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November 27, 2005

Conversations at DSI

Last week I met with professors of the MIS class at DSI in San Francisco.  We had terrific conversations that went way past the time alloted for them. The entries below recap some of the thoughts and ideas that flowed around the table.  I learned so much and it redoubled my belief that there is great utility in connecting the community of MIS teachers.

Posted by DavidK at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

Evaluation Blackmail

The darkest phenomenon to arise from our conversations at DSI concerned student evaluations.  For a variety of reasons (keep the classes full, gain majors, show empathy to students, respond to anxious parents, etc.) administrations are placing increasing emphasis on student evaluations.  Professors not on the tenure track who work on a year-to-year contract fear low evaluations mean loss of employment.  Those on the tenure track fear low evaluations lead to a negative tenure decisions.

Such evaluation pressure makes it difficult for professors to take a principled stand in the classroom.  Roy Dejoie at Purdue applies a twenty percent penalty to late work -- and he states this policy clearly in the syllabus as well as frequently throughout the term.  In spite of this, one student evaluated him poorly and stated, on the evaluation form, that he did so because he was penalized for his late project.  Other, similarly depressing stories were told by professors who have been punished for applying high standards in their classes.

I'm wondering: Who could be a good parent if their children filled out an evaluation form on their performance every 4 months?  And suppose one's economic future depended on the results?

Posted by DavidK at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Appropriate Classroom Evaluations

In spite of the fear and reality of Evaluation Blackmail, everyone agreed that classroom evaluations are necessary and important.  But, most also believed that the current evaluation system is broken.  The following suggestions emerged from several conversations:

• Reduce the emphasis on student reviews and increase the emphasis on reviews by one's peers
• Correlate evaluations with grades to demonstrate that evaluations are biased by grades
• Eliminate evaluation anonymity.  Require students to sign their reviews (after grades have been determined)
• Provide an appeal process.  Enable professors to question and counter excessively negative reviews

 

Posted by DavidK at 10:27 AM | Comments (0)

An Intriguing Attitude about Student Evaluations

John Lundin at San Jose State stated an unusual and intriguing attitude toward his evaluations.  "As long as I have a high standard deviation, I'm happy."  The more I think about that posture, the wiser it seems.  John wants to teach the class so that some of the students think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread while allowing himself the freedom for other students to think he's a disaster.

If I admit the truth, there are times when I find myself pandering to the students.  I don't allow myself the freedom for a student to believe I'm disaster personified.  I wonder if my class would be better if I did?  I suspect it might.

John returned to academia after a successful IT career in industry.  He's able to take more risk because he knows he can go back to that career, near where he lives in San Jose, without problem.  Maybe we can gain from his situation at a distance ... perhaps he's pointing us to greater ultimate freedom and better classes???

By the way, John suggests to his administration that it is invalid to compare his evaluations to his colleagues'.  Because his standard deviation is different than theirs, the t-test for difference in means is invalid.  That test requires the two means to arise from distributions with the same standard deviation.  If I remember my statistics, he's right.  I wouldn't bet that it would mean much at UW, however ... 

John starts his class with the following requirements:

• Be courteous
• Be prompt
• Be professional
• No excuses

Posted by DavidK at 10:24 AM | Comments (0)

Increased Importance of MIS CSFs

To my mind, the pressure from evaluations increases the importance of our developing a list of critical success factors for the MIS class (see entry below).  A nationally-endorsed list of critical learnings and behaviors would give us a solid basis for peer evaluation and a well-grounded argument of our effectiveness to the administration.  It would also provide an explanation to the students:  "Look, this is what they're learning at other universities nationally.  If you want to be competitive on the national market, you'd better be learning these things."

BTW, I know that CSFs include more than course goals and objectives; they also include us, our environment, our relationships, our material, etc. 

Posted by DavidK at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

Increasing Student Involvement in a Large Section

Jeff Gaines at San Jose State teaches the MIS class to 125 students in a two-hour session.  During the first hour, he presents to the entire group.  After the break he splits the class in half.  One group of students goes to a lab to learn and complete application cases (using Access) and the other stays in the large lecture hall for discussion of a case or other active learning exercise.  Next lecture, the groups switch places. He asks the students who remain in the lecture hall to change their seats and group together at the front of the room.  Jeff reports that having the students clustered together in the large hall creates a sense of intimacy and fosters better discussion.

