Category Archives: Social Media

Santa’s Workshop Goes Agile!

Posted on by
2

Among the aroma of fruit cake, hot cider, and sub-zero temperatures Santa Claus announced today that his North Pole Workshop would switch to using agile practices in toy production.  Santa sighted a number of reasons for the change, among them:

  • Increasing need to be first to market against growing competition.
  • Better collaboration between kids’ toy lists and toy developers.
  • Reducing the risk that kids don’t get what they want.
  • Increasing quality and accountability in toy development and delivery.

According to Santa, “We’ve analyzed this decision for some time and  it became clear that change was needed after re-reading little Timmy Todsnockerdellturtlefoof’s complaint letter from last year.  Instead of receiving a bicycle, as stipulated in his toy list; he got two fake icicles.”

The well publicized failure last year to meet the requirements of Timmy’s wish list was not the first time Santa’s North Pole Workshop hadn’t delivered, but in this day of social media and instant updates; the story took on a vicious viral characteristic….hitting #1 in the tweetosphere for a full month with the hash tag: #TimmyTodsnockerdellturtlefoofGotIcedBySanta.

When asked what type of agile practice the workshop would be adopting, Santa replied: “Scrum.  It’s well known, proven, and being used in some isolated corners of our workshop today.”  Some muted ‘boos’ could be heard from the audience.

Santa went on to say that Rudolph The Red Nosed Raindeer would head up the agile transformation of the North Pole Workshop in conjunction with an outside agile consulting firm to be named later.  That development confirmed for some that Rudolph was next in line to take over The North Pole.  Rudolph was on hand to comment to reporters after the announcement:

“We’re looking at one of the big 5 consulting firms, but we haven’t ruled out the smaller players.  Look, what’s important here is that we get to done. I have a nose for this kind of thing.  I’m not a dreamer..I’ve been a servant leader for a long time…I realize this transformation isn’t going to happen overnight, there will be pain and there’s a lot of existing process and procedure that will have to….well, frankly….go away.  But, one step at a time. I expect we’ll have a more detailed plan in May or April.  Talk to me then.”

Reactions among the North Pole elves was varied.  One older elf man pointed out that Santa had to be dragged “kicking and screaming to the decision.  He wasn’t on board at all.  Rudolph, Frosty, Mrs Claus and the Yeti really had to sell him on it.  When they broke out Timmy’s letter to remind Santa of the increasing defect rates in his shop….he went ballistic. I mean he really lost his cookies.  Then the Yeti put his foot down.  I think Santa knew what that meant.”

Others, like a younger elf woman, had a different opinion on the switch to agile:  “I’m fine with the whole agile thing, but I guess I don’t understand why they chose Scrum?  I mean….from what I read XP is way better and more applicable to our environment.  I really don’t think the elves, particularly the older ones, will like daily stand-ups. I mean most of them can barely wake up every day….let alone stand up.”

Still another view was held by Donner, “What about Kanban?  No one’s talking about Kanban, but in the reindeer house we use it all the time to limit HIP ( hooves in process). I bet Rudolph moves us there.  I think there’s going to be a power play here between Santa and Rudolph.  It’s a battle that’s been brewing for centuries.”

“Give me a break. Agile?  Really, let’s knock off the buzz and hype.   So we goof up on a few thousand toys out of the billions we make a year.  How’s agile gonna solve that?  I don’t get it.  I guess I’ll ride it out and see where this goes.  But limiting HIP in the reindeer house has done nothing but give some of us more time on our hands.  I don’t think that’s what Santa wants.”  said Blitzen.

Frosty, while at the announcement, declined to make any official comment but did say that he favored a balanced, pragmatic approach, one that would focus on the workshop’s needs rather than a dogmatic approach.

Mrs. Claus had this to say: “Rudolph is very bright.  I know he’ll make this work.  He knows where he’s going.”

Strangely, the Yeti, was not present.  But his footprint could be found in the comments that others made.

