Thursday, August 16, 2007

Bet you didn't know MIT was in California

Last night, I participated as a panelist on a discussion on "Enterprise 3.0"... (I'll get back to that title in a minute). The MIT club of Northern California (organizers of the event) keep the east coast university alumni connected on the opposite coast - and there are plenty of 'em (MIT alum) in the Valley... Every few weeks, the club hosts events with a panel of relevant speakers on a certain topic in one of many categories. It's a good mix of casual atmosphere with a professionally organized and moderated discussion. Audience involvement is encouraged and the events are open (and very cheap)... This event was moderated by Sramana Mitra - a very smart "entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994".
A few people have asked for the list of points I used during my intro discussion, so here it is in raw form... at the risk of it being irrelevant and useless without the context of the discussion ("then why post it JR?".... ). The other panelists - Cliff Reeves (Microsoft)[update 8/20: Cliff posted about the event], Tim Harvey (Webex) and Tom Cole (Trinity Ventures) were all very interesting.

Back to the name of this event... I was somewhat critical of the terminology used in the title of this event (as was a more often read blogger), as I feel that while "Web 2.0" was a useful stake in the ground on a significant shift to robust, web-based applications, and "Enterprise 2.0" was clearly just a conversion of terms to express corporate use of such applications & technologies, the term "Enterprise 3.0" makes a leap into something that will only get lost in definition conflict (which seemed to begin when Eric Schmidt was asked in public to define/predict it - which I discovered thanks to Orli). I feel that Enterprises are just now starting to tackle the movement to web 2.0 apps and are therefore just now helping to shape enterprise 2.0... so defining 3.0 is more simply stated as "What's the next huge shift in how businesses will apply technology and when will it occur". In hindsight, maybe that is easier (shorter) to just call Enterprise 3.0... nah.

8 comments:

Mojo said...

Hi JR,

Thank you for adding the note about my blog on your blog!

I have two blogs and use as you see the spreadsheets a lot.....I need your email address to let you in the other one. (for your own lifetime membership)

Mojo

http://predictwallstreet.blogspot.com/

http://modj97-predictwallstreet.blogspot.com/

Brandon Modrov said...

Hey JR,

I came across your blog from Mojo.

Great blog. I hear Google is an awesome place to work.

While you are on topic of Web 2.0 I love to know what someone with your experience and what the guys at Google think of the little guy trying Web 2.0

My partner and I just finished coding and just launched our site yesterday www.mixpanel.com (took a long 8 or so months)

You can view a little bit about Mix Panel here.. http://www.mixpanel.com/comments/view/223472

We just launched and are still tweaking the bugs out and adding a to of new features but I would really be curious what you think of it.

Take Care,
Brandon

JR said...

Hey Brandon,
Interesting site... I thought it was going to be a music mixing site by the name ;) but after a quick 5 minute look, seems like an interesting angle...I'd call it "google alerts meets digg". I'll check it out in more depth.

Brandon Modrov said...

Cool! Yeah its far from anything to do with music :)

Let me know what you think. I think you have my gmail from me signing up to your block and I am always on so send me a message at anytime.

I look forward talking with you more.

Unknown said...

JR,

Thank you for participating on our "Enterprise 3.0" panel and for mentioning the alumni club here. We try to offer informative and relevant sessions. Please let your readers know that our events, despite being hosted by the MIT alumni club, are open to the public.

Cheers,

N2--

Anh Thu Vo
MIT Club of Northern California
avo@alum.mit.edu

JR said...

Hi Anh Thu,
>"Please let your readers know that our events, despite being hosted by the MIT alumni club, are open to the public."
I think you just did ;)

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

JR, great meeting you and speaking together on the panel!

Cheers,
--Tom Cole, Trinity Ventures
blog: Consuming Ambitions