Information and Flash Mob Tactics - Plus Paul Revere's Speed

Recently anti-mask and anti-testing activist, using mobile phones, video and social media platforms, called for a flash mob style protest at the Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center emergency room in Vancouver, Washington.  They were protesting against the hospital's requirements that patients be tested for Covid-19 upon entering the hospital.

The anti-maskers that organized the 15-20 person flash mob protest stated their goal was to be able to "push a button on their mobile phone" and send information that would summon 10 activists in 10 minutes, 100 in 100 minutes and 1,000 in 1,000 minutes."  A speed they hoped would be fast enough to surprise the targets of their protest.

That got me thinking about information and "summoning" speed.   I wondered how long it took the American colonists to distribute information and summon their militia to meet the British in Lexington, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775?  

Here is what my research found.  Paul Revere's 12.5 mile ride on a horseback to warn the colonists that the British were coming took approximately one hour.  Paul arrived in Lexington about 12:30 AM on April 19.  

Once the colonist received the warning information that the "British were coming!" they got dressed, grabbed their weapons and ran, walked or rode their horses to meet the British in Lexington.  The "shot heard around the world" was fired just after dawn in Lexington.  Based on these records it appears it took around 6 hours to distribute information and summon 500 colonial militia to confront the British.

One of the anti-maskers stated goals was the ability to summon 1,000 protesters in 1,000 minutes (16 hours). With today's social media, internet and mobile devices is that a stretch goal? In about 6 hours the American colonists had gathered approximately 500 militia, and the information was distributed on horseback. 

At least in this instance, it appears Paul Revere's team and their horses beat the "summoning" speed goals of today's anti-maskers.  Paul's team was able to carry information out and summon more people at a faster rate.

I recognize this certainly will not always be the case, but that doesn't stop us from enjoying this bit of silly trivia.

Don't forget to subscribe or follow me if you want more silly trivia, plus not so silly discussions on the future.

 

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Kevin Benedict

Partner | Futurist | Leadership Strategies at TCS

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile and Digital Transformation on the Mercy Ships

Most of the interviews and articles I publish here are on the relatively sterile topic of technologies, industry trends and business strategies. That is not to say they are uninteresting, just absent of a human interest perspective.  This article and interview is not one of those.  I had the privilege of hosting and interviewing Susan Parker, Executive Special Projects with the Mercy Ships (www.MercyShips.org) in Boise this weekend.  She has lived and worked on the Mercy Ship for over 27 years and has volumes of incredible stories to share.  The Mercy ship is a hospital ship with over 400 staff providing special surgical care, at NO cost to the patient, along the Western coast of Africa.

What follows are two videos.  The first is a brief overview of the work that the Mercy Ships accomplishes and the second is an interview with Susan that I recorded this week on the digital transformations she has witnessed in her 27 years on the ship, and how mobile technologies and digital transformation have changed the way they operate the ship, raise funds and care for more patients. Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/qu73D_VCB1w



Video Link: http://youtu.be/LBF5SVkpJ5o?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw


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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Editor

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

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Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

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Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility and the Gift of Time

McCall, Idaho - Winter Wonderland

I was standing next to a grizzled old man (definition: anyone older than me that can grow a beard), at the coffee shop today.  He said he had been standing in lines all day.  I said, "Makes you appreciate smartphones, doesn't it?"  He agreed and added they save me so much time!

That comment is a perfect example of "blogger's inspiration!"  I said, "What do you mean by - "It saves you so much time?"  He said his work is closely tied to the weather.  He runs snow removal services in beautiful McCall, Idaho.  As a result, he must carefully monitor the weather including wind direction, precipitation forecasts and the beginnings and endings of storms.  He can now do all of this precisely from his smartphone.  He said he is absolutely more productive.

He went on to say, "I want to start working at the tail-end of a storm to maximize my productivity and customer services."  If he starts work too early his work will be covered by snow and he will have too remove it again, adding expense and delaying his work for other customers.  If he starts too late, he will have dissatisfied customers."  He uses his smartphone constantly in the winter to maximize his productivity.

Enterprise mobility solutions can provide all kinds of "gifts of time" to employers and employees.   From simple collaboration with colleagues, prospects and customers using your smartphone for voice, SMS, Skype or Google+ instead of traveling to a face-to-face, navigating quickly and accurately to a destination or to collect data in the field that is integrated with back-office systems.  There are all kinds of ways time can be saved by utilizing mobile technologies.

In recent decades productivity gains in manufacturing have been driven through better processes and process automations, automated data collections, advances in SCM (supply chain management), logistics and ERPs.  Today, there are even more productivity gains to be had in each of these areas by using mobile technologies to improve real-time visibility into events, processes, statuses, locations, resources and snow fall!

Have you reviewed my new Mobile Solution Directory at http://mobilesolutiondirectory.blogspot.com/?

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC) Cognizant

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Situational Awareness, Enterprise Mobility and Field Services

 I read an interesting article this morning titled, Afghanistan Creates Proving Ground for UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) Capabilities.  Here is an excerpt from the last paragraph of this article, "They (UAS) are providing the kind of situational awareness that wasn’t even imagined a generation ago,” Singer said. “The sea change that’s happened is that they have gone from being unimagined to an expectation.”

I am on a Delta flight as I am writing this article, connected to the Internet, and keeping up with my workload.  I also have situational awareness as I am connected into all of my business and banking systems.  I can communicate and receive updates from my clients and customers.  This capability, was also unimagined a few years ago, but is now an expectation.

