Blog
Thoughts and things I care to shareAn End to the IT ‘End User’
Courtesy of Dell Inc.
This has bothered me for quite a while, and I thought it about time to mention it. Hang on though, this may be a bit of a rant, but it bears bringing up.
Of course, it’s part of the language of IT, part of the culture as well. You know the jokes, “if only we could get rid of the users, our support costs would go down”. Good for a laugh on a stressful day, but what’s really being said there?
Are we that far off the path of providing quality, usable, enjoyable technology solutions for our businesses that all we focus on is the difficulty in doing so?
I think we’re missing an opportunity to re-connect with our co-workers, our customers within the business. They should not be minimized in the we that they are by IT. They’re our co-workers and cube neighbors. They deserve our respect. They’re out selling, or balancing the company budget, or dreaming up a new product to sell. They’re not trying to be challenging, they’re simply using the tools we provide to get their job done.
New Perspectives
The issue I see is that most IT staff are too busy trying to solve problems rather than provide solutions. What it really boils down to is a change in attitude, and revising perspectives. We’re missing the point if all we’re trying to do is reduce call volume.
Just like the larger goal of the businesses we work for – our focus in IT needs to be on satisfying our customers. In order for the business to grow and prosper, it needs to focus on the customer. So too does IT.
New Priorities
No longer is IT about providing a standard computing platform. Or stressing everyone out about security. Of course these are important things, but they are but one aspect of the technology landscape within an organization.
The consumerization of IT is greater than supporting the iPhone or Android devices. It’s an opportunity for IT to join the revolution in our industry. Corporate standards are great, but as more people make the move to provide their own computing platform, we need to rise to the challenge of providing great user experiences and outstanding support.
Raise the Bar
What we need to do as IT professionals, is to look outside our environment for inspiration. Look at how other companies are solving the challenges facing them. Accept the fact that people expect more of IT than we provided just a year ago… heck, more than we’re providing today.
While I’m not an Apple fan, I do admire the user experience all their customers enjoy. Sure, the phrase “it just works” is over-used, the reality is that it’s true. This is the new standard that our business customers expect. This is the new standard we need to meet. This is the new opportunity we have as an industry.
I hope it’s not too late.
Pondering A Motorola Nexus Droid
Courtesy of Motorola Mobility
I’ve been on the fence for some time regarding whether Google should use Motorola to produce a pure Google Android phone. There are lots of reasons why this would impact the Android marketplace in many predictable ways, but could also bring a number of unknown effects.
However, I’ve been thinking lately of all the so-called fragmentation, and of all the varying user interfaces (skins) that every OEM ships with their phones. Some are great, most aren’t. They all add unnecessary overhead to the Android experience, no matter how good they may seem on the surface.
Maybe I’m simply an Android ‘purist’, or a Google Fanboi – take your pick. Among other things, one of the missing components of the Android ecosystem is a line of true, pure Android devices.
Sure, the Nexus series of phones is as honest an experience that you can find in the Android universe today. I had the privilege of owning the original Nexus One – a phone that still kicks ass for my daughter Brianna and that keeps amazing me with its ability to seem relevant two years later.
To be honest though, what the market needs is a line of true Google devices. While I realize that the Motorola isn’t complete by any means, and that it could still unravel, I think this is what Google needs to use their new division for. When I first heard about the deal, I thought it may affect the Android market in negative ways. That Google recognized this and would work towards ensuring their OEM partners of fair participation in the availability and participation in Android code releases.
What I fear at this point is that Google will stick to this promise and not take the opportunity to clarify what this can mean to the marketplace.
Google needs to set the tone for Android. Period.
They can do this without jeopardizing the Nexus program, releasing their own take on a line of devices through Motorola. Not flooding the marketing with 12 designs in a year, but just three. One candy bar style like we’re all accustomed to, one slider with keyboard, and one BlackBerry style with smaller screen and dedicated keyboard.
This does several things:
- Demonstrate the positive affects of timely, consistent firmware updates across a standardized platform.
- The Android market would have a pure Android option to choose from on multiple carriers.
- OEMs would have a baseline Android device to compare their enhancements to, differentiating their products.
