metaphorical management of it

Moving

Matt — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 16:30:00 +0100

Following the recent issues with my ISP, I've decided to mothball this site, and blog at http://mmitii.wordpress.com/ from this point onwards.

I'll leave the site up and running for the time being, but have also replicated all the old content on the new site too.

See you at the new gaff...

When to app...

Matt — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 17:04:00 +0100

There was quite a debate in the office with the announcement of Amazon’s HTML5 version of the Kindle Reader at the beginning of the month. Initially, it focused on whether this was just a direct two-fingers to Apple’s rules and regulations about commission on in-app payments for content, and then on the reasons why Chrome along with Safari were the first two browsers targeted (conclusion: offline browser support).

We then, however, got into a deeper discussion about why and when an installed app should be used instead of just targeting the browser (especially if HTML5 is the underpinning technology used). Overall, I’m of the view that the future is undoubtedly online, and most of the time serving live to the browser is the way forward. However, the future isn’t quite here yet, and totally Cloud initiatives like ChromeOS, by example seem both too ahead of their time, and yet vaguely anachronistic (as I described in my post on Chromebook).

So there seem to be some key times when an app installed locally works best – here’s some of the cases that we’ve discussed:

To allow offline access:
Whilst I think that the cases of people using laptops offline these days are increasingly rare, on mobile devices we frequently find ourselves off the network. In those cases, locally cached data accessed by the local app makes perfect sense (if there is one thing that really irritates me it’s a locally-installed app that doesn’t cache data for offline on a mobile).

To cope with big data:
Before taking up my current role, I ran IT for a big marketing agency based in London but with offices across the globe. A constant issue that we had was of shipping video and 3D content from office to office: whilst the Cloud could provide fantastic opportunity for rendering processing grunt, getting the data in and out would be a complete pain in the backside. Local apps are often still the answer to cope with vast data volumes.

To use a device’s hardware:
A local app that takes advantage of gyroscopes, accelerometers, GPS or other hardware increasingly found in the average smartphone seems to make sense. (As an aside, if someone could create an app that would turn a Windows Phone into a customizable touch surface and control for Windows, I’d be eternally grateful).

To provide an audience:
A more publisher-centric one, this. App marketplaces can provide an easier route to get a developer’s work to an audience than a mere website.

I’m sure that there are other cases when the local app is of advantage, and I’m also sure that this is going evolve dramatically over the coming years; however, as Amazon have shown with the HTML5 Kindle, assumptions that the app should always be local need to be questioned…

What motivates developers?

Matt — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:00:00 +0100

I found myself in a meeting yesterday listening to a colleague talk at length about how fundamentally software developers were driven by the need to make money. As I get further into my career, I've learned how to both sit on my hands and bite my tongue - not a comfortable experience, but one that prevents me launching into a stream of vitriol. That's what my blog is for!

Whilst at a very basic level we are all driven by basic physiological needs (food, particularly) and safety needs (a home, warm clothing) as was described in Maslow's famous Hierarchy of Needs, things that actually motivate us come at a higher level - a need for belonging at a social level, a need for self esteem, and the nirvana of a state "self actualization" (where we believe we are doing the best that we could). Money buys the lower levels, and provides proxies through flash cars or designer labels (or whatever floats your boat) at the higher levels. It, in itself, doesn't motivate people. (For a deeper discussion of this topic, see the wonderful Dan Pink RSAnimate on The surprising truth of what motivates us).

So, all well and good - but if not money, what might motivate someone to develop software? A means to an end might explain traditional software development roles, sitting in an IT team or a software company producing widgets, but what about the new world of App developers?

In my short spell as a management development consultant, the company I worked for used a model to describe motivations based on the idea of different dimensions in which different people get self esteem. It gives an interesting insight to what might help propel people to developing software which will never make them money.

The first dimension is the aethesthetic; the desire for things to look beautiful. Whilst looking right might not at first appear to be something that has particularly driven software developers in the past, the increasingly merged worlds of graphic design and code today are often places of beauty (and, it could be argued, aesthetic principals are the reason why Apple are the company they are today). Even in the traditional IT world, however, beautiful code is something than motivates many programmers.

The second dimension is the desire to show expertise. There is a competitive spirt amongst some coders to show their expertise; the demoscene that sprung up in the 80s was testament to that, with coders producing abstract works of often great beauty, often within very constrained limits of memory, just to show how good they were.

