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Blog Post: No Tool Can Replace Actual Conversation

Loved this post on communicating with customers from Intercom co-founder Jon Hainstock because it highlights something very depressing about how we work today: live conversation has been replaced in many ways. Regardless of your industry or company culture, there is a tool available to you that gives you the opportunity to avoid communicating.

I am not saying I dislike software that assists with categorization, priority flags, auto-responders, and case numbers. The bigger your organization, the more of a challenge it can be to keep everyone in the loop. At the same time, we must take advantage of every opportunity to have live conversation with co-workers and customers.

Trust is key, as the article states. That must be build with time and effort. You’ll have to swallow a lot of pride and words. When I say “you”, I mean me for sure.

Who have you had challenges with? Make a point to have some interaction that can give both people a chance to share and grow together. 

Blog Post: No Tool Can Replace Actual Conversation

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Prototyping the Future

Think back just a few years ago to the Time Before The iPhone. We’d seen a number of touch-screen cell phones and PDAs. (Remember that acronym?) But the conventional wisdom among tech pundits was that touchscreens weren’t really workable for mobile devices. Certainly, it was thought, touch screens couldn’t replace keyboards and hardware buttons. It took two things, together, to prove the conventional wisdom wrong. First, touch screens got better slowly and steadily. They became more accurate, more responsive, more durable, prettier, and able to track two or more touches simultaneously. Second, interface design got better all at once when Apple released the first version of iOS.

This is the consistent pattern. Early products pioneer some elements of the future. Those products influence engineering and design thinking before they fade away, victims of timing and market dynamics. Finally a tipping point arrives, enabled by technological progress and usually catalyzed by an excellent new product design. Conventional wisdom adjusts and it becomes hard to remember we didn’t all know all along that, for example, phones would one day be little slabs of glass. William Gibson expresses it best: the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

We don’t know what is possible until it becomes so.

Prototyping the Future

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Blog Post: #Apps of All Kinds

Sometimes I am jealous of all the mobile conferences that happen globally. If I had a choice, there would be a designated amount of time where my company allowed employees time for exchange of ideas and networking. Unfortunately, there’s work that needs to be done. So I’m left with reading great recaps like this piece from Venture Beat.

As usual, companies are a little reluctant to throw all their eggs into one basket. With the mobile industry still so new, it can be difficult to make product decisions based on what could be considered a “fad”.

The senior VP of Salesforce concluded that in the future, more and more work will be done on mobile devices. For now, though, it’s impossible to employ a mobile-first strategy. Reading the tea leaves, many decision makers (even at my company) believe too much work is done on traditional computing devices to warrant a change in product road maps.

Problem being, it’s not going to be that way for much longer. Companies that want to innovate should be making the changes to their planning now if they want to beat the rush.

I have tried something the last couple of months at work, with some degree of success. Instead of carting my bulky laptop everywhere to monitor email and instant message queues I have been taking my iPhone. Strangely enough, I get just as much done and my interactions are limited just because I don’t want to be on my phone too much during meetings.

Of course, documentation still has to be written. For that, I need my bigger screens and a keyboard. That, of course, could be remedied with an iPad and Bluetooth keyboard.

Mobile devices are not just for consuming content. These powerful devices are just as capable of creating the content, and I need apps to help me do so.

Blog Post: #Apps of All Kinds

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Blog Post: Do You Own A Tablet But Not A Smartphone?

This is an interesting post by Enterprise Mobile Solutions that poses an interesting question: do you prefer smartphones or tablets?

One question I have is, are there any of you out there that have only a tablets and not a smartphone? It might be an incorrect assumption, but I assumed if you have a tablet it is because you purchased a smartphone already.

Curious to know your thoughts.

Blog Post: Do You Own A Tablet But Not A Smartphone?

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The Balance of Opinions

Most of my time on the Internet is spent performing a back-and-forth dialogue of inner conflict over the opinions of others. When viewed individually, either side is equally ineffective. Together, lives can be truly impacted. Let me explain. I was raised by great parents. My dad, in particular, instilled a lot of great patterns and […]

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Blog Post: Connected Cars Could Save Lives

Great release about an MIT study on how WiFi-connected cars could not only save lives, but ease traffic in future car models. The better this technology gets, the more excited I get.

Imagine the possibilities because your vehicle could sense something was going to happen around it?

This satisfies drivers that still want control. It reduces the financial burden on insurance companies. It certainly takes driving as one of the leading killers.

Change like this will be hard, but I think car manufacturers will embrace this. Doesn’t impact the oil industry like electric cars, and everyone wants safer cars.

Being connected helps propel innovation forward. The Internet of Things coming to automobiles will do just that.

Blog Post: Connected Cars Could Save Lives

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