David Erasmus

My team are already bored of hearing it.

“The future is Social and Mobile”

We want to do….

Whatever we want

With whoever we want

Whenever we want

———————–

Is it good?

Probably not

Is there any way to stop it?

Probably not

Will you win commercially if you fight it?

Probably not

In any market segment, any country any socio-economic grouping sooner or later I think you will be hearing these words.

Mobile & Social

TechCrunch just released an article by Ben Horowitz on Leadership.

He maintains that there are 3 facets to the best leaders he has seen.

• The ability to articulate the vision
• The right kind of ambition
• The ability to achieve the vision

I am sure we all know plenty of people who only carry 1 or 2 of these attributes and cant get out of the starting blocks.

Seth Godin talks a lot about The Dip. When a business is about to fail is the only point in which you can truly see a leaders relationship equity. Horowitz commends Steve Jobs on his ability to get through these Dips against all odds.

The most exciting leaders I want to follow are ones who’s whole lives revolve around serving a purpose bigger than themselves.

I guess that falls under the right kind of ambition.

A few days ago looking at a tech conference I saw the following.

This man sounds like an experienced, professional, silver haired fox.

What was slightly surprising was to see his photo next………..

Its amazing how powerful  what our presence on the web suggests.

I am not suggesting this apparently very young person can or cannot deliver commercially I just think its interesting how the language that is used conjures a very different picture in my head to the one I am viewing.

They say when you meet someone you make your judgments on them almost immediately.

The same is definitely true if not truer on the Web.

Don’t underestimate the power of the pictures and language you choose to use on the web.

Since the web began there has been a huge divide between our digital selves and our ‘real selves’.

I remember being a 17 year old talking to girl friends too much on MSN sharing all sorts of deep and meaningful stuff and then feeling weird seeing them and not even wanting to hug them as the two lives were so seperate.

Skype Video Chat has been a big contributor in narrowing the gap, I now speak to and train my South African staff form London over Skype and feel like I genuinely know them when I finally meet them face to face.

With the mobile device market raging and Apple leading the charge I think we are going to see that Gap completely Disappear. 4G will make our mobile web interactions as good if not better than our desk based ADSL connections.

I hope by the time 2011 is through I will be scanning my Tesco shopping on my iPhone through barcode recognition and paying for it PayPal on my mobile.

I hope I can walk round IKEA and scan all the items I want on my iPhone and get them delivered to my preloaded delivery address.

I think we will see shops becoming more about show rooms for touch and feel rather than commerce based as that can all be done more easily on our mobile.

I hope I can print from my iPad by purely making a gesture towards the physical location of the printer rather than clicking buttons or icons.

Gestures are far more intuitive, just look at kids trying to touch the screen of your dell PC the whole time. Finally they will be allowed. I maintain that the iPad will be amazing for kids especially with learning difficulties and Grannies who can’t work out dells.

I think its going to be fun to ride this wave.

Every interaction we have should flow naturally.

Every conversation, written or verbal, web based or face to face requires flow.

Every website we visit needs flow to make our experience enjoyable.

A good flow breeds natural trust.

Flow is the natural movement to the next phase of an interaction based on the information presented.

The most natural flows exist where the response is founded on the specific information someone has provided and gives them a result they like without scaring them by going too far

Examples:

- You Google “buy bourne identity dvd” and the ad displayed shows the relevant ad text and when you click on the ad it uses the information you provided to give you the best result. If it took you to the home page you would be annoyed as it was not the natural flow as you already provided the relevant information.

- You are on a date with someone you find very attractive after dinner you kiss them on the cheek, they kiss you, with this encouragement whip your shirt off in the middle of the restaurant. This would obviously be a FAIL. More importantly it would be a flow fail, if time was taken to commit to the relationship, wait for the right setting, mood and built trust there may be a time where the action would have been appropriate but out of context and without buy in from the other party it is a flow fail.

- If you clicked a button on a website that said “view more info” and the item was added to your basket you may be concerned the shop was either trying to scam you or you weren’t understanding each other.

If people give you information remember it and USE it but do not jump to conclusions they haven’t agreed to yet.