Scoble's Web 2010 – Owen's Web 2012
I truly enjoy Robert’s perspective on Technology and Social Media, not too mention he is fun to follow on FriendFeed & Twitter too. Robert is very helpful if you approach him the right way, I find him to be respectful, approachable, a solid resource and entertaining. 🙂 In May of this year (2009) Robert Scoble posted an article on his Blog called Exploring The 2010 Web, he covers a number of points on what the 2010 Web is and or is going to be.
Here are the Attributes he listed for us,
Web 2010
1.) It’s Real-Time
2.) It’s Mobile
3.) It’s decentralized
4.) Pages now built out of pre-made blocks.
5.) It’s Social
6.) It’s Smart
7.) Hybrid Infrastructure
I linked to his article above so you can read his definitions in more detail.
Now I agree with Robert’s list for the most part with some additions, I know he knows what I’m adding is coming and he probably will be one of the first (early adopter’s) to play with the new toys. This is not an exhaustive list but you’ll get the picture of our where we are headed.
Here are my additions and I like to call,
Web 2012
1.) In 2012 you will be able to buy off the shelf a computer (device) that can compute faster than the human brain.
2.) Virtual Reality is where we will spend our leisure time
3.) We will not use keyboards, voice recognition will be our method of instructing our device’s what to do
4.) Tower’s will cease production
5.) Laptop production will be vastly reduced
6.) Wireless devices will be integrated into eye care (Glasses and Contact Lenses)
7.) iPHONE’S & BlackBerry type devices will also be greatly reduced in size
When it’s all said and done, you merge these two lists and you have considerable change ahead of us. We are entering an era where Nanotechnology and Virtual Reality will make exponential strides in development and growth, unlike anything we have ever seen. How we communicate will continue to change, communities will continue to grow as we the people take back big business.
I wonder what else might take place in the next 2 – 5 years?
Social Media won't be called Social in the near Future
I was unable to attend BlogWorld EXPO 2009 in Las Vegas this week but it was streamed on a site called Mycontent.com, the service worked very well yesterday but day two was not smooth at all, but the audio was rock solid. So I watched from a far, the real stuff happens after and in between the sessions and of course all the after parties. The meetings after the meeting so to speak. I would love to have been a fly on the wall at many but technology hasn’t made it possible to be in two or three places at once just yet.
This event was chalked full of amazing people sharing and encouraging all of us, but also to help one another, to work together, and build each other up rather than put down and tear down. Chris Brogan as usual brings it with such authority and conviction, he works hard to relate all that he has learned, not from books, from his experiences. Chris doesn’t just preach, he has done or has walked through the experience of what he shares, either himself or a client he was helping. One of my favorite quotes from Chris’s Keynote was, ” Equip the people you want to do business with and they will want to do business with you “. Most people are always thinking about what they can get out of a given relationship or interaction, what I take from Chris is the opposite, help without getting first, then in time you will be rewarded at some level. This does not mean you will get money every time you get something back, it may be in the form of recognition, praise and or being referred to as a trust agent.
I struggle with these major events because there are so many of them and I can’t afford to attend all of them, not always because of cost but because of location and time. I also recognize that you don’t get as much out of the speakers and sessions unless you are actually attending, watching on the Internet doesn’t do any of these events justice in my humble opinion.
An announcement made today on the first panel of day two; State of the Blogosphere Address: Richard Jalichandra & Opening Keynote Address: The Death and Rebirth of Journalism, The announcement was this, Everytime you tweet #beatcancer in the next 24 hours a donation is made by BWE09 (Blogworld EXPO 2009), Tweet’s like this one are choking the Twitter fire-hose:
@scottmonty The organizers of #bwe09 are trying for a world record. RT #beatcancer to raise $ to beat cancer.
There is another shift taking place and it’s the new name of Social Media, it won’t be called Social in the near future or from this event forward, the new name will be….The New Media! This name will represent all types of media, not just the online world but traditional media as well. We’ll see how it takes. Until next time.
Are Real Estate Agents Obsolete?
I’ve met with a number of Real Estate Agents and Broker’s the past few months and I’m not surprised they view Social Media as a waste of time. Don’t get me wrong, I have found a few that get it, they have taken the risk and setup virtual offices and even opened accounts with FaceBook & Twitter. Some use these Social networks well and some just say they use them effectively, my research here in Canada reveals that most aren’t practicing what they preach.
