Who has the answer ....

I was recently asked for "answers" on how to implement web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0. I, like many others, can hazard a guess to a sensible course of action depending upon the company, but at this moment in time there are no answers merely informed guesses or what is commonly called recommendations.

Whilst web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 are not new fields, the technology having been used in commercial settings for many years now, it is still emergent.

What this means, is that we are still learning. This is particularly true when it comes to enterprise 2.0 because you're dealing with a complex network of people (which we barely understand), operating in an environment containing a mass of changing activities (which often we barely understand) into which we are introducing tools that expose new mechanisms of communication, collaboration, componentisation and participation (for which we barely understand the effect or the most suitable means of management).

Some activities are common and well defined and hence we can provide ideal mechanisms of control. However, unfortunately, those which are common and well defined are of declining strategic value due to their ubiquity in an industry. The hypothesis is that there exists an inverse relationship between the certainty about which we know something and its potential future value - a sort of uncertainty principle of future business value.

So genres of activities which are highly uncertain (such as web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0) have high potential future value. Unfortunately by the time that we have all the information, case studies, best practices and research to tell you the best way of achieving this value, the activity is ubiquitous and common and therefore has little.

I mention this because I have recently seen people touting themselves not only as subject matter experts in these field but also setting themselves up as gurus and offering answers.

As with the best snake oil traditions of the past, such claims are founded on weak evidence and you should be glad it is. When it comes to creating value, you need to be experimenting and anyone playing in these fields is just as likely to make the big break as anyone else.

No-one has all the answers to web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 yet, which is why these subjects still matter.

3 is the new 2 ...

There are three accelerators to change hidden in the concepts commonly associated with web 2.0. These are :-

• componentisation through the internet as a platform
• network effects through social networks
• increasing participation though reducing barriers to entry, collaborative approaches and the levelling of any disparity between opportunity and ability.

I mention this because Salesforce have decided to define Platform as a Service (a term which they coined and used successfully to gain thought leadership on what was already a common concept) as "Web 3.0".

Seeing that the internet as a platform is a key part of web 2.0, this change will just cause confusion and will be of little benefit to consumers. However, it will give the pundits plenty to talk about.

Expect "Process as a Platform as a Cloud as a Service" or PaaPaaCaaS (aka web 4.51 rc 2) soon. Sounds gibberish? It is, and so are these new terms being touted.

From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0

This is a recreation of my talk from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Milan (June 2008).

During the talk I examined the concepts of web 2.0, enterprise 2.0 and the forces behind change. The talk links together a number of topics from componentisation, software as a service, participation, network effects, innovation and commoditisation into a single theme (most of this stuff is old hat for those who have seen any of my presentations over the last few years).

The video covers in very simple and general terms:-

• What is commoditisation?
• What is innovation?
• Why is web 2.0 important?
• Why is web 2.0 important now?
• Why is enterprise 2.0 important?
• Some basic lessons on managing enterprise 2.0.

From Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0 (50 mins approx)

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.

Meeting new people ...

I gave a talk last week on innovation and commoditisation to a small group at dunnhumby. It was a great opportunity to discuss a number of concepts with experts from another industry. They certainly raised some interesting and very valid points.

Anyway, I've made a video of the presentation (it's a slightly modified version from the original and as usual I've had to record some audio with just me speaking at home. No atmosphere and without a proper microphone - the audio is a bit pants. I was also a bit tired, when I get a moment I'll probably redo this.).

It covers many of the usual subjects but with a few new additions. The themes are:-

• commoditisation
• commoditisation of IT (for example SOA, SaaS etc)
• innovation
• how stuff happens
• why nothing is simple in management
• the different life-cycles of an activity
• the need for different project methodologies
• the problem with outsourcing
• organisation and enterprise 2.0
• my research into business process modelling
• predictions for the future

Managing a complex world (45 mins)

20th October 2015

The original video was on blip which stopped their consumer service. So, I've reloaded the original to youtube.

