As mentioned elsewhere on this site about hearing difficulties, I hate noise and crave clarity. Also, as my hearing continues to worsen, I rely more and more on lip-reading – so being able to see someone’s face and lip movements helps tremendously in giving clarity to what is being said. Beyond that, I enjoy being able to participate but unfortunately as many CMS/IT related discussions and debates are held in very noisy locations like bars, restaurants and exhibition halls I often forgo the opportunity to do this as I know from past experiences that it will be frustrating and stressful trying to follow the topic of discussion and contribute relevantly and meaningfully.

So, from the comfort of my home office, with the video displayed in a comfortable size in one window, Twitter in another, my favourite noise cancelling earbuds in place and the volume turned way up, I sat back to enjoy the latest CMS Connected offering – 2011 Year in Review with Scott Liewehr and Seth Gottlieb (AKA The Unpronounceables )

Having had a go on this blog over the last couple of years at predicting and reviewing CMS developments from a practitioners perspective, it was a topic I was very interested in hearing more views on.

Obviously, you will be able to watch it with all the clarity I did but, for me, the main takeaways were …

1. One time ‘cheap and cheerful providers’ like Ektron are moving up the ranks through re-architecting and innovation and increasingly targeting the enterprise space
2. Just being able to publish content doesn’t cut it in the vendor space anymore, hence the emphasis on doing more with that content to meet business need (Personally I think this has been understood since the first generation of CMS vendors and the dotcom boom, but clearly more vendors have got the message now)
3. Social is a ‘where do we publish’ problem given the proliferation in channels. It also provides ‘the body language’ for the online world. (A particularly good metaphor I thought)
4. Despite it being said for a number of years now, organisations are being slow to prioritise and optimise content for mobile
5. Adobe/Day was the most significant acquisition of 2011. Acquisition detracts from innovation. And SAP may well snap up a CMS vendor (possibly Coremedia) in 2012
6. Ones to watch in 2012 are European vendors and, particularly, the open source offering and ecosystem from Drupal!

After many years of sampling the delights of CMS’s large, small and in-between I have been putting more of my eggs in one basket over the last year so I was understandably pleased to hear that leading pundits in this space think Drupal is going to make a bigger mark in 2012.

Message received loud and clear !

(please note:- In my enthusiasm for the format and topic, I am aware that I tweeted a lot during the event yesterday. Presumably some people use hashtag muting for when things get noisy from live event tweeting but for those who don’t, I apologise for filling your feed with a bit too much #cmsconnected)

1. In times of uncertainty be very wary of over-buying software solutions…

There’s a website I still visit from time to time that saddens me somewhat. In some ways it was one of the more successful web projects I have been involved in over the last 15 years or so, and in others the least successful.

The requirements gathering and evaluation process was smooth, with the preferred CMS solution and implementors ticking all the boxes and jumping through the hoops relatively easily. The design phase went very well with great buy-in from all stakeholders and a lot of positive feedback on the direction it was all going. The implementation was progressed expertly by the project manager, technical architect and development team and delivered within the agreed timescales and budgets. The content migration was fast and accurate and provided the main mastersite and complete framework for 5 additional languages within 2 weeks. So, with everything lined up and ready to roll, we waited…and we waited…and we waited.

Unfortunately, the product range this new multi-lingual, web marketing platform had been implemented for (as a pilot for a much wider deployment) never materialised and, to my knowledge, is still not launched over two years on from its original planned debut. It was/is a potentially great product but, realistically, there was always a relatively narrow window of opportunity to get the new range launched and established with resellers and consumers successfully.

Without the revenue stream this new product range was designed to generate, there was no budget available for expanding the new web platform further and so it remains like an iceberg – with a fraction of its capability visible above the waterline and a massive potential capability hidden passively beneath. What a sad waste of everyone’s time and efforts for something that is now being used just as a basic (and expensive) email marketing tool but also a reflection of how tough it is to develop and market consumer electronic products efficiently and effectively   Based on the same requirements I’d probably stick with the original recommendation but with the benefit of hindsight I would certainly have recommended directing the money elsewhere … 

2. Don’t overestimate the desire of others to be empowered …

Although skeptical of social media on a number of levels, I have always welcomed the fact that it has shown a mass majority of people how easy it is to publish content to the web and collaborate and communicate around it, because that is, in essence, what they are doing via Facebook and Twitter day in and day out. This adoption and use of technology is what the majority of content management orientated people have been trying to achieve to a greater or lesser extent within organisations since the web’s inception.

Why then, when faced with the prospect of adding and managing content for their work activities in as easy-to-use ways do they freeze like rabbits in headlights? What’s wanted is the same enthusiasm they have in their social lives for describing stuff in witty and engaging ways – what you often end up with is procrastination and lists of reasons why stuff can’t be done.

The age of participants has some part to play in their comfort levels but as in a lot of scenarios it is more about attitude than age. Ultimately though, this gap between willingness to use content technologies in social lives versus work lives comes down to the culture of the organisation. If senior management have seen the rise of social media as a means to monitor what their employees are up to they can hardly complain when those employees don’t rush online to engage with customers and talk about the organisation positively.

3. It’s easy to forget that web-based applications can still be very dumb …

Having spent most of my career using web-based tools for content creation and management, it’s easy to forget how forgiving you can become. Getting folks who are used to using high-end graphic tools like Photoshop and Illustrator to manage basic web content is a reminder of how far web solutions still have to go before the usability is as slick as it could be. Basic usability needs have been known for years, as illustrated by this type of post from early in the last decade. However, even the content technology solutions described as ‘leaders’ in their respected fields could do a lot more to address the following fundamentals …

Users hate …

• Learning – It doesn’t make sense to learn new interactions if there’s no return on the investment we must make to learn them.
• Repeating – Automatic data collection and the reuse of information will save your users the hassle of data entry.
• Waiting – We hate waiting even more if we don’t know how long we have to wait.
• Searching – Maintaining consistent navigation is important in helping users find the information they want.
• Reading – People are good at scanning, and we recognize and remember images more easily than text.
• Security breaches – While we’re happy to share some information with some people, we prefer to keep some information private.
• Platform restrictions – Applications should not be restricted to a particular operating system, form factor, or user’s abilities.
• Rigid functionality – Options to add, remove and modify different functionality should be given to the user.
• Mistakes – Having the ability to undo our actions can allow us to recover from mistakes and learn from them.

