On May 25, 2009, at 6:08 PM, Jeff Wright wrote:
Now you're just making things up.
Of course, because I specialize in working with the publishing
industry, by WFB rules I'm disqualified.
Perhaps a new slogan for M$: only the ignorant need apply.
Several newspapers and magazines that are "household names" are/were
my clients. I observed and assisted with their move to computerized
production. In the early days I watched their existing staff take to
the new technology with great enthusiasm. Getting the computer part
right was not hard, they were buying Macintoshes and developing
systems for themselves. Since they knew the business they knew what
needed to be done and they did it. It was a golden age.
Then I watched management get sold on the idea that IT
"professionals" could do the job so much better. The publishing
professionals were told to butt out. The IT "professionals" announced
that Macs were "toys" and that real IT was done with PCs. I started
getting calls from the publishing professionals screaming for help.
The IT "professionals" were tossing out stuff that worked while
putting in stuff that required huge effort to use. The IT "pros" even
started turning away advertisers who were sending them Mac files.
Their new systems would not work with "nonstandard files" and, of
course, it was not PC style to interoperate.
Productivity dropped, costs rose. The IT "pros" convinced management
that the problem was all those publishing people on the staff.
Management started cutting the people who knew about publishing and
the ranks of the IT "pros" swelled because it was a lot of work to
maintain their crummy IT systems. Management was terrified that
everything could quickly collapse if the IT beast was not constantly
fed. On the other hand forcing a popular columnist to retire early
would not have such an instantly terrifying impact. So they kept
trimming and trimming and trimming -- the soul of their enterprise
gradually vanished.
Then the web came along and the IT "pros" had an even easier time
convincing management that it was all about computers. They claimed
that everything would be automated. They told management that it was
all about data entry and coding everything in XML. Then computers
would then rewrite the data into multiple streams. Doing hardly any
work the computers would produce a newspaper, a news magazine,
specialized newsletters, and websites. Huge profits would roll in and
nobody would be the wiser.
There was only one problem: the IT "professionals" did not know what
the hell they were talking about.
Management now reaps the whirlwind. Conveniently they blame the
economy. Bad managers always do.
*************************************************************************
** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy **
** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ **
*************************************************************************
