You can find the magazine and article here.

Over the past year, and especially in the past month, I’ve read a great deal about the concepts of cloud computing, software as a service (Saas) and platform as a service (Paas). There is definitely a reason to get excited about these concepts as people get more and more comfortable moving their data online and connectivity becoming more ubiquitous. Although I think there is a bright future for connected desktop apps (the ones that work like iTunes or TweetDeck), the static desktop application will no longer dominate the marketplace of the future.

But what these concepts address is the storage and presentation of my data. Whether it’s my music or my banking information, these are data objects that don’t currently think for themselves. And I certainly don’t have a personal relationship with them. And the way I see the way the internet revolutionizes the world, it’s through personal connections.

The other day as I was meeting with Scott Wilder, the author of Millennial Leaders and the whiz behind Intuit’s brilliant customer community, I realised that there is yet another acronym to throw into the pool of where we are trending towards the future: CaaS or community-as-a-service. Intuit’s customer community is pretty killer amazing. The conversations and connections that happen on there could never be satisfied by machines and data. There are hundreds of unique and nuanced conversations going on daily. These are conversations that go far beyond what Quickbooks, TurboTax or any of Intuit‘s other software could ever cover.

This community is incredibly useful and full of great information. It’s been carefully built up over the years and is a gem. But as we know, people don’t gather around these topics in the masses they have here without some pre-conditions being put in place:

Precondition #1 – The hosts of the community need to have good whuffie: the culmination of the hosts reputation, influence, access to resources through your connections, etc. [Intuit has a history of good reputation and trust in the business community]

Precondition #2 – There has to be the initial impression or idea that participating in the community will bring the participant good whuffie. [higher volume or more prestigious communities that bring more opportunities do better]

Community-as-a-service is the most challenging of the ‘as-a-service’ structure of the future as bugs and corrupted data are much easier to fix than flame wars or damaged reputations, but I think it is the most powerful ‘as-a-service’ offered on the web. Twitter, without it’s community would be a webpage. Google’s App Engine, without Google’s reputation, volume or developer community would hardly be looked at. Alongside the technology comes the human beings using that technology – and the humans would still exist without the technology, the technology would not exist without the human beings.

I see a powerful future in SaaS, PaaS and cloud computing, but CaaS is absolutely necessary and core to that future.

I’ll have more to say about this later…but for now, you should watch this. One of my favorite talks at TED this year.

I refrained from tweeting out all of the great quotes today so I could just truly absorb the entire experience of TED. However, I did paraphrase as many of them as I could (while still paying attention) in my notebook, so I thought rather than typing out several tweets tonight, I’d just type them on my blog and link to it from Twitter. So here we go…

The first one of the day I had to write down was from June Cohen, Executive Producer of the TED Conference, when talking about the people that drive us crazy with their obsessiveness on subjects they are passionate about:

“I believe we’ve evolved as a species BECAUSE of the collective obsessiveness of individuals.”

The next one I enjoyed was Nina Jablonski, who studies skin and evolution and referred to how far we’ve come as a species as well:

“200 years after Darwin’s birthday, we have the first moderately pigmented President of the United States.”

Arthur Benjamin, math enthusiast, called for a different approach to what is the pinnacle of mathematics. He said that calculus is interesting, but not what will drive students of the future. It is probability and statistics. Love it.

Louise Fresco, a Dutch food and agriculture expert, talked about the upsides of mass food production (often just painted as plain bad) and instead of just local or just global food production, we should be talking about REGIONAL food production:

“Never before has the responsibility to feed the world been given to so few people and never before have so many people been oblivious to this.”

“Small scale farming is a luxury solution for wealthy Westerners, but not a solution for solving world hunger.”

I totally, completely fell in love with Elisabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame (will now definitely read her book). Everything she said about the anxiety of the creative process really resonated with me…to the point where I burst into tears and jumped to my feet cheering Olé! She was incredibly poignant at describing the frustration I share with her on the lack of understanding people have for creativity. I think my parents STILL wonder what I do for a living. I can’t wait until this one comes out in video. Here are some memorable quotes:

“Is it rational that anyone should be afraid of doing the work the felt they were put on this earth to do?”

“Nobody ever asked my father, ‘Do you have chemical engineering block?’”

“Individual genius is too much pressure for one frail human psyche to handle. It’s like asking someone to swallow the sun and I think it’s what’s been killing artists for 500 years.”

“The creative process does not behave rationally – it seems at times to be paranormal.”

She told the story of a poet whose poems come flying over the hills. She can feel the earth rumbling as it approaches and she knows she needs to run like hell to find pen and paper so she can catch the poem as it travels through her body. I’ve totally been there. Not with poetry, but ideas.

Jacek Utko’s design work on a Russian Newspaper increased circulation by more than 30% for some regions and doubled other regions. His designs are freaking killer amazing. He said:

“To be good is not enough.”

I loved Margaret Wertheim‘s crocheted coral reefs project – a real international community effort and a fantastic way to spread the word about the dying coral reefs. She suggested “Play Tanks” instead of “Think Tanks”. I like that idea alot.

Post-lunch, I felt lukewarm about Daniel Lieskind’s talk. I don’t like to think in dualities, but he did say some really profound things:

“Today, we have an evangelical pessimism all around us.”

“Many buildings outside tell us a story, but that story is very short. It says, ‘We lack a story’”

Kevin Surace’s EcoRock is well worth checking out if you are going to be building anything that requires gyprock. I also really loved the idea of intelligent outlets shown by John LaGrou. (sorry…no link I could find to the actual outlets). Shai Agassi, who talked about an awesome electric car network (turning our current vehicles into electric cars instead of merely manufacturing more cars) said:

“Hybrids are like mermaids. When you want a fish, you get a woman. When you want a woman, you get a fish.” (I think he was quoting someone else)

There was more, including a hilarious interlude by AskANinja, but I stopped taking notes at some point. Sarah Jones was amazing. My favorite TED Prize was presented by Sylvia Earle who was amazing and passionate about ocean life and I was deeply stirred by José Antonio Abreu’s wish to spread El Sistema and the beautiful music played by the youth orchestra. I was also tickled to see that all the TED Prizes from 2008 are doing well: Once Upon a School (Dave Eggers project), Next Einstein (creating the next Einstein in Africa), and Charter for Compassion (my total fave…love this project about religious tolerance and understanding).