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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

CentralDesktop is a cool collaboration offering. I first ran into them a couple of years ago at the Office 2.0 conference and since then we’ve met up regularly and chatted about collaboration and organization.

Hot

• The logo on the front is way cool (try and decipher it, answer below)
• 100% Cotton, saving the world from body odor and lurex
• Good quality fabric and stitching detail

Not

• Maybe it’s just me but I’m kind of over black t shirts
• Manufactured in El Salvador, which (in my mind at least) cheapen the product

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In an attempt to sleigh dragons and battle demons (or maybe that’s the other round) I often go into battle to try and get some sense and scale into the marketing messages that I hear from PR.

2009 seems to be destined to be remembered as the year of the Platform – when every startup was intent on “creating a platform”. I often railed against this and begged for some sanity – one of my favorite posts on the subject was back in October when i got all hot under the collar after the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference.

I tried to get some definitions around what I see as being the main platform types – hopefully it added something to the mix…

Earlier this year at the Enterprise 2.0 conference “platform” was the name of choice. Seemingly every company I spoke to was a platform player. It seems the latest “fart on demand” iPhone application is a “platform for virtual flatulence generation”, that the latest Twitter clone with negligible uptake is “a platform for global collaboration” and the maker of a time tracking widget is “a platform for enterprise efficiency and ROI generation” – I can’t help but rail against that and yell “enough of the platform already!”

One of the sessions at the conference included half a dozen or so vendors of microblogging products, true they all had various takes on the theme and offered different services, but they shared the common feature of providing microblogging. Somewhat surprisingly every one of them proclaimed that they were a platform. I couldn’t help but ask a somewhat tongue-in-cheek question – when every single product on the web calls itself a platform, we’ll have to invent a new word to let wannabe players impress VCs.

The inimitable Phil Wainewright recently released an excellent report looking at different aspects of PaaS, I thought I’d try and bring a philosophical bent to the discussion.

In my mind, to claim the moniker “platform” a service needs to have a number of attributes; an ecosystem, critical mass, beachhead status and openness. So what different types of platforms do I see out there?

Monotheistic platforms

What I’ve playfully called monotheistic platforms leverage one particular business process and attempt to build a platform around that. It’ll always be a niche but so long as it’s a big enough niche it’s worth following. Force.com is the originator of the PaaS moniker. It’s clearly gaining an ecosystem, with third parties developing applications that live within its world and it’s also seemingly gaining some critical mass. Force.com however is less than open – it dictates how applications can be written, it dictates (to a certain extent) how applications look and it’s central view of the world is CRM-centric (although admittedly less so now than even a few months ago). Force.com is a platform but it’s what I’ll call a niche platform.

Like Switzerland, only different, and bigger

Platforms that span the divide between on-premises and SaaS and that do so in a neutral way are arguably something of a nirvana. These platforms interact seamlessly with the web environment, while also federating to on-premises applications. They also broaden the offering such that vendors can chose parts of the stack to adopt (billing, authentication, data models etc). As for size, like anything in business, reach is critical and this is where the incumbent players have an edge – having the ability to leverage an existing customer based but introduce them to a platform is the gold many platform plays would die for. I’ve written before about the Intuit Partner Platform(disclosure – IPP is a client) and I contend that it’s an exemplar of this type of platform play – both from a vendor perspective and an end-user centric viewpoint.

Ego Platforms – The Id

To use Freud’s term, these platforms cater for the Id part of our personalities – these social platforms are built around individuals core desire to connect and find meaning from the people around them – exhibit one, Facebook. One can’t deny that Facebook has true critical mass, it also has a plethora of third parties creating offerings surrounding it. It’s beachhead proposition is “the social graph” but again it’s fairly closed. I’d temper that last statement however to say that Facebook Connect is a move towards becoming a more open, amorphous platform.

Pantheism

Pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. Without talking about the utility or otherwise of Twitter, it is the ultimate pantheistic example. To continue the pantheistic analogy, it is a platform that doesn’t focus at all on the anthromorphic expression of itself, rather it’s an abstract expression – the “tweet” is a semi-abstract thing that takes on different shapes and forms at different times. The ecosystem that has built up around Twitter is phenomenal – this is precisely because it’s a platform that doesn’t dictate where players are or how they look. From this point of view Twitter is ultimately open. The critical mass they have is a little debatable looking at statistics of users who are actual active. Twitter’s beachhead status is communication – often vacuous communication it must be admitted but communication nonetheless.

Co-operation

Co-operative platforms attempt to build critical mass through symbiosis. The Small Business Web is a good example of this. The Small Business Web, according to its founding partners

is a movement to bring together like-minded, customer-obsessed software companies to integrate our respective products and make life easier for small businesses. While there are many products available for small business owners on the Web, the approach we’re taking is to use each others APIs to provide a high-level of integration between these applications and create a more seamless experience for our customers.

In other words a bunch of small SaaS start-ups got together to try and build an alternative to the single site best-of-breed application. By working together on integrations, they’re slowly build the ability for small businesses to pick and mix functionality according to their specific needs.

Summary

Not eveyone can be a platform, but everyone sure wants to be. I’d be keen to hear readers thoughts about this post and how they see the platform battles shaking down over the next year or two.

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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

I have three favorite conferences – along with my hometown hero event, Webstock, it’s no coincidence that the other two in the triumvirate are arranged by the same person.

Mild mannered conference guru, Eric Norlin put on two of the coolest events on the calendar. This year was my first time attending defrag, and I’m super pleased I was there.