The third dimension is the desire to do good; altruism sits at the heart of much of the Open Source movement, and there are other interesting examples, from Sukey to DecisionsForHeroes.com of programming ventures that are driven by a want to make society a better place in some way.

The final two dimensions of the model I feel are in some ways less prevalent in the world of coding. The fourth is the desire to stand out from the crowd. There are probably relatively few extrovert leaders in the world of coding, and although they do exist, it seems that many of the more bullish characters in the IT world come from a sales background.

The final dimension, one of wanting to control things, is very evident in people who code, but not necessarily in professional, full time coders. Many an over-complicated Excel macro has come from a need to exert control over process within a team...

It strikes me that to encourage people to adopt a new development technology (or increasingly, an "ecosystem"), it's about appealling to particularly the first three of these esteem needs. How will a new platform enable you to create beautiful content? How can a new technology build on your existing skills and expertise? And how can a marketplace enable you to get reach to an audience? This is the stuff of aspiration and motivation; if coders want just money, they can always go and work for a bank...

Weeknote 61: Productivity

Matt — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 19:49:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- first draft of a new editorial process for use in the team
- remaining monthly project reviews
- short-listed on the recruitment process, and began final interviews
- some thoughts on how to better work with the Most Valued Professionals community
- and some ideas for a series of editorial around how Cloud and Consumerisation is going to change the role of the developer

Next week: annual reviews.

The inevitable London Riots article

Matt — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 08:39:00 +0100

Ok - before I start this, some political positioning: from what I have seen (completely from the media) it does not appear to me that the trouble that has been witnessed in London and elsewhere in the country in recent days is anything other than aggressive, male thuggery. I don't believe that it is some sort of explicit political statement, nor directly the result of poverty or spending cuts.

However, whilst we wait for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, it is not enough for us to wring our hands and blame mindlessness, the individual or "the parents"; we need to understand what is going on in our society that means that groups of people can feel that they can act in a way that is such an affront to our societal norms (whether that's the looting, or allowing their kids to be out on the streets). Oh, and sticking them all in jail is just going to train them up for proper criminality in later life...

So, given all of that, there has been a lot of commentary on how technology and in particular social media and the BlackBerry Messenger network have been involved in the organisation of the criminal activity in the past five days. Now first of all, it is worth reflecting that the role that new technology has had is probably equal or less than the role that traditional media has had; in particular, 24 hour rolling news loves a photogenic story, and there is little as photogenic as a burning building. The £5 trillion lost on the stock markets in the past nine days (apparently amounting to £600 for every man, woman and child on the planet according to the BBC News last night) doesn't have great imagery so doesn't get the commentary.

Undoubtedly, though, new technology has had a role in what's gone on. And it provides an interesting example of the sorts of ways in which the simple (and dare I say it, intelligent) use of commodity, collaborative services can run rings around the big, process-centric technology of big organisations. The past 20 years has seen London, in particular, become the most CCTV-surveilled city in the world. Law enforcement has been systemised, de-skilled and dehumanised. Policing has become a matter of data monitoring and monitor monitoring with increasing use of face recognition software and other technologies to production-line the activities of keeping the streets safe.

The net result? A few kids, disaffected and probably never having come into contact with a police officer for good reasons can run rings around the whole, heavily technology-invested, "crime prevention" system with a couple of tweets and a few BBMs.

There are a couple of things that I conclude out of the events of the past few days; first of all, that we need to think long and hard about mechanising law enforcement - the evidence that it reduces crime has always been patchy (it tends to just redistribute it), and the last few days have shown that, when push comes to shove, it can't prevent it either (sure - perpetrators can be caught, but the jails are full so one only knows what's going to happen there); and secondly that a little bit of collaboration (whether to riot or to clean up afterwards) can be much more cost effective than heavy, processized technology implementation, and we should all consider how that might impact our own businesses now and in the future.

Discuss...

The battlelines of consumerisation

Matt — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 21:15:00 +0100

We, along with many other technology companies, are talking at great length about the impact that increasingly easy-to-use consumer devices are having on the world of corporate IT.

At one end of the spectrum is the popularity of smart, touch screen (and often Apple-produced, if truth be told) devices that, according to one report that I saw today, people would be willing to give up free coffee, or even extra holiday to be able to use more readily in the work place. At the other end, the rise of Software as a Service, and Cloud providers like Salesforce who have made their market from aggressively advertising the lack of engagement required with the IT department to implement their services in a business.

