Enterprise2.0

February 20th, 2006

So we know about Web2.0 and how it is/going to revolutionise the internet. But what about the company Enterprise, what does this mean to users in your organisation? to your IT team? to your extended enterprise, suppliers and consumers?

Currently the next-generation web has all been on customer focus and exploiting the “long tail” of small business. This is where it starts but it won’t be long before the next-generation web moves internally and we start talking Intranet2.0 and Enterprise2.0

After all what is IT except exposing company information to employees, customers and suppliers to deliver competitive advantage.

So what is Enterprise2.0 going to be about?

Well i’d hazard this. Enterprise2.0 will be about:

  1. Delivering all off the company information as addressable discoverable sources.
  2. Allow custom mash-ups of this information on a user-by-user basis
  3. Identity services will stretch across this information seamlessly
  4. Rich dynamic user interfaces for employees powered by Flash and AJAX
  5. Customised RSS feeds delivered to desktops
  6. Low integration price points delivered by extremely losely coupled services
  7. Custom business processes applications continuely developed in low-cost technology such as RoR accessing consolidated data services
  8. Unstructured information dissected by collaboration and social services such as tagging
  9. Data exposure of all employees thinking and analytic environment through eventing and blog integrations.

and probably everything i havn’t thought of.

I think the first step is the use of RSS in the Enterprise. Imagine all the contacts and leads in a CRM delivered to Outlook 12 and managed through SSE, it won’t matter if your CRM is internal or a hosted solution. The SSE/SLX exensions is going to be big for creating an integrated Enterprise2Desktop and someone will make a lot of money for someone creating a SSE-bus to existing Enterprise applications.

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Summit: The Future of WebApps

February 14th, 2006 Last week I was at the Carson Workshops "Future of Web Apps Summit":http://www.carsonworkshops.com/summit/index.html. Its fantastic this kind of thing gets to London as it often seems we miss out on all the best talks to many thanks to Ryan and Gillian, please keep it up!! Had a great time, met up with lots of people i knew for many different places and got hideously drunk. Now I don't really go in for the whole Web2.0 thing. I'm a massive advocate for a lot of things it encompasses but i just hate bandwagons. I'm a bandwagon rustler. Nearly everyone is releasing big bold/rounded corner/large text/pastel colour sites and claiming they are next big thing. Its driving me nuts right now. I'm much much interested in how this is going to change business, both online and offline, new and old. It was great to see some speakers who knew what they were talking about. But it was a little disappointing that no one (except maybe Tom) didnt do big picture stuff and take a real punt on what the future would be like. For them the future was just like it is now in the web2.0 world, just more of it. So here is my speaker review in no particular order: Notes can be found "here":http://www.socialtext.net/webapps/index.cgi h2. Joshua Schachter: Delicious - Things we've learned Very disappointing, and nearly every one i had spoken to agreed. Joshua used the "Takahashi Method":http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/living_large_ta.html of presenting which is just few slides and big big bold text. But this is better for shorter presentations. Joghua was a bit rambling with little structure and kinda jumped to the detail while what the conference needed was a big conceptual kick-off. I also get the feeling Joshua is just one lucky bastard with a great idea, he implemented fantasticaly but his advice to others, don't market, just do a problem you need solving and don't worry about making money only really applies to the fastest of fast-mover advantage. h2. Cal Henderson: From web site to web application Cal was better, more lively presentation but was less on Building Flickr as to what a web2.0 application actually means. This was a good breakdown and while Joshua talked the same subject, Cal had better structure. Cal was using a cross between the "Kawasaki Method":http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/the_kawasaki_me.html with his top 10 and the "Godin Method":http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/the_godin_metho.html in style. h2. Tom Coates: Native to a web of data The best of the night. Tom's a great presenter. His presentation was on the concepts of data and web2.0 and how data level exposure can enhance your business. A really great presentation which can be found "here":http://www.plasticbag.org/files/native/. Tom also used a bit of the "Godin Method":http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/the_godin_metho.html but a lot of his own style. h2. David Heinemeier Hansson: Happy programming with Ruby on Rails Well David was preaching to the choir for me and i couldnt say i learnt anything new. I did hear people say they though DHH presentation was a bit of a marketing pitch, which is a share because i'm sure that it wasn't intended that way. DHH basically spent half his time talking about good versus evil coding and developer motivation and the rest showing why RoR good looks so good. He really didnt pull it off, i spent the next hour explaining more about RoR to people i was with. At least half the people there where non-devs and it would have been good for DHH to talk about what it would mean to them. h2. Shaun Inman: Ten reasons why you need to build an API Shuan Inman, from "Mint":http://www.haveamint.com/ shot his load quickly and came across as the most nervous. His presentation was straight out of the "Kawasaki Method":http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/the_kawasaki_me.html but at least he had time for questions and actually this was his best bit h2. Andrew Shorten: Flex from Adobe Well this was Adobe's sell, the reason they had paid for the thing. The chance to talk about Flex to a bunch of people who are obviously big Ajax fans. And it was a good intro especially to people who would never have noticed it otherwise. I even talked to some people who said they might look into it for some projects. Nice sell Adobe! h2. Ryan Carson: Building a web app on a budget Second best of the day behind Tom. Ryan's a great speaker and a great example of how to use "Keynote":http://www.apple.com/uk/iwork/keynote/ good looking but not distracting (thats Keynote, not Ryan). While a lot of what he said seems like common sense, i know of a lot of people who wouldn't think of it. Two of the guys i was with who had set up their own online business were like "preach it sister!" h2. Steffen Meschkat: Reality-Checking the AJAX Web Application Architecture Oh dear. I'm sure Steffen is a nice chap and he is very bright but this was terrible. At the point he started discussing the inner workings and problems with DOM for 12 minutes of his allocated 45, we made a break for it to hit the pub.