I’ve made recommendations and suggested radical approaches to how an agent prospects and wastes a huge amount of time with tire kickers at open house events. They look at me with those puppy eyes and say I couldn’t do that, I don’t know how, that sounds like too much work. I think it’s harder the way they do things now, but they’re stuck! If you’re an agent or a broker that’s been in the industry longer than 10 years, you may have a tougher time making the paradigm shift. I’m not saying you can’t or don’t have the ability, but I am saying if you don’t, life is going to get very interesting when the new tech savvy up and comers produce at a high level with a very different kind of effort. How will you compete and survive?
Let me give you an example of one thing you could do and have fun doing it. I’ll look at the old school traditional agent first, then the new tech savvy agent.
Old School Agent
The old school agent would sit on the phone rounding up prospects for hours on end, then would set up 4 or 5 walk abouts and even a few open house events two weekends in a row. A lot of time and effort goes into this type of selling, hard work is important but with today’s technology why would you do this? Organizing and worrying about how may or may not show up, worse yet, having to go and pick them to ensure you do have a prospect. Getting flier’s out and setting up sign’s, the list goes on. The advertising costs can be staggering too, time spent networking, convincing people they should come and see this house and so on.
The New Tech Savvy Agent
The new tech savvy agent sits at the desk and decides which homes to work on this week, then prepares how they would sell the dream of the home on video. This agent goes out and buys a Flip MinoHD Camcorder 2nd Generation
This new agent let’s the prospect qualify themselves and let’s them contact him or her when they’re ready, this agent is thinking about the prospect not themselves.
As you can see the new tech savvy agent takes a different risk, invests their time giving what prospects want and then makes it ridiculously easy for them. The prospect that calls the new tech savvy agent back just qualified themselves, less work than the old school way of handling the same task. This is just one opportunity to start making the shift to Real Estate Selling with Social Media, if you don’t take baby steps now and don’t learn how to do some of these techie things. I have to wonder if Real Estate Brokers won’t become obsolete, Broker / Owners at some point will figure out they can handle inventory in a less complicated way. By the way, people complicate things not flip cams and iPhones.
Are Real Estate Agents Obsolete? Maybe not yet, and maybe not all, but more than you think.
I.T. Strategic Planning – ANALYSIS: Observations
This technically could be the last section of your plan, this is where you take a high level look at the plan and existing challenges that may hamper your ability to deliver on any said item. Depending on who and how I.T. decisions are made in your organization could literally dismantle your strategy on many levels. I wrote on this topic back June 2009, it’s called I.T. Decisions – Who Makes Them In Your Organization?
Once you’ve finished this section you can then do an Executive Summary for the purposes of presenting to your Executive Team and or Board of Directors. Here is a short hypothetical example of this section:
PLANNING OBSERVATIONS
A one year planning and budgeting cycle creates significant difficulties for the I.T. Department to execute the early stages of this plan.
- Hardware and software have to be upgraded or replaced regularly, either to take advantage of newer technologies or reduce maintenance fees. However, sometimes an upgrade would make long term sense but cannot be done because it is too large for a one year budget. This has resulted in a series of sub-optimal short term purchasing decisions being made.
- Recent budget cuts have forced a multi-year upgrade schedule to be differed resulting in perpetually out-of-date technology.
- Many projects take longer than one year to complete and require both tools and personnel at the start-up stage, but will not see significant results until the subsequent year.
- A new service is anticipated to be required by a department in a future year but the department lacks sufficient budget or approval to such an expenditure; however, there might be sufficient lead time for IT to prepare the infrastructure; does IT ” risk it ” and build the infrastructure anyway?
That’s just snippet of what you might put in this Planning Observations section, I suggest you pull your top three together to ensure you are covering the critical issues. You’ll want your IT leaders to be in the loop especially if you are seeking additional budget and it gets rejected, they may be able to assist you with other creative ways to turn the rejection around.
Happy Planning…
Gary Vaynerchuk's New Book – CRUSH IT! is on the Shelves Today!
I can’t help myself, I have to promote this book! Gary’s new book hit the shelves today, if you don’t know him, you’re missing on something. This book screams of passion and the message is simple to understand,
” Why NOW is the time to CRUSH IT! Cash in on your Passion “!
Here is a video that sums up why Gary wrote the book, Live Long & Prosper are words that come to mind : )