After reading the article I referenced above, I pondered how this technology could help the field services industry.  I came to the conclusion that most field services organizations will not be flying drones overhead, but perhaps they will begin to incorporate more use of real-time video feeds between service technicians and the central office.  Perhaps senior managers can ask their junior technicians to activate their headlamps and video feeds so they can see the equipment being serviced and assist remotely.  Most of the popular smartphones today provide these real-time video feeds (face time or similar functionality), but I have yet to see significant enterprise processes built around them.

Yesterday, I visited enterprise mobility vendor DSI in their Kansas City, Missouri office.  They were celebrating their first appearance on Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms and wanted to brief me.  They have new headquarters and have set-up all of their audio visual contols on iPhones and iPads.  All of the giant monitors in all the rooms are controlled via Apple TV.  Each of their conference rooms have iPads mounted to the walls and connected to Outook so the rooms can be reserved via their calendar systems. DSI has offices in Australia, the UK, Singapore and other locations all set-up with state of the art video conferencing systems.  All of these functions enable managers to utilize mobile technologies and video conferencing to have situational awareness and M2M (machine to machine) control of their environments.  Very cool!  Their glass doors even slide shut with a shhhhhhhhhh sound just like on Star Trek.

During my tour of DSI's new offices, Scott Lutz,  Global VP of Marketing, showed how a mobile app on his iPhone could control the lights, window shades, monitors and many other things in the room.  It was an awesome example of an M2M system in action.  I can see how mobile video feeds, M2M controls from your tablets and smartphones can become the "expected" in the near future.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

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Full Disclosure: I am a mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Latest Strategies for Mobilized Field Services

There are very few areas in the enterprise space that are being transformed more by mobile technologies than field services.  I can think of perhaps healthcare, banking and marketing, but field services is a big one.  This week, Gil Bouhnick and I will be discussing in a webinar, how the use of mobile technologies in field services has introduced completely new business strategies for the services sector.  I invite you to join us!  Register here!    

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 13th (8:00 am PST/11:00 am EST/ 4:00 pm GMT).

In this webinar we will be discussing:

• The meaning of a real-time enterprise and the role of mobile technologies
• Situational awareness in field services
• 4D Field Services
• Mobilized Objects
• Velocity in Field Services
• Optimized Intersections
• The role of HTML5
• The role of mobile middleware
• The role of enterprise app stores

I hope you can join us!  Register here!

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

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Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

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Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility - A Business or IT Strategy?

In my Enterprise Mobility Survey 2011 (September 2011) I asked survey respondents the following question, "How important do you view enterprise mobility to your company's future success?"  80% said enterprise mobility was "very important" (36%) to "critical"(44%) to their company's future success.  With these numbers it seems mobility is an area worthy of significant brain energy.

Another survey question on the same survey asked, "What are your company's motivations for wanting to deploy mobile apps?"  Here are some of the answers:

• 79.1% said increase productivity
• 48.6% said improve customer interaction and service
• 43.4% said reduce costs
• 41.7% said achieve competitive advantages

The results of this survey clearly highlight how important enterprise mobility solutions are to a company's business.  However, some companies are still treating enterprise mobility as if it were an IT issue.  That is simply wrong thinking.  Who makes competitive advantages, customer service, productivity and cost reductions the responsibility of the IT department?

I meet with large enterprises either via phone or in person weekly.  Finding good mobile technologies are no longer the main challenge.  The biggest challenge in enterprise mobility today is getting the business to understand what is possible with mobile technologies and designing a business plan to take advantage of it.

First, the business must understand mobility so they can identify how their business models, strategies and processes can be improved by using mobile technologies.  Once the business has identified what they want to accomplish using mobile technologies, then it is time for the IT department or third-party experts to identify the mobile technologies, frameworks and infrastructures necessary to achieve the business' goals.


***Upcoming Webinar of Note:  HTML 5 vs Native Mobile App Development: Practical Insights, The VDC Research Report on Mobile Development Strategy.  February 2, 1 PM EST  Register Here!


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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

SAP TechEd 2011 - Session ID MOB102: Mobile Technologies and the Real Time Enterprise

I am presenting a session at SAP TechEd in a little over a week called Mobile Technologies and the Real Time Enterprise.  I would invite you to attend.  The session ID is MOB102.  One of the key concepts in this session is that enterprise mobility is not just about technologies but tactics.  Using advanced mobile technologies without advancing your tactics is just plain wrong!!!  Here are some of the areas we will cover:

• Connected and Mobilized ERPs
• Connected workforce, assets and inventories
• 360 degree and 3D view of the operational area
• Asset and workforce tracking
• Work and task status visibility
• Business process and KPI alerts
• Unified views
• Dynamic real time scheduling
• Integrated end-to-end back office systems
• Real time analytics and decision making

I hope to see you there!

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group

Read The Mobility News Weekly

Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

SAP Mentor Monday - Pre-Recorded SAP Enterprise Mobility Webinar

On Monday of this week John Appleby of Bluefin Solutions, Prashant Chatterjee of SAP and I recorded a webinar on the latest in SAP Enterprise Mobility.  It is available now for your viewing pleasure. 

In this webinar https://sap.na.pgiconnect.com/p49687013, I start out by discussing some of the most interesting new mobile technologies, and then Prashant and John actually bring substance to the webinar.

Just a reminder that there are many video interviews I have done with industry experts like Syclo's CEO Rich Padula available for you to watch here, http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/p/mobile-expert-video-series.html.  Syclo is a Co-Innovation Partner of SAP, which means they develop joint mobile solutions with SAP.  Theses videos are shaky and look like I am holding a small HD Flip video camera in one hand while conducting the interviews (in fact I am), but they do have some interesting content.

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Kevin Benedict, SAP Mentor, SAP Top Contributor, Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
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http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility consultant, mobility analyst, writer and Web 2.0 marketing professional. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.