Trend Watch

Since I've been traveling pretty non-stop the last two weeks and haven't been able to post, I can't really call this a D Conference wrap-up.  After all, the conference ended 10 days ago, and in this speed-of-light industry, if you don't write about something 10 minutes after it ended, it's old news.

Still, when you get John Chambers, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Steve Case, Eric Schmidt, YouTube’s co-founders, George Lucas and the leaders of CBS, Viacom, NewsCorp, and Time-Warner speaking at the same gig, you really should try to find collective threads to what they've said and see if they point to any trends. 

After the jump, tech trends that will have a shelf-live plenty longer then 10 days...

--Everyone is in everyone else's business.  This is obvious in the abstract, but it was somewhat jarring to hear speaker after speaker talk about businesses or products that they are focusing on that previously were in the domain of someone else.  I don’t think there was a single exception to this.  This means that Cisco is doing social networking (of some form); it means Microsoft doing Web advertising; it means Apple doing TV and a phone; it means Google with a phone strategy and mobile software; it means media companies becoming Internet companies; it means Internet companies becoming media companies.  It’s big “C” Convergence and the speed in which this is happening is remarkable. 

--Mobile is where a lot of the action is going to be in the next couple of years.  If you listen to Microsoft, Apple and Google, the significant bets they are placing are on mobile applications, operating systems and, in some cases, hardware.  The bet isn’t against the personal computer; it’s that everyone will also have a mobile computer formerly known as the phone — and this will happen in a major way in the next three years.  This development will spur lots of innovation and get start-ups jumping into this ecosystem.

--The media company executives may not be tech savvy in their own personal use and overall comprehension of emerging technology, but they know enough to understand that the business around them needs to be moving as quickly as possible to as much organic and partnered digital entertainment opportunities as possible.  They get the fact that consumers no longer consider their business a brand and instead have loyalty toward specific content.  None of the media folks came off as dinosaurs who “just don’t get it.”  If anything, they have been converted, but haven’t established their own focused, prioritized belief system yet.  The current strategy is to throw as much stuff out there in as many places as possible and see what sticks.

--Second to copyright, privacy was the second most-mentioned policy issue at D.  And, interestingly, in almost every case it was the executive who proactively brought it up soon after mentioning a technology that would have clear privacy related implications.  It was almost like a insta-caveat of “of course, as we role this out, we will be sure to do so in a way that respects the privacy of individuals.”  Examples included, Internet advertising, surveillance cameras, and location-based services. Walt and Kara had plenty of red meat here, but didn’t bite.

--Judging from D, tech's impact on health care could finally break through into mainstream discussion.  Folks in the audience asked both Steve Ballmer and John Chambers about what Microsoft and Cisco are doing, respectively, to create tech driven health care solutions and this was the main topic of Steve Case’s interview about his company Revolution.