Thinking out loud

What are you doing this weekend? Anything exciting? How about staring a company? If you live in the Memphis area or can get here – Startup Weekend 2 is this weekend in Memphis.

Startup Weekend Memphis is an event where about 100 people get together in downtown Memphis to start a few companies. Usually this means a tech company like a website or application of some sort.

All are welcome – a mix of business skill sets are needed – from marketing to web design to software development.

Click here for more info.

I just launched a site that Tomorrow’s Trends followers may be interested in. It is called LinqMax.

If you are a user of Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, or Gmail and like to share links then this may be a service you might be interested in. It is pretty basic and simple, but that is how I like it. Basically, you add a button to your browser bar. As you surf the web you can click on the button that adds a bar across the top of your web page. You can then share with friends on your favorite social websites and email. It also has voting and discussion capabilities if you choose to log in and use that functionality. It is integrated with Google and Yahoo! so that you can login using your existing login and password.

Check it out if you are interested.

LinqMax

Below are the top 10 biggest tech failures of the last decade according to Time.

I can understand most of these at first glance. Some simply failed to launch. Others failed to understand a shifting market.

I really liked Gateway about 15 years ago. I liked their desktop computers. What happened to them?

Gateway’s failure has been blamed on several things, primarily its reluctance to enter the laptop business. Its share of the desktop business was strong through the early part of the decade, but it did not shift to portable computers as fast as its major competitors did.

Here is the top 10 list:

Microsoft Vista
Gateway
HD DVD
Vonage
YouTube
Sirius XM
Microsoft Zune
Palm
Iridium
Segway

Link: Complete List – The 10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade – TIME

My guess is that the next shift is to mobile devices and tablet-computing devices. I wonder who is not gearing up for the next shift and will pay the price.

The Institute for the Future has listed 10 skills needed for the future workplace. Below are 3 that I like best – you can visit the site for more detail.

Longbroading
Seeing a much bigger picture; thinking in terms of higher level systems, bigger networks, longer cycles

Protovation
Fearless innovation in rapid, iterative cycles; the ability to lower the costs and increase the speed of failure

Influency
Knowing how to be persuasive and tell compelling stories in multiple social media spaces (each space requires a different persuasive strategy and technique)

Link: 10 Workplace Skills of the Future; the skills workers should strive to have and the skills workers should seek out and promote | The Institute For The Future

I think that the core threads through all of them are: collaboration, big picture thinking, iteration, fast failure, and communication/ storytelling. Although, the newly created names are a bit distracting, I agree with them  – especially when it comes to jobs that are “new product” and entrepreneurial type jobs.

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I want to introduce Shawn Lane. He is an old friend of mine and will has been creating a lot of posts concerning emerging technologies over the past month or so. You may have noticed a different author on most of the posts lately.

I recently added Shawn based on his background and skills. A few months ago I set out to to add another perspective to Tomorrow’s Trends and now have sucessfully done just that. Shawn brings additional interesting emerging technologies coverage as well as covering some interesting breaking-news around tech. So, welcome to Shawn – it is great having another voice on the blog. As far as his background: Shawn has many years of experience in IT, from networking to systems analysis. When Shawn is not staring at the computer screen, he enjoys reading books and hanging out with his two boys. I look forward to covering “what is new” and “what is next” with Shawn as this blog continues to grow and improve.

Here is an interesting video with a lot of futuristic concepts imbedded. It is very creative and also tells a story. Pretty cool.