InfoDome is a new product that fits into the "easy database application builder" space.  There are many out there (almost all of which I have tried), but I am quite impressed by InfoDome.  It's clean, well thought out, and easy to use.

Of course, all these tools are great until you hit the inevitable wall, and then you have to start writing code to get what you need done.

Still, there is a place for these tools in the enterprise to address relatively simple situational applications that before would have been shoe-horned into Excel. 

SilverTree Systems ChatterWave
 

Introduction

Google Wave is an excellent collaboration and communication device for any subject that requires multiple exchanges of email. In addition to eliminating email exchanges, Wave provides the ability to have everything in one place, including related docs, videos, etc.  Anyone with a Google userid can use Wave.

Salesforce Chatter provides passive, non-intrusive and automated status updates.  This eliminates many status related emails, calls, etc.  Chatter is used primarily by in-house users.

Working together, Wave and Chatter offer a powerful way to improve productivity and efficiency on the edges of the organization.

Scenario 1: Track a transaction from proposal to payment. 

Objective

To provide a single place for anyone (Salespeople, Customer, Order Department, Vendor, etc.) connected with a transaction (eg an Order) to track and participate in everything related to that transaction (updates in Force, discussions, IM, etc.).

The net effect is to:

1. Speed up commerce
2. Reduce email
3. Reduce overhead
4. Reduce communication errors
5. Provide a single place to collect information about a transaction
6. Wave replaces email conversations regarding the transaction.
7. Wave can be used by anyone including customers.  They don't need access to SF.
8. Anyone can be added to a Wave at any time.
9. Wave puts everything about a transaction in one place.

Reasons to use Wave

1. Wave replaces email conversations regarding the transaction.
2. Wave can be used by anyone including customers.  They don't need access to SF.
3. Anyone can be added to a Wave at any time.
4. Wave puts everything about a transaction in one place.

Reason to use Chatter

Wave is unaware of transactions taking place in Force.  The Chatter feed can provide this information in the right place in the Wave (ie as part of the Wave timeline).

The Chatter feed eliminates the need for Wave to access the Force database to find the transactions.  The Wave can be updated from Chatter as soon as transactions in Force take place.

Example: A cross-company workflow

A vendor can connect with a potential customer and:

1. exchange RFPs and proposals
2. edit the documents together
3. negotiate and settle on a price
4. conduct the project
5. keep track of status
6. handle invoices
7. complete the final acceptance
8. Salesperson creates a Proposal in SF.
9. A Trigger generates a Wave for this Proposal when the Proposal is created.
10. The Wave automatically invites the Customer Contact to the Wave, as well as eg the Sales Manager.
11. The ChatterWave robot knows what to look for in the Chatter feed eg "Proposal 101".
12. ChatterWave periodically reads the Chatter feed for "Proposal 101"
13. ChatterWave writes feed entries that match to the Wave.

Implementation

1. Salesperson creates a Proposal in SF.
2. A Trigger generates a Wave for this Proposal when the Proposal is created.
3. The Wave automatically invites the Customer Contact to the Wave, as well as eg the Sales Manager.
4. The ChatterWave robot knows what to look for in the Chatter feed eg "Proposal 101".
5. ChatterWave periodically reads the Chatter feed for "Proposal 101"
6. ChatterWave writes feed entries that match to the Wave.

Scenario 2: Update the Chatter Feed with Wave Blips. 

Objective

Add Wave blips from selected Waves to the Chatter Feed. 

Example

1. A Wave is created to discuss a Force transaction.
2. Force users can follow updates to the Wave in Chatter

Implementation

A Wave robot periodically writes Wave updates to the Chatter feed.

By dramatically reducing the time it takes to develop and implement an application, Force.com completely changes the old Build vs Buy dilemma.  With Force.com, it is becoming much more attractive  to build a solution to meet needs your specific needs instead of buying a package and trying to make it work for your environment. 

We are seeing this all the time now - companies that before would never have even considered writing their own solution are now shunning the packaged software route and building from scratch.  A sign of the times...

In the USA, we always think we are ahead of the curve.  As we are seeing in many areas, this is no longer necessarily true.

I was reminded of this recently when I was contacted by IBM EMEA.  They are helping a university in South Africa, University of Stellenbosch, set up a BSc Honours course in Computer Science on Situational Applications.  They will be using my book Power in the Cloud as the basis for the class.

