Not really sure what I’ve been looking for, but I feel like something is missing. I feel like I’ve been reading and writing about the same thing over and over (and over).

So I’ve been surfing around reading a bunch and really good stuff in the interwebz – most has been around topics not related to my core areas of IT and  technology.

I worked my way through tons of blogs and read some great posts…but there was something in my subconscious gnawing at me.

I wasn’t really sure what that something was until later when I jumped over to my Hootsuite tab to take a glance at what was going on in twitter-land. The stream looked kind of slow and repetitive so I jumped over to one of my saved CIO & IT streams that I like to look at for ideas for new posts and it seemed repetitive to me too.

And then it hit me. I realized what I’d been searching for. I was searching for something new.

That’s what my blog surfing was all about. Something new. New insights. New stories. New directions.

And my CIO / IT twitter stream helped highlight it for me.

Why?

With no disrespect meant to anyone on the stream, what I was seeing felt like the same thing I’ve been seeing on the stream for many months. Lots of people talking about the same things. Cloud computing. Virtualization. IT Leadership. IT Innovation. Alignment. Etc Etc.

Don’t get me wrong…all excellent topics and all worthy of discussion…but I don’t see anything new out there. Nor do I see any real change happening. I see a lot of people talking about the need for new thinking, re-thinking and innovation in IT. I see people talking about aligning business with IT.

But…all things that have been talked about for months and years. Has there been any real progress on any of these topics?

Oh sure…I’d like to think there are plenty of people out there making these things happen in the real world…but I haven’t run across anyone really talking about the “new IT”. I haven’t seen anyone talking about the real-world implementation of the Re-imagined IT group. I’ve yet to see any new case studies or new stories about real-world IT groups taking the reigns and leading innovation within the business or recreating themselves to make the ‘new’ IT a reality.

Am I just missing these stories? Or…are those stories just not there? Perhaps all of us blogging and tweeting about it are just talking amongst ourselves while the real IT pros out there are keeping their head down and doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

So…what’s my point with this post?

Its not really a critique of the IT & CIO bloggers and twtitterers….er…tweeterers….er…twits…er whatever the name is. Not at all….I love reading these guys. Heck…I love writing about IT, the New CIO and other topics. I grew up in IT and technology and will continue to write about these topics.

But I have to ask….is it doing any good?

Is the stuff I’ve been writing about, thinking about and reading about for the last few years doing any good? Are we making any difference in the ‘real world’? I’d like to think we are but for some reason I keep seeing the same topics repeated year after year.

That repetition tells me that most in the IT world are working too hard to ‘keep the lights on’ and a lot of what is being written about is ignored. Does this mean all of us bloggers and writers are just talking amongst ourselves? Or are we just not hitting the topics that real-world technologists and IT pro’s are looking for so they can do their jobs better? Or…am I just missing out on the real deep case studies from those companies that are doing the things we are all talking about?

I realized what my subconscious was telling me. I’ve been subconsciously searching for something new. New topics for IT. New Topics for CIO’s. New topics in marketing / technology. New topics for you and for me

I’d love your thoughts on the subject…what are some new topics that you’d like to see covered in IT, Marketing, Project Management and Technology?

Image credit – Search Help By misterbisson on flickr

By eqqman on flickr

This post is a bit off topic from the norm but I wanted to take this opportunity to say Thank You to anyone who’s ever served in the armed forces.

For those of you outside the US, November 11 is Veterans Day and is also celebrated as Armistice Day / Remembrance Day in other parts of the world.

Its a day that we Celebrate and Remember our Veterans.

Its a day that’s celebrated as a federal holiday but few people truly take the time to remember the reason for this day.

This day should make you stop and think about those people who served, whether in peace or in war…our veterans have done more for us than most people give them credit for.

Those bastards of the Westboro Baptist Church can protest at military funerals because of our veterans. Sorry for the strong language…but its the mildest word I will use to describe those people.

People who spend their day bashing our government can only do that because our veterans have defended their right to bash.

People who call our President anything other than “Mr. President” have the right to do so because of our veterans.

While some people may disagree with reasons for war, nobody can disagree with someone putting their life on hold to protect this country and our freedoms.

My father, Dwain Brown, was a part of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade, the Redcatchers, in Vietnam.  He didn’t want to be there.  My grandparents didn’t want him to be there. My mother didn’t want him to be there.  But he was there…and he served.