- The Nexus series would continue similar to today as annual examples of state-of-the art, premium devices.
- Google could demonstrate standardization, without mandating blandness across OEMs.
- The Motorola deal becomes more than just a patent purchase, and allows Google to bring some of the best concepts of Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s WP7 approaches to leading their ecosystem.
Granted, this is simply my wish list, but is having Google produce their own phone really that ‘evil’?
Technology Redux
'nixie' by teclasorg
So I find myself a year into another technology consulting gig for “the big client”. It’s an interesting thing after spending a couple of years working both the corporate IT world and growing a community for social media professionals.
While I’ve grown a little tired of social media for its ability to enable too much interaction, I do find I miss the action. Sometimes. As you may have noticed, I’ve backed away from the social media space in the past six months or so. It’s a conscious decision on my part to get back to basics, and focus on life directions.
Sometimes I forget how much a technology career has rewarded me over the last two decades. With the ability to work with new things, and see the potential within an early product design. I love looking at something new that someone has built, and not only see what they’re trying to do, but see the hidden potential, the part they haven’t grasped yet. That’s one of the things I love most about technology – and about social media. There is still so much unexplored territory, and I can’t wait to see what other new things come along.
If you’ve ever been to CES (Consumer Electronics Show) or SXSW or another similarly large and impactful trade show. There is so much excitement, so much going on, that you can’t sit still. When you’re there, it’s exciting, it’s new, and you’re a part of it. That’s how I view technology every day.
But here’s the thing I’m getting to. I’m back to doing the deep thinking for large organizations on standards-setting processes around technology. It’s something I’m good at, and something I enjoy doing. It’s also allowed me to neglect blogging. More importantly, it’s kept me from writing… nearly anything that isn’t a technical manual, and it shows.
That’s what this post is really about. Simply making myself sit down and write something, even if I cringe when I hit ‘Publish’. In the end, it’s the passion for social media and technology that keeps me thinking of blogging and sharing crazy ideas and opinions.
Getting Back to Where We Came From
It wasn’t so long ago, not quite a decade yet, when I first discovered what a blog was. The idea of sharing ideas and publishing them to the world was new to me. That was what journalists did, and story tellers. Not some computer guy from Minnesota.
Yet I was wrong. I read blogs from all sorts of folks, from all walks of life. The blogs with topics furthest from my own experiences were the most interesting, of course. Through the months and years, the people I knew grew from a couple dozen to hundreds, then a few years later, thousands.
The impact personally, was tremendous, allowing me to start publishing my own ideas on how to approach a problem. Allowing me to present my ideas, which I shared with hundreds of others, on communications and social communication in business. I found my voice in creating my own personal brand, and launching forth a new, second, career in sharing these ideas.
Eventually, these things lead us all back to where we came. I started branching out from Information Technology, and find myself bringing new ideas back to IT in the last couple years. The last four years I’ve worked on multiple solutions with three different fortune 500 companies. All in different ways. All for different reasons.
Today, I find myself looking back on the experiences from the past decade. Not only the technical ones that have dominated my career, but also the social, marketing, and communications ones that I’ve had the pleasure of learning from. I find myself doing what I said back in 2008, bringing social media oriented ideas back to my core skills and incorporating the important and relevant bits.
I think this is the key to social media as we move forward. Instead of the next network, or the next viral video to learn how far – how fast something can travel, it is how much more that we’ve communicated. It’s how we’ve articulated our ideas. It’s how much we’ve listened and learned.
Photo credit: mx2-foto
Top Gear U.S.–Looking forward to the new season
Random Tidbits – Catching Up
So it seems that I’m constantly talking about blogging rather than actually doing it. A lot has been done since my last post where I talked briefly about changing hosting providers (here’s my InMotion Hosting review) and getting that work done. Along with this site, I had three others to move over. That’s been done for a while, and I’m pretty pleased with the service so far.
The challenging thing is making time to get back to writing, sharing thoughts and ideas through this blog. That, of course, is where I’ve let work and life pull me in multiple directions. As usual, one of the first things that’s affected when too many tasks and projects demand more time are activities that don’t seem to support those task and projects. So it is with my blog from time to time.
