HorizonWatching

IBM: 2011 Technology Trends Survey Results and Report

Last month, IBM released it’s 2011 IBM Tech Trends Report, which is one of the top reports I suggest you read about tech trends going into 2012.  It’s a great report because it’s developed from a survey of more than 4000 IT professionals from 93 countries and 25 different industries. 

Summary: 

The IT professionals surveyed identify adoption drivers and inhibitors around important emerging trends such as Analytics, Cloud Computing, Mobile, and Social Business. 

Key findings in the 2011 IBM Tech Trends Report include:

• Analytics:  Analytics was named as the most in demand area for software development in the future.
• Open Source:  87% of respondents believe open source and open standard technologies will play a key role in the future of application development.
• Cloud Computing:  During the next 2 years more than 75%  of organizations will engage in cloud computing.
• Mobile and Cloud.  Fifty-one percent of respondents cited the adoption of cloud technologies as part of their mobile strategy.
• Social Business.  Regional cultural differences impact social business adoption. India is highest with a 57% adoption rate, while US is at 45% and China’s at 44%. Russia shows the strongest resistance with a 19% adoption rate.

Top 8 Programming Skill Areas Identified

1. Application Development
2. Mobile
3. Cloud Computing
4. Database Management
5. Business Analytics
6. Security
7. Software/systems engineering
8. Business Process Management

For More Information: 

Report:  Get the report and share your thoughts at: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/techtrendsreport

Twitter:  Join the Twitter conversation: #TechTrends

Videos:

• Overview of IBMBM 2011 Tech Trends Report
• Mobile Computing insights from IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report
• Cloud Computing insights from IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report
• Social Business insights from IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report
• Business Analytic insights from IBM 2011 Tech Trends Report

Press Release:  IT Professionals Predict Watson Technology To Transform Education Industry

IBM's Celebration of Service: My Service To My Community

Last week, IBM turned 100 years old.  I blogged about my thoughts about the big birthday in my post:  Happy Birthday IBM!! My thoughts as IBM turns 100   In that post I talked about IBM’s three beliefs.  One of those beliefs is all about providing excellent service to customers and others.

As part of our Centennial celebrations, our CEO, Sam Palmisano, asked all IBMers to pledge to volunteer at least 8 hours of community service and then post out on our social platforms about our experience doing community service.  IBMers around the world have been tweeting (search on #IBM100 or IBM and #COS) and blogging about what they did for their service time.  This post will describe what I have done to help my community as part of this celebration of service.

Ever since my daughters entered our local school system I have enjoyed helping out in the schools.  As a father, I have always been in a sea of moms. I have seen very few dads volunteer at schools.  I think all those dads out there are really missing something. 

When my daughters were young, I conducted an “Art Awareness” class for each of my daughter’s Kindergarten - 2nd grade classes.  This was a monthly class that was about 10-15 minutes art education and then 30 minutes of a related art project.  It helped the teachers out a little by giving them a break.  For me, I got tremendous satisfaction out of seeing the artist in the children come to life and even more satisfaction when the students would send me cards at the end of the year thanking me for teaching the Art Awareness sessions.

The last four years I have been involved in running a career day event at Plum Grove Junior High School (my community’s local junior high school) titled W.O.W Day.  W.O.W. is short for “Widening Our World” and is designed to be a career day event that provides information about careers and practical knowledge to the 800 students attending the school.   The last two years, I have been the PTA Chairperson for this event, coordinating over 30 parent volunteers, 35 career speakers, and working with the school’s staff to ensure a well-run event.  I have probably put in 300 hours easily over the last four years planning for and holding this event.

The event, usually held in mid February, starts off with an assembly for the students.  We find an assembly speaker that can deliver a strong and inspirational message to the students that they can accomplish anything that they put their mind to.  This year I secured Michael Ventrella as a speaker.  Michael won the NBC Biggest Loser Season 9 Title in 2010.  Michael delivered four key messages:

• Believe in yourself. You can achieve anything.
• Set goals. Picture how you will feel when you achieve them.
• Break goals into smaller pieces. Focus on the first small piece.
• Surround yourself with family / friends that believe you can achieve your goal and can support you

After the assembly, the students are scheduled into 4 consecutive 40 minute career presentations/workshops that they have chosen from a list of 35.  During October – January I seek out and find 35 different career speakers from the parents and communities.  Then I work with those speakers to help them develop their presentations which should help the students understand what the career is all about and what type of experiences and education is required to enter that career.  I’ve learned that students like sessions that are 1) interactive, 2) have things they could touch or experience, and 3) were delivered by a speaker who was upbeat and passionate about the topic.

