After afternoon tea, Nigel Parker, a User Experience Advisor at Microsoft New Zealand spoke on the topic of Convergence, User Generated Content and Composite Applications. He didn’t use a Mac.

Convergence
There’s a lot of convergence going on … devices (cellphone … is it a cellphone or a computer?), media, software, and more. Users are driving the convergence … the increase in options greatly benefits the users. Nigel developed his own quote on software convergence:

“… is not the reduction of solutions but the expansion of presentation and information to user combinations.” Nigel Parker, 2007

User-Generated Content
The consumerization of the enterprise is a key trend … but it has happened before, eg, the home PC.

With user generated content, you need to know who your moderators are, what your system is, what corporate governance controls are in place, etc.

With the right tools, anyone can create anything and most of it won’t be any good! But working together with the right system in place, user content will be really good. Eg, plentyoffish.com became a very popular dating site, but it’s just a one person company.

Composite Applications
A “traditional” application is encapsulated and self-sufficient.

A composite application … the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

More Information
See more at Nigel’s blog.