Ever since Jason Hiner posted his speculations on the convergence of the PC and mobile in Utopian convergence of PC and mobile: How far away is it? I have been thinking about how that applies to my new situation at Concordia. The questions of convergence of the PC and mobile is really only significant to those who have fully committed to using laptops and now mobile devices. For those who are still anchored to a desktop PC and only use a cell phone or even a smart phone as a phone this is a moot point. Let me explain…
In meetings at the Adams Center at Abilene Christian University (ACU) most people brought their laptops to meetings and more recently we started to see tablets replace the laptops. Everyone had a device and at minimum people fell back on their smartphones. During the meeting you would hear the steady tapping of keys and the regular beeping or buzzing of smart phone or iPad signalling incoming emails and text messages. All meetings rooms had either a projector or in the case of the Adams Center a flat screen TV that people would use to show agenda items, videos, and work out task lists, action items and much more.
The meeting were more of a collaborative work session then they were traditional meetings because everyone was able to immediately do something related to what was being discussed. Many action items were immediately taken care of, files were immediately shared and many decisions were made on the spot. It was also not uncommon for people to pull up a google doc and collaboratively generate a plan or other document immediately rather than waiting to go back to their respective offices to do the work that was discussed.
If one was not used to working in this type of setting one could assume these meetings were too unruly and that most people were not paying attention because they were spending more time looking at their laptops or tablets then the one who was chairing the meeting. For the most part you would have a hard time telling who was chairing the meeting because there was so much peripheral activity. The traditional worker would be right–not much traditional work happened in those meetings because we were not working on business processes, we were working on the innovations that we hope could transform education and the world. We were dreaming of building the most effective learning environment.
I am not the only one who is working this way or who is noticing these significant changes. Mark Dean, Chief Technology Officer IBM Middle East and Africa, is one of a dozen IBM engineers who designed the first PC and who is now part of the IBM leadership that is moving IBM toward the Post-PC Era. Not only has Mark moved away from the PC to a Tablet as his primary computing device but he is predicting an even further move away from and emphasis on devices to what people do with devices. He states in his blog post IBM Leads the way in the Post-PC Era:
PCs are being replaced at the center of computing not by another type of device—though there’s plenty of excitement about smart phones and tablets—but by new ideas about the role that computing can play in progress. These days, it’s becoming clear that innovation flourishes best not on devices but in the social spaces between them, where people and ideas meet and interact. It is there that computing can have the most powerful impact on economy, society and people’s lives.
The best technology is the technology that has disappears or that no one even knows is there. It is not the technology that is important it is what you can do with it. Those noisy, rambunctious social interactions at the Adams Center at ACU that most traditional business people or academics would hesitate to call meetings are really just the cutting edge of where we need to go to really start making changes to our systems, our institutions and our society. Innovation will flourish when you bring people together and equip them to scheme and dream. If the technology is good enough that you don’t need to focus on it but you can use it to help you build those dreams then the sky is the limit.
Unfortunately, there is not much dreaming that goes on when people are tethered to their desktop PCs. Not much dreaming goes on when people scurry from their offices or cubicles with steno pads into media-less conference rooms and shuffle paper and check off processes and then scurry back to their offices or cubicles to transpose the meeting notes. Not much dreaming goes on when you only use computing technology to serve the administrative process of an institution.
Fortunately, we can start to change all this because the technology has matured to the point where it can really be used to help fill in those spaces between the social interactions. Our use of technology must also mature to the point where we take advantage of all this potential. This will be the subject of part 2.
Jeff Young of the Chronicle interviews 4 students via Google+ video chat and asks them about their professors technology use. The results are definitely interesting. While professors do get points for making the effort to use technology for communication they do have a long way to go.
A few weeks ago I was in Abilene Texas at Abilene Christian University (ACU), which was the first university in the world to hand out iPhones to all its students. This they fall will be giving their students the option of using their mobile technology credit for an iPhone or for an iPad. To stay current some ACU IT staff purchase and experiment with Android tablets to make sure that these devices will work satisfactorily on the university network just in case the occasional student brings one in. Many people speculate that the Android tablets are the only true competition to the iPad so it doesn’t hurt stay up on what devices may also be coming to campus. The Blackbery Playbook is really not even considered as a device to worry about because so few people use or even want them.
What a difference a few weeks make. I am now in Alberta Canada in my new position as the VP Academic of Concordia University College of Alberta and I have been involved in several conversations about the merits of the Blackberry Playbook over the Apple iPad 2. I consider this a moot discussion since the Blackberry Playbook has neither top of mind awareness with more than 82% of people surveyed planning to purchase an iPad compared to 3% planning to purchase a playbook (see above onlinemarkettrend data) nor does it have any market share (3.3% according to Strategy Analysis). RIM advocates may be quick to point out that the iPad market share dropped from 95% to 61% in the past year but that drop was directly due to the fact that it took almost a full year for the wide assortment of Android tablets to come up that now make up 30% of the market. The Blackberry Playbook is at 3.3% which is quite good considering the lack of innovation that RIM has been able to muster with its product line.
Perhaps one of the most significant factors in selecting a tablet is deciding what you plan to do with it…and that means what apps will be available to help you accomplish the desired task. With over a half a million apps in the App store and more than a third of them free the iPad is the clear winner in this category.
If you want to be open for innovation and if you want to bet on what your students will be walking onto campus with then your safer bet is the iPad. Our Concordia Tomorrow strategy emphasizes being student centric–this means we need to know and understand who our students are and what they need. This also includes knowing what they come to campus with. The chances are overwhelming greater that they will be using the iPad or to a lesser extent the Android.
The question of what tablet should one purchase should also be asked with a specific time frame in mind. Any tablet is really a 12 to 18 month device. Whatever you buy today will be replaced in a year to year and a half. The innovation in this space is so significant that these devices will be obsolete much more quickly than PCs or even phones. All hardware companies build in a significant aspect of designed obsolescence into their devices and I would argue that Apple is the best at this. So purchasing and using a Playbook today is fine if that is what you can tether and are prepared to use. Next summer we will be talking about whether one should purchase the iPad 3 or save money on the iPad 2 or perhaps an Android device will have some must have features. I would also be willing to bet on the Android tablets playing a more significant role.
I have my doubts that RIM will be a player in this space. In order to survive they will have to focus on a very small security niche market as many industry writers suggest. It is really too bad. I have used RIM for many years and remember when they were the innovation leader and not the company being displaced by the new disruptive innovation. I started off with the Blackberry 850 and then the 857 shortly after which were the first two devices ever released by RIM so I have a longer history of using the Blackberry then I do with the iPhone. If they truly had a better device I would switch back to RIM in an instant–but they don’t.
It is in everyone’s best interest for the tablet and the smartphone market to have stiff competition from as many vendors as possible. We have lived through over a decade and a half of monopoly with Microsoft and now that we are moving into the post PC era I would hate to be subjected to yet another monopoly.
When will we ever learn that freedom of speech really means freedom.
Thanks to my Tyler Wall for pointing out this great resource!
