Thursday, June 28, 2007
XPLANE - DAD connection
Xplane Corp. and DAD, my Spanish incubator have a joint company in Madrid, XPLANE EMEA. We are now trying to integrate the venture 100% with the main company in the US and discussing new ventures that we will entertain together.
XPLANE has tremendous potential. As we develop what I like to call a new attention's economy, it becomes clear that companies need new methods to communicate their products, ideas and services and XPLANE is VERY good at doing it.
The key are their X Teams. They are able to help customers visualize the most complex situations and explain their products in a complete visual manner.
I have always admired Dave Gray and the company he has been able to create. I am now very impressed with the whole team and I believe we have a tremendous opportunity to help companies gain understanding.
Labels: DAD, Visual Thinker, XPLANE
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
A new breed of Application Service Providers (ASPs) will become successful by:
There was a new warning about the dot.com stocks bubble today from a unique global think-tank currently debating the development of a strong but equitable world digital economy. 'Boosting the Net Economy 2000' (www.netecon2000.com), which runs all this week, is drawing together experts from all parts of society in 45 nations.
On the debate's first day, think-tank member Frank Bannister of Trinity College, Dublin said there were striking parallels between the stock market crash of 1929 and today's "wildly overvalued" dot.com stocks.
"In 1928, people were talking about a 'new economy' and 'new paradigms' [and]the small man was getting into the market in a big way - though on nothing like today's scale", he said.
"I think that it was Rockefeller who said that he decided to get out of the market when his shoe shine boy started to give him market tips. All bubbles - the Dutch tulip bubble, the South Sea bubble, the 1980s property boom in the UK, have a germ of reality underneath. But a bubble is a bubble is bubble.
"The value of Amazon and Lastminute.com are purely in what people expect the share value to rise to. In most of these companies, there is no business model which is likely to produce the 80% gross margins or market share that the current technology leaders command. Unless your favourite share is going to do that well in the long term, you'd better time your exit well!"
Morton Falch of the Technical University of Denmark said the lack of transparent legislation protecting consumer rights will inhibit the electronic market place from reaching its full potential.
However tackling this problem meant answering some very tricky questions including: Is it possible to preserve national protection of consumers in an international market? How can international regulation be created in a way which is sufficiently flexible and dynamic to meet the demands of an ever-changing environment? And should regulation of electronic commerce be rule-based or market-driven (self-regulation)?
"Self regulation seems to be the answer, but who is the 'self'? When we are dealing with sellers and consumers, there is a built-in contradiction of interests", he said.
Rodolfo Carpintier, Vice President of Spain's leading Internet incubator Grupo NetJuice, predicted the new technologies would have some strong effects on democratic politics. "I believe the merit of teledemocracy will be to provide an interactive way for politicians to really understand what voters think about major subjects without [relying on] interpretations by 'experts' that very often are very different from the real positions of voters.
"Another major effect will be massive voter movements behind major issues both to stop or promote legislation".
Charley Lewis of the South African Congress of Trades Unions asked to what extent the new economy is really new, or whether globalisation is "merely good old-fashioned imperialism plus information technology?
"If ICTs are the universal enabler they are so vaunted to be, what is it that they enable? Or put differently, who ultimately controls the new information economy, and how is that control exercised?
"How are we to ensure that the promise and hype of the new global economy does not merely lead to the destruction of more jobs, increased levels of poverty, further erosion of the working environment, further ravages to our seas and forests, and a deeper digital divide between those with access to the new information society and the vast excluded majority?
"Surely, one of the key answers lies in ensuring that the voice of organised labour forms part of the debate. But it has to be a voice that is not only heard, but listened to as well. A digital economy designed, implemented and controlled by only one of the social stakeholders can hardly be an equitable one."
Franck Martin of the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission offered a fascinating insight into wiring up the 20 tiny, remote Pacific Island States.
Some of these nations have attractive internet domains like TO (Tonga), NU (Niue), and TV (Tuvalu), which can generate revenue for the islands: there were talks about leasing the TV domain for 50 million US dollars to television companies, around the same as the total annual budget of Tuvalu.
The wealthier islanders find internet postal shopping useful as there are currently few foreign imports, but there are payment problems as local banks do not offer visa cards.
And internet connection costs are high: when an island establishes a connection to another nation like Australia or the US it has to pay for the full leased line (4,000 US dollars a month in average). This anomaly means that "if a US citizen surfs an Island nation web site the island nation pays for it at a dear price. I think when an island nation connect to the Internet the state on the other side should pay half of the bill", Martin said.