I have recently seen an up-tick in interest in the idea of situational applications.  It's getting ready to take off! 

The headline in todays NYT "Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs"  - prompted me to seek out a white paper I found back in the early 2000's when I was writing my first book about the future of IT.  This quote sums it up:

See here.

Force.com's new Visual Process Manager is a big step forward in what I describe in my book as "situational applications":

... the speed and efficiency demanded of a resilient and responsive organization can occur only when employees find different ways to make continuous small adjustments that increase profits and decrease costs every day, every week, every month.

The only way to do this is to give them the tools and support they need to serve themselves.

“Self-service” does not mean turning business people into programmers. What it does mean is giving the right set of tools and support to the person closest to the problem, so that they can build powerful software solutions on their own. The goal is to get these knowledge workers to quickly put together “good enough” software solutions to solve specific problems – significantly reducing or even eliminating the time and coordination needed from IT. In this way, it becomes possible to address areas that were previously unaffordable or of low priority to the IT department. 

The target audience for a self-service approach is an educated professional (e.g., accountant, HR personnel) with modest computer literacy (and interest) that mostly includes the web and MS Office. They have basic computer experience like using a wizard to generate something new; interacting with spreadsheets, documents, and forms; and using drag and drop to rearrange items on the screen.

The types of applications being addressed will not replace core business applications. They address a different need – applications that are built for just a handful of users, applications that are used for only a few weeks or months, or applications that address a small piece of functionality. Called “situational applications,” they are a new software niche, where communities get form-fit, good-enough tools for the very particular needs of the community that uses them.  

Situational applications are a potent combination of tools, mindset, and methodology. They provide a formidable force that will help your organization meet today’s business challenges quickly and cost-effectively. It will reduce - or even eliminate in some cases - the need to use professional software developers (a valuable resource best used for enterprise-wide solutions), purchase an ill-fitting software package, or kludge a suboptimal, inefficient and incomplete solution using tools like Excel and email.

Here is Force.com's description of Visual Process Manager:

Force.com lets you automate any business process. Processes can be simple tasks—creating an activity, emailing an alert, or updating a data field—or more complex, like automating the quote–to-order process or scripting inbound and outbound calls. Whatever your process need, the new Visual Process Manager, together with workflow and approvals, enable you to rapidly design and run any business process in the cloud without infrastructure, software, or code.

Processes

Every company has hundreds of business processes. With the Visual Process Manager multi-step processes can be rapidly modeled in a visual designer and instantly run in the cloud.

Approvals

A specialized type of workflow called an “approval” can route information to a series of people, each of whom can approve or decline the information and then send it on to the next step in the process.

Rules

You can use various criteria to determine when a workflow is triggered. In addition, you can use rules to validate data and enforce business logic when a user is entering data. You can use formulas to perform calculations or to fill out other data based on user-defined entries.

Monitoring and queuing

Time-based workflows are placed into a queue that can be easily monitored from the administrative console. Creating transparency in business processes makes it easy to maintain an audit trail and keep tasks from falling through the cracks.

Tasks and alerts

It’s easy to alert people when their participation is required in a business process. Whether it’s to approve a PO or implement a request, alerts are sent via email and can be assigned as a Task in Force.com.

What is Cloud Computing and how can it help my company?

Presented by Delivered Innovation and SilverTree Systems

Overview

Delivered Innovation and SilverTree Systems are teaming up to provide business executives with an informative overview and peer-to-peer roundtable discussion of Cloud Computing and how this leading-edge technology can be leveraged to achieve breakthrough business results. Topics to be discussed include:

• What Is Cloud Computing? How did we get here?
  • How does “The Cloud” help me?
  • Benefits
• Risks and Mitigation Strategies
• How does Cloud Computing change the way we do business?
  • Time to market acceleration
  • Business model enablement
• Who are the players in Cloud Computing?
  • Amazon
  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Salesforce.com
• How do I determine my Cloud strategy?
• Customer case studies
  • Adobe Systems
  • Polycom
  • School of Rock
• How do I get started?

• How do I get started?

All attendees receive a copy of Jonathan Sapir’s book, Power in the Cloud : Using Cloud Computing to Build Information Systems at the Edge of Chaos.

