That isolated word comes to a screeching halt when the last session ends. Physically, the world inside the conference room disappears in a few hours. Workers start tearing down the show floor and some of the conference area even while the last presentations are being delivered. By early afternoon, the site doesn’t look the world we’ve come to know so well for the last four days. From having every minute planned and parceled out, having two hours with nothing specific to do before my train leaves is an odd experience. That’s when I take the chance to stare off into space for a bit. The view from the Croisette is really quite nice, it turns out.

Aside from the normal questions about vendors and best practices, I was surprised by the number of organizations looking to take advantage of new vendor dynamics to shake up the hold that they perceive that Microsoft and to a lesser extent IBM has over their collaboration strategies. They welcome the advantages of integrated offerings and upgrades with more functionality, but dislike the idea that they have no choice but to stay with their incumbent vendors. I think the traditional titans could be in for a surprise when they see the number of organizations seriously looking at Cloud computing as a way to shake up existing relationships, and taking steps to understand which parts of their collaboration lineup can be commoditized and federated.

As conference chair again this year, it was gratifying to see that some of the changes we made this year went well. We continue to see more senior executive attendees, which is reflected in the CIO track. We dramatically increased the number of workshops and roundtables, most of which were well-attended. Several analysts and about 20 attendees were actively tweeting, with about 200 messages per day. Scheduling the analyst keynote on Monday afternoon to give attendees the option of arriving on Monday morning seemed to go over well. The stormy weather on Monday morning was not very welcome, but there’s not a lot we can do about that.

Right now, several analysts are on their way to Tokyo for the Japanese Symposium. I have started the trip to Australia for the event there to be held next week. I expect these to be just as intense.

As always, these conferences are amazingly energizing for analysts, and I hope for the participants as well. Hearing what people are up to and how they are using the technologies we talk about helps keep our research from being too abstract. External speakers like Edward deBono (the father of lateral thinking) and Chris Thorpe of the Guardian (who described how they built groundbreaking crowdsourcing initiatives like Investigate Your MP’s Expenses in a few days using almost no money) were inspiring as well as entertaining.

Dr. de Bono plans to autograph the stack of transparencies he used during his presentation and auction them for charity. See www.debonosociety.com for details.

As well as speaking and talking to clients, this year I took on an additional role as Twitter ambassador. I had planned to tweet highlights and notable quotes using the #gartnerpcc hashtag,but pulled back when I saw that other participants were already tweeting away. In all, we had about 600 tweets, which is quite a bit for or events. There was enough traffic that followers from Canada, the US and Korea were able to get an idea of what was going on without making the trip to London.

Many of the tweets repeated quotes that caught people’s attention. Some examples:

More than 50% of large ecm projects fail if less than 6 months are spent on vendor choice + planning Tony Bell (sic) @ #gartnerpcc

“You shouldn’t need training on tools: who took Facebook training? who’s Myspace certified?” – Deb Logan #gartnerpcc nicely put, again

Others commented on what the analysts were saying.

Unified comms can lead to clashes between those who run the phone/data netwowrks & those who want to innovate on it #gartnerpcc Surely not!

Social networking analysis very interesting, but has some interesting cultural issues. Definite Big Brother overtones #gartnerpcc

Inevitably, some some sessions didn’t go down as well, and Twitterers let us know it.

#gartnerPCC That session with the countdown questions was a train wreck. Sorry Deb, keep the day job.

Ironically, Dilbert had a cartoon that same day which sums up how analysts feel when someone criticizes the presentations they’ve poured their souls into.

I happen to know that the person who sent that last tweet knows Deb Logan quite well, and did not intend it to be as harsh as it might sound.

Thanks to all who contributed to the event IRL and on Twitter. All of the Tweets are accessible in this archive with a representative word cloud here.

This year, Microblogging (which includes the Twitter service) has crested the Peak of Inflated Expectations and is beginning to move into the Trough of Disillusionment. Some people disagreed with the placement of the dot, but that’s to be expected. From an unscientific survey, about as many people felt microblogging still had plenty of hype left in it as thought it was well onto the Slope of Enlightenment. So that’s OK. If the critics are all over the map, then the position is probably just about right.

It was also apparent that many people don’t really get how the cycle works. The most prevalent Tweet said some variation on “Web 2.0 Trending Up, Twitter Down.” Many commentators seemed to think that moving towards the trough meant that Twitter was over, never to be heard from again.

Actually, microblogging is moving along the cycle rather smartly. The structure of the hype cycle means that everything goes through the trough, before it reaches the plateau of productivity and wide adoption. Moving into the trough is therefore, a good thing for someone’s favorite technology, but not without risks. It is far worse for a technology to languish on the up side of the peak, never to approach wide adoption. Other technologies whiz quickly through the trough to reach the slope and onto the plateau.