However, the islanders have the last laugh: "I prefer to be here coding on a beautiful beach with coconut trees than in the traffic jams of Silicon Valley."
On the debate's first day, think-tank member Frank Bannister of Trinity College, Dublin said there were striking parallels between the stock market crash of 1929 and today's "wildly overvalued" dot.com stocks.
"In 1928, people were talking about a 'new economy' and 'new paradigms' [and]the small man was getting into the market in a big way - though on nothing like today's scale", he said.
"I think that it was Rockefeller who said that he decided to get out of the market when his shoe shine boy started to give him market tips. All bubbles - the Dutch tulip bubble, the South Sea bubble, the 1980s property boom in the UK, have a germ of reality underneath. But a bubble is a bubble is bubble.
"The value of Amazon and Lastminute.com are purely in what people expect the share value to rise to. In most of these companies, there is no business model which is likely to produce the 80% gross margins or market share that the current technology leaders command. Unless your favourite share is going to do that well in the long term, you'd better time your exit well!"
Morton Falch of the Technical University of Denmark said the lack of transparent legislation protecting consumer rights will inhibit the electronic market place from reaching its full potential.
However tackling this problem meant answering some very tricky questions including: Is it possible to preserve national protection of consumers in an international market? How can international regulation be created in a way which is sufficiently flexible and dynamic to meet the demands of an ever-changing environment? And should regulation of electronic commerce be rule-based or market-driven (self-regulation)?
"Self regulation seems to be the answer, but who is the 'self'? When we are dealing with sellers and consumers, there is a built-in contradiction of interests", he said.
Rodolfo Carpintier, Vice President of Spain's leading Internet incubator Grupo NetJuice, predicted the new technologies would have some strong effects on democratic politics. "I believe the merit of teledemocracy will be to provide an interactive way for politicians to really understand what voters think about major subjects without [relying on] interpretations by 'experts' that very often are very different from the real positions of voters.
"Another major effect will be massive voter movements behind major issues both to stop or promote legislation".
Charley Lewis of the South African Congress of Trades Unions asked to what extent the new economy is really new, or whether globalisation is "merely good old-fashioned imperialism plus information technology?
"If ICTs are the universal enabler they are so vaunted to be, what is it that they enable? Or put differently, who ultimately controls the new information economy, and how is that control exercised?
"How are we to ensure that the promise and hype of the new global economy does not merely lead to the destruction of more jobs, increased levels of poverty, further erosion of the working environment, further ravages to our seas and forests, and a deeper digital divide between those with access to the new information society and the vast excluded majority?
"Surely, one of the key answers lies in ensuring that the voice of organised labour forms part of the debate. But it has to be a voice that is not only heard, but listened to as well. A digital economy designed, implemented and controlled by only one of the social stakeholders can hardly be an equitable one."
Franck Martin of the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission offered a fascinating insight into wiring up the 20 tiny, remote Pacific Island States.
Some of these nations have attractive internet domains like TO (Tonga), NU (Niue), and TV (Tuvalu), which can generate revenue for the islands: there were talks about leasing the TV domain for 50 million US dollars to television companies, around the same as the total annual budget of Tuvalu.
The wealthier islanders find internet postal shopping useful as there are currently few foreign imports, but there are payment problems as local banks do not offer visa cards.
And internet connection costs are high: when an island establishes a connection to another nation like Australia or the US it has to pay for the full leased line (4,000 US dollars a month in average). This anomaly means that "if a US citizen surfs an Island nation web site the island nation pays for it at a dear price. I think when an island nation connect to the Internet the state on the other side should pay half of the bill", Martin said.
However, the islanders have the last laugh: "I prefer to be here coding on a beautiful beach with coconut trees than in the traffic jams of Silicon Valley."
Mind your intranet...
Those of you that regard intranets as a technical issue should read Dr. Jennifer Stone Gonzalez�s book called "The 21st Century Intranet." I, myself, have always argued that the intranets I encounter as a consultant seem to miss the point all the time.
IT auditors will generally agree with me that most companies� intranets were built by the IT department with little participation from the rest of the company. These intranets all seem to miss the point. To become a successful communication tool, an intranet should be the work of the whole company and grow, as shown in Exhibit A, from a structured Organization Chart to the so-called "Networked Enterprise." In other words, it needs to grow from a hierarchy-driven model to a cellular one.
