Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Reflections on Blogging

It is fitting that my last blog entry for 2005 should focus on blogging.  I think that years from now I will remember 2005 as the year when I started my personal blog.

In my very first entry, which was posted less than eight months ago on May 16, I said that I anticipated an exciting journey.  It has been that and then some.  For years I had resisted starting a blog because I thought that it would have been primarily an exercise in narcissism.  But in the last year, I was frankly taken by surprise by the rise of blogging, and by the number of people I knew and respected who had started personal blogs.  So, when colleagues at IBM encouraged me to start one myself earlier this year (when we launched the IBM blogging initiative), I finally took the plunge.

Meetings in Argentina

I visited Buenos Aires last week.  The main purpose for my trip was to participate in an Innovation Summit hosted by IBM Argentina for clients, members of the press, and other invited guests.  I gave a talk titled “Innovation in the 21st Century” in which I discussed the major forces driving innovation in technology, business and society, similar to my recent talks on the subject.  Following me on the agenda was Fabio Gandour, Director of New Technologies for IBM Latin America and member of the IBM Academy of Technology.  Fabio gave a really interesting and entertaining talk about the future of technology.  It revolved around some supposed “malfunctions” in a demo he was giving which resulted in his linking to himself in the year 2036.  He then proceeded to "interview" his 2036 self on how various technologies had advanced in the intervening thirty years.  It was very creative, funny, informative, and really well done. 

Intellectual Property as Innovation Capital

The key subject in most of my presentations this year and a recurring theme in this blog has been the rapid rate of change taking place in technology and business, and how those changes relate to the focus on innovation all around us. And as has been true throughout history, major changes in technology and business are accompanied by major changes in society, including in education, the nature of work and government policies.  While less tangible and harder to quantify, these societal changes require at least as high a degree of careful management as the changes taking place in technology and business.

Trip to Beijing

I spent last week in Beijing.  The primary reason for the trip was to attend the Computer Innovation 6016 conference, where I gave an invited talk.  The theme of the conference, which accounts for its "6016" name, was to reflect on the most significant milestones and innovations in IT in the past 60 years as well as to discuss the trends in the next 16 years.