4. Don’t underestimate the time needed to implement an Open Source solution …

For the reasons given in lesson 1, my hand was rather forced down the Open Source route by total lack of budget to continue the web development projects planned for 2011. I say ‘forced’ because although I have used WordPress, Joomla and Drupal in the past on both personal and professional web projects I have always been conscious of the fact that there is ‘no such thing as a free lunch’ when it comes to content technology implementations, regardless of whether or not there is a licence fee.

In the past, going the Open Source route has required a lot of personal investment of time and effort to get the results at reduced expenditure and if I was doing an accurate time/cost analysis then factoring in that time – both in office hours and home hours – would be the only way to make a fair comparison.

Luckily, total lack of budget coincided with the arrival of Drupal 7 and its greatly improved usability. It didn’t take long to recognise that a lot of time and effort had been lavished by the Drupal community on addressing the types of fundamental usability issues listed in the previous point.

To date, this has been the most tangible example I have seen where the Open Source approach trumps proprietary development because it is those fundamentals that often get de-prioritised in the race to add the latest and greatest functionality or respond to the latest fad or fashion.

5. Study the previous form to back a winner…

While Drupal 7 ticks a lot of content scenarios these days – as expressed in this earlier post – there are some acknowledged gaps while the community gets up to speed in redeveloping old modules for the new core. For me, the main one was a native e-commerce solution. I’d only played around the edges of Drupal 6 and Ubercart but liked what I saw. However, it became clear that the key people behind Ubercart had set their sights on bigger and better things.

Looking back through the history of Ubercart and its development community, as well as early efforts by third parties to get support and sponsorship for the development of Drupal Commerce, a native solution for Drupal 7, I got a sense that this had good momentum and felt confident that the team and community would deliver against the proposed milestones.

Needless to say that having had some involvement in software product/project management there are many things that can push such developments off course and I have seen a lot of examples of Open Source based developments that simply run out of steam when support drops away. Now at version 1.1 Drupal Commerce looks set to continue great progress in 2012 and I am looking forward to contributing in some small ways to making that happen.

6. Know your limitations and seek expert advice…

I like to think I’m a pretty capable person. I seem to be able to get to grips with a lot of things after some trial and error and I don’t give up that easily. However, there always comes a time when you have to weigh up how long it’s going to take you to do something versus seeking the input of those who are a lot more experienced.

I fall into the ‘power user’ category when it comes to implementing content technologies and although I know my way around HTML and CSS code at a pretty basic level as soon as things start getting vaguely more technical I break out in a cold sweat.

Suffice it to say, a day spent in the company of someone who understands Drupal from a developer perspective was a complete eye-opener and within just 30 minutes or so I had learned a couple of things that have transformed how I do things.

Why had I never considered using Firebug before? Duh !!! There was I wrestling with ever more complex CSS using ‘trial and error’ approaches rather than commonsense – now at least I know where the offending stylesheet code is located even if I have no idea what to change it too

7. Things you think will be hard turn out easier than expected …

One project I have been working on required the migration of content from Joomla to Drupal – or more specifically, to the Drupal Commerce product catalogue structure. It’s always best to over-estimate the amount of time any content migration is likely to take and not rely too much on automation or ‘easy-to-use’ migration tools.

However, with the excellent range of plug-in components available for Joomla and the development community already moving on quickly with Drupal Commerce add-ons I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to dump content and data from Joomla and import it into Drupal Commerce using the Feeds Module.

The bottom line is that you need to be prepared for less consistency and understand how the community works as there are very few lines of accountability compared to the proprietary development environment.

8. Things you think will be easy turn out harder than expected …

Drupal Commerce does some very smart stuff with the Drupal core views and rules capabilities which can make things like complex shipping and tax calculations a breeze (once you understand the logic). Therefore, I had rather assumed that being able to add a ‘gift wrapping’ option into the purchase and checkout process would also be a breeze. Hmm – sadly not …

I’ve since noticed reference made on December 28th 2011 to a sandbox project for this type of thing but coming 3 days after Christmas Day it was a bit late for last year but hopefully early enough for Xmas 2012

As above … The bottom line is that you need to be prepared for less consistency and understand how the community works as there are very few lines of accountability compared to the proprietary development environment.

9. If it looks like bullshit, smells like bullshit, guess what? …

Sometimes when you make observations based on a gut feeling you often question how much it is distorted by your own worldview.  However, when events substantiate those observations, then you feel somewhat vindicated. Such is the case with Alterian, a company that has pumped out more than its fair share of social media related hype over the last few years.

Personally I like to celebrate British innovation and competitiveness but the direction the bigger UK Content/Marketing Technologies companies have been going over the last few years has been disappointing. I am sad that my former Immediacy colleagues lost their jobs at a difficult time and concerned that the SDL acquisition moves look far more about profit imperative than product innovation.

As with Alterian’s social media and content management strategies, time will tell if the latest acquisition boosts the UK’s credibility in this field or opens it up to even greater Scandinavian dominance.

10. Twitter is a necessary evil …

Well – if you want to drive traffic to a blog it is.

It pains me to say this but I only have to take a fleeting glance at my blog or website stats to know the importance of Twitter. On the occasions I remember some of what I’ve learned about SEO then Google search can chuck a fair few visitors my way if I structure my headlines well – “Sitecore vs Drupal” has pulled in more visits than “predictions for 2020″ as a search phrase for example. However, Twitter referrals are double search engine ones even though I have only had a Twitter account for around one of the three years this blog has been running.

Sociologically I still think we are experiencing the early growing pains of ‘social media’ and there is still much good and bad to be experienced before we can say it has reached maturity. Until then, it is at turns unpredictable, delightful, useful, dangerous and damaging.

As I write this, Rupert Murdoch and (possibly) his wife are making a new year splash by venturing onto Twitter for the first time. Although given News Corp history with social media ventures I’m not sure quite how this endorsement should be interpreted and also, I’m not yet sure whether his wife’s account is genuine or a spoof yet? (but it is quite funny) I am also reading reports questioning who owns Twitter followers and Facebook contacts in work scenarios and how a whole bunch of police officers have got into trouble for using social media ‘inappropriately. I’m sure 2012 will give plenty more examples of the pros and cons of today’s ‘social media’ environments and hopefully we will learn from the bad ones to make the good ones even better

11. Everyone needs a milestone to aim for

I’ve spent most of my working life in project management roles striving to reach milestones set by others and/or setting them for others to work towards. So, when it came to getting my own venture off the ground I needed to put one in place for myself, otherwise I am sure I would procrastinate for months and fuss about trying to get everything ‘perfect’.

