Mar 26, 2012 | blog, featured
You know, I think I’ve had enough of the silliness of Apple’s naming if the iPad. Being unpredictable sounds great, but not giving a product a differentiating name is simply stupid.
“The new iPad”. Great, next year we can refer to it as “last year’s new iPad”. Really Apple? That’s as brilliant as Microsoft’s year-naming of software. It was dumb in 1995, and it’s not any better now.
What the hell was wrong with “iPad 3” or “iPad HD”, even though its screen is a light year beyond HD. What about a name that really differentiates it from the iPad 2? Where was the originality that we expect from you? Guess it died with Steve. Why should we get excited about a product that can’t describe itself in its name?
Guess we’ll find out next year when you deliver “the new iPad 2013”.
Doh!
Feb 16, 2012 | blog, featured
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.
Why do corporate IT departments continue to call their customers “end users”?
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.
Jan 31, 2012 | blog, featured
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’?
44.8654977-93.3010561
Jan 12, 2012 | blog, featured
'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.
Oct 9, 2011 | blog, featured
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
Jul 1, 2011 | blog, featured
You know, I think I’ve had enough of the silliness of Apple’s naming if the iPad. Being unpredictable sounds great, but not giving a product a differentiating name is simply stupid.
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