Posted by DavidK at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

Getting Students to Read the Book (Con't)

Jeff provided another suggestion for getting students to read the book.  From time to time, he administers a simple quiz on the required reading for that class period.  He posts questions (to be Scantron-graded) on the overhead five minutes after the class starts.  Any student who arrives after the test begins is unable to participate and expected to sit quietly, and "Fail with pride," as Jeff tells them.  One quiz score per term can be thrown out.

All of this helps him to avoid lecturing to faces would not be blank had the students read the material...

I still plan to compile all of the suggestions I've had on this topic into single document ... coming soon ...

Posted by DavidK at 10:17 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2005

Meetings with Professors at DSI

Yesterday and today I'm meeting with professors of the MIS class at DSI.  Lots of interesting ideas and great conversation!  Everyone seems open to the idea of establishing a community of MIS professors to share ideas.

Posted by DavidK at 08:27 AM | Comments (0)

A Few Ideas from Yesterday's Conversations

• Donna Davis at the University of Southern Mississippi suggests that we share cases that we've developed. A great idea that we could easily implement here.   Please, if you have a case that others can use, send it (or a link to it) to me and I'll post it on this blog.  If we get enough of them, I'll create a keyword searchable database that everyone can access. 

• Delvin Grant from DePaul University suggested that we work together as a community to establish Critical Success Factors (CSF) for the MIS class.  What an interesting idea!  Clearly, we deal with many common issues / problems / opportunities, and most of us are addressing those issues in isolation.  Learning what others have found to be critical to their success could be a great boon to all of us.  When I get back to Seattle, I'll summarize the notes I've taken from the conversations here and produce a draft of possible CSF's that incorporate the ideas expressed in our meetings.  Meanwhile, if you have suggestions for CSFs from your own experience, please mail them to me or make a comment to this blog entry.

• One common theme seems to be the need for in-class activities to break up the lecture hour(s).  Tueta Cata from Northern Kentucky University uses in-class group exercises successfully and believes they are a key part of her students' learning.  I hope to have a summary of Dr. Cata's activities on this site, soon.

• Roy Dejoie is the course coordinator for all sections of the MIS class at Purdue.  Roy brought lots of ideas / issues / problems / opportunities to our discussion yesterday afternoon.  He raised one point that greatly complicates our classrooms:  Unlike marketing, ops management, finance, even accounting, MIS requires integration of all business disciplines.  An IS is like the nervous system of an organization, and we have to know and teach something about every major business activity.  That need causes the course to fan out like the Platt River in springtime -- 3 miles wide and half an inch deep.  It means not only that we need to have a wide breath of knowledge, but also that we need to connect to the knowledge that students are gaining in other classes.  All of that to students many of whose business experience is that they've been summer lifeguards.  How do we address this?  Lots to think about and I hope Professor Grant's idea of the CSFs will help.

• Many other great ideas in the conversations, but I'm running out of time.  More to  come tomorrow and over the weekend.

• Thanks to everyone!          

Posted by DavidK at 08:11 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2005

Blogging at DSI

I'll be at the Decision Sciences Institute conference in San Francisco this weekend.  I'm hoping to touch bases with other MIS professors on the topics raised in the MISsed Opportunity article (under Favorites -- to the left).  If you're at DSI and would like to meet, please send me an email here or call me at the conference hotel.  I hope we can get groups of people together to talk about these issues.  I'll blog from there ...

Posted by DavidK at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)

Cultural Differences in the Classroom

About 30 percent of the students in my MIS class are Asian and most of them are not native to the United States.  Several terms ago I was trying to engage a young Asian woman in a dialog -- I wanted her to disagree with me.  After four or five volleys on my part, it became clear that it just wasn't going to happen -- she simply would not disagree with me.  Her discomfort with our interaction was so great, I asked to speak with her after class.  She told me that she had been taught that it was never polite or correct for her to disagree with an older man.  Even more problematic, when I could get her to disagree with me, she felt guilty.

Her honest description sent me into a bit of a tailspin.  Invoking guilt in my students is not my goal.  I began to wonder if I was being arrogant -- after all, who am I to foist my culture, my beliefs, onto her.  But discussion with other students caused me to realize that she and others have come to the United States to study because they want to learn business American-style.  And, at least for the companies in which I've worked, give-and-take, open discussion, open disagreement, even, at times, open argument are common -- and it would be hard for any new employee to have much impact if he or she felt guilty disagreeing with an older man.  So, ultimately, I decided to continue my discussion-, sometimes disagreement-oriented teaching style.  But the interchange caused me to realize one more time that there's a lot more going on in my classroom that what's in Chapter 6.

