WebEx: Ideas in Motion

Wikinomics 101: Getting Ready for Tomorrow's Workforce

Wikinomics co-author Don Tapscott kicked-off the 2007 WebEx Experience Online Forum with a keynote in which he shared the insights and findings from his best-selling book about the impact of mass collaboration on today’s society.  Tapscott’s has a witty, candid presentation style and a unique take on the emerging workforce. The WebEx Experience Online Forum runs May 15-17 and May 22-24.

He talked about a lot of interesting topics including corporate transparency and what companies are doing to remain competitive in today’s global environment, but what was perhaps the most interesting is what he had to say about the way collaboration tools are going to change the way we work. 

There is a lot of talk about the impact of site like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and even Second Life on the emerging workforce, but few of these writers seem to truly consume these tools with as much enthusiasm as Tapscott.  He provided a close look at how young adults are using collaboration tools and speculated that tomorrow’s workers will use everything from instant messaging to social networking to break down communication boundaries to collaborate on a global level.  One example he used was a young couple who maintains their long distance relationship using Skype, webcams and Facebook, which allow them to talk, share photos and even play television shows for each other. Tapscott stated that as these adolescents move from the classroom to the halls of large corporations they will bring these tools and collaboration principles with them.

Tapscott’s keynote validated a lot of the work that WebEx is doing to meet the evolving needs of its customers and partners. WebEx Connect and even the company’s partnership with AOL to deliver business-ready IM solutions are just some of the steps that the company is taking to prepare for tomorrow’s workforce. That seems like a good thing because they’ll be here before we know it. 

Colin Smith, Dir, Corporate Communications, WebEx

Business Mashups Gaining Momentum

At last week’s Software 2007 show, SaaS took center stage. I was surprised to see the attendance level at this show, which is becoming a favorite gathering of the software industry. I met several people from my past life in this industry and it felt strangely familiar to see CIOs, software industry execs, analysts and the media all in one place.

Hasso Plattner, SAP’s chairman kicked off the conference with a keynote where he unveiled SAP’s ‘new idea’ – which has been talked about quite a bit as part of their A1S release next year. I sat next to Mary Hayes Weier from InformationWeek at a lunch hosted by Horn Group, she writes this interesting piece about the event.

The two things that stood out for me with this ‘new idea’ was the creation of an on-demand platform for enterprise mashup applications, and the second was a streamlined, collaborative client interface.

WebEx Connect, WebEx’s collaborative on-demand platform shares these two traits. WebEx Connect is designed for collaboration-centric business mashup applications with WebEx providing the real-time and asynchronous collaborative services, and relying on our partner ecosystem to provide the business process and data-centric applications. SAP’s ‘new idea’ includes the SAP Business Suite applications and depends on third-parties for collaborative capabilities. Sounds like an interesting match.

When the biggest provider of enterprise applications acknowledges that the world needs more nimble, on-demand applications, it’s time for the paradigm shift to occur.

Shankar Iyer
Vice President, WebEx Connect Ecosystem, WebEx

Countervailing Convential Multi-tasking Wisdom

WebWorker Daily has an interesting post about research on effectively multitasking when asynchronous collaboration tools, such as email, ostensibly create a distraction. The research looked at productivity at a mid-size executive recruitment firm over 5 years, detailing project and individual performance based on metrics such as project completion rates and revenue. WebWorker Daily's Anne Zelenka lists 5 methods to help effectively multi-task and collaborate.

The key elements of the tips include some obvious tricks, find the right number of projects to work on over weeks and months, emails should be short and focused, check and respond to email at periodic intervals. Less obvious tips include having a diverse group of email contacts and don't rely on email too much, use other collaborative tools such as databases to find information other people have already captured.

In the "Ideas Whose Time Has Passed" department, Business 2.0 has a story about FlyLite, a company that provides baggage delivery services for harried travelers.  The premise of the business is that time is wasted standing in baggage check-in and claim lines. Hello, time, money and energy are wasted traveling to the airport, getting on the plane, flying, getting to the destination and revisiting the process for the return flight. Back in the early 90s I worked with someone that would ship all his cloths and collateral home from a trade show via FedEx so he could fly light on the way home -- another waste of money and jet fuel.

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx

Software 2007--Day One

Attended Software 2007 yesterday. Much better and bigger than last year. MR created a new showfloor area for smaller companies from around the world. Saw a couple of very interesting companies in the India, EU and Israel sections.

