Stritar's chronolog

Me vs. IT 2.0 vs. Enterprise 2.0

Wed, 30 Jul 2014 20:41:46 GMT

In 2009, I was very excited to present a few funky things we've been developing with Neolab, at the largest independent IT conference in Slovenia. The world was obsessed with "2.0" back then, and we were determined to join that hype. Facebook was already big at that point, and it was becoming clear they will make a huge impact on the future of technology. Tim O'Reilly wrote a seminal article on the topic, arguing how Web 2.0, the new generation of the internet (and software!), has changed everything.

I was amazed by the potential of Web 2.0 as well. Since my main focus is developing business oriented software solutions, I started fantasizing about the possibilities of integrating those concepts into our (serious) applications. If our clients are buying premium custom software from us, we should try to deliver more features with high added value for them. Stuff that enables co-creation and collaboration. Which we did. And called it IT 2.0.

We wanted IT 2.0 to be much more than Enterprise 2.0. At that time, Enterprise 2.0 meant using mostly third-party tools for social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, assimilating them into enterprise environments. On the other hand, we wanted to take the coolest concepts invented by social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging, and integrate them into our solutions in new ways. You see, our software isn't social per se, our software's main goal is to solve complex and specific business problems. But we've managed to put a social layer on top of that software, making the term Enteprise 2.0 simply not awesome enough to describe it.

But Enteprise 2.0 is awesome. It's actually very awesome. If O'Reilly defined Web 2.0 in 2005, Andrew McAfee defined Enteprise 2.0 in 2006. He was one of the first who has studied the implementation of social software (such as social networking, wikis, blogs or tagging) into enterprise environments. In doing that, he developed the fundamentals of Enterprise 2.0, naming it SLATES (Search, Links, Authorship, Tags, Extensions, Signals). This concept was later on extended by Dion Hinchcliffe with FLATNESSES (adding Freeform, Network-oriented, Social, Emergence) and the 4Cs by Niall Cook (Communication, Collaboration, Connection, Cooperation).

But social software (like any other software) is usually just a means to achieve something greater. The truth is, implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools into the enterprise isn't enough to make collaboration and open innovation work, organizations need to fundamentally change as well. Enterprise 2.0 enables a completely new way of doing business, walking hand in hand with lean and agile approaches, seeking new opportunities in connecting employees, clients, partners, suppliers and even competition. It supports the new global and connected world. But it requires a new way of thinking and a deep corporate culture change.

Organizational culture (change) is very important for innovation and adaptability, but in the academic field, pieces of this equation are missing. Until now, there haven't been many studies about how organizational culture impacts the implementation of collaborative environment and vice versa. But I'm set to change that fact. And I will soon need your help!

I've finally started working on my master's thesis, which will try to find out if there is connection between organizational culture and Enterprise 2.0 adoption. I have already studied 6 books and 50+ articles on the subject, and will soon deploy the survey, which will combine the OCAI (Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument) and a general Enterprise 2.0 questionnaire. Those who will help me and participate in the study, will get the final report in return, besides a concise comment / advice about their specific organization's situation (the survey is not available yet, please ping me on if you're interested). I'm sure the results will be worth the effort.

If IT 2.0 is about new generations of software and user experience, Enterprise 2.0 is about new ways of managing companies. Those who are able to implement such approaches can win big, but then again, not all companies actually have the opportunity to absorb this transformation. There are many huge obstacles for businesses to go 2.0. Stay tuned because soon, we will better understand why.

Be an apprentice. Evolve as a manager.

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:22:18 GMT

Being a manager is not something that's in my DNA. I'm primarily an engineer, a scientist, a software developer. I find it hard to spend time on governing activities that have no direct output, and prefer doing things rather than guiding and supervising how things are done. Some people are natural organizers, others need to somehow learn and adopt that specific set of technical and social skills that help teams operate smoothly and efficiently. While I may have the technical skills of understanding how things should be done, my problems lie elsewhere.

The truth is, I don't feel that good when I'm telling people what to do, I don't see myself as a superior who sets the goals and awards or punishes people based on their results. At the same time I fully recognize this is something that needs to be done one way or another, otherwise, inefficiency. I must admit I did advance on the field in the past years, since I'm trying hard to learn how to do it. Slowly. And to my great surprise, it seems one of my latest ventures will unexpectedly help me evolve as a manager as well. As you will see, I happened to find myself on the other side of the story.

After many years, even decades, I'm finally an apprentice again! By dedicating multiple 10.000 hours to system architecture, database design, development, (digital) marketing, design and user experience, I've done or heard about pretty much everything that is associated with the fields of software development. That's what I do for living, and even if I embark on something new, I always have enough initial knowledge to prevent me from being an apprentice. Now I understand this fact made me miss out on a few very important realizations that come from being one.

My grandfather has left me this really cool car. A Yugoslavian Zastava 101, built in 1978. She hasn't been driven in about 20 years, but now, the time has come to bring it back to life. My girlfriend's uncle happened to be a car mechanic for 20 years, and he was specialized in repairing Zastavas. Lucky bastard me! He was very happy to help me out, and in the past weeks, we have spent a few session in his garage, coming close to making the beauty run.

I wanted to be there when repairs happen, to help and to learn. Which makes me an apprentice car mechanic. Swiping the floor, cleaning up spark plugs, screwing and unscrewing stuff, holding things aside, moving the flashlight, operating the car jack. I even managed to disassemble the wheels and brakes and felt amazing about it. My teacher is very patient and I don't feel bad at all for being ordered around and doing all the small things. I understand this is my role in this specific project, and I love playing it.

I did this. I will also have to put it back together.

I learned so much already, not only about cars and engines, but about management as well. The most important one being that people don't feel bad if they're ordered what to do, rather the opposite. They need to know why things are happening and how we will get there. It has nothing to do with someone being something more than the other, it's just a person's role in the specific situation. Perhaps those managed will be the ones who will give out orders in a few years, who knows. But today, I'm the one who is expected to do so, and it's becoming clearer, how. It's a bit ironic that I learned that by fixing up an old car that was waiting 20 years for me to take care of it.

Funny, how things are interconnected, how everything is everything. I probably wouldn't perceive the whole apprentice experience the way I do now if I wouldn't be where I am now, but what's even funnier, is that I can imagine having the same epiphany who knows where as well. I was ready for this, this needed to happen. We evolve every day, and sometimes, the next steps are achieved under very weird circumstances. That's why you and I need to do as many crazy things as possible. Being an apprentice somewhere to become a better manager somewhere else? Why not. Life is like a box of chocolates.

5 reasons why I won't steal your idea

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 09:22:39 GMT

Since I'm a software architect and a web developer, I get often approached by people with their new ideas. In most cases, for some quality feedback, and on lucky days, for a rough quote about the costs of such a project. These people are usually very secretive about what they have, making me explain to them that it's far from my interest to steal that idea. One time, a guy even made me sign a Non-disclosure agreement before I could make him an offer for a service he was thinking about. After bargaining with me, he chose a different contractor, but ended up doing nothing, at least to my knowledge. He was obviously focused on the wrong things, instead of getting feedback from as many sources as possible, he was investing energy into bureaucracy and protection of his idea. Let me tell something to him and all others out there: Focus on your product, and don't worry about me stealing your idea. I won't. I have at least five reasons not to.

1. Your idea probably isn't as great as you think

I've seen a lot of different people who had "game-changing" ideas, at least so they though. A few of them actually managed to convince me and my partners that their idea is so amazing that it'll kick everyone's ass. Even though proper market research wasn't done, charisma is sometimes hard to resist, and if you are working with someone you've known for a long time, you are prepared to accept crazy terms, such as a delay of payment until this idea will start to generate revenue. After these specific ideas were put into the real world, it turned out there is a huge discrepancy between ideals and reality, and we ended up with unpaid invoices and ignored phone calls.