The Twitter backlash has certainly begun, and many are piling on enthusiastically. I am not one of them, but there are definite indications that microblogging will have a difficult time getting through the trough. Moving into the enterprise will be especially tricky, one of the necessary steps to really achieve productivity. While there are several enterprise microblogging platforms out there, one of Twitter’s attractions is the massive volume of Twitterers and the amount of content they generate. Recreating that internally will be hard. Some companies have achieved successes, and I would love to talk to any others I haven’t spoken with. But it will be more difficult for microblogging to jump from the consumer to the enterprise market than many other collaboration technologies, such as instant messaging.

We will be publishing formal research on the announcements, but the big news this year is Lotuslive, a real cloud-based platform for Lotus products. Other highlights include Blackberry-RIM integration, SAP integration called Alloy to counter Duet and other integration plugins for LinkedIn and Skype and several upgrades to existing products.

I must admit that the level of energy is also a bit bewildering. The atmosphere at Lotusphere is somewhere between a summer camp for geeks and a rock concert. Even if it is in January, the weather in Orlando usually feels like summer in Amsterdam. I am accustomed to a bit of cynicism or at least skepticism when it comes to vendors, but any of that is hard to find here. Standing room only crowds, cheering, enthusiastic Karaoke nights and even goofy SpeedGeek events are evidence of enthusiastic followers.

This sentiment has certainly changed from when I first started coming to these events about ten years ago. In those dark days, the Lotus strategy was cloudy and confusing, and participants were worrying about their choices and their careers. Now, while Lotus has trouble with formidable competitors with Microsoft, Google and a host of collaboration and social software start-ups, few can question IBM’s commitment to the product line. They are investing in innovation, and it shows.

I am not sure that I believe all of the rah rah purporting to show that Lotus is defeating all others. I regularly speak with big Lotus shops switching to Exchange, but almost never any going the other way. But it’s also clear that reports of Notes’s demise have been premature. That’s good. I like competition. Markets need it, users like it, and innovation requires it.

I am not a heavy Tweeter. I have sent out 1,457 Tweets and have accumulated 460 followers. According to Tweetstats, I have averaged four tweets per day, and sent the most messages in October. According to Twitter Grader, I am in the top 98.3% (#13,663 out of 952,391) of the Twitterverse. These are not particularly great numbers, but they work for me. The rock stars of Twitter spend most of their day doing little else but reading, replying and tweeting. I like to think I have a life that won’t allow that. I also have a job, that requires a bit more depth than the average tweet.

The reason I first started tweeting is that I find it hard to find the time to do proper blogs. I need to write research notes, and have more ideas than discipline, so the regularity of this blog sometimes suffers. I can handle 140 character mind squirts though. They just fit into my day better.

My time spent on Twitter has been rewarding. It alerts me to what is going on, connects me to old friends, and introduces me to many people whom I think are worth knowing. I have used it to test out ideas that eventually make their way into this blog or my more formal research notes. Twitter points me to people saying interesting things on their blogs. I can tap into expertise on travel and silly things like the best brand of tea bags to use if you want to use them in the garden. Apparently, Celestial seasonings and PG Pyramids don’t have those paper tags that inhibit mulching.

Twitter also helped us close a sale. I noticed that someone was saying they were having trouble reaching their Gartner account rep. I passed the contact on, and one of our sales people was able to close a deal very quickly. I don’t expect to get that much direct business value every day, but it’s a nice way of justifying something I like doing.

• Using an online chat system to collect questions during sessions and allow participants to talk online among themselves.
• Hosted a ‘back from the future’ session where colleagues from 2028 told us about what IT life will be like.
• Tore apart a low-cost PC on stage to discuss and demonstrate how the vendor kept the price  low.
• Recorded analysts on video for the Gartner YouTube channel and for use in a cost-cutting best practice session.
• CIO case studies delivered by the CIOs.

Some of these ideas worked, some better than others. We will be continuing the ones that did, but we’re also looking for other ways to improve the Symposium experience.

If you have ideas about what you would like to see at Symposium (especially Cannes, where I am chair), please add them as comments on this page, or you can email me directly at jeffrey.mann@gartner.com if you prefer. I can’t guarantee we will be able to do all of them, but I’d love to hear your ideas.

Instead, I want to talk about 10 anti-resolutions for 2009. They are anti in a couple different ways. The main one is that these are not things that I intend to do, but stuff that I hope that other people will do. I find that a lot easier. It’s also generally what analysts do; we rarely do stuff, but we comment a lot on what others should do. Most them are also anti because they describe something that I hope won’t happen anymore rather than new things that should happen. I am generally not a negative person, but there’s a lot of undesirable activity going on out there. After reading this, please stop it. Thank you.

