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.

• It felt good, from the analyst perspective. 
  Events each have their own feel, their own level of buzz. This event certainly had lots of buzz, with a feeling of optimism underlying it. Judging by feedback from Twitter, people laughing at the right spots, and having lots of questions I felt like my sessions were well-received, even the one where I attack the wisdom of pursuing financial ROI for PCC projects. I was a bit nervous about that one.
• The venue was great.
  The conference location at LA Live was pleasant to be at. I like downtown venues where it’s possible to get out and see something, where there are people around that aren’t part of the conference. This venue had that.
• Technology is advancing, but the issues that many enterprises are facing don’t.
  The biggest challenges that enterprises face continue to be defining strategy, setting priorities and policies, and driving adoption. New capabilities come available, but these remain the issues that cause the biggest problems.
• IRL doesn’t necessarily mean face time.
  The opportunity to meet with other people facing similar issues. This remains a challenge though, as ever more powerful and portable devices provide distraction. I almost tweeted a scene I found funny, with six people sitting around a table in comfortable chairs, all of them engrossed in their phones and tablets, ignoring each other. Tweeting snarky comments about customers is probably a bad thing though, so I held back.

I hope that Customer 360 will be as good. I will be watching on Twitter.

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. 

The new brand name is the most striking part of this announcement. BPOS never really tripped off the tongue and always kind of felt like a code name. Office 365 as a major Microsoft brand will be a surprise to a certain UK office supply company, but will quickly become associated with Microsoft’s cloud collaboration suite. I actually was surprised at how Microsoft was able to keep this new brand name a pretty good secret until the unveiling. I was also surprised that the web site was not scheduled to be available until 3 1/2 hours after the launch event, leading to avoidable snarky Twitter comments.

Inevitably, there will be fun poked at the new moniker. Do I really want to be in the Office 365 days per year? What happens in leap years (Microsoft gives you a day off once every four years). I honestly don’t think that it would be possible to come up with anything that would not have some kind of downside, and it certainly is better than BPOS or some other anodyne acronym.

The second big news is that in addition to Exchange, SharePoint and Lync (OCS), Office 365 will also include Microsoft Office applications, delivered either in the browser or running from the desktop. While Microsoft naturally emphasizes the productivity benefits integration with the rest of the products will bring, many corporate buyers will be hunched over their calculators figuring out how the new possibilities will affect what they pay for Microsoft Office products. With prices ranging from $2 to $27 per user per month, it won’t be simple to do the maths.

The most important indication from this announcement would be if Microsoft’s design focus is really shifting to the Cloud. Yes, this has been the stated direction for some time, but it has been hard to defend when new functionality that was available in on premise products a year ago won’t make it to the cloud products until sometime next year. If Microsoft starts introducing new functionality first in its cloud products, that will be a major step towards proving that Microsoft is “all in” for the cloud, as Steve Ballmer keeps saying.

While five cities in five days is a quick pace, it’s not out of the ordinary. I really enjoy these tours. As well as eating some great food, seeing (briefly) some nice places (the train trip from Zurich to Milan is stunning), I get a chance to talk to lots of people about what they are doing. It is always a great source of research, as I hear about the questions people are asking.

Here are the top three questions that I heard on this trip:

• How do we introduce social software into a skeptical organization?
  Although social media is hot, it ain’t hot everywhere.Some organizations are more conservative, or have been around for a very long time and aren’t too eager to adopt new technologies. In these cases, people won’t use it because it is cool or because Gartner says they should.
• Should we start our own customer community or build onto one that already exists?
  After hearing all the reasons why customer communities are good for you, this issue comes from those who have not yet really started. They face the dilemma of going where their customers already are (like on Facebook or a more specialized site), or trying to draw them to a site associated directly with their own brand.
• How do we handle privacy? Our users and customers find this stuff creepy.
  This is a huge issue in Germany, where attitudes towards personal and professional privacy are very highly developed, but was a hot issue across Europe this tour. Importantly, the questions were not about legal restrictions and requirements on privacy, but about how social media makes people feel. Many are not comfortable with sharing too much in their professional lives, and social techniques make them uneasy.

