By Joel Orr on 1/30/2009

The 40th anniversary of the "Mother of all Demos" (see Wikipedia entry) was held at The Tech Museum in San Jose and at Stanford on December 8 and 9, 2008. Marty Wasserman interviewed me there; see it here.

By Joel Orr on 12/11/2008

I was co-chair of the Program for the Future, held 12/8-9 at The Tech Museum in San Jose, at the MediaX Center at Stanford, and in Second Life. Here's a video of a wonderful conversation between Alan Kay (inventor of Smalltalk; Dynabook; Object-Oriented Programming) and Andy van Dam (teacher of more computer industry leaders than I can count.

It was an honor to work with the team who did all the work! 

By Joel Orr on 7/28/2008

In an interesting editorial, Jeff Moad quotes Larry Ellison to the effect that Oracle has not managed to make money with "software as a service" (SaaS) applications, and that he thinks it's a major challenge that is probably slowing down some rollouts.It's a fascinating point - and a sobering one. Investors and customers alike seem to be demanding that software vendors convert to SaaS as soon as possible. The customer benefits are obvious--less hardware; less IT management; easier to expense; software is always up to date. But if it is to work for vendors, the economics have to make sense.According to Moad, Salesforce.com, SAP, and others simply set prices too low. That surprises me; was the expectation to make it up in volume?CAD vendors are saluting the SaaS flag with more and more vigor, although bandwidth issues have limited full-blown transition to the new model. Sounds like a squeeze is coming for vendors; if your competitor is offering...

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By Joel Orr on 7/1/2008

If you've been to COFES, you've met Ruth. Her husband Jason called me a little while ago to say that Ruth  gave birth today at 8:27 pm EDT to a healthy boy! Name, weight, etc. to follow...Ruth is feeling great, as is Jason the new dad - and of course, the entire family!

Happy great-grandpa Joel

By Joel Orr on 6/25/2008

Richard MacNeal (the "M" in MSC) has sold his company to MSC. Read the press release here.

But before you go there, you might want to head over here, and download the new Cyon Research report on the MCAE market, to gain a better understanding of the terrain in this realm. The report is free.

By Joel Orr on 6/17/2008

I'm at SuperNova 2008, in San Francisco. Here are some of the session topics:The Theory and Practice of Networks • Does Telecom Have a Future? • Networked Business Models • Whose Social Graph? • The Internet is People: What We Know, and What it Means • Cyberspace Constitutional Moments • The Meaning of Openness • All the World’s a Game: What the Web can Learn from Virtual Worlds • Liquid Conversations and Distributed Content • Going Green: Toward a More Sustainable Technology Industry • Who is Driving Marketing Innovation? • Monetization for Today’s Internet… and Tomorrow’s • Wireless Disruption • Privacy and Security in the Network Age • Does the Media Get the Message? "The shift to network-based computing, services, business processes, marketing, entertainment, social relationships, connectivity, and culture will challenge our assumptions about how the world works. Those who fail to appreciate the complex implications are at risk. Those who can take...

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By Joel Orr on 4/22/2008

Life goes by so fast! COFES 2008 was, well, outstanding - even more the prior ones, each of which outdid the ones before. But so much keeps going on! There is hardly time for thought, let alone reflection; stuff keeps happening too quickly for me to make sense of.We're doing a much better job of posting stuff quickly; explore this site, and you will find recordings, videos, and some comments on what went on at COFES, with more to come - hopefully, before it's all old hat...What do we do about this phenomenon that signal processing geeks call 'aliasing' - the challenges of representing a high-frequency set of events in a low-frequency medium. Stuff is pouring in as I sit here, and there is no way I can assimilate it all, let alone its implications. I can't even begin to assimilate the ruminations of gurus who are quick to analyze and summarize - and I certainly don't have time to think about how good those analyses are...I know I'm preaching to the converted here. You have told me, at COFES and elsewhere, that...

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By Joel Orr on 4/20/2008

I'm sitting in this wonderful conference, full of ideas from all the many powerful presentations I've experienced so far, and the people I've met - and I find myself actually distressed that the slides and more are not already online -- nor is there any indication that they will be! What does that say about us leading-edge scouts? Here's some text from the event site: In a not-too-distant future, the computing platform of choice for a significant number of consumers will be a hand-held device. Signs of this trend are already apparent in Asia and Scandinavia, and all indicators suggest that this evolution transforms the lives and work of individuals in ways that are both chaotic and enriching. Given the diversity of global communications mechanisms, how can network operators, software vendors, and handset providers accelerate this evolution? The Mobile Future brings together experts from industry and the research community to share and discuss their visions of possible futures, along with technology and business...

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By Joel Orr on 4/3/2008

3D Systems, the company that coined "stereolithography," has just announced a printer for less than $10,000.

When the Apple Laserwriter came out in 1985, it cost $7,000 - and opened the era of "desktop publishing." Of course it's not the same thing, but perhaps there are some interesting parallels for us to think about.

At the very least, it will be something of a test of the assumptions of those like Dassault CEO Bernard Charles, who believe that 3D is a universal communication language. Simple CAD puts 3D modeling within reach of all; now this printer puts 3D "hard copy" within reach of many. I'm curious to see what will happen!

By Joel Orr on 3/25/2008

On Dave Gurteen's knowledge management blog, a fascinating take on the "2.0" meme:I recently spent the whole of January in SE Asia; giving talks and running knowledge cafes in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. As always I learnt as much as a I taught at these events.Most of us understand what Web 2.0 is all about as we move from a read-only web to a read-write or participatory web.And we are starting to come to grips with so called Enterprise 2.0 where the concept and technologies and social tools of Web 2.0 are moving from the open web into organizations.It is still early days and there are many issues to be grappled with as we try to balance the structure and stability of the old world with the more fluid and complex nature of the new.But the "2.0 meme" is starting to affect everything. In a talk in Kuala Lumpur I was asked how you implement Enterprise 2.0 and I was talking about some of the barriers when someone spoke up and said "We will never have Enterprise 2.0 until we have Managers 2.0!”...

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