My 2010 New Year’s Blogolutions
The concept of the New Year’s Resolution is familiar to us all and is most typically associated with an abstinence or period of moderation whereupon we forgo those vices that we had previously enjoyed the guilty pleasures of.
Some of us will only be cutting back on jelly beans and fatty snacks, where others will perhaps be more seriously giving up bullfighting and “herbal” cigarettes. Either way, this for many of us is a period of self-enforced asceticism that is intended to purge our souls and cleanse our hearts and minds.
So what, you may ask, will the average technology hack on the street (if I may afford myself that epithet) be giving up in January 2010?
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KEY WORD BINGO:
One might reasonably argue that rather too many IT stories last year featured the words “cloud-based” or “Windows 7-compliant” etc… in the title or headline. The killer for me was a dull call centre story which I got a PR pitch for with the line, “Interestingly, this call centre solution is cloud based…” PUL-EEEEASE!
SOLUTION RESOLUTION:
OK, I’m not about to completely stop using the word “SOLUTION”, but let’s all try and reign it in a bit shall we? Even Wikipedia’s disambiguation page for SOLUTION has a mere 10 lines devoted to the term and one of those is for a Dutch progressive rock band. Enough already, right?
ADJECTIVE AVERSION:
I want this blog to remain a cutting edge portal for “conversational learnings” and ground-breaking state-of-the-art informative technology updates to inform and seamlessly update readers with next-generation-focused commentary aligned to the needs of 21st century users. OK?
BIG GUYS & LITTLE FISH:
Serious one this please chaps – I want to make sure I do cover the little fish out there at the same time as the big guns. I have always tried to do that and I hope I can keep that in mind. My only entry on Wikipedia (there I go again) is a comment related to COBRA. Not exactly something Wall Street Journal material is it? The moral is, perhaps, that niche is often good.
THERE’S (software) METHODOLOGY IN MY MADNESS
Another decade awaits and, logically, so does another decade of wrangling over the differing virtues of the most popular software application development methodologies. This time round let’s a) try and play one more directly off against the other with real world empirical examples and b) speak to more practitioners to make this even more punctual. Sound OK?
SOFTWARE’S GAY MARRIAGE
This has to a blog in its own right doesn’t it? But let’s get the whole developer-to-designer dating game once and for all sorted out. This will probably focus quite heavily on web designers talking to software developers and examine the process for rich (but ultimately still very useable and useful) Internet-based apps being produced.
Once we’ve sorted that out we can move on to business to IT-function workflow and the challenge of agreeing on, pursuing and achieving mutually aligned goal-based objectives. Yeah, right, that’ll be easy.
… AND FINALLY
I will not make fun of companies that send me puerile press releases about dull customer wins, meaningless management appointments, fabricated surveys, needless security warnings and/or favourite cheesecake recipes.
Oh alrighty then, I will if you insist.
Happy New Year everyone and an honest thank you to anyone that has read anything at all that I have written over the months. I’d like to wish everyone health, happy families and the best of luck in 2010 and beyond.