Nicolás Jodal started by explaining he decided the title of his talk would be “September 2010” because he couldn’t assure its content would be current or make any sense a few months or a few years into the future.
Then, he posed an easily answered question, “What were you doing the morning of September 11, 2001? I’m sure all of you remember exactly what you were doing; it was certainly a dramatic event that changed the world.”
But then he asked, “What were you doing the afternoon of October 23, 2001? I don’t think you’ll remember that, except if it was your birthday. What happened on that day has an enormous impact on our life today. We don’t remember it because this event was not of a political nature, and political events are surrounded by a dramatic halo."
“What happened on October 23, 2001, was a technological event and it was surrounded by a halo of skepticism. The Apple iPod was launched on that date by a company that was hitting the ground and was at the time chaired by Steve Jobs, who was only acting president by then. On that date this guy launched a little device with two main features: first, it had a little dial — it was basically an MP3 player with a little dial, a funny thing that would not bring any revolution about —, and second, it was 400 dollars. This guy was launching a product that was twice the price of other MP3 players.”
Their sales evolution showed that 125,000 devices had been sold in the three months following its launch, and then figures fell over the next quarters until the second quarter in 2003 when 304,000 devices were sold. Jodal explained, “What had happened? On April 28, 2003, the product that made a difference with the iPod was launched: the iTunes Music Store, and music started to be sold for one dollar.”
From then on, sales figures grew exponentially and exceeded 4.5 million in the last quarter.
Jodal noted, “What I mean to say is that this teaches us how technology evolves in tiers, that is, one innovation helps another and so on.”
He went on to explain that “Having a highly specialized device connected to a central database is a tremendous success factor that can be explained only by the combination of both things and not by one of them alone."
Further on in his talk, Jodal highlighted another significant date: July 15, 2006. When he asked the audience what had happened on that date, many people shouted “Twitter!” and Jodal joked, “it’s a trick — you don’t really remember, you’re just saying that because before starting this talk I wrote in my Twitter that you should shout ‘Twitter’ when I mentioned July 2006, right?”
About this social network, he said that “people use it for whatever purpose they want — some use it for communication, as I just did with this audience, but there are other purposes; I usually use it for sharing any interesting material I read.”
He stressed, “As it becomes more and more popular, Twitter is becoming the pulse of the world. So, if people have an idea of what’s going on in the world, then the next steps may be predicted somehow.”
Another significant date mentioned was January 27, 2010, when Steve Jobs introduced the iPad. About the use of this tablet, he said its quality had been met with skepticism at first, but then history proved Apple’s president right again.
One of the things he remarked about the iPad experience was that “you get used to paying for content. I used to read Wired magazine on paper and now I read it on my iPad; it costs me 4 dollars. But the interesting thing is that I read the actual magazine. The information is available for free on the Internet and I can read a news article, but in an iPad I’m actually turning the pages and the experience is even better than the paper magazine because it includes videos.”
He then reached today’s date, September 15, 2010, and said these days have brought about some relevant lessons. The most important one is that “enemies are not real enemies any longer.” “If there are companies that need to experiment, that don’t have a business model, if the world is becoming increasingly complex, the old idea that some are our friends and some are our enemies is becoming blurred.” He illustrated this with the example of alliances in different fields among four major companies such as Google, Microsoft, Adobe and Apple — whether they are competitors or partners will depend on each particular endeavor.
In addition, he stressed that “developing a device or having a database is not enough, the magic is in the combination of things; that's why it was easy for us to develop the smart devices generator.”
Finally, Jodal announced that over the next few days he'll be working on the GeneXus Evolution I Upgrades and on having the GeneXus Evolution II beta version ready by October.
He recommended participants to buy a Smartphone — "I can say this today, but in January 2011 it may sound like recommending having a PC,” he clarified —, and to “buy a tablet for your great-grandmother” and above all to “abandon the idea of dividing the world into friends and enemies, because the world is significantly more complex than that.”
“And start working on the generation for smart devices using GeneXus. In this complex world, we need to learn how to collaborate, and collaboration means are significantly more complex than what we’re used to.”