As people of all generations become increasingly confident and competent with using Internet-based services on powerful, portable devices, it is easy to conclude that the IT department's days are numbered - outwitted by Bring Your Own Device policies on the one hand, and the rise of browser-based services marketed direct to the using department on the other. The expectations that we all now have as empowered, web citizens are so great that we just won't accept the shackles of traditional business computing in the workplace.

Whilst I have a great deal of sympathy with that view, I believe that there is one battleground that is getting little or no coverage, and is (possibly unfortunately) going to be business IT's Alamo.

The last 40 years of management theory has had one mostly consistent theme: if you constantly bark orders at people, then they, over time, become demotivated and less productive. For the most part, in larger organisations, that principal has been well embedded into the management culture of today. Except when it comes to business systems.

Most systems that have been implemented into organisations to manage process do so using the motivational principals of the 1800s. Shout at people. Order them to do things. Refuse dissent. If you work in a large organisation, think about how often you receive automated email messages, telling you to do something and then telling you not to reply ("for this is but an automated communication...").

Now, compare those process-centric systems with the world of the Web. Loose collaboration that finds itself used in many ways, from coordinating revolution (or thuggery); transactional systems that are a delight to use; realtime communications in audio and video that span the globe.

This is where the consumerisation fight is going to get nasty. Often now legacy systems, designed without thought for the human factors involved in using them (apart from maybe some light screed of User Interface), are going to become quickly and dangerously anachronistic in comparison to the heavily tested, motivational experiences that are the commercial Web. Here's a benchmark: if your business system is less motivating to use than a tax return service then you've got problems on the horizon...

It's not going to be enough to make these dictatorial systems accessible on an iPad - that will just accentuate their incongruity. And it's not just IT departments that will need to rethink their approach to systems design; too often, management in organisations has been delegated to these business systems because actually managing change in behaviour would be too tricky. It's all going to make for an interesting set of conversations in the next few years...

Weeknote 60: Workshopping

Matt — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:54:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- a good day's workshop with the whole team
- working out ways of working with a couple of key clients in the business
- the beginning of the monthly work review meetings
- and the latest in staff annual reviews

Next week: setting commitments.

Weeknote 59: processed

Matt — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 17:23:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- almost submitted my first expenses claim (long story)
- good catch ups with Mike Thompson at Headshift and @bolarotibi
- planning for a team workshop next week
- booking review meetings for the whole team

Next week: the aforementioned workshop, plus a number of client meetings

The mystery of M&A

Matt — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 08:35:00 +0100

According to press reports in recent days, it seems that there it's trouble at t'mill at my former employer Thomson Reuters. Three years after the takeover, the Thomson family are apparently frustrated by the slow return that they are seeing as a result of bringing together the two information companies.

I'm no economist, and that is maybe the reason why I find it odd that so many people put such faith into such enormous corporate unions. At a general level, bringing together two sets of corporate support services (finance, IT, HR etc) and expecting to see fast efficiency savings from larger shared services is naivety in the extreme. Even if such shared services worked to exactly the same processes and with exactly the same systems, it would take some time and cost to restructure and reorganise them in such a way that you received economies of scale. That such support services will be working to completely different models in the pre-merged operations means that economies of scale (if they can be realized at all) are likely to take significant time and investment. (I'm actually a strong believer in diseconomies of scale.)

In the specific case of Thomson Reuters, however, I was also always sceptical that the merged organisation would ever amount to less than the sum of its parts. The two former companies had an overlapping set of products, and the plan was to consolidate the product set into a single set. The problem with this as I see it is that some customers had Thomson products, some had Reuters, some had a mixture of both, and some had a mix of Thomson and/or Reuters alongside the major competitor, Bloomberg (I am talking here about the systems that the three companies sold into banks and other institutions in the financial services world that made up the lion's share of Reuters revenue in the past).

Now technology companies, it seems, sometimes confuse the improved functionality that is offered in their new products with a value proposition to their customers (who not only have to swallow the cost of new products, but also the often much greater cost of actually implementing them). For Thomson Reuters, out seemed to me, the risk of trying to force all of their customers on to a new product platform would be that some would refuse, those who were on both former companies' products would at best consolidate onto one, and at worst would move to Bloomberg because if you are going to have to suffer the pain and cost of changing systems, then better it be to one that is established and proven.

