Mark Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce.com, wrote a guest post for TechCrunch entitled "The Facebook Imperative." In it, Mark discusses the needs for increased collaboration for the enterprise and also notes how a the more traditional enterprise software (Lotus Notes, Sharepoint, etc.) hasn't really changed since it's inception.  Sure there are add-ons and "socially" things you can do with them that you couldn't 10 - 15 years ago, but nevertheless, proprietary enterprise applications are fundamentally unchanged.

That's one of the things that excites me so much about our upcoming Social Office release.  I see where we are headed with it, and I am confident in saying that Social Office is, indeed, a game changer.  This application is being designed to facilitate the natural social interactions and need to collaborate that knowledge workers have.  It is done with an intuitive interface that is easy to use, understand and master.  From a sales perspective, I know that Social Office is scratching an itch felt by companies worldwide because the pre-release interest has been massive.

Say what you will about Mark Benioff, but his vision for software as a service fundamentally changed the ecosystem of corporate acceptance of how software can be delivered.  I think the vision he presents in "The Facebook Imperative" is a worthwhile read and something that businesses should react to.

I believe in the power of technology to bring people together.  Although our society lives in more physical isolation than 20 years ago, I think that we are seeing people remove those barriers through self-expression online via Twitter, Facebook, Buzz, Yelp, and on and on.  It is powerful to watch people express themselves. Social media breaks down barriors by allowing the free flow of conversation and personal expression.

Twistori let's you see, in real time, Tweets from people who use the words love, hate, think, believe, feel or wish in their posts. It's powerful stuff. As I type this, I have Twistori open in another window, and here are a few of the thoughts from people who I will never meet but nonetheless have the opportunity to impact millions:

• if i has to choose between loving you, and breathing. I would use my last breath to say i love YOU
• The more i think about the #ipad product category, the more it makes sense to me. I must be in Job's reality distortion field
• I believe that music is connected by human passions and curiosities rather than by marketing strategies. Elvis Costello
• i think I'm done blaming people for broken systems.
• i wish life was easy. anyone have that staples button handy?

I'm not sure if we are approaching the visual representation of Carl Jung's collective consciousness here, but we're getting close. Neat stuff.

 A couple of weeks ago, Paul Hinz, Liferay's Chief Marketing Officer, asked me for my thoughts about what the future of portals holds.  I provided a long, drawn-out response which, when boiled down to its essence, comes back to consolidation.  

Consolidation of the information that employees and users needs in a single online experience.  
Consolidation of data from disparate systems into an easy-to-digest format.
Consolidation of what is important from all of the noise that is online.

This week, Google Buzz has been all over the news, and from my preliminary usage of it, Google has done an excellent job at consolidating the information that I want/need into a stream of information that is easy to digest.  From my Google Reader, I can share information with my contacts.  I can see what my contacts find interesting and comment, interact or ignore.  Google Buzz intelligently links all of the disparate Google systems into a unified whole.  If I post photos into Picasa, they appear in my Buzz stream.  If I post a new blog entry on Liferay.com, it appears in my Buzz stream.  If one of my colleagues posts a buzz item, I can chat with him inline about the topic.  

There is a ton of stuff going on here, and Google is seamlessly connecting their systems into a consolidated whole.  Reader, Picasa, Gmail, Google Talk...all tied together in an intelligent and easy-to-use fashion.

Naysayers of Buzz have stated that this is a me-too offering because Twitter and Facebook are doing the same thing.  They're not.  Entire ecosystems have been built around filling in the blanks that Twitter has left behind (Twitterfeed, Twitpic, Tweekly.fm, Liferay's own TweetRay), and while they are nice, Google has built on the experience and shortcomings of Twitter and has launched something that speaks to the real needs that people have: consolidation of information into something that is useful, usable and ultimately, makes life a little bit better.

Will Buzz remove the need for Facebook and Twitter?  Probably not.  But, I do think that these two applications will have to react to what Google has created....a portal.

One November 17, 2009, I had the great honor of presenting at the 2nd annual Accenture Open Source Conference in Amsterdam.  Accenture has made great strides over the past couple of years in spreading the gospel of open source software, and with the introduction of the Accenture Innovation Center for Open Source, I think that we are on the cusp of an even greater rate of adoption/acceptance of open source software in the enterprise.

  My presentation's ambitious goal was to cover three topics:

1. Introduce Liferay as an open source portal and as a company
2. Discuss a case study of HanseMerkur
3. Highlight the pros and cons of working with commercial open source products whose business models are either based on professional service or subscription/support.

