I Love Technology!
posted by: Nick Roman on 1/29/2010
I guess it is no surprise that someone working in a software company has an affinity towards technology. But it isn't really technology for technology's sake that I find fascinating. It is how technology can change and improve our lives, from the miniscule to really significant changes. Some recent examples from my own life:
For a number of years I have been pondering about setting up a good solution for backing up our home computers. The thing is, I don't want to spend time on managing back-ups from the family's laptops, and I don't trust that I would remember to do so. Also, if there is a fire at our home, it doesn't really help us much to have our digital images on an external hard drive if that's also kept at home. So I was looking for a solution that would allow me to automate this and store the back-ups externally, with no manual interaction needed. The solution was a combination of a Home Server, which is running silently in a cupboard, connected to the router, backing up the family's computers every night, synchronizing music and images etc.; and a Home Server add-in from Jungle Disk, which connects to Amazon Web Services, and keeps an external backup of images and important documents in the cloud for me. No work for me after the initial, simple set-up, and we avoid being nervous about losing files.
Another example: Confirmit moved to a new office in Oslo last year. It now takes me 5 minutes to get out of the office and down to my bus stop. Now, the bus is obviously very seldom there on time, and I just hate to have to wait for it. Fortunately, the public transport system in Oslo now offers real-time updates on the Internet. So I've bookmarked a page showing when my bus will actually arrive at the bus stop outside the office. I check that page every day before leaving the office. Usually I can spend 5–10 minutes extra in the office instead of waiting at the bus stop.
When developing new functionality in Confirmit, we focus on improvements for those that are exposed to the system—either directly or indirectly. How a system does something is just as important as what it does. However, very often software buyers don't think in those terms. Software buyers are surprisingly often focused on a list of individual features, typically handled as a checkbox exercise. But whether a system has a certain feature, or not, does not tell you much about whether it will be the right choice for your business. What's really important when choosing survey software are things like how efficient the users will be in setting up and administrating surveys, how easy it is to train new users, what process improvements the system can enable, and how easy it is to integrate with other business systems. This is a bit more difficult to determine than listing features, but it can make a tremendous difference to your business.
Having spent the last ten years working with survey software and being part of the major shift in moving surveys online, I have witnessed lots of change enabled by our technology. There have been several small start-ups that have grown into large and successful companies, with our software as an important component. However, I still see lots of room for changes in survey processes achieved through improvements in technology. We are busy testing the next version, Confirmit Horizons 15, as this is written, and look forward to seeing how all the improvements in that release will lead to changes for our clients.