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David Lavenda 652 days ago
Yes, it is our time. Mine, yours and everyone else's. It has been almost a year since I last posted – things have been busy…and busy is good. I have spent the last few months speaking a lot with prospects, customers, analysts, journalists, partner, and anyone else who doesn’t fit in one of those categories. We have made some significant announcements in the last few months (http://www.myworklight.com/) and subsequently, there has been a lot of interest in what we are doing. I have spoken to many, many interested and inquisitive people. I have learned a lot from these people and for that, I am genuinely grateful for the time, the attention and the feedback. This is a part of my job that I truly cherish. Which is why I am genuinely shocked when someone attends a briefing thinking they are doing me a favor for taking my meeting or phone call. For these folks I offer the following advice: Tips for A Professional Briefing My staff and I spend copious time researching who ...
David Lavenda 1006 days ago
I have just returned from a whirlwind two-week trip. 22,000 miles in 14 days. Lots of time spent in airports waiting for cancelled flights. The high point was our company launch at DEMO 07 in Desert Palm, CA. (See the demo at http://www.demo.com/demonstrators/demo2007/91349.php) It was a lot of fun. Preparing for the conference was a lot of work, but the feedback has been extremely positive, so it was more than worth it. The absolute low point was being in Chicago and watching the Bears lose (in -27 wind chill weather). In contrast to the congeniality of the show, I was really shocked by the rudeness of some of the bloggers who "covered" the show. There were so many stupid comments about things that had nothing to do with the conference. Bloggers wrote about what clothes the presenters wore, mocked the terms they used (one guy had a really tough time with the term "long tail"), and generally downplayed what was being shown on stage. Once I noticed it, it ...
David Lavenda 1063 days ago
At a recent Web 2.0 conference, a speaker asked the audience how many people checked email as their first activity of the day? About 3/4 of the hands in the audience went up. When asked how many check email as their last activity of the day, even more hands went up. These are the kind of folks who blog their way through their children's birthday parties and family reunions; these are the kind of folks who are emailing via their Blackberries when they are in the bathroom. In short, these are the folks who are ALWAYS on. So why is it, I wonder, was there so little blogging activity over the Christmas weekend? Most of the blogs around the Web 2.0 space were surprisingly silent over this past weekend. Is it because we were able to truly "step away from the browsers and PDAs and put our hands in the air" for several days. Is it because we were busy enjoying our family and friends, spending time with the kids, or reflecting about the past year and thinking of the year to come? ...
David Lavenda 1064 days ago
After years in the enterprise software space, I am still amazed by the excitement generated around the "possibilities" of new technologies (look at Gartner's ongoing hype cycles), with less initial focus on exactly where can the technology solve a really difficult problem. In regard to Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0, I am not convinced that for many companies, wikis and blogs will not solve email proliferation, storage, or content management problems. Large companies typically have email 'policies' that are intended to solve this problem (I worked with an email trainer from a large company once and she explained exactly how it is was supposed to work in her company - pretty scary stuff). People largely ignore these and continue to spray emails all over the place. At some point, most companies will have 'wiki policies' and 'blog policies' and these will likely be ignored as well. The new technology will not change the balance of authority in companies any more than email did (or ...
David Lavenda 1077 days ago
Writing from the LeWeb3 conference in France, I am amazed by the lack of regard the organizers have for the conference attendees. Having spent thousands of Euros or Dollars or Pounds, the attendees traveled to Paris in the winter to hear about web 2.0 topics. Instead of presenting the advertised fare, the organizers have turned this conference into a parade of politicians that have very little relevance to web 2.0. Shimon Peres spoke this morning about world peace....and the Internet, and now, we are being treated to a parade of French presedential candidates, speaking mainly in French. What about the 400-500 attendees who are not French and who could care less? The organizers seems more interested in the fact that someone is paying attention to the conference than in the conference topic itself. Ironically, as the presenters debate whether traditional media is irrelevant, the TV trucks roll up outside the convention hall, the TV correspodents replace the bloggers onstage, and ...
