My resolutions are “anti” in a couple different ways. The main one is that these are not things that I intend to do, but are hopes and polite suggestions about what other people should do. As well as being much easier, it seems to be becoming a thing. Anti-resolutions also suite the way that analysts work; we rarely do stuff, but we comment a lot on what other people or organizations should do or have done.

Most of the resolutions are also “anti” because they describe something that I hope won’t happen rather than new things that should happen. I am generally not a grumpy person, but there’s a lot of undesirable activity going on out there. After reading this, please stop it. Thank you.

1. Stop finding new ways to SPAM me. I have unsolicited email kind of under control. I’ve signed up for the don’t call me telemarketing lists. I really would rather not have to do that for Twitter, SMS, and other channels.
2. Don’t think that a social media policy should be a long list of things NOT to do. It is OK for a list of anti-resolutions to sound a bit negative, but for social media policies it’s not a good idea. Describing what people should do, and they the organization encourages social media participation needs to be a part of any policy document.
3. Please don’t ask me how to improve your position in a Magic Quadrant. The answer is simple: create a great product that people need, sell it a lot, and provide terrific support for your users. It really is that simple. There is no specific feature you can add, or partnership you can sign that will move your product to the upper right.
4. If you want to set up a time to talk to me, tell me where you are likely to be. I live in Europe. I move around a lot. I have little trouble juggling time zones in my head. Matching up calendars will be easier if I know what time zone you are in.
5. Don’t make me “like” something before I see what it is. Increasingly often, when I see a potentially interesting game, video, minisite or promotion on some social media site, the only way to see what it actually is requires pressing the Like button, or becoming a fan, or following the brand. How can I know if I like it before I see it? Please don’t ask me to commit before coming clean with what you’ve got.
6. Don’t diss the vendor-customer relationship. I saw a truck go by on the highway this week that epitomizes this puzzling behaviour I see from more and more vendors. It said “All our customers are our partners!” What is wrong with being a customer? This statement assumes that being a partner is somehow more noble or exalted than being a mere customer. I don’t agree. Accepting someone’s money in exchange for providing a product or service is a great responsibility. Being a partner is a different relationship, where both parties expect to benefit from a third party because of their collaboration. Whenever a vendor starts talking about a “partnership” when they are trying to sell me something, I want to ask “So if I make a bonehead decision, will you lose your job?” That’s what being a partner means.
7. Make noise about revenue and user adoption, not investments. Here is a tip for startups: I am far more impressed by a company that crows about its sales, revenues or customer growth than when it issues a big press release or (heaven forbid) throws a party to mark a big round of venture capital investment. Sure, it is nice when an investor believes enough in you to invest in your future. But it is far more significant when customers give you money because they believe you can help them. If I only ever hear about your ever larger VC participation rounds, it makes me think you are probably heading for a crash, because investors like to get returns on their investments, the kind that can only come from happy customers.
8. Don’t think that Silicon Valley is like the rest of the world. Every time I visit clients in the Bay area, I notice how things change as I enter the SV Bubble. Within that bubble, reality shifts a bit. In the SV Bubble, SharePoint is irrelevant because no one uses it. Inside the bubble, privacy is a legal matter and not about not being creepy. Mentions on TechCrunch really matter there. VC investments seem to be more important than revenue numbers in there (see previous point). Ties don’t exist. It can be pleasant inside the Silicon Valley Bubble. Just don’t think that it is the real world.
9. No one will “Reply all” to more than ten people.
   Please?

Happy new year everyone.

Those sessions would make it a busy four days, but also have about 35 meetings already scheduled. That means I am sold out, so I am sorry if any delegates weren’t able to get on my calendar. You can look for at the receptions (if the questions aren’t too hard) or set up a time to talk after the event if my slots were all taken.

This is the first time in three years that I am not looking at Symposium as the conference chair. I am looking forward to being “just” an analyst in one of my favourite cities in the world. Hope to see you there.

Analysts do a lot of work to define inclusion and evaluation criteria to give what we feel is a realistic and useful picture of a market. Obviously, there is no way to include all the nuances of what companies need to do and how they should get there in a two dimensional graphic. For most markets, we cannot include all possible vendors, but draw the inclusion criteria carefully to rate the most relevant ones. Our goal is to make the dot placements provide an overall view of the market, which combined with the text descriptions of the market itself and each vendor provides useful guidance. These are consistently among the most popular deliverables we produce, so despite the inevitable limitations, clients love them and find them useful.

