Without you I'm nothing. I was talking about my phone.

Clearing out the RSS reader over the weekend, (you still remember Google Reader, right?), and while scrolling through the out of control list of 'starred' items, I ran into two pieces having to do with mobile technology and smart phones, while seemingly unrelated, also serve as unintended companion takes as to the relentless takeover of our normal lives by our devices.

First, the links to the two pieces, and then after the jump, (Yes, I know there is no such thing as a jump. It's Wednesday. Take it easy on me.), some thoughts on how or if this might have relevance to you as a talent or technology pro.

1. From the BBC Online - Bouncers checking Facebook on phones as identification

2. From the MIT Technology Review - New App Watches Your Every Move

In the BBC piece, we hear about bouncers and doormen at a few nightclubs and bars requesting a look at some potentially underage patrons smart phones in order, (allegedly), to have a look at the would-be club-goer's Facebook page to ty and verify their age and match their name and other personal information to the ID card they presented at the door. Sort of creepy, but in a way sensible from the point of view of the bouncer.

In the MIT piece, a new location-based App called Placeme is reviewed. Placeme essentially logs and stores your comings and goings, and takes advantage of the smart phone's sensors, GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities to figure out where you go and for how long, and stores this data in a private log on the phone. No manual 'check-ins' needed, it just happens. Later, you can look back at the logs and track your activity in case you lost your debit card after a big night out, or I suppose, need some kind of an alibi.

So much of our identity is tied up in and captured by our devices, that it only seems sensible and fitting that a quick scan of someone's Facebook feed or their last few text messages would be more telling than a (perhaps dodgy) West Virginia drver's license card that looks like it might have been manufactured with an old Polaroid camera, some clear tape, and a little ingenuity. And since no one I know, (willingly), goes anywhere without their trusty iPhone or Android, then having an automatic running log of where you've been, what you've been doing, and with whom you've been doing it with, (that is probably coming), might have some utility for productivity analyses or even some kinds of self-improvement regimes. 'Why can't I lose weight? Maybe it's because all I do is go to bakeries and bars.'

For the workplace professional, some implications are pretty easy to see. Many of us already do social-media scans and checks of prospective candidates, so one day having some kind of app that candidates could install that would 'submit' or  quickly supply relevant and permissible information on the spot is not too far a stretch. And as for the Placeme app, well certainly for drivers, delivery persons, outside sales people, and more, access to a real-time and running log of movements and location-status updates would be beneficial for lots of reasons, some good, some not so good.

I guess the real takeaway, aside from some simple and kind of obvious use cases, is that while we talk all the time about how mobile is taking over the world, and have seen or even delivered presentations citing statistics about how mobile will soon become the dominant means for accessing the internet in the near future, I am not sure at all that as workplace professionals we are thinking about how mobile and smart phones are changing more common things, simple things, and even possibly changing us as people.

We take our phones everywhere. We start to break out in a cold sweat if we can't locate our phones, if even for a few minutes. The first thing we do in the morning is reach over to the night stand and check in on our phones, (don't lie like you like to, you know you do this).

With all this considered, I think the organizations and solutions that start to think more fully and carefully about these changes and their impact on people, work, and communities will be the ones that stay ahead of the game. I think there has to be more to this than simply re-purposing what we do today to 'fit' a smaller screen, or to figure out how to make phone users see and click more ads.

What do you think - is mobile truly and significantly change the way your business works? Or the way your employees want to work?

Media and Consumer Tech Trend #3 - Information Acceleration

Recently the analyst firm Gartner issued an interesting press release sharing their '10 consumer macro trends shaping the technology, media and service provider markets over the next 10 years', and I have covered two of these trends Gartner called out here on the blog. The first one, the importance of understanding the customer profile as you create products and services, and perhaps more importantly, as you make decisions on hiring and promotion into leadership roles has definite implications for the design of enterprise technologies and programs. The second, the desire for simultaneously powerful, multi-functional, but simple and easy to use solutions that are prevalent in the consumer world, is increasing in relevance in the workplace as well.

Today I wanted to wrap up this series by taking a look at one more of Gartner's '10 trends', the one titled 'The Impact of Acceleration/Deceleration: The Temporal Digital Divide Widens'. What does this mean, and why is it significant? First, more details from Gartner on this trend:

Acceleration means consumers expect regular and increasingly frequent product upgrades. Over time, there has been a closing of the classic "digital divide" between the haves and have-nots in terms of access to basic technology products and services. However, new digital divides have opened up, especially inequalities in relation to the social graph and consumers' ability to access and manage — or not manage — real-time, nonstop ubiquitous connectivity that is the product of technological acceleration.