Net result? The overall market shrinks because there are now only two products rather than three, Thomson Reuters overall market share slips down from the pre-merged total, and the costs associated with integration of the two companies decreases overall profit margin.

But then I'm no economist...

When might M&A work? Well, three scenarios spring to mind... when you are buying into a new established market (Green and Black's acquisition by Cadbury, for example); when acquiring R&D (the staple of most large tech companies); or when acquiring a smaller rival to reduce competition (although such behaviour is often prevented, thankfully).

Weeknote 58: live from Colorado

Matt — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 23:20:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- surviving MGX

Next week: back to normality.

Travelblog MGX

Matt — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 23:16:00 +0100

It's been a busy week in Denver. Presentations in a sports arena, sessions in a conference centre the size of your average airport, frequent networking opportunities, and the odd drink here and there.

A few years ago, I went to New York in early December. I was expecting to hate a whole load of Christmas schumaltz, but actually found the whole experience quite magical. If I am honest, I was expecting to find the tub-thumping Americanism of MGX a real turn-off, but I return to the UK with a much better view of where Microsoft is heading in general terms, and sight of where I fit in the whole, massive, venture.

I don't get the fist-clenched, aggressive, neck vein-throbbing style that some of our leaders adopt, but there was plenty of more reflective calm over the week to temper the Boom! Boom! of Steve Ballmer and co.

Stand out for me was Steven Sinofsky's presentation about the future of the Windows client. It's going to be a revelatory few days at the Build conference in September...

TravelBlog MGX 1

Matt — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 21:03:00 +0100

Tomorrow I'm heading off to Denver, Colorado to attend the Microsoft Global Exchange (known, inevitably, as MGX).

MGX sees the gathering of 15,000 Microsoft employees from around the globe. That many people requires a sports stadium, and so it is that the plenary sessions will be being held at Denver's Pepsi Center.

Quite frankly, there is a whole lot about the event that scares me. The size and scale; the relentless nature of the sessions; the four nights of organised parties; the whooping. I'm British - I don't whoop.

It's going to be fascinating. I'm looking forward to seeing the company outside of the UK subsidiary, and hopefully find out a bit more about what is ahead for us in the coming year or so (but if I do, I won't be able to relay any of it). Just as long as they don't expect me to whoop...

Weeknote 57: defining visions

Matt — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 15:39:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- good progress on editorial approach for the coming 12 months
- slow but steady progress on the recruitment front
- a great catch up with @tobywright at The Telegraph
- thoughts and conversations about Application Lifecycle Management, and who the heck would "buy" it
- a few runs at articulating the vision for the team (it's all about building trust)
- and the WellConnect launch party too

Next week: M G X in the U S of A - stay tuned for TravelBlogMGX

Acclimatisation

Matt — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:01:00 +0100

Starting a new role in a new organisation takes some getting used to. The past three months have flown past for me, but a combination of new role, a new specialisation (I can't escape the fact that I now work in marketing), moving to the supplier-side of the IT industry, the sheer scale of Microsoft, and also working for a US-centred company for the first time have meant that I have been making "waving or drowning" judgements quite frequently.

Part of the challenge of negotiating the big company is in understanding where the boundaries of one's own initiative lie. Much management in large companies has, these days, been subjected to a Taylorisation where an awful lot of my time seems to be spent understanding what the right process to be following is, and then filling in the appropriate online forms. In a smaller firm departments tend to be people, rather than service-level machines, and there is at least a sense that you can get things done with a better sense of control. Giving up a sense of self determination is part of the deal with corporate life.

But the upside of that sacrifice is exposure to things that just don't happen in the SME space. We are entering in to a period for the firm which is going to have the potential to be remarkable. The realisation of the Windows Phone deal with Nokia; the beginning of the journey for Windows 8 (which I will be seeing in person at the Build conference in California in September); what happens with the further development of the Kinect controller; deployment of Office 365, Intune and Azure into more and more companies; new versions of SQL Server; and so the list goes on...

There are big challenges for my team in the year ahead, not least as a result of a huge amount of attention being given to new consumer products which will have varying levels of interest to our traditional base of IT folk. It's another impact of the consumerization trends that are changing the tech industry.

