New Media Disruption - Crossing of Trends

In 2008 CSC posted 10 areas of potentially disruptive technologies.  The first one is the following:

"1. New media is breaking down traditional big media, giving voice to millions of individuals and unleashing new talent and creativity. Related to this, viral video and new media channels such as blogs offer businesses a radical new way to bring their messages to the market, changing distribution just as profoundly as the Internet redefined the brochure."

The most notable example of this is the growth of YouTube videos.  One can find almost anything you want on YouTube - someone will have made a video about it.  If you want help on how to solve a particular puzzle in a video game, such as Assassin's Creed,  you can find a video that will walk you through the solution.  If you want to see the latest trailer of a new movie, go to YouTube.  If you need to get some training in project management on a particular topic, YouTube has it.  An it is all free.

But, this disruptive technology only became available as the trends of personal video composing and the Internet used as a publication media joined to make this new media what it has become. 

My point is that disruptions occur when trends intersect, allowing a new development that could not occur by itself.

Is Gamification a tool for you?

A previous prediction from 2008 was that "Virtual and physical reality are blending to form a new reality. In this augmented reality, work will seem more like a game, workplace experimentation will increase, and super-collaborative skills will become paramount in the workforce."

Some recent development is proving that including game components in work processes does indeed increase productivity and enjoyment.  Happy workers are 30-35% more productive that unhappy workers.  The book by Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter, "How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business" talks about the 6 Levels of how to include Gamification in your business processes.

Why do games work?  The basic idea is that there are components in games that motivate a wide variety of people, and motivation is what you want your employees to have.  some are motivated by the reward, some by being at the top of the list, some just because it is fund to do, regardless of whether they win or lose.  In today diverse workplace we need to have multiple tools at our disposal to motivate the vast diversity of employees.  Gamification may be a tool to consider.

Disruption by clouds is cloudy

Well, it has been a while, hasn't it.  I do find it interesting that future disruptive technologies mentioned in my Oct 2008 blog are still developing.  Some have come a long way and I will talk about those.  Today I want to mention number 8: Cloud computing is replacing the world’s data centers.

Well, is it or isn't it?  Data Center consolidation is certainly moving forward rapidly in the government area as this action has large potential costs savings to the various agencies, especially those agencies that have grown to mammoth size through congressional mergers of agencies; Homeland Security comes to mind here.

But we don't see as much movement to the cloud yet.  There are some agencies starting to move in this direction and GSA is making an effort to provide a contract vehicle that would allow government agencies to acquire cloud services.  But, security in an open cloud environment is still an open question.  Private clouds developed by the larger agencies may be able to solve that problem, but at the expense of acquiring and maintaining all the equipment necessary for such a large enterprise effort, reducing the savings potential.  

The issue of security is the major drag on open cloud computing.  Concerns about where your data is, e.g., is it in China today, and maybe Russia tomorrow?  People are addressing these issues through geo-restrictions and data encryption, but cloud providers are not generally providing these technologies as part of their cheaper offerings.