When Conversations Become Spreadsheets
The moment conversations stop disappearing is the moment business changes again
I’ve seen this before.
In 1981, I learned Access 20/20 on a Data General microECLIPSE.
Then the PC happened.
I played with VisiCalc and quickly gravitated to Lotus 1-2-3.
Quattro Pro showed up. Then Microsoft Excel.
In 1986, I started a company called Spreadsheet Solutions. I ran it until 1993.
There was a time when every fifth word out of my mouth was “Lotus 1-2-3.”
None of those tools invented math.
They made numbers usable.
Before spreadsheets, numbers lived in paper ledgers and people’s heads.
After spreadsheets, numbers became something you could sort, search, model, and understand.
Business stayed the same.
What changed was this:
Numbers stopped disappearing into memory.
For almost forty years, businesses tried to do the same thing for conversations.
Lotus Notes.
Early CRMs.
Salesforce.
Ticketing systems.
Call recording.
Knowledge bases.
All trying to answer one question:
“How do we stop losing what happens in business interactions?”
They captured documents.
They captured emails.
They captured tickets.
They captured notes.
But they never captured the conversation itself.
Because until now, they couldn’t.
What virtualized conversations do is exactly what the spreadsheet did for numbers.
They make conversations usable.
Searchable.
Learnable.
Provable.
Portable.
Here’s the part most people don’t see yet.
Spreadsheets made numbers usable.
vCons make conversations usable across companies and across the internet.
That changes everything.
It means anyone, anywhere, can now build on top of this layer.
Just like hundreds of companies built tools, add-ons, and entire businesses in the Lotus ecosystem…
We are about to see the same kind of economy form around conversations.
Because the raw material isn’t numbers.
It’s the thing every business actually runs on.
I watched businesses go from paper ledgers to spreadsheets and never go back.
I watched an entire software ecosystem form around that shift.
And I’m watching it happen again.
Only this time, the raw material is conversation.
So when I ask:
What’s your vCon strategy?
I’m not asking a technical question.
I’m asking whether you recognize the moment you’re standing in.
Because the spreadsheet moment for conversations is happening right now.
And just like before, the people who see it early are the ones who build what everyone else ends up using.
If this resonates, this is the time to align with the future and connect with the emerging AI Communication industry.
Join a vCon Foundation meetup.
Join us at Spring ’26 vCon.
Come see what this future looks like in person.