Posted by DavidK at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)

Hoftstede Research on Cultural Differences in the Workplace

Hofstead analyzed cultural value systems in matched samples of employees of multi-national businesses in more than 40 countries.  He identified four dimensions, defined as follows:  (I found the reference to this work in Bandura's Self-Efficacy  in Changing Societies, p. 151 ff.)

1. Individualism / Collectivism
2. Power distance
3. Uncertainty avoidance
4. Masculinity/Femininity

The first concerns looking out after one's own interest, alone, vs. adherence to group loyalty with the benefit of group protection.  Power distance is the degree to which authority figures keep distance and accept large differences in power.  In power dominant cultures, the teacher is a distant figure.  Uncertainty avoidance involves the degree to which people are stressed by new, unstructured, and unpredictable situations.  The fourth dimension concerns the degree of difference expected between men and women.

I think this work is important and that it explains some of what happens in my class.  For example, my experience working in entrepreneurial settings in the U.S. causes me to act as it's everyone for him/herself and no one is going to take care of you.  I'm sure I project that attitude onto my class and some of my behavior statements must seem very strange to students from more collective-oriented cultures.

Has anyone else experienced these issues?

I wonder what it's like to be a professor from an Asian country teaching students from the United States?  That must seem very strange.  Is anyone willing to share thoughts on this issue?  Or, in raising this question, and I just evidencing my true lack of understanding of cultural differences?  By some cultural values, is it rude or embarrassing for me to raise this question in a public forum?  Can anyone help?

Posted by DavidK at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)

Svinicki Powerpoint Presentations

Thanks to help from Sharon Dunn at the University of Texas (a fellow MIS prof), Dr. Svinicki sent me the PowerPoint presentations that I referenced last week. The one with references to research papers and books can be found here and the presentation with specific teaching suggestions can be found here.  Also, don't forget about her book Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom!  

Posted by DavidK at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2005

What a Great Week!!!

Many years ago I had the good fortune to attend a seminar led by the psychologist, Virginia Satir.  She had a profound impact on my life and my teaching and many of her quips and phrases still come to mind.  One I especially like:

"I may be slow, but I am educable."

I thought of it this week, plugging away on my MIS class, when I stumbled into two interesting, promising, research-based, and new-to-me sources of learning theory.  Both generated ideas I could apply this week.  Below, in alternating blog entries, is an element of a theory and what I tried with it this week.  

Posted by DavidK at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)

You Can't Learn It for Them

This past Thursday and Friday, the  Center for Instructional Development and Research at UW sponsored teaching seminars by Dr. Marilla Svinicki from the University of Texas.  Svinicki is the author of Learning and Motivation in the Postsecondary Classroom, which I've not read, but I did go to both seminars and found them excellent.  Her Friday seminar was entitled 'Helping Students Help Themselves' with the subtitle, 'You can't learn it for them."  The room was jam packed crowded -- with a waiting list.  Dr. Svinicki, whose appointment is in the UT Psychology Department, reported on recent teaching and learning research -- her own and others.  Lots of interesting ideas.

One that struck a chord with me is the power of goal oriented study.  Probably not a new idea in itself; the news is probably the emerging evidence of its efficacy.  Anyway, one example is to ask students to read with a particular purpose in mind.  Instead of an assignment like 'Read pages 110-127,' the assignment should be to use those pages to define certain terms, relate ideas in a concept map, solve a problem, compare and contrast several theories, etc.

Even if this is old news to us, it may be new to the students.  They may be giving themselves goals like, 'Read the book for an hour.'  The problem with that goal is that one can fully accomplish it and not learn a thing.  Rather, the students should be given, or give themselves, specific tasks to accomplish -- using the reading pages as a a resource.

Posted by DavidK at 07:26 PM | Comments (0)

Goal Learning and the MIS class

I'm teaching 'IS within organizations' this week.  While very important, I find this topic hard to teach.  It tends to become one acronym after another -- here's an MRP, here's an MRP II, here's a CRM, here's an ERP, and here's an EAI.  So, I decided to try my new-found knowledge about goal oriented learning.  I started class with the assignment of several goals.  Here's one of them:

Use the concept of value chains to compare and contrast functional versus cross-functional information systems.  

To do this, the students first must understand Porter's value chain model and which functional systems relate to each value activity.  Then they need to understand how cross functional systems like ERP and EAI support value chain linkages, and finally, how the nature of such cross functional systems makes them hard to implement.  If they can do all of that, then I think they will have learned what I would have hoped they'd learn by reading the chapter.  But, their reading will be directed to that goal.  We'll see...

