Good pre-sales people are hard to find.

Finding and recruiting great pre-sales people is hard.

The best pre-sales people (call them Systems Engineers, Solutions Consultants, Technical Pre-Sales, whatever) are the ones with a deep understanding of technology, products and architecture, who can also articulate the value of those products and technology in solution focused, business oriented language to non-technical audiences. The very best do that so well that they end up earning that coveted "trusted advisor" status. Customers then naturally want to engage and consult with them on important strategic decisions, even when those decisions don't involve the products or technology that the employer of the pre-sales individual is selling. Their respect within the customers they serve is legendary.

Possessing both technical skills and business acumen is such a rare find that the best pre-sales people are hard to find and even harder to recruit. Most hiring managers don't even know where to look to find great pre-sales people because they are few and far between, in high demand, and often very well looked after by their existing employers.

In my opinion, the best place to start your search for great pre-sales people is with your customers. Ask your existing customers which pre-sales people from other vendors they have engaged with in the past and would highly recommend. If your customers would happily recommend them, then they must have performed exactly as you would want them to with that customer, meaning it's a very safe bet they'll be the right person for your business too.

Internet of Things

Ever since I started to play with Node.js many years go, I wondered if maybe there would be a nice clean way to solve this "Internet of Things" shizzle.

Node was really the first time we saw JavaScript make it to the server-side in a good way. We did it at Netscape with LiveScript but Javascript wasn't yet a standard at that point, and the features were limited. This was pre-ECMA days. With Node, what we saw was the "web programming language" move underneath the application, rather than just being out on the edge as the Web UI language of choice. Then some guy writes a whole operating system in JavaScript, and suddenly we see the "web language" move underneath the whole OS.

At this point I started to wonder if maybe one day this inherent web enablement would just make it's way even lower in the stack, and we end up with a standard (and extensible) "WIOS" (for lack of a better name). Basically a Web-enabled BIOS that could run everywhere. That way no matter what you did on top of the device in the firmware or app layer, it was inherently Web enabled. The new stack might then end up being WIOS -> JavaScript -> OS -> App. Now that has turned the tables a bit from the traditional BIOS -> OS -> App -> Web layering we are currently used to. 

The WIOS would need to be extensible so that each individual device type could extend it to allow for whatever native I/O capabilities is has (from sensors to lightbulbs to washing machines to whole cars). Now the Internet of Things seems so much simpler to achieve. If everything on the planet was WIOS enabled, then (secure) WebSockets would be the de-facto communication choice, and you could then use MQTT over the top of the WebSocket to do the M2M messaging piece.

Sure, you could just do the same with a regular TCP/IP based layer at the bottom and nothing else, but you would then need to deal with arbitrary ports over the Internet, probably some secure tunnelling, firewall issues, etc etc. Instead, having all these devices communicate *any* protocol over the Web solves a lot of these issues, requires no changes to Firewalls, is a known deployment and scale up/out model and is instantly intra-inter-cross-Cloud ready. 

I've bought some Ninja Blocks and plan to WIOS enable them next time I get bored.

Bit whacky, but til I see the Internet of Things brought together in a common, consistent manner, anything and everything is up for grabs. :)

Traders go Web

The Web is no longer too difficult, or too risky to trade financial instruments across.

See how.

Merci Paris!

Video and slides from a recent talk I gave at What's Next Paris can be found here.

WebSockets to plumb your TV

Cisco look to be taking on Google (and others) with the launch of their Videoscape offering. Fantastic to see that it supports WebSockets too! Makes a lot of sense if you are after an efficient, standards based way to deliver real-time content from the Cloud and across the Web.

I can see a day when TVs are all IP based, resulting in much richer content, and a richer, more immersive experience than you're used to today. A time will soon come when you can watch TV programs on demand, see content and context aware ads targeting to you (no longer just generic ads splatter-gunned to the whole audience and hope a small percentage find it relevant) and perhaps even be able to conduct e-commerce at the same time. 

You could be watching prime time, get an ad displayed for a product that is related to the show, targeted to your profile, of real interest to you, with real-time reviews appearing alongside, coupled with a crowd-sourced sentiment for not only the show you're watching, but the product being advertised as well. Embedded will be an ability to click-to-purchase, knowing the purchased item is on it's way to you for delivery tomorrow morning. 

No reason to leave the sofa.

Thanks Krakow!

Slides from a recent talk I gave at the 33rd Degree Java Masters Conference in Krakow can be found here.

Be the traffic - Part 2

http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/27/apple-officially-answers-questions-on-location-tracking-says-it/


"One of Apple's answers seems to disclose an extra bit of new information: "Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years." 


Think I blogged about this concept a while ago. Fantastic to see crowd-sourced traffic data becoming a reality.