Outsiders also came to hear the announcement.  The Easter Bunny had this to say: “I understand what Santa’s doing and to be perfectly frank he’s in a different position from us in Easter Hollow.  He’s facing some real time to market issues and competition with Mom & Dad, Grandpa & Grandma, and others.  His competitors have real advantages in local sourcing, customer relationship management, and technology.  Santa just hasn’t kept up and now it’s time for a radical change.   I don’t think anything he’s doing is going to change our approach.  We pride ourselves on stability of delivery and with a 98.2% market share on Easter…we’re just not facing the same issues.”

The Easter Goose has the other 1.8% of the Easter market.

Merry Christmas agile community.  Enjoy your holidays, stay safe, and as always….take care. 😉

Advertisement

How Will Tablets Impact Your IT Strategy?

Posted on by
1

Introduction

Gartner recently unveiled the top trends that enterprise IT should be strategically focused on.  One of those is the growing use of tablets in the work environment.   This post will take a look at the implications of increased tablet and smart phone use in the enterprise and hopefully deliver some insight into this trend beyond just a capacity replacement strategy for PCs and laptops.

Implications of Tablets and Smart Phones in the Enterprise

Let’s skip the obvious background and trend information and launch straight into the implications.

1. Printer exit strategy – Think of tablets as electronic paper.  That’s one of their utilities. Plenty of technology gurus have struggled to manifest using technology in lieu of paper only to be vexed by the utility, versatility and permanence of the 8.5 X 11 parchment of industry. So what’s different this time?  Portability, usability and eventually….sharing.  Right now it’s a little cumbersome to share notes, reports, and other virtual-papyrus artifacts with everyone in a room.  It’d be nice if my tablet recognized all those other tablets in the meeting auto-magic-ally and allowed me to share documents with them with little more than a button click.  A kind of permanent “LiveMeeting” or “WebEx” with RFID/GPS type sensory to recognize my location relative to the meeting schedule for that room.  It’s not there yet, but you can see it coming.

That alone won’t shut down your printers and get rid of the reams of stock in your office closet. Nor will it stop “Ed” at IKON solutions from frequenting your micro printing press to unclog the jam of a decade.  It will take you, the CIO, pushing, selling and implementing a bold strategy:  get rid of them.  All of them.  I’m talking about your printers.  People won’t stop using printers unless they’re gone.  Once they’re out of reach….they’ll find, and use the alternatives.

If you’re Hewlett Packard or Lexmark,  yesterday would have be a very good time to rethink your business model.  Kodak is foreshadowing you.  Tablets will get thinner, more collaborative, increasingly better at power utilization, and super cheap.

2. Embrace video/audio recording – Does anyone else see the paradox in someone with a tablet typing or writing meeting notes on his device when it’s fully capable of recording the visual/audio representation of that discussion?  Tablets and other devices can transform how your organization captures information and knowledge and shares that with others.  Written/readable documents don’t go away, but moving an organization toward a video/audio strategy should improve the quality of your work.  So much context is lost in written notes, documents, requirements, and emails.  How much does that quality cost?

Go with this strategy and here’s what changes:

  • A premium on presentation and verbal communication skills becomes essential.
  • This strategy augments your move to paperless ( number one above )
  • You need more storage and network bandwidth to capture all the videos / photos / audios:  think cloud here.
  • A tool to version, track and search this knowledge will be essential.  A wiki makes an ideal candidate.
  • Digital video and editing skills are now a key requisite on resumes.
  • Corporate policies need to be rewritten.
  • You might want to invest in pico projectors for everyone, but I think eventually tablet and laptop makers will make this a standard feature.

3. From office to work lounge –  Look at your desk/cubicle.  If you’re mobile and paperless…why do you need this space?   Work places are still relevant.  Collaboration and communication happen best in a common physical environment.  Working from home is like working in a really thick cubicle.  But to encourage the freedom and interaction that mobility and paperless bring to the office, the furniture and interior should be living, playful and open.  Many employers have already made this move:  mobile whiteboards, open touch down areas, couches, plants, and open space with lots of natural air are some of the interior elements that seem to work well for a work lounge.

