Social Software
Is social media making us dumber?
I have been a big fan of social media but lately I am starting to think that much of the information we share on the various social software tools are inaccurate, unproven, and nothing more than opinions. The problem is that anybody with a blog, a Twitter account, or a Facebook account can say anything and other people will accept it as the truth. On any given day, you can find content that is nothing more than someone’s bias opinion that is being used as facts to support opinions of others. Here are a few examples just from the last hour:
1. On Premise proves less secure than Cloud
This is simply not a fact. Yes we can find examples where this may be true, but for every case study supporting this argument, there is a case study that supports the opposite opinion.
My take: An application or service is only as secure as the implementation team makes it. I can make a system secure on-premise and off-premise. I can also implement a system with gaping security holes in my own data-center or in the cloud. It is not the infrastructure that provides the security, it is the implementation of the system on the target infrastructure that determines how secure the it is. In other words, it takes people to make systems secure. They must understand the risks and the requirements and apply the appropriate level of security.
2. Any reputable SaaS provider will provide robust PCI compliance as a default feature
What if the SaaS solution has nothing to do with credit card processing? Why would a SaaS provider spend valuable time and money to pass a PCI audit if there is no business justification?
My take: We need to be careful with generalizations. Reputable SaaS providers who need to be PCI compliant should be, but lets not making sweeping generalizations. Does Google Maps need to be PCI compliant? Didn’t think so!
3. Please Don’t Let the Cloud Ruin SaaS (blog post here)
The author equates today’s SaaS solutions on AWS to the old days of distributing software on DVDs thus shifting the responsibility of security to the customer. I have a lot of issues with this assessment. First of all, not all SaaS solutions are deployed on AWS or IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platforms. If you do your homework on cloud computing, you will know that IaaS providers can only secure the infrastructure. They do not provide application security because the customer is free to build whatever solution they want. PaaS (Platform as a Service) providers can provide a higher level of security because they are higher up on the stack and have more control over the applications.
My take: We need to understand that the particular use cases that we experience within our business or our domains do not necessarily correlate to all use cases and all domains. The author’s assertions are valid for certain use cases, but they should not be perceived as truths for all SaaS solutions. We need to be careful of generalizations.
Summary
The problem with social media is that our attention to details are now about as long as a 144 character tweet. The above mentioned tweets lead to blog posts that have some valuable insights and data points to consider. But none of them are pure facts. They are opinions based on specific use cases and experiences. However, many consumers of content shared on various social software tools are so swamped with information that they are forming opinions and making decisions based on tweets and generalizations thus adding to the hype, myths, and mass confusion that we encounter daily on various technical topics. So in the spirit of not generalizing, I believe social media can make us smarter due to the collective intelligence of many people (in some instances). But at the same time, it can make us dumber due to the collective opinions of the bias and uninformed.
*** Disclaimer: By no means am I implying that the authors of the above mentioned content are dumb or malicious. My point is that with social media, we must take what we read with a grain of salt. There is always another side of the story.
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What would life be like if they took your Social Networking tools away from you?
I left the corporate environment nine months ago to embark on a startup venture. The place that I worked at frowned upon social software, especially instant messaging. It was always a battle when we had consultants come in because they could no longer use the tools they were accustomed to using to get work done.
Today, I just saw a glimpse of what life would be like if I was stripped of my social networking tools. I just engaged in a long email conversation with an old colleague of mine who works at a place that prohibits the use of instant messaging and frowns about social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. So I just engaged in a cumbersome and fragmented email exchange that last over 3 hours. How productive is that?
What I am accustomed to now is somebody reaching out to me on Twitter, Facebook, or Skype. We usually have an initial exchange and if the conversation can’t be completed in a few short exchanges I typically switch to instant messaging (if the initial contact did not already start there). If it requires a phone call I pop my head set on and do a Skype call. Well, my colleague who is still in the corporate setting which discourages instant messaging began a conversation via email. Some 24 emails later, we are almost set to meet for lunch in a few weeks. We have to continue the conversation tomorrow to confirm a location and time. When I look at my email account in Gmail, I see a thread with (24) in parenthesis. As I scroll down my inbox, the next biggest thread I see is (10) which took course over several days with a potential client of mine. Twenty four emails that spanned over three hours and we are not done yet! We still have to pick the location to have lunch. And after we figure that out, the email thread will probably be forwarded to another handful of colleagues who will likely start a new thread with me. This conversation was tailor made for instant messaging and/or Facebook!