Ideas are something, execution is everything else. There is a long way inbetween, a way paved with upgrades, downgrades, changes, pivots, time and hard work. Millions have ideas, only a few can make them work. I've seen Seedcamp companies change their core concepts and business models completely, and these startups are already the best, selected from hundreds, if not thousands. When you start working on something and proceed ahead, the initial idea will often evolve beyond recognition. Not to mention there is a very strong possibility that someone else was already thinking about the same thing, except better, years earlier. Your idea isn't amazing, but it may be good enough to achieve something with proper execution. That's why you need feedback and partners.

2. I have plenty of ideas of my own

You know what's better than your idea? My idea!

Mostly because I kick ass, but also because people get emotionally attached to the thoughts they generate by themselves. I have so many ideas I don't know what to do with them. They are probably not really great (see reason 1), but they are mine, and I try hard to make a few of them come alive every now and then, when I have the time. During the day, I work on real-life projects, during the night, I play around.

When I decide on what to work on next, I usually look for the best ratio between actuality, complexity, required energy and potential. This means I've already made my own priority list of the services I will be rolling out in the future, and I must say, it would really be hard to put one of yours inside this packed list. I'm sure most developers think in a similar fashion, lacking resources to make everything they imagine a reality. Face it, there are hundred times as many people who have unrealized ideas, than people who don't know what to work on. Do the math.

3. Your idea probably requires specific passion and know-how

The idea lives strongest in the person who thought of it. It is a result of that person's experience from many fields, so it's hard to replicate in its full form without that experience. The ideas I've stumbled upon usually solve very specific and niche problems you can't solve without digging yourself into that field. Which most of us don't have time or the resources to do. The core of the idea represents the person who thought of it, it may be taken to another level by a different person, but in most cases, it requires the original author's knowledge, involvement and passion to work as it's supposed to.

I can't execute an idea which will revolutionize kindergarten children education, I don't know shit about the problem, I don't have any connections in the industry, and I'm simply not that passionate about that field.

4. Your idea requires your involvement as a product manager

In the past few years, we've implemented quite a few prototypes and services together with Neolab, and even though a few of them got some praise, they didn't make it to the mainstream. Take this blog for example, I developed it in early 2009, aggregating posts from different social services, presenting them (also) in a magazine form. What did I do with it? Nothing. Years later, a service called RebelMouse did something similar and raised millions in funding. Same goes for Twenity, a spin-off from Twitfluence, gamifying social authority measuring. Or Ljubljana Realtime, a social event discovery tool. All out there, but that's it.

I simply don't have enough energy to push a service beyond a point, or don't want to. Perhaps this fact will change someday, but at this point, you will need to be the product manager of your idea, and I can be its architect. Since I have a real company to run besides all of this, I can't afford to be one.

(Btw, if you think you could do anything with the above mentioned things, don't hesitate to give me a shout).

5. Karma and stuff

I believe in karma. Don't do evil and all of that. I would really feel uncomfortable if I would take someone else's baby and make it my own. So I won't, because this simply wouldn't be a fair thing to do. I value proper sleep above success.

But what if

Of course, there are always exceptions, and I can imagine I could encounter something that would go beyond all of my points above. Perhaps there is one idea that I've heard about years ago that would suit this description. If I ever decide to proceed with this project, I will let that person know what I'm doing and invite him to join the project. Even if I'm thinking about a thing that only faintly resembles the original concept, I can't deny it's that person's idea. And since this guy was able to think of such a marvelous thing so much time ago, he would surely make a great addition to the team (also see reason 3).

That's it. I won't steal your idea, so feel free to talk about your revolutionary innovation with me anytime. All I will do is to try to tear it apart and put it back together, and after we're done with that, if I get the chance, I will try to bring it to life.

One of the most important things ever written

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:51:28 GMT

Every once in a while your read something that takes you to another level. Something that can change the way you've been thinking and doing things for years already. Which means looking for ways to optimize everything, drilling yourself, studying every day of the year, gathering knowledge, battling procrastination and low energy, looking for new ways to grow. Lifehacks whenever possible, fixes and improvements that come on a daily basis. And then one day your find out that you've perhaps been doing it all wrong. Not possible? Let me tell you a story about a great idea.

tl;dr: The article.

You've probably heard about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where people need to fulfill their primitive requirements, like food and intimacy, to reach higher needs like self-actualization. Classic psychology. Which is perhaps also doable the other way around.

A few days ago Salim Virani wrote a great post about the perceived causality between self-improvement and self-confidence. We usually think we need to improve ourselves first, to make it to the next step. Well, he made me believe it's rather the opposite. The problem these days is, at least in the technology startup environments, that we are all hyper pumped up do crazy shit everybody drools over, while the competition is fierce and global, tight schedules and stress are everywhere, most clients expect you to overdeliver things, better, cheaper, faster. A never-ending story, sucking every bit of blood you have, leaving you empty. Which makes you not evolve as much as you would like to, both professionally and spiritually.

But wait, what if we try to self-actualize first, could that help us find the energy for self-improvement?

Read the article now! Yes, forget about how to do this and how to improve that, you've been doing it all wrong! You've read tons of shit like that, just like me, and what happened - nothing. You are still the same. No matter the technique, you can't change how things are, you can't be happy at work if you're not, you can't force yourself to do things you don't want to do.

From this day on, I'm doing it the other way around. Focusing on the things that make me happy first, believing other things will magically become more pleasant. Because this guy is right, I can see the way self-confidence can help me towards self-improvement. I will do all the things I really want to do besides my job, and those things I hate about my job will become a piece of cake, since they will be downgraded to just another activity required to reach the higher goal of finding my self-confidence and self-actualization.

Now that I think about it, I feel I've been intuitively going into that direction already, but now that I'm fully aware about the science behind it, I'm going all-in. Which means more fun, more blogging, more crazy prototypes, I've also decided to start working on this idea I have for a boardgame. Just because. Not really giving a fuck if these things actually make sense or if they will be financially feasible. I need to start enjoying life, I need to satisfy my urge to create, and confidence and growth will come. Thank you Salim, for discovering and pointing out this amazing perspective on life.

Hey developer, here's something that will make you sound smart

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 08:21:02 GMT

I've met many developers in my life, and quite a few of them share a similar problem. Being mathematical geniuses and all, but not being able to put into words what the hell they are doing. At least so it would sound marketable and awesome. After all, it's not their job to sound smart, the developer's role in the Hipster - Hustler - Hacker dream team is a bit different. But talking like an MBA can have it's advantages, specially when it comes to individuals communicating with their clients.

Launch

Take my example, half of the time my customers don't fully understand what I'm saying even though I'm trying really hard. But I've noticed some phrases have a better effect than others, some simply sound like special awesome things are happening (which they are) and that everything is under control. The funny thing is that the recipe to speak like that is very simple: say hi to the MBA developer talk.

[MBA verb] + [technical noun] = [#mbadev]

The equation for the #mbadev talk is elementary. Take a power verb that has a really active meaning. Like "structuring", "evaluating" or "utilizing". These are often used to make an activity sound way cooler than it actually is. Then, take a noun that is very hacker-specific, something that non-technical people don't fully understand. Like "metadata", "framework" or "encapsulation". Put them together, and you have a winner. Developers, face it, no one really understands what you're saying, so you might as well make it sound cool.

"Dear client, I'm very busy structuring metadata, thank you for your understanding".

