[wp-edu] Making the Case for WP in University Setting (Chuck Scott)
The Avanti Group
chuck at avantigroup.com
Wed Jul 6 22:37:43 UTC 2011
Hi - i just wanted to jump into this thread a bit given the outlaw
suggestions of starting outside the IT/political boxes ...
while reading some of the comments i was reminded about conversation
i had in mid 90s with IBM's John Patrick ... at the time he was part
of big blue's top brass, famed internally for thinkbook innovation,
famed outside with his global speaking about all things web (e.g., he
went on to author book called Net Attitude) plus sundry other
accomplishments but his story about AlphaWorks project was what i
wanted to share here ...
if memory serves correct, at the time John was frustrated with the
internal silos (e.g., the AS400 people did not talk to the Lotus
people, etc) and as a culture they were super brainy but marketing
kerplunk* ... so in an effort to jump start relations with outside
developers, programmers and emerging web development community, he
went outside his organization, bought a domain, set up a site, and
grained massive traction ... then at some point, the powers that were
woke up, bought his domain and rolled that "skunks work project" back
into their main core as outreach effort to get products from lab to
markets but i digress ...
he and i enjoyed many strategy discussions along the way as we worked
on a couple other projects but he also shared two things that might
be relevant to this thread ->
a) last to change ... one of the things i first heard from a mentor
in 1992 and then echoed again by John later was that the last three
organizations that will be totally transformed by web technologies
will be Wall Street, Education, and Government - in that order ... i
think history is pretty much showing this to be correct ... with
Paypal, online trading and now bitcoin technology, the finance impact
is pretty clear ... with the rising cost of traditional education and
it's dubious advantage in a "just-in-time learning" globalized world,
it is only a matter of time before lynda.com's and others put a real
dent into education markets but to be continued in this education
changing dept via web but my bet = WordPress will have HUGE part ...
and with respect to gov'ts, well, Arab Spring from social media is
only a beginning but here to we see WP playing huge role in more and
more gov't agencies ...
b) plan-build-deploy vs sense-and-respond ... apparently this was a
big part of John's message to those would listen to him in that the
old days, the plan-build-deploy worked great but not so much today
given the massive changes from some many levels ... he would laugh
when he said "Chuck, by the time we implement a given set of plans,
two years would go by and the world was different then when we
started out so much better to approach new markets via
sense-and-respond method, then if it starts to take off, well then,
lock and load and make it industrial..."
anyhow just sharing as fyi for those free thinkers and doers out here
on this list ... accordingly, i echo much of the sentiment in recent
thread - just do it :>)
cordially, chuck scott
*once i enjoyed the opportunity to sit in on a high-level meeting at
Watson research whereby it was the first time the Lotus team (they
had just been acquired) was meeting with key web / media team to set
the global strategy for IBM .. there were like 27 people at the table
and 25 of them had doctorates ... i was the only outsider and part of
the reason i was invited in was because they were trying to get
better with the marketing and outreach to developers ... yet i share
this because there was one part of conversation about streaming media
servers and competitors and first to market ... during that thread we
talked about how hot mail was just picked up for mega-millions with
less than 2 years under their belt and scant revenues ... so while i
was promoting the merits of first to market moves, one of them said
to me, "Ah, gee Chuck - none of that really matters to us. Do you
know how much cash we have on our balance sheet? Any market we miss,
we can just buy our way in" to which i thought about it for a moment
and replied, "Understood. They certainly didn't teach us that one in
business school but given your cash i can see your point."
- fin -
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Me -> http://chuckscott.com
Chuck Scott - Creative Consultant
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