Posted by DavidK at 07:25 PM | Comments (0)

Motivation Theory

Svinicki also discussed the work of Dweck and Elliot (A Socio-Cognitive Perspective on Motivation), which describes four different learning orientations:

Mastery:  I want to learn (or 'I want to become a great skier, knitter, writer, weaver, stock picker, or scuba diver')

Performance approach:  I want to succeed (or 'Will this be on the test?')

Performance avoidance:  I don't want to fail (or 'I just hope I don't get the worst exam score')

Strategic effort:  I want the biggest bang for the buck (or 'Hmmm.  Looks like a guest lecturer, guess I'll skip class')  

Posted by DavidK at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

I Give Up ... sort of

I've been preaching, yes that's the right word, preaching, to my class this quarter that what they learn is far more important than their grade.  I'll bet I've said that 20 times, so far, in one way or another.  So, how's it turned out?

Which was the most active session all term?  In which meeting did I have their complete and focused attention?  In which session did they stumble over one another to be able to ask the next question?  To rush to tell me they didn't understand a term or concept?  In which session was everyone wide awake, anticipating my next glorious statement?  Yes, you guessed it.  The review session just before the exam.  I held it at night, apart from scheduled class, and even still it was the best session all term.

I give up.  I've decided to pay attention to the Dweck and Elliot research.  My students, juniors, are motivated by grades (performance approach).  That's just the way it is.  Few are mastery learners (the MBA students are, but they have more job and life experience), and I now admit my preaching won't turn them into mastery learners.

So I changed my tune:  For the rest of the term, I'll pose 4 to 5 questions (these are questions that they would be likely to ask if they were motivated by mastery).  The final will be taken from that complete list of questions from all class sessions.  Hence, from now on, every class will be a review session.  The goal questions will form the exam.  Am I caving in?  Is this prostitution or practicality?

Posted by DavidK at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

Self-efficacy

In the seminar, Professor Svinicki briefly described Albert Bandura's work on self-efficacy.  She said recent research indicates that self-efficacy is the best predictor of student performance in class.  Bandura has several books; in Self-efficacy in Changing Societies (p. 149) I learned that Bandura defines four sources people use when forming a sense of self-efficacy:  Past success, vicarious experience, persuasion, and physical and emotional state.

There's not much I can do about students' past success, but I can do something about vicarious experience.  I can also attempt to persuade, but I'm already such a preacher, it's hard to imagine I could do much more along that line.  So I decided to try vicarious experience.

Posted by DavidK at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)

Using the IS Class for Competitive Advantage -- Vicariously ?

I've been telling the students all term that they should use knowledge from the MIS class to gain a competitive advantage in their job interviewing process.  "I'm a marketing major, and I also know a lot about the use of information systems in marketing."   This week, with the help of one of my students, I had a chance to motivate using Bandura's idea of vicarious experience.

One of the students wants to go to dental school.  She's applying to a number of universities and each requires an in-person interview.  Several weeks ago, I'd mentioned to her that she could use this class as a way of distinguishing herself in the interview process.  Taking that hint, she decided to prepare a report on the role of information systems in modern dentistry.  She visited two dentists and interviewed a third.  Yesterday, she presented her findings to the class.  It was great fun to hear her say that she was surprised and gratified to hear terms like 'local area network,' 'protocol,' 'interface,' 'architecture,' 'data storage,' 'query,' etc.

After her presentation, I asked the class to brainstorm on how she could use the knowledge she'd gained in the interviewing process.  There weren't a lot of responses (surprising to me because half the class is marketing students, and I'd think they'd have an idea about how to present this 'product').  But, three or four ideas were terrific.  I saw her taking notes at the podium and I hope they'll help her.  Meanwhile, I hope even more that the students in the classroom were vicariously learning that they, too, can use this class to help them find and flourish in their new job.  "You can use this strategy for careers besides dentistry, by the way  ..."

And flourish brings me to the last of the theory, at least for this week.

Posted by DavidK at 07:12 PM | Comments (0)

Flourishing Football at USC

In case you're not a football fan, the University of Southern California is ranked number 1 in the nation and is attempting to do something no team has ever done:  win a third consecutive national championship.  Now, for those of you who find football a brutal exercise of gratuitous violence perpetrated on college campus budgets for the sole purpose of providing a vicarious outlet for over-testosteroned males, what does that have to do with teaching MIS?

