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What makes a good presenter? August 20, 2009
To be a good presenter you must:
- Be an expert on the topic
- Use relevant examples
- Make a case
- Care about the topic
- above all, be entertaining
Ken Robinson in this presentation meets all these criteria amazingly. Watch his presentation on school creativity.
The next 100 years April 18, 2009
Most people find it difficult to predict what they will have for dinner tonight – George Friedman has a stab at the next 100 years.
George pulls a few surprises and interesting suggestions. Consider these:
2020 – fragmentation of China.
2050 – Global war between US, Turkey, Poland and Japan (the new world powers)
2080 – “Space based energy” powers the world
2100 – Mexico challenges the US
Mind you, George Friedman is not your average Nostradamus. George is chief intelligence officer and founder of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor), a private intelligence agency whose clients include foreign government agencies and Fortune 500 companies.
Without giving away too many clues of the book a number of other predictions:
– The US will remain the prime global power throughout the next century.
– Wars will be less deadly and fought in space rather then on earth.
– Turkey and Japan will become regional powerhouses as Russia and China decline.
– The US will develop three space-based weapons platforms, which Friedman calls “Battle Stars”
– By 2050, Friedman sees Japan pulling a Pearl Harbor-esque strike against the Battle Stars
The Next 100 Years presents a fascinating picture of what lies ahead.
Why does Google want to Twitter? April 7, 2009
There is a heck of a rumor that Google is interested in buying Twitter. In an era with lots of talk but no deals (MSFT-YHOO, IBM-SUN) I am not sure if this deal will pull through but WHY would Google want to buy Twitter?
News-as-it-happens is the answer. Twitter is great for searching for what is happening NOW. You feel an earthquake, hear an explosion or want to know if your favourite team scored? Changes are that a search on Twitter will give you results, Google takes a couple of hours to aggregate results.
People want as-it-happens search results and Google wants to deliver. Whether they buy Twitter or not, expect this feature to show up sometime this year.
Its Adobe March 31, 2009
Tomorrow is my fist day at Adobe. Of course we all know adobe as natural building material made from sand, clay, water and some kind of fibrous or organic material but it is also one of the largest software companies in the world.
For Adobe I will work in the EMEA enterprise partner organisation working on an effective partner program.
Adobe is a very diverse software company with a line of creative solutions (ie Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash), business solutions (LiveCycle) and developer solutions (AIR, Coldfusion, Dreamweaver). With all these products they (should I say WE now?) are doing very cool things like social applications on Facebook, Flash on mobile phones (where is the iPhone?) and rich online applications. Needless to say I am very excited to be working in the creative environment!
Click the image below to see what awesom things can be done with Adobe products:
No crisis in Enterprise Software? March 30, 2009
Press release from Gartner today: Gartner Says Worldwide Enterprise Software Market to Experience Flat Growth in 2009
In short, Gartner predicts that in 2009 the Global enterprise software market will grow 0,3% (flat) from 2008. The size of the market is almost the same as the GDP of Portugal with $222.8 billion. Gartner predicts flat growth this and next year.
I am somewhat surprised, not necessarily because I see a different reality but more so because almost every other bit of market data points to negative growth. The reality as it seems is that the enterprise software market is relatively strong because it experienced a big shake-out in 2001/2 and because the software increasing deliver on its promise of improved ROI. Especially market areas like virtualisation, open source and SaaS.
Not surprisingly Gartner points to the importance of strong partnerships for enterprise software vendors. “Aligning with partners that can provide local knowledge or industry insight will be a considerable differentiator.”. We’ll take that to heart.
By the way, first day of spring and the weather is great. I expect more good news about the crisis these days – hard to be pessimistic.
