All The News That's Fit To Print for ME!

There is an innovative and simple solution to the collapse of the business model of traditional media. The question is whether the old media incumbents will see it and adopt it before they fully collapse or if it will be new entrant players who see it first and take the leap of offering it. The solution is coming it's just a matter of time and who see's it and implements it first. So what is that solution? 

Simple: Give me EXACTLY the information I want, EXACTLY when I want it and I WILL PAY YOU FOR THAT. The future is all about custom/personal information filtering and delivery. Clay Shirky's now famous statement in his, "It's not information overload, it's filter failure." presentation sums up the problem and points at the solution. 

So why is nobody rushing to give me that solution? I'll tell you why. Because it's scary for the incumbents to fundamentally change how they gather and distribute information and it's expensive for new entrants to build and migrate people over to a world-changing information delivery solution. This is always the greatest wall holding back any fundamental change that needs to happen.

But, make no mistake,  this is an idea whose time has come. News media companies are in panic and Information overload has already reached a point where many people are suffering info exhaustion. Given the chance, many will now pay some amount for a service that effectively filters the "info-verse" in a custom way and delivers it to them in a custom way. I know I would. Between Email, IM, RSS, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Pearltrees, TV, Radio and yes, the occasional newspaper, I am drowning in too much information. What I want is a single, one-stop service that delivers me "All the News/Blogs/Tweets/Music/Videos/Friends That Are Fit To Print/Show/Stream/Deliver/Introduce for or to (Roger Toennis)". 

I WANT TO PAY for a service that Data-mines the web continuously getting, prioritizing and spoon-feeding to me all the info relevant I need to be "dialed in to the what's happenin' on the web and in the world" without me having to do all the work of setting up and tweaking the filters. I also want the service to mine the people networks and find people I need to meet based on my networking goals and and make the introductions for me(us).

In addition I want an option to pay extra to have a real, live, breathing, human person who works for this service to send me personalized voice/video/text notes telling me why I need to read certain articles, watch certain YouTube videos, TV shows or movies. They would also tell about people I should meet and then introduce me to them perhaps even in a live call or video chat when the other person agrees to meet me. When this service is available I will pay up to $200 a month for it, maybe more, if it includes the live-personal-assistant-like features.

Help me surf the information tsunami and hang ten on that wave with style and I WILL PAY YOU FOR THAT!!

Eventually almost everyone will pay as they realize it's the ONLY WAY FOR THEM TO STAY RELEVANT AND COMPETE and be successful in this new "Information and Social Connection" economy.

Twitter is Woodstock. Facebook is a Garden Party

Twitter and Facebook are fundamentally different. Facebook is an invitation-only garden party for your friends in your own backyard(garden). Just like Ricky Nelson song "Garden Party". "I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends. A chance to share old memories and play our songs again. When I got to the garden party, they all knew my name...." 

Twitter on the other hand is a Woodstock-like festival experience for anyone who shows up at Yasgur's Farm. Like Joni Mitchell sang later.. 


"I came upon a child of god, He was walking along the road And I asked him, where are you going, And this he told me Im going on down to yasgurs farm, Im going to join in a rock n roll band, Im going to camp out on the land, Im going to try an get my soul free, We are stardust, We are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"


Joni wrote this because she regretted canceling her appearance at Woodstock. Her agent put her on the Dick Cavett show instead. Yikes, talk about wrong place at the right time! Twitter is like Woodstock in another way; the Twitter promoters (Twitter founders), just like Woodstock, decided to cut the fences down before the day of the concert (Public posting of comments) and spend the money building the stage instead. The human experience of being on FB versus Twitter is also very different. 

With Facebook, conversation is easy because you know everyone at your garden (FB Wall). With Twitter your party doesn't get going until all the Woodstock fence-jumpers have decided you and your tent in the field are worth hanging around and partying with. Which involves getting down and dirty dancing in the mud. ;-)  With Twitter you have to "let go" and mingle with your inhibitions left behind. Just like Woodstock.

So what kind of party do you like? Muddy psychedelic Woodstock? Or civilized and private Garden Party?

Me? I tend to go to most parties I'm invited to. But I really have fun at the ones where I'm a "crasher" . :-)

Avaya/Nortel - Traditional Enterprise Telecom Market Moving Toward Disruption

It was announced this morning that Avaya(TPG/SL) has won the stalking horse auction for Nortel's Enterprise division. Avaya made this move mainly for the channel expansion and market-share growth. They will now look to aggressively churn the Nortel base into buying Avaya solutions.