It seems appropriate therefore that my 11th lesson follows the theme I used as a stake in the ground for my venture into self-employment. On 11.11.11 I launched Webwiser, a consultancy operation that provides services based on the type of learning described above.

The original 'round table' on display in my home county of Hampshire UK

Today’s event was a round table discussion in a sparkling new format – a live video stream and Twitter ( #cmsconnected ) as the back channel. As I was transfixed by the folks in the virtual studio (which I assume was a very ‘green’ room/box for the participants) and following the Twitter hashtag stream I didn’t take many notes and this format rather negates the type of commentary I did for that previous event.

So… for the second time this year I’m finding myself somewhat redundant Awwwwww

What I will say however is that it was great to see these folks whose written commentary I have followed in recent years talking live. Scott was as clean-cut and sharp suited as I imagined and Irina was – well how do I put this … razor sharp, with some wonderful quips about workflow and training -  (together with fabulous outfit and hairdo too of course). I found myself relating most to the Skype participant Carmine Porco from Prescient Digital and the useful role they can play in proceedings as ‘bad cop’ – asking those awkward questions that might make the real difference between a good choice and a not so good one.

In summary, the key takeaways for me …

1. The importance of describing scenarios that transcend yes/no checklists and getting hands-on with the tools to test these scenarios for yourself

2. It’s more about selecting the right implementation partners than the tools, particularly with the breadth of offerings available today

3. Don’t just take up the references provided by vendors and implementors, go through their client lists and talk to others about their experiences

4. You need a project sponsor with some authority and also the support of the IT folks to ensure what you select for business objectives plays nicely in their patch too

5. Never underestimate the time it will take to migrate content – automation is not all it’s cracked up to be  (although I’ve personally had some good experiences recently with Drupal Commerce )

Finally, I think it would be useful to get some clearer answers on budgeting as I found the responses today somewhat skewed towards proprietary based projects with the ‘three times licensing cost’ model.

Well done to all participants – Looking forward to the next one

To be honest I don’t really have that much to say about this latest acquisition other than following up a comment I made back in October when I felt Alterian would be making a big mistake if it continued to reject SDL and offering a bit more explanation to the comments I have made on Philippe Parker’s recent insightful post – much of which I agree with based on similar evaluation and implementation experiences.

The Alterian CEO’s resignation in mid 2011 really just underlined the issues that were already apparent to outside observers in the direction the company was going. It was only a matter of time before something had to happen. Unfortunately it meant the remainder of the original Immediacy folks losing their jobs when the company cut almost half its workforce recently.

You never really know what happens behind closed doors before takeover bids become public knowledge but it wouldn’t surprise me if Alterian hacked off a big chunk of its Web Content Management operations in anticipation of an offer being made from the likes of SDL. WCM was clearly the most disposable part of an organisation that at one time had three separate offerings and had the unenviable task of trying to make some sense of this after taking on Mediasurfaces’s dubious ‘three bears’ strategy.

Having evaluated SDL Tridion against EPiServer and Sitecore for a big web globalisation project back in 2008 I very much agree with Philippe’s observations that the company has been lucky and/or shrewd in being able to maintain a ‘leader’ position with the likes of Forrester and Gartner – (although IMHO these analysts took their eye off the CMS ball years ago now). Immediacy won regularly against the original Tridion solution on usability, where multilingual deployment wasn’t a top priority, and EPiServer and Sitecore were deemed in our pilot testing as far more intuitive when it came to globalisation needs.

While the Morello product that formed the core of Alterian’s eventual single WCM offering had reasonable usability (although never in my personal opinion the ‘work of art’ Gartner is claimed to have called it) globalisation support was not its strength. Yes, it was one of the better, if expensive, UK originated offerings for multilingual deployment but fell well short of solutions like Tridion, EPiServer and Sitecore that had multilingual handling baked into their DNA.

So maybe, just maybe, there are synergies to be had in combining Alterian’s usability with SDL Tridion’s globalisation strength? As far as other synergies are concerned, Alterian’s ‘marketing platform’ vision has always looked more like presentation over substance with little tangible or accessible evidence of just how the strands of social media analytics, email marketing, campaign management and WCM really fitted together in useful and meaningful ways, beyond what you could achieve by combining ‘best of breed’ components.

To be consistent with comments I have made in the past, the thing that really hacks me off about these acquisitions is when the interested parties pretend that the motivations are something more or different from what they really are. My tolerance for this type of artifice has declined further in the wake of endless examples of how this type of financially motivated boardroom behaviour has plunged us all into deeper and deeper economic trouble.

I will never forget the first meeting I had with Mediasurface’s CEO after they acquired Immediacy. To his credit, he made it pretty obvious to me that he was far more interested in Immediacy’s sales operation than he was in anything to do with the product, other than getting a better insight into the SharePoint connectivity which they had been struggling with. I was left in no doubt after just one conversation what direction things were going to take, which is why it was so painful to watch the subsequent death of the product by a thousand cuts and the developers feeling they had wasted several years in continuing to put their heart and souls into a product that had been pretty much doomed from the moment the company was sold.

As well as developers being left disappointed that their efforts have been in vain, customers are left with a lot of uncertainty, particularly when the profit imperative is at the heart of their vendor’s strategic decisions.

While I could very much imagine how Immediacy customers felt following the Mediasurface acquisition and felt frustrated on their behalf that Alterian kept giving out mixed messages about the product’s future, I had first hand experience of this uncertainty following EPiServer’s change of ownership in 2010.

Having come to respect and admire EPiServer for its product focus and development activities, which had more in keeping with open source orientated projects than the more overtly commercial WCM offerings, it was disappointing that preceding and following change of ownership, the emphasis shifted very firmly to the financial aspects of the organisation with fundamental changes to the licensing model that effectively priced it out of the picture as far as my wider project was concerned.

So, after a decade of being ultimately disappointed by how the development of proprietary WCM solutions fall victim to financial strategies and the profit imperative, these last 12 months have been somewhat of a revelation in working closely with the Drupal community and the development of Drupal Commerce from alpha, through beta to version 1.1.

Poor old Mr T keeps stepping into the line of fire ...