Here is an example subset of the 35 career sessions we had at this past February’s event

• Comic Book Artist
• FBI Agent
• Dental Hygienist
• Optometrist
• Registered Dietitian
• U.S. Army
• Astronomy Science
• Veterinarian
• Engineering
• Retail Fashion
• Guitarist
• Astronomy Science

Putting on an event like this took a bunch of nights and weekends of planning.   However, I get so much satisfaction knowing I have had a small part in helping our students understand what types of careers await them.  Junior high school is a very critical time in their lives.  The career day provides them with information on some of the many potential careers awaiting them after their school years.   I think the biggest benefit of the career day is that it helps our children understand that even at just 13 and 14 years old, they need to start taking responsibility for their future careers.

So that’s my story of how I volunteer my time back to the community.  Providing service back to the community is part of the fabric at IBM.  It’s part of our DNA.

Happy Birthday IBM!! My thoughts as IBM turns 100

“I attribute the success of our business in the main to the power of our beliefs” – Thomas J. Watson, Jr., 1962

The company I work for is turning 100 years old this week.  The company has earned it’s place in history and IBMers around the world are celebrating this fantastic milestone.  Being a second generation IBMer (my dad was also a lifetime IBMer) I am very proud of this achievement!!

And what a milestone it is.  100 years is a very long time for a company.  Can you even think of five other companies that have survived 100 years?  It is hard to do.  There are many more examples of companies that were successful, but years later went out of business (see here and here).

So why has IBM survived all these years?  There are many reasons we could point to, perhaps the most important being great leadership.  But there are others, including IBM’s Research Division, the strength of IBM’s sales teams, and the thousands of dedicated and passionate IBM employees.  Those are all important elements of IBM’s success.

Perhaps the most important ingredient of our success can be found in a quote from the book “A Business and its Beliefs:  The ideas that helped build IBM“ written by Thomas J. Watson, Jr. in 1963.

“I firmly believe that any organization, in order survive and achieve success must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions.  Next I believe that the most important factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs.  And finally, I believe that if an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life.”

IBM has had a total of 8 CEOs over the span of 100 years.  Each one of them has exhibited strong leadership skills that have helped IBM stay strong and reinvent itself as the needs of our customers have shifted over the years.  Part of being a great leader is communicating values, beliefs, and marching orders to the company’s employees.  Watson Jr. grew up watching and learning how to do this from his dad, Thomas Watson Sr., who was the founder of IBM

In 1962, Thomas Watson, Jr. communicated a set of beliefs the company would stand by going forward.  When I joined IBM in 1981, I fully bought into these beliefs and it remains with me still to this day…guiding me in my daily activities, both on the job and off.  IBMers around the world have done the same.

The three beliefs are very simple, yet powerful when bought into by everyone working for the company.

1. Respect for the individual.  This is like the golden rule my parents taught me “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.”
2. Customer Service.   Provide the best customer service of any company in the world.
3. Excellence.  Pursue all tasks with the idea that they can be accomplished in a superior manner

In his book, Watson goes on to say

“The basic philosophy, spirit, and drive of an organization have far more to do with its relative achievements than do technological or economic resources, organizational structure, innovation, and timing.  All these things weigh heavily in success.  But they are, I think, transcended by how strongly the people in the organization believe in its basic precepts and how faithfully they carry them out.”

The IBMers I have worked with throughout my career have been dedicated to those three beliefs.   They have carried out those basic beliefs very well.  I believe IBM is celebrating it’s 100 year birthday this week due, in large part, to adherence to those three basic beliefs.  Our leaders have, in fact, been willing to change everything about our company except those beliefs. And if we continue to do so, IBM will survive another 100 years.

Happy 100th Birthday IBM!   #IBM100

Slides: How IBM Enables A Social Workforce

This week I have been attending WOMMA’s School of WOM in Chicago.  The conference started on Monday and wraps up today.  There have some great keynotes, workshops, and breakout sessions.  I’d estimate roughly that there are about 300 attendees.

