Much of what Tom saw about IT in the publishing business, I have seen in
my own work environment (a county government agency).
One such example: The IT department is proud of the fact that they
have convinced school age section of our agency to abandon it's Mac for
Windows machines. They say it will be easier if they (the students)
don't have to to learn a new OS when they come to the adult program. I
work in the adult program and have never had a client who had that
problem. (I've been working with Adults & computers for over 12 years -
longer than anyone has been working in our IT dept.)
I personally believe that person should know the basics of at least two
OS. Much of it carries over from one to the other.
Steve
t.piwowar wrote:
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.
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