...or so Bukowski said. While he may have been referring to a deeper despair than having YouTube blocked at work, I think Charles (on a level even he wouldn't admit) felt something similar to today's office workers, feeling powerless within the confines of the corporate environment to really accomplish anything significant, at least compared to the creative abandon they feel outside of work, in the plush surroundings of the consumer web. Saturday, you make a movie from beginning to end in an hour. Sunday night you lay awake dreading the ERP system you need to confront on Monday to somehow enter a Purchase Order into that finance will approve.
Well, it just got a little easier for humankind, with some new releases from BEA Systems, Inc., by bringing some of that consumer magic one step closer to your office keyboard.
It sounds like a stretch, but it's not. I just looked at our internal deployment of AquaLogic Interaction 6.5, and I see this on my profile page:
Now how did that information get in there? From our CRM system. Would it be easy for me to query the CRM system everyday to monitor the deals? No. But one glance at my home page and I know that Brian closed the deal and its time to take him out for a beer.
That feels pretty modern.
But the most exciting thing about bringing social computing to the enterprise is watching where people take it. There will be a lot to talk about in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned...