Thankfully, he returned unharmed and has been able to lead a great life and has been a wonderful father to me and my sister.  There’s no words to tell him how thankful I am that he served his country when asked.

Very few Vietnam Veterans were ever told Thank You when they returned home, which I think is a travesty…hopefully those people that spat on our Vietnam Veterans saw Karma come back and bite them.

My great-uncle, Woody Kinnear, was a member of the 101st Airborne in World War II and saw action during D-Day and the subsequent movement through Europe.  He saw action in every major engagement in the European Theater including the Battle of Bulge.

I never got to say Thank You to uncle Woody before he died and I’m truly sorry for that. I hope someone, somewhere told him Thank You for serving.

Whether you’re in the USA or elsewhere, take a moment to remember your Veterans.  Say Thank You to them for serving.

Some Veterans show an outward injury…perhaps they’ve been physically injured in some way. But…many other Veterans are injured on the inside as well…they’ve seen things that they shouldn’t have to see.

The simplest act of saying “Thank You”, said with sincerity, can do amazing things to help that Veteran out.

Say thank you to a Veteran today….and every day.

The conference uses a double-blind review process to review papers and provide feedback.  In this double blind-review, reviewer’s aren’t provided with author(s) information and author’s aren’t provided information about the reviewers.

Good and fair process….and one that I’m about to completely tear apart today.

My submission, titled A Social Approach to Knowledge Management in Projects, was conditionally accepted for inclusion if I were to address a major concern on the part of the reviewer.

The main concern was a claim of plagiarism.

The reviewer believed that the author (me) had plagiarized a good part of the paper.  They pointed to a website that they claimed proved that the author had used content from and note cited.  That website was mine – http://ericbrown.com.

Plagiarism is defined as:

the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.

I can see where the reviewer might have thought plagiarism existed as some of the work in the paper has been previously published here on my blog.  I’m actually quite excited that someone out there found my site interesting enough to cite as the original source of something that might have then been used in a plagiarism matter.

While this could be considered a case of self-plagiarism (if you believe in such an oxymoron), it’s not plagiarism.  The conference organizer requested that I cite my own work published on this blog within my article and also rework the article to ensure that the majority of the paper was significantly different than any other paper / article I’ve written.

Because I don’t believe in ‘self-plagiarism’, and because I’m feeling a bit rebellious this morning, I’ve decided to withdraw the paper from the conference and publish it, in its entirety, as a PDF here.  You can download the full paper using the link at the bottom of this post.

In the paper, I try to look at ways to answer this question:

Can a project team use Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 platforms to communicate and share knowledge during a project? Can this communication be indexed and mined to capture relevant knowledge about the project, project team members and project technologies without adding additional burden to the project team members?

Download a PDF copy of A Social Approach to Knowledge Management in Projects today

Enjoy.

I’m sure there’s a scientific name for it but I’m too tired to look it up right now…sorry.

How many of you are stuck in a rut in your life and/or business and just doing the same thing over and over and over.  Ever thought about why?

Maybe it’s because you haven’t been keeping your eyes open to see things changing.

Take this little story as an example…

A few weeks ago I’m driving to the local target.  I decided to go a back way through neighborhoods rather than the main road.   I get up to one of the main roads that I have to cross to get to the target and hit a red light.

This particular intersection is fairly new.  In the past, you could only turn left or right at this intersection, but about three months ago a new road was opened that allowed you to go straight through this intersection.

I planned to go straight as it was a shorter route to get into the Target parking lot.

Now…this particular light is extremely long.  It felt as if I sat there forever waiting for the light to turn.  I also noticed that the car behind had their right turn blinker on. And the car behind them did too.  Oh well…that’s the way life is right?  Always stuck behind the guy going straight when you want to turn right.

While waiting I heard a horn honk. Sounded like it came from behind me.

So I rolled my window down…and heard the horn again as well as someone screaming and looked in my mirror and noticed it was the driver behind me.

He was yelling at me and honking his horn.

Can you believe that?

He was screaming at me.

Then…he opened his car door and started getting out.  Wow.

OK then. I’m not going to be caught sitting in my car while some crazy dude is standing outside my window.

So I got out of my car. Probably not the safest thing to do but I did it.

He was walking toward my car screaming to me.  He was saying “turn man turn”.

What?  I’m going straight across I tell him.  I also pointed at my blinker and politely said ‘do you see a blinker?’.

