LagrangePoint - Brad Howarth

The weird world of wiki journalism

For those unfamiliar, wikis (that being the plural of a singular wiki) are a form of living Web site that enables people to easily make changes to content. One of the most exciting initiatives has been Wikipedia, a kind of living encyclopedia that consists of contributions and edits from people all over the world, whose English language entries alone now number around three quarters of a million. Without wanting to go into too much detail of how wikis work, I wanted to point out this article from CNet News, brought to my attention by fellow writer Stephen Withers regarding how one journalist at Esquire was able to improve his article on Wikipedia by posting it up to the site and allowing others to comment and alter it. The final version, which went through over 350 edits, was considered punchier and more accurate than what was originally posted ...

Update - CRNA - Price versus value

Just found that my CRN Australia article on selling in the technology channel has been posted to the Web site - if you are interested, check it out here.

Mistaking the raiding party for a vanguard

One of the many lessons to emerge from the tech wreck was that a rush of early adopters onto a service does not necessarily represent the advance forces of a great army of consumers. The great enthusiasm with which sizeable (although ultimately statistically small) numbers of consumers leapt onto services such as Webvan and Kozmo.com gave company execs and analysts sufficient comfort to believe that they were but the advance parties of a much greater wave of consumers who would follow. Time showed however that while perhaps 5% or so of consumers had the knowledge and skills to get into these new services only, the bulk of consumers would take much longer to migrate, and hence excessive cash burn-rates would never be sustainable.

It is easy for we commentators in tech industry to get carried away with similar displays or irrational exuberance. As a proponent of new media initiatives such as blogging and podcasting, it is easy to get sucked into the view that the changes they are making on the fringes of media communications today will have massive ramifications for the dissemination and consumption of information in the short term. Ultimately I still believe they will, but it will undoubtedly take longer than many of might like to believe. As the the great sci-fi author Arthur C.Clarke aptly said, "we tend to overestimate technology in the short term and underestimate it in the long term". Blogging and podcasting may 'feel' like the way of the future, but there is no telling how soon that future will arrive - as somewhat cheekily demonstrated in this article - Blogging confuses Britain - from The Australian newspaper.

Time frames for change may be uncertain, but change is definitely taking place - and it is especially important to remember that many of the people driving these changes are not yet old enough to be driving taxis, running pubs or cutting hair (the basis for the article's social sample).

Salesforce.com, the client/server killer?

Apologies for the infrequent posting .... best laid plans and all. Thought I would follow up on my recent musings on Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event by posting the story that made it into The Australia - Death knell for software: Salesforce chief. This links back to the newspaper ...I hope the site remains active ...

Will be interesting to look back in a year's time and know whether the current hype around on-demand computing was really warranted - ie; are we in the midst of a change as fundamental as the shift from mini-computers and mainframes over to client/server computing. Salesforce.com and others in the on-demand space would certainly have you believe that client/server is dying, and point to the recent spate of acquisitions (Verisign and Symantec, Oracle and Most Of The World, etc) and lack of clear innovation as the evidence. It is certainly true that the web is the centre of innovative application development today - just look at eBay, LinkedIn or even this host site, TypePad. I suspect were are moving through a fundamental change, but one where the new world of demand computing is an addition to the existing mix, not a replacement. After all, after 15 odd years of client/server technology there are still plenty of mainframes out there.

Archive - MIS Magazine - Dark side of the net

It's a common occurence in technology journalism to be taken aback by the level of self-importance that many people in this industry (including the odd journalist) place on themselves and the work of their company. After all, selling servers is not exactly saving lives. So it is great to meet someone from within the industry who really is making a huge difference to the lives of one of the most vulnerable groups out there - children. Laura Chappell started as a network security expert but now finds herself tracking peadophiles online. You can read her story, Darkside Of The Net, from a recent edition of MIS Australia, here - Download darkside_of_the_net_1.pdf , Download darkside_of_the_net_2.pdf , Download darkside_of_the_net_3.pdf , Download darkside_of_the_net_4.pdf .