On Monday, Susan Emerick of IBM (@sfemerick), Chris Boudreaux of Converseon (@cboudreaux) and I presented during a breakout.  Our presentation, “Enabling the Social Workforce” discussed how IBM has been able to enable thousands of employees to participate in social media.  At IBM, employees are such an extension of our brand and it is important that IBMers represent our brand in the social media.

Most businesses are finding it challenging to mobilize employees in social media on behalf of the brand.  For years prior to the social media explosion, IBM had focused on enabling IBMers to collaborate internally via collaboration tools.  As social media took off on the public Internet, IBM has, in turn, successfully enabled thousands of employees to participate in the social media conversation. 

The presentation (loaded on slideshare and then embedded below) discusses how IBM advances the goals of the business while growing the professional influence of the employee. The key to enablement for IBM is focusing on empowering the workforce to communicate their strategic expertise socially.  Our presentation and the Q&A session afterwards covered important program elements like

• Developing the Digital Strategy Model
• Publishing and Communicating Social Media Guidelines
• Developing a Social Computing Curriculum that includes certification-based training
• An Expertise Locator system that helps aid in the search and discovery of IBM experts
• IBM’s Centennial Program that enables social conversations.

Enabling the-social-workforce 09-may2011

View more presentations from Bill Chamberlin

Fourteen Social Media Disasters: Learning from the mistakes of others

Social media can work wonders for your brand, but it can also spell disaster.   A colleague recently asked me for a list of examples of where the wrong post or tweet has damaged a brand’s reputation.  I had a few examples on the top of my head, but thought I would do some extra research on the side to see what else I could find.

After some research, I produced a deck titled “Social Media 101: Social Media Disasters”.  I’ve loaded the deck to Slideshare and have embedded it here:

Social media 101: Social Media Disasters

View more presentations from Bill Chamberlin.

Examples of bad social media can be tracked back to a focus on social media governance by companies. 

• Lack of real-time monitoring
• Not responding to customer concerns
• Lack of corporate social media policies
• Employees not trained in company policies
• Lack of professional Social Media managers
• Too much focus on self-promotion (lack of relationship building)
• Lack of due diligence before launching social campaigns

We can all learn from these mistakes.

• Having a social media presence that represents your brand means responding quickly and directly.
• You need to plan for the worst while expecting the best.
• A professional and responsible manager should be in charge of all communication on the various sites and this person should be very well versed on the many risks of social media.
• All employees are potential spokesmen for your brand. They (including executives) should be trained in the basics of good and bad social media communications.

There is a risk to participating in social media, just like there is a risk with any other channel or method used for external communications.  Smart companies acknowledge that risk, but have focused on limiting that risk by hiring professional social media managers on staff, putting in place proper social media guidelines, and ensuring that employee and management alike are trained in how to best represent the brand when participating in social media.

WOMMA School of WOM: The Art & Science of Creating Talkable Brands

On May 9-11 the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) comes to my neck of the woods (Chicago).  The event is the “School of WOM:  The Art & Science of Creating Talkable Brands”.  You can check out the event and register at http://womma.org/schoolofwom/about.html

I’m on the speaking agenda along with my colleague Susan Emerick (@sfemerick) and our friend and colleague, Chris Boudreaux and (@cboudreaux) SVP of Management Consulting, of IBM’s strategic partner, Converseon.  We will be speaking on May 9, Tuesday afternoon.  Our topic is entitled “IBM: Empowering Employees to Participate in Online Conversations.  We’ll discuss how we’ve developed an ongoing social listening and engagement process within IBM designed to enable IBM employees to become active in the social conversations happening everyday.  Hope to see you there.

The School of WOM event has a jam-packed schedule of presentations from brand names you all know, including:

• IBM
• Gap
• Kellogg's
• Nabisco
• McDonald's
• Chick-fil-A
• SAP
• Random House

You can check out the full agenda here http://womma.org/schoolofwom/faculty.html

It’s a very rich and full agenda.  I’m really looking forward to it!!

Thursday’s Chicago AMA Event - Social Media: Beyond the Chaos

This Thursday, I am on the speaker list for a special event organized by the Chicago branch of the American Marketing Association.  And I’m looking forward to not only presenting, but meeting a bunch of new people who are interested in social media marketing.

