Web 2.0 Generation Employee

Young employees will only want to work in Web 2.0 'compliant' companies.

People born in the late 80's do not even know how was the world without Internet. They are approaching today the business world by entering their first job experiences.

They grew by using tech gadgets to communicate with others, sometimes more than one at the same time (i.e. smartphone while using an instant messaging app while listening to the music coming out from the speakers of their iPod).

Some sociologists call them 'Generation Y'.

When they enter the work experience they expect to find the same tech tools they use everyday, but how many companies are ready to satisfy them? Not that much!

Generation Y people want to try every new tech gadget as they get to the market.

One of the problems is that the habit in using social networking is to 'classify' others, and when their manager is not even able to send an e-mail or access a search engine, well, there could be problems in keeping the value of the management. Some of the internal processes will become instable: it's not a valuable answer if you say "...this is how it works here!".

Another problem is the fact that Web 2.0 makes you to put less attention to privacy and security issues. This introduces a new responsibility for the IT Manager that has to educate these people to find the right balance between sharing and preserving data.

However, all of the new methodologies to communicate and share info that Web 2.0 can bring into the enterprise is surely a high value. So, it is worthwhile to approach the problems to solve them somehow to be able to benefit from the Web 2.0 value.

Real Web Based Computing

If you have any doubts about the Web Based Computing scenario I've talked about in My Post, well, give a look at this video and see what eyeOS can do for you. This is (I believe) the best Open Source example of how this technology can be brought to the world and how we could start accessing our data and preferred applications anywhere anytime.

I'll be chairing a session at the Rome based Linux Day 2008 on October the 25th where I will be talking just about this.

Linux Day 2008

October the 25th. This is the date for the 2008 Rome based Linux Day. This year it is held at La Sapienza, Rome University, starting from 08:00 a.m.

More info at:
- http://www.linuxday.it
- http://www.ls-lug.org/wordpress/?p=51
- http://www.ls-lug.org/wordpress/?p=53
- http://groups.google.com/group/linuxdayroma
- http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=28379368014

Register at http://www.linuxdayroma.org.

Address: Facoltà di Ingegneria di San Pietro in Vincoli dell’Università la Sapienza.

There is a possibility that I will be chairing a session related to the Web Based Computing.

Welcome to the Web Based Computing

There are important changes that we are going to see in the way the computing is accessed by users. Plenty of applications and operations that people do daily with the PC is on the Web (WebMail, Chat, videoconferencing, photo, social networks, books, trips, buy stuff, check for events, join forums and blogs, access information on wikis, check for maps, bank account, etc. etc.

Most of these activities are performed by using a web browser and a mail client that is installed onto the PC that we normally use and that is often customized on ourself (bookmarks, fonts, themes, old mails, folders, etc.). This requires the use of our PC for most of the activities because we have data and configuration stored in there. If we have more than 1 PC, we replicate everything on all of them.

There are many information that can now be brought on the Web allowing people to access them from anywhere by using all PCs that you have. Think at the centralized bookmarks, IMAP Mail storage, web based calendar and contacts, online feeds, photo album, documents, pictures, etc. etc.. Are you thinking at Google, Firefox and Thunderbird? You're right. The combination of these three solutions with their plugins/add-ons allow you to make all of your needed info available on the web: bookmarks, mail for all of your accounts (who has only one e-mail account today???), your photos, documents, calendar information, contacts, feeds, etc. etc. etc. You can then use the functionalities on all of your PCs and you're fine.

What if you are somewhere without your precious PC!!! You don't need to bring your PC, you need to bring your applications with you. So, imagine if you have a USB Pen Drive that you paid about 20€ with ALL of your preferred applications and their settings: you can plug it in a PC and be ready to access the web and the info you need.

What if you need your precious application because you need to download something from a torrent or you want to modify your picture!!! You don't need to bring your PC, you need to bring your 'desktop' with you. So, imagine if your USB Pen Drive has the image of your 'desktop' installed on it: you plug it in a PC and start your machine.

In both situations you do not have to install anything on the pc that you're using, so you do not have to bother anybody but just borrow minutes of their hardware.