And…I may have yelled it. And…I may have said a few other choice words that can’t be repeated here.   And I may have called him something that wasn’t polite.  I may have also told him to get back in his car or he’d be getting into an ambulance in 3 minutes.  Might have been bad of me to say…but, he started it

His response was “oh…you can go straight?  I didn’t know that”.

While he was walking back to his car, he was apologizing and trying to ‘make nice’ with me while also saying “I’ve driven this road a couple times a day for two years and didn’t realize you could go straight.”

Lessons from this story?

Its an easy one.

That man, who almost got himself in some trouble, was so sure that he was right that he was willing to risk his health (and his life?) to get out of his car and scream at an unknown person in a car in front of him.

According to him, he’d been through that intersection multiple times over two years. He’d gotten so used to only being able to turn left or right that he’d failed to realize that a third option was now available to him and to all other drivers.

He’d gotten into a mindset and wasn’t able to see the changes taking place around him over the years.

Sound familiar?

How many businesses do you know today that are in this same mindset?  What about your manager or leader? Have they allowed themselves to get so comfortable with their surroundings that they fail to notice the changes?

What about you?  Are you keeping your eyes open for changes?

BTW – link below for anger management techniques for those of you (and perhaps me too) who get a little too angry

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I love to read a good story and I love to create stories…although they may not always be “good.:)

In fact, I love a good story so much that I’m researching the topic of stories and storytelling as a mechanism for knowledge capture & transfer within project teams.  See a presentation I did on that subject here -> Stories, Projects & Knowledge Management. Oh..here’s another article of mine on Using Stories to Share Knowledge.

Stories have a ton of good qualities. They help set context.  They help share values and beliefs.   There are lots of good things about stories.

But the most important is one that we often overlook.  It’s the importance of YOUR story to your life.

Chris Brogan pointed me toward Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (affiliate link) a few months ago.

Chris recently said the following about Miller’s book: “It’s about the importance of living your life as if you’re the main character in an important story.”

He hit it spot on.  This is a wonderful book.  Not only did it make me laugh, it made me think long and hard about MY story.  And about YOUR story too.

What’s my story?

I used to think that my story was one of small town farmboy who makes a name for himself in the big city.  I was going to work hard and climb the corporate ladder and become the CEO of a large organization one day.

But…as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that my story is changing.

I no longer want anything to do with being employed by a large organization. I’d rather be a part of  small group of people doing something fun and important.

My story has evolved and I’m evolving with it.  I’m longer interested in the office politics that some people play. I’m more interested in finding that smart group of people who want to do something fun and challenging.  Those folks that see that things CAN be different.

My story has evolved from one of perpetuating the ‘sameness’ that is corporate America to one that of wanting to be a part of (and perhaps starting) a small business.

My story includes me working hard and playing hard.   It includes my wife and I spending more quality time together traveling and actually engaging in our passion of photography rather than wishing we could.

My story isn’t the classic American Story, but I think its one that will become the neo-classical American Story.

I think people are getting fed-up with the large, bureaucratic environment found in most large busiensses. Those businesses that look at the numbers before they look at the people.

That said, my story is my story and I’m living it as though I’m the lead character.  My story is one of hundreds of millions in this country, but its an important one to me.

What’s your story?

I look out at the people I interact with on a regular basis and realize that, for the most part, I don’t really know their story.

I have almost 1400 followers on twitter but i really only know less than 20 of them. On Facebook, I’ve kept my friends to those that I know fairly well but there are still folks who I don’t really know what well.

This blog receives about 6000 visitors a month and has ~1800 RSS subscribers but I don’t know the story of every one of these visitors or subscribers.

Of course, there’s no way for me to know everyone, but I do get curious about what drives people to my site and why they decide to come back (or subscribe).

I’m always interested in hearing your story so drop a line and let me know what you are working on and/or where I can learn more about you.

The Importance of Story

As I’ve said, story is important.   Not only does your story help define who you are, it helps define were you’ll go.

Based on this post and the little bit of background I’ve provided, can you tell where I’m headed in life?  Do you know the next chapter in my story?

Do you know they next chapter in your own story?  Are you writing your own story or letting someone else?

Me – I prefer to write my own…and hope to continue doing for the rest of my life.

BTW – if you DO know the next chapter of my story, don’t tell me

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Apparently I can’t count   I started the blog in 2006 so it’s my blog’s THIRD birthday!

I started this blog on July 14, 2006 with a blog post titled “The Strategic Use of Human Resources“. My first post was an excerpt from a paper I wrote for my MBA program of the same title….not exactly the most exciting stuff in the world but it wasn’t bad.

