I laughed when I heard Sarah Palin say in last week's debate: “...and I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also” (this is straight from the CNN transcript). I laughed because it’s such overt “spin” to say you’re not going to answer what the moderator wants to hear. And, incidentally, it's exactly what the moderator wants to hear.

But that’s beside the point. The point is that new technology companies are often put in a similar position of defending their new technology as a challenger to existing, established technology. This is certainly true in the enterprise mashup space. Since mashup adopters have started to graduate from “what-is-it-for” to “ahhh, here-is-how-I-can-use-it", we regularly have to compare and contrast mashups against existing technologies.

I think the defining "AHA!" moment is when people realize that mashups aren’t meant to integrate systems together like EAI/ESB software systems do. But rather that mashups are meant to integrate people to the data in their systems. And as an added benefit mashups are designed for collaboration and sharing among people.

So, now when we hear; “Oh, so mashups aren’t like my ESB or EAI systems that integrate systems; mashups get data from these systems to my people”, we give silent thanks to Sarah Palin, smile, wink, and simply respond with “You Betcha!”.