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On March 16, 2010, I will be speaking
at the Colorado
Chapter of the Society of Information Management.
New Normal - Information Technology
Re-invention
Steve Wille, Author Colorful Leadership
 Some
people still remember when office technology was a Dictaphone,
telephone, and calculator on every desk. That was a long time ago,
prehistoric for most of today's workforce. Some people remember the day
when personal computers showed up on desktops, with word processing
eliminating dictation and the jobs of typists. Some people remember when
email replace paper mail, along with the jobs of people who moved paper
from place to place in the office. That was a long time ago, back in the
nineteen-hundreds.
Recently, a programmer on my staff retired. He had
been in the business since 1956 and had worked on every generation of
mainframe computer. The only reason he retired was because we unplugged
the mainframe and he had nothing to do. He was the last person using it.
Fifty years ago, it seemed like technology we moving fast, but compared
today, it moved at a leisurely human pace. During the dot.com.boom
and dot.bust we said technology was moving in dog years. That was
ten years ago. Today, information technology is moving in prairie dog
years. We don't yet know what this means for the corporate technologist,
but if we don't keep up we will be retiring a whole lot sooner than the
man whose mainframe skills paid the bills for fifty-four years.
Things have changed and they are not going back.
The economic crash drove productivity up because corporate survival
required efficiency. Technology accelerated the change and made it
permanent. We need to adjust to the new reality.
- States cannot collect sales tax because local
retailers are gone, replaced by on-line ordering.
- Newspapers and magazines are barely surviving
because advertising is down, replaced by more efficient ways to get
the word out.
- People at work are gone, replaced by better
and faster technology. Maybe your old job is gone, too.
- Big iron computers are gone, replaced by
things we cannot even understand or control, like cloud computing.
Technology makes business run faster at less cost
with better customer service. Think you can't keep up? Think you can’t
move faster? Think again!
Steve Wille, author of
Colorful Leadership,
will lead us on a journey through the change of how it used to be, how
it is, and how it will be. Technology managers have to change with the
times because our product had fundamentally changed, and the people
working on our projects are changing.
Steve is a senior applications manager at
Great-West Life and Annuity. He has over 25 years experience in
corporate information technology management. His book, Colorful
Leadership, focuses on management issues facing technologists. Steve
has an MBA from Regis University and a BSBA from the University of
Denver. He is also a Project Management Professional (PMP).
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