Next week is Microsoft Global Exchange (MGX), a gathering of 15,000 employees from across the planet. Many have said that this is where I will receive my Microsoft implant... we shall see. If nothing else, the week in Denver will give me a view from outside of the UK subsidiary, and hopefully means I will get to know some of the people doing our role in other countries. It should be a fascinating week...

Weeknote 56: a strange calm descends

Matt — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 19:57:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- catch ups with a number of the team...
- ... and a meeting with the audience marketing team to start to reform the bigger team
- planning for the customer data strategy...
- .. and some interesting thoughts about contact strategies in a social media world
- continuing discussions about hiring
- and the first (of many) performance review meetings

Next week: customer segmentation, a trip to London, and the countdown to my "chipping" at the MGX conference.

Single factor...

Matt — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:22:00 +0100

Hidden in the News International phone-hacking chat that was going on on Twitter last night, it emerged that the Twitter account for PayPal UK had itself been hacked and defaced.

With Twitter in particular, and mobile phone voicemail in general, it's amazing that we now have such sensitive information services and communication channels protected by very weak, single-factor authentication. The average voicemail account has a four-number PIN protecting it. Twitter accounts have slightly more complex passwords, but ones that you can imagine for big brands are shared extensively by people in marketing and PR teams.

The average InfoSec person would probably say that this is indication that complex security is needed at all levels and on all systems. For me, though, it points to how much personal accountability everyone needs to take these days for the security of their information actions...

Weeknote 55: in which a (financial) year ended

Matt — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:49:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- continuing progress on resourcing the Audience Marketing team
- catch ups with @tallnohair, @andrewtuson, @davecoplin and @andrewdotcom
- ritual humiliation for the leadership team at the end of year team get together...
- ...but "Kevin Warwick's Implants" came 4th in the pub quiz
- planning starts for Build
- and a good initial planning session with @simonster for some IT Department 101 sessions to run later this month

Next week: FY12 begins in earnest

The same, but different

Matt — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:49:00 +0100

In a post last week I mentioned Future Babble, Dan Gardner's recent book which looks at human's desire to predict the future, and our inability to do it very well. It's a topic I've been exploring a bit more since, talking with a few folk about the subject.

One of Gardner's key arguments is that pundits who predict the future tend to fall into two categories: hedgehogs and foxes. Hedgehogs tend to have a big theory, be very assertive, and then try to bend their predictions into that theory; foxes are more pragmatic, and generally come across less sure about their predictions. The media loves hedgehogs, and are much less keen on foxes, and we as the audience tend to believe more that is said by someone who is sure of their convictions (hedgehogs).

When analysis has been done of predictions against what actually comes to pass, hedgehogs are significantly less good at predicting the future than foxes. But even the best fox won't get a hit rate of 50%, and so most seers are less effective at predicting the future than flipping a coin. Gardner extends this to suggest that, if you want the best probability of predicting the future, your best bet is to say that it will be just the same as it is today.

This has really struck a nerve with me, and is helping me to rethink how I think about the future.

Whilst the future (in the sense of our use of technology) won't be the same as today, it's likely to be the same, but more subtly different than the hedgehogs might predict. Why? Because we humans tend to be fairly conservative in our approach to adopting change.

Let's take an example: the telephone. The single biggest change in the way in which we operate a telephone came with the move from operator-connected calls to self-dialling. Strangely, with hands-free and voice recognition, we seem to be going back to the orignal way of using the phone. Behind the scenes, the ways in which phones are connected have changed enormously (from operators connecting patch cords, to mechanical through digital to IP). But all of that backoffice stuff is (comparitively) low touch for people, so the transitions have been easier to manage. A modern phone (even if it is a portable computer and media centre too these days) would probably be recognisable as a phone in some way to Alexander Graham Bell.

And even though the underlying technology of telephony has changed, we still have language that is of a former age - giving someone "a ring", "dialling" a number and so on...

Have a look at the list of "disruptive technologies" on Wikipedia, and (in hindsight) none seem to me to be anything other than evolution. They are better ways of doing things similar to what was done before, rather than a completely new way of doing it. To come back to telephony, and having watched Prof Kevin Warwick give a presentation yesterday, a truly revolutionary change from telephones would be communication between people by linking their nervous systems in some ways. That's a revolutiuonary step, but one that (to me) seems so outlandish that it probably won't happen. Nueral interfaces that allow you to "dial" someone up by thinking about them, however, migth be more credible...