The implication of work lounges and the increased interaction is that work is not work anymore.  People aren’t laborers, they’re….well….people.   Work, fun,  friends, co-workers, ideas, and profits will begin to blend.  This poses some challenges to stodgy HR policies and Tayloristic views of management.  Those who’ll succeed in this environment will be leaders, not managers and the org chart will flow around them in an organic way.   Corporate empire builders beware.

4. Office supplies / telecommunication equipment reduction –  In addition to dropping your printers and paper supplies you can now chuck your sticky notes, paper clips,  desk phones, and almost everything else in that closet.   Again, if you keep it around people will use it.  If you dump it, then they’ll get creative and use the tools they have.  Force the change.  Be the leader and save the company money.

Office Depot, Staples and others should plan their exit strategy.  Maybe they begin selling the work lounge concept and the supplies for that.  To date, I see little evidence they *get* this.

5. Killer App Coming……Plan for it -> Intersection of Identity / NFC – An earthquake is coming to the landscape of identity and access management.  Check out my earlier articles on this for background.  Your mobile device is an abstraction of you.  People will come into your employment with their credentials and data already digitized and ready to be transferred and used in your environment.  You’ll pull this data from LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+…….and using those same tools you can give them rights/permissions to systems on your cloud.    Kaboom!

In time this destroys internal LDAP systems, multiple id and password issues,  corporate HR systems and physical security access control.  These will be thrown into a social mobile nfc blender and become the domain of mega vendors.   The tech war to control the identity market will have no comparison to previous epic battles.  Those who scale this out will capture the lucrative enterprise IT market.

The implications are vast and will touch every corner of the enterprise IT market.  Plan for this NFC hurricane to shake out vendors through 2012-2013.   You’ll want to embrace those software vendors that do NFC, cloud and social identities for access.  My prediction?  Microsoft’s collapse is right around the corner.

6. Build vs Buy vs…….Download for Free.  The implication of app markets is that you now have a third generic system strategy:  download for free.   Any options analysis for system planning should consider this.   While it hasn’t happened yet, that i know of, we could well see a big vendor crash as a freely available mobile app does the approximate functionality for none of the cost.

The download for free option should also be used as a development strategy.  Maybe you find something that ‘kind of meets’ your needs.  Download, play, experiment, trial and get a feel for it.   Then, approach the developers of that app and say you have some ideas to improve it.  They might do it for free.

App markets are consumerization of IT writ large.  Our work force will be our IT department, and our IT department will turn into technology strategists, gurus, enterprise architects.  High caliber, well paid business technology talent will replace the ‘system analysts’ of today and IT departments will shrink.  Invest in your best.

7. Email’s days are numbered – Email gave us a huge productivity boost in the 90s.  Indeed it was the killer app of the first internet explosion.  But as we’ve moved through time its weaknesses are costing us.  The loss of context in email, as apposed to physical presence undermines quality of work.   Mis-understandings, multiple interpretation, cultural differences and poor writing lead to *email threads* that are a semiphore of poor quality.  Think ,just for a second, how many issues you deal with daily that revolve around clarifying what someone meant in a cetain email?   It’s astounding and it’s holding us all back.

There’s a better way, but it hasn’t been built yet.  Google’s Wave initiative is a bold attempt at remaking communications tools.   It’s close, but the email replacement will incorporate the cameras, microphones, and NFC chips that are built into tablets and smart devices.

Any CIO will want to watch this space and price out the latent, untapped potential cost savings in boosting communications quality across the enterprise.  Combine this vision with implication #5 above, and you can see the scale of change coming towards us.

8. POS industry: look out you’re about to be remade –  Tablets can be turned into POS terminals.  Enough said.  If you’re a POS vendor and you don’t realize this: what in the name of clam chowder have you been doing the last 2 years?  With NFC in 2012 an avalanche of slim, mobile terminals will usher in tap-pay while still accepting swipe pay.