All these things can be done today, but not everybody does them. We can configure all our desktops with our settings to be able to access our data on the web, therefore we can move our data on the web rather then leave them on the pc at home. More, we can configure lowcost devices (USB pen drives, external drives, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, or whatever) with our standalone applications to be plugged everywhere and used to set our environment.

What if you are somewhere and you need your powerful PC to be able to run some heavy applications, or because you need to launch some applications to be accessed lately from somewhere else... Here it is! We can bring our desktop on line as well, and access it through the Web with incredible performances. You access the web and choose to either launch your desktop (Windows, Linux, Solaris) or your particular application from any device. You do what you need and just close the browser: your system will continue to work, and you've done this far hundreds of kilometers from your workstation.

Think at these capabilities with a powerful device that you can bring in your pocket, you plug it into an ethernet port or you access a wifi/umts network, and you're set!!!

I do not mention the overall cost savings that these could bring within the enterprises (there should be a dedicated post with all items), but believe me, it's huge!

There are activities going on to achieve the needed results... stay tuned!!!

Google Chrome: Web 2.0 Browser

After all, Google (I said Google, not the last company born yesterday!!!) has released a brand new Web Browser that wants to enhance MS IE and Mozilla FF: it contains many performance evoluted functionalities!

Available starting from tomorrow. As per the usual Google methodology, the announcement has been done with a comic books!!!

Here a couple of links with the details:

- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

- http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Why 'Enterprise' Social Software?

After all, there is a question that probably comes in your minds: 'Why are we thinking to Enterprise Social Software? Is it worthwhile?'Well, the answer is simple: 'Because it's natural!'

To explain this, we have to think at how things have changed in just 10/15 years.

About 10/15 years ago e-mails seemed to have introduced the highest level of communication technology because of the fact that a message is sent real-time compared to post-mail (not necessarily received real-time though).

Today, [audio,video]chat seems to have outdated this type of communication since it is real-time from a receiving/answering point of view: you can send a message to a user that you can even see if he/she's online, and you know that he/she has received your message instantly.

Digital communication was a way that people used to get in touch with other person that they know already. Web 'social rooms' like wiki, forum and blogs allow people to get in touch with people sharing the same interests, ideas, knowledges, hobbies, friends, business needs, etc.

Yesterday communication was web centric, while social networks are putting people in the centre.

Let's think about young graduates: 10/15 years ago, new graduates were entering into their first jobs and finding PC's as to be their most important tool for the day by day activities, and therefore were learning using it from that time because very few people had a PC at home. This was making them to learn the technology at work.

Today's graduates are growth with a PC at home. They are already able to use it, to configure printers, to surf the web, configure a mail client, access mail via web, chat with others, access information through forums and wikis, see blog contents, and even create and share info on these tools for free!

They 'bring' their technology knowledge into the enterprises but they usually finds that companies are backward in technology evolution: many companies still use Windows NT/2000 while Mac OS-X, Linux and Vista are in out there; not always there are intranet with tools to interact with collegues and share processes and knowledge with them; wifi is still not present everywhere; mail tools are basic, there is no shared calendar and contact tools; there is no social networking functionallity.

Today young people is growing with mobile phones with which they can access the web (youtube, skype, messenger, facebook, picasa, etc.) and exchange e-mail, pictures, video, etc. They come into the work environment and find old mobile phones, bought at about 50/100€, that can only be used for making phone calls while they can stay continuously connected with their friends and tech-mates with their 'tech-toys'.

This makes the new hired graduate to think about the obsolescence of the company technology.

Now, think to a work environment where every employee that needs to know who is the expert within the company (or even within the 'certified' partners) for a specific argument for which he/she has to make activities on, can find him/her through a couple of web-clicks on the company intranet, that is a tool that can pull out the 'knowledge' in seconds.

Think to a people centric solution where users can access information instantly through web searches and start sharing info with others easly.

You can join to groups of people that work on a specific problem or item, you can find people that have handled your problems before, or have developed the same documentation that you have to generate in the past, in short, that can help you in your job!

The answer is surely not exhaustive but... Feel free to ask more.

If you want, check this out: http://blog.softwareabstractions.com/the_software_abstractions/2007/02/web_25_the_soci.html