As this is where my current focus lies, I am going to draw a line under any further commentary on SDL Tridion and Alterian – or SDL Altridion as it is being referred to. No doubt my former colleague Ian Truscott will breathe a sigh of relief at this as he has been in the unfortunate position of being in the line of fire with my inquisitions and previous commentary about the demise of Immediacy and Alterian’s apparent hype over substance. As Mediasurface’s sale to Alterian was undoubtedly an investment decision by the senior management rather than a product driven one, I have no doubt that it was as much of a surprise to Ian as to any other Mediasurface and Immediacy employee at that time. Likewise, as the SDL Tridion takeover of Alterian looks more financially motivated than product driven, I’m sure he has been equally at the mercy of financial rather than product related strategy and I wish him the very best of luck in the efforts to make some sense of this latest bucket of products. Sadly the folks who are truly passionate about the product and champion the customer’s position are the ones with the smallest voice in these scenarios when money talks

Also, I wish the last of the Immediacy folks the very best of luck in whatever they do next and I very much agree with the sentiment expressed the other night when Immediacy was described as having been a great place to work.

Now… if there are any organisations reading this who want to make serious improvements to their online presence and commerce operations ready for the 2012 xmas period, but are very worried about high project costs, then we should start talking soon.

Plan early to avoid disappointment ! Great value rates for the new year !

Back then I was writing from the relatively comfortable position as an employee and approaching the Christmas break knowing that I had a job to go back to in the New Year and that the bills for the ‘present mountain’ and over-consumption of food and alcohol would all be covered.

This year is different …

A few weeks back I took the plunge and decided to start my own thing . Taking the significant sounding date of 11.11.11 as a stake in the ground I have launched Webwiser, a web consultancy business with a focus on commerce and community development.

Sitting here a few weeks away from 2012 I have very little idea where the next paycheck is going to come from and I currently have the whole family income riding on the success of some new content and commerce technologies that I have been putting in place recently.

So, all things considered, I have moved from the coal face to the frontline and become even more dependent on how things shape up in the content technologies arena over the next 12 months.

Here are some thoughts (wishful and otherwise) on how things may progress during 2012 …

1.We see more clearly what the C in CMS really means on the web today

If you’ve been through the exercise of adding ‘skills’ to your Linkedin profile recently it provides some useful instant feedback on what’s in demand and what isn’t. While things like Drupal, WordPress and analytics skills all show positive demand, the generic terms such as ‘Content Management’ show static or declining demand. Does this mean that ‘Content Management’ is commoditised now and an accepted ‘skill’ to have in the workplace or that it is so broad a term as to have become a bit meaningless?

Over the past year I’ve seen vendor and analyst organisations talking about a lot of different Cs with reference to ‘Content Management’ – Context, Communication, Commerce, Customer, Community and Conversation have all popped up in various combinations. I favour Episerver’s adoption of 4 of those Cs as a succinct description of what your average ‘content management system’ is trying to encompass these days – Content, Commerce, Community and Communication. Expect more offerings and variations in the coming year …

2. Proprietary vendors jump on the Social CRM bandwagon

Content Management System vendors have been itching for years to get their teeth into the CRM space but the marrying up of unstructured data with structured data is often not an easy, comfortable or worthwhile fit. Mid-market vendors looking to differentiate in a crowded and competitive space have latched onto e-commerce in recent years as an area where they can add value.  Social CRM offers a similarly interesting opportunity space for CMS vendors looking to claim the ‘customer experience’ as part of their domain without having to delve so deeply into data integration challenges.

Personally I see the social publishing heritage of the main Open Source system providers giving greater credibility in this area. I liken this to the initiatives to build native e-commerce solutions for the Drupal framework which have taken an excellent leap forward with Drupal Commerce during 2011. Unfortunately the DropCRM initiative did not gather the same momentum as the Drupal Commerce one has but progress has been made by Trellon to create a CRM approach that harnesses the Drupal core more effectively. The aims of RedHen CRM also look noteworthy if they can get the community support they need. I can see this gaining more momentum in 2012 as the value of harnessing a powerful management core becomes more apparent through growth of  the commerce initiatives.

3. Power users discover superpowers

Ten years ago I was working on an enterprise content management project that had a $25 million price tag attached to it. It was a fascinating experience and provided a benchmark for me in terms of the scope and scale of content management requirements very large organisations typically have and just how much that functionality cost to buy and implement at that time.

Having spent the last year immersed in the new Drupal 7 and emerging Drupal Commerce solutions I can say with some certainty now that almost all the functional capability that was developed for that Global 2000 enterprise project back in 2001 could be achieved for free today with the breadth and depth of Open Source solutions now available. Granted you need some time and experience to configure these things but ultimately it puts an immense amount of capability at the fingertips of ‘power users’ who are now more likely to be constrained by their own imaginations and understanding than the functionality of the tools themselves.

4. Commercialised Open Source becomes the prevailing business model

The conditions are ripe for a massive surge in commercialised Open Source offerings. This offers opportunities not only to established Open Source communities but also for the traditional proprietary vendors who have embraced Open Source philosophies and approaches in their business models. Wiser organisations will transfer budget to sponsoring development of Open Source modules rather than locking that spend into proprietary developments with debatable returns on investment that are more about adding shareholder value than improving user experiences.

In a week when Richard Branson has declared that capitalism has lost its way, the success of Open Source initiatives in the content technologies arena very much reflect the type of approach to business development that he is advocating. Instead of developments being focused on short-term shareholder value and hyping things up to get the support of the money markets, he advocates …

“Have passion for what you do; believe in yourself and your product and your customer; persevere; delegate; listen. Have fun. Today, I add: “Do good”

5. Some unsung heroes get the recognition they deserve

All the projects I have been part of over the years have shared one thing – enthusiastic and capable leaders. These are inspiring people who set ambitious goals and pull others behind them to achieve them.

Spending this last year close to the Drupal community and particularly the Drupal Commerce initiative has shown me that these types of people are as key to success in the Open Source community as they are in a proprietary software development environment. The commerce initiatives can be credited to a handful of talented individuals who have clearly put their heart and soul into making things happen and hitting their targets very impressively. Contrast that with DropCRM initiative mentioned earlier and it was clear that the drive and determination was not there at the start and, subsequently, it faltered early on.

6. Mobile opens up new battlegrounds

I’m not a big fan of war analogies in business and usually shy away from them but there is no doubt that organisations of all shape and sizes are going to need some fighting spirit in the coming year.

As expected, the search marketing space has become a lot more competitive in the last year with organisations desperately trying to out-perform each other in the organic, pay-per-click and social media spaces.

Mobile is undoubtedly a new front to be explored and understood and is starting to show growth in terms of advertising click-through rates and conversions. If your operation benefits from decisions made on the move then get onboard with mobile web optimisation and advertising as quickly as possible now.

7. Cyber-warfare gets very destructive

As well as ground to air missiles being stationed around the London 2012 Olympics to help address airborne terrorist threats, the Games are also getting what’s described as a ‘cyber-shield’ to prevent all manner of potential malicious electronic attacks.

