Is the iPad a glimpse of what future computing will be like?

I just got an iPad and I have to admit this is what computing should be like. I know there will be those who despise Apple products. However it is not because the iPad is made by Apple that makes me think this. It is because of how it performs and functions.

In simple terms I think this because

• it turns on instantly. None of this MS Windows or Mac booting and sitting around twiddling your thumbs with the iPad;
• you don't have to get into the bowls of it and be an amateur techie to get things working or fixed
• using the applications is intuitive and you can work it out without fear of crashing your machine or getting some technical configuration dialog up;
• using touch to get things done is fast and again intuitive;
• it is a good size and weight. Not too big, not too small and not too heavy.

What convinced me even more of this is that my wife uses it and likes to use it. My wife is not a technology fan and hates PCs and electronic gadgets in general. She thinks the iPad is quick and convenient as she can use it whenever and wherever she wants and needs it. If we fancy seeing a movie we can just turn it on and check the cinema listings in the kitchen. Just like picking up the listings from the paper.

Another incident that convinced me was when I was using my laptop and my youngest wanted to do things by touching the screen. To this two year old it was the obvious thing to do and the keyboard was not.

So these are some of the reasons I think, and hope, the iPad is the future of what computing will look like and perform like.

I haven't yet tried to use it to read a book yet so it may not replace everything just yet.

One final point is that I wrote this blog on the iPad at a time convenient to me and it was a breeze.

Footnote (Nothing is perfect)
(1) iTunes needs sorting though. Having all you iPhone and iPad apps in one list is not user friendly. Maybe this is due it being an PC/Mac application ;-)
(2) I have to admit that I had to post the blog from my laptop as the Blogger editor doesn't yet appear to work on the iPad Safari browser.

What if kids ran your business

I was watching television the other day and saw the advert for Andrex toilet tissue where they have a baby running the company.

It made me recall a conversation I had with my 6 year old daughter some time back were she wanted to do something the next day but we had other plans. I said to her “There are lots of things Daddy wants to do but he can't” as I pictured some of the dreams and ambitions I have had and still have. Some fulfilled and others not. I will always remember her reply to me “Why not?” The innocence of a child I thought whose world has not been set any boundaries as to what can and cannot be done.

On another occasion I got a great piece of advice from someone who told me “to get your point across to any audience write it in 2 or 3 sentences as though explaining it to a 6 year old”. A piece of advice I have used since and it works. Try it especially if you want someone to explain something to you. It is challenging but the results are worth it.

So this got me thinking I wonder what it would be like if we got some children still at school into the working environment and told them what we do and challenges we have and asked them what they would do to resolve them?

For example I wondered how my daughter would get an organisation to embrace Enterprise Architecture. So I asked “how would you get someone to build something in a way you wanted them to do it”. She replied “I would build it first so that they could copy it”

I then asked “What would you do if they would not copy it?” and she said “Find some other people to copy it”

Sounds like she is creating a stakeholder power map without knowing it.......

I wonder what possibilities would be created if we thought in the same curious, inventive and unbounded mind of children? Are they the great untapped innovators?

Next time you have a challenge approach it with a view that no idea is a bad idea and break down those perceived barriers you have built up over time.

Footnote – Is Bob the Builder an Enterprise Architect? The other day my daughter said to me “Before you start anything you need to have a plan of what you want to do and how to do it. Just like Bob the Builder” Is she an Enterprise Architect in the making.......

Open Business

I have entitled this post Open Business. It could quite easily be titled Open Government, Government 2.0, Open Insurance, Open Retail, Open any business for that matter. So for the purposes of my thoughts here today I have made it generic and called it Open Business.

I was thinking of actually calling it Open Enterprise which then got me thinking. If I was going to call this Open Enterprise and now I am calling it Open Business should we bite the bullet and get rid of the term Enterprise Architecture and call it Business Architecture. It is the architecture of a business after all. Let it encompass all the layers of an Enterprise Architecture that we have today – business, application and technology. Maybe call the layers something like operation, application and technology layers of an organisations Business Architecture? Operation may not be the best term but hopefully you understanding what I am trying to saying. It may help to get rid of the stigma of IT not being part of a business when it is. Something I have written about previously in you never here of business/finance alignment. Anyway that is maybe for another discussion.

