Cezanne wrote once “With an Apple, I will astonish Paris.” Cezanne at the time was a notoriously sophisticated and gifted walking set of contradictions. He loved everything he hated and hated everything he loved. He approached painting with scalpel-like precision but with a scalpel to canvas nonetheless. He wanted the world to bleed – and it showed in his art.
In Paris today, it is clear that Apple is astonishing Paris. iPad sales in France, which according to speculative reports, are second only to the United States. A new and mobile revolution has become more visceral – it is a global phenomenon. It is clearly a preferred way of interacting with enterprise technology. This could not be clearer than at Cloudforce Paris, where the old model is bleeding and the new mobile and social memes are not the cutting edge or bleeding edge but the mainstream.
I saw this not only at the event, but at the airports, the hotels, people on the streets of Paris. Miming of this technology is not happening. Mimicking perhaps is.
The intersection of social and mobile is also clear, but it is not just the Apple that is part of this. Android’s latest statistics via Comscore emphasize a world with choice. And that choice is driving the enterprise mobile and social revolution.
One company that is driving innovation around social, mobile, and choice is Seesmic – Loic LeMeur’s popular company. [Disclosure: my company has invested in Seesmic]. [Disclosure about the disclosure – it wouldn’t matter anyway, because Loic is mec cool anyway.
I caught up with Loic in Paris, and thankfully the interview was not in French, because it would have been a one-sided conversation. In the five minute interview Loic says five things:
- Social in the enterprise is being implemented at increasing rates.
- The ability to integrate external social feeds with corporate social knowledge is a real business.
- Innovations are happening in the enterprise across different parts of organizations.
- Social as an enabling technology definitively improves the ability for a company to improve sales
- Companies can run their businesses more effectively through a social layer
He also said several things about Seesmic that shockingly were all positive. Under the hues of the Blue Man Group, the video is worth watching.
N’est-ce pas?
(Cross-posted @ The Cloud Blog)