Seating is limited to 12 business executives, so order your ticket today to reserve your place at the table.

Agenda

Friday, February 19

8:00 – 8:30 Continental breakfast and networking
8:30 – 9:10 Michael Topalovich, Delivered Innovation
9:20 – 10:00 Jonathan Sapir, SilverTree Systems

Location

Regus Park Ridge Plaza
350 S. Northwest Hwy.
Suite 300
Park Ridge, IL 60068

About the Presenters

Jonathan Sapir is the CEO of SilverTree Systems and the author of Power in the Cloud : Using Cloud Computing to Build Information Systems at the Edge of Chaos. 

Michael Topalovich is the founder and CTO of Delivered Innovation. Prior to Delivered Innovation, Michael was a senior IT leader with Siebel Systems where in 2003 he spearheaded the systems management team for Siebel CRM OnDemand, one of the first enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been in situations where I have been asked by companies to evaluate proposals for application development projects from traditional consulting firms.

It is quite astounding to see the numbers being proposed.  The same applications could be developed and deployed in Force.com at a fraction of the estimated cost.

It won't be long before companies start catching on and realizing there is now a very different (and much less expensive) way to build information systems.  This is not just a 20% or even 50% improvement.  Building systems with a tool like Force.com, if done correctly, can be transformational for an organization - applications that were too costly to build suddenly become feasible, resources that were constrained become available, and the quality of systems dramatically improves.

The IT consulting industry is in for a shock.  Driving the bus up to a client and unloading high priced tech archs, DBAs, and a multitude of developers will quickly become a thing of the past.  

The times are definitely changing.  Quickly.

Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration.  BUT: the old dilemma - build from scratch or buy and customize - is going through a major transformation.  Until now, it was often more cost effective and faster to buy and customize.  But with the advent of platforms like Force.com, the old rules do not apply.

With Force, you aren't building from scratch - you are starting with a huge amount of functionality already in place.  Therefore, the cost and time to build custom solutions is radically altered.

This is a very good thing, because now companies can get exactly what they need, when they need it. They can implement in stages that are convenient to them, and they can eliminate a lot of hassle and need for training caused by the presence of fields and functionality that the users don't need.

This has already been proven by a number of Force clients, some of whom have written complete ERP systems tailored specifically to the needs of their business.

Many organizations become fixated on the cost aspect of SaaS when considering a Cloud solution.  But there are many other, more compelling reasons to migrate to the Cloud.

For a lot more on this, see here, here and here.

We are currently developing an application for a substantial franchise organization.  The application is designed to help each franchise manage their operations, and provide the franchise organization with consolidated reporting at multiple levels. Building this app was only affordable using Cloud computing.  Why?

The franchise concept works because it is fully expandable. It has a proven formula, and the goal is to get each franchise up and running as quickly as possible.  But if the franchise organization has to implement and maintain an IT infrastructure at each franchise location, it quickly runs into a logistical nightmare.  Hardware and software needs to be installed, maintained and upgraded at each franchise individually.  Start up costs are high, the overhead to maintain the systems increases as the complexity of the system grows, and the chances of failures occurring rapidly multiply.

Cloud computing allows a franchise to easily duplicate their management system anywhere in the world with the click of a mouse. In addition, they can offer better support and security by being centrally managed.

The benefits of using Cloud computing (in particular, Force.com) in a franchise include:

• Faster Startup

Being able to simply click a button to add a franchisee allows the franchisee to just point their laptops (or any device with a browser and access to the internet) to the system and start working. No provisioning and deployment team needed to be sent from headquarters to set up the network and hardware.

• Lower Start Up Costs

Not having to install servers at each location drastically reduces the start up costs for each new franchisee.

• Lower Overhead

The overhead is lower because you only pay for what you use. In addition, having the franchises work under one large data center significantly drops the overhead of IT management.

• Easily Expanded Network

Using the internet as your network allows you to expand to any location with the click of a mouse.

• Easily Contracted Network

Using the internet as your network allows you to shut down a franchise with the click of a mouse.

• Much Easier Globalization

In addition to eliminating the need to install hardware and/or software outside the home country, Cloud platforms like Force.com have globalization already built in, supporting multi-language and multi-currency out-the-box.