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 ....

If you didn't mean to read this ... then why did you?

I just received the following email:

Thank you for your previously expressed interest in {name removed} beta testing which has now begun. We would greatly appreciate your participation and subsequent feedback. Please click on the following link to create your account and begin your involvement: http://{url removed}
If you did not previously request to be involved, please do not click the above link but instead contact us immediately at {email removed}.
Thanks
The {name removed} Team

My immediate thought was Social Engineering Attack! Except, of course, I knew I had expressed an interest. I still had to check the raw source and headers just in case.

I was suspicious because of the text that I've highlighted. Why would you ask someone who has not contacted you, to contact you? Doesn't that say something awful about the quality of your service? Are you just randomly spamming people as well?

If you don't mean to contact me, please don't. Certainly don't contact me and then ask me, that if I didn't want you to contact me, to then contact you to say so.

As I said before, I don't want to be pushed or pulled, I want to draw.

Principles of Organisation

As most of my friends know, I'm currently hidden away in the British Library writing about:-

• Commoditisation, commodification and creative destruction.
• How organisations are a mass of S-Curves.
• Managing from invention to innovation.
• Managing from innovation to ubiquity.
• Organising around stage of activity rather than function.
• What sort of firm are you - physical or human capital intensive?.
• What 2.0 means.

It's an enormous amount of work and extends upon the framework I use in my presentations. So yes, I'm writing a book and yes, I'll be releasing it Creative Commons 3.0 attribution when I'm finished.

However, two things happened today which I must respond to. The first thing was that I read Suw's post and the second was that someone asked me about the "ideal of ubiquitous knowledge in large organisations."

This is an interesting idea. To explore this, I first need to discuss two main emerging types of firm - physical capital intensive and the other is human capital intensive.

As an example of a physical capital intensive firm - I'll use wikipedia. The key controlling element for any members (whether its paid employee or its voluntary members who gain value through reputation or some other social or actualising need) of this "firm" is access to the physical infrastructure which creates wikipedia.

If a member of wikipedia leaves - the impact on wikipedia is minimal. Conversely if wikipedia denies access to the system to an individual - the impact to that individual is significant as setting up a new wikipedia requires huge physical capital.

Wikipedia is an example of a physical capital intensive firm and can exert influence on its members by controlling access to the physical assets or infrastructure. It is the infrastructure that binds this group together.

Human capital intensive firms are controlled or bound together through access to high value human capital. For example Barristers Chambers, where pupils often work for very little (if at all) and are mentored by the chamber in a sort of master / apprenticeship relationship. As the apprentice acquires more human capital then rewards are increased and eventually they become masters themselves. The advantage for the masters is they offload menial work to the apprentices whilst concentrating on the high value and more rewarding work. It's an exchange.

This sort of structure exists in many fields, and the firms depend upon creating an umbrella group to not only support this, but also to create a brand and provide suitable compensation to keep the group together.

So let's look at the "ideal of ubiquitous knowledge in large organisations".

Ubiquitous knowledge requires its codification, however codification almost always leads to commoditisation as knowledge rarely remains within the boundaries of one firm. Now commoditisation and ubiquity of knowledge is fine if you are a physical capital intensive firm - such as wikipedia. However what if you're a human capital intensive firm? What if "how to win every legal case" could be codified? The firm's reason for existence has gone as setting up a new firm requires very little physical capital and there is no human capital to be acquired by joining another.

Fortunately, tacit knowledge comes to the rescue. Not all knowledge can be codified, for example creative writing and debate.

So in general:-

• human capital intensive firms are fine, as long as knowledge cannot be commoditised
• physical capital intensive firms are fine, as long as the physical infrastructure cannot be commoditised

So if we look at the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 worlds, hopefully you'll understand why I have been going on about commoditisation so much.