The MBA developer talk seems such a great concept that we've even made a generator for it. Feel free to take it for a spin, you'll be amazed by how such a basic combination can yield such interesting results. Now all developers can sound really smart.

http://mbadev.neolab.si

A case study in agile development: the algorithm for Ljubljana Realtime's event discovery

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:01:16 GMT

When we started working on Ljubljana Realtime, we decided to approach it in an agile way. Amongst others, we wanted to use a few interesting lean concepts such as rapid development, Minimum Viable Product and the Build - Measure - Learn iterations. Less than two months later, the results are in, and they are very pleasing. The MVP in the shape of an activity map was developed in a few weeks, only to show there is a lot of social noise which will somehow need to be taken under control. But that's currently low priority, since the first pivot is already taking place, slowly shifting the focus from the rich map application towards an event discovery algorithm and stream. That's where I see the most potential of Ljubljana Realtime, and in the last weeks, that's where the most work was done.

Launch

Ljubljana Realtime event discovery engine uses Foursquare trending venues and geo-tagged posts from Twitter, Instagram and Flickr to discover what's happening in real life. At least 6 people checked-in on Foursquare or two different people tweeting or posting photos in a single hour could mean something is going on. These events are posted to Twitter and Facebook, with links to the posts. A few versions of this algorithm were already deployed, each one solving new problems, resulting in a few micro Build - Measure - Learn cycles in a single month.

Iteration 1: Foursquare, no duplicates

The first version of the stream (bot) was a simple one, at that point it was meant to work as promotion for the map. The only thing it knew how to do was to wait a few hours until it posted the same thing again. I think Foursquare checkins are alive for three hours, so if a trending venue was still trending after that time, new people had to checkin and the venue was still buzzing.

Problem: Plain, no real added value.

Iteration 2: Adding activity from other sources

When we were trying to make some space on the crowded map, we started grouping posts from Twitter and Instagram by the nearest Foursquare venue, which meant having less boxes on the screen. This turned out to be quite a complex thing to do properly, but it was worth the effort. On only a few occasions, one venue would have multiple posts in a single hour, and in most cases, that meant something was happening there. This provided another very interesting potential for the activity stream. Actually, it made the stream bigger than the map could ever be.

(I love it when such things happen, when you are trying to solve a problem, and it turns out there is much more hidden behind the resolution.)

Groupping posts by a venue. Did Ljubljana Realtime just discover an athletic meeting taking place?

The next problem: Activity in some venues, specially generic ones such as "Ljubljana" would trigger the stream almost every day. Similarly, some large venues, such as supermarkets, would be trending too many times on Foursquare.

Iteration 3: Balancing the posts

The algorithm needed an update, which would lower the amount of times when a venue would be recognized as an event, either on Foursquare or on other channels. At first I though about an upgrade which would set the amount of people or tweets needed to trigger the "event discovered" action for a specific venue. This would enable us to reduce the importance of some venues, but it would also require manual work. Luckily, we came up with another brilliant idea: the more times a venue is trending, the harder it is for it to be trending again, at least for the next few days. Automatic balancing.

Venues with the most discovered events. Generic ones, besides massive places, such as train stations, cinemas, squares and shopping centers are too dominating.

The next problem: At this point, we have launched other test instances of Ljubljana Realtime (Maribor, Zagreb and Zurich), to see how the system behaves in other environments. Some cities are bigger, some are smaller, which means they produce different amount of activity. Besides, different services are used differently in different cultures.

Iteration 4: Supporting local instances

Foursquare is big in Croatia (Zagreb), but not so much in Switzerland (Zurich), which means Zagreb Realtime's stream had a lot of Foursquare trending posts, while Zurich's had a lot of "Increased activity on Twitter and Instagram" posts. It was obvious that local instances needed different algorithms. While having an option to set the amounts which would trigger the post on a specific venue would be too much to moderate, having the same logic on a specific region could work. And it does. Zagreb now needs more people checked-in on Foursquare, while Zurich needs more unique people tweeting or sharing photos.

Number of discovered events by type (Foursquare vs. Twitter + Instagram) on each day. Foursquare trending venues are dominating Zagreb, while social streams are dominating Zurich Realtime.

The next problem: The basic algorithm requires two different people to tweet/post from the same location in one hour. In case of Zurich, this amount was set to three, but it turns out this situation happens rarely, around 10 times fewer than with two people, or only two to three times a day. Obviously not enough.

Iteration 5: Improving the "increased activity" weight

You can only have a whole amount of people tweeting in the past hour. Two or three. In our case, we needed something in the range of 2 1/2. The modified solution adds the number of posts divided by ten to the number of users, which means that currently, at least two people making at least three posts in an hour will determine a trending event in Zurich. This is not a perfect solution from the event discovery view, but it does what urgently needed to be done: prevent having too many tweets in the stream.

The next problem: we currently have four Twitter accounts that tweet events for these four cities. Our target was for each of them to make around 10 - 15 tweets a day, which seems like a number that is not spam. But how can a person see which of these events is THE event?

Iteration 6: Going super venue level 2

The latest version of the algorithm now recognizes two levels of events. An event (mostly 6 people on Foursquare, mostly 2 different people tweeting), and an outstanding event (around 12 people on Foursquare, around 4 people tweeting). Our goal was to make this super event happen only once a few days, on rare occasions two times per day, and it has already happened a few times.

Sometimes super events happen, with tens of posts in a single hour, such as the one for Philips Fashion week. These events definitely require more exposure.

The next iterations

At this point, I'm very satisfied with how the algorithm works, even though a few other modifications need to be done (specially to support different days of week specifics and behavior). By measuring what is happening, learning from that information and building the next releases based on that knowledge, the activity stream logic has come a long way from the initial version. Measuring is crucial, and rarely we have went to such extent to enable this in the widest way possible (e.g. the update to balancing the posts based on the previous events would be trivial by itself, but we wanted to log things that would happen but didn't happen, besides things that actually happened).

These cycles of Build - Measure - Learn can be a lot hard work, but they provide great results, which are also very fun and rewarding. Some people simply need to see how deep the rabbit hole is. Do you have any other interesting cases or experience with this approach?

On iPhone, toys, the enterprise and of course, Windows 8

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 07:34:06 GMT

Flashback 5 years ago. In 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone, the original model, which had no 3G support and cost more than any other mobile phone. At that time, Nokia dominated the market, with almost 40% market share, and Samsung was gaining ground on Motorola, both owning around 15% of the industry sales. Funny, how things change in so little time, but what's even funnier, is how the competition reacted to the iPhone. Some of you may remember how Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO, laughed at the iPhone, saying that it's pretty much an expensive toy that would never penetrate the enterprise. History proved him wrong, and we can only guess if this was one of the most bitter predictions he ever made.

Apple proved that with proper marketing, a toy can find its place in the enterprise, a place traditionally owned by Microsoft. We must understand that even if a lot of Microsoft's revenue does come from the Windows division, most of it still comes from their enterprise business (Business Division + Server and Tools). But is the enterprise ready for a radical user interface such as Windows 8's Metro? I hope Microsoft isn't overcompensating for the totally wrong estimate about the success of the iPhone, because it's hard to believe they will be able to pull something similar off. Sell another toy to the enterprise.

I love Windows Phone 7. The user interface is great, the user experience is intuitive and fun. I like what I've seen about Windows 8. I think it's fresh and modern, something that even Apple could be proud of. But what worries me is its adoption in business environments, which is Microsoft's core business. The phone and a tablet are primarily casual gadgets, the personal computer is not. And there is already quite a bit of bad press around about the upcoming new version of Windows. Some have already said the next Vista situation might happen, and that most people will stay on Windows 7, like they did on XP before.

I think the average user in the enterprise in not that tech-savvy. Imagine a 50 year old secretary, struggling with the new fundamentally different environment of Windows 8. Businesses have already had problems with implementing the new Office 2007, at it was only slightly different than the previous version (compared to the differences between Windows 8 and Windows 7). Who will pay for the massive training required by users to adapt to the new Windows? Which company will risk it?