When I started this blog, I didn’t have a plan. I still really don’t. Many people tell me to pick a topic and focus…perhaps they are right. But that isn’t me. Sure, I can focus….but why should I be forced to do so on my own blog? I see this blog as a place to share my thoughts and help people understand who I am.  I write about what I want but try to remain within the Technology, Strategy, People & Projects arena.

I have found a few topics that are of great interest to me. Specifically the intersection of marketing & technology and how enterprise 2.0 (and 3.0) is changing and will change business in the future.  I’ve also started off The New CIO series where I’m planning on taking a look at the role of the IT group and CIO from a different perspective. So far, I’ve written 3 The New CIO articles and have plans to write one article per week (released every Thursday).  The published articles so far are:

• The New CIO – An introduction
• The New CIO: Social Media and the Enterprise
• Keeping your IT staff Engaged and Happy – The New CIO Series

So I’ve finished up 3 years and I’m entering the fourth year and I’m going strong.  I passed the 400 posts mark in June (~2 posts per week) and 1000 comments that same month. I also bumped over 1000 RSS subscribers sometime in 2009…but never really saw when it happened. Twitter and friendfeed have helped grow traffic but at the end of the day, this blog isn’t about traffic…its about delivering good content to those that like to read it.

Top 5 Commented Posts

• Blu Domain: Poor Service Defined
• A Book Review of “Website Optimization”
• Some Thoughts on Sitecore CMS
• Ramblings on Social Media
• John Madden’s Lessons for Leadership

My Top 5 visited posts

• The Problem(s) with Linear Thinking
• Factors affecting Productivity – IT, Management and Process
• Some Thoughts on Sitecore CMS
• Blu Domain: Poor Service Defined
• Competitive Advantage and the Resource Based View of the Firm

Would you be surprised if I told you that the top 5 keywords from Google had to do with the these top posts?   Probably wouldn’t be. What are the top keywords?

• linear thinking
• factors affecting productivity
• bludomain
• blu domain
• sitecore review

So…those are the most visited and commented posts on my blog after 3 years…but what about my favorite posts?  Here’s a few (in no particular order):

• Common Sense and Technology Selection
• Competitive Advantage – The Human Capital Approach
• Factors affecting Productivity – IT, Management and Process
• The Problem(s) with Linear Thinking
• Keeping your IT staff Engaged and Happy – The New CIO Series
• The New CIO: Social Media and the Enterprise

Hope you’ve enjoyed the time like I have.  And I hope to be on here for much more time to come.

What’s transpired this year?

• In February, I put my consulting practice on hold to join the Boy Scouts of America full time after working with them for 1.5 years as a consultant.  Previous to starting full-time, I’d been leading the Sitecore Content Management System implementation and since going full-time have been involved in some major technology and marketing initiatives.  It’s been fun and an education in how non-profits are run.

• I’ve just finished year #2 in the Doctoral program.  Only X number of years left (i have no idea what X actually is…probably 3 to 4 more years).

• I’ve held up my resolutions for the year fairly nicely. I used the ‘three words’ approach (I learned this from Chris Brogan).  My words were: Create, Think & Lead. I’ve written more important stuff (at least to me) on this blog than I used to and I kicked off another blog focused on my photography.

• My wife’s photography business is starting to see a bit more life.  The economy has taken its toll but we are starting to see a bit more traffic and interest from potential clients.

• I’ve disconnected from a lot of things that were taking up way too much of my time.  While this has been hard to do, it’s been necessary to allow me to focus on those things that will bring the most benefit & value to me in the future.

What does the rest of 2009 hold? I’m not sure…but I’m positive it will be a good 6 months.

• I’m anxious to kick off a few projects that I’ve been thinking about and can’t wait to see the results.

• I’ve got a couple interesting side projects that have been brewing for a while…they are looking like they might show some signs of life later this year.

• I’ve submitted a few articles & papers to academic journals & trade publications…hopefully I’ll hear back on whether they are accepted for publishing.

How has the first half of 2009 been for you?

I found myself bored with Seth after reading his “You’re Boring” post.  In the post, he writes:

You don’t get unboring for free. Remarkable costs time and money and effort, but most of all, remarkable costs a willingness to be wrong

Well Seth..I agree with you but haven’t you been saying this for years?  Where’s the new stuff.  Have you become boring?

Of course this probably isn’t the most popular sentiment in the world.  But…I’m willing to be wrong here.

