DISQUS

"The always level-headed Anne Zelenka": thanks for that, though I wasn't feeling so level-headed earlier in the week when I responded to Scott Karp's Twitter critique ;)

Hi James, I usually let my posts cure, but not always. At any rate, sometimes it's worthwhile to just get them out, flaws and all. :)

My first paragraph in that post was intended as sarcasm, but I can see how you might read it as serious! I don't agree with the idea that most of what's online is garbage.

Must rethink intros to posts written in the heat of the moment...

Seems like a bigco like Oracle might suffer from the innovator's dilemma. It is very good at doing incremental improvement on enterprise apps and meeting the needs of current customers. Doing radical innovation isn't necessarily going to meet the needs of those customers who just want this new feature or that performance improvement.

So maybe you *can* be too busy to innovate -- and successful big companies like Oracle are so busy meeting the needs of current customers that they are just that.

Where's the place for Web 2.0 and social networking behind the firewall then? I still suspect it's in solving the really hard problems you come across when working on complex systems like enterprise apps. I'm not sure it's so much about innovation -- though that might be a side benefit -- as just about problem-solving and being more effective in getting regular work done.

As far as innovation in a big company goes, maybe the best place for it is it some sort of skunkworks type organization rather than sprinkled throughout every team. At least when I was at Oracle, we had so much to do that we knew about that innovation was not the top concern. We just needed to get features designed, coded, and tested then out the door. We needed to execute, not innovate.

An aside: interesting point Carl made about if you have too many contacts your manager might start to question whether you're being productive. Andrew McAfee wrote about the same issue in April.

Paul: yes, you added that caveat of "walking before you run;" sorry I missed that. And in a huge place like Oracle, there are indeed major gains to be made just by encouraging informal social relationships that complement the formal hierarchy.

It certainly makes things much easier in the short run to keep things inside the company since in the enterprise context the issue of security and privacy is so important.

I'd agree with Meg that the social network gives the context. A social networking solution like Connect can help people actually find relevant knowledge captured in wikis and blogs.

If you only listen to what your Oracle coworkers say is important and all your coworkers do the same thing, you could end up with a stagnant community. Might be good to get some fresh ideas in from outside.

But how do you find people outside Oracle that you trust? And how do you find relevant information? That's the hard part... and that's where maybe Enterprise 2.0 has to go if it's going to offer real value. Creating silo'ed social networks inside of big enterprises offers some value, but not transformative, explosive value.

Very cool! I'm writing a book, and here's what it's called:

Connect!

With the exclamation point and a long subtitle of course, since one-word book titles with long subtitles are in fashion right now.

But connection is the thing, isn't it? iPhone or no. (In my case, no.)

Didn't know that Common Craft had a video about social networking; I had seen the one about RSS and thought it was great.

Will be interesting to see what you guys do with your Connect while I write mine. :)

Maybe only geeks will want to wire together the RSS feeds but once they do, other people can take advantage of the remixed feeds. So you can imagine some people who just assemble pieces, some people who integrate data (via something like pipes), and some people who actually build the software that allows the data integration.

So I see this as being one more piece that puts in place the infrastructure for everyone to make mashups.

Thanks John, I'll post a question on the forum detailing the problems I had--it boiled down to not being able to see my colleagues shared calendars. I found a bug description that may have been what I was dealing with, but I couldn't be sure.

I enjoyed reading the interview--it's interesting to get another view on your life and career.

I didn't realize we both had our first children in 1996--Henry's ten now, looking at 11 in February. Can't believe he is almost a teenager. We are applying to middle schools right now. Ack!

As for frizz vs. fat--I find I can look good even when I am feeling fat--but it's hard to look good with frizz. So if I have to have one or the other, I'd choose fat too! Fortunately there are short-term fixes for frizz (though long-term they seem to make my face breakout, giving me a frizz vs. zits choice).

I guess web workers don't need to worry too much about what they look like, until video chat becomes more common. :)

Integration is a biggie, that's for sure.

I spent two hours yesterday trying to get iCal on my mac to sync with my Zimbra calendar. No joy so far. Sync'ing email and calendars shouldn't be so hard! Should be a well-understood task using defined standards. And that's just integration on a personal level... I'm sure it only gets more difficult as the organization size scales.

mecommerce looks pretty cool. I like the idea of being able to get my shopping done as I'm browsing around.

I hear you, Judi! My husband has only been out of town since Monday, but I'm exhausted.