Of course, I might be wrong and Microsoft isn't primarily interested in the enterprise with this release. Maybe they are just trying to own a bigger share of the consumer markets, and targeting mostly smartphones and tablets, hardware included. This might be an interesting strategy, since adoption of Macs has also grown with the success of the iPhone and iPad. I hope they have a solid plan behind it, because I would like to see Windows 8 succeed. Because Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7 actually did higher my perception of Microsoft, they made me believe Windows can be awesome. But to succeed, Windows 8 will have to be more than awesome, the way it's done, it will have to be so amazing my mother will be able to use it on her first try. Otherwise she won't.

The final destination, part 1: technologies and concepts enterprise IT will have to adopt

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 18:38:09 GMT

In the past years, we've witnessed a very important transformation: the consumerization of information technologies. Billions of connected users living their life online, overwhelmed by millions of information systems that have been tailored to suit their every need and desire. Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon came a long way with their products and infrastructure, but the enterprise isn't losing any time. Learning from the new paradigms and adopting new funky technologies, that have traditionally been developed in corporate laboratories. Can the Fab 4 also predict where enterprise IT is headed? And what will it become?

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel for PI-PL on Ljubljana's Faculty of Economics, where I was asked this exact question: where do I see corporate IT in 10 years. A very hard question indeed, but the more I thought about the it, the clearer it became. Enterprise data, software and technology will sooner or later integrate everything. Simple as that. But to fully understand how this will happen, we must first try to identify the most important trends that have shaped information technologies as we know them today. Yes, most of them don't have that much to do with the enterprise. But things are changing.

Cloud technologies

While cloud computing may have been present in the enterprise for quite some time, it's still pretty much dominated by web players like Google (mail, docs, etc.) and Amazon (hardware), who are also flirting with the enterprise. Who wouldn't? There are massive benefits for businesses to move their stuff to the cloud, from scalable physical Infrastructure to higher level Platform or Software as a service information systems.

Perhaps the most important thing the Cloud achieved was to render technology infrastructure irrelevant. It doesn't matter any more, what kind of environment you use. What type of security, infrastructure, servers and network you have installed. You can outsource these things to others, and it will be much easier and cheaper, while all your migrating-to-a-bigger-thing problems will be solved with a swipe of a credit card. I was fascinated that Microsoft now offers Linux based servers on their Azure cloud services, which can be changed to Windows with a click of a button. Architecture doesn't matter anymore, and this fact helps IT departments to focus on more important things than system administration.

APIs, mashups, platforms and ecosystems

Heavily connected with the whole Cloud concept, data and information never had it easier to travel from one place to another. System migrations (moving data from one information system to another) and system integrations (connecting multiple information systems into one) have always been one of the biggest challenges of IT. But the web didn't have as much resources as the enterprise, so it had to simplify things. By offering APIs (Application Programming Interface), web applications allowed others applications to work with their data in an easy way. Mashups, hybrid information systems built on top of others, were born.

Pretty much every noteworthy web service has its own API. This helped a lot of them to become a platform. You know, like Facebook and Twitter, who have created an ecosystem, where thousands of other applications live around them? Soon, similar concepts will dominate the enterprise too. There are already players like Salesforce, who not only offer business-oriented Software as a service solutions, but the also a Platform for other developers to build services on top of their services. And since everything is so open, all this data can easily be integrated with other information systems or transferred to a different environment. Modern information systems don't have problems with understanding each other, but IT departments have problems with understanding information systems, since different, more business oriented skills are needed to support these integrations.

Mobile devices and new distribution channels

More than ten years ago, when I was an Information Sciences student, there was still a debate going on about the benefits of web based enterprise information systems over traditional Client - Server architecture. In the end, the Web won, mostly because distribution was so easy, you make the update on the server, and every user gets it instantly. Employees need nothing but a browser. They are acquainted with the environment ever since they started using Hotmail, and took it for their own ever since they started using Facebook.

But today, it seems the Web is losing its ground as the leading infrastructure, since a new technology came into town. Capable mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, now enable access to information systems from anywhere, anytime in real-time. Besides, they arrived with their own app markets, which enabled a whole potential for software distribution, and perhaps more importantly, for software billing. You give a fair share to the store owner, who also promotes your solution, and you can freely focus on developing and marketing the product. It's true that mobile apps may not be as flexible as web applications, since the users need to install the updates (even though this can also be achieved by combining native mobile and hosted HTML 5), but the trend is clear. Apple already has its Mac store, Microsoft Windows will follow soon. Distribution of mobile and Software as a service information systems is becoming trivial.

Big data and The internet of things

Traditionally, banks, retailers and financial institutions have been the organizations that operated with the most data in the world. Well, things are changing, and we can only wonder who owns the most bytes today: is it Google, Facebook or someone else? Since there are less transactions than there are interactions, we can estimate consumer oriented information systems with billions of users are the biggest in existence. While this data is accessible to the enterprise to some extent, there are also hundreds of other systems the enterprise or its employees use, and they all create massive amounts of data and information, which needs to be integrated into a wider picture.

Not only that. Today, there are already are more connected devices that we have initially anticipated. These devices (cameras, sensors, tools, etc.) create even more data, which the enterprise needs to process. This trend of wired gadgets is called The internet of things, and together with the large amount of interconnectable information systems businesses use, points to one important trend: the typical enterprise was never faced with so much data and information, which somehow needs to be integrated and understood in an interdisciplinary way.

New ways of doing things, on a higher level

In the mean time, these consumer oriented (B2C) web corporation not only became a few of the biggest technology companies in existence, they've also invented new ways of how to get things done. From Google's 20%, to flat organizations without management, more and more companies (not only startups) set out to revolutionize how business is done. In the service oriented society, creativity is important, but so is productivity and the ability to ship fast. Done is better than perfect.

With new types of management concepts, such as lean and agile, modern organizations are becoming more and more flexible. Not only in doing things, but also in switching from one technology to another. These companies have developed their own way of thinking about which software to use. And it probably has a lot to do its price, how fast can you start using it, how scalable and connectable it is, and how fast can you dump if for another. IT requirements are moving to a higher level, and information systems have become just pieces of a puzzle that needs to be completed.

Design and user experience

Design and user experience probably still don't have that much to do with enterprise IT, but they are very much worth mentioning nevertheless. Face it, users are becoming more and more demanding, and software developers need to make better and better software. Even though the above mentioned facts are probably the dominating factor for the choice of which information systems the enterprise will use, design and user experience matter more and more.

Businesses have always had problems with implementing new software, educating the users, going through the whole status quo change. But beautiful and useful software penetrates faster. People perceive beautiful things to be more useful, and it's the whole intuitiveness and usability of software that helps them adopt something without too much resistance and problems. Some software vendors already found out user experience is the new competitive advantage, and in the end it may be the thing that tips the scale. But the whole point behind it is that I can see better, more clever and detailed, information systems force out older ones on an even faster pace. The whole world of information systems need reinvention, and user experience design will be the science behind these upgrades. Benefits are becoming more important than features.

Social, crowdsourcing and gamification

More than 3 years ago, I was very excited to present a concept we have been developing in Neolab on Days of Slovenian IT. I called it IT 2.0, since it meant integrating social services into enterprise software (at that time, Enterprise 2.0 was more widely used for stand-alone social software such as wikis or corporate blogs). The truth is, I didn't get the chance to sell it well, and in the mean time, disruptive social services managed to fully find their way into the enterprise. But business won't stop here; there are many other fascinating things the internet has invented that can fully be applied to corporate environments.

Gamification, the art of using gaming mechanics in non gaming environments, is getting more and more claim beyond the web. Both for motivating employees, as for motivating clients. We all like to play, so why should work be any different? And we all like to participate in something bigger, that is why crowdsourcing, where people coproduce something, can bring such exciting results. Can you see where I'm headed?