Here is how a typical conversation would play out when I communicate with colleagues who are free to use social networking tools.
A colleague reaches out to me on Skype, Twitter, or Facebook and says “Haven’t heard from you in several months, what are you up to?”. I would reply “Working away at my startup!”. If we started the chat on Skype we would just continue a short conversation and eventually settle on a lunch meeting in a matter of a few minutes. If the conversation started on Twitter, we would probably move it to Skype or Facebook after a few exchanges. If the conversation was not confidential, Facebook would be the perfect place. Then all of my other colleagues could join in at any point of the conversation and there would be no need to forward a 24 thread email to five or six other people. The entire collaborative event would take place in one area.
I know this is a trivial scenario, but these are the same tools my company depends on to communicate amongst ourselves. We all work remotely and leverage Skype to communicate. We chat constantly throughout the day and hold conference calls on Skype, we share documents on Google Docs, and we use SMS when we are on the go. We don’t use email too much and we only use the phone when we don’t have access to Skype. Most of our emails come from people who have not made the move to social software. I have a few consultants working for me on specific strategic initiatives. The Statement of Work (SOW) for these engagements specifically called out the requirement that the consultant is requried to use Skype as the main tool for collaborating with us.
So what would your life be like if you were stripped of your social networking tools? Could you go back to the old ways of doing things? How much productivity would you lose? I would love to hear your thoughts! I’ll leave you with a nice presentation I about Social Software I found on Slideshare (another great social software tool)!
Social Networking: Accelerate the Learning Curve
Every day the I find myself amazed at the amount of information that I can obtain and the speed at which I can learn about technology by leveraging social software. By using a variety of tools, I can tap into a network of several hundred individuals that I am directly connected to. Each of them have their personal networks at their disposal resulting in a viral network of millions of resources that I can tap into for knowledge sharing.
Over the last decade I have worked on three major enterprise technology initiatives that required extensive research on my part. One of the major differences in my approach is directly related to the size of my social network at the time of the project. The better my social network was, the easier I obtained information and the quicker I came up to speed in the technology.
Project 1 – Enterprise Portal Implementation
This project took place in 2001. At that time my network consisted only of current and former employees from companies that I have worked for and from vendors that I had worked with. Much of my research was obtained from Google Searches, books and trade magazines, conferences, and paid research like Gartner. The disadvantages of this strategy is that it is a pull strategy where I had to know what to search for. Another disadvantage is that most of the information that I was able to obtain was vendor marketing material and very high level in nature. It took a tremendous amount of time on my part to get up to speed and most of the “real” learning occurred after the product was purchased. In other words, we learned a lot the hard way when things didn’t work as advertised. I did not have any people in my network that had experience with this technology so I was on my own.
Project 2 – SOA & BPM
This project took place in 2005. By then I was subscribing to blogs, digging into wikis, and using social bookmarking tools like Digg and Del.icio.us in addition to the methods of the past. A few months into the project I started blogging which is when my social network took off. All of the sudden I was collaborating with practitioners all over the world. Now the vendors could not hide behind the marketing slides because I was able to access real world information on how these technologies really worked (or didn’t work). I was also able to collaborate with technical people within consulting firms, software companies, and within businesses leveraging these technologies who could answer deep technical questions in my language. This collaboration happened near real time without having to schedule meetings two weeks out. Unfortunately, my company did not allow us to use social networking platforms, chat, teleconferencing and other tools so much of the communications occurred in forums, blog comments, emails, etc. But the ability to learn from practitioners allowed me to be much more knowledgeable about the technology than I was in the previous project. This was a shift away from pull technology where I had to know what to search for. Now I could listen to conversations and discover things to research further.