The success of intranets throughout the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries has prompted many companies in desperate search for intranet solutions. Luckily, not only the "Fortune 1000" companies can afford intranets � there are many off-the-shelf intranet packages that are both affordable and relatively easy to install.
Traditional Organization Charts are therefore structured as shown in Exhibit A.
EXHIBIT A
Such organization charts reflect a management model on the way out. Such a hierarchical management style is unsuitable for the new Internet economy. Successful Internet companies typically operate successfully by empowering their employees to make decisions and take actions. Slowly, traditional hierarchical environments are being replaced by new, networked environments.
This concept of a company represented by a network of connected cells requires an intranet implementation of a completely different nature, as Dr. Jennifer Stone Gonzalez proves in her interesting book. She explains that the organization of the 21st century will require a different intranet paradigm: one created by moving the whole company in a new direction. This can only be achieved by involving all the cells in a company � official and unofficial. At least one or two promoters of the new intranet ways must get the others in their cells to participate in creating content, rather than disseminating information using the traditional top-down approach. The new network model enables employees to participate in problem solving and to generate business opportunities, regardless of their rank or position in the organization.
(For more information, see Dr. Jennifer Stone Gonzalez�s website at http://www.luminella.com, and read the "Intranet Development Roadmap" article summarized from the book at http://www.builder.com/Business/Intramap/index.html.)
The new organizational model, promoted by the development of a successful intranet, will look as follows in Exhibit B:
EXHIBIT B
The objective here is to achieve this change without a major upset in the organization. This type of networked environment enables the organization to evolve slowly but surely to a more dynamic structure.
How can this be achieved while avoiding dramatic changes in the organization? In my opinion, the intranet must become the agent of change. Many organizations have already accomplished this by using the following graphical model shown in Exhibit C:
EXHIBIT C
The Path
This model develops from the very "converts" from each original cell. They are the messengers who promote the use of the intranet. They make their cells dynamic and get more people involved in order to promote a "quiet revolution" in their companies.
How does it work?
Normally, an outside consultant, is brought in to help. He/she must have top management�s support and the help of the Human Resources Department.
The next steps involve discovering the real communication paths of the company, not only those derived from the existing organizational chart. To be successful, the intranet must become used by all, formal and informal, working cells.
The result is a cellular company that should become more responsive to change.
What should be the role of IT Auditors in these environments?
The auditor�s role certainly must not be one of alarming management with the risk factors of such a new network � although the risks are indeed plenty:
Communication flows freely from secure departments to open areas of the company.
Everyone handles critical information, and not always properly.
HTML files can be moved to the Internet or to a disk in seconds and are merely a few bytes in size.
An optical copy could carry the whole know-how outside the company.
IT auditors must be resourceful in proposing document handling methods that become normal practice at the cell level, allowing everyone to become conversant with them, and avoiding major breaches of security. They must do all this without interfering with the new organization.
We must all become familiar with this form of cellular working. The networked enterprise of the next millennium will not maintain the present structure and consequently, auditing must reflect a new paradigm. Guaranteeing free flow of information but avoiding massive breaches of security.
Not an easy task!
IT auditors will generally agree with me that most companies� intranets were built by the IT department with little participation from the rest of the company. These intranets all seem to miss the point. To become a successful communication tool, an intranet should be the work of the whole company and grow, as shown in Exhibit A, from a structured Organization Chart to the so-called "Networked Enterprise." In other words, it needs to grow from a hierarchy-driven model to a cellular one.
The success of intranets throughout the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries has prompted many companies in desperate search for intranet solutions. Luckily, not only the "Fortune 1000" companies can afford intranets � there are many off-the-shelf intranet packages that are both affordable and relatively easy to install.
Traditional Organization Charts are therefore structured as shown in Exhibit A.
EXHIBIT A
Such organization charts reflect a management model on the way out. Such a hierarchical management style is unsuitable for the new Internet economy. Successful Internet companies typically operate successfully by empowering their employees to make decisions and take actions. Slowly, traditional hierarchical environments are being replaced by new, networked environments.
This concept of a company represented by a network of connected cells requires an intranet implementation of a completely different nature, as Dr. Jennifer Stone Gonzalez proves in her interesting book. She explains that the organization of the 21st century will require a different intranet paradigm: one created by moving the whole company in a new direction. This can only be achieved by involving all the cells in a company � official and unofficial. At least one or two promoters of the new intranet ways must get the others in their cells to participate in creating content, rather than disseminating information using the traditional top-down approach. The new network model enables employees to participate in problem solving and to generate business opportunities, regardless of their rank or position in the organization.