1. Enterprises will stop fixating on social software gew gaws and competitive product horse races and put energy into achieving collaboration effectiveness.
   I talk with many customers who are primarily interested in what new features vendors have packed into their products, or the competitive position between a group of vendors, all of whom are viable and could meet their needs. These things are surely interesting and sometimes important, but rarely are they the main drivers for success.  Instead, focus on the best ways to work together and what kinds of input or feedback will help you, your colleagues or your customers be more effective. Look for the bottlenecks that kill productivity. Find the spots where conflict and arguments arise; that is usually where more collaboration will help. Comparing features and competition can be fun, but these activities will be far more effective.
2. Vendors will lessen their emphasis on new features and functionality, and help their customers get stuff done.
   It’s not just the enterprises that need to shift; vendors have their part to play. Too many vendors still consider their job is done when the software is delivered, at least until they have to convince the customer to upgrade to the next version. Making sure customers use the current version effectively is far more useful than pushing out another 150 APIs or increasing the number of themes from 20 to 100.
3. Vendors will get realistic about their positions.
   Analysts spend a lot of time arguing with vendors. Sometimes it is because we are wrong. Often it is because we say things that they know are true, but really, really don’t want us to say publicly. I can understand this; I was a vendor once, and it is never pleasant when people say bad things about you. But I would rather put my energy into other things, so I hope that some of them would look at their strengths and weaknesses more realistically.
4. Security and social software people will stop talking past each other.
   I have seen too many entrenched positions among the social software and security constituencies in my clients, the vendor community and even between analysts. Social software people must not assume that there are no risks and all security measures stem from paranoia and are unreasonable restrictions to be circumvented. Security people must not assume that social software has no business value therefore no risks are acceptable. They need to talk to each other rather than past each other.
5. Network communications and collaboration people will stop fighting.
   Market shifts cause tension for vendors and among the customers they server. As traditional collaboration vendors (like Microsoft) offer voice services and traditional communications vendors (like Cisco) start to offer collaboration products, the different IT departments aligned with these areas are bumping up against each other. Like with security, these groups need to stop talking past each other, and talk to each other.
6. Vendors will stop pitting different user constituencies against each other.
   Some vendors find an advantage in encouraging tension between their customers’ departments. I hate that. I hope it stops. 
7. There will be effective help managing overlapping life and work personas
   The lines between work and private activities have been blurring for some time. The rise of social media is about to obliterate what distinctions still remain. While I keep this Gartner blog separate from my private blog, I use Twitter to track and broadcast both private and business ideas, which makes me distinctly uncomfortable sometimes. Better help in maintaining the differences that need to remain will become much more important in 2009.
8. There will be more help managing personas in general.
   Personas and the tools to manage them should become big in 2009. Users need to be able to control easily and transparently the roles they are acting in, whether private or professional, buyer or seller, commenter or writer, parent or child, producer or consumer, and on and on. The current tools are way to rudimentary.
9. Video will stop being the Next Big Thing and finally become the Current Big Thing.
   Videoconferencing has been the The Next Big Thing since the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, which saw the first video phone.  In almost 45 years, it has stubbornly refused to become the current big thing, however. Room-based video systems are unwieldy and disruptive. Some companies use them effectively, but I cannot begin to count how many meeting rooms I have been in where the video equipment sits in the corner with a tangle of connectors and cables sitting on top of it. Cheap desktop webcams and high end telepresence systems are making video more accessible and a much better experience respectively. The trouble is that most people want low cost AND great quality. It would be nice if those came together in 2009.
   

   null

10. No one will “Reply all” to more than ten people.
    Yeah, that would be nice.

The last reason these are anti-resolutions is that I don’t really think that any of them will happen in 2009. We will make progress on some of them, but none of them will be fully achieved, which is a good thing.  That leaves something for analysts like me to write about in 2009, and then some.

I was afraid that being able to send messages from just about anywhere would make that worse. Recovering snatches of otherwise unproductive time is one of the advantages of having one of these things, even if the snatches are brief. Small amounts of time can lead to boo-boos, however.

Today I did it. I was catching up on messages from other analysts while waiting in an airport security line. I had what I thought was a salient comment to add and just saw enough time to squeeze it out before I had to walk through that portal. Fifteen minutes later I was trying to remember what I said, and smacked my forehead. This is what came out:

If the vendor sells an unlimited plan, they cannot complain when people use a lot. They can’t get the marketing cake of using the term AND the cake of capping or punishing users who take them at their word.

There was a real thought buried in there about having your cake and eating it too, but it didn’t survive the transition from head to thumbs to message.

Maybe Blackberry needs something like mail goggles.

