Market Analysis for Infrastructure Software from Lustratus Research Limited

2007 thoughts

Published December 18, 2006 | By Steve Craggs

As 2006 closes out, what will 2007 bring?

Well,on the SOA front, Lustratus has already published its 2007 trends for SOA, integration and interoperability. Hopefully they will all be as accurate as the 2006 trends were, but if I had to highlight just one, it would be the prediction of SOA taxes starting to bite.

But I read a post from Tara Hunt today that gave me serious pause on this whole blogging question. Being new to blogging, I have found myself being pulled towards the echo chamber – linking and commenting on other people’s words. After all, this is the way to get a higher blog rating in places like Technorati, which must be important, mustn’t it? Reading Tara’s post, I began to realize that this becomes a self-serving approach, and will eventually stymie discussions in the blogosphere to an increasingly small number of topics that circle around faster and faster as more people get sucked into the echo chamber.

I am therefore making an early resolution for 2007. I am going to do all I can to resist the pull of the echo chamber, and keep my focus on saying what I want to say. Of course, this doesn’t mean never commenting on other blogs – just making sure that if I do, it is to make what I consider to be a really relevant point, as opposed to just trying to get more links and join the choir.

Steve

Posted in Imported, SOA

One Response to 2007 thoughts

Ronan says:

December 18, 2006 at 10:20 am

Steve,
You are too hard on yourself – I think of blogging as a way to make public those conversations that we all have at trade events, by email, down the local industry drinking hole etc. Whereas in the past if you lived in Silicon Valley or The City of London it was easy to find out what was happening in technology or banking respectively and everybody else was to a degree excluded, blogging allows people anywhere with ideas to join in on the conversation.
Now, I agree most of the time if all you are doing is saying “yes – me too”, the value is limited: Although the recent effective killing of the ugly SOA 2.0 concept by precisely that approach proves even that can be powerful.
However most of the blog conversations add value, join discussions together and best of all add dissonant voices to challenge what has become precisely such an echo chamber and clearly add value to both the original writer and the readers. For instance, The Enterprise Service Bus concept has in my opinion been greatly strengthened because it has been and continues to be challenged through blogging and blog-like portals.
However, I do have a personal blogging beef – people who use del.icio.us as a way of padding their blog. If you don’t have something to say, say nothing!
Ronan

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