Gartner Wireless & Mobile Summit… In Review (Part #2 of 2)

Posted March 5, 2009
Filed under: Industry Events, Interesting Articles | Tags: Gartner Wireless & Mobile Summit, online society 2020, reputation management |

I recently reviewed the Next-Generation WLAN presentation given at the Gartner Mobile & Wireless Summit that took place Feb 23-25, 2009. I said the authors hit a home run with that presentation.

This go-around, I am reviewing the “Online Society 2020” presentation which, to me, is more of a ground rule double than a home run. The ball still went over the center field fence, it just wasn’t as satisfying as a pure home run…

The presentation started with a high level overview of some of the factors affecting online society in 2020. These factors were logical based on the information available today:

Technology
Social Attitudes
New Jobs/Hobbies
External Factors

From there, the discussion turned to networked Healthcare, Personal Communications & Collaboration, Education, Entertainment, and Financial Services.

Some of the predictions seemed rather straight-forward:

(In 2020… “Division between personal and professional life has blurred”)

Other predicitions were insightful (even downright brilliant):

(In 2020… “Reputation management will be a billion dollar business”)

Personally, I would have liked to see a tighter focus on Wireless & Mobile technologies, which was the theme of the conference. That being said, I applaud the presenters (Nick Jones, Jackie Fenn, and Monica Basso) for attempting to predict society a decade from now. Futhermore, I would suspect the audience discussion in this session significantly contributed to the overall quality of the presentation.