The Fun of Social Networking

So all of these social networking sites are tons of fun: Myspace, Facebook, Plaxo, Ning and on and on. Yup, they're fun. That's about it. They're not useful, in a business sense. At least not yet. Some of these are starting to pop up as a useful business tool, but I don't think it has happened yet. The first one that creates something that can be used for businesses, will really be onto something. It would almost be a phonebook of potential customers and partners. For instance, you could see that a current business associate has a relationship with someone who has a skill that your company requires.

These sites aren't at this point yet, but I'm thinking they will be someday. Where that sort of thing can be as mainstream as using the phonebook or even using google, as a more modern-day reference.

Outsourcing

Outsourcing is kind of the dirty word in Information Technology (IT). At my last job, I have been around when there was some outsourcing talk. The whole situation was kind of funny, actually. Everyone was hollering and screaming that they didn't want it, because they thought they were going to lose their job. The best part was, they were just hiring the contractors to do the "dirty" work: installing new PC's and removing the old ones. This was the same work that no one else wanted to do. The contractors did come in for a little bit, and no one else lost their jobs.

Outsourcing isn't as bad as people think. A lot of times outsourcing winds up opening new jobs and opportunities. And a lot of times it gets rid of jobs that people don't want to do.

I have also been on the flip side, though. When I have to call technical support from a company that has outsourced their work. There can definitely be some communication "problems" that can make it difficult. I guess you win some, you lose some.

Ooops! This part of the class has kind of fallen by the wayside for me. Been doing all of the other assignments, and haven't posted here. I think this is the perfect week to get back into the habit. I kind of laugh when MIS/ITEC classes start talking about SDLC and programming approaches. From my experiences, there is a real division in the workforce about how this is implemented. There are the project manager/supervisor types that "invade" MIS, and want everything to be super structured and make everything look pretty. Then there are the hardcore programmers who just want to be left alone so they can code for 16 hours a day.

While I definitely fall into the latter group, I try to keep everyone happy. The organization is necessary, but I have seen times where project managers drag down things. The real problem is the project managers don't know enough about the technical aspect, and the technical people don't know enough about the "project management" side. So you kind of get stonewalled in a meeting trying to explain the gritty details to each other. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.

There have been many times where I've seen the project manager report and just said "Huh?" It is really frustrating from my standpoint when the project manager offers little in the way of organization; that coupled with we have to spend every meeting minute trying to explain what the "tech" people are talking about.