Cash and checks will be digitized too and while the exact shakeout is still fuzzy to me; private digital currencies ( Ven, BitCoins ) are going to play a role here.  As I professed in my article about the externet ( internet of things ), the combination of an amorphous, unaccountable virtual world and the ability to pay with a tap lower and free the barriers to entry for those enterprising enough to believe they can challenge the global fiat currency oligarchy.  Nation states, banks, and the overlords of international finance will surely capitalize on this opportunity in some way.  Watch my blog for future posts on this….I’m still noodling on it.

9. Healthcare – Goodbye clipboard, hello iPad.  It’s all over the place, and doctors and nurses are demanding that all their software tools run on tablets.  FINALLY technology understands healthcare’s unique needs.  God bless Steve Jobs and the Apple-neers.  Steve, this was truly your greatest gift to the world…..not the iPhone.   You’ve given doctors a tool that will help them treat and solve the very problem that took you from us too early.  Rest in peace.

Taking this further, digitizing medical records and sharing that with patients is the bonfire lit by the meaningful use regulations passed in 2009.  NFC, smart devices and tablets will make the sharing part real time and collaborative.  People will really know and understand their health.

Summary

Surfing the waves of enterprise tablet integration has great possibility for the visionary C-level executive.  Will you be one of them?   My consultation to you:  tear up your current IT strategy document and vest your talent with the authority and energy to make these nine implications happen.   If you don’t…your competitors will.  You can be sure that some of the finest minds in IT are reading and following this blog.  Numbers don’t lie.  Be part of the revolution rather than a victim of it.

Requirements Documentaries – A Recipe

Posted on by
2

Introduction

In previous posts I’ve talked about how written requirements are on the decline and how our development methodologies and practices, at least in part, are constructed to hedge the risk of misunderstanding requirements.   As an outgrowth of those posts I’ll talk here about my vision for Requirements Documentaries as an alternative to written requirements and user stories.  I hope by the end of this post a formula will emerge for crafting video based user stories into a persistable set of requirements documentation that captures much of the context around a project.

Preparation and Coaching

How do you prepare the team for video recording?  While the discussion should be as open and natural as possible:  some coaching should be required here.  Meetings of all stripes tend to deviate from their course and sometimes into topics that are not appropriate for the organizational culture.  While these things can and should be edited out for the purpose of requirements documentaries; the team and customers should receive coaching ahead of time on how best to present their views and what topics/situations to avoid.

Other good tips should be included like: speaking clearly and loud enough for everyone to hear, avoid bad behaviors ( picking nose, tapping on the table, etc ).   We want it to be natural, but we also want it to be professional.

Tools

I believe this is a simple, cost effective set of tools that would serve as a basis for delivering requirements documentaries.

  • Whiteboard(s)
  • Wiki or requirements gathering tool ( Jira for example ).  A tool that can track versions.
  • High quality video camera(s) with sufficient battery life and backup batteries.
  • Digital camera to capture whiteboard sessions.

The Role: From Requirements Manager to Producer/Orchestrator

The role to facilitate requirements documentaries requires some new skills.  I’m calling this role “Producer” or “Orchestrator”.   But I don’t want everyone getting caught up in the title here.  It’s the skills and abilities of this role that are important.  Those are:

-Video production:  a solid understanding of digital video technologies ( hardware & software ) is important.  But additionally the person should have some training/understanding of how to make a documentary.  This would include how to edit the videos for applicability, ease of understanding, and dissemination to a heterogeneous audience.   Furthermore, this role would understand lighting, how to stage a scene, and related concepts in film/video production today.

-Facilitation & Coordination:  any good requirements manager today has to have some level of facilitation and coordination skills.  This will be instrumental when discussing the requirements, but also important in getting the right folks together to produce the documentary.  Discussions could veer off course, and it will be important for the orchestrator to guide the group back to the topic so as to make the video relevant.

-Detail Oriented:  goes without saying, but with the video medium, details may need to be clarified through, what I’ll call, adjunct clips and whiteboard captures.  So attention to detail doesn’t change, but the mediums of collection and dissemination may pose challenges for a traditional requirement’s managers.