Whether or not the Olympic Games get targeted this coming year, the time is approaching when cyber-warfare of one form or another causes more than financial and infrastructure damage and results in significant loss of  life.

Expect all electronic and information systems to continue strengthening their defences as many have been doing over the last year.

8. Windows gets smashed

With the tone of my predictions turning increasingly violent, I couldn’t resist slipping this one in as I’ve been itching to use that phrase at some point   .

Dramatic headlines aside, the only place Microsoft has in my life right now is the Windows operating system on my desktop PC and via the very effective indoctrination of my children at school who appear to have been taught that Word, Powerpoint and Excel are the only ways to produce digital content. Some first hand experiences of Ubuntu recently means that Microsoft is hanging by a thin thread in this household. Where once it was utterly dominant in our work and home lives, today it is largely irrelevant.

So why do I celebrate this? Well, aside from Bill Gate’s excellent philanthropic activities, which are to be applauded, the company he spawned has become synonymous with capitalism’s failures over the last few decades where the aggressive pursuit of short-term shareholder value acts to stifle competition and progress. The words Microsoft and Free Market do not sit well together. I hold these views not because of jumping on an anti-Microsoft bandwagon but from personal experiences in working directly with the Microsoft organisation at several points in my career where I observed the DNA of the operation and its culture.  I didn’t like it, it put me off for life and today I relish the fact that the company no longer enjoys the monopolistic position it once did.

Expect more Microsoft job cuts in 2012 as the relevancy of its core product offerings decline further, implementors recognise that even FOSS solutions like Drupal 7 can do at least 80% of what SharePoint can do and Windows Phone continues to falter.

9. London 2012 Olympics gives the semantic web a welcome boost

mmmmmm – just think of all that gorgeous content and those wonderful facts, figures and statistics organisations like the BBC will have to play with when the Olympic Games finally returns to the UK.

The BBC has provided the W3C with some very tangible examples of the semantic web in action over the last few years and did some great things with the Football World Cup back in 2010. These semantic publishing framework approaches will really come into their own as the world looks to this beacon of trustworthy coverage to follow the action at the 2012 Games.

10. The Social Web grows up (a bit)

At some point in their lives, most people realise they have to take some responsibility for their actions and put a little more thought into things before doing them.

As Mark Zuckerberg edges closer to his 30th birthday and his views on the world evolve it will be interesting to see what directions he takes Facebook in next. I still find it staggering that so many of us have placed so much of our web activities into the hands of a 27 year old who is still finding his feet in the world. I read the other day that he will only eat meat from an animal he has slaughtered himself. It’s a shame such noble ideas are often discarded when it comes to people’s personal data and privacy.

The rapid rise and equally rapid stalling of Google + illustrated why first-mover advantage is still so important but also that there is an interest in finding other ways to be ‘social’ and not just the one dictated by Facebook.

To me Google+ reflects a more rounded and grown-up view of social media and if it does something to prompt Facebook to reconsider its approaches in some areas then it will have been worthwhile.

11. E-Commerce, F-Commerce, G-Commerce, M-Commerce? Just focus on Commerce!

No doubt the coming year will add more alphabetic descriptors for selling stuff online and offline. Forget the letters, you need to be ready to sell online wherever and whenever your customers wish to buy.

This means a focus on good content management practices and web standards, separating content from presentation and making it very easy to syndicate quickly and accurately.

12. Governance and ROI move sharply into focus again

When it becomes harder to gain competitive advantage and market share through economic growth, keep an eye out for dirty tricks! We are already seeing the tech giants fighting tooth and nail over patent infringements in the mobile space and this will escalate further as markets are disrupted and disposable incomes suffer. This puts greater emphasis on getting ‘information management’ practices right and not giving away advantage through avoidable mistakes.

Likewise, tighter budgets mean less willingness to tolerate project scope drift and more emphasis on what that spend will add to the bottom line …

Disclaimer …

This blog post has been written following a year spent outside of the Twitter echo-chamber. Which means it is inspired by reality on the ground, horribly introspective and/or hopelessly out-of-touch.  Let me know what you think …

After many years of pedestrian home broadband service, frustratingly right on the edge of the Virgin Media network but seemingly too far for them to shift a bit of dirt in my direction, I am now enjoying ‘superfast’ BT Infinity.

By way of an instant example of the difference, my wife recommended I watched a particular sequence of Ice Road Truckers: Deadliest Roads the other evening before the Infinity install. The bit she wanted to show me was about half way through the 45 minute episode and she had to wait at least 10 minutes for it to load from the Demand 5 service. Contrast that with the BBC iPlayer demo the BT engineer gave after install where a 1 hour programme loaded instantly and he was able to play the beginning, middle and end of it in a matter of seconds.

Not only am I delighted with the service speeds, and have almost doubled my Drupal development activities during the morning , but the whole experience in ordering the service, receiving the equipment and getting it installed has not only been fast but also ‘super efficient’!

BT has made excellent use of the web, email, text message, phone and post to keep me informed every step of the way from switching my lines back to them from ‘Talk Crap‘ (a not so pleasant telecoms experience where they shot themselves in the foot spectacularly by phoning me relentlessly to get me to buy new stuff), to arranging the engineer’s visit and then following everything up.

Well done BT!

Unprostituted image courtesy of Gleenz Tees http://store.glennz.com/

Sad news and a reflection of our times as Alterian announces a workforce reduction from 441 to 260 .

It’s at times like this that some age-old wisdom used with reference to the Web Content Management sector in the past seems particularly prescient.

“A rising tide floats all boats”

It was Warren Buffett I believe who added the more graphic punchline to this …

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked”

As a long-term participant and observer in this area of business I must admit I have always struggled to understand Alterian and find the substance behind the facade. There’s been far too much ‘talking the talk’ rather than ‘walking the walk’ with regard to its social media developments and it seemed to get carried away on the wave of unsustainable hype. Meanwhile, the web content management offerings became de-emphasised and increasingly confused at a time when alternative solutions have been moving on at a pace.

For the sake of old colleagues from the Immediacy days I had hoped Alterian would use recessionary opportunities to get bigger rather than contract, because that would seem to be the wrong direction to be going in an increasingly commoditised market space.

Time will tell but I believe, personally, that the company is currently making a big mistake in rejecting SDL …

Drupal had the much greater reach but Sitecore was able to land some low punches

In the blue corner we had Bryan House from Acquia representing Drupal. In the red corner Darren Guarnaccia from Sitecore. The referee was Scott Liewehr from Outsell Inc and the delightful compere was Veronica Cooper from CHEK TV.

