Ten tiny IT Things I wish people will do in 2009

1. Do not forget that Social network contains the word “Social“
2. Stop speaking of web 2.0, web 3.0 without knowing what it means. These terms are just good for marketers.
3. Do not only use the technology but teach it to other people. Do not only watch but act.
4. Share -> The more you give the more you get.
5. Promote technologies in which you really believe and not only to be “fashion” or to earn money. Before promoting a new software, take some time to test it and see if it’s really innovative.
6. Do not forget to donate when you feel the technology provided deserves it. Think about the people who spend time developing the software you are using everyday. Wikipedia will be one of the sources for the semantic web (dbpedia) and needs you to donate in order to stay free ( in all the sense).
7. Do not think that technologies emerging and working on the web side can work inside Enterprises like marketers want you to believe it.
8. Think twice before printing a document or an email. New technologies are green if you use them in such a way.
9. Organise your information workflow in order to  avoid information overflow.
10. And finally, before writing an email, take 5 sec to see if it’s really needed, 5 sec to see if another tool could not be more efficient and if you really opt for an email 10 sec to define a correct subject !

 

The role of the IT in this era of turbulence

 

We are facing today an economic  downturn in the global economy, this slowdown will force CEO’s to rethink their strategies and some of them will be then tempted to reduce the IT budget. IT has always been considered as a necessary cost inside companies but few have really seen the secret weapon it turn out to  be in this era of turbulence.

Why IT can help to recession-proof a company ?

A recession is not only about cost cutting and it’s a perfect time to review all the business processes that were never reviewed during better times.  Innovation will be crucial in order for companies to emerge when the crisis will be over and fight the remaining competitors on the market. Reducing  hidden costs will also be part of a global strategy inside companies.

In this context the CIO is one of the few inside a corporation with a bulletproof knowledge of the processes and practices of almost every area of this corporation. A CIO is or should be able to understand the impacts of a strategy as a whole, or identify Process catalyzers that would not be obvious to people involved in a too detailed or too high level process (I recommend  reading “Breakthrough IT: Supercharging Organizational Value Through Technology” by Patrick Gray if you are still skeptical).

Where to start digging ?

CIO’s have to focus on IT’s impact on business results by assessing, measuring, promoting what IT does for the business. They may have to review target and extend time horizons on some IT projects and maybe sometimes abandon some of them. A good start would be that they ask themselves “what did I start as project yesterday that I would not start today ?”. They will have to avoid “nice to have” projects that are sleeping on shelves and that some department may dig up since they have now more time and prefer focusing on project with short terms ROI. CIO’s should list strategic software’s under maintenance and train employees while their workload is lower in order to be ready when the crisis will come to the end and gain advantages on competitors (especially if this competition is coming from Asia where the recession impact seems to strike less than in Europe or in US).

Conclusion

Instead of fighting against cost reduction, CIO’s will have to prove their added value to the global strategy by embracing business more today than ever before. he has to communicate this strategy inside his department so that any member of his team could be aware of the role he/she is playing in the IT considered as corporate innovative engine and not as cost centre.

 

Is Web 2.0 just considered magical by naive observers ?

I like Collaboration tools, I use RSS readers to aggregate information from different sources everyday, I blog but I never use the term Web 2.0  which is just for me a pure marketing term. I agree that we needed something to mark the evolution of the web but too much companies are claiming to sell this “Web 2.0″ technologies and most of the time all they have upgraded is their presentation.

In this context, I really enjoyed reading the post of Tom Davenport “Is Web 2.0 living on thin air ?” and “Why web 2.0 does not work in enterprise?” by Allen Huish.

 

Back To Typewriter ?

 

It’s interesting to see that some people still prefer a typewriter to a laptop if their goal is only writing without being distracted by the popup coming from the new technologies.

The Los Angeles Times Publish this week an article Typewriter stays relevant in technology-saturated world

 

The Power of business trip

I was wondering why most of my ideas were coming when I am in the plane, behind the wheel of my car or in my hotel room. I read recently that a knowledge worker is interrupted every 3 minutes on average (see articles May I have your attention please? and Worker, Interrupted: The Cost of Task Switching ). in the office, we are constantly switching from a task to another being interrupted by emails, phone calls, questions colleagues are asking, meetings … So no wonder that the best place to think is the end of the day or when you are travelling.

 

List of Acronyms

I have added a List of Acronyms on my blog. I use a lot of those acronyms in my speeches and writing and some people have difficulties with that. So I thought it would be nice to share what i have collected until now instead of keeping that in a MS Word on my Computer.

 List of Acronyms