Monthly Archives: December 2012

Post-Apocalyptic Tech Predictions for 2013

I am not sure how Transparent Content Management did in 2012. I am also not sure if any thing big really happened this year in Content Management, rebounding on @piewords prediction post!

Anyhow here we go for a round of predictions for the year to come, going beyond Content Management! I decided on ten of these, a good number, faster to read, faster to write.

1: ‘No Empty Enterprise Social Networks’

There will be a wave of customers with empty ‘Enterprise Social Networks’. Just like what happened ten years ago with portals, enterprises will have a hard time getting employees to use these tools when they are just an internal replica of the public social network. Why would people go there when they can go on the public ones?

Just like Plumtree who ten years ago launched a “No Empty Portal” campaign, some vendors will focus their marketing on trying to have their customers using the software to deliver on the promises of the social enterprise… but will fail.

In the meantime, more creative vendors who have the feel for a good mix of social features with more Enterprise functionalities, without simply cloning what’s happening on the public side, will really strengthen their position on the market.

2: ASP back in business

Fifteen good years after its creation, the ASP acronym will make its comeback. “Application Service Provider” is actually very explicit and people will use it to escape the loud and confusing terminology revolving around cloud computing. ASP will be big in 2013!

3: “Mobile First” Is Over

The expression’s sun will set. Don’t use it in 2013 or you will be perceived as old-fashioned. ‘Mobile’ doesn’t mean much anyway; most of the devices are now mobile but still very different! For instance, the iPad screen is much closer to my grandma’s desktop (actually it is way bigger in number of pixels…) than to a mobile phone. “Mobile first” will be abandoned for things like “Touchscreen First” or “All Screens First” or something of the sort.

4: e-Commerce Will Get Bigger Than Ever Thanks to Real Point of Sales

This prediction can almost be used every year but it will keep happening, yes, e-commerce will keep booming. Beyond traditional 100% electronic commerce, new hybrid shopping experiences will be developed more and more and they will be a major driver for e-commerce: car services ordered and paid online, in-shop buying but online paying, local food delivery and pick-up on the mobile device… This also means it will be more and more difficult to tell the difference between electronic and traditional commerce.

5: Big Data Reality Check

After serious buzz, people will want to understand what is behind Big Data and they will understand it is not a phenomena that touches everything and everyone, even if it is clearly a major disruption. Big Data will change over to more concrete technology topics, related to data manipulation and data analysis. “Big Data” will lose 30% of its popularity on Google search and the BD bubble will progressively decrease.

6: Marketing Automation Will Go to the Next Step

Marketing Automation is an amazingly promising set of technologies but it also has a hard time delivering on its supposedly very measurable promises.

In 2013, Marketing Automation will solve this by integrating more seamlessly other online marketing software. It will suffer from the move to mobile usage which makes it more difficult to track users. It will also suffer from some data privacy programs that will hurt some of the techniques they use.

Some vendors will stay on the side of the road when others will really understand this and reach success by shaping a new generation of Marketing Automation more focused on inbound marketing and self-service integration.

7: Amazon Will Finally Ship the Fridgdle

I don’t know if I will hate it or love it, but in 2013, the Fridgdle of Amazon will make its really successful debut. Fridgdle is the home device that probes what’s in your fridge and recommends grocery items. The Fridgdle, based on the same technical platform as the Kindle, will be a 7-ish inches tablet-like device that magnetically attaches to your fridge and comes with a Bluetooth-connected in-fridge camera to detect the level of stock. 2014 will be the year of mass production.