However, it is not a good idea to take important decisions only by looking at the top right corner. I cringe whenever I hear customers say that they only consider vendors in the leader’s quadrant. That is not how these things should be used. When I speak with customers, I often recommend vendors from every quadrant or who are not on the MQ at all, based on what the customer wants to achieve, the infrastructure already installed, potential affinity with how the vendor works, etc. Interpreting these diagrams too broadly means missing out on a lot of great stuff.

Also, apologies to European readers who probably didn’t read it on April 1. I only thought of it in the evening while walking my dog. It usually works that way.

Therefore, as of April 1, 2011 we will be renaming the Magic Quadrants and calling them “Real Quadrants®” and changing the names of each quadrant. Rather than Challengers, Leaders, Niche Players and Visionaries, the corresponding sections will be named as indicated below to correspond more closely with these simplistic interpretations.

It will take some time to finish reformatting existing documents. We expect to have this completed and will launch them all simultaneously on April 31, 2011. We have not yet come up with a name for the fifth quadrant introduced in Mark McDonald’s new magic MQ, which launched today.

For more information about Real Quadrants, please click here.

I see a lot of vendor briefings as an analyst. A disturbing number of them go wrong. I cannot count how many times I heard the phrase “Haven’t seen that before…” or “Can you see anything?” or “It worked this morning.” My favourite is “We just released a new build, and it might not be completely stable,” as the software crumbles into a smouldering heap of bits. 

Or worse. Just this week, a very proud web conferencing vendor wanted to show me their flashy new version. It did look good, until it crashed my machine with a Blue Screen of Death, the first one of those I have seen in several years. That day also saw the second and third time I saw it, until we finally gave up.

I’m not sure why, but I am prepared to believe it is my fault somehow. I spend a lot of time in the mountains, which makes for sometimes dodgy Internet connections. Maybe that is what does it.

Maybe its just my karma. Whatever the reason, I am sorry. If I could make it stop, I would.

These were some of the top questions people were asking about.

• Promoting Social Software in Conservative Organizations.
  The initial issue many organizations faced with social software was how to get control of the mavericks and pioneers who were dragging in innovative solutions from wherever they could find them. As adoption deepens, more organizations are finding that their internal or industry culture is stronger than the impulses of these dynamic individuals. In conservative organizations, people feel that using wacky new software like wikis or microblogging would be seen as a bad thing, even if there is no official statement or prohibition. These organizations are looking for ways to encourage innovation and responsible adoption.
• Developing a Collaboration Strategy
  A bit of an evergreen, but definitely still a hot topic. There are lots of initiatives, some benefits, and lots of attention. How do we channel that energy into a viable strategy?
• Involving Customers in Social Software Efforts
  The first several iterations of social software concentrated on collaboration among colleagues. After that, the marketing or customer service organization started Social CRM efforts. Now, it’s time to develop a long term view of how to involve customers in the developing conversations.

This year is different for me because it is most likely the last time I will serve as chair for the event as well as attending as an analyst. This was my third year organizing the agenda, which is personally stimulating as well as a pleasant challenge. I became familiar with areas of our research that I otherwise would not have seen. I loved the chance to think about how we present our ideas as well as what the ideas themselves should be. I have loved working with the events team, leading to a much greater appreciation of the professionalism, work, and skills needed behind the scenes to pull off an event like this one. If Symposium is a success, it is mostly due to the events people making it seem (mostly) seamless. I will miss that part of the event, when I go back to just worrying about finishing the slides for my own presentations.

To everyone who made Symposium possible: Events staff, analysts, consultants, management, sales people, and (most of all) clients and sponsors: An enormous thank you. 

I’m an analyst, so I love getting attention, but some kinds of attention are tricky. Clint Boulton, a journalist at eWeek.com, summarized and commented on what I had to say in a slideshow on eWeek.com entitled Cloud Computing: Microsoft’s Stealth Attack in Enterprise Social Software. I have been quoted by Clint before, and have a lot of respect for his insights. I generally agree with most of what he says in this analysis as well, except for some of the emphasis. Only one slide in the webinar concentrated on Microsoft, while the title of the article could make it look like I spent an hour talking about Microsoft. Given the hoopla Microsoft has been raising about SharePoint and its renewed social software features, I wouldn’t really characterize it as a “sneak attack” either.