Weeknote 54: Back to work

Matt — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 16:27:00 +0100

After a two week holiday, achievements this week included:

- catch ups with many of the team
- catching up with the state of planning for the new financial year
- planning for staff changes (don't forget - I'm looking for a new Audience Marketing Manager!)
- a bit of blogging
- and some thinking about Sticky Marketing

Next week: the planning process draws to a close.

Points of IT Control

Matt — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 10:19:00 +0100

I've been inspired by a couple of pieces of writing this week: the first, an interesting blog post from my former BBC colleague, and Social Media guru Euan Semple, and the second a tweet that I have since lost, but will paraphrase as "Cloud Computing isn't killing the IT Department, they're committing hari kiri."

What all of this has got me to thinking that one of the biggest challenges that IT departments face in this rapidly changing world is the expectations of the organisations in which they operate.

Traditionally, IT has three points of control: control over the technology used in an organisation (software and hardware); control over the data generated by the organisation (although not the information or the knowledge); and control over the costs associated with technology. What the Cloud, the Internet, and consumerisation is doing to breaking down the control that the IT department has over the technology. But organisations still expect IT to govern the other two elements, and hence things break down.

In the old world, control of cost and data came from standardisation of the technology. Fragment the technology and the models that exerted control in the other two dimensions break down. It puts IT into an impossible situation, and one in which organisational expectations will need to change to allow the Internet-led changes to be embraced rather than rejected.

Kinecting

Matt — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:18:00 +0100

I had the opportunity to find out a bit more about the Kinect SDK for Windows in a session held at the Microsoft Campus on Tuesday morning. If you aren't aware of it, the development kit provides a series of software tools to allow developers to use the Kinect controller in the Windows environment. There has been quite a lot of activity developing Kinect in Windows, but until now it's been done using an SDK that was reverse-engineered by the Open Source community. The offical kit gives access to more functionality.

It's impressive stuff, and the maths in particular behind how it works are very clever indeed. It's one of those bits of technology that, when you see it, you kind of have to turn off your mind as to how it works and just accept that it does. And it's causing quite a stir, where I have already have had requests from companies thinking how it might be used in fields as diverse as banking and online retailing.

We are starting to scratch the surface of how humans might interact with computers without a physical device acting as interface. The ways in which we commonly interact with computers (the WIMP - Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing devices model) have been around in concept for around 40 years, and in commercial form since the mid-80s. The ways in which we interact with other computing devices (modern cars, for example) even longer. Completely reconceptualising our computer interaction is possibly going to take a long time.

Why? Well, because personally I'm going to feel like a bit of a prat waving my arms around in the air to control a computer. Much in the same way that I feel a bit of a prat talking to a computer (on IVR systems for example. And I also feel a bit of a prat when on video (although my vain egotism gets me through that a lot of the time). And I'm sure that I'm not alone in those insecurities along with many others. (As an aside, I also know people who feel that using something like a QWERTY keyboard is something somewhat beneath them because they come from a certain generation where typing was done by secretaries, but that's another story).

One of my holiday reads was Future Babble, by Dan Gardner (who wrote the wonderful Risk that I've mentioned more than a few times on these pages). In it, Gardner explores why we so like listening to people predicting the future, and how most pundits are wrong most of time. Research that he quotes concludes that if you want to predict the future, your best probability of being right is to predict that it'll be the same as it is today.

I'm learning - I reckon that human-computer interaction in the next few years is going to be much less different from today than some may think. Consider that the biggest innovation in the past 20 years has been the recent adoption of touch screens, and all they do is replace a mouse with your finger. Consider also that the QWERTY keyboard has been prevalent since the late 1800s. The technology might be possible, but actually we have human habit that gets in the way of dramatic change over a short period. I think it's going to take a longer while that we may think today to fundamentally change how we interact with computers...

Job Advert - Audience Marketing Manager

Matt — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:09:00 +0100

I'm recruiting at the moment - looking for a new Audience Marketing Manager to co-ordinate marketing activity in the UK for the IT Professional community (ie people working in IT outside of development). There is full detail here: http://bit.ly/iVG2d8, but feel free to drop me a line if you want more information.

