Nook Tablet – Warning and Hope
This post is driven by my experiences with my new Nook Tablet and today’s related article on Marketwatch (Wall Street Journal’s online presence). The graph on the left is a snapshot of the Barnes and Noble stock price this morning so far. The steep drop is due to at least two factors. First, the article sites the B&N CEO as saying that they want to spin off the Nook business. Second, the market is reacting negatively to the latest news about European banks. Take the chart with a grain of salt since it is just a snapshot early in the day. However, it does reflect how many investors feel about such a spin-off.
I have already posted two articles discussing the Tablet here and here. Today, I want to comment from the perspective of a business user with the needs detailed in the field report post. There are two ways to look at such a spin-off of the tablet/reader business. First, it could be a way to harvest value from a profitable part of a struggling business, as some of the comments to the referenced article say. Second, it could be an admission by the B&N management that growing that business is more complex than they are prepared to sign up for. Based on my personal experience with the Nook Tablet I use and the Nook Color I gave my daughter along with my background in the technology business, I am voting for the second scenario.
Remember that this is fundamentally a good 7″ Android tablet, capable of doing everything the other Android tablets on the market can do. It’s held back by a very poor software ecosystem (other than ebooks). They recently updated the operating system with ver. 1.4.1. That update shut down the “side-loading” of apps that don’t come from the B&N app store. To me that was a huge but understandable mistake. Both the B&N and Amazon tablets are priced right at cost. The business model assumes that they will make their return on their tablets off of purchases made through their ecosystems (books, apps, music, etc.). That is likely going to work for Amazon. B&N, on the other hand, will be harder pressed to make this approach work because their ecosystem is vastly more limited than Amazon’s. The operating system update was primarily intended to force their customers to use only the B&N ecosystem. An understandable but flawed approach. You never prosper by bullying your customers.
For B&N to make their approach work they must do a few things fairly quickly:
- Upgrade the customer’s experience with their ecosystem.
- Open up the tablet and e-reader like other tablets.
- Upgrade the operating system of the tablet to Android 4.
Option 1 can be accomplished by making a sizable expenditure in their own infrastructure or cutting a deal with Google to make the Android app store accessible. Option 2 can be accomplished by simply rolling back the lock out features of the last update while retaining the other upgraded features. Option 3 is straight forward but a non-trivial amount of work. All of these changes are better accomplished by technology people leading the charge than by booksellers at the helm. If you’re B&N management and you accept these arguments then spinning off that business to people more suited to running it is a smart decision.
Only time will tell if my assessment is right.
Managing Personal Mobility
This is a follow up to my last post on the Nook Tablet. I now have a Nook Tablet (7″ screen), Dell Insprion Duo (10″ screen) and Samsung/Google Nexus S 4G (4″ screen) smartphone in my possession. I also have an HP 17″ laptop in my office which stays there except for rare occasions. However, given the title of this post, it is not relevant here and won’t be discussed. Essentially it’s a desktop.
Now that I have all of these devices available to me the question becomes how to manage them in a useful way. What should be each device’s primary uses? Of course I had some idea why I wanted each item before I bought it. Typically, though, buying technology and living with it are different things and require some post-purchase adaptation. These devices are no exception.
It is first necessary to set some definitions. “Content creation” will refer to the act of creating something, like a word processing document, spreadsheet, image, etc. “Content consumption” will refer to the act of reading, viewing an image or listening to something. Each device can do 
both to varying degrees depending on which applications are installed. However, the tablet and the phone are primarily about content consumption while, for me, the laptop is primarily about content creation.
My overall objective is to have the most flexible, adaptable and portable working environment that I can. That’s a tradeoff between computing power, power consumption, battery life and weight. I also spend more time consuming content than creating it so I want to be able to consume content wherever I am, make notes about what I consume wherever I am and have those notes available for content creation most places I am.
I quickly realized that the smartphone and tablet should be considered a unit. The tablet is Wi-Fi only but the phone can be a Wi-Fi hotspot. By keeping the two together I don’t have to be a slave to meeting where Wi-Fi connectivity is provided. I usually pay a 3G speed penalty for wider coverage, but here in Houston 4G is fairly available when I’m out and about. Since my primary concern is email, the penalty is manageable.
