Its hard to believe that only 10 years ago so few had heard of Amazon and Ebay! Google was shortly to be born but thats another story, as is FaceBook!

Just today I stumbled across this link to the project i was leading a decade ago to help create focus on ecommerce in Europe, oh how things have changed http://www.microsoft.com/misc/features/features_eChristmas.htm

E-Christmas was a learning collaboration experiment designed to illustrate in Europe what could be done with e-commerce. Microsoft formed a consortia with HP, UPS and KPMG and invited large and small Retailers, Internet service providers and Web developers to have a their first go at enabling ecommerce to reach new customers in new ways. At this time these ISP and Webshops were real entrepreneur innovators. Boy did we learn some pioneering lessons!

http://www.e-christmas.com/isps.htm

http://www.e-christmas.com/store_directory/pg00011.htm

two year prior to that Id been responsible for the internationalisation of Microsoft.com understanding all the issues of localising and translating content just as the masses were beginning to ask what a URL was or what www meant. Fortunately i was one of the few who hadnt been doistracted by the weight of momentum towards the windows95 launch, which was a huge deal, the world was really begging MS for a 32Bit OS not just an upgrade, fortunately for me Id also spotted the web and http as an even bigger deal.

Since then and especially since 2001 I've been on the periphery to the drive for Mobility and for social computing, while heavily involved in the ongoing fundamentals of small business, many of who's issues predate the internet. Almost all of the key issues still need some radical thinking and change, be that via technology, the web or whatever. These are largely tied to supply and demand, innovation, risk, finance and access to the right people. The solution lies with the next generation entrepreneurs!

So many things have changed since then, yet so many issues remain to challenge our future.

What lies ahead now?
What will we be revisiting in 2017?

If you revisit my archive you see i usually use the run up to the New Year as a time to reflect.

Thanks for refelcting with me.