Seems that envy is part of the human condition, since we judge how we're doing relatively and not by an absolute standard. I remind myself of that when I feel envious about someone who has more than I do, because I know if I got to where they are, then I'd just compare myself to the next higher person.

And then I get back to the fun of it all. To me, that's worth way more than a new car or millions of dollars in the bank.

I'm so glad we were able to do the podcast together--it was good for me to get my skype recording setup in place and have another chance to practice my Katie Couric imitation. Still working on that ;-)



Thanks for linking to Theikos; I was wondering how to spell that.



Tomorrow when I post the interview I'll link to this so that people can get your tips in written form. I think you did great on the interview too. I really appreciate your contribution to the project and the work that you do. My father has recently undergone treatment for prostate cancer, it appears to have been completely eradicated, but it made me pause to think about losing him. That's another one that's hard to talk about, "down there."

I'm a Mac and PC user too--my own machine is a macbook pro and I also use a Dell Latitude for one of my clients. I agree with you that they both have advantages and disadvantages, though the mac has turned out to be really good for podcasting because of garage band, iTunes, and audio hijack pro.



The big problem with the macbook is the lack of docking station. It's just not that smooth to hook it up to an external monitor. My external keyboard failed and I haven't replaced it, so my arrangement is to type on my macbook pro and use its screen for my main monitor area and then my big screen is off to the side. It's not ideal. I could probably work it out better if I invested some time and thought in it though.



Hmm, I realized there's probably a docking station for the macbook pro now. I just checked and bookendz has one. So never mind. Looks like you can now get a docking station for the 15" macbook pro.

I got a couple paragraphs into Gomes' column this morning and just quit reading. It's so ridiculous, this idea that traditional media produces only works of art and "user-generated content" always sucks.

Great set of links here. Thanks.

I prefer "participatory media" to "citizen journalism" too. Calling bloggers journalists sets them up for the kind of critique Tim O'Reilly launched last week; e.g., why didn't the bloggers who commented on the service mark issue do the same fact checking the NY Times did? Um, because we're not journalists for the most part and we don't own our own fact checking departments.

But "participatory media" doesn't quite capture it for me either. That makes it sound like some sort of interactive TV show where the audience merely gets to choose what ending is shown. I'm going to think on it some more.

Judi, I feel the same. I stopped reading TechCrunch a few weeks ago because it felt stale but I read Rachel's blog regularly, so followed what happened with the redesign.

I also hope a ton of work goes Rachel's way because of her increased visibility. I'm sure it's been painful, though.

"Reckless Banality": I wish I'd called my blog that. Great post, Mathew.

Nick: your book is a real "motherfucker"? Come again? On second thought, no thanks. Hold your fire, buddy.

If anyone's wondering why more women aren't hanging 'round these parts, there's a partial answer. I don't mind potty language, but I draw the line at phrases that suggest women are most useful as fuckable objects.

Mathew, yeah, I see your point a bit better now. VCs didn't create the bubble, I agree with that. However, whether they acted as an accelerant or a modulator... I'm not sure. In a somewhat parallel situation the current real estate bubble has been exacerbated by new types of mortgages like interest-only and 100%, that themselves are available because hedge funds have been buying up mortgage-backed securities sometimes without attention to the risk involved. Did VCs help manage risk, like you propose, or did they make the situation worse because they were playing with other people's money? I understand other countries don't have quite extensive a VC industry as we have... I'm wondering how the presence of VCs affected the bubble.

Anyway, I like looking at it through a supply-and-demand lens... that's a good thought. I blogged my own economic perspective on the current situation after reading yours.

Mathew - interesting post. Since VCs are in the middle, they influence both supply and demand. One reason there were so many dot-coms in the last bubble was the demand for them created by VCs. What do you think? Does this idea change your analysis at all? I don't completely follow why you think Dave's analysis was logically flawed, but hey, I'm no VC.

It seems like some shake-up is going to happen for VCs just because start-ups can get by with so much less money these days and because it's so much easier to get noticed now without already having the right connections. I think the market will come up with a solution, but I couldn't predict what it might be.

wow, your comments are so cool how they slide into place... i'm leaving another to watch it happen again.

I love that 1% too. I am so excited about the shift that is happening on the web. If it's not trendy to call it Web 2.0 or to think of it as a radically changed paradigm, fine. I'd rather be inspired, productive, and motivated than fashionably cynical. Cheers to Web 2.0!