We are all human, and in the end, behaving on a very basic level. Sometimes we perform better, sometimes worse, and we all hold hidden potential even ourselves aren't aware of. That is what software in the workplace can sometimes help us discover, and it's something more and more businesses are aware of. Social, gamification and crowdsourcing are only a few approaches that can make us feel better and more motivated, and they are all concepts that enterprise IT will adopt sooner or later. Behind every company, there are only people.

The final destination of enterprise IT

These are the concepts and technologies that will shape enterprise IT of tomorrow. And with it, new challenges will emerge, together with new profiles of people, who will understand and use all of the above. These profiles, such as data scientists and business analysts, will help enterprise IT do what it was destined to do: Integrate life, the universe and everything.

But that's another story. Coming up soon.

Check out the complete The final destination series.

What Apple's headphones can teach us about user experience design

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 12:25:17 GMT

I've always been fascinated by things that simply work. By the details that convince, by the experience that fulfills expectations. Enter the case of Apple's headphones. They may be just an accessory that supports something else, but this little gadget is a brilliant example of how ux design should be approached. I'm not saying other vendors don't make equivalent or even better headphones (don't know, so please comment!), but Apple has proved many times that they really know what they are doing, reinventing stuff as they go along. Bottom line: as weird as it may seem, when your are designing user experience, you should think about Apple's headphones. They are one of the most perfect examples of how to do it right.

Form follows function

As most great designers will tell you, the design is only as good as its ability to solve a problem. The focus is not so much on aesthetics, as it is on function. If you manage to persuade someone to do what you wanted, design did its job well. Otherwise, it failed, even if it looks great.

Apple's headphones come with a controller for the iPod and other phone functions. This controller is ergonomically shaped in such a way, that you can use it with your eyes closed, or while running. Your finger will always find its orientation. The volume up button is physically on the top. The form follows function, being beautiful comes secondary.

The controller is designed in such a way it does exactly what you expect it to do, without guessing.

There are infinite ways you can implement this philosophy into software, but you have to know what you are trying to do. That's the main objective of user experience in general, understanding your goals, and adapting everything to help users reach them.

"Less is more" generates intuitiveness

The controller comes with only three buttons, but these buttons can do more that it seems. The age when a single control could perform only one function is over, and this fact can easily be applied to the new generation of software, supporting advanced (native and HTML 5) interactions (swipes, multi-finger gestures, etc.) on devices such as smartphones and tablets. Here's what these three buttons can do:

volume up and down are dedicated
the main button can play and pause with a single press. The same goes for answering and hanging up the phone.
pressing the main button twice goes to the next song, three times for the previous song
holding the main button activates Siri / Voice control

Less is more is a very important approach, and it's one of the reasons why the iPhone did what it did, having a single button instead of many. Users shouldn't be faced with too many options and choices, it's better to design these choices in such a way they offer advanced behavior. Only then, users will find something intuitive and easy to use.

Think adaptation and multi-functionality

As mentioned before, the headphones controller can adapt its behavior to the state the system is currently in. When you are listening to music, it controls music, when you're on a call, it controls the call, when you are using Siri, you're the weirdo who's talking to your phone. Software can do the same; when I launched this blog, I played around with the idea of the home link adapting to the fact where the visitor currently is.

Software users come in various shapes and find themselves in various situations. First time user vs. second time user, potential client vs. client etc. Advanced systems can adapt to this fact and offer a different kind of experience to each of them, acting multifunctional. You want to present yourself to the first time user, and inform the second time user. You want to close the potential client, and do everything to retain the current client. Software is not static anymore, it adapts to different personas and scenarios.

Consistency FTW

Great user experience is consistent inside a product and across multiple channels. Even if something is not solved perfectly, analog functions must be solved in the same way all across the same and other systems, to avoid confusion. Apple's headphones also work with a Mac computer. With the controller, microphone and everything. The little cherry that makes Apple's complete listening and controlling ecosystem a platform.

The headphones are fully compatible with a Mac.

This is very important fact, making user experience a holistic strategy, that goes beyond the single product / implementation. A part of mentality that CEO is not about Executive anymore, it's about Experience.

Summary

Great user experience is becoming a competitive advantage, but at the same time something that's really hard to master. Knowing what problems and goals you are trying to solve is crucial, everything else must adapt. Thinking outside a single product and implementing the same philosophy across multiple systems and channels is slowly shaping (user) experience design into a strategic business function.

Apple's headphones with their controller are a great example of how to do user experience right. Something so basic, but at the same time so advanced. Solving so many problems with so little, by fully understanding what you are trying to do in different situations, and leaving you only with the choices you need to make in the specific moment. It simply doesn't get much better than that.

The Silicon Valley tour, part 8: Lessons learned, time to reevaluate

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 18:01:36 GMT

It's been about month since I've returned from Silicon Valley, so I've had plenty of time to think about what happened there. This time I went out of curiosity, hoping to get the idea of how things work in the global center of technology. The next time I will be there for real business, approaching the situation more systematically. San Francisco and Silicon Valley are a great place to visit for profiles such as myself, so there surely will be a next time, when a wiser version of me will be able to do some serious shit. And I'll be wiser also because I've learned my lessons this time.

Ideas are worthless, but execution also isn't all it takes

When I started being an entrepreneur, I thought The idea was everything. While innovation may be important, it's mostly worthless by itself. No matter how good or revolutionary your idea is, hundreds of people probably have a similar idea at the same time. As Oren Michels puts it: "Stealth mode is stupid, execution is what matters.". Ideas are worth nothing if they're not executed properly. But wait, we've done a pretty good job with Twenity, but that still wasn't enough to make it abroad. It seems execution isn't enough as well.

At this point I think the hardest thing to do is the next step, putting the product on the market, making it recognized. At least that's where we are now, that's the obstacle we are currently facing. But I can already predict that the next hardest thing would be to find the investors, and the next to scale the business. Idea > Execution > Marketing > Financing > Scaling is a complex lifecycle, and you have to control every element before you can say you've made it. That's why you should try (and fail) as many times as possible. With every new project you do, it will be easier to dominate the prior steps, allowing you to focus more energy on the next ones.

Competition is fierce, but the market is big

The (Seedcamp) startups I've met on my trip really do some seriously crazy shit. Some of the things were so awesome I've almost lost faith in being able to do something similar. But I managed to somehow get back in the game. Neolab may not be cutting edge (yet) on the emerging fields such as mobile, HTML 5 or responsive design, but that's really not that big of an issue, since we make things that do what they're supposed to. That's the Execution phase, but luckily, the Market has the capacity to absorb many things, if approached properly. Face it - there will always be companies who do a better job than you, but it's the Market who'll decide who makes it or not.

I attended a Salesforce conference for a few hours (thanks Davorin!), which attracted thousands of visitors. In case you don't know them, they are the leading provider of Software as a Service CRM solutions, offering a service and a platform for other developers. Their product is really awesome, but that doesn't mean similar products can't find their own market. Researching on this issue, I found a review of the 10 best known SaaS CRM solutions, all of them obviously able to survive, even though Salesforce dominates this segment. And I'm sure there are hundreds, if not thousands more that are able to coexist at the same time on the huge global markets. Which brings me to my next point:

Highlights from a massive Salesforce conference

User experience is the new competitive advantage

You need to find your Unique selling proposition and competitive advantage. Most of the above mentioned Seedcamp startups found it in superior user experience. Take something that works, and make it work even better. Today's users are quite willing to migrate to a new product / service if it turns out to be better than the current one. A great example of this philosophy is vox.io, which offers a similar service than Skype (online calls and chat), but simply does it better. And by better I mean using new innovative approaches to make something more simple and intuitive to use. The user experience segment will only become more important and challenging in the future, since new ways of interactions with software are emerging (touch, voice, thought?).

vox.io's chat with embeddable content proves chat can be reinvented

Selling and pitching is ok

When you mention Sales, many people get the impression of a door-to-door salesperson trying to sell you books. Or company phones ringing with people who make it hard to say no to. These things give sales a negative connotation. But it seems that's a cultural thing. In San Francisco, everybody is trying to sell you stuff, everybody's pitching all the time. When you ask somebody "What do you do?", the person is already showing you their product on his/her iPhone. Maybe not for the actual sell, but just to get some decent feedback. You shouldn't feel bad about trying to sell something, that how the system works. Just make sure that something is worth selling.

