Farewell to Enterprise 2.0 ...

Yesterday I gave my last conference talk on Enterprise 2.0 for the foreseeable future. Actually, it wasn't a talk but rather I was on a panel with JP Rangaswami, Nigel Green, and Ajit Jaokar.

Jonathan Robinson was trying and in the most part succeeding to keep us all on track, except of course when I barged in to speak. Unfortunately that was most of the bloody time!

I rarely do panels because I'm awful at them, still I was grateful to finish my meanderings in this field on a high note such as Enterprise 2.0 Mashup.

The audience was very forgiving.

If you want to keep tabs on the Enterprise 2.0 world, I really recommend reading Euan, Jenny, Dion and of course Andrew.

For me, the future is all spime, spime, spime, spime ....

(See the Monty Python sketch)

*aaS time goes by ....

CloudCamp London was a blast, congratulations Alexis. This was my swan song on utility computing (I need to focus on printed electronics from now on), so I was really pleased to be given the opportunity to kick off the event with the first talk. The environment was excellent, the organisers had done a fabulous job and the audience were ruddy marvellous.

I did get the opportunity to ask the audience two questions at the end (prompted by none other than James Governor) to which I was surprised by the strength of response. Almost everyone agreed that:-

• portability and interoperability was important.
• proprietary technology and standards through committee wouldn't provide this.

Now if you are interested in the what is going on in the cloud, I'd urge you to keep tabs on Rich Miller and James Urquhart.

For me, the critical issue for the future in the cloud remains the formation of markets based upon portability and interoperability between providers offering common services. This is why open sourced standards matter, however keep an eye on James' as he will keep you on the straight and narrow.

Addition =========

That said, I couldn't resist this parting comment on Nick Carr's blog post.

Given that the "as as service" world is simply about the shift of ubiquitous activities from a product to a service based economy, then competition based on price and quality of service in marketplaces of common services with portability & interoperability between vendors seems logical. Unless of course you're a vendor for a common product who is not willing to accept a new reality. It's tough really, but that's the Red Queen for you, the constant need to adapt to the marketplace just in order to stand still.

Portability and interoperability between providers is necessary for all the usual user concerns of second sourcing - price competition, security and so forth. Shifting the mentality of product differentiation into a service world is not only counter to second sourcing, it makes little sense for something which is becoming ubiquitous and well defined.

The most logical route is for the entire service to be open sourced, encouraging the formation of markets and hence emergent standards.

We've been seeing some of that recently and interestingly at CloudCamp London, when asked, most participants thought that interoperability and portability between providers was important and that this wouldn't be achieved with proprietary technology and standards by committee.

So I have to agree with Chris on the importance of open source but this won't be an exclusive situation in much there same way that there will be niche product areas and there will also be plenty of new lucrative opportunities from the establishment of commodity markets in computing resources.

As for Ellison buying his way into the market as traditional revenues decline, it of course makes complete sense to maximize existing revenues that are being cannibalised. However, the rub here is the same with any disruptive innovation, the switch of consumers can quickly become a flood and not a trickle and many traditional players will be trying to shift into the new space when it does. Timing will be critical and there will be casualties from this shift.

Of course, as big as this change is, it is potentially small fry compared to the looming commoditisation of the manufacturing process itself through digital fabrication technologies. The combination of open source to hardware with digitisation of fabrication techniques and an approaching future of machines printing machines promises a whole new world of commoditisation, componentisation, accelerating innovation and ever more creative destruction.

But then, this has been going on for donkeys years.

Words of advice ...

If you are going to the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, then whatever you do, don't miss Jenny Ambrozek's session on the 10th.

Jenny is one of smartest people I know and an absolute pleasure to talk with. I was so delighted when we were able to persuade Jenny to come and speak at Enterprise 2.0 Summit at Cebit and the session she ran was truly spectacular.

The highlight of the Cebit conference was Jenny, Euan and Dion on stage together. I'll be catching up with Euan and Dion at Web 2.0 Strategies in London on the 12th.

If anyone can record Jenny's session, I'd appreciate a copy.

[Additional note: I've just realised that Jenny is speaking at E2.0 Open, which is the FREE part of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference. If you're in the area and you can't afford to pay the conference pass fee, don't worry, you don't have to. It's worth checking out E2.0 Open, they seem to have a really good lineup.]