One criticism of the Dell that it is powered by a dual-core Intel Atom processor and only two gigs of RAM, so it’s a little underpowered. However, I am able to run the complete Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus suite with acceptable performance. I also have assorted other serious business apps that run at acceptable levels of performance. As long as the Dell is plugged in and working at full power, it streams video quite well over an 802.11N connection.
That brings us to the center of my non-Office application universe, Evernote. I have been a big Microsoft OneNote user for some time but it only works (at least for now) in a Microsoft environment. Evernote works with almost every operating system and almost every device. I have Evernote on every device I own and subscribe to the $45/year premium package. For more information on Evernote and their subscriptions check out their website. A comparison of OneNote and Evernote is beyond the scope of this post. I like and use both products. However, Evernote’s dramatically better operating system support makes it my go to personal knowledge 
management system.
Another discovery was that reading documents on a 7″ screen is dramatically better than a 4″ screen. Interestingly, the difference in reading the same document on a 10″ screen is somewhat better than a 7″ screen but not dramatically better. Like most people, I believe that the more screen real estate I have the happier I will be. I have screens ranging from 4″ to 22″. However, for most business applications, while a 10″ tablet screen is better, it’s not differentiated enough over the 7″ screen to justify the difference in cost.
The Android productivity apps that I have installed on both my smartphone and tablet are useful but still very lightweight. I use QuickOffice Pro as my primary Office-like app on both my Android devices. While it’s useful and I like that I can use several types of cloud storage options it isn’t an Office replacement and I have to resist the urge to try to force it to do more than it can do. I would recommend that you get ezPDF Reader rather than use the other available PDF readers. To me, it’s that much better and worth the price.
I’m happy with my selection of devices. I can carry all of them with me comfortably in a modest size briefcase and address my needs. When I want to leave the briefcase behind, the phone (on my hip) and tablet (in a small case) are even more portable. While your choices may differ, I believe that all of our goals are similar. We all need to be very portable, be able to consume content and do lightweight content creation everywhere. We need to be able to do serious content creation many places but not necessarily everywhere.
That’s all for now. Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll see you next time.
Nook Tablet Field Report
I bought a new Nook Tablet last week. A link to its product page is here. The bottom line is that it’s a good device despite some limitations. My perspective for this post is not to provide yet another product review. You can find those from CNET, Engadget, PC Magazine, and MSNBC.
This post will be focused on its practical use by a business guy. Its entertainment value is not a primary concern of mine but it’s nice to have. My main business needs are:
- A very portable, expandable device for business research
- Capable of storing large amounts of content (documents, images, etc.) of all types
- Capable of capturing and sharing notes and ideas
- A larger screen that my cell phone
- Capable typing at moderate speed
- Longer battery life than my laptop
- Less expensive than the current crop of ($500+) 10” tablets
- Compliments my other portable devices (Sprint/Google Nexus S cell phone and Dell Inspiron Duo Windows 7 laptop). A link to the Dell post is here.
Some time ago I bought my daughter a Nook Color. She wanted it for the children’s book selection at Barnes and Noble. When it comes to something for my granddaughter, grandpa is all over it. As I was setting it up I was struck that while it was a little sluggish, it was a decent, inexpensive little tablet. When the Nook Tablet was announced I got interested in what it could do for me. There is a dual boot micro SD card available for the Nook Color that turns it into a regular Android tablet. A link to its site is here. When I contacted them to confirm that their software would also allow dual booting of the Tablet, they said they couldn’t confirm that until they got a Tablet for testing. Some product reviews I found said that the Tablet ROMs were locked down and would probably prevent dual booting. Not being able to dual boot was a disappointment but wasn’t a deal killer. I was able to find an alternative strategy on the XDA Developers forum. That link is here.
So I picked up my new Tablet last week and started setting it up. It is definitely not focused on business use. While it’s built on Android 2.3.x Gingerbread, it uses an early release because versions above 2.3.4 support Exchange email servers. I know because my phone came with 2.3.4 and it did. The version that comes with the tablet does not. You have to buy a slimmed down Touchdown client to get it. The browser is adequate but does a miserable job managing bookmarks. It doesn’t support folders which is a big deal for me. I have collected several thousand bookmarks over the years and wanted to get most of them over to the tablet.