One of the parties at vox.io's. Everybody was pitching.

You're nothing without the contacts

I admit I was a bit naive this time. I hoped the fact me being a blogger and a representative of two startups would open a few doors, but this turned out to be wishful thinking. It's true I did manage to find a few contacts on the spot, which enabled me to do great things (such as visiting the technology bluechips and the Internet archive), but my way to the influential blogs was closed. I heard that they receive a few hundred submissions a day, so you need to make sure your pitch is awesome and you have backdoors to deploy it. Do your homework, the next time I take on a similar adventure, I'll try to schedule as many meeting as possible in advance. I've finally found a reason to pimp up my LinkedIn profile, and I was lucky enough that:

The Slovenian (startup) scene is alive and kicking

One of the most fascinating things that happened to me was the chance to meet the Slovenian diaspora in Bay Area, and the startup scene around it. Thanks to a few individuals, such as Jure, Tomaž and Andraž, a lot of things are happening around Stanford University and vox.io's San Francisco headquarters, and everybody is very welcoming to the new generation of Slovenian immigrants and other startups, trying to make it abroad. Thank you for your kindness, I feel Slovenia!

The Slovenian diaspora meeting at the Stanford University

Foursquare is the ultimate travel guide, so get a local data plan

Forget maps, Foursquare has become the ultimate travel guide if you're looking for companies, tourist attractions or happening. That's why you'll need a local data plan, which costs a few bucks a day. Pretty much everything is on Foursquare (besides, physical addresses are often very hard to find online), and trending venues can point you to the events worth visiting. I've never used Foursquare in such a way, and the critical mass of users reached around here surely provides massive value beyond the game.

What now?

That pretty much sums it up. This trip was a great experience, but it's time to get back to the drawing board. Rethink my strategies. Redesign Twenity's user experience. Reinvent Neolab's business model. Stay in touch with the people I've met. Find new contacts for the next visit. Adopt new technologies. Research new markets. Think global.

Well, at least I won't get bored.

Check out the complete The Silicon Valley tour series.

The art of internal hyperlinking

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 21:00:02 GMT

Everybody wants traffic on their blog or website. Direct traffic. Referring traffic. Search traffic. All good in their own way. Direct traffic means having a strong brand. Referring traffic means having a strong network. Search traffic means having a strong team. The first two are hard to influence, but search - that's the one you can influence the most. And even if search technology has changed a lot in the past few years, with mathematical algorithms slowly getting replaced by social ones, old school search engine optimization can still make a difference.

Let's say you already have good content. And you have it technically optimized and search engine friendly. Like, Tweet and +1 buttons implemented where applicable, since they are more and more important for search result rankings. All good, but you might have missed something. Since it's very hard to persuade other people to link to your site giving you a higher PageRank, you just have to do it yourself. I'm talking about internal hyperlinking, where you cross-reference the content you already have. Google loves it so much that their official blog, besides influential blogs such as Mashable and ReadWriteWeb, have main headings referencing itself.

I approached this issue from two different angles. Sometime in October 2010 I took the time to systematically cross reference all my blog posts. It took me a lot of time, but I think it was worth it. Besides, I developed a "similar content" module, which additionally does it for me. The results on the diagram below, which display search-based traffic on my blog, are not real proof of that fact, since the experiment was not fully scientific; there are many other SEO factors, additional content and optimizations that were put into the equation. But still, most energy was put into content cross referencing and the trend looks pretty good.

Traffic to http://stritar.net via search engines

Since internal hyperlinking is an ongoing process, you have to have a good overview about the content you own, something that provides you with the complete picture. I used a plain Excel file, grouping my posts into general categories and started drawing arrows representing hyperlinks. At this point, it's already become a bit of a mess, so I'm thinking about moving to a stronger diagram-oriented software, but I think you get the picture.

http://stritar.net internal hyperlink structure

Internal hyperlinking can help, and it's something you can do even if you don't have a lot of technical skills. Just a lot of time, but we're in a recession anyways. Now go for it and let me know about the results.

Why Web 2.0 is so important

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:10:53 GMT

The influence the Internet is having on our every day lives is reaching almost unimaginable levels. The extent of the information revolution can only be compared to inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past, which are all major achievements that allowed new ways of sharing thoughts and ideas between people. Web 2.0 is the next step of this information (r)evolution, and to understand why it's so important, we have to observe all the significant applications it represents (according to Wikipedia). This will hopefully give us a better insight into the potential they bring to our personal and professional lives, besides their impact on the whole humanity which we still perhaps don't fully comprehend.

Social networking

Social networking sites enabled probably the greatest migration of people to the virtual world. People have a new opportunity to interact not only in real life, but also in cyberspace, where geographical and other physical barriers don't exists. I'm not saying this is a promising thing overall, some people are obviously overdoing it, but it's still useful for keeping in touch with people. Together with the implementation of feeds and streams which enable dynamic information, social networking could represent the biggest and most important component of Web 2.0, reshaping business, marketing, politics and just being plain amazing.

Video sharing

Yesterday we read the newspaper, listened to the radio and watched television. Today, we have a super-medium that supports all of it at once. Video, as the most complex form of multimedia, is something that you can record with your telephone and publish online in minutes, from where it can go anywhere. If distributing a video is easy, anything else surely has to be a piece of cake. This fact obviously holds massive potential for science and arts in general.

Wikis and folksonomies

Wikis and folksonomies are tools which harness the amazing effect of participation and collaboration of millions of people to create information and knowledge. Wikipedia is the biggest encyclopedia in the world, holding knowledge whole mankind can benefit from. Folksonomies, such as tools for collaborative tagging and social indexing enable structured knowledge, while recommendation engines help us get information from massive quantity of data available online. Today, if something important is discovered, everybody knows it in minutes.

Blogs

Most people have the need to express themselves, and blogs (and microblogs) are the perfect tool for that. Plain and simple: anybody can be a journalist and if you have something smart to say, people will listen. Those who are influential enough can even break out of anonymity and become opinion leaders.

Web services and mashups

Web services and mashups enable and use open flows of data from one online service to another, from one online platform to another. System integration used to be one of the most complex things in IT, but thanks to new standards, protocols and technology, data can freely travel from and to different sources. This provides a perfect ground for exchanging information and enables evolution from software services to software platforms.

Perhaps we should also mention cloud computing, which makes hardware requirements irrelevant – the processing power and memory is around in plenty – but computer grids with shared resources have already been around for decades. All the better to understand that Web 2.0 is more about concept than it is about technology.

Web 2.0 is important and revolutionary, both in a good and a bad way. It brings a new perspective and new opportunities to different arts and sciences, such as business, education, sociology, psychology, literature, politics and many other. My professional and academic work focuses mainly on it's influence on information science and technologies, but it's clear that this new paradigm has a huge global effect, whose scale we still can't fully estimate. Now we just have to hope younger generations don't get too overwhelmed because of it and will be able to adjust to this new reality without abusing it too much.

The influence of new generation information systems on modern organizations

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:08:48 GMT

The traditional role of Information Science and corresponding Information Technologies is providing organizations with information. This makes it a tool supporting decision process, which can be counted as an organizational process. But today, this role is becoming more widely spread, making Information Sciences and Information Technologies also an important part of the operational process itself. Concepts such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) make information solutions a vital part of any modern organization process, present in all components in the business cycle of planning, realization and controlling.