Project 3 – Cloud Computing
This project is taking place now. In addition, I am now in a startup and in charge of all technology which means I can use any and all social software at my disposal. I live on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and use Skype, DimDim, and GTalk to communicate real time with many people within or new to my network. Over the past few weeks I have started following numerous cloud and security specialists and some of them are following me. Between my blogs about clouds and my tweets which are questions or links to proposed architectural diagrams, I am brainstorming real time with experts in various areas of expertise. Although my startup consists of only three people at this time, in reality I am working with dozens of people in a collaborative fashion. When I want to know something about a product or tool I talk directly to CTOs, Product Managers, and architects and bypass the entire marketing and sales discussions. I estimate that the amount of knowledge I have acquired in the last 2 months is equivalent of what I learned in 6 months with limited access to social software on my SOA/BPM project and 12 months on my Enterprise Portal project where I did not use any social software. Now my research is more of a push than a pull. I fill my Google reader with searches of key words and phrases on Twitter, I follow numerous blogs from both practitioners and technical blogs from creators of the vendor products. I follow various industry analysts and listen to them on a daily basis as they discuss emerging trends and practitioner interviews in real time. It is like thousands of people are having discussions and I am able to observe and participate in all of them!
Is not just the tools, it’s the network
The tools play a role in the speed at which you can acquire information. The more methods of acquiring knowledge, the better. And chat, video conferencing, and the like provide for richer and more complete conversations in real time. But the key differentiator is the size and quality of the network. My network has grown substantially over the years and I have become a known entity on the web. I now have direct access to some of the greatest minds in the industry, something I was never privileged to before.
If you don’t have a valuable network, you are reinventing the wheel!
So what I have learned form this experience is that without a valuable network, I was forced to discover the best practices of the portal technology by trial and error. Was I successful? Yes. Did it take too long and cost more than I thought it would? Definitely! We learned may things the hard way. This is what I see happening with SOA, BPM, and Cloud Computing. IT shops that ban social software are relying too much on their vendors and trade shows to teach them about these technologies. They are missing out on unbiased information on best practices and missing the opportunity to collaborate with experts. I remember from my corporate life the sometimes hostile resentment to social networking tools. Now that I am free from the tight controls of corporate America, I feel sorry for those colleagues who are being handicapped by corporate constraints.
I know it’s the end of the year and some corporations have some cash to spend before they close out the books for the year. My recommendation is to use this cash to invest in collaboration technologies so that the staff can increase both the speed and depth of their knowledge acquisition.
Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?
A little off topic today.
Each evening I help my kids with their homework. They are both very capable with computers. My daughter has been blogging about her pets since she was 8 (she is 10 now). She creates blog entries complete with multi media with no assistance from me. Other than creating the Blogger template for her, all of the work is her own. My son is the wizard of Wikipedia which he discovered on his own a few years back. The fact that my kids are computer savvy gives them a huge advantage when it comes to learning.
For example, my son has a weekly technology project where he must report on how certain technologies work. Like me, he is fascinated by how things are manufactured. So each week we pick an item that we are familiar with and he Google’s it. Then we find a video on the manufacturing process like the one below about how bubble gum is made.
This is so much more effective than how I had to learn. I was forced to use either an outdated encyclopedia that my parents purchased or I had to go to the town library. Neither of these experiences offered rich media options. I often had to perform a ton of reserach to get the desired knowledge in order to write my papers. My son and I are able to knock these weekly assignments out in a half hour. At the same time he gets to see the actual manufacturing process in the video which enhances the learning experience. Then he notices similar videos and starts learning how marbles are manufactured.
It is so obvious to me that this generation can consume large amounts of pertinent information in short periods of time. My kids are very up to speed on the current election process and even know who the Governor of Florida is. I am not sure I knew who the governor of NY was when I grew up there in high school. This is the beauty of Web 2.0 and Internet technologies. The whole ranking, tagging, and social networking processes that are taking place are allowing my kids to learn about the world around them.
Here is another great example. My daughter gets assigned a science project. So I am prepared to carve out numerous hours each night to help her get this done. Instead, I see here collaborating with classmates on Google Talk and exchanging links and images. She would draft a story board on paper, scan it, and send it to her classmate. I was floored. She completed the entire project without my help using free collaboration technology on the web. And she’s 10 years old! So I ask myself. Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
Will IT shops shrink in the near future?
This is a question I have been asking myself lately as I look at trends in technology. There are two major areas that lead me to think that IT shops for non-technology companies (banks, retailers, insurance, manufacturing, etc.) will continue a trend of reducing headcount over the next 5-10 years. The first is cloud computing and specifically, Platform as a Service (PaaS).