(For more information, see Dr. Jennifer Stone Gonzalez�s website at http://www.luminella.com, and read the "Intranet Development Roadmap" article summarized from the book at http://www.builder.com/Business/Intramap/index.html.)
The new organizational model, promoted by the development of a successful intranet, will look as follows in Exhibit B:
EXHIBIT B
The objective here is to achieve this change without a major upset in the organization. This type of networked environment enables the organization to evolve slowly but surely to a more dynamic structure.
How can this be achieved while avoiding dramatic changes in the organization? In my opinion, the intranet must become the agent of change. Many organizations have already accomplished this by using the following graphical model shown in Exhibit C:
EXHIBIT C
The Path
This model develops from the very "converts" from each original cell. They are the messengers who promote the use of the intranet. They make their cells dynamic and get more people involved in order to promote a "quiet revolution" in their companies.
How does it work?
Normally, an outside consultant, is brought in to help. He/she must have top management�s support and the help of the Human Resources Department.
The next steps involve discovering the real communication paths of the company, not only those derived from the existing organizational chart. To be successful, the intranet must become used by all, formal and informal, working cells.
The result is a cellular company that should become more responsive to change.
What should be the role of IT Auditors in these environments?
The auditor�s role certainly must not be one of alarming management with the risk factors of such a new network � although the risks are indeed plenty:
Communication flows freely from secure departments to open areas of the company.
Everyone handles critical information, and not always properly.
HTML files can be moved to the Internet or to a disk in seconds and are merely a few bytes in size.
An optical copy could carry the whole know-how outside the company.
IT auditors must be resourceful in proposing document handling methods that become normal practice at the cell level, allowing everyone to become conversant with them, and avoiding major breaches of security. They must do all this without interfering with the new organization.
We must all become familiar with this form of cellular working. The networked enterprise of the next millennium will not maintain the present structure and consequently, auditing must reflect a new paradigm. Guaranteeing free flow of information but avoiding massive breaches of security.
Not an easy task!
Inverting the research Piramid
Turning the search engine model upside down is a good start in more targeted research.
A search engine is based on power, raw power. Let's face it: there are millions of new pages created on the World Wide Web every week. No one can keep track of it all. Even major search engines like Google are only a small help.
The philosophy of a search engine is to gather information, as much information as possible, and then—based on advanced mathematical algorithms and data-mining capabilities—try to provide best bets to searchers. A graphical representation would be a triangle like an upside-down pyramid: information gathered at the entry points (top two angles) is slowly distilled down to get individualized results (the bottom angle).
The question is, is this the only way? What if I already know, more or less, where the information that I am looking for is stored? Many professionals know their industry well—through the magazines, the blogs, and even the forums that are relevant for their specific business or scientific interests.
Does such a professional need to use always a search engine? Is there not a different way to organize his or her information requirements? Could information be gathered in a much more selective way? Try inverting the search triangle mentioned previously, this time like a pyramid with the single angle at the top.
Industry professionals should then be able to get very selective and industry-specific searching environments, having the ability to experiment with them and readjust them to their requirements regularly. In a manner we would be moving away from the centralized searching offered by the search engine and toward a system that is decentralized and powerful in a very specific manner, without needing tremendous computing power every time.
A sort of "dashboard" would allow users to adjust their requirements from an industry-specific model to specific search and research requirements. Instead of handling millions of pages in a search, this system would handle a very targeted hundreds of thousands.
That there is a requirement for it is part of the reason why IBM has produced WebFountain. While it is obvious that IBM has a captive audience in all of its existing customers of on-demand computing, it has, again, followed the path of the search engines and missed an opportunity to develop what I have just described. WebFountain provides specific search environments, but they are based on the raw power of the system and are provided as an expensive add-on to an outsourcing and computing-on-demand contract.
There is a clear need for the specific search environments I describe, and I believe Intelliseek in the United States and DiceLaRed in Spain are the companies closest to suiting this need.
I encourage other members of the AlwaysOn Network and Zaibatsu to let me know what you think.
A search engine is based on power, raw power. Let's face it: there are millions of new pages created on the World Wide Web every week. No one can keep track of it all. Even major search engines like Google are only a small help.
The philosophy of a search engine is to gather information, as much information as possible, and then—based on advanced mathematical algorithms and data-mining capabilities—try to provide best bets to searchers. A graphical representation would be a triangle like an upside-down pyramid: information gathered at the entry points (top two angles) is slowly distilled down to get individualized results (the bottom angle).
