By 2015, you'd better be a content creator

I peeled my eyes away long enough from the ongoing drama at Rutgers University (by the way, catch a special HR Happy Hour Show on all things Rutgers here), to catch the news that market research and analyst firm IDC is predicting that by 2015 global shipments of tablet devices are expected to overtake shipments of PCs.

Here are the specifics of what IDC is forecasting for tablets and PCs as reported by Bloomberg:

Tablet shipments are projected to grow 45 percent from this year to reach 332.4 million in 2015, compared with an estimated 322.7 million for PCs, according to Framingham, Massachusetts-based IDC. PC shipments may decline 7.8 percent this year, the worst annual drop on record, the researcher said, a revision from its prior projection for a 1.3 percent decrease.

Pretty interesting if not terribly surprising I suppose. Just think about how much personal computing (taken generally) has changed since the introduction of the first iPad just a few years ago. Chances are you or someone in your family, or maybe everyone in your family, had jumped into the tablet craze. And why not? Tables are fantastic for watching movies on the plane, checking up on your social networks, playing games, and sure, tapping out that odd email or two when you are on the road or on a plane.

Pretty obvious right? But worth repeating and thinking about what this means. Hers is more from the Bloomberg piece:

More portable, affordable and backed by hundreds of thousands of applications, tablets are replacing PCs as consumers’ main tool for checking e-mail, browsing websites and accessing music and movies.

Read it again and think about what, so far, you and pretty much everyone else does with a tablet. You sit back. You relax maybe. You have the TV on while you are messing with your iPad. You consume. Movies, books, your friend's updates on Facebook. Sure you might send the odd email or two, but you probably read 10 more for every one you actually create and send.

If the trends in the growth of tablet shipments that IDC predicts are accurate, then in just a couple of years more personal devices that are primarily oriented on consuming content will hit the market than ones whose primary purpose is creating content. All the content that you and me and most working stiffs create, even boring content like spreadsheets and slide decks, (that pay the bills for lots of us), are created on PCs. Even 'creative' stuff like blog posts (other blogs I mean), and graphics and podcast and video editing - all done on PCs or more powerful machines.

To date, hardly anything is created on tablets. That doesn't mean they aren't amazing tools and certainly the growth and trends indicate the market values the form factor and capability. But mostly, and probably for a while, they will exist for personal and business use cases as consumption devices.

And by 2015 and beyond, with more and more of these consumption devices out in the world it seems to me the place you want to be isn't sitting back on the couch consuming right along with everyone else. It seems to me the place you want to be is on the content creation side.

I think you want to be the person pushing content and value (and hopefully getting paid for it), to these millions and millions of consumption devices.

But that is just my opinion.

Written on a PC.

PowerPoint for the iPad? Well that's no fun.

Lots of chatter in the tech news and blogosphere this week about the possible launch of an iPad version of Microsoft Office.  First the news of the Office for iPad was broken by The Daily, denied, (kind of), by Microsoft, examined in more detail by ZDNet, then reconfirmed on Twitter by a staff member at The Daily. And I am sure there were lots of other takes on the potential release of Office for the iPad, most of which making it seem like it is not a question of if Microsoft will release the iPad version of Office, but rather when the apps will be released.Source - The Daily

So based on the evidence, and the sort of non-denial denial from Microsoft, let's assume that indeed in the 'coming weeks' there will be a release of MS Office for the iPad. Most of the accounts about this possible new Office version herald this development as a positive one, both for Microsoft, essentially absent to this point in the rapid rise of the tablet ecosystem, and also for the millions of iPad users that now can become 'more productive' now that the ubiquitous Office suite will have a native iPad version.

But for me, I have to admit I don't feel all that excited about having Excel, Word, or PowerPoint on the iPad. Even assuming that the iPad versions of these workplace stalwarts manage to leverage the best capabilities and usability features that the iPad offers, you are still crunching spreadsheets, writing (boring) documents, and futzing around with another PowerPoint. You know, working. And work, sadly, is often not much fun. And perhaps through no fault of their own, Excel and PowerPoint take a lot of reflected shrapnel for that if you get my meaning.

People love their iPads because they are fun, (assuming you can mentally set aside how they are actually manufactured, but that is another story), they provide an amazing user experience, and mostly what you do with them either isn't work, or doesn't feel like work. It just seems cool, hip, easy. Not words we often associate with work. Especially when work takes the form of spreadsheets and slide decks.

So when MS Office for the iPad comes out will I rush to load it up? Probably not. But I imagine I will eventually succumb, as the allure and utility of being able to tweak that presentation file on the iPad when sitting in the airport will prove too tempting and seem too necessary. It's work right? Need to get 'er done whenever and wherever.

I just hope I won't have to drop Angry Birds to make room for Excel. Because that would really stink. 

Where's the Employee Handbook again?

Although I recently took a bit of a swipe at the Apple iPad, even I would be foolish to deny the current and certainly near-future impact that the iPad and increasingly other tablet devices like the BlackBerry PlayBook and even the Motorola Xoom will have on the enterprise IT landscape.BlackBerry PlayBook

Whether it is the potential for Apple to support the creation of restricted and IT-managed enterprise App stores, the emergence of third-party tools to facilitate the development and distribution of company created and approved apps, or the likely shift from one size fits all enterprise portals to more individually created and defined tablet or smartphone environments, there is clearly a growing trend towards more specialization, personalization, and well, I hate to say it again, consumerization of enterprise systems.

With the continuing proliferation of smartphone ownership in the US and elsewhere, and the preferred and accepted means for accessing, consuming, and creating content on these devices (and their tablet cousins), it seems apparent that any forward-thinking organization would start to strategize and develop its own response to this 'appification' of information consumption. 

When an employee sends an email or makes a call to the HR support desk because they can't seem to locate a copy of the company bereavement leave policy, (leaving aside the certainly questionable decision to even have such a policy, 'two days for an Uncle' - absurd), the typical response from the HR administrator will almost certainly be one of the following:

1. All the HR policies can be found on the shared Network drive, just navigate to:

J:/Corporate/Resources/Employee Resources/Information/Policy/Staff/PTO/Bereavement.doc

2. The bereavement policy is sub-bullet 4 of the overall Time-Off Policy, just find the PTO policy. If you don't want to page down through all 39 pages, just do a search for 'death'

3. The bereavement policy is in the Employee Handbook you were given on your first day.  What's that? You started in 1997?  You didn't save your copy? 

4. What is your email? I can email you the latest copy of the policy.  Make sure to archive it though, since the file is 8MB, it will take a big chunk out of your email storage allotment.

You get the idea.  While many forward thinking organizations have rightfully moved beyond this state of affairs and deployed searchable, personalized portals for employees, even more haven't.  For those organizations still struggling with file shares, dead Sharepoint installs, and mainly sending file attachments around in email; the next few years will present both a choice and a challenge.

Figure out a way to adopt yesterday's technologies to solve today's problems, or try to see past the current state, anticipate both where the market for tablets and smartphones is heading, coupled with the needs of your anticipated workforce mix (will they be more geographically diverse, more mobile, younger), and develop and deploy technologies and more accurately, build methods to support your organizations with the needed information how and where they are most apt to consume it effectively and efficiently.

In three years when that same employee rings up asking 'Where can I find the bereavement policy?', chances are the savviest HR organizations will answer:

Employee Policies?  There's an app for that.  It should be on the home screen of your PlayBook. Open up the app, and search for 'ludicrous', it should take you straight there.