Web 2.0 Expo

I've been twittering about this over the last few weeks but just as a reminder the closing date for submission for web 2.0 expo is midnight, Tuesday.

XTech Review

Last week, it was my pleasure to give the first keynote at XTech 2008 in Dublin. Giving the opening talk at any conference is always a delight because you can then relax and enjoy the rest of the sessions.

The conference was exceptional and I thought I'd take this opportunity to thank Edd Dumbill and Expectnation for organising this excellent event. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

There were so many fabulous sessions that it seems unfair to highlight any in particular. However, I'll mention just a few:-

AMEE - The world's energy meter by Gavin Starks.
An inspirational talk on AMEE (avoiding mass extinction engine). Gavin and his team are focused on providing the world with a canonical source of information regarding energy consumption and carbon data. The work is essential, exciting and fascinating and the talk was delivered with real passion.

Data portability for whom? Some psychology behind the tech by Gavin Bell.
At any good conference, there is always one talk which stands out a mile from the rest, this was it. Gavin gave a breathtakingly good talk on the psychology of why non-geeks need data portability, asking the question:

"How can we ensure that we include their needs and expectations along side the buzzword tick list?"

Within our community it is all too easy to become wrapped up in the current technology and assume that everyone else is just in the process of catching up with the alpha geeks. This is an arrogant and dangerous assumption and Gavin did a great job of dissecting the issues. Awesome.

JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford.
One of best technical talks that I have seen in a long time. Who'd have thought that (value == null) only works because of two errors that cancel each other out.

Here Be Dragons: Knowing Where the World Ends by Leigh Dodds.
A wonderful exploration of the open data landscape and the issue related to exploring, finding and relating canonical sources of information.

Why you should have a Website by Steven Pemberton.
An illuminating talk on the issues around lock-in and data loss in web 2.0. The key issue that Steven was arguing for was that users should have their own web sites and aggregators should collect this data together. Whilst this directly relates to the issue of portability, I happen to agree with Gavin Bell that whatever solution emerges will need to be useable by non-geeks.

On a final note, there is always a presentation which I really shouldn't have missed. Judging from the video, it was truly spectacular.

Bare-naked Flash: Dispelling myths and building bridges by Aral Balkan
True showmanship at its best including the RickRoll of Jeremy Keith. Brilliant.

XTech

I've been extremely busy for last two weeks, hence the lack of any posts. I'm now heading off to XTech.

Preparing for XTech ...

XTech is in two weeks time, so I've been busy preparing my talk.

As part of the process, I've provided a preliminary paper on the topic I'll be covering.

Why open matters ....

XTECH is only a few weeks away. I'll be giving the opening keynote on Wednesday during which I'll cover why "open" matters, from innovation to commoditisation.

I'll be exploring a number of themes from:-

• How open source is accelerating the commoditisation of IT.
• Why open source is essential for competitive utility markets.
• Why open standards are necessary but not sufficient for data portability.
• How the spread of the open meme is not only accelerating innovation but undermining traditional forms of business.
• The growing conflict between organisation and innovation.

So do say "Hi!".

I won't be speaking at OSCON this year, due to a miscommunication and then me agreeing to do some other work instead, then being told I was invited to speak, and then me not being able to afford to ... yada yada yada ... long story, very dull.

Upshot is that I won't be doing any U.S. gigs. Obviously the "hummer" joke didn't go down that well.

I do keep a list of upcoming talks and videos of previous talks. If you want me to speak at your event on any of these subjects, I'd be happy to hear from you.

What is platform as a service?

I was asked today, what is "Platform as a Service" (Paas). Apparently there has been a lot of talk about this subject recently.

After a quick bit of digging, I discovered that PaaS seems to be a term coined by Salesforce, to describe a platform for building software as a service.

It's what I used to call framework as a service. I think Nick is right, there really are too many aaS's. I've tried to express this in Venn form in the following diagram.

Figure 1 - What is SaaS?
(click on image for larger size)

In reality, these various forms of "as a Service" simply represent different aspects of the commoditisation of the software stack from a product based economy to a service one (see figure 2). Don't get bogged down in the different acronyms being used; the underlying concepts behind this change are the important thing to understand.

