Demo '06 - Impressions
I'm in beautiful Phoenix Arizona at Demo '06, which is the perfect conference for a tech trends/industry watcher/tech investor types to look at up-and-coming tech companies who have a nail-biting 6 to 8 minutes to sell the audience on their value proposition and give a high-impact demo -- it's kind of like "speed-dating" for VCs. Of course, there's a pavilion where the presenters can set up a booth and be more interactive with interested parties.
While the technologies span every market, from ice-cream vending machines (admittedly out-of-the-box, but cool!) to enterprise security offerings, there are some unifying themes that seem to be prevalent at this year's conference:
Trend: convergence of business and consumer tech. Users are spoiled by elegant and functional applications in their personal life and are left wanting by overly complex and cumbersome enterprise tech. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Trend: corporate computing is too complex. Moving to the point of diminishing return. One more feature in enterprise software among thousands? A better search algorithm to bring back 50 more needles among thousands in the haystack?
Trend: people trust other people before they trust an algorithm. This is the power behind Google's search approach (ranking search results based on people's use of the results) and is fueling a new trend that uses social networks as the engine for a variety of purposes, like recommending products, sharing streaming photo diaries, validating plans and decisions.
Trend: The most exciting new thing to come out of the Enterprise Software Space is (yawn!) security. Among the plethora of security offerings and better application mousetrap (there's a BRAND NEW CRM company here (snooze!), there are only a smattering of unique offerings. To my fellow enterprise software insiders: we need a shake up! IMO, we are failing to capture the imagination of the market, our customers, our engineers and our shareholders.
Cool companies/products:
1. MooBella: technology after my own stomach...er, heart. They've gone and built a vending machine that serves ice cream, but not any old ice cream - the machine will start with a flavor of your choice and mix in various goodies and other flavors, ultimately producing a bowl of your own custom flavor in seconds. Of course, I tried it. Very, very good ice cream and very, very simple to use. This could turn any business into an ice cream provider in one simple step... http://www.moobella.com/
2. Blurb - this company can "slurp" (their term) a bunch of different content into their desktop app and let you publish a beautiful hardcover book with excellent layout control and very attractive templates. They can smartly import content from files and documents, blogs and other stuff you have laying around. They also will sell books on their web store and publish to an audience of one. http://www.blurb.com/
3. DigiSmart - how often does this happen: You want to show people on your cell phone or PDA screen and it's awkward and difficult to ensure that you can operate it and people can see it? DigiSmart is from an Aussie company that has a small add-on that projects the image from the device onto a surface that all can see. No fuss, no muss, and no fancy footwork. http://www.digislide.com.au/consumer/digismart.htm
4. Grass Roots Software - FreePath. This is a meta-content assembly product for people who give presentations. This lets people embellish their PowerPoint presentations with richer media and more dynamic content. As a presenter, I like this idea, because I think PowerPoint comes up way short as an effective communications tool if users simply use the prescribed PowerPoint formats. For more on this, check out Andrew's blog on Bad PowerPoint at http://power-points.blogspot.com. On the other hand, as an audience member I can envision "death by powerpoint" being new and improved with light, sound and video and imagine being bombarded with bad multimedia along with bad slides. But if used for good instead of evil, I have high hopes. http://www.myfreepath.com/
5. Ugobe Pleo. Ugobe is a company making artificial life forms. The CTO is the inventor of the Furby, but I won't hold that against him. The fuzzy and somewhat creepy Furby was a toy that reacted with its environment and its owners. Instead of being cute and engaging, it was annoying. Thieves crept into our house late one night and stole ours. At least that's what my children were told at the time. Well, Pleo is different. Pleo is a baby dinosaur that's very cute and has enough variety in its actions and reactions to be interesting for a long time. Looks like a winner if it can be mass produced. In contrast to the Furby which sold for less than $50, Pleo is in the $200 dollar range. http://www.ugobe.com.
There are plenty of others, but these stood out for their creative applications of technology. For the next little while I'm going to spend some time thinking about how these consumer tech trends can be well applied to the enterprise space. Stay tuned...
While the technologies span every market, from ice-cream vending machines (admittedly out-of-the-box, but cool!) to enterprise security offerings, there are some unifying themes that seem to be prevalent at this year's conference:
Trend: convergence of business and consumer tech. Users are spoiled by elegant and functional applications in their personal life and are left wanting by overly complex and cumbersome enterprise tech. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Trend: corporate computing is too complex. Moving to the point of diminishing return. One more feature in enterprise software among thousands? A better search algorithm to bring back 50 more needles among thousands in the haystack?
Trend: people trust other people before they trust an algorithm. This is the power behind Google's search approach (ranking search results based on people's use of the results) and is fueling a new trend that uses social networks as the engine for a variety of purposes, like recommending products, sharing streaming photo diaries, validating plans and decisions.
Trend: The most exciting new thing to come out of the Enterprise Software Space is (yawn!) security. Among the plethora of security offerings and better application mousetrap (there's a BRAND NEW CRM company here (snooze!), there are only a smattering of unique offerings. To my fellow enterprise software insiders: we need a shake up! IMO, we are failing to capture the imagination of the market, our customers, our engineers and our shareholders.
Cool companies/products:
1. MooBella: technology after my own stomach...er, heart. They've gone and built a vending machine that serves ice cream, but not any old ice cream - the machine will start with a flavor of your choice and mix in various goodies and other flavors, ultimately producing a bowl of your own custom flavor in seconds. Of course, I tried it. Very, very good ice cream and very, very simple to use. This could turn any business into an ice cream provider in one simple step... http://www.moobella.com/
2. Blurb - this company can "slurp" (their term) a bunch of different content into their desktop app and let you publish a beautiful hardcover book with excellent layout control and very attractive templates. They can smartly import content from files and documents, blogs and other stuff you have laying around. They also will sell books on their web store and publish to an audience of one. http://www.blurb.com/
3. DigiSmart - how often does this happen: You want to show people on your cell phone or PDA screen and it's awkward and difficult to ensure that you can operate it and people can see it? DigiSmart is from an Aussie company that has a small add-on that projects the image from the device onto a surface that all can see. No fuss, no muss, and no fancy footwork. http://www.digislide.com.au/consumer/digismart.htm
4. Grass Roots Software - FreePath. This is a meta-content assembly product for people who give presentations. This lets people embellish their PowerPoint presentations with richer media and more dynamic content. As a presenter, I like this idea, because I think PowerPoint comes up way short as an effective communications tool if users simply use the prescribed PowerPoint formats. For more on this, check out Andrew's blog on Bad PowerPoint at http://power-points.blogspot.com. On the other hand, as an audience member I can envision "death by powerpoint" being new and improved with light, sound and video and imagine being bombarded with bad multimedia along with bad slides. But if used for good instead of evil, I have high hopes. http://www.myfreepath.com/
5. Ugobe Pleo. Ugobe is a company making artificial life forms. The CTO is the inventor of the Furby, but I won't hold that against him. The fuzzy and somewhat creepy Furby was a toy that reacted with its environment and its owners. Instead of being cute and engaging, it was annoying. Thieves crept into our house late one night and stole ours. At least that's what my children were told at the time. Well, Pleo is different. Pleo is a baby dinosaur that's very cute and has enough variety in its actions and reactions to be interesting for a long time. Looks like a winner if it can be mass produced. In contrast to the Furby which sold for less than $50, Pleo is in the $200 dollar range. http://www.ugobe.com.
There are plenty of others, but these stood out for their creative applications of technology. For the next little while I'm going to spend some time thinking about how these consumer tech trends can be well applied to the enterprise space. Stay tuned...
posted by Rob Rose at 2:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home