It’s been a busy couple of months, and I’m finally catching up on a number of life challenges that randomly occur, especially with the economic changes that have been in play. So while I am saying I’m returning to blogging, I am certainly going to be working my way back into it. Easing my way really, building new habits into the days and weeks ahead instead of setting a hard schedule that would inevitably not follow.
Also, I plan to include a bit more personal experiences and items of interest rather than just talking about social media in business. That is still my core focus, but I believe there’s more in that by getting back to some of the original reasons I started blogging… as an outlet and ongoing record of creative ideas and points of view.
All in all, it’s been a long time since I’ve sat down and really thought about blogging again, and I hope to reconnect with those that wish to do so. Some say life is about challenges, but I prefer to look at it as a series of adventures. Each one building on the experience of the last.
So, on to the next adventure.
Photo credit: Hugh MacLeod – gapingvoid
Work in progress!!!
I always wanted to post that!
Seriously though, I’m in the middle of switching hosting providers and obviously I hadn’t finished by 1pm last night… so check back tomorrow and see how things turn out!
-Rick
Unlock creativity by taking direction
Working on something with actionable tasks, and tangible outcomes can be highly rewarding for the creative mind. The trick is to realize the need to back away from a roadblock and do something that helps you get past it. Turning to a task that someone else has given you, or that you’ve taken up responsibility for can sometimes be the ticket you’re looking for.
So go ahead, do something else for a day, a week, a month or more. Let the experience help generate new ideas, and rekindle that creative soul lurking inside.
January 2011 SMBMSP ListenUp Podcast
Just in case you’re interested, the January SMBMSP ListenUp Podcast is available! Mykl Roventine and I talked with Pamela Muldoon about the challenges and opportunities of social media to the publishing industry. Pamela was also the moderator at the January SMBMSP event on the same topic.
Head over to www.smbmsp.org/podcasts to subscribe to the SMBMSP ListenUp via iTunes or RSS!
The Winding Road
Ever have a plan? One you are sure is the one you’re destined to follow? Did it work out the way you thought?
Yeah, same here. Though its becoming less surprising as the years pass I think. The great part of following your gut and your heart in life’s great adventure is that you’re guaranteed an exciting one.
Its been awhile since I’ve talked here about the exciting challenges I’ve run into, and this year has been filled with a number of new ones. Events, people, and situations that make you think hard about what you’ve chosen to do. They give you another perspective that you may not have had when you started.
I speak, of course, about the challenges and choice of freelance consulting. Taking the world by the tail and making the most of your skills and knowledge in a new and exciting way. The great things about plans is that they always tend to deviate… to zig when you plotted a zag, or that the situation you thought would take place doesn’t seem to develop.
For many who attempt it, this is simply known as the Plan B effect. Of course, “The Plan” didn’t require a Plan B… so we never develop one. They tend to develop themselves, and that’s where the real excitement comes from.
In my case, I’m talking about SMBMSP, and there is so much to tell, so much to share on that front that I’m going to cover some of that over the coming months. What I hope to do is share a bit of the back story, some of the perspectives from my viewpoint on how we’ve got to where we are today, and what’s happening next. I guess I should call it “Plan SMBMSP”.
Its interesting to see where the long and winding road will take you.
@MAC_Arms Pay taxes when you make your money, pay taxes when you spend your money, pay taxes when you successfully invest your money, pay taxes when you save enough taxed money to afford a house, pay taxes to live in your house, pay taxes when you sell the house that you paid taxes on to
Yup, taxes are criminal and we need serious reforms. I've always said that if you want to see a tax revolt, make withholdings illegal and have Americans write a tax check every payday. They'll revolt for sure. You don't miss what you never had.
I think it’s safe to say that @GovEvers should stop blocking audits in Wisconsin and open the books…
“Only AMERICAN citizens should vote.”
Sen. @berniemoreno says voter ID and proof of citizenship are simply common sense.
“We’re talking about a very low threshold — identify who you are and prove you’re a U.S. citizen when you register to vote. I think we’re getting closer to
Wrong. Democrats are solely responsible for hours-long airport lines.
They voted to defund TSA three times and won’t even entertain a conversation about reopening it. Why?
They’re using it as leverage to stop enforcing immigration laws.
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