Figure 2 - Understanding aaS
(click on image for larger size)

If you want to know more about this subject, then my presentation from OSCON last year (though it is fairly old) provides a basic introduction.

Video of OSCON talk - Commoditisation of IT (approx 15 minutes)

Enterprise 2.0 Summit at Cebit

The Enterprise 2.0 Summit at CeBIT was the first conference that I've moderated. Wow, was I nervous.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, the speakers were truly fantastic, the audience wonderful and the organisers Bjoern Negelmann and Kongress Media had done a fantastic job.

I was also given the opportunity to give the opening and closing talks. So I've made a video of each (I've just re-recorded them as I don't have audio from the conference itself.).

Opening Talk

Closing Talk

There and back again ...

I'm off to Enterprise 2.0 Summit at Cebit.

I'm looking forward to catching up with Jenny and Euan as well as many others (including Dion Hinchcliffe - excellent!)

The schedule and program looks fantastic. Bjoern and his team have put together some outstanding speakers and I get to introduce them all!

There will be ducks ....

Phew .... sanity restored.

These days I do very little in the 3D printing world except keep tabs on how the industry is progressing. Awareness of the field is becoming more mainstream now, though I'm not sure if people have really thought through all the consequences yet.

For anyone who is interested, I've created a video (below) of the last fabrication talk I gave back at EuroOscon in Sept. 2006. It covers the usual suspects of fabrication, ducks, open hardware, environment, commoditisation and spime script.

Of course, these talks are never quite the same without the sound of the audience.

Back in 2002/03 when I undertook a development program at the IMD, I really hammered home the point about 3D printing. Most people didn't believe it then and thought I was somewhat odd. They nicknamed me "crazy guy".

Back in 2000 when I talked about it, people always looked at me as though I was mad, and I mean genuinely "mad".

Before that date, people always acted as though I was telling some sort of joke and had forgotten to add the punchline. We never usually got to the "you're mad" stage.

So I must admit I was delighted to recently receive an email from my tutor saying he was reading an article about 3D printing in the NYT. Also, today, I came across Tom Easton's blog in which he says he is going to look at writing a book on the impact of 3D printing and the effects on business models (aka commoditisation of the manufacturing process).

It's amazing how quickly things spread and sanity is restored.

I really hope Tom puts 3D printing firmly on the map, the same way Nick Carr did with commoditisation of IT.

Web 2.0 Expo Berlin

I've uploaded a video of my Web 2.0 Expo Berlin talk below. Unfortunately there was no audio available, so I've had to record myself speaking in the hotel - doesn't seem quite the same without an audience.

I had a small but really pleasant crowd turn up - not surprising since I was up against some superstars from Google.

There is a lot of buzz about open social, I should check it out myself in more detail. I do hope it is as really open as it sounds.

Web 2.0 Expo - Preview

The guys from BerlinBase caught up with me in the corridor at web 2.0 Berlin, so we created a quick video of what I'm going to be talking about on Tuesday. I've posted it here.

FOWA - Video

Mel and Ryan from Future of Web Apps have sorted me out the audio, so I've uploaded the video below.

I'm going to be giving a re-run of the talk at a small event called TEN (a mix of Cambridge and London based geeks) organised by Rufus Evison and John Woods. It's in London on Wednesday 31st at 6pm at the Pitcher and Piano, 42 Kingsway, just near Holborn Tube. It's fairly informal and limited in size, but you're welcome to turn up - just ping us an email and I'll ask them to add you to the invite list.

I'll also cover some of themes which I'm going to explore at Web 2.0 Berlin.

Still no video?

Nope

In the meantime, I'll just note that Tim is talking about Atoms, a field which I have taken an interest in for some time.

I've dug up an old presentation from 2003, which I gave a slightly modified version of at Euro Foo in 2004.

It's a bit basic, well it's a bit pants .... but it serves as a very general introduction into the field. So I'll post the slides here.

[Corection - had some problems with slideshare - so I'll just provide a link to download the file or you can go to slideshare directly.]

I should really post up the EurOscon version as a video ... but since I'm going to be combining this with the FOWA stuff - including the different metholodogies needed for CA / CODB, the stack is bigger than just SaaS / FaaS / HaaS and the problem with patents & ROI - all into one monstrous web 2.0 expo talk, I thought I'd wait.

Audio --

Still waiting for the audio, so the video will be a bit later.

