Introducing the ebTDesign Forum: Expanding the Opportunities for Small Business Success

The Semantic Viewpoint RSS Forum has moved to its new home at the ebTDesign Forum which will build on next generation productivity discussion. The ebTDesign Forum will have a new expanded charter and new ways to help small businesses compete in the global marketplace. New topics like the following will be discussed regularly:

• Why is relevance management so important to small business competitiveness?
• How will the P2P Economy impact the nature of business services delivery?
• What is the difference between the IT Investment mindset and Enterprise Software Management mindset?
• How can F.I.R.M. Leadership be used to create competitive advantage and productivity lead growth?

Readers of the Semantic Viewpoint RSS Forum are encouraged to continue to follow the discussion on the ebTDesign Forum web site.

Three Broad Strategies

How to provide services to constituents is one of the most fundamental design decisions that executives must make. This most basic of all design decisions has enormous implications on the running of the business and the establishment of trust. Getting the service delivery wrong can undermine all of the team building efforts that a company may have underway. IT Investment Vehicles are capital planning and investment control tools. These tools can be used most effectively to plan for the future and communicate those plans to the company at large.

The three broad strategies are as follows:

Data-Centric IT Investment strategies are focused on maintaining the integrity and control of data. The most important goal is the accumulation of all the data under the control of one group. This is the most traditional and the most conservative IT Investment strategies.

Net-Centric IT Investment strategies are focused on supplying users with desired services upon request. The most basic tenet is that services must be distributed and raw data must flow as quickly as possible so that the users can process it at their own convenience. This is the most cost effective IT Investment strategies for service providers.

Peer-Centric IT Investment strategies are focused on the relationship and trust that users have with each other. The most basic philosophy of the Peer-Centric IT Investment strategy is that users will do what is in their own best interest at the time. These environments are built on decentralized P2P (Peer-to-Peer) Federations. Participants are free to seek value wherever they choose based on their particular needs at the moment.

Congressman Wolf at October TechDonuts: Communicating the Need for Innovation

Congressman Frank Wolf was the featured speaker at the TechDonuts meeting hosted by the NVTC Entrepreneur Center last week. He spoke at length about his concerns about the future competitiveness of American industry. He talked about the shortage of native-born students in the engineering and sciences programs. He spoke about asking a group of scientist what they believed was the current state of science and innovation in America. None of the scientists replied that we were doing okay. About forty percent said we were in a stall and the remainder said we were in decline. [1]

The Congressman also said that many Americans are unaware of this trend. During the Q&A portion of the program, I asked the panel what we could do to get the word out to the American people at large. One of the panel members did not feel that there was a problem. I then recounted a conversation I had with a foreign businessperson about the competitiveness of U.S. companies in the mobile phone industry. The foreign businessperson said some of his colleagues feel that American companies are so far behind that it is funny.

One of the other panelists chimed in that he had heard that comment before from other foreign businesspeople. He also said that foreign businesspeople are starting to poach American students with advanced degrees. The businesspeople ask students with ethnic ties to Europe, if they wouldn’t be happier returning to Europe to start their careers. In fact, one of the audience members said the Chinese have a term for it: Sea Turtles. A sea turtle is a Chinese national who studies abroad then comes home to have their children and start their businesses.

Congressman Wolf highlighted once again the need to fire up the engines of innovation in Northern Virginia. There is a need to show the world that the people in Northern Virginia have what it takes to compete in the global market place. There is a need to show that we have the will to maintain our standard of living for ourselves and future generations.

[1] This statement was also made during the announcement of the National Innovation Summit.

OASIS Announces Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) TC: The Web Services Community Can’t Wait

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) recently sent a “Call for Participation” email for the Semantic Execution Environment Technical Committee (TC). The email went out before there was a true web site or the requisite press release that accompanies all new technical committees. The only thing that was available was a place to signup and that was all that was necessary to start the ball rolling.

Word of mouth about the new semantic web services standard quickly took over. OASIS members began forwarding the “Call for Participation” email around the Internet to the groups that have been working for years to develop and implement international web services standards. The email has been received in these groups with the kind of hopeful anticipation generally reserved for birthday gifts. Meetings have been hastily planned to discuss new strategies for solving the world’s business problems using this new standard.

For those readers that haven’t seen the “Call for Participation” email, here is a short excerpt:

The OASIS SEE TC aims to continue work initiated by the WSMX project and working group and several other projects in Europe such as DIP, ASG and other projects in the area of Semantic Web Services … The aim of the SEE TC is to provide guidelines, justifications and implementation direction for an execution environment for Semantic Web Services.

Hopefully, this international web services standard will produce results. The leaders of the web services communities and the large enterprise software vendors have been promising a revolution since the latter part of 2000. It seems that the web services community can’t wait.

Global Energy Markets: A Dangerous Illusion?

ndividual countries are handling high energy prices in different ways. Some countries are subsidizing the cost of gas and oil prices and have been for quite some time. Others have been passing all the price increases on to consumers. The Washington Post article “High Oil Prices Met with Anger Worldwide” talks about the illusion of a coherent global energy market place.

The current energy situation is a disaster waiting to happen and local leaders should take action. The gas and oil prices are supposed to be set globally and uniformly. After Hurricane Katrina, there were no uniform prices throughout the US. There wasn’t even a uniform price in the greater Washington DC area. The effects of energy speculation were even more glaring than normal.

Local leaders should look for ways to foster energy policy ownership at the local level. Groups like the local “homeowner’s association” can use the peer-to-peer relationships of neighbors to create a localized energy policy. All technology adoption is local and the best solutions to global problems are often local solutions. Creating a local culture of self-sufficient energy ownership is the best way to handle the emerging energy crisis.

NVTC Fall Fusion Fest Buzz: Not Even Rain Slowed the Small Business Development Action

The Fall Fusion Fest is one of the two events each season that all the NVTC committees meet in one place. The small business development action was nonstop. The Reston Town Center Pavilion has a glass roof and is open on all sides. At the height of the event, participants felt a cooling mist drift into the Pavilion because of the substantial downpour that was taking place outside. Few, if any, stopped their pitches because of the inclement weather.

The general buzz was whipped to a fevered pitch by those members who had attended the NVTC “Meet the Capital Players” event earlier in the day. The topic of this meeting was the investment climate for Voice Over IP (VOIP). However, the event took a very interesting turn when the topic of Session Initiated Protocol (SIP) and Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) came up. SIP enables the integration of advanced phone services over VOIP and BPL could render Wi-Fi and Cable modems obsolete. BPL uses standard indoor power wires to carry data at broadband speeds over the Internet.

Bolstered by the “Meet the Capital Players” buzz, there was a lot of talk about starting the New Media Special Interest Group (SIG). A number of people, who are interested in supporting the New Media SIG, were identified. Some of them had ridden the dotcom bubble and done well. Others have current clients that are involved in new media businesses and still others were interested in modeling/simulation. There was even a delegation from the Fairfax County Computer Club House and the Fairfax County Economic Development Agency talking about the benefits of the New Media SIG. The night ended well and a new technical SIG was born.


PS: I only got elbowed a couple of times. But there was no bruising.

NVTC Fall Fusion Fest: Another Chance to Talk New Media

The NVTC Fall Fusion Fest is tomorrow. This event will provide a great opportunity to talk about the need to support small new media companies and practice hipchecking competitors into the stands. The event will be held at the Reston Town Center Pavilion at 5:30 p.m. right next to Clyde’s Restaurant. The Pavilion doubles as an ice-rink in the winter, which makes it the perfect venue to play the small business development game. The owners have taken down the boards that separate the players from the stands. So, every player is eligible to compete. See you there.