There will be three other main speakers in addition to myself, all with 20 minute presentations about our experiences with social media marketing, whether in B2B or B2C.   After the presentations, we will have a panel Q&A discussion. 

I’ll be talking about two topics during my 20 minute slot.

1. How IBM is approaching the development of a digital communications strategy that aligns with the IBM Brand.
2. An overview of how we at IBM plan out social media marketing strategies.

I’ll post my slide deck up on Slideshare tomorrow at http://www.slideshare.net/HorizonWatching

The other speakers joining me are…

• Blagica Bottigliero, Director of Social Media, Motorola Mobility
• Troy Janisch, Social Media Manager, Digital Marketing, American Family Insurance
• Jennifer Severns, Creative Director, Zocalo Group

You can read up on their bios at this site.

Here are the event details:

• Event Name:  Social Media: Beyond the Chaos
• Date of Event:  Thursday, March 31, 2011
• Time:  Registration opens 3:30pm.  Presentations begin at 4pm.  At 6:30 we will close the presentations down, but people can stay up until 8pm for networking opportunities.
• Event Location:  Alhambra Palace / Marrakech Room, 1240 W. Randolph Street, Chicago, IL
• Registration:  If you have not registered, you may still be able to get a ‘ticket’ to the event although last I heard they were almost sold out. The registration website is http://www.chicagoama.org/events/social-media-beyond-chaos. 

For those of you wanting to follow along on Twitter, the hashtag will be #AMASocial.  If I don’t see you at the event, perhaps I’ll see you on Twitter!

A Primer on the Website Personalization Trend

The Personalized Web will be driven by analytic engines that will integrate data from many sources in order to present an online experienced tailored to each user.

Thanks to the explosion of social media, how users are influenced, consume information, and make purchasing decisions has been altered forever.  Users are increasingly expecting company websites, products, and services to be tailored to their individual preferences, past experiences, and what they happen to be doing at this very moment.  This puts the demand on business and IT leaders to create a personalized and engaging experience for end-users across all channels, both online and offline. 

                Unica: The State of Marketing 2010 (link)

Users want to their experience to be customized:

• Returning visitors to a web site want to see a page based on all the information collected from previous visits.  Businesses should present personalized sites to these customers by organizing information and prioritizing it based on the individual's liking.  Products and services offered on those pages will be pre-configured.
• “Anonymous” visitors to websites should get customized messages based on the referring URL, search terms, geo-location and any other insights. 

In 2011, I expect business leaders to focus on advanced solutions that can delivering a more personalized experience to end users.  These solutions will be designed to mine the user profile, buying behavior, browsing behavior and other insights obtained through marketing analytics in order to deliver a more customized and personalized online experience.  Look for further improvements in technologies such as marketing analytics and predictive algorithms that can automatically deliver highly relevant, contextually aware, personalized content and recommendations to customers via both online and offline channels. I also expect the personalization trend to be extended beyond the website to other digital channels, including social media marketing, mobile marketing, and email marketing.

One other point, the personalization trend is not only about presenting personalized pages to users of sales and marketing processes. All business application users can benefit from web sites and applications that present information that is personalized to the user. 

The rest of this post provides you with some background information on the trend, some quotes from the marketplace, and a bunch of links to additional reading information.

Trend Drivers

• Individuals want content that is personalized and is relevant to why they are on a particular website at a given time /
• New analytic capability

Trend Inhibitors/Challenges

• Integrating offline as well as online behaviour
• Need to build and retain complete profile data
• Privacy issues

Trend Implications

• New business processes and skills required
• Need to track individual’s interactions and transactions across all channels, in order to provide the best offer or communication.
• Messaging plans can be tailored to interests and preferences of each individual.