-Organized:  just like today’s requirements the videos will need to be stitched together in some kind of wiki and organized in a manner that coincides with the software release.  Any adjunct items ( whiteboard captures, additional videos ) will need to be issued as modifiers to the original video.  In addition the orchestrator will need to keep his meetings, resources, and notes well organized.  More preparation may be needed to gather requirements in this fashion, but the benefit will be the greater context it brings to the developer’s work.

-Creative:  a little creativity to make the videos more enticing and “watchable” would be valuable.  However, we need to be careful here.  Too much creativity and the videos become more of a movie than a documentary.

-Provacateur:  a good requirements manager today thinks through the questions and challenges those in the room on their assumptions.   We still need this skill and it becomes even more important with video production.   Unless we want to issue continuous sets of adjuncts after each requirement documentary; we’ll need to flesh out as much as we can up front.   Please note, that I’m not suggesting BDUF here.  We can have 5,6, or however many requirements documentaries we need to form a release, but each of those main documentaries may have many adjuncts that clarify or modify anything missing in the main video.b

Method & Utilization

The process below could be done in an iterative or waterfall fashion.  It should be methodology agnostic.  My recommendation would be to start using this on a small, non-critical project in your enterprise.  See how it works and decide how to scale it from there.  I see this as a technique pattern for situations where your requirements may change frequently, have a complex and intricate data domain, or your team is global.  Lastly, I do realize this process is fairly basic……my intention is to start high level and as we see what works/doesn’t work we iterate back through and add more details or changes.

Potential Issues

Fear of the Camera – This is probably one of the most difficult issues.  Some folks have trouble speaking up in meetings…let alone in front of a camera.  So a sufficiently skilled orchestrator should recognize when this is occurring and attempt to bring that person into the conversation or, if completely unwilling to talk up, the orchestrator should pull that person aside, after the meeting, and have a candid discussion about whether they would like to continue participating.  It may be necessary to get a proxy to stand in for him/her.

Change – Using requirements documentaries is a big change in format.  It won’t go smoothly at first and that’s why I recommend approaching it on a small non-critical project at first.   Work out the kinks, and the issues with a group that sees the potential benefit.   Use all your change management skills and recognize the loss cycle associated with any big change.  Some may see it as opportunity, and yet others will see it as a threat.

Equipment problems – one of the reasons I stress using 2 cameras ( video and still ) for recording the requirements events:  Murphy’s Law.

Legal, Organizational Policy Issues – in some countries and companies recording by video is against the laws or corporate rules.  Check with your counsel before embarking on a project using a requirements documentary.   Legal representatives and corporate leaders who see value in this method may need to sit down and amend rules to allow this form of requirements gathering.

Politics – Recording things on video is a way of preserving the context around the requirements in addition to the actual meat, logic of the system.  It’s intended benefit it to preserve for future team members and current team members the mood, background, motivations, and reasoning behind what they are building.   This is the ideal side, but there is a less rosy edge to this.   Politics arise in almost any company, and documenting decisions on video could open the door to misuse for devious ends.   A company’s leadership embracing requirements documentaries should recognize this and put controls in place for those seeking political gain from manipulating the format.

Summary

Requirements risk exists on all projects to a greater or lesser degree.  The intention of this technique is to help mitigate that risk and provide continuity through time for a system’s definition.  I don’t suspect this will alleviate all requirements issues.  I’m too jaded by experience to think there are panaceas to every problem.  But there is some good evidence in the world of psychology and Hollywood that motion pictures are more memorable and understood more easily/rapidly.  You can see this for yourself.  When you left the theatre after seeing “The Green Lantern”  did you not understand it?   Was it totally lost on you?  Now what if I drafted that movie into a requirements document?  Logic aside…my hope is that we can catch our requirements gathering process up with the technologies that we have today for gathering that information.   If you try this technique….feel free to comment and let me know your experiences.  I’ll be anxious to hear them.