The Aussie PR blogs emerge

Interesting to see one of the first examples of a PR company in Australia using a blog to help promote a product. Amanda Starr's blog details her fitness regime as driven by the EyeToy - a motion capture system that works with Sony's PlayStation II. In this case Amanda is working out with a program developed in conjunction with Nike Motionworks - called EyeToy: Kinetic.

The catch is that Amanda is also an employee of Weber Shandwick, a company that happens to provide public relations services in Australia to the EyeToy's maker, Sony Computer Entertainment. Amanda doesn't go so far as to say that she is an employee of Weber Shandwick, although her e-mail address of astarr@webershandwick.com is up on the site.

Another week, another city - Cisco Networkers 2005

Last week it was San Francisco with Salesforce.com. This week it's Australia's sunny Gold Coast for Cisco Networkers 2005. Have just come out of the keynote presentation with Cisco Fellow, Australian-born Bruce Davie. Interesting that Cisco would pick such a technical person to deliver a fairly technical keynote, while also talking up the increase in technical content at this year's show. Although I haven't been here for a few years, previous communications from Cisco have been heavily accented towards moving up the value chain from technical provider to business partner. Like many companies, Cisco has been expressing its desire to talk to the senior management in the boardroom, not just the CIO in the IT department.

Could it be that in its desire to be a business partner to big business, it has forgotten the guys who got it to where it is today - the engineers and network specialists who install and operate its technology? Recent reports from Microsoft's TechEd talk about a similar shift towards technical matters. Maybe the tech industry is starting to realise that as much as it may have some semi-delusional notions of grandeur with regard to its place in the world (or in the minds of its clients, anyway) there are still a lot of little people that need to be looked after.

As one force emerges, another fades

I'm sure it was no coincidence that the announcement of Oracle's takeover of one-time rival, the CRM software maker Siebel Systems, happened on the opening day of the user conference for another CRM company, Salesforce.com. I arrived in San Francisco about that same time that Salesforce.com's CEO Marc Benioff was relaying the news to the 3000 or so faithful gathered at the Moscone Centre, so only found out around lunchtime.

The last time I saw Benioff live was four years ago, also in San Francisco. At that time his company was hot property - a fast growth CRM software maker with a hosted application business model that didn't require its users to buy and install software. They were also only charged by the month, without the big upfront licence and implementation fees imposed by most rivals. Back then Salesforce.com was barely 100 people. I interviewed Benioff  the day after interviewing Tom Siebel (who explained to me that the reason why he had never visited Australia was that he couldn't see the point in flying 14 hours to see 3% of his marketplace). At that stage Siebel was also a hot company, but with thousands of employees and a market cap of about US$65 billion ...

Benioff was actually one of the first 10 investors in Siebel. The two had worked together at Oracle, and Benioff even went to Tom Siebel in 1998 and suggested that they build Salesforce.com together. Siebel told him to take a hike. Siebel then went and built Sales.com, which subsequently failed, and then had another go at the hosted model within Siebel with Siebel CRM OnDemand. Today Salesforce.com is still hot property, claiming around 300,000 individual users, and Siebel no longer exists ...

(Disclaimer - I am currently in San Francisco as a guest of Salesforce.com)

Archive - CRN Australia - Price versus value

I seem to have sales on the mind at the moment. Here's a piece that Byron Connolly over at Computer Reseller News asked me to write for his features pages detailing the ongoing swing towards value-based selling. Seems the days of the deep discounter are slowing fading away ... Download crn_price_versus_value.rtf

Archive - The Age/SMH My Career - See it in 3G

The days of the slick mobile phone sales guy in a shiny suit are over. Mobile phone selling has gone legit, oratleast according to the chaps I interviewed for this careers story. Check out the article from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age's My Career section here.