Sessions : Document 2.0 : Comments

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:42:03 GMT

Hi Francois.

I hope you could cover how the evolution of documents will affect mobile. Dealing with documents tends to be one of the barriers to true mobility.

Thanks,

-Bob

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 12:53:49 GMT

Great build Bob!

Actually, we have been working on the intersection of Mobility and Documents in the past quite a lot what we called — "Mobile Document Services", or "Any Document, Anytime, Anywhere". I'd love to further discuss the intersection between these two concepts a bit more. Would you be interested in joining the panel?

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 06:42:20 GMT

Hmmm. Structured is an interesting attribute. Since I think much of good product design (and much of life, for that matter) consists of paradox management, I would love a discussion about allowing document creation to be both structured and ad hoc. And using "generic" document functionality in domain-specifc ways. E.g. Ad hoc documents with optionally structured meta-data, or even forms-like behavior.

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:45:37 GMT

You're right, nothing is black or white. I'll try to instill some discussion on this duality/paradox in the discussion.

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:39:07 GMT

Hi Francois:

Great topic... Sadly I can't join the panel... It overlaps with my Board meeting this afternoon.

It would be good to chat after the mobility session Friday morning if you can.

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:22:56 GMT

Ad hoc presumably would also enable enterprises to handle exceptions to the normal business workflow, right?

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 04:08:10 GMT

Interesting session — wish I could have been there in person. I'm old enough to remember when there were lots of office products (including Wang word processors with 8" floppy disks) — the market eventually evolved some 25 years later into a single predominant player. Now we're seeing an explosion of new web-based tools such as Adobe's Buzzword, Google Docs, Sliderocket (which feels very Adobe-esque), and dozens of other offerings. We know that in reality a document migrated from one version of software to another may not look exactly the same as the original, let alone a document migrated from one application to another. As we have discovered many times over, the best product doesn't always win; it's the guy with the best marketing campaign.

What assurances do I have as I enter the world of web-based apps that:

My data belongs to me and not to the company who owns the software and servers it runs on,
When venture capital runs out and the servers are turned off I'll be able to retrieve my data,
I'll be able to use that data in some other application.

Some folks are still afraid that GMail — in what is apparently perpetual beta — will someday have the plug pulled and years' worth of email archives will suddenly be lost forever.

Until there are some real answers put forward, I'm playing with a huge variety of web-based apps — a great many I have signed on, tried once, and decided never to go back; others I find intriguing and am doing further testing and experimentation. But I don't plan on switching my real-life production environment any time soon.

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:53:50 GMT

We touched about your point in the panel. Some vendors on the panel (in particular SlideRocket) said that import and export is on the top of their feature list. I believe your issue is fundamental to the migration of desktop app to web app: users want to be in control of their bits! It's a solvable problem. For example, think what if storage is in the grid (think Amazon S3) with an API that everyone writes to.

RE: Document 2.0

ismael@monolab.com — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:52:14 GMT

Indeed, great discussion we started in the panel on that topic. Maybe we can continue here?

One more question: is privacy of those documents a concern to you? Do you trust Google or others with all your professional documents and mail?