Early in round one it became clear that this wasn’t a straightforward product bout but more a philosophical battle between open source and proprietary web platforms in which the names could be swapped out across different levels of  competition by any number of commercial and GPL offerings.

However, taking the Real Story Group’s recent re-classification of Sitecore as an upper-tier solution and the growing reputation of Drupal as an enterprise capable platform then I would pitch this as a heavyweight title match.

Before entering the ring, a quick review of the competitor’s stats had Sitecore talking thousands of implementations and Drupal talking millions so the relative sizes giving open source an immediate advantage in terms of reach but perhaps the smaller fighter being more nimble, agile and packing a stronger punch? On stats alone this looked a little like a David and Goliath scenario…  

Seconds out – Round One …

A very even sided first round with each competitor dancing around each other on the question of whether they provided a platform or product. The answers really just confirmed that it was relevant to have them in the ring together as essentially they are both competing on the same or similar propositions. Both offer a flexible and adaptable toolkit with which platforms of varying size and sophistication can be built and interconnected with other solutions.

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore 1

Round Two – (Enterprise fit)

After Scott set the scene for what he was referring to in terms of ‘enterprise’ I sensed that Bryan could start to falter a bit in this round. A seasoned .Net solution like Sitecore has the potential edge on Drupal in an enterprise environment in terms of integration and interoperability, particularly in environments that are heavily Microsoft orientated. This was the angle Darren quite sensibly took. Bryan fought back well by emphasising the levels of adoption in enterprise environments for Drupal’s ‘social publishing’ approaches and how some organisations measure success by the speed and volume of content produced.

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore 1

Round Three – (Web Engagement)

Darren was quick out of his corner on this one and possibly sensed the mood in the crowd as he questioned terms like Web Engagement Management and emphasised that engagement was much more about business processes than technology solutions. If my mic wasn’t muted he would have heard an approving cheer from me on that one.

Bryan took the opportunity in this round to emphasise that the Drupal community will package functionality up to make it easier for developers to implement the vast array of modules available through offerings like Drupal Commons. He also mentioned that Acquia keeps its finger on the pulse with regard to what proprietary vendors are promoting and has discussions around packaging up solutions for things like web engagement as and where relevant.

In my personal opinion Bryan could have done more in this round to emphasise the contributions of other affiliated Drupal organisations like Commerce Guys for instance. Here you have an organisation similarly commercialising its previous involvement in the Drupal shopping cart solutions in a well organised and professional way. I have been impressed with how these ‘guys’ have hit their milestones this year with the launch of Drupal Commerce 1.0

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore 2

Round Four – (Services)

Another round potentially favouring Darren as many proprietary CMS vendors have been able to create cosy and mutually agreeable relationships with web design and systems integrator companies. This is an area where ‘money talks’ and it is a lot about the margins partners can make in recommending and implementing various solution, particularly if they are able to sidestep responsibilities at a later date. At this point the lovely Veronica stepped in with a question from the audience (in this case from yours truly). I asked … “How does Sitecore oversee its partner network to make sure it is not over-customising the solution and thereby creating a higher degree of lock-in for customers?”.

This is something I am always mindful of on web projects and it is an easy trap to fall into. This obviously works in favour of both partner and vendor as it becomes harder and harder for the customer to move away from the software solution and/or the service provider. I’m not entirely convinced that the partner accreditation programmes the majority of CMS vendors operate today really emphasise best practices that are in the customer’s interests and are often designed more to get the partner and vendor working closer so that the best financial deals can be struck. Too often, profit imperative is the main objective of these programmes which, ultimately, results in less flexibility for the customer.

Conversely, service providers in the open source arena have a long way to go to present and market their offerings as well as those in the proprietary eco-system. Acquia is an encouraging start and showcase for the Drupal eco-system and hopefully it will inspire others and increase choices in the next few years.

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore 2

Round Five – (Customisation)

This round gave Bryan a great opportunity to emphasise the processes that sit around developing the Drupal core and how well controlled it is. My perception of proprietary vendors is that knowledge of the core system is guarded closely by a small number of people for commercial reasons but that this ultimately leads to implementors having to customise heavily and create workarounds to satisfy customer needs. If those customisations prove popular and the vendor then wishes to incorporate them into the core solution problems can then arise because the partner lacked essential knowledge of the core. Once again, customers often have to pick up the pieces for add-on modules that don’t work as seamlessly as they should.

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore 1

Round Six – (Steering the ship)

At this point in the battle I started wondering whether the referee Scott had put on a pair of red gloves and started battering Bryan on Darren’s behalf. Describing himself as cynical and skeptical (not normally descriptions I’d apply to your average American) about how this community organises itself and actually manages to agree on anything or delivers results to satisfy fast moving business demands. The creation of Acquia and the influence it has on the community was also questioned. This reminds me of comments I’ve seen from Drupal community leaders in the past about the challenge in ‘herding cats’.

However, despite having doubts myself in the past about the sustainability of community driven software projects I believe that Drupal 7 is superb testament to the fact that a large and diverse community can be sufficiently motivated, organised and inspired to deliver a very high quality software solution. Rather than being railroaded by big customers with big budgets or big product managers with big egos, the community has focused well on improving the usability of the core solution and really understood what is needed to create a productive and user-friendly interface.

My scorecard – Drupal 2 – Sitecore 1

Round Seven - (Customer Experience/Cloud services)

Bit of a muddled round this as Bryan was asked about Acquia’s cloud/PaaS (Platform as a Service) offerings and what this meant for the acknowledged challenges in moving from one version of Drupal to another – particularly from 6 to 7. There was some confusion around terminologies at this point but Bryan emphasised that when it came to the cloud/PaaS solutions, there was no distinction made between versions and that it is simply ‘just Drupal’.

At this point Darren got the opportunity to talk about Customer Experience Management and spoke about the importance of recognising customers at various touchpoints in their online and offline journeys and the challenges of integrating systems to provide that single view of the customer and their interactions. There was also some debate about the importance of developing things like analytics capabilities versus enabling ‘best of breed’ solutions to be integrated effectively. Bryan made a valid point about some proprietary vendors currently promoting new Facebook integration capabilities that have been available for a long time in the Drupal eco-system.