I’ve got some ideas about how to answer these questions, and will work them out in formal research notes in the coming weeks. I also will be talking about some of these (especially the first one) at Gartner Symposium in Cannes. Carol Rozwell will cover this in Orlando. There are also sessions on privacy in Europe, and social CRM.

I was excited by the original video clip that introduced Wave. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before, and I couldn’t wait to get an invite. Once I got one, my reaction was… “Huh? Now what?” Like most people who tried it, I never really got into it. I felt kind of guilty, since I never really devoted that much time to figuring it out. I thought I would have plenty of time to do so once the kinks were worked out. But alas. After about a year, Google announced that they will put no more development effort into it, essentially dooming it as a product.

Google certainly has the right to kill off its projects. It was still in Google Labs (not even Beta), and no one had paid for it. But the way that Google did this is unsettling. If I had spent a lot of time or money incorporating Wave into how I work, I would feel pretty bad after someone pointed out that blog post to me. Just imagine: you have to follow a specific blog page to find out that the product you have built a business around, or used every day is doomed. . If I were a partner who had spent money developing products around Wave, I  would feel even worse. Let down. Adrift. Angry. Certainly, I would think twice about doing business around Google technologies again. Actually, I wouldn’t think twice; I would never do it again.

I love how startups innovate. That means taking risks, which is to be applauded. But when do they stop being startups and when do the risks need to get smaller? I think that we have reached that point with Google now. It wants to be an enterprise player, so it needs to act like one. That means developing and communicating long term technology roadmaps that developers and enterprises can count on. Some think that this kind of flexibility and willingness to act quickly is a good thing. So do I, for small startups. Not for high profile products from grown-up companies. Google was still pushing Wave to enterprises at an event about two months ago. Even today, there is nothing on the Wave inbox page or the Wave help page or the official Wave blog page to indicate it is a dead product walking. Partners and customers are right to expect more. Google has made significant progress towards becoming a more credible technology partner and enterprise supplier. This episode is certainly a step backwards, however.

The theme for 2010 is “Think B4 U post!” (sic), with videos and posters aimed at reminding people of the potential consequences of posting embarrassing videos and pictures, or worse. Something that “seemed like a good idea at the time” often goes pretty wrong when populated across the Internet.

While the primary audience of Safer Internet Day is kids, the advice given also has relevance to enterprises. As so often happens, what is important to consumer users of social media, also apply to businesses:

Kids: Have you thought about what could happen if people you don’t know see what you are about to post?
Enterprises: Have you done an impact/risk assessment of what could happen if your social media sites are compromised?

Kids: Do you think about and use the privacy settings of the social networks you use?
Enterprises: Do you understand and effectively use the security and privacy protection capabilities of the collaboration products you use?

Kids: Do you know how much you can trust the people you “friend” into your network?
Enterprises: Do you understand the limits of trust with the partners you collaborate with?

Are you following the advice that you are giving your kids?

The thing that particularly made me think this time was that while I was clearing, it was still snowing. A lot. Half of me felt like I was wasting my time since by lunchtime, it would all be covered again. But I could come up with several reasons while I was shoveling :

• What is gone is gone. There was about 20 cm when I started shoveling. Clearing it now would make doing it later easier.
• Even though we don’t need to get out now since I work from home, we might want to go out later.
• Walking on unshoveled snow makes it hard to remove and eventually slippery ice.
• If the driveway is relatively clear, the snowplow is somewhat less likely to throw a mass of wet, heavy snow onto the driveway when it goes by next time.

Indeed, Powerpoint has ruined me such that I think in bullet points even when away from a keyboard.

That got me thinking of other things that seem pointless, but actually are worthwhile doingto be done.

• It is worthwhile to set up a scalable, manageable platform even if you suspect or even know that not many people will use it initially. Once the infrastructure is in place, you can concentrate on encouraging adoption. Reversing that order could cause problems.
• Even though everyone hates formal content categorization systems, they are necessary. Even if you know that any hierarchy of categories set up will ultimately break down or need an overhaul, you have to start somewhere.
• Participating in social media rather than a medium the corporation control invites negative comments. Too bad. You have to do it anyway, or risk something worse: irrelevance.
• The quickly-changing technology market means that any product choice could be undermined at any time by a better product that comes along. But you can’t stay on the fence forever.

What examples do you have where something seems like a waste of time, but needs doing.