8: Brooklyn Will Get Its Flagship Tech Company

I have paid a lot of attention to the NYC tech landscape since I arrived in the area two years ago. Actually I find the tech community very vibrant, interesting and nice. I feel part of it and really enjoy it. I’ve been working in Manhattan and Brooklyn at different locations. I of course love Brooklyn but still, I must say that the community is huge but more made of individuals, agencies, consultants… it lacks a serious tech company or two. No real big name to raise to challenge the Manhattan players such as Stackoverflow, 10gen… and such. This will change in 2013 and it will not come from a startup but from a company moving to the east side of the river…

9: Open Source Will Keep Being Repositioned

Five years ago, being Open Source was a huge Marketing and Sales differentiator for vendors using this model; to the point that some vendors decided to go Open Source only to surf that wave. As it has already been discussed in many places, Open Source will be less and less present in Marketing and Sales folk vocabulary. The number of mentions in business articles will seriously decrease. It will be mostly a technological thing, related to how software is developed and how it works with little impact on how it is sold. While this will hurt some Open Source vendors, it is I think a good move; it takes Open Source value back to where it should be, not a sales or marketing criteria but a best practice when it comes to developing software, a technological characteristic which results in quality and innovation more than in super low costs. I do expect this trend to be a good one, a sign of maturity for Open Source vendors doing it the right way.

10: Github Will Go Beyond Collaboration on Code, and Will Seriously Hit Atlassian’s Reign

Since Github got this massive $100M funding, we didn’t hear much about them, did we? We will soon see concrete results of this funding, which will go beyond Github’s usual territories. This will obviously be about collaboration and about building software and this will definitely tread on Atlassian’s territory. I can’t predict exactly what will happen, but certainly it will involve development process, allowing a lean and agile way to build software. Github will also explore continuous testing and building topics.

These are my quick 10 predictions for next year. I look forward to seeing what comes true, and how!

In the meantime, Happy New Year to all, Happy New Year New York and see you in 2013!

Please Santa, bring Dvorak to my iPad!

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Dear Santa, I don’t ask for much geeky stuff, but one very good gift in that area would be a Dvorak keyboard for my iPad. And please don’t give me a side real hardware keyboard, I am talking of a touchscreen keyboard (the combo external keyboard + iPad looses the battle with my Mac Air…).

Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (Photo credit: Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta)

I switched to the Dvorak keyboard map not so long ago, last July. Reason for that was not to be faster (like many others) even if this would be a nice side effect, but exploring solutions to solve the pain of a recurring carpal tunnel syndrome. My friend Paolo advised this, explaining it would make my finger, hand and wrist move way less, as a result, it should reduce the inflammation and then the pain. If you are interested in the Dvorak keyboard, jut read it on Wikipedia, or from Ma.tt already almost 10 years ago!

For learning resources, you will find plenty around the web so I won’t say much here beside a short feedback if you are interested:

I am not yet 100% up to speed but really happy with that switch – I am still fighting a bit for all special characters and also for french accents… but I made progress in speed compared to my Qwerty typing. I am finally touch-typing and have my pain slightly diminished, which was the main goal. While not perfect yet, still very positive change!

I must say though that I can’t type for a too long time or pain still comes back but it is definitely an improvement compared to Qwerty. I also still have a hard time using it when not really in a ‘typing mode’, for instance when taking notes in meetings. And finally, I am just a bit annoyed by the blind or Dvorak stickers that I use on my keyboards as it is not the most comfortable solution. One day I will take the time to remove and switch keys.

Actually, now, the very main issue is coming from iOS. The Dvorak keyboard would be a perfect story for me if only I could use it not only on my computers but also on my iPhone and iPad but I can’t! It simply seems impossible to find a way to have a Dvorak map configured on the iOS system. Come on Apple, what the heck!? Can you believe that?

This is supposed to be so easy to support, certainly not more than a bunch of configuration files to change. Instead of that, we are in the paradoxical situation where we were able to find a solution for hardware keyboard and not for purely software ones…

And let me add that this is a typical example (among plenty of others) where I would love iOS to be more open if not open source. We are so far from it now with Apple. Openness would enable a bunch of happy few to make this thing happen quickly, without hurting Apple or asking their contribution, and pleasing many other users… but no! This has a taste of “innovation is over”… I will certainly keep a very interested eye on Android phones and tablets, and feel the change coming stronger and stronger.