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| From SOA Slides |
You can see from this diagram I created, PaaS takes cloud computing to the next level. Software as a Service (SaaS) are web based applications hosted at a software providers site. PaaS goes one step further and allows a company to run its infrastructure at an infrastructure provider’s site. The leaders in this space are Force.com, Amazon’s S3, and Google’s App Engine. Currently PaaS is far from being mature as witnessed by the recent outages for each of these vendors. Many companies are starting to go the PaaS route with non mission critical applications. Over the next few years, I expect to see these platforms stabilize which will lead to a large shift in mission critical applications moving to the cloud.
So what does this mean to IT shops where technology is not their core competency? As companies move their infrastructure to the cloud, they shift a lot of the work in the areas of system administration and business continuity/disaster recovery to the provider. There will still have to be somebody within the company who is responsible for those areas but the size of these teams will continue to shrink as more systems move to the cloud. As SaaS applications in the areas of ERP, CRM, financial systems and even non business applications like application servers, BPMS and SOA tools move to the cloud, there will be a decreasing need for third party software administration for patches, upgrades, installations, etc. There will also be less development and more integration. This movement starts to commoditize development which makes outsourcing more prevalent. When I add all of these things up, I start to see a world where IT shops are putting more of an emphasis on business SMEs (subject matter experts), architects, and system integrators and a lot less emphasis on custom development and systems administration and network engineers. Before you go nuts, I am not saying that IT shops won’t need these skills. I am saying that they won’t need as many people to fulfill these roles.
The second area that leads me to believe that IT shops for non-technology companies will get smaller is all of the advancements in telecommunications and social networking. Bandwidth keeps getting faster and cheaper. Within the next five years, streaming media will not be such a burden on corporate intranets. Add to that the plethora of social software that is available on the web and we will start seeing a huge shift towards a mobilized workforce. It’s already happening in large companies like IBM. As companies move more work to remote employees and as software becomes more of a commodity, companies might take the opportunity to fight back against rising health care costs and start outsourcing more of this type of work. That does not mean they are going to offshore everything, but they might use a combination of onshore and offshore outsourcing. I have already run across a company in the Tampa Bay area that has gone down this route. They are a bottling company who retains a very small IT shop made up of senior management, a handful of business SMEs, an architecture team, and a PMO. The IT management team works extremely close with the other executives within the company to participate in planning and strategy. All requests for projects come through this C-Level team for approval and funding. Once a project gets approved, it is put out to bid. All of the maintenance and support is off loaded to other firms as well. There is virtually no internal IT staff beyond management and architecture in this firm. It works well for them. I have not talked with them in a few years but I am sure they are looking at PaaS next.
One thing I am not saying here is that these technologies will eliminate jobs. In fact, I see more jobs being created because embracing technology is allowing companies to gain a competitive advantage on the competition who is slow to change. What I do think will happen is that many IT jobs will shift out of the traditional IT shops and move to outsourcing firms and to PaaS providers. The PaaS providers that survive will have multiple facilities across the world. These facilities will have huge data centers with armies of IT people. They will also invest heavily in innovation initiatives as they try to reduce their dependency on electricity and provide a cheaper, greener, and more reliable platform. The picture below shows a Google data center in Oregon. They are leveraging cheap land in areas with water and wind power so they can generate as much of their own energy as possible.
I know that this post may anger some and cause others to think I have lost my mind. I am simply asking some questions and trying to understand where all of this is heading. I have always been fascinated with the evolution of IT and try to understand trends before I get taken by surprise. I remember trying to grasp what the impact of PCs would be when I was a mainframe developer and I remember trying to figure out how the Internet would change our world forever. I knew both of those technologies would change things but not to the level that they have. I think cloud computing, advancements in telecommunications, and social software will combine to create changes even bigger then anything that we have seen in the past.
Why must we still drive to work?
I know the answer to this question. Because we always have. Can we put aside our age old habits of being herded into corporate offices like cattle to sit in cubes (I call them coffins) and try to find some piece and quiet so we can create that next document, model the next design, code the next service, or develop the next prototype? Speaking of old habits, why must our two main sources of collaboration be meetings and email? Many meetings are either about status or some person needs some information to solve a problem and invites everybody under the sun to help. Most of these types of meetings add value to very few people in the meeting at the expense of the others. Isn’t it time for a change? As for email, nobody has a better story about ditching email then IBM’s Luis Suarez.