Identity – The Killer App for NFC and Social Media

Posted on by
4

If you’ve seen recent articles about Google+ and Google’s moves to acquire handset maker Motorola…then it should be clear that Google’s vehemence and focus on NFC and tying it together with Social Media are not just about mobile payments or competing with Facebook and Apple.

There’s a bigger focus and it becomes more apparent after relfecting on some of  my older posts  The Externet and  NFC is about the eWallet Right? and Social Networks or Virtual Countries? 

Identity is the killer app.  Why?  In order to accept and transact payments ( or any piece of information/data ) you need TRUST.   Trust comes from knowing someone’s identity is real.

If Google can secure and hold your identity, YOUR REAL IDENTITY, then they’ve become a trusted global store / directory of people.  Tie that together with NFC and your identity ( or the parts your willing to share with others: credit card numbers, names, phone numbers, pictures, really anything you share with people and businesses today ) becomes easily transferable between mobile devices, nfc readers and computers.

Ok, so what?  What’s the big deal?  For starters Google will make gobs of money off this through marketing, advertising, security, finance & banking, and academic research.  They’ll do this the same way that they do through search advertising: minute transaction fees spread across monstrous volumes.

But more importantly NFC and Social Media will solve one of the biggest problems the internet has today.  What is it?

Security.

It’s great to browse websites, but how many ids and passwords do you have?  50? 100?  You’ve left a trail of different identity signatures over a myriad of databases across the world.  As time goes on and you continue to use different sites; your security becomes increasingly likely to be stolen by hackers.

Not only is it insecure, but it’s down right annoying.  Why can’t i just save my identity once.  Then, while I’m on the internet it reveals the necessary parts to any website?   Believe it or not…many have tried to solve this problem ( remember Microsoft Passport ?? ), but there’s no vested reason for me to sign up for OpenID other than “I”m sick of having so many ids and passwords.”   That’s where social media comes in.  There is a vested interest in things like Facebook or LinkedIn.

But before you think this is a problem relegated to the web….take a look around your brick and mortar neighborhood.  The same problem exists.  How do I know who you really are…quickly and reliably!!!!??  So that it doesn’t hold up a line and anger my other customers.  This is where NFC comes in.

By tying together your real identity through a Social Media service like Google+ and an NFC enabled handset; I can now quickly transact pieces of your identity ( health, financial, personal, legal, or otherwise ) to third parties through NFC readers, other NFC phones, or even on the web once your laptop has an NFC reader too.  ( Yes, it’s coming Jim Bob ).  Your Android device and Google+ would be the gatekeeper to you.

Effectively, Google or Facebook or Twitter or Apple, would be a bank of identities, a directory with ancillary services tied to that identity.  They could charge other businesses to access that directory on a transaction fee basis and provide services.  This is a powerful business model and shouldn’t be discounted.

Within 6-9 months, if my post is accurate, I’d expect to see a headlong rush into identity services as global handset manufacturers proliferate NFC technology across the globe.

The Externet

Posted on by
7

The internet connected our computers together and created a virtual world along with a tsunami of change and innovation.  The externet will connect the physical world to the virtual one and complete the circle.  Everything will be connected, communicating, updating, and aware.

How will this happen?

Near field communication will bridge the two worlds together.   Most notably NFC is bantered about in the media as a way to enable the ‘eWallet’.  While it does this, there are competing technologies that could do this today without NFC.  Check out Square’s card case for instance.

Regardless of who wins the eWallet race, NFC enables much more.

What are the implications?

Let’s take an ordinary Saturday in my home town of St. Louis.  Waking up to the alarm on my Android or iPhone device at 7:30 am, I jump in the shower and get my son up for soccer practice.

When I get to my car I put my device in the NFC holster and my car’s app opens up.  It knows its me since my identity app conveys this to the car app.  All system diagnostics for this trip will be recorded with me as the driver.  My virtual keys are differernt from my wifes.  I press start and the engine is running a little rough.  The car app now gives me a menu:

1. Owner’s Manual

2. Diagnostics History

3. Music

4. Video

5. Climate

6. Navigation

7. Maintenance

8. Insurance

9. Trade In

I check the Owner’s Manual and it says I may be using the wrong oil.  The remedy is to let it run for a few minutes before driving.