The question is, is this the only way? What if I already know, more or less, where the information that I am looking for is stored? Many professionals know their industry well—through the magazines, the blogs, and even the forums that are relevant for their specific business or scientific interests.
Does such a professional need to use always a search engine? Is there not a different way to organize his or her information requirements? Could information be gathered in a much more selective way? Try inverting the search triangle mentioned previously, this time like a pyramid with the single angle at the top.
Industry professionals should then be able to get very selective and industry-specific searching environments, having the ability to experiment with them and readjust them to their requirements regularly. In a manner we would be moving away from the centralized searching offered by the search engine and toward a system that is decentralized and powerful in a very specific manner, without needing tremendous computing power every time.
A sort of "dashboard" would allow users to adjust their requirements from an industry-specific model to specific search and research requirements. Instead of handling millions of pages in a search, this system would handle a very targeted hundreds of thousands.
That there is a requirement for it is part of the reason why IBM has produced WebFountain. While it is obvious that IBM has a captive audience in all of its existing customers of on-demand computing, it has, again, followed the path of the search engines and missed an opportunity to develop what I have just described. WebFountain provides specific search environments, but they are based on the raw power of the system and are provided as an expensive add-on to an outsourcing and computing-on-demand contract.
There is a clear need for the specific search environments I describe, and I believe Intelliseek in the United States and DiceLaRed in Spain are the companies closest to suiting this need.
I encourage other members of the AlwaysOn Network and Zaibatsu to let me know what you think.
Kelkoo : The Book
Kelkoo today a company of the Yahoo group, has a very interesting story to tell. Pierre Chappaz, founder and CEO at the time, created the leading comparison search engine in Europe.
Last year it was sold to Yahoo for 475 million Euros. As a founding partner of Netjuice, one of the larger investors in the company and owners of "Donde Comprar", the Spanish competitor that was merged with Kelkoo, I am very thankful to Pierre Chappaz and the superb team he built for the company.
Now, there is a book coming this fall, telling the true story of the company. Pierre will write the introduction, Julien Codorniou and Cyrille de Lasteyrie are the authors and yes, I am looking forward reading it. For the time being in French, I do hope they soon get an English version for friends and investors that cannot read it.
They are still searching for the title. Any ideas?
Last year it was sold to Yahoo for 475 million Euros. As a founding partner of Netjuice, one of the larger investors in the company and owners of "Donde Comprar", the Spanish competitor that was merged with Kelkoo, I am very thankful to Pierre Chappaz and the superb team he built for the company.
Now, there is a book coming this fall, telling the true story of the company. Pierre will write the introduction, Julien Codorniou and Cyrille de Lasteyrie are the authors and yes, I am looking forward reading it. For the time being in French, I do hope they soon get an English version for friends and investors that cannot read it.
They are still searching for the title. Any ideas?
Attention's Economy
What is today someone's attention worth. For even 5 minutes? Do you participate in meetings where you cannot get your concentration to listen to the speaker for more than a couple of minutes at a time? Do you leave with the sensation that you did not understand what was the meeting about?
Dave Gray, my partner at XPLANE, has a very good solution. Use interactive tools to move the Web 2.0 concepts from the Web to the meeting room using flip charts, post-it notes and index cards, to get everyone involved. In no time he gets the complete room designing concepts like "market leader" or "computer access" or revenue per customer in a manner that we all contribute to generate, a well understood, picture that caputures our attention because WE have been participating in its creation.
Meetings will never be the same if you give Dave a chance to work his magic in your company. If you are in a town with a XPLANE office, Portland (Oregon), St. Louis or Madrid (Spain) feel free to ask for an invitation to a VTS session and you will understand what is the potential of this approach.
XPLANE Portland office
I have been a few days in Portland, at the headquarters of XPLANE. They are my partners in Spain and we are now discussing several joint ventures in the visual communication space.
We have been using the meeting tools that they use with customers and I have seen how much time you can safe with them. 3 people can accomplish more in a few hours that a complete team of double the size using traditional facilitation methods.
It will allow me to travel to San Jose on Friday in time to attend the kick-off of TripJane another of our investments in the US.
We have been using the meeting tools that they use with customers and I have seen how much time you can safe with them. 3 people can accomplish more in a few hours that a complete team of double the size using traditional facilitation methods.
It will allow me to travel to San Jose on Friday in time to attend the kick-off of TripJane another of our investments in the US.
