I keep dreaming I’m Tom Cruise...

Had a brilliant and very memorable ‘summer of fun’ with the kids in between work contracts but now back in the saddle on a new global web project.

Since spending a number of weeks using enterprise content management solutions again, rather than having my head buried in open source code for personal projects, I keep getting a recurring dream that I’m Tom Cruise.

Obviously I’m much taller and better looking than the diminutive movie star ;) but my dream has me in his iconic Minority Report role manipulating data on his interactive ‘smart wall’ - only rather than working out the details of an impending murder, I’m managing a company’s global web presence.

I think this dream has been prompted by watching some impressive videos on the Microsoft envisioning website and also a clip tweeted by a former colleague.

I think it’s also been prompted by the repetitive monotony of piecing together a multi-lingual microsite for a major new product launch and feeling that the traditional mouse, keyboard and layer upon layer of pop-up CMS dialog boxes is just so 20^th Century now.

In my dream I’m in a meeting with some marketing folks and we’re using the interactive ‘smart wall’ to build an engaging web presence for an exciting new product. ‘Wave like’ information collaboration and voice-to-text conversion combines with drag and drop template building and real-time image manipulation - creating product rotations, feature hotspots and integrated video on the fly.

Once all the building blocks are slotted into place, auto-translation produces 20 language versions almost instantaneously, country team members pop up on the smart wall to discuss and approve and the final site information is fed out into the social networks around the world for consumers to engage with and comment on.

Job done, I jump onto my 160mph electric superbike, zoom down to the local marina to my 10 berth fully solar powered superyacht for a leisurely jaunt across the channel to France.

If I’m thinking ahead to 2020 then the first part of this post is probably far more likely to happen than the last part -although if I get off my arse and help make the first part happen then perhaps the whole dream will come true ;)

Update 11th October - spotted in the Sunday Times today that the solar powered superyacht is already on the drawing board - so that's a start :)

Update 17th October - spotted in Times Eureka supplement a reference to Mission One, an electric superbike unveiled earlier this year that's been clocked at 161mph. It currently costs over £40K - so I better get saving ;)