The World Wide Web as a platform

If Information Science and Information Technologies revolutionized modern organizations, there is a heavily related technology that revolutionized our every day lives. The Internet and its main service, the World Wide Web hold unimagined potential both for personal and professional goals. This technology enables unlimited knowledge sharing between people and organizations, while at the same providing the platform on which different information systems can be created. Intranets (designed to support internal people and processes) and Extranets (designed for connecting with external entities, such as clients, suppliers, partners and competition) enable effective, flexible, scalable and accessible web-based information systems that can support most of organizational needs of a modern organizations.

To understand the implications of World Wide Web we can also take a look at the companies behind it, as they have become some of the largest IT companies in the world, and their services the most widely used information systems, leaving aside operation systems. There is an important point hidden in that statement – most information systems of today are not used to support organizations any more, they are designed for personal activities. Software solutions are shifting from B2B to B2C, and where management was the key buyer of software yesterday, ordinary everyday user is the main "buyer" of software today.

The Internet with its possibilities to share knowledge is a revolution probably comparable to the inventions of speaking, writing and printing in the past. Those organizations and individuals who are able to recognize this fact have a great opportunity for progress. That potential goes both for getting useful information and knowledge from other sources as for getting useful information about organization to those or any other sources. There is no doubt that today we live in the information era, and those who will not adapt that fact, probably have no future.

Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and IT 2.0

In the past years, a new generation of World Wide Web solutions has emerged, which we understand as Web 2.0. These services are focused on collaboration, cooperation, communication and connectivity, enabling sharing between millions of users and utilizing the effect of mass participation. The potential marketing revenue, which is the driving force behind the World Wide Web, and the large competition between millions of software companies around the world allow these services to evolve with light speed, making them both technologically and functionally more advanced than classical information systems. It didn’t take long for managers and entrepreneurs to realize the effect of these now approaches and services can also be beneficial on organization, marketing, decision support and other fields of organization and management.

The concept of Enterprise 2.0 adapts Web 2.0 for business-oriented use and represents using these new technologies, approaches, concepts and services in business-oriented environments. With a focus both on internal optimization (wikis, idea banks, social networking tools) and external optimization (blogs and microblogs, RSS, social bookmarking and tagging), it enables companies and their employees new ways to connect and interact between themselves and with other organizations. The focus of information systems is shifting from technical elements to social elements of organizations, and traditional information systems, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems are getting upgraded with modern systems, such as custom developed intranets and extranets.

But Enterprise 2.0 solutions are still mostly partial (separate) software solutions modern organizations can use to optimize their performance and strategies. In my opinion, future information systems will have those concepts and approaches incorporated into the core of the system, enriching traditional business-oriented solutions with social components that will support connections both with other individuals within organizations and with individuals from other organizations. Real-time interactions and communication will be one of the foundations of new business models that are emerging on the market, and IT 2.0 will be the platform that supports those concepts and activities.

It's time for IT to go social

Modern organizations are mostly service-oriented, so traditional ERP systems are becoming used mostly for low value-added activities. These new organizations are founded on innovative business models, knowledge and human capital. High value-add information systems for those organizations are systems for Project Management, Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Management etc., which are not oriented on technical components of organizations, but on social ones, such as people, relationships, connections, interactions, knowledge, cooperation and other.

New services that Web 2.0 "invented" fit into this picture of new generation IT 2.0 software solutions perfectly. Social networking tools can enable higher connectivity, new forms of interactions, team building and cooperation between all the people in the process. Social bookmarking and tagging produce structured knowledge and can harness the effect of crowdsourcing. Visualizations of data and information can bring more information used for decision making and clearer view on organization process. Feeds and streams enable faster data flow and clearer connections between most individuals inside the organization.

Organization is a system of dynamic relationships, and people are no longer considered only as a part of the machinery, but as complex entities, building even more complex social units. The greatest corporations that exist today were produced by capable individuals, forming even more capable teams. Therefore we must not ignore the science behind it – human capital is the probably the most valuable thing any modern organization can have and most software solutions of the future will be focused on these social components. The interesting symbiosis between new generation information systems and modern organization approaches is more obvious than ever, providing all the elements needed for business-oriented IT to go 2.0.

How mini-feed and other streams revolutionized IT

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:59:20 GMT

Web 2.0 brought us a lot of interesting things, approaches and solutions, so it's hard to imagine how we ever managed without it. Most of us are half addicted to floating around in cyberspace, looking at what people are doing and talking to everybody at once. It is a little social revolution that we are witnessing, and it doesn't seem it will end soon. Web 2.0 changed our everyday lives, but for an IT expert such as myself, these new concepts also have a big influence on other sciences and in our case, they will change management, organization and corporate IT forever.

Besides the whole social networking concept, one feature of Web 2.0 stands our as one of the main building blocks of this new paradigm. Call it the news stream, mini feed, activity log or whatever, it is the little information report that makes you come back every hour to see what other people are doing and if something new happened. Without it, Web 2.0 portals and services would be boring and useless, and they definitely wouldn't be as attractive interactive as they are.

Besides being cool and addictive, the mini feed is also a major shift in the presentation of data and information. Until it came around, data was static, but now, we can notice that data has the ability to become dynamic. In Web 2.0, this feature was "invented" to amuse users, but this approach is also fully applicable to business oriented software. Imagine a corporate solution that is intended for project management, where projects are consisted of tasks that have people working on them. The simplified dashboard for a project would probably look something like the table below.

Two weeks ago	Today
Write the documentation (John - Completed)	Write the documentation (John – Completed)
Delegate tasks (John – Active)	Delegate tasks (Mary – Complete)
Design wireframes (Mary – Active)	Design wireframes (Mary – Active)
Enter data (Unassigned)	Enter data (Simon – Active)
Make HTML (Simon – Active)	Make HTML (Simon – Complete)

The two dashboards, even though they represent the same project two weeks apart, look quite similar, and they actually don't give those, who are not directly connected with the project and people working on it a lot of information about the flow of activities, data and work. This data represented is static. But if we add another layer of mini feed / activity report on the same case, things start looking more interesting and give a lot more information about the project. The data becomes dynamic. When we look at the dashboard above, we don't really know that this is what actually happened with our project.

12 days ago – John changed the status of the task Write the documentation to Active.
10 days ago – John added a new note to the task Write the documentation.
10 days ago – John changes the status of the task Write the documentation to Completed.
8 days ago – John made Mary responsible for the task Delegate tasks.
8 days ago – Mary made Simon responsible for the task Enter data.
6 days ago – Mary added a new task Contact client.
5 days ago – Simon changed the status of the task Make HTML to complete.
3 days ago – Mary deleted the task Contact client.
2 days ago – John added a new file to the task Make HTML.
2 days ago – Mary changed the status of the task Make HTML to Incomplete.
1 day ago – Simon added a new note to the task Make HTML.
Today – Simon changed the status of the task Make HTML to Complete.

This dynamic component wasn’t available in business oriented software until now, except in the most sophisticated analytical systems, where data mining and other high level approaches provided dynamic information. Using Web 2.0 approaches such as the mini feed, operational and transactional information systems finally got the dynamic component too. Not to amuse, but to inform.

These are the approaches we use and things we think about when developing our software solutions. There are actually more useful applications of the mini feed we already noticed, but some mystery must remain. If you are interested, say hi to Neolab, one of the first companies in the world to offer fully integrated Web 2.0 features in business oriented software, all part of the IT 2.0 concept we are developing, for which already got an award for. Made in Slovenia, shipping worldwide.

Neolab in 2009

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:38:32 GMT

2009 was a hard year for everybody, specially for start-ups such as Neolab. Greed and wrong decisions of global financial institutions and their leaders turned the world upside down. Luckily we were able to survive, to stand tall against all the challenges that await for us next year. Projects have been confirmed, so the biggest issue that we face now is consolidating our inner organization and finishing our software framework that we put so much time and energy into.

