DACS General
Meeting
December 2008
Program Review:
John Patrick – Future Of The Internet
by Sean N. Henderson
The excitement over our December meeting is still being felt.
John Patrick took the stage before the largest DACS audience
of the year – all eager to hear about the technology that
touches nearly all of our lives.
John Patrick has given this presentation to our group well over
a dozen times. At the beginning of his presentation, he was presented
an engraved thank-you gift – a chrome dash plate for one
of his motorcycles displayed on his website. He then began his
presentation with the excitement and eagerness of someone who
truly understands the role of technology in modern life.
Much of his program comes from his book, Net Attitude, and those
who have seen it previously recognized many of the slides and
stories. One of the features that remains the same is this percentage
number – the Internet is still in the 5% of its potential.
He maintains this low number despite the record number of people
worldwide now on-line and on other metrics. He still criticizes
many, if not most, businesses for having an inside-out mentality
- where the Internet is a tool used to push back on customers
or where businesses miss the mark completely and gave numerous
examples. John Patrick sees the Internet as being a democratizing
force giving “power to the people” and a way to give
people real choices.
John Patrick champions government and the public sector for being
closer to these ideals. One example he cited was the U.S. IRS’ e-File
program with it's large participation numbers. He went on to
give examples on how even Danbury Hospital - where the meeting
took place - was forward thinking.
For the businesses he offers as examples of having it “figured
out”, he still uses eBay as an example of a company that
thought through the experience of using their service in an end-to-end
fashion. He also mentioned that eBay may be the largest reputation
database in the world. Nuggets like that demonstrate how much
John Patrick really envisions how organizations should interact
with their customers.
New this year was his talking more in depth and thankfully defining “cloud
computing”, and what it means for everyday people and for
those who are tech savvy. Personally, he uses Google Docs and
Gmail exclusively for all his office-related tasks. His logic
is that Google probably has better system administration, reliability
and security than what he can offer with his own servers and
backups at home. He said he still needs to run Windows for a
couple of applications (he mentions Quicken), but otherwise the
Internet and software titles will use more frameworks and software
layers to make operating system choices more flexible.
The keys for a successful Internet and Net Attitude, as Mr. Patrick
describes in his book, are: fast, always on, everywhere, natural,
easy, intelligent, and trusted. Some of these attributes, such
as trusted, are obviously more difficult than others to implement
and to be accepted. He readily discloses that much of what is
blocking the Internet's potential is often as much political
if not technological. He cites lobbyists for Verizon getting
public Wi-Fi blocked in many jurisdictions. He also used Verizon
as an example of a company that missed the mark by unreasonably
limiting what types of requests could be handled by way of email.
He also spoke about the changing role of libraries and schools.
Libraries, he said, were already expanding, not with books, but
with events and computer labs. He also talked about the Internet
Bubble, and said that the problem wasn't technology, but poor
business models “trying to push water uphill.”
Mr. Patrick is a great speaker and especially on this topic.
DACS looks forward to the next time our members and visitors
are treated to this presentation.
As a reminder, DACS General Meeting presentations are free and
open to the public, and held at the Danbury Hospital Creasy auditorium.
DACS has been serving the Danbury and surrounding communities for
nearly two decades. Visit http://www.dacs.org or
see any Board Member for information on joining DACS and getting
involved.
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