Tech

Andreessen Horowitz: Investing in, and nurturing, great capabilities for the enterprise

Andreessen Horowitz has a model I have not seen at any other Venture Capital firm, and that model is paying off for a broad ecosystem of companies, investors and enterprise IT professionals. From the standpoint of an enterprise technologist, the payoff will come by their support of firms fielding capabilities that will make a positiveRead… Read more »

Want To Know The Future Of Enterprise IT? Track Venture Capital

I know of only three models that enterprise technologists can use to make accurate predictions of future technology, and all three models have failings. The first model is to track mega trends in the IT industry. This provides broad insights on topics like Big Data, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Commoditization of IT, Social Media and OpenRead… Read more »

Reimagining town centres

I’ve been an interested follower of the debate around town centres since the Portas review of last year, not least because I live close by to a small town, and indeed it’s one where a debate is raging about the future and sustainability of the town centre as a place for people to visit, andRead… Read more »

The Accident of Your Experience

I was talking with a pretty smart business observer, who said, “I don’t think the lives of many people in this town have turned out the way they expected.” At first I thought he was referring to overwhelming smart-phone addiction, but thinking further my life sure hasn’t been what I was planning in high school,Read… Read more »

Growing number of working households put 50% of their income into housing

Despite a variety of programs designed to reduce the cost burden on homeowners in the wake of the financial crisis, a new study from the Center for Housing Policy confirms that many working households are paying half or more of their income into housing costs. CivSource spoke with Laura Williams, research associate with the CenterRead… Read more »

Why the Government should take an interest in Pinterest

You may have heard people talking about the hottest thing in social media, Pinterest. For those not aware of what Pinterest is, it’s a “Pin-Board” styled social photo sharing website. The site allows you to create and manage theme-based image and video collections. Popular topics include recipes, fashion, celebrities, animals, design and nature. The wayRead… Read more »

A tour of the media coverage for AmericaSpeaks’ One City Summit

I wanted to share excerpts from a few media pieces about the One City Summit held on February 11th in D.C. by NCDD organizational member AmericaSpeaks. Most groups in our field work on a smaller scale or run their programs over a longer period of time (which is less media-grabbing), so it’s always interesting toRead… Read more »

Government as a Catalyst: Prizes for Tech Innovation

At this year’s South by South West Interactive (SXSWi) conference, I’m pleased to be moderating a panel on the role of government and prizes in stimulating technology innovation and providing public services. Federal agencies have recently been given the authority by Congress to sponsor competitions for individuals, groups, and companies to develop new ideas andRead… Read more »

Social Media in Government Reading Discussion: Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows”

This week we read Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Why I assigned this text Every medium creates its own orthodoxy. You can tweet that. And the reason you can tweet that is because the technical strictures of Twitter push effective tweets to the limits of the sense:syllable ratio,Read… Read more »