A few weeks ago, Neolab celebrated it’s second birthday. The first two years are supposedly decisive for the survival of start-ups, so if this unfriendly situation won’t last too long, looks like we’ll make it. To sum it up: for us, 2008 was the year of checking out the scene, where we were observing if it’s possible to make it on our own. The second year, 2009, was the year of marketing, where we presented ourselves to broader audience.

Our presentation was quite successful. After a few years of building and optimizing our design and marketing concept with IlovarStritar, we finally launched our web page, a thing we are very proud of. Until this post we (they) have already received two awards for Neolab’s broader corporate identity, Brumen award and Taiwan international award. This confirmed we made the right decision by doing something special with our image.

The whole story of our design identity is built around a fictional ecosystem of pixelized mutant animals, representing connectivity of people, organizations and processes using information technology. Different animals are used for different documents and people so the whole concept is scalable, artistic, interesting and fun. If you like, you can check out the whole showcase on the IlovarStritar website.

We are becoming one of the biggest slovenian experts in IT. In april we received an award on the Slovenian IT conference for best paper on the subject of IT 2.0. If that wasn’t enough, we were also named the Emerging web agency of 2009 on Slovenia's biggest web authority, Netko. The barriers between organization, marketing, IT and web are obviously getting thinner and thinner, and Neolab stands strong right in the middle of it.

We may look good on the outside, but we are also healthy on the inside. At this point we employ six people, which actually brought a bit of organizational confusion. By adopting stronger approaches in project management, things are turning for the better. Besides, our big investment into our framework, which now stands stable, scalable and promising, will soon be complete, so we are more than ready for all the projects that are coming upon us.

Hopefully this year will be more welcoming. As we and our services mature, new challenges for our clients, suppliers, partners, supporters and ourselves are on the horizon, so you better be ready for all the things we have in store. To a successful 2010!

An approach to statistics and data analysis

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:32:06 GMT

When information systems evolve, they become greedier for both operational and advanced strategic statistics and data analysis. This need is a part of a natural evolution. The more data you have, the higher potential for extracting information you have. Looking at business environments using IT platforms, that's what analytics are actually all about - getting useful information from usually bad data. It turns out the task of analytical reporting is not so complex as it seems, but you definitely need a set of different skills / people to make it work.

There are tons of different statistical approaches, methods and theories, but it turns out that for average business needs you only need basic mathematics, where the most complex operations are sometimes logarithms. So, if it's so simple, where does the problem lay? Why do information systems often lack analytical support, which can be used for decision making?

In my opinion there are three main steps to consider when trying to make useful statistics and data analysis, and ignoring or underestimating any one of them will make your reports suck.

Data

Data is the king. If you don't have the data, you might as well give it up. If your data is bad or weak, you might consider rebuilding it. But you should know one thing - the better the structure of your data is, the better your analysis will be. Using a flat database such as a text file or an Excel spreadsheet gives you few analytical opportunities. Relational databases, such as Access, MySQL or SQL offer cross-data querying and advanced reporting, but huge and complex calculations can take a lot of time. For those, a multidimensional OLAP database designed strictly for analysis becomes the only option.

Challenges in this step: Technical

Information

The data discussed above defines the scope of potential information you can deliver. In this step, the main goal is simple - you need to know what you want to know. Business needs, process flow, strategic goals or just plain simple amusement are the main factors that need to be addressed. Having someone who is able to recognize these opportunities is crucial, because data is just numbers, but aggregated data - information - is knowledge. It's quite clear you won't be able to get something if you don't know what you want to get.

Challenges in this step: Analytical

Visualization

A picture can tell a thousand words and this goes a long way for data visualization. Even if you can't use charts, you can color information and use measures such as font size to represent another dimension of information or trends. Besides, always keep in mind that less is more, so you should put irrelevant information in the background and punchlines in the spotlight. Check out different chart types, they're useful for different representations and experimenting with them can display things that don't seem there at first sight. Observe patterns. Try to imagine a playground, where information can satisfy your curiosity and while doing it, it also brings useful and valuable results.

Challenges in this step: Creative

If you have the will, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff with statistics and data analysis, but you should know they sometimes take a lot of time. I'm proud my chronolog already has two nice looking children of these activities. The first one is a simple recommendation engine used for content ranking and the other one a set of reports which offer insight into activity and interactions of the chronolog. What can I say, I like to play around, and it may as well be any information system I can get my hands on. Give me the data and I'll give you information.

IT + Web 2.0 = IT 2.0

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 15:43:32 GMT

Web 2.0 is one of the hottest things around. Everybody is talking about it, and it is revolutionizing the way we work, communicate and enjoy our free time. It is obvious even now that such services will be the main tools of marketing and political movements of the future. Now we have to wait and see how far it goes and where it ends.

It did not take long for executives and technology officers to see that Web 2.0 could also have interesting applications on business oriented environment. Therefore, Enterprise 2.0 was "invented". It represents using new discovered approaches such as tagging, wikis and blogs for corporate goals. It works and I think companies shoud embrace it, because it's modern and effective.

We have taken it to another level, partially because we have become quite obsessed with developing not partial, but wholistict software systems. Web 2.0 is not just a collection of tools for better communication, it is a new concept of interaction, data visualization and user participation which was originaly discovered for one purpose - to amuse users and to earn more money from advertising. Usefulness came with it, and in this case the market economy worked.

Neolab is one of the first companies in the world that is offering business oriented software, fully integrated with Web 2.0 services, such as internal social networking, mini-feed reports, content tagging, cloud visualizations and more. As it is an integrated concept, we have dubbed it IT 2.0. We think that this approach helps both the users and the management with easier use, stronger belonging to the company and richer information than classic information systems.

Hopefully there will be more professional articles available on that topic in the future. It's hard to find the correct equilibrium between academic research and real life development. At this stage It has more and more scientific background each day, and the implementations prove it works. IT 2.0 is born.

I want it all - the curious case of Microsoft

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:18:12 GMT

There's Microsoft, probably the biggest software company in the world. And there are others. In the past years Microsoft has been trying to expand it's business to pretty much all the markets, faintly connected with it's core business - developing software. Marketing experts could say this is not a good strategy, because it is better for companies to retain their focus and stay specialized in things they do best. But if Samsung can build bridges in South Korea and at the same time make smart phones, why shouldn't Microsoft make iPods?

There are a few interesting new markets Microsoft entered into. But are they profitable enough to let the Windows family suffer because of this expansion? Here are the most significant:

Gaming consoles market: the Xbox 360 is supposed to be one of the best gaming consoles according to independent tests, because of it's high performance and good online support. They even offer some exclusive Grand theft auto content, which was probably the most anticipated game of this year.
Portable media devices: we are supposed to see the new Zune HD in autumn, designed to kill the iPod dominance of portable mp3 and video devices. But is it cool enough to be able to take this burden upon itself?
Search: a few years ago Microsoft introduced Live search, which was the successor of MSN search. A few months ago Bing was launched, and it is actually successfully taking search engine usage and share from Google and Yahoo, at least for now. But is it just curiosity, or is it actually good enough to replace The mighty one?

In the mean time, Windows Vista was quite a debacle and left most of the users longing and keeping Windows XP. We will see how Windows 7 does, but they surely lost a good position against Mac and Linux in the past years. I still think that Microsoft's business suite is the best there is (Office, asp.net, SQL server), but negative attitude can easily travel from operating systems towards enterprise environment and fun gadgets. People want the iPod and the iPhone because it is easy and fun to use, will they think the same about Zune after using Windows Vista?

It is always fun and interesting to check what the stock market says. The following diagram compares Microsoft (MSFT) to it's competitors from different markets mentioned above, Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG) and Nintendo (NTDOY), from the beginning of 2005 until now.

It doesn't look that good, does it (even though the dates and players in the diagram were carefully chosen to support the hypothesis)?