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore 2

Round Eight – (Learning from each other)

Just before getting stuck in to the next round a question was fired in from Veronica about how secure Drupal is. There is obviously a running joke at these events about Drupal making reference to the whitehouse.gov site as Scott seemed surprised that it had taken almost an hour for it to mentioned in this debate. However, this was a relevant choice by Bryan as it is easy to see how this site must be one of the most targeted in the world from hackers with all sorts of greivances.

In terms of the responses to the question of what Sitecore emulates from Drupal and visa versa, they were pretty predictable. Darren emphasised the importance of community – something that many proprietary vendors tried to avoid for as long as possible until open source made it impossible to ignore – and Bryan acknowledged the importance of marketing and identfying how to package solutions to customers needs.

My scorecard – Drupal 2 – Sitecore 1

Round Nine – (Cost of Ownership)

An opportunity here for the proprietary corner to fight a bit dirty over the popular held belief that despite the fact open source solutions do not carry license costs, they can cost twice as much to implement. The emphasis appeared to be particularly on how long it takes to build stuff and that complex proprietary projects can be delivered in weeks not months. Having used Drupal 6 and 7 quite extensively now I can see validity in this comment for the previous versions but I think the latest version has improved ease-of-use and deployment considerably and so such observations from the proprietary corner are looking increasingly thin.

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore 1

Round Ten – (Open question)

In the 10th and final round, Scott gave each competitor the opportunity to ask a question of their opponent. Now, I’m not sure the history to the question Bryan asked of Darren but it seems Sitecore has been a bit dismissive of Acquia in recent whitepapers. To me, it appeared a justifiable and humble enough question to ask why the opponent seemingly refused to recognise that Acquia has something to offer over and above Drupal.

When it came to Darren’s turn, the question was aimed, in my opinion, below the belt and was the sort of classic FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) attack that proprietary vendors have become masters at given the continuing rise of open source as a credible alternative. Darren chose to make reference to the publicly viewable ‘bug list’ associated with the new Drupal 7.0 release and appeared to be implying that the development community itself was concerned about the level of bugs.

Bryan defended this sneaky blow well in explaining how the Drupal development process was so much more transparent than typical proprietary product ones (just for the record, I couldn’t find any public Sitecore issues lists only a bunch of comments from frustrated implementors renaming it  Shitcore hey ho ) and that the Drupal community was very passionate about delivering a quality solution. I’m sure Sitecore’s developers are equally passionate about what they do but as I felt this was a low punch I have penalised it in my scoring.

My scorecard – Drupal 1 – Sitecore (-3)

So, adding up my personal scorecard I found the battle pretty evenly matched across most of the rounds with both parties doing well to emphasise the pros and cons of open source and proprietary software developments. It is a shame that Darren chose to fight dirty with low aimed FUD in the last round when it was so unnecessary and therefore lose some of those hard-earned points.

My final scores – Drupal 12 – Sitecore 9

Watch this space for the YouTube coverage of the above bout and also the next battle in the series between SDL Tridion and Adobe Day – should be a good one

You could say that the Web passed its driving test a few years ago with the arrival of high bandwidth mobile access. However, now that smartphone ownership is starting to pass the 50% mark in some countries, access and use of the Mobile Web is growing exponentially and ‘in-vehicle’ capabilities are improving steadily in competency and sophistication. The major challenge remains the speed with which smartphone technology is changing and the comparative slow development lifecycles of automotive technologies, restricted as they are by a myriad of safety legislation and complex supply chains.   

Unfortunately, this lag in car manufacturers incorporating smartphone and Mobile Web capabilities into new vehicles means that more and more of us are risking serious accidents through distracted driving while trying  to access services on the move.

As identified by iCar, there are three main ways you can access the Web in a vehicle …

1.  Portable Devices

One of the best current examples of this is the 3 MIFI Pebble which according to iCar is the most progressive and least price punitive network when it comes to 3G data.

When it comes to simply using your smartphone in the car, I currently like the look of Parrot’s Minikit Smart. Priced at a reasonable £70 for a standalone plug and play kit, it provides a well designed and secure cradle that enables easy horizontal or vertical positioning and has voice activated hands-free call support that uses a built-in speaker.

The cradle design leaves the audio jack position on most smartphones free to access and I’m assuming that if you want to stream music to your car speakers you can plug in an FM Transmitter unit that are widely available for less than £10 these days and often provide a ‘good enough’ standard of sound although would not satisfy music purists.

So, for around £80 to £100 you could have all key requirements of hands-free phone, navigation, web access and music streaming in a relatively safe-to-use and non-distracting solution.

2.  Semi-Integrated Devices

This latest advert from Toyota makes a very quirky illustration of a car filled with gadgets and wires and the new Yaris which allows Bluetooth wireless connectivity to the car’s infotainment system to allow access to your smartphone based music, phone, web and navigation services without having to fiddle around with the device itself.

An alternative aftermarket solution would be something like the iO Play solution that sits behind your car’s audio/infotainment head unit and provides high quality Bluetooth connectivity for hands-free calls and music streaming.

3. Fully Integrated Systems

The car manufacturers are waking up to connected onboard infotainment being an increasing differentiator and sales feature hook, as illustrated by the Toyota Yaris mainstream media campaign above. I’m personally surprised that it has taken the Japanese and Korean car manufacturers so long to push this forward as their home markets are the early adopters of mobile internet services but perhaps they’ve been waiting for it to become a truly mass market opportunity. In terms of quality and sophistication, in-car systems innovation and development is dominated by the German engineering supremos BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Given the high level of aspiration for these vehicle marques I think it is safe to say that they are setting the benchmark for what will be expected as standard in all new vehicles in the next few years. More detail on the current top capabilities for in-car systems is listed below…

In its ‘Future Autos’ news section, iCar looks at being ‘Connected to the Cloud’ and different ways in which the internet is moving from your ‘desktop to your dashboard’ . My eye was drawn particularly to the following …

• Ford and Google Prediction API   -   This gathers real-time driver data such as preferred commute routes and driving styles. Then the vehicle self-adjusts on the fly. For example, it might start conserving the battery on one part of your route because the car knows you will later be driving on the motorway. Another example of how Google’s algorithm supremacy will likely trump the humble Sat Nav, beyond the erosion already happening through smartphone usage.
  

• Toyota and Microsoft Azure   -   This is being experimented with to report EV battery levels, how long a charge will take and any nearby charge locations. The eventual goal is a cloud infrastructure that can report diagnostic info to a repair shop. I’m sure this is being experimented with outside of the M$ Azure platform – SharePoint Services for cars is such a horrible thought

• Street Bump in Boston   -   This service gathers data from smartphones’ accelerometers to record the severity and frequency of potholes. The data is then sent to the cloud which reports pothole locations to city officials. This is a very tangible example of the ‘smart grid’ in action whereby the information being gathered and communicated via an onboard internet/web capability is not just for the purposes of the vehicle and its inhabitants but providing a wider service that can benefit others.
  