Seems as if everyone is enthralled with Seth. His book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us” still gets a lot of play on the web. You know what?  I thought Tribes was kind of boring and didn’t really say much that hadn’t been said before.  The book actually felt very repetitious. I had a hard time turning each page.  Dare I say I was bored reading the book?

Now…don’t get me wrong…I’m pretty boring myself.  Have I said much on this blog that is unique?  Not really.    But I haven’t made my career telling others they’re boring…Seth has.

Seth – I love ya man but how about something new?  Like you say in your post, “Remarkable is a choice”…make a choice please…start saying something remarkable. I don’t want to shrug my shoulders after reading your blog.

I wonder though…how many shrug their shoulders after reading my blog?  I’ll be thinkin on that one.

I found an interesting take on the subject written by Chris Brogan titled “Cultivating a Writing Habit“.  Great post…jump over and read…I’ll wait.

Chris’ approach is a fairly simple method: Read, Write, Write.

• Read – Read more.  Read everything you can.  Read things that you wouldn’t normally read.
• Write – Write all day regardless of whether you are in front of a computer or with paper…write in your head.  Think about what you can write and/or how to reword something.
• Write – Write daily. Write often.  Write as much as you can.

Nothing earth shattering here but Chris does gives us a glimpse into his writing regime.

If you don’t know Chris, look him up…he’s quite well know in the Social Media world and is considered to be one of the SM experts.   He’s a prolific writer and his blog posts are always well thought out and well developed…definitely someone to listen to on the subject of writing.

There are some excellent tips on Chris’ blog…great ideas for improving your writing (and mine!).

What is it about the changing of the ‘year’ that gets people into the mindset of making resolutions to do things differently in the ‘new year’?

Well…being the geek that I am, I had to look into it.

I read a few articles about the psychology of new year’s resolutions….two of the more interesting articles were:

• The Psychology of New Year’s Resolutions
• What is Really Behind New Year’s Resolutions

The Psychology of New Year’s Resolutions lists some results from a 1998 survey that aren’t that surprising:

most people — 75 percent — who make a resolution fail on their first attempt and most people — 67 percent — make more than one resolution.

Not really that amazing if you think about it.  The results from that survey also show:

people who believe that self-control is something dynamic, changing and unlimited (e.g., “I can stop smoking, all I have to do is put my mind to it. I can also change my eating and be a better person, it just takes willpower.”) tend to set more resolutions.

People who believe that we all are born with a limited, set amount of self-control that one cannot change (e.g., “I can’t help myself from eating all this chocolate — I inherited the ‘chocolate gene’ from my mom!”) and who also have little belief in their own capabilities to carry out their own goals (they have what psychologists refer to as “low self-efficacy”) naturally did worse on obtaining their New Year’s resolution goals.

Very interesting, don’t you think?  In order to meet your resolutions or goals, you’ve got to believe that you can reach them.

The 2nd article (What is Really Behind New Year’s Resolutions) backs this up when they report:

The first step in making any permanent change is to become an observer of your life. This is simply becoming aware of your thoughts and actions. Your thoughts lead to emotional states which lead to your actions. Take responsibility for your thoughts, emotional states and actions

To meet your goals, you’ve got to think about them constantly, not just at the new year.  You’ve got to continuously re-asses these goals and compare them with your life and see if the goals still make sense.

So…back to the original thought.  Why is it that we wait until the New Year to make these resolutions.  For most people, I think it’s because they get so wrapped in day-to-day life that they (me too?) lose focus on what they (I?) really want to do with their life.

So what are my resolutions?

Well…I’m going to try Chris Brogan’s appraoch to goals for the new year. Chris has used an interesting approach called “3 words” since 2006 and it looks like his approach has worked well for him.

Here’s my 3 words: Create, Think, Lead.

More on those words:

• Create – Whether I’m writing for this blog, working on my doctorate, working on entrepreneurial activities, working with clients or spending time with family, I want to be creating 2009.
• Think – I want to think better. I want to think more creatively.   I also want to make other people think….this is what I’ll be working on for the coming year.
• Lead – My goal for the coming year is to lead in everything I do.  This doesn’t mean I want/need to be the ‘best’ at everything I do (although it would be nice)…I want to be seen as a leader in the various aspects of my life.  My writing, my research, my work…I’m going to push to be someone that people look to for information and direction.

2009 is going to be a good year….I’m going to make it one and I hope you do too.

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