The coach:  Pete Carroll.  I found him fascinating even before I learned in the Fall issue of USC's business schools Marshall Magazine (full disclosure:  I'm an SC alumnus -- I get the magazine from the b-school along with the donation request envelope and a personal note that Dean Gupta sends to me and 7,499 other of his closest friends).  Anyway, I learned on page 7 that Pete Carroll wrote his Master's thesis on Abraham Maslow (remember Maslow's hierarchy?) and self-actualization.  It turns out Maslow's work has been carried on in the field of psychology under the rubric Positive Psychology.  And, even closer to home, the principles of positive psychology are applied to organizations by a group that is based at the University of Michigan called the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship.

All of which was news to me, but what I've read and learned so far I like -- a lot!  (Recommended readings here.)

Posted by DavidK at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

Why We're Having Fun

If you listen to Pete Carroll after the game, he always mentions how much fun they have.  It's one reason I started liking him several years ago.  After all, it's just a game but the announcers try to make it into something more important.  "I just hope everyone else is having as much fun as I am," he said at halftime during one crucial game.

On the flip side, this year SC's quarterback, Matt Leinhart had (for him) a bad game against Notre Dame and the next week Leinhart told the press, "I've gotten away from what I want to do.  I just want to go out there, enjoy the game, and have fun."  I'll bet there was a coach or two in the background helping him to remember that attitude.

What's going on here?  Why the focus on fun?  Surely, they're doing more than just having fun to be in the running for a third national championship.  I think I got a clue in Cameron, et. al (editors) Positive Organizational Scholarship. In a contributed article by Barbara Fredrickson (p. 168):

"The hypothesis ... that positive emotions broaden thinking and action repertoires is supported by two decades of research by Isen and colleagues... Induced positive emotions produce patterns of thought that are notably unusual, flexible, creative, integrative, open to information, and efficient."  (skipping over a slew of references to the underlying research papers)

Now, I can't think of a better list of adjectives for a job like a quarterback on a football team:  flexible, creative, integrative, open to information, and efficient.  Wow!

Furthermore, (p. 169)

"The cognitive literature had already documented a downward spiral in which depressed mood and the narrowed, pessimistic thinking it engenders influence one another reciprocally, leading to ever worsening functioning and moods, and even clinical levels of depression."

Hmmm.  We've always known that fun classes are more fun to teach.  Now we see that not only are they more fun, but the positive emotional experiences are starting the flow of "creative, integrative, open to information, efficient thinking."  How'd you like some more of that in your classroom???  And fun is not the only positive emotional experience ... they discuss lots more.

Isn't this fascinating?

I want to keep reading about it through the weekend.  Another interesting book:  Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived by Keyes and Haidt.

Am I the last person in the U.S. to learn about this?  Does anyone else have experience with POS?  Anybody know anybody at the POS center at U. Michigan?  Please write Ideas@TeachingMIS.com if you do.

Have a fun week!

Posted by DavidK at 07:05 PM | Comments (0)

November 03, 2005

Google and Microsoft Duking It Out?

Finally, after 10 years of sitting on its laurels, Microsoft is beginning to feel competitive pressure ... from Google.  I opened a gmail account several months ago and I prefer the Google, web-based email program to Outlook -- by far.  Not just for the searching, which is excellent -- as one would expect from Google, but because the interface seems lighter, easier to use, less bulky, and I've become so spoiled by the keyboard shortcuts that I keep trying to use them when I go back to Outlook.

So score one for Google on email ... at least for personal and light professional use.

Posted by DavidK at 07:03 AM | Comments (0)

Picasa

Picasa is another easier to use, friendlier (oh, did I say, free? -- at least for non-commercial use) program from Google.  This one helps you organize, edit, and share / print your pictures.  When you install it, it scans your computer for images.  That in itself was interesting -- I found photos I'd long forgotten that I had -- carried over from one computer upgrade to another, to another. Here's what it looks for:

• Image file types: JPG, GIF, TIF, PSD, PNG, BMP, RAW (including NEF and CRW). GIF and PNG files are not scanned by default, but you can enable them in the options dialog.
• Movie file types: MPG, AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV.

Once it knows about your photos, you can further organize them, add (searchable) labels, make slideshows and so forth.  Then you can edit them, cropping, adding special effects, adjusting color and lightness.

All very easy to learn and with just enough features and functions to be useful without overwhelming me with 20 toolbars of functionality.