The purpose of this posting is around opening up an organisations knowledge capital to allow others to create innovative and exciting value from it. The United States Government has an initiative on-going at present, data.gov, to provide access to government data for others to use and create innovative and exciting applications. The UK Government is doing a similar thing with data.gov.uk as part of Smarter Government. We all know how google maps is changing the way we find out where places are and how to get to them both on the Internet and on smart devices such as the iPhone. Is there a website with a location service on it anywhere that doesn't use Google Maps these days?

This is all good stuff and there are some really innovative and exciting opportunities being created. I love Google Maps on the iPhone with the overlay of traffic data hot spots. Information is important, see Wisdom Hierarchy. However the one thing that strikes me about this is it just providing information.

For me the real opportunities are in governments and organizations that not only provide access to the information that they hold, they also provide access to core business services and functions that they perform. In simple IT terms a set of business application programming interfaces (APIs). This, coupled with access to an organizations information, will provide really ground breaking innovative applications for consumers.

Imagine a world where you can go to book a holiday from a site called YourPerfectHoliday.com (I made this up and the domain is for sale...). It takes in your personal information of where you have been, what you like to read and watch, integrates that with information from travel companies on what destinations may match what you like and then offers a set of option. You select an option and it makes the booking direct from the site with the company offering the holiday. It also books any transfers and train ticket. This is because that company has not only provide access to its data it has provided an API for others to use. So have the train companies to book train tickets and airline companies for flights. You don't have to book them individually and you don't need an administrative person doing the bookings in the background manually.

This is only a simple example but the possibilities for consumers are immense. More choice and value. For the organizations that provide the information and APIs it offers many more avenues for access to the services they provide rather than people having to go to them directly.

Imagine the possibilities if government not only offered access to its information but also provide APIs to allow you to claim benefits, tax your car and renew your passport. The opportunities seem endless.

So to me Open Business is not just opening up access to information but also to core business services and functions to provide innovative transactional opportunities. Roll on Open Business

Innovation Speed Dating

Recently I was traveling on a train reading some papers for an innovation workshop I was attending. In the papers there was a press release, from a leading newspaper website, taking about a recent new service that had been implemented. It even included quotes from satisfied users of the service and people within the organization. I thought things have been moving fast in the last couple of months because I don't recall this being implemented or even being discussed. Had I lost my finger on the pulse. I then glanced to the top of the page and noticed the date of the press release was 2011! Ah I thought this is a mock up of the possibilities the innovation workshop could achieve. It got my attention.

So the innovation workshop commenced following a short intro of the objectives it was straight into the first of three themes to brainstorm. We brainstormed and threw out ideas that stimulated other ideas for 20 minutes then it was over. We agreed as a group our top 3 ideas and fed this back in 5 minutes. Then onto the next theme in the same format. At the end all the ideas where collated and we are going to vote on the top three to take forward.

It was like Innovation Speed Dating.

However it got result and some really interesting ideas were discussed. You could see the passion in people as an idea took hold and the possibilities became apparent. Some of the ideas I had never thought of myself. But when but forward were inspirational, inspiring and sometimes so obvious. Some of these may have been missed if we had gone down the traditional waterfall approach of requirements produced and then IT respond with a solution.

This was also innovation brainstorming as an organization not as the business or IT we were working as a group of individuals adding value to the organization as a whole. Something I am passionate about and talked about in my post on you never hear of business and finance alignment.

Technology is pervasive these days. Most people have a hotmail, gmail, yahoo mail personal email account. They use facebook, online banking, shopping etc. They can see what IT can do and with a little nudge, through innovation speed dating, are able to find new business value enabling services using some of the IT approaches and services they use everyday in their daily lives.

IT solutions are no longer the domain of a few geeks talking a foreign language in white coats in a basement. This workshop reinforces why I believe my vision of Real End User Computing is achievable

The workshop was inspiring.

However before I get carried away I am not advocating this is all you need to do to generate new ideas and make them a reality. You still to need to ensure that they produce a coherent whole, create enabling capabilities that could be used elsewhere in other ideas, for example process management capabilities. You don't want to end up building vertical silo ideas, services and capabilities. Who wants to end up with three process management capabilities with 3 times the implementation and operating/maintenance costs. Not good.

So you need to ensure all this is underpinned by good old Enterprise Architecture models, frameworks and governance. These will help to turn prototypes into pilots into full scale services. If we don't do this there will be anarchy. A good post by The Enterprising Architect on Is Architecture the Enemy of Innovation shows how the two can and should work together

This workshop was simple to setup and execute but was exciting, interesting and inspiring. I am really looking forward to seeing some of the ideas being taken forward and to the next innovation speed dating workshop.