the middle of where all the change is taking place. I like to shake things up. I like ideas, especially ideas that distrubt our old assumptions. I want to play a part in the game-changing mission that eComm embodies. I’m honored and pleased to join eComm as the Director of Conversations & Marketing.

I’m keen to put my experience and weight behind Emerging Communications as a catalyst for change; change for the better. eComm promotes opportunity and innovation. One thing that matters to me greatly is the impact our technologies have on people in their daily lives. The social impact of our tools For some that means efficiency in work flow. For others it simply means ease of sharing their lives with family. The innovation that comes from eCOmm members accelerates innovation for the common good of all. It is changing how we live, and work. It’s changing how we interact with family, friends, colleagues and customers. It’s changing home like, education and how we work.

I’m keen to also nurture a passionate, engaged and thriving community. I challenge myself and others to think outside the box. To disrupt. Sometimes that means we upset people But eComm is not about maintaining the status quo. It is not a community of people selling some boring “me too” service. The speakers at the conference are not aiming their talks and the small room down the corridor. They’re innovators and leaders clamoring for center stage in the big room in front of their colleagues, peers and competitors. They’re driving change, and eComm is all about change. It’s about real advances and seizing the immense opportunities now available in the communications space. eComm is about taking risk to do something bigger and better. It’s about what’s next in terms of services and products. It’s about our future and I’m excited to be in a position to help this community grow.

I’m excited and already working on some ideas to get us all moving. I’m not usually shy and reserved, so many people across all walks of the industry are going to be hearing a lot more from me as we move toward eComm in Amsterdam this October and the USA 2010 conference in San Francisco. I’ll be challenging us all to not hold back and shake things up with our words and actions.

Update 4/27/09 – Entries to the contest closed. Now we really need your votes. We don’t know when the voting closes, so please don’t wait. Your comment is your vote, so go leave a comment in support of our entry! And please share this link with all your friends. The power of social media is what can help us win this great opportunity. Please go to 48 Hours in Denmarkhttp://48hoursindenmark.com/) and vote for us.

Here’s our video entry. If we win, we will blog, Twitter, Twitpic/Tweetphoto, Facebook and QIK video (which will mirror on YouTube) in realtime. And we’ll record lots of podcast and video for our return when we get back. You’ll see GeekSpeakTV again as a video of the trip, and we’ll be searching for a series of Incidental Interviews and other podcasts along the way,

Update: Now the the flurry of entering is done, here are a couple of other things -

• We set QIK to go to our YouTube, so all our live video will show up in both places. QIK already tweets it when we stream.
• We’ll have one or both laptops along, so if we can, we will go live on our ustream.tv channel when we can from the hotel. Obviously, the trip will be a frenzy, but maybe we can do a day end wrap up each day and chat live via ustream. It’s also set up to spool over to our YouTube.
• We’ll do our best to arrange TweetUps with any and all Twitter people around there. And we’ll ask you to help promote it. We’ll do pics and video the best we can from the TweetUps and share them as well.

In short, we’ll take the First Couple in Technology (that’s US) and our hyperconnected life to Denmark and we’ll take the world along on our trip. We’ll take you every step of the way. The car, the plane, the airports. You’ll meet people we meet and see things that we see. Given that our relationship, both as social media evangelists and as a couple in love, is widely seen everywhere. How could we possibly not take all of our best friends….the networks we live (that’s YOU) in along for the trip. We take you everywhere anyway.

And, we’ll be trackable on Google Latitude as we travel around the world. Watch our progress as you follow our live tweets, pictures and video.

Please go to to http://48hoursindenmark.com/ and vote for us.

Also please help spread the word and get us more votes by sharing via the buttons below.

Have questions? Send us a tweet @SherylBreuker or @kencamp.

Technorati Tags: #48hoursindk, 48 Hours in Denmark, Sheryl Breuker, Ken Camp, GeekSpeakTV, Incidental Interviews, video, travel, mobility

Wow! Last week was fun because I posted my interview with Shel Israel, who I might add was brilliant, and that created a dialogue involving Robert Scoble. Like many people I have shared online conversation with Robert, and even though I’ve met him, I had never had a personal conversation with him. That all changed today and here’s why.

During the interchange over Shel’s interview, I was encouraged to invite Robert to an Incidental Interview. After giving it maybe 5 minutes I simply used socialscope on my phone and asked Robert publicly if he would be willing to do an interview with me. Ken told me within an hour he believed Robert would come back to me with an affirmative. Ken was wrong. It was 6 minutes later in a DM on twitter.