Time out

Matt — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 16:16:00 +0100

I arrived back in Portsmouth on Saturday night after a two-week break with the family in the Charente region of France. For the entire two weeks, I was offline, and I struggle to remember such an extended period when I wasn't in some way connected to the Internet in the last decade.

Partly this was a conscious decision to focus on things in the real (rather than virtual) realm, partly it's because I'm too tight to pay the exorbitant rates that the mobile operators seem to think appropriate for roaming data. What did I learn?

Well, the main thing was that battery life on modern smart phones is dramatically improved if you just use them as a phone. Turn off data, and therefore a who stack of services, and you can remember the days when a phone would go for days without it needing to be charged up.

Other than that, well, I didn't miss it. And not having the nagging devices bleeping me for new email/tweets/facebook updates and so on was quite easy to drop (although a toddler and a six-month-old gave me a new dimension of ADHD than my normal mobile-induced state).

But now it's back to reality. Or whatever this mobile device-enabled world is...

Weeknote 53: Awaydays and bank holidays

Matt — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 12:33:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- a valuable two-day off-site session with my leadership team colleagues
- getting focus for the next financial year in the evangelism team (it's probably a process thing)
- getting up to speed with all that is Windows 8 (that we know so far...)
- a catch up with Trudy from Harvey Nash to talk Cloud and what it means for CxOs
- 121s with most of the team in advance of...

...two weeks holiday.

Normal service will be resumed in w/c June 19.

Porter's Five Forces (and what it means for IT)

Matt — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:28:00 +0100

Another whiteboard session for you - covering a bit of management theory that I think is particularly relevant to IT heads today.

(or link directly to it here.

Yearnote 1

Matt — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:49:00 +0100

12 months ago I started weeknoting. You can read the first one here: http://bit.ly/kumHWB. It's turned into a useful habit, and one that I (for the foreseeable future at least) intend to keep up. Taking ten minutes at the end of a week to quickly reflect on things that have happened is a useful exercise (as I have been known to say, getting through work sometimes requires you to regard it as an extended role play exercise - you just need to build in your own debriefing sessions).

It's been quite a 12 months too. This time last year we had just formally closed the project that migrated my last firm onto Google Apps, and were beginning the tendering process for a new network. I popped into Imagination yesterday to say hello and they're a few weeks away from deploying WiFi alongside the now gigabit network, part way through the deployed managed print service, have Active Directory running, continuing to exploit the Cloud collaboration tools, and about to deploy Adobe CS5 amongst other things.

And I, meanwhile, work for one of the biggest technology companies in the world. Seven weeks in and it's engrossing, challenging, sometimes frustrating, but I'm working with some fantastic people (and that, I realise as I get older, is what makes me happy in working life).

Here's to Yearnote 2. Check back next year.

Weeknote 52: Out and About

Matt — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:35:00 +0100

Achievements this week included:

- watching many of the team in action at UK Tech.Days (nice work, chaps)
- a productive meeting with community leaders from UK-based user groups
- lunch and all things cloud with @justinpirie
- another lunch with @em_stone
- and another lunch with @mrsimonking at Imagination
- a fascinating afternoon at DesignLondon
- a night out on the razzle at the Ubelly Critters Awards
- coffee with Dave, setting up a London studio for Babaroga
- planning for a session for our leadership offsite next week
- gearing up for the performance management season
- lining up some speakers for an in house event on Consumerization next month
- and recording another whiteboard session (available soon)

Phew.

So, that's a year then.

Next week: holidays, offsites, planning meetings and then off to France for a well-deserved break (Mrs B being the one who has well deserved it).

Lacking empathy

Matt — Wed, 25 May 2011 07:50:00 +0100

I spent a fascinating couple of hours on Tuesday afternoon at the Royal College of Art, at an event organised by Design London, a joint venture between the RCA and neighbour Imperial College. The aim of the group is to fuse academic disciplines from design, engineering and management schools to help develop new products and services to take to market, improve the education of some of the two institutions' students, and help foster a better approach to design within British industry. Heady stuff.

Alongside the astute observation from speaker Sir George Cox that most MBAs don't teach people how to manage creativity, there was also a reflection that most inventors don't know what it is they have invented. Cox, whose Report for the last government was the catalyst for the foundation of Design London, cited Marconi's invention of radio (as a communication tool for shipping, not a mass medium) and SMS (a tool originally designed for debugging of mobile networks) amongst other examples of this.