• More Innovation

Being able to easily add or retract functionality allows the franchise to try new business models.

• Less Risk

Being able to easily start up and then close down if necessary reduces the risk of opening new locations. 

• Better Communication

It is now possible to distribute new data and functionality to each franchisee for them to use immediately.

• Better Security

It is much easier to keep track of security centrally compared to having an unorganized, self governed distributed system. Backup and disaster recovery are automatically taken care of for all franchisees – by the platform provided.

• Faster Expansion Rate

By working in the Cloud, you can easily expand to multiple locations at a faster rate. No need to create VPNs and try to integrate all the systems. Instead use the new technologies that are out there and keep it all connected from day one, but focus on expanding instead of managing.

• Increase Franchise Profits

Allowing you to grow at a faster rate and increase communication between the franchises will allow you to obtain a large market share at a faster rate. This will also directly reflect towards royalties and brand recognition which will help drive profits.

Cloud computing is a transformative technology shift for franchises.  It will allow franchise organizations to significantly reduce costs and risks, expand much more rapidly, and improve efficiency and management.  It’s time for franchises to jump on the Cloud bandwagon.

Contact SilverTree Systems for more information.

Original article here.

The Do-It-Yourself Economy

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

In case you haven’t noticed, the U.S. economy today is actually being hit by two tsunamis at once: The Great Recession and the Great Inflection.

The Great Inflection is the mass diffusion of low-cost, high-powered innovation technologies — from hand-held computers to Web sites that offer any imaginable service — plus cheap connectivity. They are transforming how business is done. The Great Recession you know.

The “good news” is that the Great Recession is forcing companies to take advantage of the Great Inflection faster than ever, making them more innovative. The bad news is that credit markets and bank lending are still constricted, so many companies can’t fully exploit their productivity gains and spin off the new jobs we desperately need.

Two examples, one small, one large: The first is my childhood friend, Ken Greer, who owns a marketing agency in Minneapolis, Greer & Associates. The Great Recession has forced him to radically downsize, but the Great Inflection has made him radically more productive. He illustrated this by telling me about a film he recently made for a nonprofit.

“The budget was about 20 percent of what we normally would charge,” said Greer. “After one meeting with the client, almost all our communication was by e-mail. The script was developed and approved using a collaborative tool provided by www.box.net. Internally, we all could look at the script no matter where we were, make suggestions and get to a final draft with complete transparency — easy, convenient and free. We did not have a budget to shoot new footage, yet we had no budget either for stock photography the old way — paying royalties of $100 to $2,000 per image. We found a source, istockphoto.com, which offered great photos for as little as a few dollars.

“We could easily preview all the images, place them in our program to make sure they worked, purchase them online and download the high-resolution versions — all in seconds,” Greer added. “We had a script that called for 4 to 5 voices. Rather than hiring local voice talent — for $250 to $500 per hour — we searched the Internet for high-quality voices that we could afford. We found several sites offering various forms of narration or voice-overs. We selectedwww.voices.com. In less than one minute, we created an account, posted our requirements and solicited bids. Within five minutes, we had 10 to 15 ‘applicants’ ” — charging 10 percent of what Greer would have paid live talent.

“Best part,” he said, “within minutes we had sample reads, which could be placed into our film to see if the voices fit. We selected our finalists, wrote them with more specific instructions and within hours had the final read delivered to us via MP3 files over the Web. We could get any accent or ethnicity we wanted. For music, we used a site called www.audiojungle.net,” where he could sample thousands of cuts of music and sound effects with the click of a mouse, and then buy them for pennies.

By being able to access all these cheap tools, Greer got to focus on his value-add: imagination. The customer got a better product for less money. But he didn’t create many new jobs. For that, he needs the economy to pick up. “If we could only borrow a buck and invest,” said Greer, “we’d all be rolling again.”

Farooq Kathwari, the longtime C.E.O. of Ethan Allen Interiors, had to accelerate reinvention of his company for the same reasons. In the last year, he reduced his work force by 25 percent, consolidated several U.S. manufacturing plants, including transferring all upholstery manufacturing into a large state-of-the-art facility in North Carolina, enabling Ethan Allen to substantially decrease its production time. The most labor-intensive upholstery work is done in the company’s new plant in Mexico, and the components are shipped to the North Carolina facility for completion.

