We go to perhaps the most boring place in the world for vacation, but that's how I like it. The place is called Buxton, NC, on the beach at Cape Hatteras. Whenever they give hurricane directions, they always refer to our beach.
In thinking about the 30 years we've spent at this strange location, it occurs to me that my time at the beach has been characterized by three main phases - phases that map directly to the revolution going on in information management.
Phase One (1981-1995) - What is Connectivity? - There was no cable on the island, and it was too far for a TV signal, so there was no TV. The small hotel we stayed in did not have telephones in the room, and of course, we had no cell phones. So if you needed to make a call, you walked up the road to a pay-phone. And -- get ready kids - there were no portable computers and no email.
Phase Two (1996-2009) - Selective Connectivity - I now had a laptop and a cell phone. But there was no cell phone coverage. Much to my wife's chagrin, I would check e-mail at the beginning, middle, and end of the week, and this was considered a huge intrusion on "our" time. For the first part of this period, I checked email via a speedy modem; toward the latter part, by roaming around the neighborhood, holding up my PC like a divining rod in search of water, look for a wifi signal to mooch off. In either event, it was a pain, thereby providing a natural gate on the frequency of checking email. Cable TV arrived on the island, much to the relief of the kids who normally had to play Board games with us or -- God forbid -- read.
Phase Three - Ubiquitous Connectivity -- AT&T actually works now on the Outer Banks, better than it does in the DC area. Wifi has arrived at the individual cottage level. Between the 6 people staying in our house this year, there were 6 smartphones, 2 MacBooks, and 3 iPads. On my iPhone, I have Kindle books I am reading, music I am listening to, and Audible books I listen to while bike riding. I am not strong enough to resist the lure of business connectivity when it's availability on the very device that I am using to help relax. The Hatteras Snoball place we love has a Facebook site, as does the awesome Buxton Village Books.
Social. Local. Mobile. This is a mantra I first picked up from a Kleiner Perkins presentation by John Doerr and have used many times in my own presentations. It is transforming everything we know or do relative to information management and relative to business and organizational processes. And yet it still seems like many organizations are stuck in Phase Two, thinking that they can choose to exist like we were all back in the era of Selective Connectivity.
Note that I am not sure that all of this is always personally good - the days of Phase One seem so peaceful in retrospect - but that doesn't really matter. It is what it is. And I am afraid that organizations that do not embrace the social, local, and mobile revolution and adapt their information management strategies to meet the revolution head-on will be left in the dust.
How does your web site look on my mobile device? How many of your core customer processes have you ported to mobile? Are you taking advantage of the geolocation capabilities of mobile devices? Are you actively monitoring what is being said about your organization - and responding to the same - on social networks? Are you planning for the day -- soon -- when your employees will be working outside of a traditional office on devices that are not PCs?