Changing the ecosystem

More on the topic of integrating web 2.0/social media/cloud construct into legacy usages (here the author refers to enterprise apps while I think of 20+year old desktop design apps):

All of this emergent stuff like open source, remote services, cloud computing, and etc. that happened on the web, hasn't happened just for the web. It was mostly catalyzed there, but it's impacting the enterprise too by changing those enterprise IT boundary conditions and the eco-system that the enterprise lives in. - Jim Stogdill

Love that statement: “changing the ecosystem that the enterprise lives in”. I can’t help but believe that’s what we’re seeing – people, by changing how they apply technology to their personal lives change how they will expect to use professional software. The community changes the ecosystem, which is how it should be. The software shouldn’t dictate the community – in fact it can’t.

Complete article here:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/11/building-the-legacy-systems-of.html#comment-2047523

Collaboration vs privacy

I've been interested leveraging social media in desktop design applications for a while now. Designers of all kinds spend more and more time collaborating with teams located in different offices and different time zones but it’s more than that. As can be seen with the introduction of Agile, more and more people know that work gets done better and faster when collaboration is built into the process.

One thing I that concerns me about using social media in corporate-funded design processes was privacy: would a company be willing to put proprietary data on the cloud to increase efficiency?

It looks like people – at least some students at MIT – are willing to trade privacy for an increase in collaboration. Is it fair to assume that companies will eventually move that direction as well?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html?em