I’m taking a break from work at the moment. It’s been a long time coming, and something I should have done at least 6 months ago. That was the original plan, but work commitments to a client project took longer than expected, for a variety of reasons. The reason for… Read More
My morning commute consists of a 30km bicycle ride. This gives me time to plan my day, and to muse on anything that happens to be running through my brain. Today I was thinking about sunglasses, and quality. You see, I have a pair of Rudy Project sunglasses for the… Read More
I’ve been reading a few books simultaneously lately, and there’s a common theme that I’ve long believed in, but it’s gratifying that it’s a) been noticed by other people, and b) was noticed a long time ago: companies are run by people. It’s a central theme in Porter’s Competitive Strategy.… Read More
So you’ve just signed another check for a couple of million dollars of storage hardware. Just what is everyone keeping on there? If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a PC chock full of old email, digital photos, your mp3 collection, a bunch of old shell scripts, stock photos for… Read More
Over the years, I’ve had some frustrating times at work due to the… shortcomings… of some people who purport to be IT professionals. Once upon a time, a project team was in a dither about a ‘performance problem’ with the storage their application/system was using. I was working in the… Read More
Ok, so you’re a business person who wants to fix the broken IT in your company. This is an admirable goal indeed, and one worth pursuing, however, before you get stuck in, there are a couple of things you need to know: It’s hard. It’s really hard. If it was… Read More
Wired has an interesting article about the way Apple is run by Steve Jobs. They assert that Apple ‘got everything right by doing everything wrong’. They discuss how Apple is doing very well commercially, even though the company is run in a way that is counter to a lot of… Read More
Today I had a meeting that involved talking to someone on the other end of a conference phone. The phone was one of those triangular lumps that live on the meeting room table like a three limbed starfish that has branched out into teleconferencing. One of the problems with teleconferencing… Read More
You can learn a lot about a company by its bathrooms. Since I’m male, I’ve only been privy to the workings of the male bathrooms at the companies I’ve worked at. Based on informal polling of my friends and colleagues, the men’s room is probably worse than the ladies’, so… Read More
I’ve just read an article from Harvard Business Review called Mastering the Three Worlds of Information Technology. I’m not familiar with Andrew McAfee’s work, but according to his biography he has a background in mechanical engineering and management. I’m not sure what level of involvement he has had with implementing… Read More
