I'm not alone in arguing that these styles will increasingly dominate enterprise software development. Ray Lane, formerly an Oracle executive and now a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made the same prediction in his Software 2006 keynote (http://www.infoworld.com/4127). But whatever the future may hold, those of you who are enterprise software practitioners today live in a world that I experience only indirectly.

I'm always looking for ways to close that experience gap. In the past I've done a lot of interviewing for feature stories in InfoWorld and elsewhere. That was an invaluable source of insight, but the logistics of print publication prevented me from sharing much of what I learned. Now, using podcasts and screencasts, I can capture, digest, and relay much more. It's an incredible journalistic opportunity, but one that has led me to a new logistical roadblock.

Consider this scenario. You're at your development workstation, showing me your application and the tools you use to build it. We discuss the architecture of your software, the nature of your environment, and the ways in which your tools both do and do not meet your needs. My virtual camera, looking over your shoulder, records everything we say and everything that happens onscreen. Then I edit the session, which might have taken two or three hours, to produce a 20-minute screencast.

That screencast will be of compelling interest to your fellow practitioners. Similar ones that I might produce in collaboration with them will likewise appeal to you. But for several reasons, it may not be possible for me to make such movies.

Confidentiality is the overriding concern. If your application confers strategic advantage -- and if it didn't, you'd be buying rather than building -- you'll need to hold your cards close to your vest. That's particularly important when the medium is screencasting. In a conventional interview you tell but don't show, and so you can be pretty sure to control what information you release. But the virtual screen camera creates an extreme degree of intimacy and may see things you did not mean to show.