And to conclude, I took 20 minutes to write this post because, even if just a drop in the ocean, I wanted to contribute to the Dvorak keyboard cause! It is super interesting and deserves more attention from device and system makers. It also needs to be known by more users. I believe that it is an interesting option with lots of potential for people like me. When I think about people writing, typing, translating, transcribing all day; I strongly feel Dvorak could be a much bigger change worth to consider.

My Dvorak keyboard for learning

And if you have a solution to my problem, please let me know!

On Stage with Jeff Bezos

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Jeff bezos and Werner Vogels on stage

I took the time to finally watch the whole keynote of Jeff Bezos at the re: Invent conference all the way to the end. This keynote was definitely inspiring to me. I found Bezos’s presence, performance and thoughts extremely sharp. He had a simple, bright and unpretentious attitude that I really enjoyed – quite a lesson, honestly! And as this was not a monologue but a chat, it must be said that Werner Vogels was equally excellent in conducting the discussion!

So I thought I would share a few extracts that I enjoyed!

On the “pay as you use” vs. “pay up front model,” which is valid for Amazon Web Services as well as for other Amazon business such as the Kindle:

Our point of view on this is that, if we can arrange things in such a way that our interests are aligned with our customers, then, in the long term, that will workout really well for customers and it will workout really well for Amazon.

Said like this, it sound so obvious. This almost defines what is a sustainable business. It should really be a motto for all product designers but so many forget about it…

On what to look at and where to search for ideas:

I very frequently get the question “what’s going to change in the next ten years?” and that is an interesting question. I almost never get the question “what’s not going to change in the next ten years?” I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time.

About innovation and the culture of innovation and pioneers vs. the mentality of conqueror:

When you attract people who have the DNA of pioneers and the DNA of explorers, you build a company of like-minded people who want to invent and that’s what they think about when they get up in the morning – how we gonna work backwards from customer and build a great service or a great product – that’s a key element to invention (and that part is fun by the way).

So true again! My takeaway here: whether your are hiring or about to be hired, try to really catch the DNA of the other — find out if he or she is a conqueror or a pioneer. That might be the number one criteria for a successful hire!

Now there are couple of other things that are essential for invention that are not as fun. One of them is you have to have a willingness to fail, you have to have a willingness to be misunderstood…

Successful invention is invention that customers care about. It’s actually relatively easy to invent new things customers don’t care about, but successful invention, if you want to do a lot of that, you basically have to increase your rate of experimentation and that, you can think of as a process.

All this is about the pace of innovation and about being as fast as possible ahead of users and experimenting with different directions, and about not rushing in one direction blindly. My takeaway here is that innovation surely doesn’t come from only you. I think this is also a mistake of many entrepreneurs and product designers. Innovation only starts when your ideas are meeting users’ for real. If you believe your ideas are enough, you are surely in big trouble or you’ll have to be very lucky!

And it is good to have people stating out loud the importance of Products and Services vs. the one of Sales:

AWS is not winning because we have the biggest salesforce. It’s winning because we have the products and services that we have.

In the market I am in, so many people tend to say, “Don’t invest in product. It is all about sales and marketing.” I like to hear from leaders such as Bezos about the importance of Products!

And to conclude, Vogels asked Bezos for advice to give to new entrepreneurs.

The first one:

Never chase the hot thing, where ever it is. That’s like trying to catch the wave. You’ll never catch it. You need to position yourself and wait for the wave and the way you do that is you pick something you’re passionate about. Missionaries build better products than mercenaries.

The second being:

Start with the customer and work backwards.

I truly think maturing these two pieces of advice are better than many entrepreneurship classes!

Oh, and as a side note, I wrote this blog post as I was really impressed by Bezos this day but also as I had some time to kill and discovered the transcript feature of YouTube. It is an awesome one, but I must say I had a lot of fun looking at that. My favorite nonsense misstranslation being the transcription of “entrepreneur,” as said by Werner Vogel, which results in “president burger.” Google should train its transcription engine with Vogel’s voice maybe!

And if you have 40 minutes to kill, here it is:

Time to Ban SEO?