As economy recovers and large enterprise starts buying capital equipment again it’s very feasible that Avaya could easily gross an extra $900M in the course of 12 to 18 months as a result of the acquisition of the Nortel base and Nortel VAR channel partners. This is what smart private equity buyers do. The attempts by Gores Group (Seimens Enterprise Telecom Division owners) to acquire Nortel mean they saw the exact same value prop as TPG/SL.

The $15M set aside as a “retention” fund for Nortel employees likely is really more a “severance” fund. This is a “spoonful of sugar” to be used in softening the blow for Non-US workers who all have severance requirements built into employment contracts via unions and/or non-US govt regs. US-based Nortel workers are going to have a very rough go of it. It’s mostly a non-impact for Avaya workers or a slight positive.

Also in a more strategic sense this suddenly makes Avaya a lot more attractive in relation to a future liquidity event for TPG/SL. Whether they decide to IPO and relaunch Avaya as a public company or sell it, it’s now a more attractive property. Selling it now may be somewhat more complicated because if it was sold to Cisco or another major telecom player now you truly would have a non-competitive market situation from US FTC/DOJ perspective. So the ideal private sale for TPG/SL would be to Microsoft. That would give at least a duopoly of Cisco versus Microsoft in the Enterprise Telecom market. Another possibility would be a sale to a major telecom carrrier like Verizon; notice VZ complained to DOJ about Nortel/Avaya merger.

In a much broader scope, the Enterprise Telecom/UC market is being set up for a disruption by solutions like Google Voice/Wave. Eventually the future version of traditional “Hosted Telecom” that the RBOC carriers deliver(ed) is going to be replaced by something I call “Cloud Telecom”; or more appropriately “Cloud Collaboration”. F500 companies are going away form big corporate campuses with thousands of people at one site toward a very distributed employee model. Employees more and more are scattered around in small offices domestically and overseas and also lots of people working from home/virtually. So big iron CPE boxes at corporate sites become less and less relevant. Instead all that is needed is for an employee to be able to reach those corporate resources at a network connected datacenter via SSL VPN over broadband. So why not then just outsource the datacenter instead of using inhouse datacenter and IT?

That is where an offer like Google Voice, enhanced with perhaps an Avaya CMS call center supporting virtual agents, becomes very attractive on a variable cost (subscription) basis.

This will disrupt both traditional hosted voice AND customer premise telecom businesses as they currently exist. Even very large multisite companies will be able to go fully to Cloud Collaboration, even in the call center. In call center the traditional equipment will hang on for a long time but now in a hosted/subscription model versus as a capital purchase for the enterprise.

However, It’s going to take about 5 years to 7 years for this disruption to happen and before it becomes clear this is coming, TPG/SL will sell Avaya or relaunch Avaya as a public company and get their money back.

The "Blue Ocean Collaboration" Replacement for Distributed Personal Computing

The period from (1985-2010) is/was a technology/market era that was focused almost exclusively on the mechanics of enabling "Independent Personal Computing(IPC)". The goal was all about faster processors, bigger disks and more RAM to run ever more complex locally deployed PC applications.

That era is coming to an end. 

We now are transitioning from that IPC focus into an technology/market era that will be focused almost exclusively on maximizing the productivity of what I call "Interpersonal Realtime Collaborations" (IRC). IRC is a hybrid value proposition that results from merging the value proposition of communications technology with the value proposition of computing technology. This IRC value proposition will be important in the professional marketplaces as well as the consumer marketplace. 

The reason for this is, 'computing power' is now becoming both ubiquitous and inexpensive, (true both for distributed as well as Cloud-based computing). With computing power reduced to a commodity it can no longer be the primary/exclusive value focus for computing technology companies who want to build and market premium-priced technology products, software, services. 

A similar disruptive process is happening to traditional voice/video/text communication solutions as standalone "Customer Premise" solutions. They also are commoditizing rapidly and traditional communications companies like Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Mitel, Shoretel, Ericcson, Seimens, NEC, etc. are seeing that erosion in profitability. 

However, the seamless combination of communication technology and computing technology delivered over ubiquitous broadband pipes, that delivers a premium IRC experience, is currently not available widely. But it is something people are starting to demand. Those companies who provide it first will be able to take the initial high margins in this new market. Google is about to launch a big initiative in this area with the Google Chrome OS running on lightweight "netbook" devices.

So what does this mean? The companies (PC manufacturers, Telecom equipment manufacturers, Software companies and others) that refocus most effectively on enabling IRC vs IPC will win the profitability and the marketshare battles. They will win because the best IRC solutions will have the highest customer demand and therefore deliver the highest margins on sales of everything that supports the IRC experience. With realtime communication being elevated in this new era to be a much more critical value proposition the visionary companies have opportunity to to be significant players/leaders in this new IRC marketplace. 