So referring to Suw's post - if you are a content broadcaster, then you used to be physical capital intensive as the infrastructure needed for production and distribution was far from cheap. Such physical assets meant that a content broadcaster, say a record producer, controlled what was produced and controlled the artists by access to these assets. These days anyone can produce and distribute music. Firms that are based upon physical capital cannot exist in this market - the best you can hope to be is some form of syndicated provider giving some value add.

However, music and song writing still contain tacit knowledge even if the result of this can be easily reproduced. So there is the opportunity for new types of organisations based principally upon human capital. Master songwriters or Master Musician type chambers (otherwise known as Bands). Obviously you need reputation, revenue being generated by providing access to services (for example gigs) and secondary revenue streams (for example physical merchandise)

The music is just a way of building recognition and a following. It's an unfortunate tune if you're a record producer or a mediocre journalist / artist / musician.

However, this brings up another point. The "ideal of ubiquitous knowledge in large organisations" is only ideal if you happen to be a physical capital intensive firm. If you're a human capital intensive firm or a "we don't know what we are" type firm, then a rush towards Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 and codification of knowledge could in fact be reducing the lifespan of your firm.

A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing.

Acceleration or Velocity?

Last year I attended a conference in which one of speakers suggested that utility computing was a far off subject (2012+). This I found mildly interesting because it was already becoming established, however the speaker's point was that large companies wouldn't take it seriously until that time.

So I was interested to read Joe Tucci's list of the top 7 priorities for 2008.

• Virtualization
• Storage
• Security
• VOIP
• Enterprise 2.0
• Software in the Cloud
• Green Computing.

Now if I look at somewhere like Fotango then each of these had become priorities some 2-6 years beforehand, for example the company has organised activities around an internal wiki since 2003/04.

This would be fairly normal as larger corporations tend to lag the smaller software companies. What is unusual is that this lag is normally considered to be around 7-10 yrs and I find it unlikely that there are companies who can say that the above list was their priority between 1998-2001.

So what has happened? Joe Tucci says that this list is "something to consider for anyone who contends that business technology moves too slowly."

Rather than looking at the speed at which technology moves, the really interesting question is whether the spread of technology is accelerating.

I, Robot ...

Ok - so hot on the heels of open social, is something which is very exciting ... Android.

I've attached the video below, but basically Android is an open source stack for developing applications on the mobile phone, backed up by an alliance of interested parties.

Obviously providing a standard framework for building apps on a mobile phone is a big thing ... however there are two more things I wish to note. First that Google APIs will be available on Android. I assume this also means OpenSocial in the future?

Secondly, that XMPP support is provided. More P2P applications and bitTorrent for the mobile phone? Excellent.

Watch the video ...

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.

Where's the future bud?

I talk a lot about commoditisation of IT, the application of utility like concepts to computer resource provision, the XaaS stack, the need for competitive utility markets, open standards, open sourced implementations of those standards, the reduction of the barriers of entry (or participation) in marketplaces through commoditisation, the consequences of this (such as news 2.0), the growing phenomenon of 3D printing (the commoditisation of the manufacturing process), the participative manufacturing based upon draw rather than push or pull (see threadless.com) and the importance of conversation over product.

These things are all starting to happen whether its SaaS vendors like salesforce or HaaS vendors like xCalibre or higher orders of the stack already well populated with a growing fight to become the canoncial source for particular types of information.

So what is the next next big thing?

Well, in my view the next progression of web 2.0 (and NO, that isn't web 3.0 or 4.0 etc - it's still web 2.0) is all about the attention economy, reputation and the distribution of the social graph. The following gives you a hint of where we will be going, it maybe for video but in my view the key concepts are all there ....

Hidden in this are the ideas to create reputation networks and a solution to Brad's noble desire to make the social graph a community asset.

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.

All in a name ....

I've noticed that a lot of energy, effort and debate seems to being going into the "what's in web x.0" question.

I thought Tim had made a mistake in calling the change "web 2.0" rather than a neologism or re-using some archaic word. However, the mistake wasn't his. Tim had created a neologism, "inforware", we just chose to ignore it ... damn that crowd.

