Advertisers in Charge

PC Forum update: Not the year for big ideas in social software, I guess. Oh yeah, and the internet really is just another advertising medium (justified, apparently, because "advertising pays for 99.9% of the 'free' content").

PC Forum this year is about smallness ( I'm even tempted to use the word pettiness) which is unfortunate.

Because I think that, in fact, we're very close to seeing a highly collaborative, internet-based enterprise software revolution whose seeds will first be sewn in 2006. And nothing about that - which will disrupt the daily work lives of every connected global enterprise - is really being discussed here.

Microsoft (who, once again, is given short shrift by the intelligentsia) will be delivering exciting software on the desktop at the end of this year, for example. The collaboration available intrinsically inside Office 12 will be a watershed for those companies that embrace it.

Enterprise wikis, lead by Ross Mayfield (who is here, but not presenting), are changing the way enterprise content is gathered and disseminated - and in so doing is turning corpoate information assets on their ears, as well as many of their processes.

And what of corporate blogs? Even The Wall Street Journal is writing about how CEO blogs are changing the communication patterns (read: processes) at companies large and small.

And where is process in all this? Everywhere! Most BPM companies will talk to you about structure. About BPEL, I guess. Ot possibly "just write up all your rules and we'll automate those 12 steps away.". Just like those old commercials: "Calgon, take me away!" But the real world is grittier than that. It's Raymond Chandler, not Madison Avenue.

So process has to embrace confusion and collaboration. THAT is a problem worthy of solving: how to embrace collaboration at the edges of process.

A process which acknowledges that when they are needed in the process, the users truly are in charge...

- Phil Gilbert (via mobile)