In the meantime I've posted the slides with slideshare. For some reason the encoding they use has messed up a few slides and the transcript is just gobbledygook and I can't seem to find a way of removing it.

I note that they use S3 - and for some reason this crashed my preview in blogger - oh well. Still at least it's a fairly easy way of getting slides up, though not quite as easy as video.

The previous talk ...

Whilst I wait to get my hands on the audio for my FOWA talk, I thought I'd post a video of my slides from OSCON 2007. It's an earlier and shorter version.

I'll be exploring all these themes in more detail at Web 2.0 Expo in November.

With thanks ...

Just finished my talk at FOWA, I'll upload the presentation tomorrow.

Before I do, I just want to say thanks to two masters of public speaking - Robert 'r0ml' Lefkowitz and Damian Conway.

Any small skill which I have in this field, I have learned from these fine speakers and I would encourage anyone, who has the chance, to listen to them.

I'm a great believer that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. So when it come to defining a new computing term, rather than using the neologism, fungitility, I took Robert's advice:-

instead of using words which already have common uses, we should dig up archaic words which might or might not have related meaning and just use those, since no one knows what they mean anyway and it makes you sound erudite to use them.

So Patration it is. Obviously, everyone knows that patration means “the freedom and portability to move from one service provider to another without hinderance or boundaries"

Thank you Robert and thank you Damian.

Also thanks to Ryan, Simon, Lisa, Mel and Dan who made my attendance at FOWA such a pleasure.

Web 2.0 Berlin

I submitted a proposal for Web 2.0 Berlin about a week ago, and then received a email from Brady about helping out in the advisory board.

Wow .. I didn't know what to say, other than "yes" of course, I'm very flattered.

So first order of the day, was to email (a very un-web 2.0 like approach) some friends and contacts I respect about their views on good speakers, what they would advise etc.

Unfortunately, my mistake, I sent out one email to all thirty-eight at the same time. It didn't take long to be told of my error!

However, I did get some very interesting replies, suggestions and had a discussion with Ben about Security and his feeling this is missing from the conference.

Well it's a valid point, and one I'll raise.

Now, as for trends ... well I don't agree with Ben that there are NO significant changes occurring.

I'd argue that change is constantly occurring, and the most significant seem to be driven by the meme that is "open source" causing a faster dissemination of novel and new ideas, an acceleration in innovation and increased creative destruction.

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, utility computing etc are all consequences of this as the once novel and new becomes ubiquitous and common.

Now this was part of something which I started to write some time ago about the "entropy of innovation" - I'm very good at lame titles.

Anyway, today's discussion sparked a conversation with Jenny Ambrozek, so I'll add my notes that I made during and shortly after the FAST conference - they are very rough, and at some point I'll get my note book out and write a clearer post.

Rough thoughts

The open source concept created communities around creating software systems. However the meme has spread up the stack of software (from just operating systems to system applications to entire business applications) and out of the stack (creative commons on content, images etc).

The idea of communities sharing and collaborating on information which is often provided freely in an "open source" manner is what is starting to impact traditional news media. In the same way that open source collaboration became faster than proprietary development, the same would seem to be true in information aggregation.

The hidden power behind this all is that open source removes barriers to dissemination of ideas and content. This spurs on innovation, as it accelerates the rate at which the novel and new becomes ubiquitous and common.

You can see this effect in other areas, hence wikipedia become quickly the main source of knowledge on the internet - precisely because of its open and free nature, precisely because this encourages collaboration. If you don't encourage collaboration, then because of the open and free nature someone else will - hence the trio of open, free and collaboration are always combined.

This meme will travel into processes, including business processes and many other areas of human endeavour. It increases collaboration by removing the barriers of secrecy and the illusion of arcane knowledge. It's strongest affect is where it impacts infra-structural services - those used by all. Had HTTP not been released in an open and free manner, the world wide web would not have become the force it is today.

Hence enterprise 2.0 for me is merely an extension and spread of this meme into an organisation. Ultimately I expect to see more openness and collaboration between organisations as a result - hence my theme about the necessity for openness in business at Andrew Mcafee's session at FAST and why I agreed with Euan Semple's default position that the simplest thing is to do nothing ... it's going to happen to an organisation in any case ... assuming the organisation chooses to compete in this new world.