In its ‘Top Fives’ section, iCar gives a useful concise summary of the best in-car systems currently on offer …

1. BMW iDrive

After getting a lot of early stick from commentators, the iDrive system is now described as the most polished and comprehensive infotainment platform currently available. It is voted best for online connectivity and navigation and is soon to have touch interfaces added.

2. Fiat Blue&Me

Described as a simple and effective way to sync effortlessly with smartphones, it is rated best for music streaming via Bluetooth or USB. I suspect that given the current popularity of the Fiat 500 with female drivers, Blue&Me sits in the same strategy as the Toyota Yaris campaign as actively targeting the inherent male geekiness and gadget focus when it comes to this type of technology decision.

3. Mini Connected

Cutting edge when it comes to onboard social networking support which may also indicate a more female target audience. From a geek perspective it currently only offers iPhone support, although I believe an Android version is in the pipeline, but I imagine the majority of Mini owners are also more likely to favour the iPhone.

4. Audi MMI

This looks like a solid bit of German engineering. I like the cars and I like the sound of MMI which is feature rich and provides an in-built WiFi hotspot for in-car internet sharing, a feature that with three smartphone mad females in the household I can see as increasingly useful for family outings.

5. Mercedes COMAND

Voted best for screen quality, head-up display and voice control, the COMAND platform recently added web browsing and iDrive style ‘send-to-car’ navigation support.

Despite being hammered heavily by recession and energy crisis, the automotive industry is entering a fascinating period of change and innovation that I believe will benefit both our lifestyles and our planet.

The Autumn Fairs are about a third the size of the Spring ones as most big retailers need to be making big purchase decisions early in the year if they stand a chance of making the most of the Christmas retail surge, so it is a more about looking for opportunities that smaller operators can respond to quickly.

As we appear to be teetering on the edge of a double dip recession, the nervousness was palpable at this year’s Autumn event with stands calling for people to ignore the ‘doom and gloom’ messages and take faith in this or that offering to earn much needed revenue.

Thinking back a few years as financial crisis hit and recessionary fears started growing, I saw the trend for wartime memorabilia first emerging at the Spring Fair with the arrival of designs based on the classic ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ Government posters. Since then, in true capitalistic style, the original design and a myriad of copies and variations can be seen on an increasing range of items in many shops around the country. Indeed, if the exhibition stands at the NEC are anything to go by, there is going to be even more of this stuff  before the ‘fad’ subsides.

In one of a few ‘laugh out loud’ moments as I walked the aisles this year, I spotted the wonderfully irreverent offerings from ‘Modern Toss’ and the design featured on the picture above. As crude as it is, the message hits at the heart of the issues we are currently facing in our societies, which on a slightly more intellectual level was examined recently in a BBC article about the ‘prophetic’ views of capitalism and its potential weaknesses by Karl Marx.

So, here then are a few observations from my hours walking the aisles of what Modern Toss delightfully refer to as ‘shitnaks’ …

1. Looking back is still big …

The ‘retro’ trend is everywhere. I’m guessing this is still born of recessionary times when if the future looks uncertain, we like to look back with nostalgia. Among the many examples of retro styled home fashions and gifts I particularly liked this 80s style iPhone holder from gadget wholesaler Thumbs Up and the Top Gun themed range from the Wholesale Gift company. My favourite though has to be the VW Camper Van styled tent from The Monster Factory. As an occasional camper, this is not only a funny and well executed idea, it is also a supremely practical and comfortable looking tent for someone of my height and build. My wife however, thought the Dog House tent was far more applicable

2. More toys for big boys …

Big boys are now spoilt for choice when it comes to flying stuff around. There are now vast ranges of very stable and easy to fly micro helicopters on the market in all sorts of shapes and sizes, including some with built-in cameras and that can fire foam missiles. However, it was the iO micro camera range from Intelligent Optics that caught my eye whereby High Definition video and audio can be captured from a pair of glasses. Having visited the Florida theme parks earlier this year, this is the type of unit that is ideal for capturing experiences while still keeping both hands free.

3. Sustainability messages look ironic …

‘Sustainability’ is one of those wonderful must-have buzzwords of the moment but one that looks horribly ironic when placed in the context of 5 large exhibition halls bursting at the seams with ‘stuff’, the majority of which sits very low in Maslow’s heirachy of needs. As in the case of supposedly more environmentally friendly vehicles, you need to look in-depth at complete production and disposal lifecycles where sustainable elements are sometimes negated by other aspects of a products production or use. I was pleased however, to see the solar PowerPack win a ‘Gift of the Year 2011′ award. This sleek and well designed portable product can hold a solar generated charge for up to a year and be used to power cameras, phones and MP3 players etc both day and night.

4. You can now ‘edit yourself’ and freak out everyone else …

Under the banner ‘edit yourself’ was one of several companies exhibiting who produce contact lenses designed to change your appearance, from cosmetic enhancement to the downright scary. Those haunting red zombie eyes or unnerving ‘lizard like’ features are no longer the domain of movie special effects departments and CGI – you can buy these looks for yourself and transform your appearance in seconds.

5. It’s not just any old shit – it’s my shit …

Look, look – it has my name on it! Not just that first name that I share with many millions of others but my full name – and lot’s of other details too if I want them Personalisation services, fuelled by web driven efficiencies were to be seen across many categories of products on display this Autumn – from the award winning La Belle Memoire (hand crafted ‘Memory Books’) to the Personalised Momento Company who seem to be able to put your name and details on anything these days. If we’re not careful, this could be a real ‘car boot killer’ in years to come – who is going to want to buy those piles of gimmicky toys and discarded gifts if they have somebody else’s name plastered all over them?

Finally, I started this post with the irreverent, if crudely insightful, offerings from Modern Toss so I’ll end it with another ‘lol’ moment when I ventured onto the stand of the ‘Diabolical Gift Company‘. In recent years, my kids have had ‘grow it yourself’ toys – these are things like dinosaur models that start off very small and then expand to many times their original size when left in water for any length of time. So now, all you big girls and boys can do the same with a seemingly endless array of ‘grow your own’ choices, including; boobs, willies, brains, gay best friends, pole dancers and a mistress or two

Right – I’m off to check how big those boobs have got