Hence we are now stuck with wasteful debates of what is in web x.0.

Why wasteful? Well, we have been entering a new phase of participation, enquiry and expression which is driven by :-

1. The growth of the open meme and its spread from software into other areas (content, hardware, finance etc) increasing participation and enquiry.

2. The effect of the internet, open source and standards in removing barriers to adoption and increasing serendipity, analogy, spread, participation and enquiry.

3. The commoditisation of the communication process and IT through their ubiquity. This increased the ability of the public to express, enquire and participate by removing the barriers to participation (entry) in many information fields.

Web 2.0 is a marker, to signify that this change is occurring. It's not about a particular technology, a rich user interface nor this standard or that standard. It's not even really about web browsing.

What we should be doing is debating, exploring and discussing those driving forces - and adapting to them.

Instead we have a lot of energetic arguments over which things which haven't happened yet belong to which moniker in the future?

Wasteful...

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.

Dealing with the stack

I had intended to create a number of posts about the XaaS stack. However, my recent diversion with the writings of Andrew Keen and my realisation that there were deeper fundamental processes at work here has forced me to postpone ... for a short time.

After spending sometime reading up on a number of articles, I've yet to come across a satisfactory exploration of what is happening in the IT industry today.

Now I don't pretend to know, I have some rough ideas.

So I thought I'd write down an initial view (something I scribbled together in Como). I'll use this as a starting point whilst I explore the concepts. I'm likely to change my mind on these fundamentals several times during the process, and I might not even get to a satisfactory conclusion.

Any pointers would be extremely welcome.

Deja Vu dot Zero

I couldn't decide whether Andrew Keen is the modern equivalent of King Canute or akin to the wandering minstrel of old who lamented the invention of sheet music or the great digital hypocrite promoting himself by the same means which he lambasts or some great visionary?

So I attended his lecture at the RSA, to try and get a clearer picture. He received a luke warm but polite reception and by all appearances has somewhat mellowed his viewpoints.

He puts forward a case that what we need is acceptance and understanding of expertise through education, that trained gatekeepers are needed for the internet, that real artists need to be paid and that content given away freely will never make any money and may undermine the whole system.

If you take his arguments at face value - then on one side you have a litany of self selecting experts, creating "high" quality output, demanding payment and authority Vs a mob of amateurs, creating "poor" quality output and providing their work for free.

This sounds somewhat familiar?

Oh my word, it's not just the meme of "open" that has traversed from one boundary (software) to another (content) but also the entire same debate - lock, stock and barrel - has followed it as well.

Jenny Ambrozek asked me some incredibly insightful questions about open source communities which I completely missed the point of. This really is just closed source vs open source all over again, which would suggest common underlying processes. Jenny, you're star!

It's all interconnected with the ideas of commoditisation. It's worth re-reading David Stutz work and re-applying these concepts to content.

"Open source is about consumer demand, political process, and community involvement, rather than about software or hardware innovation. To stay relevant during a shift to commodity software, open source communities will need to claim part of the power that has historically accompanied the definition and regulation of commodity networks. Open source constituents will need to actively participate in the creation of standards and legal frameworks in order to avoid marginalization. Without participation, the dynamic interaction of commodification, global capital markets, and political interests will likely result in the subjugation of open source and standards to corporate and national interests. In fact, judging by the history of other commodities, this outcome is actually most likely."

At least I can finally make up my mind. King Canute - but only if we make it so.

Whooosh ....

Over the last few months there seems to be lots of good news coming through on the VC / Entrepreneurial front in the Hi-Tech market in and around London.

Saul's OpenCoffee is a regular and growing event.

Dopplr receives funding - congratulations.

Seedcamp has kicked off.

dConstruct just seems to get bigger.

Mashup demo is launching in October

Future of Web Apps is coming to town.

Things seem to be taking off.