Currently reading Seth Godin’s Meatball Sundae.
In a section – “what does marketing do?” he answers “we close the sale”.
Love to see a sales director’s response to that…
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From the BBC News article on the last night before the alcohol ban on the London public transport system
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Had a great evening last night at a dinner in London organised by Headshift and SocialText. Was great to meet everyone and some great discussions around social software (and other topics…!)
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Not exactly Web 2.0 put a great post by my former colleague Mandy Shaw of Logicalis on what IBM’s new Power Systems announcement means to customers.
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Off topic – but my brother has just finished Masters in creative writing and has published the first chapter of his first novel. It’s a little macabre and maybe not to everyone’s tast but if you like Vampire novels based in Stoke-on-Trent take a look!
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I have finally got round to adding a blogroll. Enjoy!
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Shameless plug here for a friend’s website, they hire new VW Campervans for holidays, weekend breaks, festivals, days out, weddings etc. Check them out if you ever have a need for VW campervan hire
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Wow. This clip below from Cisco is truly unbelievable. I have never really given Cisco a huge amount of credit for developing interesting products (switches & routers??) – but this clip below showing their Star Trek like video conferencing solution was incredibly impressive. Second Life suddenly has some serious competition around virtual training!! Thanks to Mark Adams of Logicalis for posting on the IT Sanctuary.
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I was reading an editorial in the recent Junior Doctor magazine (my fiance is a doctor…) and was struck by the similarities of how the web is changing medicine and how it is changing business. The editorial noted the tendency toward self diagnosis (Google) and self treatment (eBay) given the wealth of information readily available on the Internet, and questioned the future role of Doctors for ’simple’ conditions. But this quotation struck me:
“we’ve become brokers and project managers arranging services our client is requesting”
This sounded rather familiar – so I dug out “the Bible” (Wikinomics) and found something similar:
“companies are focused a new challenge as well: managing an increasingly seamless and supple fusion of design and development expertise from multiple suppliers, partners, and customers in global design and process collaborations.”
OK – so the editorial from Junior Doctor is slightly more pithy, there is definitely a parallel here. Large organisations such as Boeing and BMW are no longer engineering firms, rather they project manage a collaborative process across multiple companies that brings their product to life. They have decided to focus on being the best at what their customers value (in BMW’s case the driving experience, which is more about the software components of the car rather than efficient engine engineering). The same applies to Doctors. Patients will not value their diagnoses and remedies for ailments for which Google can provide the answers and eBay the drugs. Therefore Doctors end up project managing this area of care rather than adding value.
Leaving the question of the reliability and danger of self diagnosing aside, this is not necessarily a bad thing. If Doctors are not tied up dealing with ’simple’ ailments presumably they will have more time to fix the ‘complex’ ones – just as how BMW is able to focus more on their drivers’ experience if they outsource the more traditional engineering R&D.
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There is an article on the BBC News website about how IT skills are valued in the boardroom. A study by Microsoft shows that IT skills were seen as the seventh most important skill, behind skills such as team working, interpersonal skills and initiative. Bill Gates challenges this, claiming that IT skills were needed from the shop floor to the Chief Executive.
I have a feeling that this may be a case of Gates and UK Boardroom using the same words but meaning different things by them. Some IT skills have become so common that they are not really seen as IT skills. When being asked the question, did the UK boardrooms surveyed consider the ability to use email and a word processor as an IT skill? Would the board consider employing individuals who could not these basic tools – and worse refused to because it was IT and they didn’t understand it? Only recently I was debating with a group of friends what “being in IT” means. Does it mean you are in the IT department? Does it mean you are a programmer? Does it mean you can code HTML and write a website? Or update a blog? Or use a computer in your job?
Skills listed as important ahead of IT were those such as teamworking, analysis, planning and flexibility. The IT can be core to succeeding in all of these – try analysing and planning without a spreadsheet or project management tool, try teamworking without staying in touch via email and try being flexible without the technology to work from home.
In the end, IT skills will never be valuable in their own right, however they will be essential to achieve all the skills that deliver true value to a business, and therefore to an employee.
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