Ten Year Check-in

A lot can happen in ten years.

For this writer in April 2000, reading The Cluetrain Manifesto was a kind of awakening; the literary equivalent of industrial grade smelling salts being rammed up my nose with the delicacy of a pile-driver. It propelled me first into the Cluetrain email discussion group (back when email was all the rage) and then into blogs (this one, in fact) and friendships around the world which still persist if only as embers today.

Re-reading the 95 theses, it's amazing how prophetic many of them were; remember this was back in 1999 and long before blogs, Twitter and Facebook had commandeered the western world's collective ability to think.

But enough of the past. Two things that sparked my imagination into life this April, I read only yesterday. 

• One of them was about the supposed yearning for the iPad (what else?) - Fake Steve Jobs and his Open Letter To The People Of The World which is more profound than it might at first seem.

• And another was about how empires always collapse in on themselves under the weight of their own existence- Clay Shirky's wonderful piece; The Collapse of Complex Business Models

Two good starts to another ten years of change and wonder.

At Last

I've been blogging here on and off for nine years. Whilst the frequency of update these days is somewhat down on its prime, what with it having to compete with a combination of Facebook and Twitter as well as my changing personal and professional circumstances, it's still here.

Long time readers will however note in this post a tone of real satisfaction with the news today that I'm leaving Microsoft to join a fresh and sparky new start-up which will allow me to finally combine my passion for emerging technologies and my twenty years of experience in the typically more staid accounting software arena.

I'll be joining Xero as their new UK MD in August and, frankly, I can't wait. That said, I will miss Microsoft. Some kool-kids still think that it's fashionable to knock Microsoft, indeed I've occasionally done that very thing on this blog down the years.

But having had the privilege of spending two years inside the business, I do see the company in quite a different light than before. And I doubt I'll ever work with more talented, driven and capable people as many of whom I've had the pleasure of working with here.

That it's the largest, most successful software business on the planet is neither a fluke nor the clichéd, ill-gotten result of its out-and-out desire to win (which in the past has cost it more than won), but that it succeeds in hiring some of the best talent around.

A Very Hard Reset

As inconsistent as this blog has become in the respects of its frequency of update and the random nature of its content; it naturally follows that it feels quite appropriate for me write something timely and about the only thing that passes for news these days. Briefly, I should disclaim. And in a strictly observational sense.

I think that this statistically articulated economic recessionary phase is neither a recession nor a phase. There will be no return to normal or the way it was; there will be no perfectly cosine curved upswing starting in 2010. We're looking at an entirely different sheet of graph paper now. This is a game-changer. And only when we come to terms with this, will we be able to get a clue about how we move forwards.

A consequence of this big reset - besides the inevitable economic hardship and the involuntary, enforced reacquaintance with the basic principles of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs for not a few unfortunate souls, will be the erosion and in some cases the rapid collapse of the foundations of the old world structures. Whether these structures used to house corrupted financial institutions - corrupted either of vision or fiduciary integrity - entire categories of manufacture; such as the automobile industry, or popular technological paradigms; they're going. And that's a good thing. Gravity always wins.

Technology is the one I'm best qualified to comment about. And so, I think that I detect a forthcoming quickening. A slow-to-start but ultimately very profound shift that would never have occurred if in an economic sense, the next five years were to be a straight line projection of the last five but one.

Using the new economic camouflage afforded to them by of this so-called recession, the smarter players will re-engineer their businesses and make once precipitous decisions they would have considered taboo in 2005. All bets are off now.

But the key is that the new technological landscape that will slowly assert itself will be inhabited by the smart. And that 'smart' thing is a very important qualifier.

If either by quirk of genius, guile or happenstance should you find yourself at the helm of a new or old technology company whose new gig is (delete as appropriate) cool, Web 2.0, LAMP, .net, social media, SaaS, Twitter-API, iPhone, cloud.....based, then that I am sure, will not be enough.

Smart is an even greater leveller than any economic kerfuffle could ever be.