It starts at home

A friend of mine once said she likes going to the mailbox because of the possibility of getting money in the mail -an expense reimbursement check, a rebate, or maybe even $5 bill in a birthday card from grandma.  I feel the same way about the mail, only it's new books that I keep a watch for.  After all, we live in the information age, right?

This time was especially sweet for me since I pre-ordered the book a few months ago and then forgot about it.  The book is called "Empowered" and was written by Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler. 

The book describes four key areas: social, mobile, video, and cloud.  I had the opportunity to interview Ted while attending the Forrester IT Forum awhile back as seen in this short video:

 

As I said in the video, one of the key take-aways from hearing about the book was the idea that people now learn about different technologies at home and then subsequently bring them into the enterprise to solve business problems.  Is it just me, or did this use to work the other way around? 

Taking this one step further, the book jacket has an interesting statistic that states, "one third of your information workers already use commonly available technology that your company does not saction".  What's your company's stance on this?

I would be interested in hearing from each of you.  How does your company handle mobile technologies?  Do they have a social media policy?  Do you see an increase in the use of video within your industry?  When do you anticipate the wide-spread adoption of cloud computing? 

Douglas J. Haider is a Wireless Consulting Engineer with Xirrus. He hosts a personal blog at WiFiJedi.com, and micro-blogs on Twitter @wifijedi