McGuire’s Law

Yesterday was the second techdirt greenhouse in Sunnyvale, California. I was pleased to be able to participate and really enjoyed the interaction.

In the spirit of the event, modern tools are being used to capture and extend the day beyond the bounds of time and space:

• Wiki
• Flickr photos
• Podcast

As the token “big company” at the event, I hope I brought some different perspectives and I certainly benefitted from hearing fresh voices different than what I normally encounter wandering around our corporate campus in Kansas.

I set up the discussion with a very brief intro to the concepts of the Mobility Era and how the Law of Mobility is driving change into business. We then split into groups of about 10, with two assigned specifically to address the questions of how mobility would change how businesses operate and compete.

Some of the comments that resonated with me:

• Mobility creates convenience.
• Mobility also creates immediacy, which has tremendous value for any form of communications, so clearly mobility will be built into all modes of communications - even more than currently.
• Even when mobility is used for business, it’s intensely personal.
• A poor quality camera can have value because it’s mobile, but the mobile applications available today (in at least one person’s opinion) “suck” and making them mobile doesn’t create value.
• For mobile applications, the key will be whether the network is open or closed.
• The fact that carriers require you to sign up for at least a year before you can use the network will limit businesses’ willingness to experiment with new mobile applications.
• WiFi is an interesting study in the power and danger dynamic of mobility. In general, IT departments deployed WiFi because of the “danger” (or more accurately the cost and hassle) of running cables. But once there, people discovered the power of mobility, working in ways previously not imagined to create tremendous new value for the company.

If anyone was there and has additional comments, please feel free to share them!

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 at 7:10 pm and is filed under Events, The Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.