Here are a few reasons why I feel that I am much more productive working remotely then at the office:
- Fewer distractions
- Fewer meetings
- More tools
- More accountability
- No hour lunches
- Better work/life balance
Let’s discuss each one of these points in more detail:
Fewer Distractions
At the office, people are more willing to interrupt you because they can easily just walk up and ask you a question since they “know where you live”. Just walking to get a cup of coffee can turn into a handful of hallway conversations, some work related, some not. When working remotely, people tend to reach out to you only after they have tried to actually find answers to their questions as opposed to just bugging the expert. Don’t get me wrong, I love helping my fellow worker, but sometimes it is too easy to ask before people actually think.
Fewer Meetings
Less meetings does not equate to less collaboration. It means less scheduled interruptions. Now some meetings are necessary, but most meetings can be avoided if people were allowed to use collaboration tools to ask and answer questions. Instead of holding numerous meetings, I prefer to have ongoing conversations via some messaging tool (IM, chat, Twitter, etc.). If I really need to focus on a task I can mark myself as away. There are many interesting and free tools that I have been experimenting with that have virtual white boards, video conferencing, and chat all integrated into one platform. Google Groups is another way to set up a collaboration area for discussion threads, document sharing, and archiving.
More tools
Many corporations see tools like instant messaging, chat, Twitter, blogs, wikis and others as a security threat and block them. This is almost comical since everyone simply uses their phones to access these tools anyways. Wouldn’t people be more productive using these tools on their computer then on their phone? (See my article called Security or Insecurity?) When you work remotely, you can use the tools of your choice to collaborate. Even if I was forced to use a locked down corporate laptop at home, I would fire up my own PC to get access to the tools I need to do my job.
More accountability
Some may disagree with me on this one. I believe that most worthy employees feel more obligated to focus and deliver because of the perception by management that working remotely allows people to screw off. I know that whenever I telecommuted, I sent my boss an email telling him what I expected to deliver and followed it with updates at the end of the day on what I accomplished. I felt privileged every time I worked from home and felt obligated to prove to management that I was providing value remotely.
No hour lunches
For me personally, a lunch break while working remotely, is the time it takes to get up from my desk, make a sandwich, and return to my desk (5 minutes). A lunch break at work is an escape from the daily grind at the office and usually takes an hour between the drive, ordering, getting served, getting the check, and driving back.
Better work/life balance
When I used to drive into the office every day, I would wake up at 6 to 6:30, catch up on my daily reading, and leave by 7-7:15am. Forty-five minutes and $10 of gas later, I would be at my desk by 8am. Typically I worked until 6-6:30pm and then spent another forty-five minutes and $10 in gas to get home. Now it is after 7pm. I have missed all of the kids sporting events and now its time to do help them with homework. Dinner fits somewhere in between and before you know it is after 9pm and you still have work to do before tomorrow. The cycle continues day in day out.
Now let’s look at working remotely. I wake up around 7am. Catch up on my news and technology reading and start working by 8am. I work straight through until 6pm and am able to catch my kids soccer practice if I chose. We can get their homework done earlier, eat at a decent time, and still have time to play a game of Skip-O, tile rummy, or watch the Discovery Channel. Then, if I need to do more work after they go to bed, I am relaxed and feel like I am actually part of the family and not just part of their daily schedule. I also have a few more green backs in my pocket because I am not putting $75 in my tank every three days. Life is good!
Yes it can be done!
CIO.com is running a 3-part series on how a company named Chorus transformed their workforce to be entirely remote. If you look at the typical IT shop today, they are all leveraging some form of outsourcing, whether it is onshore, offshore, or both. In either case, there are a number of workers working remotely from some location other then where the IT shop is based. The irony is that these teams in other countries or in consulting firms within the states are all leveraging several of the tools that I mentioned above to effectively collaborate amongst themselves. I worked on a project recently where the consulting company had a few people onsite, some in Texas, Seattle, and Atlanta, and an offshore team in Macedonia. They were all productive from remote places across the globe. But mysteriously, telecommuting was frowned upon by the corporate culture. Don’t figure! What message does that send to the employees of the company? Is it this message…”we trust our vendors to be professionals remotely, but not our own people….”?