The first day featured a keynote presentation from salesfoce.com’s Marc Benioff. A bit more of a sales pitch than I was hoping for but he is such a good presenter that you don’t realize you’ve just spent an hour watching a product demo. Interesting to see where salesforce.com AppExchange and our WebEx Connect are similar and where they differ. Salesforce.com is focusing on a web-based platform to buy and build applications beyond CRM and we’re focused on building a platform and collaborative mashup client. iTunes vs. iTunes + iPod. Different but I think complementary visions (some may not think so).

Attended a great presentation on marketing and PR from David Meerman Scott. He says a lot of nice things about WebEx marketing in his book (will write a blog piece on it soon), and he has created a bit of a stir (here and here) in the marketing/PR world. Smart guy and I learn something every time I hear him present.

Good show for WebEx. Lots of interest in our WebEx Connect Developer program. Rumor is that there are some changes planned for next year as CMP begins to get more involved. MR has built a great show and CMP is king of the event circuit right now so I have high hopes for 2008.

Colin Smith
Dir, Corporate Communications, WebEx
colin.smith@webex.com

Pew Research on Technology and Media

Pew Research's recent report on "Technology & Media Use," (PDF) presents some interesting details on user adoption of "information and communication technology" (Pew Research's term). The report focuses on the number of users of the Internet and cell phones with an emphasis on rich media experiences, basically what could be described as adoption of  "Web 2.0" technologies.

There are some interesting nuggets, such as only 15% of the U. S. population don't have a cell phone or Internet connectivity, and as you'd expect that segment is generally older with low income levels. A story on Tech Crunch talks about the report as an assessment of the digital divide, which seems to be an overstatement, although technology adoption could be higher.

The interesting result, depending on how you view the data, is that between 50 and 64% put some value on connectedness and interactivity. There's really only 11% that have connectivity and technology but don't view it as central to their lives and 10% that feel it's a hassle. The heavy users of technology comprise 31% of the American's surveyed and are defined as Elite Tech Users.

The raw questionnaire data is also available here. The question responses go back to early 2000 and there's definitely a slow steady increase in the number of users accessing the Internet regularly and the frequency with which they access the Internet.

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangelist, WebEx

WebEx Offers Bay Area Commuters a Helping Hand

A fiery tanker crash on Sunday April 29th literally melted away part of a major Bay Area roadway.
It happened on the MacArthur Maze, a major connector between the East Bay and San Francisco.
On Monday, all public transportation systems were free of charge, and none of the expected traffic nightmares materialized.  But experts predict that once the week is out, people may try and return to their regular habits, resulting in extensive gridlock. Today state transportation officials said the repairs would take two months.

WebEx wants to help.  On Thursday May 3rd, we started offering WebEx WebOffice collaboration service to Bay Area residents.  WebEx WebOffice provides users with email, online meetings, document, calendar and database sharing, and the ability to assign and track tasks in a secure online workplace.

We’ve done this before, during the New York City transit strike in 2005 and in the wake of the Boston area tunnel collapse last year.

What I’ve learned from previous free offers is that I’m not the only one spreading the word about WebEx. Our customers are far better marketers than I am and they use these disruptions to expose people to WebEx. They tell me that when there is a travel disruption anywhere in the country (rain in Boston or snow in Denver), people become really open to learning about web meetings. They say everyone they invite to a web meeting is eager to join and curious about the service. I think we all realize that it could easily be us sleeping on that airport floor or stuck in that 15 mile traffic jam and we want to explore every alternative.

They expect to have everything fixed in a few months. Traffic will return to normal and we’ll soon forget this ever happened, but I have a feeling there will be a few thousand people in the Bay Area talking about their first WebEx meeting.

For more information or to sign up for the free service, visit http://webex.com/alternateroute

Colin Smith,
Dir. Corporate Communications, WebEx
colin.smith@webex.com

Continuity planning

When disaster strikes, we usually see a good deal of writing about telecommuting and business continuity planning.

Finding ways to easily transition to an alternative communications method isn't really planning continuity, that's exception planning. Using technologies that can be accessed any where at any time, day in and day out, as well as giving people the freedom to treat any day as an exceptional day is continuity planning.

Web Worker Daily's response to the traffic problems facing Bay area commuters navigating ramps at Interstate 80, I-880 and I-580 at the MacArthur Maze in Oakland strikes me as overly pessimistic. More and more companies are encouraging workers to work remotely at home, connected remote locations and satellite offices everyday, but the key to this is providing tools that make it easy to work outside the office.

Yes, the number of telecommuters and people shifting their commutes could be higher. One of the great aspects of SaaS is that applications are as accessible inside the firewall as they are outside the firewall. The question on days when these kinds of problems come up is, are IT people doing everything they can to make it easy for people to work wherever they are?

Michael Caton, Collaboration Evangalist, WebEx