Interesting take no doubt, but as technology, particularly mobile technologies and more specifically mobile access to the internet particularly in the developing nations has the effect of levelling the playing field at least in terms of basic access, then the next source of advantage and opportunity shifts from providing basic technology and access, to providing ways to make sense of the flood of information that has become more widely available. On the consumer side think of it this way, most everyone is online, has access to more information than has ever been available at any time in history, and more than likely is building personal social networks that span local areas, states, and nations. The answer to just about any question can be found, the problem often is actually sorting the good from the bad from the ridiculous number of options.

At work, we see similar challenges, (and opportunities). As electronic communication and digital technologies have been introduced over the last two decades, most organizations no longer have a shortage of data and information, in fact, in some cases workplaces are drowning in too much information. The problem of collecting or at least digitizing information is less and less a problem, but making sense of it all, and turning or transforming all this raw information in its many forms, (email, voice, video, documents, IM, activity streams, external social network data, and more), into relevant, meaningful, accessible, and actionable insights is the next frontier for organizations and solution providers to master. More simply put, the next set and group of more interesting future developments in workplace technologies will be the ones that help to effectively address what Gartner aptly notes in their predictions, enabling people to quickly make sense of the massive flood of digital data that better and faster transaction processing systems, cheap data storage, and increasing mobile and virtual access to it all has made available.

What do you think? Where you work is your problem lack of information, or the ability to sort through all the information you have?

Media and Consumer Tech Trend #2 - The End of Complexity

Last week the analyst firm Gartner issued an interesting press release sharing their '10 consumer macro trends shaping the technology, media and service provider markets over the next 10 years', and on Monday I blogged about one of the trends Gartner called out, the importance of understanding the customer profile as you create products and services, and perhaps more importantly, as you make decisions on hiring and promotion into leadership roles.

Today I want to hit upon another of the Gartner consumer media and tech trends, the one titled 'The Death of Complexity'. For some context, here is the take from Gartner on how in the consumer media and tech space, complexity can often be seen as a negative:

The Death of Complexity

The consumer market is becoming progressively less tolerant of complexity. Although consumers tend to buy products with ever-richer features, they often prefer those that are simple and intuitive. The ability to provide appealing and intuitive user interfaces has become a critical point of differentiation among competing technology providers. As technology becomes more complex, vendors need to invest more in keeping the user interface simple and intuitive. (Providers) therefore need to focus on simplifying technology, pricing, brand messaging, and feedback and interaction, and consider offering chargeable help services for consumers challenged by installing and configuring new equipment and services in their homes.

I know what you are thinking, that is such a no-brainer kind of viewpoint that it should not even have made a list of trends or predictions. I mean, who doesn't want simpler, easier, and more accessible technology?

Well mostly everyone, I think.

We continue to want more and more capability from our technologies while simultaneously demanding that they become easier and easier to use. And that is perfectly fine, in fact, these increasing demands and requirements are what often spur fantastic innovations and solutions. But when the 'I want the product to be simpler' desire involves giving up capability that we feel like we have a right to or that we can't do without, well then often the simple becomes the complex.

So the technology solution providers, both in the consumer space and those that build technologies designed to support enterprise users, (also becoming increasingly harder to distinguish), are challenged to balance the simplicity vs. capability ledger all the time. And while achieving the correct balance is certainly tricky, the ones that manage it most effectively are likely to stay one step ahead of the competition.

But here's the thing about simplicity, it seems to me that everyone is in favor of simpler and easier to use technologies for a little while. Until something new comes along. Something that does that 'one more thing' or has the one extra bell or whistle. And then the simple solution we loved for so long start to look, well maybe a little too simple.

Right up until the point where the tools we have can't do something that the other guy's tools can.

Media and Consumer Tech Trend #1 - Know your profile

Last week the analyst firm Gartner issued an interesting press release sharing their '10 consumer macro trends shaping the technology, media and service provider markets over the next 10 years'. The piece is worth taking a look through, even if you are (probably rightly), skeptical of any person or firm's ability to accurately or even semi-accurately being able to predict where consumer or even enterprise technologies are heading in the next decade. While we all know (or should know), that while the future of technology is likely to be dramatically different than today, we tend to plan for it in ways that are more like simple extension of the present.