Well, we worked out the details, Robert provided a number for me to call him on and then the work began. You see, Robert is used to interviewing others, and certainly gets a number of questions addressed to him, but I was given an opportunity to have a conversation and I really wanted to make sure Robert could speak his mind. He did. He did it beautifully.

I hope you hear what I heard, Robert’s passion is infectious. I look forward to doing this again really soon.

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Technorati Tags: Robert Scoble, Scobleizer, Sheryl Breuker, Building 43, rackspace, Incidental Interview, interview, podcast

Sheryl’s getting all set for another one of her Incidental Interviews. This one is with a very well known Internet personality.

I often keep my opinions to myself, only speaking out on things I feel passionate about.
I find myself in a unique position because I have a passion and ALL of you who are my friends and connections know what it is. You don’t even have to know me well to know what it is, or rather WHO it is. That’s right, Ken.

A few weeks ago Ken lost his job due to economic backlash, that’s what it’s being called, but whatever you call it the fact is he no longer has a job that brings him any sort of income. Yeah I know, life’s tough all over and I don’t want to sound all melancholy but the reality is we’re like everyone else. We have bills to pay, too.

Ok…so what I’m looking for is someone to pay attention. You see, I can say this differently than Ken would. I’m not writing a cover letter for him. I’m simply supporting him in the only way I know how. I don’t have a clue if any of my connections have any links to companies who could benefit from Ken’s vast knowledge of all things technical, but even if you don’t, you may well know someone who does.

Let me tell you about this amazing man. Ken started his career back in the OLD days with Bell systems which later became AT&T. In other words, the telecom industry. He was with them through a number of corporate changes finally ending that career in 1996. So rather than my telling you his career history because his CV is located on our site at http://stardustglobalventures.com/?page_id=448.
What I want you to know about Ken, what you may not know if you have never talked to him and what I think is important to know, is he is amazingly gifted at teaching, speaking, listening, understanding what he hears. He’s dynamic in all the important ways.

I’m reminded of the first time I listened to Ken speak. I watched him and listened while taking publicity shots of the panel he was moderating. I was riveted! He is more comfortable than anyone I have ever seen in a public speaking situation. More than that, he’s smart.

Many of you don’t know that when Ken was in elementary he skipped grade 5. Already he knew so much! Speaking purely from a personal perspective I know people who are bright. I know people who are able to articulate well. I know people with photographic memories, I know math brains. Ken sort of encompasses it all. He just KNOWS everything. Ok…maybe not EVERYTHING. He doesn’t always know how to snap up his coat as one of my recent tweets can attest.

What I like about Ken’s brain is he isn’t easily flustered. He isn’t easily intimidated. He pays more attention when appearing to not pay attention than most people do when completely engaged. He could offer more to a company than they ever anticipated. He has written 3 books, and yes I have an autographed copy.

Ken is also highly organized with regard to his work. As a writer he excels at outline. He is also a superb note taker so if there is a lot of information being bandied about he can be sure to hang onto it and not get side tracked. He is quick on his feet. If you have a detailed conversation with him and then ask him a question, he’s ALWAYS prepared to give an answer. If you’ve ever listened to someone really quick witted with awe, Ken is like that though maybe not with comedy.

Ken is an affable, thoughtful, conscientious and WONDERFUL man. I’m proud of him, with or without a job. Still, being honest, he would be an awesome asset to ANY company, but his skills in network architecture are 2nd to none.

Please take a peek at Ken’s CV and pass the information on. http://stardustglobalventures.com/?page_id=448

Thanks my friends. I know it’s premature but even if all you can do is listen, you’ve all done that beautifully and it’s appreciated!

Technorati Tags: Ken Camp, job

Our good friend Jim Courtney wrote a post the other day for WebWorkerDaily, a GIGAOM Network Site, about friends Alec Saunders and Howard Thaw and their conferencing application CalliFlower.

Ken and I have used Calliflower a lot and stand behind the value of this great networking tool. Have a look at Jim’s post and TRY IT! If you have a need for a full featured conferencing tool, you can’t do better for LESS investment. You do not have to pay to try it. So sign up.

Read what Jim had to say about CalliFlower.

Technorati Tags: Jim Courtney, Alec Saunders, Howard Thaw, Gigaom, WebWorkerDaily, CalliFlower