One of my team asked me where my predictions for 2011 were. I never got around to finishing them or fleshing the out… Here is where I got to… better late than never…

1. 2011 will be the year in which transmission-based communications (Letters, Fax, Email) will further accelerate towards obscurity. As more of us move our communications into the “stream”, the older forms die. Text, Twitter, IM will continue to accelerate in usage and adoption, supported by the flip to Smartphones. As an aside, I thought it would be nice to buy Sophia a stamp album for Christmas – that’s not as easy as you would think.
2. We will increasingly make technology choices based on our information consumption model. Multiplexers – those that create, consume and process information – will continue to demand increasingly powerful notebooks and desktops. Consumers – those that consume – will move towards tablets and smartphones. Processors – those doing simple information retrieval and processing – will work through the browser in virtualized sessions on personal devices and a new generation of hyper efficient Enterprise systems. Specialists will demand hyper-scale computing power delivered through the cloud and on powerful desk-side and desktop systems.
3. Cloud Consumption will accelerate as we move to the other side of the hype-cycle. Their is no question that cloud is over-hyped and over-played. Many businesses and CIOs have been executing a iteration of the cloud for years. What is new is the hyper-scale, hyper-efficient capability provided by the likes of Microsoft Azure and Rackspace. These companies are game changers for any business looking to scale with agility.
4. More business will adapt businesses processes to software as a service versus building custom apps or using high-cost apps on infrastructure they run. SaaS is going to will see explosive growth in the coming year.
5. The walls will continue to come down between the personal enterprise and professional enterprise. The majority of the business still maintain a rigid wall between their employees personal lives and then their business. The walls will come down this year with more businesses blurring the line than not. I’m tracking this and will report out. The impact of this will be improvements in productivity and further acceleration of the pace of business.
6. Managing the life-stream will become a priority. Attention deficit will increase as a by-product of us not having the skills to manage the intersection of life and the stream. This will place even more emphasis on individuals and organizations being accountable for developing new skills.
7. Web 2.0 leaders will start to set new standards for marketers and businesses operating in their streams and spheres. And some of this will be bought about looming Government intervention and regulation. Affiliate marketers will come under particular scrutiny.

More to come…

Interesting piece which gets at why emotion matters in messaging and marketing – even in hi-tech. Liked the simple table-based explanation:

Three hundred years ago, Rene Descartes famously led Western culture astray by declaring, “I think, therefore I am.” But the breakthroughs in brain science made possible by fMRI scans have over the past 20 years made a liar of Descartes. Nowadays, we know:

To put it another way, the notion of the consumer as Mr. Spock from Star Trek has been replaced by the realization that, of course, the consumer is really more like Homer Simpson. We make decisions out of laziness, greed, stupidity, altruism and numerous other motives that don’t show up on company’s spreadsheets of the “intellectual alibi” reasons why people justify a purchase.

It’s difficult to watch any tragedy unfold – it’s even more difficult when it is happening at home. Thankfully all our friends, family and colleagues in Christchurch, NZ are well. But many others aren’t.

Thanks to all of you that have send kind words and thought of us. While every New Zealander has been impacted in some way, there are many hurting at home. Here are a few of the places you can make donations:

• Christchurch Earthquake Appeal
• Fundraiseonline
• Red Cross

If you have ideas and thoughts on what we could be doing, let us know. At Dell we are reaching out to the local community and offering all the assistance we can. We have today supplied gratis Dell Latitude laptops to the Salvation Army, and St John (both are Dell customers) who are doing emergency work in Christchurch. Thanks to all their people for the incredible work they are doing.

We are also responding to other requests for replacement systems by Government and Enterprises. If you need help, please let us know.

‘Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination‘

You can read an excerpt on Tim’s blog… if the book is up to the standard of his last, it will be worth every cent…

I’m liking what Aakers has to say more and more… he is right on:

The astonishing fact is that most marketing results in no change in sales or profit if you disregard short-term blips. Nearly all marketing budgets are designed to affect brand preference in established categories and subcategories with established competitors. The great majority of these, on average, have no long term sales impact….

…. The implication is that firms should spend less, probably far less, on brand preference competition and more, probably far more, on brand relevance competition, winning by creating new categories or subcategories. That means that more investment is needed on big innovation i.e. those that are substantial or transformational, and less on little or incremental innovation.