introspectiveH

There is an interesting battle going on between the Enterprise Irregulars vs. Robert Scoble and Nick Carr about the lack of sexiness in enterprise software. In Scoble's original post, he asks if anyone knows how to make business software sexy. Fellow Irregular, Michael Krigsman, responded in his blog:

Enterprise software is all about helping organizations conduct their basic business in a better, more cost-effective manner. In software jargon, it’s intended to “enable core business processes” with a high degree of reliability, security, scalability, and so on. These aren’t sexy, cool attributes, but are absolutely essential to the smooth running of businesses, organizations, and governments around the world.

Nick Carr then jumped in with his response:

I'm sorry, but I think Krigsman is the one who doesn't understand enterprise software - or at least doesn't understand what it could become. The distinction he draws between business and consumer applications is specious. Are we really to believe that making software engaging is somehow incompatible with making it reliable and secure? That's just baloney.

Besides the fact that I respect Krigsman and believe that he does indeed understand enterprise software very well, I actually agree with Mr. Carr on this one. Too many times people go down the dangerous path of the "Tyranny of the OR", which Jim Collins warns about in his book Built to Last. Just as Steve Jobs did with Apple, he didn't choose between form OR function or even form OVER function, he decided to embrace the "Genius of the AND" and strive to deliver both.

The enterprise question is not whether to choose between either process over people OR people over process. The answer is to be the genius that realizes that it can be both people AND process. Without this realization, you will see a change of heart in SAP's users of tomorrow that Dan talks about. If you leave people out of your priorities and omit them from your equation, they will find better tools to get their jobs done, even at the cost of your money saving, business process integration. If you want proof, go read my recent experiences with our new global procurement application or the pains of working with data in BI. This isn't a fantasy land, it's reality.

I actually believe some at SAP understand this and that's why you have initiatives like the SAP Developer's Network and SAP's Imagineering Group. You can also see this in new products such as Business by Design, where SAP is trying to make enterprise software accessible for small businesses. It's an internal struggle between the old school German engineering mentality vs. the new school Silicon Valley start up attitude. Only time will tell if they will find balance and harmony of both by embracing the "Genius of the AND".

Popularity: 16% [?]

Majority Desk is a project that Dan McWeeney and I worked on this year for demo jam at SAP TechEd.  It's basically a 3D rendered widget desktop ran by an open source physics server; and oh yeah, all user interaction is completely controlled by two Nintendo wiimotes.  It supports full interaction with flash movies running on floating, spinning tiles.  Cool, eh? :)  Some of the demo widgets even consume web services from an SAP Netweaver system.  See, and you thought business was boring.

Majority Desk is powered by Adobe AIR and takes major advantage of many available open source projects surrounding the Flex community.  We used Open Dynamics Engine wrapped with Python for the physics engine, Papervision3D for the 3D rendering, WiiFlash for the wiimote interaction, Tweener for the visual transitions, and Doug McCune as an Flex open source fountain of knowledge.  If you are interested, Dan is planning on writing a blog post with more of the technical details.  I will throw a link up once it is posted, or you could just just subscribe to his blog, which you should do anyway.  He is one brilliant dude, and working with him has been career changing. [UPDATE] Dan's post is up Majority Desk Architecture

So without further ado, check out the demo below.

Here is an exclusive interview that we gave to the Redmonk guys before our demo in Las Vegas.  They were the first to see it, because those guys rock!

Here are some photos of us on stage during the demo and the next day in the Community Clubhouse.  If you think majority desk looks cool on your monitor, picture it on a 30 foot screen in front of a thousand people.  Yep, that's me with my back to the audience "showing them my good side".  These photos come from Dan's Zooomr stream and Marilyn Pratt's Flickr stream.

This one comes from Nancy Margulies and her beautiful "Community Mindspace" mural

We had a blast and the crowd really enjoyed themselves.  We couldn't compete this year because we won last year with SAPlink, so we chose to break all the rules and just focus on blowing the crowd's socks off.  I think it worked.

Last, but not least, I want to give a couple shout outs to some of the people that gave us inspiration, support, and encouragement to work on this crazy thing.

• Denis Browne - SAP Imagineering
• Doug McCune - Independent Extraordinaire
• Ryan Stewart - Adobe RIA Evangelist of Awesomeness
• Matthias Zeller - Adobe go to man for all things SAP

Some other Adobe guys that make Flash/Flex/AIR exciting and fun to work with.

• Matt Chotin
• Kevin Hoyt
• Deepa Subramaniam

Some other SAP guys that helped with the videos and actually make SAP fun to work with, if you can believe it.

• Craig Cmehil
• Thomas Jung
• Mike Prosceno

And of course, my Redmonk peeps for doing the interview and always having other great blog content.

• James Governor
• Michael Cote

 Some initial reactions out in the blogosphere:

• Synthesizer Developer - Dan McWeeney's thoughts on the future of software development
• Demo Jam highlight video
• Majority…what? Majority Desk!
• Day One of SAP TechEd '07: Keynote, Community Clubhouse, Demo Jam
• My TechEd Day 1 Highlights
• Majority Desk - Wiimote 3D widget desktop - totally sick
• The coolest thing: get your Wii Hands on
• Outside in development, deli.cio.us, democracy and the colgate twins
• Minority Report? No, Majority Desk!
• Ed explaining to Marilyn how to operate Majority Desk
• A 3D Desktop Controlled with Wiimotes and Built in Flex
• If We Can't Compete We Won't Follow the Rules

Popularity: 25% [?]

At this year's RailsConf, Dave Thomas wrote about the Rails community as they set a precedent for other tech conferences by skipping the typical swag and instead donating any funds to charity.  Fellow SDNer, Nigel James, then picked up on the meme by calling out to the SAP developer community and then shortly afterwards, it caught some momentum with the Redmonk guys as they talked about taking some real action.  How cool it is to see more people spreading the love.  

This past week I attended the 360 Flex conference in Seattle.  During the conference, the Seattle Flex Users group, led by Ali Daniali, coordinated a 60 hour coding marathon called the Flex Code Jam.  They gathered a volunteer group of hardcore, dedicated Flex hackers to develop a virtual food drive web application for Northwest Harvest Organization. 

They started on Sunday night and continued through the end of the conference on Wednesday.  I am no Flex guru, but I did stop by for a few hours to see if I could help.  Luckily, I had some experience with the PayPal API and was able to at least contribute a small amount.  It was quite an experience.  They rented out a suite on the top floor of the hotel and had a constant flow of Redbull (kudos to Redbull for providing this for free), soda, pizza, and beer. They actually had a keg, but I just stuck with the Redbull since I am no good at CUI (coding under the influence).  The mix of alcohol, greasy food, energy drinks, no sleep, and mama jokes proved for an interesting combination for sure. 

The guys pulled it together by the Wednesday morning keynote to show a working demo of the first version.  They also announced their plans to release the entire code base as open source so that other charity organizations can use it as well.  At the end, Ali made the call to other groups in hopes that they would be inspired to do similar events in the future.  This was a tremendous effort and very fulfilling to see.  It was an awesome experience and I want to give some serious congrats to all involved.  This is a prime example of developers changing the world. 

Popularity: 9% [?]