This "IRC marketplace" is an attractive and exciting Blue Ocean into which manufacturers must willing dive head first. 

The Ultimate Collaboration Technology Coming Soon! The HUMAN HIVE MIND! A Force For Good...Not Evil.

Jeremy Epstein has a cool blog post today on an innovative communication social networking activity he came up with called Rolodex Roulette. 


The basic idea is go to your cellphone contacts and pick one name from your list from each of the letters of the alphabet and call those 26 people. Odds are you will connect live with maybe 1 of 4 people you call. So may 6 conversations. Jeremy had 8. Now you may think this is a weird leap for me to make but....
I think Jeremy's idea is another tiny step toward the coming of the "Human Hive Mind (HHM)". HHM will be the Ultimate Human Collaboration technology.

Now before you "run" screaming off into the "internet woods" in horror banging yourself into virtual trees, let me reassure you, I think this is a good thing to happen for humanity. Here's why...

I believe we all deeply crave a deeper and more meaningful and positive mental connection with our fellow "man"(gender non specific). So I'm developing a theory that says as we approach the technological singularity point, and we overcome our fear of connecting fully with our fellow human beings, we will hyper-network our brains into a hive-mind-like construct that we will be able to jump in and out of like a swimming pool.  

Game theory says that positive cooperation among human actors produces optimal, 'mutually beneficial' results. This means unless society collapses, and prevents the technology from being developed, the human race is on an inherently natural path to construct and participate in ever more rich "hive mind" collaboration environments. Virtual collaboration worlds like WOW, Second Life, Twitter, Facebook and others are early examples of this direction. Imagine what will happen when in addition to voice, video and text as channels of communication we start to add things like mood to the communication. 

I believe that the majority of the thoughts we have, and the most powerful thoughts, are positive thoughts and I think when we start setting up hive minds that our positive thoughts will be the most self-reinforcing. I believe a logical outcome of this is our society will rapidly start becoming more moral, ethical and philanthropic that we are today. I know this concept scares a lot of people for reasons of privacy, individuality and fears of evil hive minds, such as those depicted in science fiction literature and film, (Star Trek:TNG's "Borg collective").  

But what will really emerge is not this "boogeyman-esque", all-encompassing, mind-numbing version of a hive mind. Instead I think it will be something more akin to what is described in the Star Wars series. There the experienced Jedi are connected via "the force" into being able to feel an overall understanding of the fabric of the collective state of mind other living beings in that society/universe.  

Can you imagine being able to at your own will jump in and out of feeling connected, at a level you find comfortable, to the whole of the human race and it's state of mind? To participate in and contribute to that state of mind? Like anything, if done poorly, it could be damaging to have a hive mind. 

For example; imagine a hive mind being used to exclusively connect only those people who are racists and exclusionists. It could be used by these angry, disenfranchised people to be more effective in causing damage to society. But this danger exists with any new technology. The technology is certain to be used much more often to proactively engender positive interactions between people. I think that ultimately the positive uses of new tech usually outweigh the negative. 

Consider even the positive outcomes of Nuclear science and technology versus the negative outcomes. It's been almost 65 years since the nuclear bomb was developed and yet despite all the massive war strife and anger since then we as a race someone have yet to wipe ourselves off the planet. That tells me something. It says that as a human race, despite our differences, we really do want to survive.

So I think hive mind technology will be no different from when printing, gunpowder, photography, the automobile, aviation, film, radio, nuclear power, TV and internet arrived on the scene of humanity. Some will fear the technology. Some will seek to use the technology for antisocial purposes. But many more will use it to for the purposes of improving the positivity of interactions between people.  

All the previous communciation technology steps that are precursors to hive mind technology (printing, photography, film, radio, TV and internet, etc) have all made significant positive impacts for humanity leading to more freedom, peace and harmony between people. Certainly our 24/7 news outlets focus on the reality that we have lots of war, strife, anger and hatred in todays world. But I think the communication technology improvements over the past 500 years in communication and collaboration technology were crucial to our society advancing.  

Communication technology in the form of printing is what stopped the dark ages death spiral of European society and started it on this ever increasing slope toward positive outcomes for humanity. I think the spike in pain and strife we see coming out now is not a sign of growing overall negativity in the human race. Instead I think it is just a lot of previously hidden resentment, anger and hatred being leeched at a ever more rapid pace out of our collective consciousness by the ever more frictionless nature of our ability to communicate. Communication/collaboration is getting more and more frictionless and affordable.  