“Five years ago,” said Kathwari, “it would take about 20 hours of labor time to make a high-quality custom sofa. Now, due to our investments in technology and a smaller work force that is more highly skilled, the labor time to make this sofa is about three hours.”

Everywhere he can, Kathwari says he is leveraging technology to cut costs and improve quality to retain his competitive position in world markets. This enabled Ethan Allen to maintain sufficient cash to survive. “We now produce all our advertising programs in-house, including national television commercials, at a fraction of the cost we spent a few years back — just as your friend is doing,” said Kathwari. “Our associates recognize that reinvention is vital to our survival.”

Given its new state of hyperefficiency, any uptick in business would really help Ethan Allen’s bottom line and stimulate hiring, but that requires credit markets to loosen for its customers and store owners. Said Kathwari, “Credit is still a vital issue, and it is not happening at the grass-roots level — or when it is, it is very expensive.”

Strange times: The Great Recession and Great Inflection are making our companies ultralean, innovative and productive. But with credit still constricted, we’re like a superfit track star with a weak heart. We’ve got to get credit pumping to our industrial muscles again.

Waze is a new crowd-sourced traffic app for mobile phones.  It's pretty incredible how it is going to change a lot of things related to driving places.

I have found myself explaining why Cloud Computing is revolutionary more and more frequently these days.  I make the following points to give the impact required to make people sit up and take notice:

1. In the same way that you plug into the electric grid for electricity, you plug your browser into the computer grid (the Cloud) to get computing power.  The equivalent of electrical "appliances" (eg microwaves) are "services" like Google Apps. So in the same way that factories no longer have their own electric generators, businesses will no longer have their own data centers.
2. Anyone starting a business today will NEVER buy a single piece of hardware or purchase software for their business - no matter how big they get.  They will simply plug into the grid and rent the services they need.
3. Cloud computing completely levels the playing field - a startup company can have as much computing power as Exxon from day 1 - without any upfront capital needed.
4. There will be a rapid decline in certain IT specialties as companies start migrating to the cloud.  This includes DBA's, CTO's, technical architects, network administrators, etc.  There will be a lot of head burying related to this.
5. There will be a rapid decline in pre-packaged software.  By providing powerful platforms like Force.com for application development, it becomes less expensive in many cases for companies to build highly custom systems by bringing together Cloud services as needed and configuring them to do exactly what they need - often without very much programming.  This has already been proven by a number of Force.com clients.
6. The most important IT person in the organization will be the business analyst who can be innovative in applying Cloud-based services to the needs of the enterprise. 
7. The PCs users will need will require much less power than the desktop computers being sold today - because all you need is a machine to run a browser.

Great little video explaining cloud computing to non-techies.

SilverTree Systems is excited to announce that our client Studio IT has been selected as a finalist for Force.com's Force.com Forty Innovation Showcase.

We worked closely with Studio IT over the last few months to build a comprehensive solution (project management, accounting, activity management, etc.) for the Interior Design industry.

It's a great looking Force.com app.  Take a look at the demo.

“I highly recommend SilverTree Systems.  They are very responsive and do technically great work. Milestones were met and they were attentive to my specific needs.  I only have great things to say about their work.  My application is very complex - there are about 3 M characters of code and 150 controllers and 150 custom pages with 40 custom objects (see www.StudioWebware.com).    I could not have done it without SilverTree.” - Lance Heaberle, CEO, Studio IT

I have built my fair share of startups – some successful and some not so much - and worked with many others to see the same mistakes being made over and over.  I have published some of these before, but I think it’s worth consolidating and re-publishing them given the plethora of new startups in the sit app platform space. Hopefully, some of these points will save startups from crashing into the rocks of false hope and misguided thinking. 

1.       You think that your product must be awesome because everyone you demo it to tells you it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Unless they are willing to hand over cold cash to use your product, they are just being nice.

2.       You have found a client, but in your euphoria you have forgotten to ask yourself if this client is an anomaly.  You need to make sure that the client represents a real market, otherwise you are just building a custom solution.   You can't build a software company one custom implementation at a time.  It's fine to find big clients that have big problems they're willing to spend some money for.  This is an easy to way to get started and some cash in the door.  However, it's imperative to look for the patterns in the customer's needs and be thinking about future customers.  If you have multiple sets of code running for multiple customers, you're going to be in trouble.

