Principia has a very interesting opinion piece on convergence from Ring2 co-founder Steve Flavell. His contention is that a market driven approach to convergence, rather than Microsoft’s grand design, can help solve customer problems today.
True. Incremental changes can improve the experience of many products and services. In this case, Ring2 has built a clever conference call control panel for RIM’s Blackberry. Recognizing that web based conference call control panels provided valuable functionality, but that 75% of conference calls are made away from a PC, they’ve provided that functionality on handhelds.
Cool! And a good business, too!
There are far more than just incremental changes that can take place, however. iotum’s Pronto Conference Calling (announced last February) simplifies the process of arranging and participating in conference calls, most notablity the pre-call phase and the process of quickly bring users together for the call. As Telepocalypse writer Martin Geddes has noted on many occasions, potentially the richest source of value add in a Voice 2.0 world is the pre and post conversation phases of the call. And what of the addition of New Presence features to allow for ad-hoc, presence driven conference calls?
We’re just scratching the surface of what is possible.
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
