IT is from Mars and your Information is from Venus

"Information structure , Sure, no problem , got that covered" says the Enterprise Architect as you ask about the alignment of the Business Classification Structure and metadata to the IT technology that has being proposed for the Pan Galactic rollout that you have just heard about.


"It's all just a quick review and we get on with. The vendor told us it will be easy", he adds, almost without taking a breath. After wondering that maybe you are in different solar systems, or different companies you race off to see how wide spread this IT selection disease has become.

Does this sound like your situation? Scary as it is, it is still be played out across companies of reasonably large size as we speak.

IT selection alone will not solve an information problem that you have. In treating the information just as a bit or a byte ultimately the thinking will by default go to a technology only "Storage Bucket" view.

Maybe this is why most technology only selections seem to fail, or why IT seems to get impatient with information management people who see the need to get a clear understanding on the complex mess of connections and associations between information in a contextual way.

By focusing only on product (technology) not the capability that it can provide you to assist in the management of your information in context you will replay the IT solution that fails over and over again. Only when you realise that there are two planets involved will you start on the right path to providing a working solution.

One Degree of separation from Obama!

Have I hit the big time? I think not. So you can guess that I was surprised to find that I am only one degree of separation from the President Elect himself.

Don't believe me, well, check this out. Look bottom right is there he is "Mr President Elect" himself separated by one contact that I know, blanked out to protect the innocent.

I have to say this, with no offence to Barack Obama, but this is more reason why I'm getting a little social networked out. I mean to say who am I in the world of Barack Obama ? and why would I click "Add Barack to your network"?

I suppose that if I did click the link it has more going for me than for him. I mean is he going to get all excited because I pop up as a "now connected" person on linkedin? Or will he even know?

Should I also race out there and sign up for Facebook and get connected? Maybe I could go for as many different social network connections with Barack that I could find. then I could claim that we are in CLOSE contact Frequently ! I think not.

Good luck Mr President Elect and I hope you find time for all the Social Networking ahead as there will be a number of big ticket items on your agenda and maybe we will not have as much time to connect in the future.

Social Network Fatigue

Are you suffering Social Network Fatigue?

I am trying to keep up to date with just the information networks and systems and frankly I cannot keep up. There seems to be so much to connect to and share and get involved in, but I keep asking myself, so what is the purpose of all this "connection".

I find concentrated, personal, one to one far more engaging and responsive than the electro, sound byte type relationships that seem to occur through social / information networks.

How do you keep up? I don't think that I have that many information / social network tools going, what I do have is:

• Linkedin
• Plaxo
• Information Zen

I don't do facebook, twitter, bebo or others as I cannot keep ahead with what I have already and keep my personal human relationships going with my own family.

How many people out there rush home only to sit in front of a computer to "keep in touch" while the ones at home are in the relationship wilderness. I guess you could connect through facebook or txt !