Of firemen and enterprise bloggers

In my 2006 predictions I wrote:

"Much as I love Google, it cannot process BOMs for the average manufacturing company. Much as my daughter loves her iPod, it will not process insurance claims. Whoever does whatever with AOL will not improve supply chain logistics at UPS.

As we did in the last Internet Bubble, we risk making the Web and consumer technologies the center of the technology world. It’s the Gates/Plattner scenario again I wrote about earlier."

I communicated this premise today in an email exchange with Gabe Rivera of memeorandum as I saw a few other bloggers complain that certain topics like web 2.0 and certain vendors like Google dominate the listings there. I asked him how he could expand coverage since "enterprise spend is 10x the consumer tech spend and the CIO is interested in telemetry, biometrics, predictive analytics as much as web 2.0"

Gabe responded:

"Thanks, and I like where you're going, but show me the links!  I'll explain...Can you pick three headlines from today about the topics you mentioned that have been linked by 5 or more people? (Use technorati or whatever as need.) Or how about linked by just 3 bloggers?"

I have emailed a bunch of bloggers who write about enterprise stuff - to write more about enterprise stuff and  to link to each other so Gabe can get the results he needs to meet his filters. This post is meant to encourage others I did not email to blog about enterprise topics and vendors - could be SaaS, BPO, SOA, VoIP - whatever the CIO would be interested in.

About the title of this post: One of the people I emailed was Dennis Howlett. He does his best work at 5 am in France. He promptly wrote this post The self-selecting sausage game.

Funny, I thought only firemen practiced that. It was part of their back up plan in case the water ran dry.   

Comments

[Jason Wood]

Vinnie thanks for taking the ball and running with it. I too exchanged emails with Gabe after my post the other day, but it was a pleasant surprise to see you picking up the torch and bringing it to a wider audience.

http://woodrow.typepad.com/the_ponderings_of_woodrow/2006/01/where_o_where_b.html

[David Terrar]

Vinnie,
Actually Dennis moved to Spain a while ago and completes on the sale of his French house today - but he does do his best work between 3 and 5am. He called me this morning, and I plan to be one of the network spreading the word, and making sure some attention gets focused on SaaS, the enterprise and the "Business 2.0" topics.

[Dennis Howlett]

If the enterprise is to take seriously the new directions some of us 'see' as being the next step in effective computing, then these kinds of discussion need to float up to the top of places like Techmemeorandum.

This will not happen while the current trend is for discussion concentrated around what I describe as con-ad (consumer-advertising) models.

Some of the minds are willing - 'we' need more to come forward and raise the level.

[viinnie mirchandani]

David, thanks - though you may have unwittingly disclosed his GPS coordinates to every vendor who wants to bomb Dennis with sausages!

[Dennis Howlett]

I need food -send 'em over!