I'm suspicious, though.  What's paying for this?  They say it's not sending my photos upstream to one of their sites, but it never occurred to me that they might until they said they didn't.  Is there a privacy problem here I don't understand?

Posted by DavidK at 07:01 AM | Comments (0)

Google Video

Produce a video?  Want Google to distribute it on on the Web?  Google Video's for you.  See Google's 'random' selection of videos here.  I watched somebody's trip in a private airplane into the Ozarks on Nov 2, 2002.  Why?  Darned if I know.  It wasn't all that interesting except some nudging in the back of my mind that we could all share experiences at the same moment in time.  Why do I want to do that?  Don't know.

Commercial video producers can upload also

What's going on here?  Again, I don't know.  Google makes 99% of its revenue from ad sales, though, so there must be some angle to throw ads at me.

Yet one more way to zone out ... but is there more?  

Posted by DavidK at 06:59 AM | Comments (0)

Google Base

Yup, there's ...  Google Base.  What is it?  Nobody's quite sure.  The site is up and down, but when it was up, someone found this:

“Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free.

"Examples of items you can find in Google Base:

• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures

"You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.”

So, is this a stab at Craig's list?  They think so in the interesting analysis here.

Contributor Don Gray thinks this could be a start in the direction of an alternative Windows development platform.  Which brings us to the interesting announcements from Microsoft this week.

Posted by DavidK at 06:58 AM | Comments (0)

Can Microsoft Still Compete?

Back in the 1980s, Microsoft was never more dangerous than when it was threatened and competing.  They knocked off Lotus and Ashton-Tate and Borland, and anyone else that Gates and Balmer put in their sights.  How many personal DBMS products do you know today?  Let's see, there's Access from Microsoft, and a, well, there's Access, and a ...well, that's about it.

Stories are legion of G and B making lists of companies they wanted to eliminate and then doing it.

Does Microsoft still have that ferocity?  Have 10 years of sitting on its Windows/Office laurels so softened Microsoft that they can't compete with Google?

(And by the way, why has almost everything interesting in the past several years come from Google or some freeware startup?  What is Microsoft doing with those billions they're pouring into research on the Redmond campus?  Why, for example, do they not have even a decent XML editor?)

Posted by DavidK at 06:56 AM | Comments (0)

Office Live / Windows Live

Nov 1, 2005, Microsoft announces WindowsLive and OfficeLive.   

 "Microsoft Corp. today previewed two new Internet-based software services — Windows Live™ and Microsoft® Office Live — designed to deliver rich and seamless experiences to individuals and small businesses. The new offerings combine the power of software plus services and are compelling enhancements to the Microsoft Windows® and Microsoft Office products. In particular, Windows Live helps bring together all the elements of an individual’s digital world while Office Live helps small companies do business online."

"Windows Live™ is a set of personal Internet services and software designed to bring together in one place all of the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with more safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. Microsoft demonstrated early versions of several new Windows Live offerings, some of which are accessible at http://ideas.live.com, a new Web site where people can try the latest Windows Live beta services:

"The company today also previewed Office Live, a new set of Internet-based services for growing and managing a business online. Designed to help companies establish an online presence, automate key internal and external business tasks, and collaborate with employees, partners and customers, the initial Office Live offerings are targeted at the approximately 28 million small businesses worldwide that have fewer than 10 employees. These services can be used independently but also integrate with Microsoft Office programs used regularly by more than 400 million people around the world, including Microsoft Outlook®, Microsoft Excel®, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Small Business Edition. Over time, the scope of Office Live services will expand."

Slideshow here.

What does this mean?  I hope it means the competitive juices are still flowing at Microsoft and that somebody over there understands that Google is eating their lunch.

Anyway, this week was the first time in a very long time that I see true innovation in products people care about ... not the same old heavy-handed, re-cycled Office and Windows applications.

Posted by DavidK at 06:55 AM | Comments (0)

Truly Viral Marketing

Not only are the products different, look at the viral marketing.  Google hasn't even finished Google Base, they haven't even announced what it is.  The site isn't even stable.  But I'm writing about it and you're reading about it.  The buzz is underway.

Where's their marketing program?  The big, expensive events, the major roll outs?  The 17-city corporate theater announcements like we're about to see for SQL Server 2005?  It's all viral ...

Very interesting and if I made my money producing collateral material for product launches, I'd be worried.

What is this new world the Web has spawned?

Posted by DavidK at 06:52 AM | Comments (0)