A pyramid scheme is bad form, Cloudwork

As some of you might know, or rather, should, Integration is my middle name - you might even call me a one-trick pony and I'd take that as a compliment. So, when I saw that Cloudwork offers unprecedented integration (cough), I signed up immediately! I was even so enthusiastic, I even forgot to use a fake identity - and very much regret that now

Cloudwork didn't have me sign up. No, Cloudwork baited me into giving away my email address, so they could decide themselves when to send me that valuable invite to their beta:

How pubsub works - and always has, and will

[Image by RIA Novosti]

Brenda Michelson triggered me into a small conversation on pubsub - of course I did a quick search and analysis via my Twitter search tools and learned that it's been mentioned 91 times in the past week, the vast majority of which seem to be treating the word sub as in sandwich (colloquial American) - I guess that answers Brenda's question

Yet, I went to check out the state of (Information Technology) pubsub, an extremely well-proven mechanism in our daily world, aka IRL, where we all subscribe to ye olde snail mail (the post office) to retrieve anything that gets published towards us

Oh, is that not it? Maybe, maybe not - but let me explain why pubsub undeservedly is dead on Twitter

Social silos adding to enterprise silos? Not with proper Integration

Laurie Buzcek called out for Integration as a solution for the failure of Enterprise 2.0 and Social Business - which she equates to each other - and I couldn't help but think of Tibbr when reading her post
Dion Hinchcliffe responded with a post in which he also stresses the integration of social media with enterprise tools, albeit he's careful to stress that pure technology can't be the answer - apparently we're really beyond E2.0 now

Dion claims OpenSocial 2.0 is the answer but I fail to see how that will help us further: although an impressive amount of work, it is purely technical and relying on the fact that

Developers can create applications, using standard JavaScript and HTML, that run on social websites that have implemented the OpenSocial APIs

and I don't see that happen any time soon - the only successful 2.0 Social Tools are those that are 1.0 in nature: confined

A new kind of Capgemini Consulting, errrrr attrition

I was alerted on Twitter to this thoughtless, clumsy, mindless piece by Peter Sayer on PCWorld:

Capgemini Consulting, a specialist in strategy and transformation, is about to transform its own strategy for the second time in two years. To cope with the change, the company plans to recruit up to 1,000 staff this year, predominantly younger workers with social media and "digital transformation" skills, although it expects other staff to leave

Its title? Capgemini Consulting Readies 'a New Kind of Consulting'

Gamification - yet another one-size-fits-all?

[Image courtesy of Johnny Mr Ninja]

I got into discussions today about gamification:

Gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications (also known as "funware"), particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with the applications. Gamification works by making technology more engaging, and by encouraging desired behaviors, taking advantage of humans' psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, or reading web sites

While making some pun statements about feeding dogs biscuits to make them obey, and rewarding them for doing a trick, along with some serious ones, Alan Berkson made a great statement:

Ask not what your company can do for you, ...?

John F Kennedy to me was one of the finest presidents of the US. Shot and killed before I was even born, but still.
During his inaugural address on January 20th 1961, one of his now famous quotes was:

"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country"

A great quote, in the given context - now let's apply that to companies shall we?

Do you Fear the End-Of-Year - like Judgment Day?

Targets - Selling targets, purchase targets, license targets, billable hours targets, call-close targets: if you work for a large company, you probably have some. Sometimes also called Key Performance Indicators (KPI's).
But did you choose them, or were they forced on to you - whose are they? Yours? Your company's? Or theirs?
And what is their goal - really?

If you're a salesperson, you get sales targets. If a marketing person, there are marketing targets. When you work for a systems integrator (SI), you'll probably have billable hour targets.

Capgemini's comma-splice: results over people?

An obvious screenshot from the renewed site, here's the latest Capgemini slogan
Capgemini presented a glossy new site this Monday, announced and talked about on Twitter.

It looks really suave, but not everything has moved correctly: the Capping It Off blog seems to have been broken, still showing my last one, but without the picture and posted by someone else than me - oh well. If you move the slider in the Media box from Video to Blog, it's there on Capgemini's home page - a nice tribute ;-)

A palace revolution. In IT?

I do apologise for the fact that in this particular blog abbreviations will be flying around like grilled geese in the land of Cockaigne

As described, a palace revolution is about changes in culture, economy, and socio-political institutions

The cultural revolution has been ongoing for decades now, with entire countries wondering about (the state and future of) their culture due to disappearing frontiers on the currency, economical and national border level

We're right in the middle of the economical one with the current crisis

Social media is now invading the earth: 300 million people on Facebook, 50 million on Twitter - and let's not