But wouldn't it be cool if...

Unfortunately, the enterprise world often seems to lack the pizazz of the consumer world.  Here's a nonsensical, completely unproductive idea I've been tossing around:

Trivial Audacity

OK, so the name needs help, but I don't think the idea does.

The television shows I find most interesting generally have the common thread of frequent historical or pop cultural references.  Frequently, I'm left scratching my head wondering what the reference actually meant.  Family Guy is one of the worst offenders.  See this page or this video for some examples.

It would be both entertaining and educational if you could Shazam any TV show, live or recorded, and get information on the specific interval of video you were watching.  Such information could be a combination of social-media generated and producer provided.  Shazam appears to be heading in this direction already, allowing people to tag pretty much any audio stream with any content, but a more solid producer-side relationship could yield a truly interesting development in how the general population experiences media.

Enterprise-focused startups are in demand

A few weeks ago, this article on TechCrunch caught my attention.  In it, Sequoia Capital's Jim Goetz indicates surprise at the lack of focus on the enterprise in the startup community.  The comment from Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk regarding enterprise vs. consumer time-to-market is particularly interesting.

Building a consumer-focused mobile application isn't difficult.  It requires focus and commitment to be sure, but the barrier to entry is low, and the learning curve associated with learning a new language or platform is shallow.  In my few years in the monolithic corporate software world, I've discovered that robustness, customizability, security, and interoperability are difficult goals to achieve, and thus take time.

Here's an idea in the enterprise space that I've been tossing around in my head for a while:

Self-Organizing Wikis

Knowledge sharing in enterprise environments is both essential and difficult.  Products like Atlassian's Confluence platform provide functionality for allowing employees to contribute and search content, track tasks, etc.  The challenge lies in keeping all of this content organized.  The Google philosophy of "search, don't organize" doesn't hold up in the enterprise due to the frequent scenario of someone not knowing what information is out there, or what has already been tried.  A wiki which recognized viewing trends, topic associations, and potentially related postings would be useful.

Why Mysticified?

I've been thinking for a while that I needed an outlet for writing about whatever's on my mind.

Well, here it is.

Unfortunately, refusing to limit myself to a particular topic minimizes the utility of the blog to the rest of the world.  Hopefully over time I will hone my message in such a way that the bits these posts occupy in some random Google datacenter in Ohio will be slightly more worthwhile.  Given that I'm missing a useful purpose in writing the blog at the moment, some derivative of "mystified" seems to be an appropriate name.

Why Mysticified, you might ask?  That answer has two parts:

1. I live in Arlington, Massachusetts, not to be confused with the large neighbor of Washington, DC, or the location of Cowboys Stadium.  The Mystic River--yes, to be confused with the movie starring Sean Penn--forms the border between Arlington and the neighboring town of Medford (and Winchester, for those of you who are geographically obsessed like myself).

2. I recently attended a wedding at The Towers in Narragansett, RI.

One of the songs played at the wedding was "Into the Mystic" off of Van Morrison's Moondance album, and it's sort of been stuck in my head ever since.

So, we find ourselves Mysticified.  Let's see where we go next.