Repetitive Redundancy and the Search For New

I’ve been reading a lot of new blogs lately.

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