Item 1 turned out to be pretty easy.  I was impressed at how many people at the conference already knew about Liferay.  We were mentioned during presentations by Sun and Accenture, and I had the opportunity to speak with several service integrators who are working on projects in Europe that use Liferay.  The highlight for me occurred during a presentation by Accenture where they presented an impressive case study on how they used Liferay coupled with Alfresco for T-Mobile Czech Republic (http://www.t-mobile.cz).

Item 2 was fun to talk about as well.  HanseMerkur has been a great supporter of Liferay, and it is always great to talk about success stories.  I delved into their original decision-making process for choosing Liferay back in the 4.2 days, spoke to their architecture and how their needs have changed over time.  Thankfully, Liferay has matured, and many of the process workarounds that HanseMerkur needed to employ are being solved by things such as Staging and Remote Publishing.  

Finally, I spoke to the two predominate business models for commercial open source -- Professional Services-based and Support and Subscription-based.  With the introduction of Liferay's Enterprise Edition in 2008, Liferay presented a great opportunity for discussing the benefits of both models.  The audience, which consisted of business leaders as well as developers, were keenly interested in how our Enterprise Edition compares to our Community Edition.  There are cases to be made for both models, and frankly, I'm a big proponent of the way that Liferay does business.

So, I'd like to thank Accenture for inviting Liferay to present at their conference, and I certainly hope that we get invited back next year.  I always love spending time in Europe, and being surrounded by people who are engaged in open source always leaves me feeling empowered.

With all of that said, what's a trip report without some photos?

Amsterdam is beautiful at night -- particularly during the holiday season!

Being from Ohio, I'm used to wide-open spaces.  The city of Amsterdam doesn't offer much of that.

The conference was held at the Amsterdam AJAX arena -- home to Amsterdam's AJAX football club.

The AJAX Arena has an amazing sliding roof and is magnificent.

Accenture put on a great show with great presentations, a wonderful vendor showcase and spectacular Dutch food!

After the end of a long day, I hopped the train back to Amsterdam Central Station for one last night in Amsterdam.

Where I spent time at my new favorite bar, Gollem.  They serve a ridiculous number of beers -- most of which I have never heard of.  It has a cozy, authentically Dutch atmosphere, and is a must for anyone who visits Amsterdam.

Earlier this week, I did a demonstration of Liferay for a potential customer.  I think it went well, and for the most part, I was able to show them all of the capabilities of the product in which they were interested.  I showed them how good we are with things like private communities, user management, integration, permissions, themes and the dragging/dropping of portlets.  As a long time user of Liferay, I know this stuff pretty well, and I think my knowledge came through in the demo.

Walking out of the demo, I asked my co-worker, Meesa, for feedback.  Her only criticism was that I should have been more excited during the presentation.  I had plenty of time to think about this on the flight home.  I really love Liferay.  In my opinion, it is a game-changing product with potential to do immeasurable good for customers, open source software and technology as a whole.  As a community member, I pushed to make the product better, and I tried to spread the word about Liferay as much as possible.  This enthusiasm for the product and the company a major contributing factor to why I get to work at what is the closest thing to a dream job that I can imagine.  

One of the contributing factors to Liferay's success is the enthusiasm of the employees.  If you ever visit the office, you feel it in the air.  The development team believes in what they are building and are excited to be doing it.  The leaders know that Liferay is the best product and are making strategic decisions to make it even better.  Marketing and Sales aren't trying to sell the product as much as we are trying to let you know that it really is the best thing out there.

So, why didn't my enthusiasm come across during the demo?  I'm not sure.  Maybe I didn't want to seem disingenuous.  Maybe I didn't want the audience to feel like they were being "sold to."  Maybe I thought that by simply showing the really cool features of Liferay that they would get it.  Regardless, I need to do a better job of showing the real enthusiasm that I have for what we do.

It's funny how timely information can cross your desk. I came across this article on TechCrunch which talks about why enthusiasm for your product is so important.  Steve Jobs is the master of this (see attached).  Steve Jobs is genuinely passionate about what Apple is doing, and that passion translates to Apple's employees and customers.  You feel it, see it and know it.  Entire subindustries are built on this passion (see MacWorld, MacRumors, OSXDaily).  The Apple Fanboy phenomenon wouldn't exist if Apple didn't genuinely believe in what it was doing and subsequently communicate that to their customers.

The lesson from all of this?  I'm going to start expressing how I really feel when I do demonstrations.  When I show someone how you can drag and drop portlets on a page, I will use the phrase "really cool."  When I show how we handle communities and virtual hosting and permissions and on and on and on, I will use the words "great", "amazing" and "beautiful."  

Why?  Because it is.  And people need to know it.