A blend of opinions & news on tech topics like cloud, mobile, big data, app development and app performance from geniuses inside the technology industry.
An engineer turned marketer, Trisha is fascinated by the integration (or perhaps collision) of information technology and marketing. Trisha writes about social media, big data, emerging technologies and the transformation of IT and marketing. Connect with Trisha @TrishaWinter or at www.trishawinter.com.
During a recent discussion with a friend about how much technology is changing our lives, he pointed out to me the fate of the VP of Electricity. My first reaction was, “Who?” Apparently, once upon a time, each company had its own generators that provided electricity for the company. So the VP of Electricity literally “kept the lights on”. This must have been an extremely important job. The business relied on them similar to the way … [Read more...]
Ok, I admit it, I am not an Early Adopter when it comes to technology adoption and I’m not even sure if I’m in the Early Majority. For someone who is in the technology industry, that was hard to admit (I hope I don’t lose my job over it!) I’ve often wondered why I am this way. I love technology! I got my undergrad in engineering. I worked a decade in R&D. But in my personal life, I am a terribly pragmatic person. If I … [Read more...]
There is a great presentation that some of my colleagues created about what is happening in the tech market and what that means to IT. In a nut shell, IT has to adapt quickly to an entirely new way of working with new skill sets and responsibilities. If they can’t, they’ll go the way of roles such as the Head of Electricity or Keypunch Operator. Personally, I haven’t seen those titles on any job boards recently. But the … [Read more...]
One of the most difficult projects I’ve ever worked on was transitioning to a new document storage and collaboration system. And I’ve been lucky enough to do it 3 times. The reasons for the change range from technology becoming outdated to simply a shift in power (and opinion on the best technology). System change number 4 is looming on the horizon so I decided to think through the previous implementations and come up with my own set of … [Read more...]
Forget abortion, same sex marriage, or taxes, the political controversy of the next decade will be social data privacy. Data privacy has been a “managed” issue for years. Companies like Symantec and EMC have been delivering solutions to corporations to help “control” the issue. There are firms that specialize in identity theft and credit card companies have gotten very sophisticated with analyzing big data to detect and combat fraud. … [Read more...]
If you work for a company in the technology industry, then you are automatically a thought leader/ subject matter expert/ one smart cookie. Whether you work on the core product or you run the network, you can help your company be seen as having smart people, who know their tech. You can do this by blogging, adding original IT content to SlideShare or YouTube. Even getting out to developer forums like Dzone or answering questions on Quora all … [Read more...]
Gartner says that CIOs are at the start of a 3-year shift in responsibilities away from the traditional “IT” to “Technology”. At least that is what I recently read in this article from Eric Lindquist of Information Week. It’s based on an interview with Gartner group VP Mark McDonald. I don’t disagree with Mark. I’ve seen the confusion that sales and marketing driven software brings to a company. These solutions are often … [Read more...]
About 8 months ago, my boss asked me to look into social media and see if it was something I would be willing to take on for the company. So, I started reading and absorbing all I could find about social media. 3 books, 8 webinars and countless articles later I came to a simple conclusion: Social Media holds the largest, most dynamic and interesting Business Intelligence database that has ever existed. Is it a channel for promoting our brand … [Read more...]
Is it wrong to covet another company’s big data implementation? If so, I am so very guilty. I attended a great conference earlier this week called the B2B Corporate Social Media Summit (#CSMB2B). Through most of the presentations, I was feeling pretty good about my efforts in social media. I was getting validation of my strategy and getting inspired by the examples of my peers. And then Greg Gerik, the head of social media for 3M took … [Read more...]
I was counseling an executive at my company recently about how to participate in social media and she asked me how to explain her desire to participate to her husband who wanted to stay unknown to the world. My answer was simply “Anonymity is not a choice on the table”. This is true for individuals, companies and yes, even IT departments. Social media has changed our world, everything is transparent. Who we are, what we do and how we do … [Read more...]