The procedure I found on the XDA site got me a Go Launcher that I can boot up after using the native tablet Search tool (search for “launcher” and it comes up as one of the hits). Just touch the name and it loads that launcher. I was also able to get an Amazon Market app installed which allows me to get other apps. Their widgets can only be loaded on the Go Launcher and not the Nook launcher. That’s a little inconvenient but gives me access to dramatically more apps than I could get on the Nook app store (link is here). Remember that apps that you download from Amazon have not been validated for the Nook Tablet. While I’m not having many issues, I am having some. None of them are deal killers so I’m happy with them.
My next post will cover day to day use and how I’m managing all my mobility choices. In closing, I want to emphasize that I am very happy with my Nook Tablet. I know I am not their target market so having to do some unusual things is not a major problem for me. The tablet is solid and expandable (my 32 gig card is in transit to me now). I now have a device that meets all the needs I listed above. I hope this post has been useful. Stay tuned for the follow up post on this topic.
A Practical Social PMO
It’s time to revisit the topic of collaboration and the PMO, especially in light of the growing use of social media in the mainstream. When I originally addressed the topic last year (link) I used the diagram shown on the left. You will notice that there is not a box for anything social or collaborative. If you look at the tools out there now the majority address this need in their package. I am focused on the needs of the consultant/contractor to mid-size and smaller clients. I’m also a big believer that we need to move toward more agile project management styles while not completely abandoning the more structured approach.
The acronym most commonly used in the press for this topic is PPM, or Project Portfolio Management. I see the tools addressing this need falling into three main categories, enterprise, mid-market and small. Examples of the enterprise class tools are Microsoft Project Server, PowerSteering Software and Oracle Primavera. These are large investments and not for the faint of heart. They are large and sufficiently complex that the customer needs to have a dedicated group that will become the power users. Examples of tools for the mid-size market are Clarizen, daptiv and AtTask. These tools are all SaaS, Software as a Service, tools and are sold on a subscription basis, typically less than $50/month/seat. They all offer social/collaborative features in some way. Finally, examples of tools for the smaller client market are much more open. Typically, the tools for the mid-size market will work but if the size of the projects can’t justify much cost then I recommend a combination of Office (including Project) or Google Docs tools along with a SaaS Scrum tool. Scrum is primarily used for software development projects but can be applied to managing a collection of projects by substituting small projects for product features. Doing that gives you a poor man’s PMO management tool. Just don’t expect to balance resources across multiple projects with this approach. There are many other tools for each market but these are all worth consideration.
I’m going to exclude the needs of the enterprise market from further discussion since it’s outside of the group I’m focused on. However, if you have inexpensive access to them and you’re familiar with them you can certainly use them for any size project. Just make sure your client knows they aren’t adding unnecessary costs to your engagement. All this brings us to a discussion on the application of lean/agile project management to projects that are not entirely about software development. To do that, it would be useful to walk through a specific example. Our example is a consultant with a mid-size client. That client has multiple moderately complex projects, limited staff and funding. All the available staff members have their “day jobs” and can only commit 70% of their time to the projects. The client only wants to pay for external subject matter experts if they don’t have any of those skills internally.
Now that I’ve laid out my scenario we can start to explore how the above referenced tools map to it. When it comes to project schedule management, all of the referenced tools work just fine. We can debate the details but at the end of the day they can all get the job done. All have some level of collaborative capabilities but I wouldn’t call them “social” tools. In the context of a project, however, the security issues of dealing with resources both behind your firewall and external to it during the course of the project complicate the selection. Another factor is cost. While SaaS applications have their advantages and low barrier to entry with their subscription pricing, if the project(s) have a long duration the total cost of ownership of that tool can become substantial. And it never ends as long as you’re signed up.
This leads me to an unexpected conclusion. The most attractive and strategic product to address the more social needs of project collaboration with team members on both sides of the firewall including occasional external subject matter experts is Microsoft SharePoint Workspace (formerly Groove). I know that conclusion will draw the ire of those Microsoft haters but I’ll give you my reasons. First, SharePoint Workspace is far from a perfect tool. I’ve used it in project work so its limitations are well known to me and I’m not going to do a product review here. There is an abundance of that material only as far away as your search engine. However, its flexibility and security are notable. Its ability to work with either SharePoint or in a Groove-like secure peer-to-peer mode is useful in accommodating client wishes. Its ability to add discussion type tools allows you to manage in a Scrum consistent manner as well as discussion forums. You can easily create separate secure workspaces for the project team and external consultants. External collaborators can come and go without compromising the security of sensitive information. The full retail cost is around $150/seat and less than that if you have one of most types of volume Microsoft licensing agreements. That means you pay off that investment by the avoidance of about four months of SaaS fees.
