The IT Skeptic - social

Social media discourse degenerates

skeptic — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 09:29:31 +0000

Some time ago, I talked about how all social channels seem to to generate overtime as the core enthusiasts who gave them their and national life lose their energy and move on to other projects, and the channel is taken over by the great unwashed masses. More and more people move into the channel who don't have the expertise nor the commitment to the ideals to maintain the quality of the channel; nor frankly the intelligence in a lot of cases to be able to contribute constructively.

Somebody - and I hasten to add not me - coined the term England's Law for this principle: "all social channels degenerate". So I want to slightly elaborate that initial statement into are more specific England's Law v2: the discourse in all social media communities degenerates into spam and derp.

The IT Liberation Movement - an IT Renaissance

skeptic — Tue, 26 May 2015 11:21:24 +0000

[Update: At the DOES15 conference, I think George Spafford finally nailed the name of this for me: an IT Renaissance ]

who is BoothMagnet?

skeptic — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 21:36:34 +0000

England's Law: all social media channels degenerate into babble. #PINK14 twitter stream is following the rule. BoothMagnet is brilliant satire of the vendor marketing social media mavens. Sadly it is achieving that satire by trashing the twitter stream even more than the vendors are (marginally).

In service support, changing the channel changes little

skeptic — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 23:22:26 +0000

I'm all for improving the support channels, and social media can do that. But don't confuse that with any fundamental change in how we do - and ought to do - service support.

Service desks and spontaneous user combustion

skeptic — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 23:24:56 +0000

There is much talk about users spontaneously creating their own communities for mutual technical support. This phenomenon of spontaneous user support is presented as a threat to IT. We're told that if we don't do something to engage these communities then they will render IT redundant. The absurdity of this shouldn't need explanation but apparently it does. I'll deal with that separately (I started here). Never mind the absurdity of the predicted consequences, does it ever happen?

What will affect the service desk over the next three years

skeptic — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 00:20:20 +0000

Malcolm Fry asked me this question for his Session 602 The Service Desk: Past, Present & Future at the upcoming HDI conference in the USA. His question reminded me that I have been off in the philosophical never-never for too long. It is high time I got back to the bread-and-butter folks at the pointy front end of IT: the service desk team. So here are my thoughts on Malcolm's excellent question: What will affect the service desk over the next three years? Tweet this.
[Updated 25/2/13: added Bring Your own App and internal social media]

On collaboration and debate

skeptic — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 23:30:23 +0000

Social media has taken collaboration to new levels of connectivity over distance and inter-connectedness of specialists. We are creating whole, new online business communities thinking and working together. Business collaboration isn't some kumbaya love-fest. Tweet this. Collaboration is not going to reconcile east and west or spawn a better society. Collaboration facilitates debate and grows ideas.

The anti-email crowd is shooting the messenger. Email is lovely

skeptic — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 23:01:35 +0000

If I see one more rant about "email is dead" or "let's replace email" I'm gonna throw up. Email is great. There's a reason it is so wildly successful and widely adopted.

User self-help - a skeptical view

skeptic — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:37:47 +0000

Continuing our debate about social media it occurred to me what a load of bollocks this idea is that users are going to support each other without a service desk.

Transformational technologies are a small view

skeptic — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:40:44 +0000

It seems to me that new technologies such as cloud, social media, or mobile personal computing, are seen as much more transformational by some of us in IT than they really are. I suspect that is because of our industry's fixation with technology at the cost of people and process.

Social ITSM - a skeptical view

skeptic — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 04:58:17 +0000

The hype around social media is reaching the usual almost religious fervour typical of our industry when faced with anything novel. We run shrieking into the street like kids chasing a noisy carnival parade. Social media is a distraction to our day job, just like Cloud. Social media is a communication channel, and not a very good one. Get over it.

We need a movement

skeptic — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 04:33:33 +0000

"What if..." "What if..." So many great minds, and a few not-so-great ones, are trying to "solve" ITSM right now. It's a geek thing. It's a man thing.

Five things to remember about social media titles

skeptic — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:06:01 +0000

When writing the title to a blog post or a tweet or other social media where you want to grab an audience, always remember:

The first word must be a number and the second a noun.
Odd numbers work better than even numbers.
Compose the rest of the title of buzzwords like "social media".
Any formula for content gets tired after a while.