Update: I just cleared another 30 cm which fell by lunchtime. This could get old pretty quickly.

Instead, I want to talk about my anti-resolutions for 2010.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. That is much easier.This is also what analysts usually do; we rarely do stuff, but we comment a lot on what other people or organizations should do. 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 negative person, but there’s a lot of undesirable activity going on out there. After reading this, please stop it. Thank you.

1. Vendors should stop confusing “You can use it to do that” with “We designed it to do that”
   Maybe it’s because I am working on a new magic quadrant (for “Externally-facing Social Software Platforms”), but I’m growing weary of vendors who think because a feature can conceivably be (mis)used to fill a need, that they should be considered just as much as a product specifically designed to meet a particular set of requirements.

   You can use a heavy duty flashlight to hammer in a nail (I know; I’ve done it), but that doesn’t mean that a flashlight should be considered part of the hammer market.

2. Organizational planners should stop thinking that participation in social media is enough.
   Don’t get me wrong; I think participation is wonderful. Participation, (or at least monitoring if that’s all that you can swing at the moment) in communities and broader social conversations is the best place to start.

   But merely participating cannot be the end goal. You need to understand what you realistically can get from the community, and what you can contribute, with emphasis on the latter. If you contribute well, you have a much better chance of benefiting at some point.

3. More enterprises will look beyond SharePoint
   I have nothing against Microsoft SharePoint. It is good at serving several needs, and just fine for addressing many others. But there are plenty of other good products out there, doing innovative things. In too many cases, SharePoint has become the default answer no matter what the question. Rather than asking “How can I use SharePoint to do X” most of the time, a better question would be “How can I do Y” or even “What should be the role of SharePoint in supporting my efforts to achieve Z?”
4. Vendors should stop thinking that it is the analysts’ job to promote their product.
   I shouldn’t be, but I’m regularly surprised and depressed at how often this comes up. The biggest part of my job is to help end user customers make better decisions, and to help vendor customers develop better products and marketing strategies. I am not a direct part of those marketing efforts, however.

   I talk about vendors and products a lot, but not because the vendor is a client, or because they took the trouble to brief me. I realize that briefings take time and effort, and appreciate it when vendors invest their time in talking to me. But neither that nor being a client creates an obligation to promote a product.

5. Please don’t blithely assume that analysts are scuzzballs.
   Again I shouldn’t be, but I am often unpleasantly surprised at the ease with which some people assume that analysts are unethical, sleazy, scumbags who do nothing unless bribed. I have no problem with people disagreeing or challenging judgements, but I am as insulted as Tom is by offhand, unsupported assumptions that question my integrity. Luckily, I have enough customers who seem to value the advice which my colleagues and I provide. If we were really as scuzzy as some people seem to think, no one would put any weight in what we have to say.

   I can’t speak for the entire industry or even all of Gartner, but I know that for a fact that I have never been asked to favour a vendor client over non-clients in any research I have done. Most of the time, I don’t even know for sure which ones are clients. We spend a great deal of time discussing how to keep our independence, and none on how to reward paying clients. In the last month, I had two situations where I know that Gartner lost revenue because a vendor client expected their customer relationship should deliver them more mentions in research notes and conference presentations and better ratings (see #4). We showed no hesitation in making clear that this is not the way we work.

6. Please don’t let the Apple people get pitted against the Android/ChromeOS folks
   I suspect that the time is soon coming when we we will see “I’m a Mac, and I’m a ChromeOS” ads, or at least spoof videos along the lines of Apple’s ads making fun of PCs. Since I am more of a PC/Blackberry type, most of this will pass me by, like when the cool kids in high school  split along a strict Michael Jackson/ZZ Top divide (I was more of a Joe Jackson fan).

   I already find most Mac vs. PC discussions irritating (they both work, they both have problems, IMHO). But a split like this will inevitably encourage the disturbing trend that splits the world into camps that generally either talk past each other, or shout at each other. There’s enough of that in politics; let’s try to avoid it in tech where we can.

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

As for last year’s anti-resolutions, as I expected not many of them came to be, or stopped being as the case may be. A little bit of progress on numbers 7 , 8 and 9, but not much. However, this year’s list only has 7 items instead of 10, so I suppose that is close enough to good news to be worth celebrating.

Happy new year to everyone.

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.