February 2, 2006
There were many good speakers and panels at the SIIA Conference yesterday and today. It was my job to moderate the final panel of the conference which was called "Top 10 Technology Trends". Leading the panel was a special treat for me because the panelists were colleagues that I have known and respected for many years: Jason Calacanis, Blogger and CEO, Weblogs, Inc., Jeff Pulver, Chairman and Founder, pulver.com, Inc., Chris Shipley, Co-Founder & Editorial Director, Guidewire Group, LLC, and Dr. Robert Sutor, VP Standards, IBM Corporation.
We had a lively conversation about a wide range of technologies and then some Q&A with the audience. One question was "what *exactly* is the list of the top ten technologies?". It was a fair question. I purposely planned the panel as more of a loosely structured discussion and did not want to box the panelists in to a list of things but nevertheless, I promised to post a list of the top ten things we talked about. These are not in priority sequence. I believe they represent a consensus.
Top Ten Technology Trends
- Blogging software highly integrated with all the other software we use
- Video blogging technology being practical for many more people
- Voice over IP known more for applications than for price
- Location based services
- Mesh technology enabling highly distributed bandwidth
- Tags everywhere
- OpenDocument Format predominant
- Standards evolving rapidly and winning over proprietary
- Broadband over the Power Line (this one we did not have time to discuss)
- Mobile devices dominant as our primary way to communicate including the web
