Product Matters

Over the past few years, I've championed the idea that smartphones are by-and-large consumption devices; not creation devices. Someone asked me recently: Do you send email from your smartphone? Isn't that creation? I suppose that it is. But I typically send bite-sized emails, SMS, and Tweets; not long-form content. But when you also share photos and videos and links and likes and plus-1s, smartphones are clearly creation devices. This reflection challenged my previous perspective from thinking of content exclusively as robust documents to include rapid-fire info-blurbs. Where now is the dividing line between smartphone content creation expectations and those of laptops and desktops? This question prompted me to try the previously unthinkable; to write a blog post on my mobile phone. This is clearly long-form, but still distinct from the rich authoring experience I enjoy on my full-fledged computers. Perhaps then the discussion ought not be about content creation, but...

Heading out of the 2012 Gartner Portals, Content, and Collaboration conference in Orlando in about an hour. Over-all, a good experience as this was my first Analyst-led conference. Had face time (actual, not the Apple variant) with several leading analysts in my space, including Nikos Drakos, Susan Landry, Jeffrey Mann, Carol Rozwell, and Tom Austin; which proved collectively useful in some unexpected ways. Some sessions were good, especially The Social Workplace: Rethinking Communication and Collaboration in the Age of Social Networks . Others, however were simply too rudimentary. This seems to be the common trend with conferences that cater to both customers and vendors alike; the majority of sessions cater to the neophyte customer who knows very little about the space. It would be helpful if conferences had multiple tracks; "I'm New", "I'm Buying", "I'm Selling", and "I Want the Bleeding Edge". They should also include dedica...