Something that I have noted in the past is that there is a distinct lack of empathy exhibited by many in the IT industry. I guess it is the nature of the products and services, but there tends to be an over-representation of thinkers rather than feelers (to use the MBTI terminology) in both IT departments (at Reuters there were only three of us in an extended leadership team of about 40) and, it seems, big software companies.

In my simplistic mind, there have been three ages of information technology: the first was of pure computing - the replacement of rooms of people known as 'computers' by machines to do complex mathematical operations (bomb trajectories and so on); the second was of business process automation where Taylorist approaches to the streamlining of businesses through specialisation, standardisation and simplification was applied to white collar work; and the third was of communication and collaboration from which stems the social networking revolution.

The three ages have overlapped and intertwined, but the first two were very scientific in their outlook and so were a logical extension for control by the people developing the underlying technology (even if most of the failures experienced in the second age were as a result of not getting the human and social factors right). The third phase, however, is so far away from the natural motivations of an industry that is "thinking" rather than "feeling".

The general reality is that most communication and collaboration projects are deployed by the techies and then left up to everyone else to adopt. The idea that this will happen without facilitation by people who have experience of facilitating such change before is crazy... but is what most organizations do. This is the new discipline that I have spoken about before - the realm of the Chief Collaboration Officer, and driven by people who understand how you can get people to work together more effectively using (or sometimes not using) technology.

That's probably not a group to be found in today's IT department, but just in the same way that mobile network engineers didn't work out the market for selling ringtones via SMS, or radio engineers don't make great DJs.

Starting start-ups

Matt — Tue, 24 May 2011 11:51:00 +0100

Last week I had an interesting conversation with the Head of IT from one of London's arts theatres. They were contemplating the replacement of their ticketing systems, and in our chat it seemed that cloud platforms might offer an interesting alternative approach for them.

My first question was why ticketing wasn't just outsourced entirely to the likes of Ticketmaster? The answer was simple - cost - and reading between the lines I guess that those services are more geared for commercial events (films remade as musicals, Lloyd Webber extravaganzas, and pop gigs) than the low, no or negative margin world of 'proper' theatre.

The system that they had in place was originally developed for the Met in New York, and presumably came out of the old tradition of bespoke development of software that works that is then spun out as a product. The challenge for the London group is that sadly the failure rates for bespoke developments are disturbingly high still, as requirements gathering turns into scope creep turns into delay and ultimately disappointment. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a technology issue - it is a socio-technology issue that is of the people and the way in which they manage and are managed. The added complication for the London initiative is that a number of arts institutions are coming together on this, and the smell of a committee of committees hangs heavy in the air.

So what is the alternative? Well, suppose that rather than setting up a project to deliver a system that meets the requirements of the various stakeholders, the institutions set up a start-up to deliver a product that would appeal to customers?

Yeah, it is a matter of semantics. But an important one. If the institutions were able to provide an amount of seed funding, with a view to selling the eventual service to more organisations in the future, and the basis for decisions throughout the project was on the basis of "will this make the product more successful with customers?" not "how do we balance these conflicting requirements?", there seems to me to be a greater chance of successful delivery (and some chance of greater future reward too).

Cloud platforms offer the ability for this kind of flexible, innovative approach because they take out a whole tranche of the traditional investment required in hardware and core software that would be required to set up such a project in earlier times. Taking entirely new approaches to development decision making gives an exciting new set of opportunities to deliver technology that ultimately provides better support to businesses.

Communities

Matt — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:24:00 +0100

A rewarding day yesterday at the first of my team's UK Tech.Day events in West London. It gave me the opportunity to see many of my guys in presentation action, and get the background on some of our newer technologies (Lync, as an aside, looks market-changing).

Probably the most rewarding session, though, came in the evening and the chance to meet and talk with a number of people who coordinate Microsoft-aligned user communities: .Net, SQL and Sharepoint by example. They are communities that used to get a good deal more support from Microsoft, but shifts in the market, and the general economic gloom in the UK, mean that in recent years there has been a lot less resource.

I've dipped in and out of such communities over the years (the first I was involved in was the BBC Micro group in Watford in the mid-80s), and so was particularly interested to understand the relevance of such groups which these people obviously devote such time and energy to in this age of the social network. The answer was bleedin' obvious... they give people the opportunity to meet and engage with others who share common interest.

The importance of real, human contact should never be underestimated....