It’s now been out for five days. I have access to email and a few other services like Twitter and Gmail through my Blackberry phone, so I am not completely cut off. Without email, I would have to find some kind of alternative, but it is possible to limp along this way for a while. Not having access to the sources I have come to depend on does take some getting used to. While the phone provides rudimentary access, it is like looking at the world through a pinhole. While I can see if there are urgent messages that I need to respond to, I’m not participating in many long email threads with considered opinions. I also can’t use Gartner’s administrative applications to file expense reports, plan research or create notes.

At first, I thought I would be able to use this disconnected time to catch up on note and presentation writing. I am generally easily distracted from big tasks by the multitude of small tasks that come along, along with the other distractions that the Internet provides. Being semi-cut off could be a good thing. But it hasn’t worked out that way. I am surprised at how often I need to look up something, or how often applications assume the Internet is always out there, ready to serve up a piece of clip art, or reference to an article somewhere, or a link to an application. I am doing a lot of planning and outlining but not much finishing. Even more than the effect on work, I am unpleasantly surprised at how dependent I feel on having Internet access to run my life. I have several pending payments, purchases and money transfers that I have to keep in my head for when that blessed green light decides to do its thing again. Probably most irritating is that I can’t look up which group sings the song that I listened to for 17 minutes while waiting for my ISP’s technical service to tell me they have no idea when it will be fixed.

If you are reading this, then it means that the green light has come back on, and I’m back in business. That will be a very good thing. I’ve got stuff to do.

But on the way to Orlando Symposium, my old Nokia disappeared. I don’t know how, or where, but it’s gone. Since I needed to replace it, I decided to make the move.

So far, I find it useful, but I’m not sure what the fuss is about. I haven’t become an obsessive Blackberry user, nor has it changed my work habits as much as I thought it would. It is handy to be able to receive and fire off quick replies on the move, but I could live without it if I had to. The main change I see is that email is less likely to accumulate when I am away from my desk. I can work through it in small batches in snatched moments of time while doing other things. That should mean that when I get to my desk, in principle I have more time available for substantive work, although I haven’t noticed huge increases in productivity. The main thing I miss is that rush when I see a load of new mails flooding into my inbox. When it is less than 40, that can give a positive buzz of anticipation. When it is more than 150, it’s just dispiriting.

Given the enthusiasm of so many people for the device, several things about the BB surprised me:

• It’s kind of ugly. Maybe I am spoiled from seeing the iPhone, but i was surprised at how wiry and hard to read all the built-in fonts on the BB are. Help, with its strange radio button navigation is especially ugly.
• I don’t like reading long messages on the screen, perhaps because the letters are so ugly. So it’s not as useful as I had hoped. Many of the messages I deal with are fairly lengthy, so I find myself often leaving them to read on a real screen.
• I must have very fat fingers. I can’t go more than two words without making a typo.

I haven’t read any instruction manuals, and it shows. I know I could and should read the manual or look at online resources, but I never read a manual for my previous phones or other applications, and I don’t feel like starting now. There is a lot I haven’t figured out yet after several half-hearted attempts to figure them out myself, or using the hideous on-board help system:

• How do I change the PIN code?
• Why do I have both a password and a PIN code?
• Can I get rid of one of them?
• How do I change the ringtone?
• How do I make it stop buzzing when a message arrives and the device is in the holster?
• Why does it only buzz when the device is in the holster?
• What does Blackberry messenger do that Enterprise Messenger doesn’t?
• How can I see just the unopened messages in email?
• Why does the BB inbox say that I have 19 unread messages when my Outlook inbox says there are none, even after I choose Reconcile from the menu?
• If Reconcile does not sort out the differences between the two inboxes, what does it do?
• What am I doing when I “compose PIN”? It looks just like an email, and seems to have nothing to do with PIN codes.
• How do I mark a message I need to come back to later (aside from marking it unread)?
• How do I know if the browser and other apps are using WiFi or the data network?
• How can I make sure that apps only use WiFi access, and not the data network?
• How do I get that SMS message out of the Messages overview? I’ve deleted it several times, but it won’t go away.
• How can I set a one-time alarm? I can only find a way to set an alarm that will go off every day, which lead to an unpleasant surprise the day after I had to catch an early flight.
• How can I go to the top or bottom of the email inbox or an individual message without scrolling that little wheel endlessly?
• How do I make that blinking red and green light stop blinking?
• What are those lights trying to tell me?

I have spent some spare minutes looking around trying to get these answers, but I haven’t made a concerted effort. I am sure that if I went online or read the manual I could figure all of these out. Since starting this post I have stumbled across a few answers while looking for something else. I got several answers to the last one via Twitter when I posed the question there. I could probably use Twitter to learn all about the device, but I won’t burden the people following me with these silly questions. Please do not respond with BB tutorials; I’m sure I’ll figure it all out in due time. I just wish I didn’t have to work so hard to understand the thing.