[wp-edu] Making the Case for WP in University Setting (Chuck Scott)

[The Avanti Group]

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 -


-------------------------------------------------------------
Me -> http://chuckscott.com

Chuck Scott - Creative Consultant

-------------------------------------------------------------
My Blog --> http://chuckingit.com

Chucking It - Reflecting on Life, Business,
Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Technology

-------------------------------------------------------------
My Company ---> http://avantigroup.com

The Avanti Group, Inc. - Architects of
Multimedia & Web Solutions

-------------------------------------------------------------
What's New --->

Tweeting a bit at @avantigroup

-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------