The Death of Place?

MOBILOCRACY: Spreading the Wealth of Mobile Connectivity

Evan Kaplan, President and CEO, iPass, predicts we're about to see a"destruction of place."

Subtitled THE INALIENABLE RIGHTS OF THE MOBILE WORKFORCE, Kaplan's presentation at GigaOm's Net:Work 2010, maps out a world where mobility or mobile work is the rule, rather than the exception that it was just a decade ago.

"Today's average mobile employee is 46 years old and lives outside of Silicon Valley," said Kaplan, whose research is based on the Mobile Workforce Report, a quarterly survey of about 2,000 of the 2.5 million iPass users.  "Main Streeters are catching up with the technological elite, many have multiple devices, and their embrace of smartphones and tablets are creating the largest workplace disruption since the PC."

Trends from the iPass Mobile Workforce Report include:

1. Security and cost / productivity imbalance
2. Hyper-connected workers are becoming a norm: only 6% of workers totally disconnect on vacation
3. Post PC - the device stack that lets me work across multiple devices [simultaneously]
4. Multi-generational and global dissemination of the mobile workforce continues.
5. Multiple devices: 50% have three devices

"A highly mobile lifestyle come certain habits," says Kaplan, "which is both highly beneficial and also potentially risky to the enterprise."

"For instance, devices are cheap, but the networks are expensive," said Kaplan. "Just look at the recent LTE high-speed mobile data announcement by Verizon, where a 5GB subscription at $50 per month, can be drained in less than two hours of video viewing."

According to Kaplan, whose company works with mobile enterprise customers, enterprises need to strike the fine balance between data security protection and mobile employee productivity.

"The dirty secret is that the most of these mobile devices are more secure than the PCs or laptops we provision," said Kaplan.

Finally, Kaplan discussed what he calls the Mobility Bill of Rights:

I have the right to stay connected, to access the best networks and services, choose what device I want to use," said Kaplan, "and I want to personalize it (make it my own)."

"I want to be free of security threats and not be deprived of IT support," he continued. "I am one person, so I want one account for all my devices, not one per device."

Through it all, Kaplan talks about the "death of location" as a norm, but says that location is even more important than it was before.

"We see the cropping up of co-working, including the local CitizenSpace [here in San Francisco]," said Kaplan. "We see Starbucks and other coffee shops positioning themselves as 'third space' locations, since the need to meet with a group—and even to be around others while you work on your own thing—is still a key factor."

Is Nimble Cool Again?

"Entrepreneurs used to brag about the size of their funding round; now they boast about how little money they need."

http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/on-the-wings-of-angels


iPhoned

Innovation meets KOSBE's Small Business and Entrepreneurship Program

The recent inclusion of a small business banquet for KOSBE, the Kingsport Office of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, has been a great success under KOSBE's first full-time executive director, Aundrea Wilcox.

Like the small business awards of the past, several winners in established categories were announced.

This year, though, the judges also awarded a new award, the  Innovation Award, to a company I helped in the past define its strategy enhance product marketing.

From the official press release:

The new Innovation Award was presented to RLH JR Inc a/k/a Patient Scrubs (Nancy Hart, et al.).  In April 2003, Nancy Hart’s husband was admitted to the hospital for heart surgery.  It was there that she observed the medical staff and other patients, and discovered a need for a new level of function in patient attire that also offered more dignity.  She stitched her first Patient Scrubs prototype for her husband to wear as an alternative to the traditional hospital gown.  After many iterations, she has developed a product that is delighting her customers at their time of greatest need.

It's great to see two startups I've been heavily involved with—KOSBE and PatientScrubs—come in to their own. Both are run by determined visionaries who have a passion for what they do.

A win for transparency

Having lived in the world of journalism—albeit only tech journalism—for more than a decade, I've encountered a number of companies that claim one thing publicly and another thing privately. Often these private companies are, at best, perturbed if one questions the claims, let alone publishes an article on the disconnect.

In the world of economic development, similar issues arise, where claims are made and then verified or questioned. Most are covered by the private side of the public-private partnership, even though the public desire is to have an accounting of where the funds are spent on a frequent, transparent basis.

From time to time, though, the hand of law must be applied to crack open the window so that the light of transparency can shine in.

Such was the case in mid-November in Kingsport, TN, when the parent company of the local newspaper filed suit against the county under the "open records law" that is often

“We take no pleasure in filing suit against Sullivan County for what the county’s own attorney agrees are clearly public records,” said Ted Como, managing editor of the Times-News, at the time of the lawsuit's filing. “But we have been given no choice due to the continuing refusal of Mayor Godsey to release information that is the property of county residents."

Turns out the saber-rattling worked: today, the newspaper announced a two-fold win for journalistic integrity: first, the records had been released shortly after the lawsuit's filing and public announcement; secondly, that the county mayor himself had covered the legal fees of the newspaper's parent company, so that the suit cost would not fall upon the county taxpayers.

Hats off to the newspaper for taking the unflinching high road in a matter of public record. In the days of WikiLeaks, it's nice to see the system work swiftly and correctly. And kudos to Sullivan County Mayor Steve Godsey for taking personal responsibility for the issue at hand.