Quotes from the Marketplace: 

“Emerging context-enriched services will use location, presence, social attributes and other environmental information to anticipate an end user's immediate needs, offering more-sophisticated, situation-aware and usable functions” - Gartner (link)

“Marketers are focused on making their communications more timely and relevant to recipients. To do that, they need to build communications around the interests and preferences of each individual customer or prospect. “ - Unica, Sept. 2010 (link)

“Personalized product recommendations are proven to consistently increase sales, conversion rates, average order value and customer retention“ - Coremetrics, Oct 2010 (link)

Featured Video

Personalising the Web Experience - Unica Video

For More Information

Here are some sites where you will find links to other learning resources like white papers, demos, customer briefs, and videos

• Coremetrics:  Personalization and Build Lift and Loyalty With Personalizd Product Recommendations
• BusinessWeek:  CEO Guide to Context-Aware Technology and Artificial Intelligence
• Forrester:  Personalization (search) and Web Analytics
• Gartner:  Context-Aware Computing
• IBM Web Experience and Developerworks:  Building a Context-Aware Service Architecture
• Unica Webinar: Achieving Interactive Marketing Success
• Wikipedia:  Personalization and Adaptive Hypermedia and Recommendation System and Context Awareness and Personalized Marketing

More Information From ibm.com

• IBM Customer Experience product page.
• Coremetrics Intelligent Offer tm 7: website
• Coremetrics Resources Page: page full or resources / links
• Coremetrics: Best Practices for True Online Marketing Personalization – 1 hour recorded webinar
• Unica Enterprise – Product page
• Unica Resources – A page full of resources/links
• Web site personalization Although written in 2001, it is still a good read.

IBM Relaunches Smarter City Initiative With An Innovative Portal

IBM has relaunched it's Smarter City initiative and the website portal is something you should visit to experience.  It is truly an immersive, interactive experience designed to show how cities all over the world are using advanced technology to help address some of the biggest problems facing our planet.  

 
It is a fact...our cities are getting larger and larger.  With that growth comes significant challenges for city leaders.  Increasingly, city operations are being digitized, creating brand new data points.  With the greater digitization of its core systems and the use of advanced analytic capabilities, cities can enhance decision-making and improve urban planning.

The Smarter City portal allows you to explore and experience how Smarter Technology can have an impact on making a city more sustainable, more intelligent, and simply better places to live and work.  At the portal, you have options to learn more about how technology can impact all areas of a Smarter City, including Transportation (all forms of transportation), Public Safety, Communications, Energy & Utilities, Healthcare, Social Services, Education,  Retail, Economic Development and other critical operations that make up a large urban city today. 

I suggest you give it a visit and explore this innovative portal at www.thesmartercity.com

A Primer On Water Management Issues

Today is Blog Action day at water.org.  It's a good time to get the word out to everyone on water management issues. Read more about water.org's blog action day at Blog Action Day - Working Together To Solve The Water Crisis.  This post is my contribution to the Blog Action Day.

Most of us reading this post take our access to water for granted.  However, I would imagine that we all realize that water is critical to sustaining life on our planet.  Water makes up 60 to 70% by weight of all living organisms and is essential for photosynthesis.  If the Earth’s water supply vanished, there would be no plants, no animals, and no people. 

While the Earth’s water is not vanishing, many scientists believe that our global water supply is in crisis.  We may or may not be at the crisis stage, but we definitely need to take action to solve our water management issues.

Some Quick Facts About Water

• Water covers 75% of the earth's surface.  Nearly 98% of the earth's water is in the oceans.  Fresh water makes up less than 3% of water on earth, over two thirds of this is tied up in polar ice caps and glaciers.  Fresh water lakes and rivers make up only 0.009% of water on Earth and ground water makes up 0.28%.
• It takes 700 gallons of water to make a cotton T-shirt, 2,000 gallons to make one gallon of milk, and 39,000 gallons to make a car.
• Global agriculture wastes an estimated 60% of the 2,500 trillion liters it uses each year. 
• Municipalities lose as much as 50% of their water supply through leaky infrastructure.  
• More than one trillion gallons of water are wasted in U.S. homes each year from easy-to-fix leaks.
• 1 in 5 of the word’s population still lacks access to clean, safe drinking water. 
• The United Nations predicts that nearly half the world’s population will experience critical water shortages by the year 2080.
• There are nearly 53,000 different water agencies in the United States alone, each managing a short stretch of river or a handful of reservoirs. 
• In the last 100 years global water usage has increased at twice the rate of population growth.

For those of us living in developed nations, our water infrastructure is many decades old.  In fact, in some places it is centuries old.  As our demand for water is increasing, we need to modernize the existing infrastructure.  One way to do that is to apply information technology.

Today’s water management systems are operating without enough data and insights.   The planet needs new water management systems, based on smart technology that can collect and analyze real-time data.  These new systems will provide water authorities with the insights they need to supply more water to more people with lower energy-use and cost. 