Cisco is one company working hard on building affordable, full-body 2D video presence solutions. 3D holographic presence is the next step. In fact in the recent movie I took my sons to, "GI Joe:The Rise of Cobra", Cisco has it's brand splashed all over a bunch 3D, holographic collaboration solutions that exist in the futuristic setting the movie portrays. Now think about later when hive mind solutions start to emerge in concert with that. I think these solutions will accelerate the leeching of hatred, anger, war and negativity out of human society.  

As Yoda said in SW-I ""Fear leads to anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to Suffering." The path back the other direction from suffering, that inverts this direction, starts with rich and regular communication. Yoda also should have instructed Qui Gon Jin and Obi-Wan Kenobi in regard to the young Anakin Skywalker..."Endeavour always to constantly speak, interact and communicate with your Padouin learner. Communication leads to understanding, understanding leads to collaboration, collaboration leads to fellowship, fellowship leads to trust, trust leads to peace."  

Do not fear the coming of the human hive mind(s). Embrace this evolution, encourage it, participate in it to contribute your positivity. Like the printing press it will be a tool of trust and understanding far more than a tool of ignorance and fear.

Is Google Chrome OS a rival for Microsoft Windows? Or Something else?

In this blog post on the Chomium OS Central blog there is a discussion of whether Chrome OS will be a rival to Windows.

Quotes in that blog from Phil Balmer and Bill Gates indicate where they stand on this question. Summed up they have Alfred E. Nueman's "What Me Worry?" viewpoint. (Bill kinda looks like Alfred doesn't he? :-) )

So clearly Phil and Bill don't get it.

It's not about whether the computing technology is new or not. Disruptive technology rarely is NEW technology. Thats why they call it "Disruptive" versus calling it simply "NEW".

The key enabler for the broad adoption of a truly thin OS with focus on cloud based apps (Chrome OS on netbooks) is all about the availability and adoption of broadband. As the fast internet connection becomes fully available to you pretty much 24/7 everywhere you are, your use of web apps becomes dominant.

Just ask yourself: When is the last time I spent even 30 minutes working on my computer or laptop doing productive work for my job with no internet connection?

Likely it was when you were last on a plane. But at any one time in the US there are about 5000 commercial planes in the air carrying maybe 100 people on average per plane. Thats 50,000 computer users max at any one time who can't do web apps work. Not a big deal really. Plus now airlines are rolling out internet connection on flights. So even that is not a blocking problem.

Chrome is certainly NOT a rival for Windows. It's an alternative for a growing segment of the computing user population!!

And that is the heart of what makes (Chrome OS + Ubiquitous Broadband) a disruptive technology to an incumbent and currently dominant technology provider like Microsoft.

Every dog has it's day. Microsoft has had 25 years worth of days as top dog. All things pass into history and now MS must change to play a new role of it will not be relevant in the future.

What do you think? I want to hear your comments.

Liquid Media LLC is Hiring Software Developers

My company Liquid Media LLC is looking for part-time to full-time software developers. Compensation initially is equity-only with potential to transition to salary/equity combination as the company grows.

Keep your day job for now and get started working in a startup on the side. Then when we achieve full funding we'll have fulltime/salaried positions.

.
(Contact me if you are interested and forward this description to anyone you think might be interested.)

Job: Senior Agile SW Developer(s)

- Do you have a passion for creating quality software?
- Are you sick of people saying their agile only to find out they don’t even know what it is?
- Have you ever wanted get involved with a software startup at the beginning and do things the "right way"?

With the economy down there is NO BETTER TIME to make your mark in the early stages of a startup.

This is an opportunity to be an early key player on the technical team of a Boulder/Denver startup company in stealth mode. We have a "hosted services" concept/solution that business customers are willing to pay for and they are waiting for us to get the product ready for their use. This is a not a "give-it-away-for-free-and-pray-we'll-someday-be-able-to-make-it-up-in-pay-per-click-advertising" startup.

Frankly those companies mostly suck because they are mostly doomed to crash and burn.

This company/solution is positioned for rapid growth as the economy stabilizes and begins growing again in the next 12 months.

The Team/Technologies:
The team actually practices eXtreme Programming instead of just giving it lip service. That means TDD, aggressive refactoring, pair programming, automated unit and integration tests, stories, iteration planning, etc.
The technologies we are playing with are: Java, JPA, JSF, SEAM, Richfaces, REST, JMS, Junit, Mockito, Eclipse, Postgres, etc

Job requirements:
· Proactive and Flexible Self-Starter comfortable working in a Startup
· Comfortable working in an agile software development environment
· Perform software design, development, testing and documentation.
· Understand OO principles
· Worked with James Gosling on Oak
· Never broke the build … ever
· Have a sense of humor :-)

To learn more about the company/concept and founders send inquires to "rtoennis@gmail.com".