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January 26, 2007
Get Motivated
Yesterday, our team took a day to Get Motivated here in Atlanta, The Get Motivaed Seminar included great speakers like Zig Ziglar, Rudolph Giuliani, General Colin Powell, Michael Eisner,. Larry King, John Smoltz and Tom Hopkins. Seems most folks in Atlanta enjoyed John Smoltz’s session since he was able to show some of the success of the Atlanta Braves. John is a solid fixture here in Atlanta and especially the Braves. He spoke on the fear of failure, discipline, dreaming, and perseverance. He provided us with the inspiration to get goals; not just realistic ones, but way out there goals. Zig Ziglar proved once again why he is number one at eighty. I loved his jokes; the one about having a pity party is bad because no one ever shows up not bring presents. He discussed the home court advantage and the importance of having a great family and I couldn’t agree more.
I was looking forward to Mr. Eisner’s session the most and he didn’t disappoint me. While others thought it was a bit dry, I thought is was great. He provided some great stories and ideas that all of can implement with Collaboration and Metadata Services. He spoke at length of the importance of branding and ensuring the message is consistent and even answered Tom Peter’s complaint about shampoo bottles. What does your brand stand for and what does it not?
The conference was well worth the small price and I look forward to the next time they are in town.
Posted by Todd at 11:44 AM
January 23, 2007
Essence of Change
There has been a lot written about outsourcing and the over all impact of globalization to our economy. Some authors have even named this natural progression of value creation as the China effect, the Wal-Mart effect, and even the Starbucks effect. The essence of this progression is that organizations are utilizing the dramatic advancements in technology to streamline their business and create competitive advantages. Wal-Mart developed a highly efficient supply chain and literally destroyed the business models of Montgomery Ward, Sears, and J.C. Penny. Many people believe that Wal-Mart was the first retailer to challange the business model but actually J.C. Penny started the down fall of Sears and Montgomery Ward; Wal-Mart simply finished them off. Change is progress and for most of us, creates uncertainty. Individuals that embrace change will succeed and flourish in the long run. Without change nothing would grow or blossom. No matter what business, position, or role you are in, you can’t sit still and watch as others pass you by.
Posted by Todd at 11:53 AM
January 15, 2007
More Metadata 2.0
Overview
A few months ago, I have the privilege of attending a data conference in Denver, CO. The conference was held at one of the Hyatt Regency Hotels located downtown. What sparked my curiosity was a small kiosk located next to the Concierge desk that allowed you to check in with your airline and print your boarding pass.
Historical Transformation
Traditionally, airlines forced you inside the terminal where you waiting in a very long line so that you could talk to the agent who printed your boarding pass, took you luggage, and ensured you were the ticket passenger. Several years ago, the airlines in Atlanta added a collection of Kiosk machines that allow you to walk up, enter your credit card or frequent flyer number and print your own boarding pass. If you had luggage, you only needed to step over to the counter where the agent was waiting with your baggage tags already printed. This was an enormous convenience and really speeded up the process. Not too much later, they airlines allowed you to print your boarding pass yourself from a home computer. Without a doubt, the fastest way through any airport is to print your own boarding pass and drop your bags outside where for a couple of bucks you can skip all of the hassle inside the airport. What Hyatt did was recognize that most people don’t travel with a printer and the business office wasn’t worth the prince of entry. The concierge kiosk allows customers to check in without requiring a computer or a printer.
If we step back a moment, we can see a transformation happening where the ownership and control is transferred to the customer irregardless of location. The web has opened up, created and destroyed businesses by moving control to the consumer. The Internet enhances the consumer power by exposing more information, more options and simpler transactions. Consumer power tends to be higher in industries where the information is easier to compare and easier to understand. In these cases, information can be easily accessed through the Internet and assimilated by less informed consumers, allowing them to make better and more transparent decisions (MIT, 2002). Not only has the kiosk machines simplified the process, they have eliminated the requirement of equipment; access is universal as long as you have a connection.
Read More About the Transformation of Metadata
Posted by Todd at 10:34 PM
January 8, 2007
No Comments
One thing that has changed is the blocking of end user comments. The spam has just gotten to be too much for me. Almost 300 spam messages per day and I can’t figure out how to stop it from happening. Email me if you have something you want posted and I will post without editing…..
Posted by Todd at 12:27 PM
Happy New Meta-Year
Happy New Year! This is going to be a great year, certainly with several new beginnings. In many ways I am sad to see BellSouth go, this company was very good to me personally and professionally. The best way for me to describe it is that that allowed us to take risks; not just to deliver a metadata solution but create a metadata experience. Not just to create a metadata environment that was considered a cost center or even to deliver business value. Rather, they allowed us to build a business model for metadata as well as online ordering, repository delivery, and collaboration technologies. Who knows what the future brings…
Posted by Todd at 12:25 PM
January 3, 2007
Deminshing Demand
The diminishing demand for the technology professional (Labor) has an inverse relation to the Increasing Demand for IT Talent! Think about this for a moment. Labor is a commodity in which individuals can be replaced easily. Commodity skills can be easily automated or moved overseas. Worse yet, our education system has down played the need for technical skills and replacing them with softer skills required by management. Our corporations can not be excluded from the blame game since they are outsourcing these skills to lower costs. For those that argue against this action, there is little to be said since our history supports this type of activity. We automated the farm, the factory, and now, the cubicle. The power of technical transformation is that labor gets transformed. Talent, on the other hand, is in constant demand. Irregardless of your skills, if you are in the top 99 percentile then you will be able to find work. In the world of Enterprise 1.0, I competed with the top of my profession. Every profession and skill category has its gurus or subject matter experts. In the Web 1.0 world, these people freely published their knowledge in the form of books, articles, and online references. They started consulting organizations and established themselves are the experts. We could read and purchase their skills in order to deliver the business value demanded. As an individual, I could easily rank and rate my effort and accomplishments as compared with theirs, but that was the old world.
In Enterprise 2.0, I now compete with the cumulative knowledge of everyone in the world. In other words, the technology professional has become a commodity and it doesn’t really matter how talented you are. Even if you are the worlds best, the competition will take what you have done and expand beyond your original ideas. Think about this for a moment, the new web provides the medium where everyone in the world can contribute, destroy, and define your area of expertise. How will you compete? How will you build your brand? How will you develop your trademarks in this new world of web 2.0?
Posted by Todd at 11:46 AM
Book Available: Chapter Two Enterprise Metadata
Architecture of Reliable Web Applications Software presents new concepts regarding the reliability, availability, manageability, performance, scalability, and secured-ability of applications, particularly the ones that run over the Web. Buy Online
Posted by Todd at 12:26 AM
Metadata's Supply Side Economics
The traditional supply curve indicated the lowest price at which suppliers were willing to sell their product. As prices rose, the seller was willing to sell more of the product. The seller in the world of metadata is the producer of metadata information. Those individuals who work tirelessly to create assets and define the metadata information produce the value-add for metadata. Traditional supply curves put price on the vertical axis and quantity on the horizontal axis. Price doesn't make much sense in our world, where we provide products and services inside the organization. However, we can exchange the price component with a cost or value-add one. Does this pass the common-sense test? Let's see; the more value the metadata effort creates, the more producers are willing to turn over the responsibility of metadata management. In a world where business units have the choice of building distributed metadata management environments versus utilizing a centralized metadata management group, the value-add must be substantial.
Read Article
Posted by Todd at 12:24 AM