The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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The Cloud Gives Back That I.T. Buzz

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It's not easy being that guy (and it still is likely to be a guy) that has worked in IT for the past 20 years, transitioned the organisation into the PC world, built up a complex infrastructure and finally had people accept that you were right about these "PC things" (around the time Windows XP entered our lives).

It's not easy for so many different reasons including, "Now it all hangs together no-one bothers saying thanks any more", to, "You want to plug what into my network?" It can all be quite wearing and to top it off you now hear that your organisation wants to dump it all and give it to Google!

"So, now what do I do?"
At this point you have 3 options:
  1. Move on to pastures new
  2. Fight them every step of the way
  3. Remember why you got into the job in the first place
Maybe it is time to take your extensive business experience and apply it outside of the pure IT world view - how about business strategy, change management, or any number of disciplines that would use your skills, knowledge and approach.

Fighting the business, all the staff and the wider wave of cloud computing crashing down upon all businesses is, let's be honest, quite a tough road to travel and, in my experience, has never been a career-forwarding option.

But you don't have to give it all up, heck why should you, this is your career we're talking about! Cast your mind back to when you career started, can you remember what it felt like back in the day? There was the 'wow' factor of the graphical interface, the first tentative uses of a mouse, and even email was simply amazing. All these made people smile and had them talking - you were da man.

crowd surfer
Who remembers what it was like to go to gigs back in the day? Mates, music and that energetic buzz of being there. Over time the bands of your youth moved from local gigs to stadium tours, then to being the the CDs of your flat which became the iTunes collections of your house and eventually the nostalgic radio plays of your home. And now, when those bands tour, it's the same music but everyone is sat down and politely claps. What's changed ... you!

Of course you could remember why it was that you went to see bands in the first place and then go and see new bands. "What, new bands - but they're not as good as [fill in the band you grew up with here]?" Yes they are as I can testify having been recently unexpectedly blown away by Alabama 3 who totally revived my gig-going buzz.

Your music, new buzz
Imagine that the music is what people want to do (the "features") and the bands are the delivery method ("PC", "cloud" ...) then some of the tunes are old ones but with a modern twist (Gmail = email), some take a classic and remixed it with others (Docs = word processing + chat + email + concurrent editing) and some are new, yet obvious, we struggle to wonder where we've heard before (access on any device).

Your old bands are grand, they still do their thing but the new bands play differently and have an energy of youth. The cloud is your new band, it delivers that buzz again, and it's all there for you if you want - let's rock out together.

(written by the oldest Cloud Sherpa who is constantly scaring the young 'uns with the buzz the cloud gives him)

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