Without a doubt, Tom Jenkins is a master at keeping his audience engaged. He’s not just an eloquent speaker, he’s passionate about innovation. His latest gig, aside from being Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Chairman of the largest software company in Canada, Open Text Corporation, squarely positions him as the driving force behind the next ICT wave in Canada: digital media.
At the most recent Communitech TechWorking Breakfast with the Boss event, Jenkins’ vision and his passion (and his personal investment) in digital media ICT were nothing short of compelling. Leading into the talk, I was wondering why Jenkins had so much skin the game. Open Text just does document management, right?
Sure, but that’s too limited a view. Open Text was one of the forerunners of search on the Internet; and now Open Text is digitizing the world. It’s a big market: worldwide, books online represent 600 terabytes; newspapers alone generate about 100 terabytes a day; but Corporate America creates the most digital information, dwarfing other sources.So that’s where Open Text is really headed… managing all of our corporate digital information — the largest store of digital information anywhere. It’s bigger than your inbox (it’s bigger than all of our inboxes), and 75% of digital information is contained in email. It’s bigger than the Internet.
Consider how Google commoditized online information. Now consider that multiplied by, well, as Jenkins says, a Googloplex. The numbers are literally astronomical. And people are, for all intents, becoming daily broadcasters - people text/email, they video, and they create content – and then people share it. They blog, they youTube, they socially network. Our daily content is quickly becoming our communication. And we have to be poised to capture it.
The power of billions broadcasting their digital creations is simply too significant to ignore.
In short, Jenkins argues Waterloo Region is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the next big ICT wave… in digital media. But not the digital media your dad talked about and not the digital media your kids waste time on. We’re talking about the real stuff. The plumbing. The bricks and mortar of the industry. The infrastructure innovations which the games, the apps and the frameworks are built on. It’s in the background, and it’s the powerhouse. From next gen cams to digital film to digital documentation to individualized communications.
And that’s why Jenkins and Open Text have so much skin in the game; because for us, it is the game.
Check out Tom Jenkin’s presentation in four parts on the Communitech website.
For more information about upcoming Communitech events and the uber-popular monthly TechWorking Breakfast with the Boss series, visit www.communitech.ca.