After letting the car warm up a bit, I head to the soccer field.  I’m feeling jovial so I choose ‘Music’ at the stoplight and start playing one of my favorite 80s playlists.  I hardly notice the police lights behind me.  Apparently, I was feeling too jovial.

The police officer conveys that I was exceeding the speed limit by 20 miles an hour.  He asks for my license & registration, so I pop those apps open and tap his NFC reader to download that data to his device.   Within a couple of seconds his device verifies that I’m not a wanted criminal and that my insurance data is up to date and paid.  He then tells me the speeding ticket is $50.00.  I pay right there by tapping his reader.

At the field,  I notice Owen’s soccer shoes are looking a little old, so I tap the NFC chip to see the receipt, which tells me these were bought 2 years ago for $49.97 at the online Adidas store.  Furthermore, due to a small pedometer powered by a battery and tiny solar panel….I know that Owen has taken 224,321 steps in these shoes.  A link allows me to look at newer models and sizes.  But wait, I don’t know Owen’s shoe size.  I take his shoe off and take a picture of his foot and then ask the photo app to measure it.  It tells me he’s grown a size and now requires a 9.  I let Owen choose the style he likes after he models it on his foot picture, and then we purchase.

When the coach shows up he asks everyone to sign in.  He puts his tablet on the bench and enables the NFC registration app.  I tap the app and sign Owen & myself in using the Soccer League app.   Later the coach will use the registrations to post notes about each child’s progress, fees owed, and the upcoming schedule.  All of which I can view from my device.  Furthermore I’m banking on the notion that a solid record of Owen’s progress as a soccer player will make him a shoe in for the English Premier League.

During practice I strike up a conversation with one of the parents.  We have similar technology interests and he might make a good business partner some day, so I ask to exchange business cards with him.  He says sure, and we tap our phones together to do the exchange.

After practice we go to McDonald’s, Owen’s favorite.  We look at the menu and tap the selections we’d like to purchase.  As a bonus the menu also downloads the nutritional data into my Health app and registers the calories Owen and I will consume.  To get a 10% discount McDonald’s asks me to share some of my personal demographic information with them, so I press yes on the device, and the data is downloaded from my Identity application.  Anything to save a buck.

But wait did I pay with Visa, Mastercard, PayPal or AMEX?  Turns out I paid with a totally new virtual credit card called GOOG-EX.  Mobile payments made issuing credit and competing with existing credit card companies easier and lowered the barriers to entry against the major providers.  I chose Google’s brand new credit card because they tied my interest rate to my credit score.  Since I have one in the 800s they gave me a low interest rate of 5% and a penalty rate of only 7%.

After McDonald’s, Owen and i left and I started feeling bad.  In fact, I felt horrible. I drive to the hospital, and they ask me to tap my phone on the NFC reader to register at the hospital Emergency Room.  Instantly my health insurance is verified, my identity registered in all the downstream systems of the hospital, and my visit is appended to my health records on my Health Record App.

As I go through each triage station in the hospital they update my health record with their findings, lab results, x-rays, and notes.  All of this I can share with any healthcare provider.  Rather than the medical record database being housed with individual hospitals that never talk to each other…the data is stored with my Health Record App and I can share it with anyone I want….a distributed database of sorts.  At the end of my visit, my doctor notes that I ate at McDonald’s and he had several patients come from the same McDonald’s today with similar conditions.  He thinks it is food poisoning.

Conclusion

That’s a small smattering of the Externet.  Realize the technology change standing before us will move quickly.   The devices are there, the apps are being built, and the profits are ripe for companies and individuals who see the vision and can make it happen.  Other technologies, like NXP Semiconductor’s GreenChip will couple these worlds closer.

In time we’ll be able to schedule, monitor and control our physical world from our favorite Android or iPhone device.  NFC, while currently riding the wave of Mobile Payments, will open the gates to a truly connected world.  The Externet is the next logical step to wiring our universe.