To be clear: I am not complaining about being misquoted or misrepresented in this article. That has happened to me in the past, so I know what it is like. It’s disconcerting to see my words summarized in a way I don’t completely recognize though.

By the way, I will be talking about similar topics with updated content at Gartner’s PCC Conference in London next month and Cannes Symposium in November.

TED is special. Its tagline descriptor is “Ideas Worth Spreading.” I love that. It attracts speakers and participants doing fascinating things. So far, I have heard about a courageous Yemeni fighting cyber-censorship in his country; a high powered consulting exulting the benefits of doing nothing for six months; an entrepreneur developing the Internet of Things where every object in the world is wired. During the breaks, I spoke with the founder of Transparency International, that fights global corruption. and a former journalist with Al Jazeera English. Over the next couple days, i expect to hear from many more interesting and inspiring speakers.

Tomorrow morning I will do a six minute presentation as part of TED University, a kind of warmup for the full blown 20 minute TED Talks. I have spoken at and attended many conferences, and for the last couple years have been the chair for EMEA Symposium. I have delivered hundreds of presentations. But this upcoming six minutes has me more nervous than any other presentation I have ever done. I have been practicing it most of the day, something I rarely do. Sure, I prepare, but I rarely stand in front of a mirror and practice what I am going to say out loud. When I have an hour there is enough room to work in what I know I want to say. With six minutes, there is no such luxury.

The standard of presenting here is tremendously high. These people not only do great things, but know how to talk about them in compelling, entertaining, and inspiring ways. I am going to talk about big companies doing interesting things with social software. I collected about 9 stories from customers I and my colleagues have spoken with. I whittled that down to three for the final cut. I really hope that I am not awful. A well as knowing more about great things people are doing, I hope to get some ideas that I can use in my presentations.

Day 0 has already fulfilled my hopes.  I can’t wait for Day 1.

This week I got to spend a day with with the IT and external communications staff from several United Nations agencies in Geneva. As I expected, use of social media is a hot topic there both inside and outside of their organizations. They were concerned both with how to prevent or minimize missteps from their own staff, and how to react to others using social media to talk about their operations and activities. The political and humanitarian aspects of UN work added extra dimensions that I don’t usually hear about when talking with commercial enterprises. While politics is never very far from what they do, most people working at the agencies try to steer clear of it to get their jobs done. For those working in humanitarian areas, it is especially important to step gingerly around political considerations.

I was impressed by the earnest desire to not only be effective in using social media, but also to contribute to the greater good. I could see from the discussions and questions that each of these agencies is driven by a clear, specific purpose, whether it is caring for refugees or analyzing economic statistics.  The sometimes inflexible funding methods and often Byzantine administrative structures of UN agencies must not make it easy to concentrate on this purpose always, but it was certainly top of mind with the people I spoke with.

NDAs are where an analyst agrees not to talk publicly about some of the things the vendor tells you in a briefing or consulting session. Some analysts flat out refuse to accept them under any circumstances, but I don’t go that far. NDAs can be useful so that the vendor can speak freely about ideas they are not sure about, or to pre-brief on an announcement that has not been released yet.

I have no problem with NDAs, so long as they are limited in time and scope. If they want to specify that some details should not be disclosed because they are unsure about whether they will be included, or if they want to keep them a surprise, that is fine. When working with vendor clients, I am happy to treat strategic discussions confidentially as part of the client relationship. A short term NDA before an announcement (also called an embargo) is also sensible.

However, I won’t accept blanket restrictions that keep me from doing my job, which is what happened today. I dialed into a phone briefing, and asked about the NDA terms at the beginning, as I always try to do when talking about futures. They said that they expected that if I took the briefing, I would not talk to any customer about any aspect of the new release until they said it was OK; they could not tell me when the NDA would be lifted. I said “goodbye.”

NDAs are generally acceptable to me, but if they impede my ability to help customers, I can’t agree to them. I take these agreements seriously, so under those circumstances I couldn’t continue the conversation. Too bad, because it is information I would have found useful. I’m sure the vendor would like to get this background out to their customers who are asking about it. I’m sure we could have found a way to agree on what could and could not be discussed while protecting their interests, limiting it to specific details or release dates. I have made many agreements like that in the past, with no trouble. It’s too bad that they insisted on such a broad restriction. Maybe the analyst relations person had strict instructions from the lawyers. Maybe they felt they could get away with it, since they were a big vendor. Whatever the reason, it was unfortunate.