How Can Technology Help?

What is needed are water management systems that can provide real time collection and analysis of all sources of data.  This includes integrating disparate sensor technologies that produce disparate data formats along with other data from an array of partners.  Information technology solutions are needed that can take data that’s coming in fast and turn it into intelligence that augments the ability to improve decision making about water distribution.  These solutions need to connect the folks in the central control room with those working in the field building bridges, dams, dykes to the sensor experts and sophisticated modelers.

• Technology can monitor, measure and analyze entire water ecosystems, from rivers and reservoirs to the pumps and pipes in our homes.
• The latest water meters, combined with appropriate Water Management solutions can provide a single, reliable, up-to-the minute and actionable view of water use for a government, a business, or a home.   These ‘smart’ water meters can provide real-time insight into water use, raising awareness, locating inefficiencies and decreasing demand.
• Advanced sensors can help us collect all sorts of new data on water usage.  For example, sensors on levees can monitor changing flood conditions and respond accordingly.  Sensor based systems can provide the agriculture industry with detailed information on air quality, soil moisture content and temperature to calculate optimal irrigation schedules.
• Advanced computing, analytics, and simulations can help us all move beyond “real time” to prediction, supporting better-informed policy and management decisions.
• Technology can also be applied to our oceans to gather data on water temperature, currents, wave strength, salinity and marine life, and applying algorithms that can forecast everything from wave patterns over 24 hours to the right time to harvest mussels.

IBM Water Management Solution Areas

IBM is taking a leadership role among technology vendors in researching, piloting and developing a whole suite of water management solutions.  Taking a look at what IBM is doing can help us see the areas where technology can be applied to solve water management issues

• Natural Water Resources – Provides sensor data integration, analysis and visualization to enable the measurement, modeling and management of water levels, usage and quality in natural water resources.
• Water Utilities – Enables water providers to make rapid decisions regarding business processes and operational efficiency to maximize their return on investments as well as foresee and quickly respond to contamination issues and emergencies.
• Water Infrastructure – Provides sensing systems for managing water infrastructure, such as levee oversight management and flood control.
• Water Metering – Improves management of water supply and demand by integrating data between the dozens of stakeholders involved. Provides all stakeholders with consistent, real-time information to help them work together to make critical decisions about water supply in a geographic region.
• Green Sigma for Water™ – is a business consulting service that identifies where water is being used, measures and monitors usage, and creates process improvements to reduce water use. IBM pilots have achieved reductions in water usage of 30%.
• SmartBay Sensor System - Monitors wave conditions, marine life and pollution levels.  Provide real-time information to stakeholders in the Irish maritime economy, runs on a cloud computing platform, and is able to predict water conditions critical to those stakeholders.

Innovative Water Management Vendors

The Artemis Project held its second annual Artemis Project Top 50 Water Companies Competition during the spring of 2010.   These vendors are all coming up with some very innovative and creative solutions to Water Management issues.  Check out the winners:  A list of the 50 is here.   View a poster show of this year’s winners here.

What Is Needed

More work is needed as we transform the water infrastructure to digital technology:

• Continue to Build Awareness for Water Issues.  Many in leadership positions are not aware of the critical need for water management information technology solutions.
• Continue Market Testing & Solutions Platform Development.  Technology vendors need to continue to build assets and test solution platforms.  Stronger linkages are needed across the growing ecosystem.
• Continue to Build Thought Leadership Deliverables.  Tech vendors need to develop content highlighting case studies, references, demonstrations, and white papers.

For More Information

There is a bunch of more reading material available.  Here some links…

• IBM Links
  • One page brief “Smarter Water for a Smarter Planet”
  • Podcast:  IBM and the Future of Water Management
  • Smarter Water Management Thought Leadership and  Solutions Website  and Water Management Pains Summary Report
  • Global Innovation Outlook Links:  GIO Water website, watch the GIO water videos, or read the GIO Report on Oceans and Water.  For more discussion, check out the GIO Blog.
• Other Resources
  • Water.org is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries.  
  • Sustainable Asset Management Report - “Water: a market of the future”
  • United Nations:  “Water:  A Shared Responsibility” 
  • World Water Forum “Bridging Divides For Water”
  • Twitter search on water management  http://search.twitter.com/search?q=water+management