A New Way to Work
Thursday, May 1 | 2:45 pm
Presenter:
Cyrus Mistry, enterprise product manager, GoogleMany business processes and IT infrastructures are designed to align with traditional corporate structures, in which employees are based in discrete locations and operate within distinct, well-understood hierarchies. Today's world--characterized by faster rates of change; deeper relationships with partners, suppliers, and customers; and employees that have networks across the enterprise--demands new tools and processes. To support this dramatic shift, the role of IT has evolved from a focus on facilities-based computing to the creation of systems that enable employees to collaborate and share information across the enterprise. Hear Google's ideas about what the next generation of collaboration looks like and how organizations can deliver tools and technologies that maximize productivity.
Cyrus proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that people can talk and listen 4000 times faster than we read and write.. YIKES! Can we harnass some of that juice!
Ok.. seriously, he certainly presented a good case for "Software as a Service" and bringing Google into the enterprise for search, common apps etc.
It would have been interesting to discuss how to go from the complexity, lack of agility and cost of today's IT infrastructure, to the "world of Google."
Cyrus also mentioned "keep everything, search as discovery," and the idea of not tagging anything. It would have been interesting to discuss the implications of doing this approach in the context of legal e-discovery, and the reputational risk to an organization by through publication of information out of context.
What I found most interesting about Cyrus's presentation was the idea that tagging, labeling, and filing are a waste of time and become obviated by better search technology since this is more than slightly counterintuitive: people can find things fast and waste less time sorting and organizing if they have a tool that is blindingly fast at finding things no matter where they are located.
I think that what makes this so bedeviling is that most people realize that this does not work in real life (otherwise, my wife would always know where her keys are). This is just another example of how our brains may not be wired to take immediate advantage of the things you can do differently with computers.
Being somewhat unstructured, I was immediately a fan of the GMail's 'just keep it' philosophy...but I find that for topics that I talk email a lot about, I struggle to find that second or third key word that trims the search results to a digestible size. On the flip side, having folders did not alleviate this. Ralph Soule posits a thought provoking riddle...i.e. do humans need structure for recall? While his key example substantiates the need for structure, I don't need structure to find my lost cell phone... I just call it and listen, i.e. I have created a fast search and rescue process. But, I can't call or google most of the things I lose in life, so...
I wish Cyrus had provided a short list of the cool ways you can search for the things Paul *can* use Google to find. That would come in handy. I particularly liked "movies zipcode" as a way to see show times in your area for movies. Nice and simple, but I have to remind myself to do things like that since I did not grow up with Google always available.
Awesome. This was a super presentation. I'm going to try out the "teams" application suite as soon as this week. I'll be posting at http://cgopc.cgblog.org to let everyone know how it worked out.
I really identified with the part of Cyrus's talk regarding the differences of tools we use at home and at work. Makes me wonder why I need to have a separate email account for home and for work. (or to take it further, separate computers for that matter...) I find myself emailing things from work to home and back again. Could I have one account and different boxes, so a work email could have my company tag, while a personal email wouldn't? I realize there are issues here regarding spending office time to take care of personal business, but I would counter that many of us use personal time to discuss/work on office business.
To pick up on the structure thread, as a list-maker, I love the ability to keep my reading list on my amazon wish list, and my movie list in my Netflix queue, etc.
Now, if I could combine those lists with my universal email....
Andy Kessler wrote an interesting article for the WSJ opinion section titled "The War for the Web" that is pertinent to some of the things Cyrus presented. You can read it by following this link: http://www.andykessler.com/
Key points:
- The contest [for tying all manner of digital devices together in a new end-to-end computing framework] is just starting. For ... anyone ... to win, they need four key elements of an end-to-end strategy:
- The Cloud (network of computers sitting in data centers)
- The Edge (the cloud is nothing without devices, browsers and users to feed it, a compelling product)
- Speed
- Platform (Having a fast cloud is nothing if you keep it closed. The trick is to open it up as a platform for every new business idea to run on, charging appropriate fees as necessary.)
I thought Cyruss three blindingly obvious lessons learned about IT (according to Google) were very interesting:
#1 – Fast is better than slow for every aspect of computers and IT. Organizations should be striving for iterative change, not big bangs.
#2 – Simple is better than complex. Current deliver models have *insane* complexity. New software and service delivery models must emerge (Appliances, Software as a Service (SaaS), Simpler).
#3 – Assume chaos and have systems/approaches that can deal with it. The CEMEX cement delivery story is a good example of embracing chaos:
http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/pkatel/pkcemex.html