Some reflections for the final blog of 2006

My previous blog entry may well be construed as me moaning about the bad customer service incident.  This is true, the problems I had with Going Places lead me to think about what the company, and others, were doing with their web sites.  Hopefully I have managed to draw some useful lessons from the experience.

It also led me to think about what I am doing, and saying in this blog.  I have a few personal rules about this blog and I have tried to explain them to readers before - well I say readers more really a case of documenting them for myself!

While one rule there isn't a listed there and which I break from time to time (regularly?) is about customer service.  I don't really want this blog to become a moan about customer service - there are plenty of other blogs for that and it would be far too easy. So I paused before I wrote that entry to think about this blog.

New Year seems a good time to think about this blog.  From time to time I think about the description of this blog on blogger and contemplate changing it.  Trouble is, so far I haven't actually come up with anything better.  So who am I latest thoughts on what this blog is...

This is a blog about what happens when technology, specifically software development, meets the business world, specifically business strategy. And to me business strategy is not really very far from business operations, there is no great divide.

In fact to my mind technology and strategy share a lot of things in common.  Both are highly dependent on people and both are highly creative.  Associating creativity with technology and strategy might surprise some people but what is the point of technology without innovation?  Similarly what is the point of strategy if it is merely a repeat of what has gone before?  Or a copy of something else?

But it is knowledge and learning that interests me most in this area.  We cannot create new technologies and new strategies without knowledge and learning.  In some ways both technology and strategy are cutting edges of the modern economy.  Both are responsible for creating the world in which we live.  And it is because they are at the cutting edge of people occupy such an essential role.  If you could replace the people in either one you are simply change the problem.  You would still need people to address the new problem.

And with that I will sign off 2006.  Hopefully those final remarks will make it clearer what this blog is actually about - to me if nobody else!