3.       You keep coming up with ideas for all the many different ways you can make money with your product.  You can sell it to big companies and small, ISV's can include it in their products, XYZ company for sure will be interested.  If you are not focused, you are dead.

4.       You think that the same product can appeal equally to 2 or more completely different audiences– like business users and professional programmers.  No self-respecting programmer is going to use a tool used by business users – and no business user is going to use a tool aimed at programmers. Your product has to very clearly be aimed at one or the other.  And if it really can be used by both, you need to split it up and put on a different front-end to appeal directly to each audience separately.

5.       You underestimate the reluctance of users to read a manual.  Nobody wants to read a manual or even watch a video.  You have to put more thought into how you design your product so that this is unnecessary except for very unusual circumstances.

6.       You don't want to stop or throttle development when you aren't really sure you are on the right track.  You just want to keep on going, because you just know that soon the product will be so awesome that it will dazzle everyone with its brilliance.   If people aren't buying the idea, you better stop wasting money now until you have figured things out.

7.       You underestimate the importance of “entertainment”.  Millenials in particular are used to interesting, dynamic, game-like user interfaces. No matter how wonderfully functional your product is, a boring user interface will turn off potential users a lot faster than you can imagine.

8.       You think that just because your product can solve a generic problem like "workflow", you have a sure-fire winner.  You have to ask yourself how your product really stacks up against the competition that is already out there and why people would buy yours instead, and if they would, for how much.  Often, the current solution being used is simply good enough, and even if yours is significantly better, no one is going to buy it.

9.       You underestimate the power of a penny over free.  If something is free and barely does what you need, you will stick with it versus something that's much better but requires you to pull out your credit card.

10.   You think that just because someone says they would definitely use your product that they actually would use it - or that they would pay to use it.  Talk is cheap.

11.   You think that just because people say they would pay for your product (and actually mean it), they would pay enough to keep you off food stamps.

12.   You think that just because there is a company making money in your field, there must be a lucrative market that you too can take advantage of.  But there may not be room for more than one or a couple successful products in this particular area.  And the incumbents have a much better chance than you do of succeeding.

13.   You start building something major in your product before you have a (real) client identified who wants to use it. If you can't sell the idea, you are definitely not going to be able to sell the product or feature.

14.   You think because your product integrates nicely with a bigger product, you're golden.  But you forget that there is inside-out and outside-in integration.  If I am in Google and there is a tool (like a gadget) that I can easily access (i.e. I don't need another login and password), I am much more willing to try it than if I have to go to another site, sign up, sign in, and then get to my Google application from there.  So if you are going to integrate with an application your target market is already using, it must be inside-out integration, not outside-in.  Facebook applications are a good example of inside-out integration.

15.   You think you can get users to pay a reasonable monthly subscription fee, but you forget that you need a LOT of $29/month subscriptions to make real money.  Do you really understand how many subscriptions you need, and how realistic is it that you are going to get there?  And how are you going to handle it when your competitors lower the monthly subscription fee even lower than it already is?

16.   You think that you need to offer an onsite solution to go along with your SaaS solution, but you forget the huge costs involved in supporting on-site software.  Besides, if you think your market is both an on-site corporate solution and also a SaaS-based consumer application, chances are one of those assumptions is wrong.  (I know there are some who disagree with me on this, but unless you are going to remain a small player, I know I am right about this).

17.   You think that just because your VC/angel/buddy tells you they are going to fund you till the end of next year that they aren’t going to be hit by an economic crisis that comes out of the blue and puts an inglorious end to that well-intentioned idea.  Plan accordingly.

18.   You choose to work with verticals that don't have a lot of money.  Sure they like your product, but they can't afford to pay you enough for it, so why focus on them?

19.   You choose to work with a small client first instead of one that will be able to help you get more clients later on.  Just because Joe's Fish & Chips is using your product doesn't mean Motorola will be impressed enough to try it. (This may be ok if you are targeting the small business market, as long as you can find some repeatable pattern – and there are enough companies to sell to that will pay enough money).

20.   You think you have come this far, you can't possibly stop now.  It's like you are swimming across the lake, and you are more than halfway there.  So you just keep on going, but the shore keeps receding into the distance…