But still, one trend that seems to be holding truer and truer with each passing day is the tendency and emphasis that consumer and public technologies will increasingly influence, shape, and create expectations for ease of use and flexibility for the next generation of enterprise technologies.  We have all heard the story by now - employees want enterprise solutions as fast, fun, nice to look at, and that can run on all their preferred devices, just like the solutions they use in their private and social lives. So if nothing else but for some awareness, designers and implementers of enterprise technologies should be aware of developments in the consumer technology space, as these drivers will have more and more impact on the solutions that are eventually deployed in the workplace.

So while certainly understanding that the Gartner predictions like any predictions, should be taken only at face value, I wanted to call a couple of them out this week on the blog, and offer a take or two of my own about how they might or should influence what happens in the workplace, either with the technologies themselves, or with the talent management processes surrounding the people that build these technologies.

Today, I call your attention to Gartner consumer tech and media trend #3: (below is from the Gartner release, and text in bold is my emphasis)):

Women Wanted: Unlocking Gender Opportunities

The consumer technology market is trending toward the production and marketing of more female-friendly technology products targeted at the market's single biggest demographic: women. Women are underrepresented in key job roles within the technology and media sectors. This is clearly a missed opportunity given that women typically control from 70 to 80 percent of household spending, including big-ticket items such as computers, cars and houses. T&SPs should conduct a gender audit and invest, if necessary, in recruiting suitable talent to redress underrepresentation of genders in key decision-making and creative roles

I thought this prediction was really interesting for two reasons. One, the more obvious observation that in certain markets, women drive the purchase and decision making processes to a significant extent. And two, and more compelling to HR and Talent professionals, that often women (and I think this angle can be extrapolated to any other demographic that dominates in a customer segment), do not have equal or even adequate representation in the companies and in the job roles meant to be making the decisions about what products and services to offer these customers, many or most of which are women.

From the talent management perspective this observation raises some important questions. How much does the talent inside the company need to look, think, and relate to its customers in order to build products that really resonate? And does an element of 'does this candidate understand our customers', (or at least is he/she likely to be able to understand them?),  need to be factored in to the more classic screening processes that focus on hard and more demonstrable skills and experiences.

I mean, upon closer inspection it seems kind of obvious - if you are building a product aimed at a particular market, (or at least one that is adopted by a specific market), how much do the people you hire to make the important decisions about that product need to be able to identify and relate?

Or is this just another example of a 10-year prediction we will all forget about in a years time? 

Carrying Costs

It has been ages since we had a good Zen philosophy re-set here on the blog, but when I read this piece, Empty-Handed, Full-Hearted, on the Zen Habits blog I wanted to call it out and use it to make a point more relevant to the day-to-day issues we often see in technology projects, and really, all kinds of situations in the workplace.

First off, the Zen Habits piece makes a simple, yet exceedingly hard for most of us to pull off, case for carrying less, for embarking on a journey less encumbered by all the things we think we need to take along.  From the 'Empty-Handed' piece:

We often load ourselves up when we travel, because we want to be prepared for various situations. This burden of being prepared leaves us with our arms full, unable to receive whatever is there when we arrive.

This doesn’t just apply to taking a trip, but to living each day. Each day is a journey, and we load ourselves up with material possessions, with tasks and projects, with things to read and write, with meetings and calls and texts. Our hands are full, not ready for anything new.

And I'd contend, this same kind of thinking, the need to bring everything along with us on a new journey at work, whether it is a new systems or technology project, or just a new way or strategy to approach an existing problem, often short-circuits, or at least complicates and slows down what could and should be important, impactful, and possibly breakthrough initiatives.

We almost always start everything new by framing the endeavor in what we have traditionally done in the past. We see this often in technology projects of course, where any new system's effectiveness is usually measured, (at least initially), in the context of what the old system could do, and how the existing rules, processes, and strictures were enforced. But this kind of thinking, the 'pack everything we have ever done' before we walk into something new is not limited to technologies, it seeps into all kinds of circumstances.

And in the workplace context, I understand why this is the case. The 'way the current system works' approach certainly includes, (sometimes significant), elements that are indeed essential to the successful functioning of the organization, and the achievement of business objectives.  But certainly not everything the old system did or the existing processes require fall into that category.

I submit that, mostly, we are terrible at understanding and being honest about what parts of the things we carry with us at the start of the new journey are truly essential. I think that more often than not, we kind of value all of our possessions the same, as critical to our mental and emotional well-being, and that leaving any of them behind most often feels like a loss, and not like the recovery of a bit of our freedom, and the opening up of new possibilities from the lessening of our burden.