Hello World

I'm really excited to join the first class team at the Gilbane Group as a contributing analyst. I hope to contribute to Gilbane's industry leading analysis of trends in content and collaboration technologies by bringing my content management experience, views and commentary to our readers and clients.

Two years ago, after spending my entire life in California, I moved to India with my family following a foreign posting by my wife. I currently live in the south Indian city of Chennai, and am Gilbane's man out in the world (well, at least in the world outside of the US). I hope to present an international perspective on industry trends, my views on the world of media and culture, and wondering aloud, why in this time of globalization, if the world is really flat, how come there are so many bumps in the road?

A lot of interesting things going on in the world of content and beyond.

Enterprise Content Management vendors, such as EMC, are rolling out their next wave of ECM applications incorporating social networking technologies for businesses. This trend will most likely increase as customers struggle to figure out what role Web2.0 and Enterprise2.0 technologies can play in their business, or more likely, if they should play any role at all? Companies like Ning, co-founded by Marc Andreessen of Netscape and Loudcloud fame, enable people to build their own social networks and virtual communities of interest at a much lower cost. How will they fare? Will everyone one day have a virtual social network to complement their real-world social network? And will we be able to tell the difference? Will we one day tell our kids to go out and play with their friends, just to see them lock themselves in their bedrooms and log on? Are we there already? Does going out on a date mean pointing and clicking?

Trendy social networks like Facebook and MySpace are trying to cut the clutter with a new facelift, while they struggle to find ways of monetizing their millions of users and hold onto an often fickle membership. Do you like Facebook's new look? Facebook claims 90 million users, two-thirds of whom live outside of the United States. They say they will hit 100 million members by year's end, and claim to have 200,000 programmers developing on the network. What will they do if all their developers get sued like those two brothers in India who dared to scra(m)bble Hasbro's Facebook strategy? Does Facebook see themselves as a social movement, more than a business? Yet, its the business that has to justify a $15 billion dollar valuation!

And then there is the ever exploding world wide web. Google this last week announced that its search engine index crossed the 1 trillion (that's 1,000,000,000,000) mark of unique URLs on the web. "The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark." While there is some uncertainty as to the exact number, we all know that the number is big -- really big, and growing really fast. But with all this burst of information, are we just wasting time? How is it that we are so over-informed, yet so under-educated? Does all this knowledge lead to any more wisdom?

Around the world, Barack Obama concluded his most excellent Middle Eastern and European adventure to roaring crowds, all asking, "Say Brother, can you spare some change?" Are you a fan of Barack's on your Facebook page? Is he a connection for you on LinkedIn? Do you follow him on Twitter? School kids in India debate and make presentations on Obama, McCain and the US Presidential elections, even in the elementary schools!

Meanwhile the wars we wage continue unabated, and all is being caught on YouTube and brought to our desktops and handhelds. Or is it? Who are the new media gatekeepers, and are they the same as the old gatekeepers, but with fancier titles?

In India, the world's largest democracy, they faced two straight days of terror with serial bombings in her high-tech capital Bangalore, and the Hindu heartland city of Ahmedabad (the site of deadly communal riots just six years ago). India is struggling to keep internal peace amidst possible communal riots and violence, and rising tensions with its neighbor Pakistan. India is viewed as a phenomenal high-tech success story, yet controversy about outsourcing and its impact on the US continue as both countries face crashing stock markets, high inflation, and economic uncertainty. How will this uncertainty, increasing risk and social unease affect India's rise as a global economic, cultural, and nuclear power? How will a nation of a billion people, with 70% living in rural villages, emerge as a global leader?

Finally, the world is coming together not for war, but for sport as the Beijing Olympics soon get underway. China prepares for its international coming out party in what will most likely be the first real-time, blogged-Olympic games. Billions of people around the world will be following the information, ironically from one of the most state-controlled information societies in the world. More interestingly, restrictions on blogging are not just coming from the government, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) itself as they "put the brakes on Olympic blogs" and web diaries by athletes and coaches. Their "rationale for the restrictions is that athletes and their coaches should not serve as journalists - and that the interests of broadcast rights-holders and accredited media come first." Meet the new gatekeepers. Making the world safe for commerce!

And speaking about gaming? What about gaming? Will the next Olympic games (or the one after that) be held in a virtual world? Will there be an Olympic Games hosted not by a country, but by Second Life? If so, will I watch the games on my network connected and web enabled Playstation or Xbox through YouTube? Will the athletes be competing on the Nintendo Wii? How weird is that?

Although controversy of some kind will surely follow, perhaps, if only for a little awhile, the world will focus on games rather than violence.

We can only hope.