the executive summary:
Nutshell: if you’re a law firm considering hiring me, and you stumble across this blog, please don’t get nervous. Instead, talk to me, and/or read the rest of this post. I’m eager to explain why I blog, and why I think it may make me a better lawyer and a good addition to your firm.
[Image by Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void fame; used with permission under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 1.0 license. For more on why Hugh licenses his images this way, see here.]
the full story:
Almost every time I see authors of traditional desktop office suites talking about web-based office suites, it is patently obvious that they haven’t read The Innovator’s Dilemma. (It isn’t just Michael; he just happens to be the latest example.) If you’re interested in innovation at all, do yourself a favor and read the book. No matter what you do in ‘innovation’ (create, manage, market, whatever) you’ll never look at your product or your competitors the same way again.
If you’re a Linux developer, the nutshell version of Innovator’s Dilemma should be familiar- the incumbent saying ‘this upstart is too immature/is too niche/doesn’t have enough features/isn’t ‘enterprisey’ enough so they’ll never take over our market’. And then the incumbent wakes up one morning with all the very immature mice feasting on its dinosaur carcass, as those mice have evolved much more quickly and gained a nimbleness and power the dinosaur could not possibly have imagined. It isn’t just coincidence; there are good structural reasons why this happens repeatedly, and the book explains them well. (Wikipedia has a good list of mice and dinosaurs, many of which are discussed in more detail in the book.)
This isn’t to say there are any guarantees about web-based suites taking over the market; web-based office suites have merely most (not all) of the the signs of disruptive innovation. But the core signs are there. So if you’re in the space, and you haven’t read the book, go do it before you write anything else on the subject. Not only will you be more competent next time you write publicly about it, you might just get some ideas that will help stop the mice who are merrily nipping at your dinosaur feet.
[Hint: it isn't just for office suites... if you're writing a desktop app or desktop development platform of any sort, you should be reading Innovator's Dilemma and figuring out exactly what you're bringing to the table against web apps and the web app platform- how are you going to stop yourself from being disrupted by them? If you can't answer that question, you might want to think twice before writing more desktop apps or another desktop platform; if you can answer that question and can act on the answer, then you're better positioned than most of your competitors- congrats.]
If you live in or around New York, and you’re interested in info/tech/’cyber’ law events, you should check out nycinfolaw.org. What was a drunken brainstorm about a year ago has turned into a calendar and mailing list- nothing fancy, but the important bits are there. The primary goal is to take the fractured events all over the city (of which there are many) and get them in one place, so that we can cross-pollinate and increase interest and attendance. I also hope people in the area actually start talking about issues (ala the cyberprofs list, but less exclusive). We’ll see if that happens :) Either way, if you’re in the area and interested in these issues, sign up and hopefully we’ll see you around.
Part two of my Deep Fried Bytes podcast is up. I had a good time doing these; hope people have a good time listening to them.
Good friends know I’m a politics junkie. So I’m struggling this morning to reprogram my brain not to type http://pollster.com/blogs/ every 3-5 minutes. (XKCD, as usual, is on point.) I usually use a hacked up greasemonkey script for this, but today someone pointed me at leechblock, which looks completely awesome- lets you say ‘for this group of sites, if I go to them during this period of time, instead redirect me to something more useful.’ So, for example, will now block me from using my blog reader after 9am, and going to individual blogs or planets as well. I know other friends have this problem, so here you are. :)
Relatedly, my identi.ca posts are now getting filtered out to twitter and from there to facebook. I’m not really a fan of the conversational nature of these tools- if I’d wanted to have conversations/interrupts all day long I would have continued to use IRC. So I refuse to check any of the sites regularly, or use a tool that pops them up like an IM. That said, it seems obvious that if I participate in them at all as an author-publisher I’m going to continue to get interesting and sometimes very useful responses. (My election-morning dents garnered replies that included what would have been an interesting party invite and a strong memory from an old friend, but I didn’t see either until nearly 48 hours later.)
So here is the question- is there some sort of ‘delayed twit’ tool that will gather responses from identi.ca/twitter/facebook every… dunno, hourly or twice daily or something, and email them to me? I guess I can use one of the rss2email scripts, but if there is something more elegant, I’d love to know. (Yes, I know email is another form of interrupt, but it is one, centralized form of interrupt which I have decent tools for dealing with already.)
The Times has a really terrific visualization of the change in voting patterns from 2004. If you want to understand what happened last night, politically, going through this data seems like a critical place to start.
I voted; polling place was mad though not quite mad enough to make for dramatic, blog-worthy pictures ;) We got in the wrong line at first. Might well have spent an hour in that line had someone else not mentioned we were in the wrong line. Turns out that our line was the shortest line in the whole place; we were in and out in about 15 minutes. All the gain, little of the pain.
cwoodruff of deepfriedbytes told me on twitter: “this will be a record turnout which shows how good people can get away from TV and celebrity gossip to do something good” I’ve long had faith that the American people can be trusted to (eventually) do the right thing; it is great to see that in action today, and even better that it seems to be mostly for the right reasons.
At any rate, we can be pretty sure what the outcome will be, but whoever you support (I voted both Working Families and Republican today (against a complacent, corrupt-ish incumbent)) I urge you to get out and vote- the energy out there should be hearten you about the future, regardless of your leanings.
My journal’s blog (recently relaunched, slowly building up momentum) has a good piece on the interactions between the McCain campaign and IP law. Good background for those curious about the issue- how does he fit with YouTube? Does he have to listen when they say he can’t play Barracuda anymore?
This is a little ridiculous. Flattering, but ridiculous. :) (Seriously, a good example of the rationale behind the deletionist position- some articles just don’t get enough ‘eyes’ to fix their errors. I think I’m still an inclusionist, on balance, but I can see the rationale.)
In other ‘me’ news, the guys at Deep Fried Bytes have posted a podcast I did with them a few weeks ago. We rambled all over the place, and had a fun enough time doing it that it ended up being two podcast episodes; second part not posted yet. Beware: I say nice things about Office 2007; if that disturbs you, might not want to listen. (I also dump all over OpenOffice, but that is mostly old news.)
I’ve also posted a slightly edited version of my slides from my visit to Duke. ODF only until OOo 3.0’s export mechanisms get better, I’m afraid.1 I did promise to answer more questions on the blog, but real life has intervened. I will try to get to it soon, though.
(planet readers, please ignore….)