Barriers for companies to embrace a remote environment
Having a handful of people working remotely is not a big deal. Mobilizing your workforce is. Part 2 and Part 3 of the CIO.com story about Chorus talks about the planning and the transition that they went through. Here are some of the barriers that I see that prevents companies from embracing remote work.
- Perception and resistance to change
- Requires capital and must be a priority project
- Needs business justification
- Requires good management and accountability
Perception/Resistance
Many people perceive that their employees just won’t be productive away from the watchful eyes of their managers. For some people this may be true. Then again, why are you paying people that you can’t trust? Other people just fear change or won’t risk taking on any challenging project.
Capital and Priority
Like any other enterprise initiative, a project of this magnitude requires executive level support, a well thought out strategy and project plan, capital funds, and a high enough priority that the milestones can be achieved. Oh, and don’t forget to address the human side of change.
Business Justification
If it is not good for the bottom line, then don’t bother. That goes for any project these days. Whether the savings is in reduced leases, power consumption, reduced employee turnover, or whatever, you should never ask for capital without the appropriate justification. While you are at it, don’t forget to collect metrics to show management at a later date that the investment was worth it.
Good Management and Accountability
To pull this off, you must work with human resources and put together a policy that clearly set expectations. These guidelines, often part of the employee handbook, should be signed by each person who will be working remotely. But the real key is management. If your management is not doing a good job of making their staff accountable today, good luck trying to make them accountable at home. Maybe the first question to ask is do I have the right management in place to pull this off?
And finally, once a company establishes a remote work force, here are some other advantages that they have.
- Hiring – no longer constrained to local markets
- Reduced travel expenses
- Opportunity to sell real estate assets
Hiring
I realized through my recent experiments with social networking that the recruitment world is much bigger then the local market leads you to believe. With a remote force, I can hire people anywhere in the country and even in the world if I have the proper controls in place. This gives me access to the top talent in the world, not just the top talent in my city. Think about that!
Reduced Travel
A lot of travel is required to hold various meetings with teams that are dispersed across offices. With the proper collaboration tools including video conferencing, virtual whiteboards, and integrated voice/chat, many of these meetings can be performed online. There will still be times where it is critical to have face to face time, but many meetings can be held more cost effective via the Web.
Sell real estate
IBM did this a few years back. Here is a great article from their web site that discusses the benefits of a remote workforce. If a huge company like IBM can pull this off, then there is no reason why any other company cannot. Here are the benefits that IBM gets from mobilizing their workforce.
Productivity. Outfitting employees with mobile technology makes your business more productive because it enables employees to work from home, in transit and while visiting customers, business partners and satellite offices.
Recruitment. The ability to hire the best talent regardless of where they live can give you a leg up on competitors that still rely on a local workforce. And because most potential recruits perceive telecommuting as a benefit, this can provide a considerable advantage to your business by allowing you to fill jobs more quickly. In addition, the business becomes more efficient because lower turnover means less time spent training new employees.
Real-estate savings. With fewer people in the office, real estate expenditures and associated energy costs can potentially be reduced.
Remote computing can also help you avoid the disruption of a major move during a crucial time of growth when the business needs to focus on quality execution. A flexible workforce, often associated with the teleworking model, can also accommodate short-term spikes in business. This enables your business to add office space more judiciously rather than simply reacting to short-term demands.
Business continuity. You never know what’s going to keep your employees away from the office: inclement weather, flu or even traffic tie-ups. When employees have remote access to IT systems, they can continue working no matter what happens in or around your facility.
So what do you think? Is the cost of gas and the improvements in social software making mobile commuting more of a reality then a fantasy? Is your company thinking about this now? I’d love to hear your story.
Upgrade your career with social software
I want to share with you my personal experience with social software and how it changed my career for the better.
What is social software?
Social software is a subset of Web 2.0 that allows people to collaborate with other people over the web. Examples of social software are blogs, wikis, social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.), instant messaging, chat, and a whole host of dynamic content sharing tools like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, and many others.