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I think I should eventually ban these three letters from my vocabulary and make the effort not to use the term, or way more carefully. I think, eventually, we should all make the effort. I realize more and more the term is a source of confusion and one of the least understood disciplines of online marketing. In almost 3 out of 4 discussions where I would use the term, the person I am talking to has a different understanding of what SEO means compared to mine. More than that, there is a real sentiment about the term. People are really opinionated about it in all directions, without always knowing what it is about in more detail. Maybe I should call it “Natural Traffic Generation” or something of the like. A natural first step taking to demand and lead generation.

One evening not long ago for instance, I had dinner with a fellow content management consultant and we were talking about the relaunch of the online marketing activity for a company he works for (including website, email marketing, etc.) to transform it into a demand generation machine. When I mentioned that the current SEO was terrible and an important thing to do was to focus on it, my fellow partner tended to depreciate this view as if it was not what really mattered, which I found in the moment a bit annoying, especially in regard to the potential for a minimum of search engine marketing for this case. After giving it a second thought, I think my discussion partner simply didn’t understand what I meant, because SEO was so much something else in his way of thinking, and not what I understood. I think he was obviously thinking of old SEO techniques of cheating search engines and that is all that was associated to the discipline. Most of the people just don’t get what modern SEO is and how SEO has evolved. I had similar confused discussions many times and I am sure they happen every day to plenty of people.

Which serious Online Marketer would skip the opportunity to generate more natural traffic?

From a report by http://www.pewinternet.org

Maybe the one who simply doesn’t get the the exact purpose of SEO. Yes, as a start, the name should speak of the goal and not the action! Don’t optimize for the sake of optimizing. It is just a means to an end and the overall goal is clearly to generate concrete real demand or traffic. Search is here and here to stay in users’ habits. My intention is not to demonstrate this (plenty of resources such as this blog post – 24 eye popping statistics about seo will give you some good hints about the role of search in inbound traffic). In this period when everybody acknowledges the power of Content Marketing, no doubt we are talking here of something crucial for online marketers.

The wrong KPIs as a proof that SEO is not understood

I have seen marketers happy and satisfied when seeing in their SEO dashboard that their domain name was showing a better authority than its competitors or even that their ranking on their brand was in top position, stopping then any effort and considering the SEO task completed… (don’t ask me why this is not enough, please). This clearly means the purpose of SEO is in many cases not understood. The only deliverables of the discipline is traffic and how this traffic behaves further on in your funnel. This is the only thing that can help assess the quantity and quality of the demand generation machine you’re building! That is in the end the only thing an Online Marketing Manager should look at.

More importantly, SEO can be your way to do information architecture 2.0

Having worked with some good SEO consultants (full disclosure, the folks at Distilled NY; I am not at all an expert myself), I realized SEO could be much more than optimization, but really working hand in hand with the content and information architecture. Organic Traffic Generation is all about how you plan and organize your content, how you dress it in the different places it will show up, how you plan it on a editorial calendar. So to speak, it is Information Architecture, but looked at through the lens of the global online world and not simply through the one of a single website.

SEO makes your content behave well online!

SEO will make sure your content behaves well online, and this is key! If you stick to a site-centric information architecture, you might miss some very important things which won’t make it perform as much as it could. Things such as basic optimization of your SERP (Search Engine Result Page) are all about that: look at how your content appears in a search result page, in a twitter feed, on a Facebook wall, etc. Ironically, today, by having your content well-understood by machines, you will have a good chance to have it well understood by humans. We can now design our content for both humans and machines at the same time, and this is may be the biggest change in what we call SEO.

Time to wrap-up and summarize. Dear industry experts, Distilled, SEOmoz and company, please come with a solution to change that term for something less confusing! On my end, I will try to use it less, simply because I realize most of the people I talk to have an unclear understanding of what I mean. Instead of that, I will talk about Organic Traffic Generation, the first stage of the online marketing rocket (advertising being simply a booster, in my opinion, but this is a different story).

Roland's job blog

In business since 1998 / Digital Experiences / A mix of tech-business-marketing and UX