There is much more to talk about but I’ll stop here. The last point I want to make before I go is that before you do anything don’t forget to ask your client their preferences. In years pasts consultants would start off telling me what they were going to do without at least asking me for my preferences. However, I always made sure they had a clear understanding of those preferences whether they wanted them or not. Don’t’ make their mistake.
There will be more posts on this topic but that’s all for now. Thanks for stopping buy and see you next time…
TechExecs 2.0
Well it’s official (I just got my new business cards). I’m now the CIO (among other things) for the TechExecs Network. It’s an expanded role in that I am now working on those things which are needed to differentiate TechExecs from other networking organizations. That’s what I’m calling TechExecs 2.0. That’s just my own light-hearted phrase because TechExecs has gone through periodic changes for years. It’s just my way of referring to the changes I want to make. My goal is to make those changes that will take TechExecs from a business networking organization to what I am calling a “social working environment”.
The social events are still there but they are not on my plate (a very good thing). My job is wear both my senior IT leader and vendor hats (I’ve been both) to try to find ways for each group to participate such that there is synergy for the whole organization. I have many ideas I need to sort through and evaluate. Hopefully, that will happen in collaboration with the chapter chairs. Since I’m still the chair of the Houston chapter I should have at least one supporter in that group.
Our objective is not to compete with other technology and business networking groups. It’s to find ways we can complement each other in the eyes of our members. That takes us to the definition of my social working environment phrase (which will undoubtedly evolve over time). The IT leader members don’t want to be barraged with sales pitches when they show up at events. If they are, they won’t come back and the organization dies. That means that vendors must look at TechExecs as a place to build relationships, not as a “target rich environment” for overt sales pitches. From my years of both leading IT organizations as well as being a product manager in the software business I know that those IT leaders who are responsible for making strategic decisions want to see the roadmaps of the products and services they need use. Those roadmaps are provided by the vendors. More specifically, the vendor’s product managers (or other staff with those responsibilities) provide those roadmaps.
For example, our IT leader members can use roadmap information as well as insight from vendors and vendor members can use feedback from the marketplace on buying trends. These two groups need to be brought together in such a way that synergy occurs. Our IT leader members also value collaboration with their peers that materially benefits them in their jobs. Most members have some interest in mentoring emerging IT professionals and helping those in need. These things need to happen on a national level, not just locally. They need to happen in a somewhat more structured and disciplined way. They need to happen in a collaborative working environment with enough social content to enable the creation of 
close working relationships, or a social working environment.
To have this synergy occur on a national level, I am proposing the creation of special interest groups, or SIGs. Those SIGs would be broken down into two major groups. Line of business SIGs would be for those members whose focus is on applying technology for its business benefits and the technology SIGs for those people want to understand technology tools in greater detail. The two images shown in this post are slides from a presentation I am making to our chapter chairs. It went over especially well with the chair of the Houston chapter; I just couldn’t get him to stop talking. While the idea of a SIG is conceptually straight forward, the devil is in the details. That is where I’m hoping for feedback from the other chapter chairs. Actually, I’d like it from wherever I can get it, hence this post. The two slides shown contain a preliminary list of ideas for both groups of SIGs. There’s no way that we can do them all, at least not for a long time. I would view it as a win if we could start with 2 or 3, total.
The SIGs are virtual. I see SIGs being led by members from anywhere in the country with much of the heavy lifting being delivered by the national organization (that would be me). Those SIG leaders need to have significant experience and contacts in the areas covered by the SIG. Members would be drawn to the SIG to gain insight from its leaders and to collaborate with each other wherever they may be located. In some cases I could see local SIG events. The SIGs will be the primary way chapters interact with each other.
This idea is still a work in progress (you may have figured that out already from the slides) so I need all the feedback and ideas I can get on the details of their operation and “rules of engagement” for the members. Please leave your comments here or on this same post on the TechExecs site. Thanks for stopping buy and reading this post. I hope to hear from you soon.