My Professional life before social software
Before I entered the social networking scene, a had a very small network. I had been at the same company since 1995 and did not do a good job of networking with people from previous jobs. In reality, I was basically an unknown entity outside of the walls of the building I worked in. Sure a few vendors and a few consulting firms knew me, but they knew me as a customer only. Over the years I felt the need to pursue opportunities elsewhere to broaden my experience from both a technology and business standpoint. The problem was, I didn’t have a network. The only people who knew about my talents where people I worked with and I couldn’t let them know I was looking. So for the past five years I applied for job after job through the old channels (job boards, classifieds, etc.). Being on the hiring side of table for so many years, I knew that my chances of my resume getting through HR were as good as hitting the lottery. So I started a journey of improving my credentials by enrolling in back to back Masters programs (Masters in IT and MBA). This made me a highly educated IT professional with no network.
Life after social networking
About a year and a half ago, I started blogging. I started out under a nickname to hide my identity so I could speak my mind without getting myself in trouble, hence the name MadGreek. I quickly found out that blogging provided a way for me to form a great network which is what my career needed. At the time I probably had 15-20 LinkedIn contacts which meant I was not getting any value from LinkedIn (I now have about 240). As I invested more of my personal time blogging, I started collaborating with talented architects, industry analysts, and various other technical IT folks from around the world.
Then I discovered Twitter. I had messed with Twitter for a short while a year ago and didn’t see the value. Earlier this year my network, which is several hundred people now, were talking a lot about Twitter. So I tried it again. This time I had a great network to follow on Twitter. So I started following architects, analysts, bloggers, and various interesting people and people started following me. At the same time I started learning so much about IT trends and technologies that my company had no idea about. Through Twitter, I landed several public appearances. I have done podcasts, web interviews, presentations at Gartner and Zapthink events, you name it. All of the sudden, I became a known entity. That was my missing link.
Then I took the big step!
Then I did the unthinkable. I resigned from my job of 13 years even though I did not have a job to go to. Am I nuts? Not really. By reaching out to quality people in my network, I have started discussions about job opportunities with 5 different companies in the last two weeks. I get emails constantly from people in my network with opportunities like VP of architecture, SOA lead practitioner, enterprise architect, and various others. Unfortunately, many of these jobs are not in Florida and require me to move, but some are consulting and others are virtual. I don’t even look at the job boards anymore because it is a total waste of time!
In the driver’s seat
So now I am sitting in the driver’s seat. I have successfully marketed my own personal brand through blogging and public appearances. I know a lot of people in the industry who know a lot of important people. I can now choose the best possible opportunity instead of grabbing the first available job that I can find. I can choose to do something that I have a lot of passion and energy for which is research technology and emerging trends and help people with their struggles in delivering enterprise initiatives. All of this is possible because of the power of social networking. My advice to those of you who dread going to your job each day is get out there and start socializing. Stay clear of religion and politics, respect people’s opinions, and enjoy the experience. Remember, recruiters can Google your name once you engage on the web.
It’s not just for personal benefit
But social software also provides great benefits for corporations. The last two years I initiated and led a large SOA/BPM effort. These same tools that provided all of the personal benefits I mentioned above, also provided an incredible amount of value to our SOA project. Much of our research came from blogs and wikis. When I was preparing the RFP for the SOA stack, Eric Roch posted this gem. Over time I started collaborating more and more with sharp SOA experts like Eric, the guys from Zapthink, Todd Biske, Brenda Michelson, and many others. We shared real life stories about what has and hasn’t worked on SOA projects, what things to think about, what to do and not to do, who the experts are on certain topics, etc. You don’t get these types of conversations talking to vendors. They only tell you the good stuff and hide the scary stuff. I truly believe that if it was not for social software, our SOA initiative would not have been half of the success that it is. Now when people from my company attend web casts or conferences on SOA or BPM, they come away saying, “We already know all of that”.
Collaborate or Die
In conclusion, those companies or individuals who shy away from social software will eventually render themselves irrelevant. Technology and business is changing so fast that if you don’t get “out there” you will be lost in the ways of yesterday, and become as relevant as a Y2K developer. So get out there, build a network, learn from others, share your experiences so we can learn from you and revitalize your career!
