Technology, then people, then process

Some people say process leads technology but I think it's usually technology that leads most peoples' decisions because it's so shiny. 

There's an order to getting things done with technology that should be followed to be successful and not spend too much or buy the wrong thing.  What we ultimately want in life and business is processes or flows that serve us in efficient, effective, fun, valuable, and entertaining ways.  To get these flows (ideal experiences), though, we have to follow a very structured process and invest in technology and experts.  The process starts with technology identification and selection, then leads to people and experts, and then finishes with you (hopefully) getting the processes that you want.

Technology.  The technology selection part is fun.  My mom's looking to get an iPad soon and she's excited about that.  Looking at technologies is fun and we can learn a lot by studying them but we have to first know our goals and criteria.  We can and should build our ideal process requirements in this phase.

Then people.  The people part of the process can also be fun and enlightening.  This phase is about bringing in experts or geniuses to support you in learning and achieving your goals and objective processes.  You'll find that many of the geniuses out there have a vested interest in *their* technologies or solutions and are not necessarily customer advocates.  True business analysts, managers, and customer advocates inquire with the customer then select only those technologies and suppliers that can meet their long-term, strategic needs.

Then process.  The process part is also fun and where the rubber starts to meet the road.  In this phase, it is about putting the technologies and people you bought into a practice and flow and making it work for you for your objectives whatever they might have been.

In review, working with technology is fun but we have to make sure we surround ourselves with advocates for us who help us get the technologies we need to achieve our process objectives.

The two faces of business intelligence

I'm most interested in capturing net new data sets, things that have never been captured before.  It's my claim that most of the world is this way: not captured, free.  But there are many examples, of course, of data and systems that we have been able to capture and visualize: banking, weather, etc.

Business intelligence solutions typically concern themselves with the consolidation and mining of *existing* data sets.  Analyzing and viewing existing data in new and interesting ways is really interesting but it is not--by any means--the end of the business intelligence story!!!

I believe that business intelligence is actually two disciplines: 1) data capture (instrumentation) and 2) reporting.  The reporting side of things is the traditional view of BI but I am certain that *no* BI firm can compete or survive without understanding the data capture side of things.  I wonder how many realize this!

Instrumenting and wiring up business processes, tools and "new things" *for the first time* is tricky business.  It requires a special skill set and a creative way of viewing the world: as incomplete.

Technical and Non-Technical People; There’s a Big Difference

This is a huge distinction in people's minds in business. Technical people are the engineers, the doers, and often the coffee-getters of our organizations unfortunately. Non-Technical people wind up being the leaders and managers. But why?


In a way in business, it's a very large penalty to be capable of doing the work. Yes, there's an entire body of "work" in management but there are some people out there that really don't do shit and don't know shit; they don't add value. These non-technical people somehow find a way to become the managers and leaders of our organizations. But why and how?


In my opinion, you either know how to do the work or you don't know and you wind up telling people what to do. Business is a crazy world that's centered in strange ideas of power.

Modified Version of Alvin Toeffler Saying

Coding is the easy part. The hard part is to discover and apply technologies that can continuously fit the business needs and problems.

My Personal and Company's Mission Statement

"To provide the best ways for people to create the most productive communities and networks about their most critical interests using the most current communications technologies."

That's it.  Any thoughts?

Eric

Interface of Your Choice for all Media Types

I want an API that does this:

Video.SaveAsAudio() - http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Other-AUDIO-Tools/Free-Video-to-Mp3-Converter.shtml
Video.SaveAsText() - http://everyzing.com/
Video.Search(string TextToFind) - http://everyzing.com/
Voice.SaveAsText() - http://jott.com/
Voice.Search(string TextToFind) - http://everyzing.com/
Text.SaveAsAudio() - http://www.naturalreaders.com/