Hot

• I really needed a new sweatshirt!
• The ribbed fabric is a high quality look
• The defrag logo gives one instant cred (at least among a certain group of people)

Not

• 65% polyester – synthetic fibers are the devil, at least we should be happy about the remaining 35% I guess
• Made in Vietnam – I’m not sure of the labor standards the workers who made this item are used to

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Here in the Southern Hemisphere (that’s at the bottom of the globe for the more geographically challenged among you!), it’s summertime.

That means vacations (we call them holidays), Barbecues (we call them barbies) and Sandy beaches (down here they’re often lined with Pohutukawa trees – that’s one of them in the image).

After a year that saw me hit in a plane way too much and in a car way too much, what else to do but jump in a car and go on a roadtrip. We’re heading to the Northland region of New Zealand, a rugged, remote place where mobile phone coverage, let alone mobile data, is patchy at best.

I’ll not be going completely quiet though, as I’ll be running a summer redux series highlighting some of my favorite posts from the year. In true curmudgeonly style I’ll be looking for posts that had something of a rant to them – after all, contention is the spice of life.

So… I’m off. Hoping everyone has a cool Yule, Happy Hanukah or awesomely agnostic break – and for those stil at work… Bummer

Ciao!

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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

Ahhh the lovely Mindtouch (disclosure – Krish and I are writing a whitepaper for Mindtouch, not at all a conflict of interest but transparency is key I guess…) – I reviewed my first Mindtouch shirt a few weeks ago here – this one continues the black, logo-on-front theme but adds a new print on the back. Mindtouch honcho Aaron Fulkerson has taken to wearing suits in his profile photo shoots (and, it must be said, bad suits as well – bad in the eighties, brown with a wide tie sense) showing little commitment to the T Shirt movement – ah well….

Hot

• Aaron Fulkerson – dress sense notwithstanding he’s a legend
• The Mindtouch logo is actually pretty cool
• Black, while not my color of choice, is a pretty safe bet

Not

• Che Guevara with rabbit teeth? A rabbit with a Che hat? Either way it does not compute
• Made in Haiti – I know I have a weekly rant about third world manufacturing but still….

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

Intervals sent me a selection of their shirts to review, all the same design but different colors and sizes. Intervals is web-based project management software that in their words, marries time tracking and task management in a collaborative online space with powerful reporting.

Hot

• Grey is a good color – I get sick of black t-shirts
• 100% cotton – good for my skin, good for my planet
• Made in Egypt, my enslaved forbears notwithstanding it’s a cool country

Not

• I’m not entirely certain what’s with the rocket dude on the back
• Poor quality screen printing is so think it feels like you’re wearing body armor

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users – the Wellington event was held in a very cool venue (a bowling club would you believe), included attendance by the uber-cool and surprisingly down to earth WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, and showed off all that is good about community and open source.

Hot

• It’s nice to have long sleeves for a change
• Matt Mullenweg – need I say more?
• 100% Cotton – natural is where it’s at!
• WordPress is cool – wear it with pride!

Not

• Made in China – my God is everything third-world mass-produced these days?

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

 Search Engine College is a site whose;

goal is to offer fun, easy and affordable online short courses in search engine optimization (SEO training) and other search engine marketing subjects.

That is kind of cool but what is awesome for a patriotic and somewhat parochial chap like me is that SEC is run from a house on the beautiful Banks Peninsula of New Zealand – paradise indeed. Kalena Jordan, is co-founder of SEC and I have to admit that I’m dubious whether she actually exists or not – considering we live nearby each other, have apparently attended events together but have never actually met.

Hot

• 100% cotton (OK, not organic but still)
• From a tech company right here in New Zealand – woot!
• You can’t go wrong with white

Not

• I just don’t like cats, virtual or otherwise
• Made in Bangladesh – either you’re part of the solution, or you’re part of the problem

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

TelecomONE is an internal unconference for Telecom New Zealand, the formerly state-owned, and now publicly listed, telco. I’ve been invited to attend as an external party on the two annual event run so far – as with all conferences, the camping was fun, the audience engaged, the food great and the Werewolf played long and hard (and badly by myself).

It was a great event and the t-shirt was a vast improvement on last years offering.

Hot

• Brown is an unusual, but an elegant choice for a t shirt
• The t-shirt is a reminder of some awesome conversations and a glimpse into the inner workings of a large corporate
• It’s nice to have some subtlety and no massive slogans plastered over the shirt
• 100% Cotton

Not

• The care label says “New Zealand Spirit” and “Made in Bangladesh” – oxymoronic methinks
• It really raises the heckles of my friends from other telcos (looking at you Paul Brislen)
• I’m still waiting for an XT device (that one’s for you Neal “with an e” Richardson)

CloudAve is exclusively sponsored by

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Everyone knows that professional conference goers like myself attend events not to listen to presentations, not to network but to collect schwag. Over the past couple of years I’ve done fairly well collecting tech t-shirts and I decided to create a weekly series critiquing tech companies t-shirt offerings in the expectation that a company with a great t-shirt is a prime candidate to have a great product also. Click here to see the series.

If you’d like your t-shirt reviewed, flick me an email to arrange things. The judges decision is, of course, final and very little correspondence will be entered into (perhaps).

Cool companies shouldn’t have bad t-shirts. I picked up this AppLogic crew neck at the Web 2.0 Expo early in 2008 and have to admit that I’ve not worn it yet. While actually a pretty high quality shirt, the logo on the front is just to much of a contrast to the color of the shirt, while the byline on the back “Real Men Don’t Manage Servers (Anymore)” while on topic for the intended audience, is just too uncool for words.

Hot    

• Great for a painting shirt or if there’s work to be done out on the ranch
• It didn’t cost a dime

Not

• The logo clashes too heavily with the color of the shirt
• The byline on the back is just plain bad
• Made in Haiti… where suffocation is preferable to actually breathing the air

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