Thursday, March 8, 2007

Community building Here's another convergence. It's not about automation, but about life. I've been pretty involved politically in local issues such as school board. But if anyone asks me now about political philosophy, I just say I'm a Jeffersonian and there aren't any others today. A guy I know at the local YMCA has a son recently returned from Iraq and retired from the Army. His son, Jason Blindauer is a Jeffersonian. I'm not saying that I agree with everything on his new Website, but it's worth thinking about. I believe that if you are a part of a community, then you should do something to serve that community. I did three years of a school consulting committee then eight years on the school board. Now, I'm deep in soccer (in fact I'm teaching a referee class tonight). Maybe that's not political, but it's helped a lot of people over the years. What made me post this was a post from Nick Belardes about an interview with Lloyd Asato about community. 10:26:35 PM    comment []

What's happening in smart services Amit has challenged his readers to think about what these new interconnected technologies will lead to. He has used the term "any to any" or A2A, for years. A few years ago the "machine to machine" or "mobile to mobile" or M2M space was christened. Lately, Harbor Research has taken to the term Smart Services over its past term "pervasive Internet." Here's his post: What will A2A/M2M/Smart Services create??. Here are some of his thoughts with my comments: In my opinion: -A revolution in how we interact with technology I'm always a little suspicious of the term "revolution" because I've heard it so much in my life. But I think this is already happening--just not so much in automation. Look at the connected mobile phones. There's lots happening there. In automation, Michael Saucier started a little company called Transpera that take historian data base information and formats it for PDA and cell phone sized devices. Yesterday Invensys Process Systems announced that it will be a reseller. So, there's a little bleed over to automation. Another trend I see in development is making software easier to install and use. All this is connected by things such as OPC and XML. We're actually getting there! -A world where we do not notice the Internet I remember a comment by Bill Gates from at least 10 years ago to wit--you won't know or care whether you're accessing data from your PC or from some database on the Internet. Microsoft is a little slow to the game, but we're all getting there. I've seen so many press releases announcing Internet access for industrial devices that I know longer consider it News--it's a requirement, now, in my opinion. -A world of multiple connected devices that have different usage characteristics This is also happening a lot now. Maybe not "critical mass," but growing. -Personalized services and content This is partly Web 2.0 but also all the software suppliers I talk to along with their users are working on "role-based" displays of information. We'll only see more. Perhaps automatically formated for either your PC, or your tablet, or your connected PDA. -A culture of technological assistance rather then searching I'm not sure what Amit means here since search is the big technology. But perhaps better customer forums and better information (maybe even easy to use knowledge bases) can dramatically improve customer service for technical aid. This still has a ways to go. -An environment, making us all think less and act more Acutally, there's a double edge sword there. In some ways, we humans can have more time to think about solutions to our problems since we don't have to search for information so much. On the other hand, action is useful. If we don't act, nothing gets done. We don't want to be like Wally in today's Dilbert calendar, "This week I achieved unprecedented levels of unverifiable productivity. I made phone calls, built consensus, displayed leadership, attended meetings and set priorities." -More service oriented businesses I agree with this. Better information provided (either automatically which was the M2M dream, or batched by the user) to OEMs and suppliers can help them enhance their products and services. They can become better service partners to their customers. This is only in the beginning stages as both technology and business practices must come together. Whew. That's my thoughts this morning. Anyone want to dive in? Steve Pazol, still reading this? I bet you have a comment. 11:10:50 AM    comment []