IT Incendiary

Finding your niche' doesn't mean you have to live in a cubicle.

Welcome to IT incendiary!  This is a new venture aimed at opening the doors of IT to new realms of creativity, productivity, and a bit of humor. It's been a long time coming, and now that it's here, I'm ready to celebrate.

What am I celebrating?    

Looking for an IT Liberation Theology

Every day we sit for hours upon hours in front of a plastic screen, pouring the minutes of our lives into a set of tasks that would drive lesser souls insane.

• You IT people are strong! 
• You're courageous!
• You're intelligent!

But let's face it.... If you're reading this blog, your life in IT may be a bit confining.  

So I'm up for a new kind of IT Liberation Theology: One that doesn't look to "management" for the answers, but stretches our minds to look to new paradigms for productivity and creativity.  I'm hoping IT incendiary will help us all get there.

What do I mean?

Tell ole Pharoh....

Remember how the pharohs built the pyramids?  First they convinced everybody they were gods, and then they roped people into becoming brick packers, stone cutters, mathameticians, and finally engineers.

See any parallels here?

In a lot of ways, that's how our organizations are being built today.  First somebody becomes a "manager", then the manager starts finding computer operators, IT technicians, programmers, and systems engineers.  Little by little the artifice of our information pyramids are constructed.   

Most of us have been working on one particular computer pyramid: It might be an IBM pyramid, or a Microsoft pyramid, or an open source pyramid, or a Sun pyramid.  Generally speaking, they're all made of the same stuff: Ideas!  And our task is to embed those ideas into silicon and code -- the business rules of the organization.

Let's take a break! 

So, given we're all in this together, I think we need a break.  

That's what IT Liberation Theology is about, and it's the main tenent of IT incendiary. We need a break so we can look up, see what we've been building, and learn from one another.

What is an IT incendiary? 

Websters say the word "incendiary" has these roots:

L incendiārius, equiv. to incendi(um) a fire (incend(ere) to kindle (in- in-2 + -cendere, transit. v. from base of candére to shine, be hot.

My desire is to build us a place where we will shine, where we can be hot, and where we can kindle the kind of community that will refresh our spirits, inform us of new events, and deliver us from the mental cubicles that constrict us.

I hope you'll take part in this community.  Share some ideas, engage in the forums, and raise our voices to "tell ole Pharoh" what's really going on in IT.

In the coming months, I'll open the forums and be posting little bits and pieces that might be of interest to you.  If you want to write me a comment, you'll need to register, but it's no big deal.  Same with some of the humor pieces I'm cooking up.

Like the Silverlake Tapes .   If you're an old IBMer, you'll especially get a kick out of it.

Meanwhile, I'll also be posting interviews that I have with a variety IT vendor executives, and posting links to other areas where I'm writing.

I'm hoping you'll become an IT incendiary in your organization too.  

Best,

Thomas M. Stockwell

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