Modelesis

Another week, another round of high-profile tech announcements…  And security woes.  Apple announced its new Pay service, which may finally make digital payments mainstream.  It was, however, tainted by concerns arising from “Celebgate” and the presumed role iCloud security played in it.  Meanwhile, Google was busy explaining that the five million Gmail credentials recently published by Russian hackers hadn’t been obtained from their servers.  Tech giants have successfully transitioned us to a cloud-based digital lifestyle, but a lot of work remains to ensure security is actually usable and effective enough.

For the past couple of weeks, owing to a mishap, I’m temporarily switching from my Nexus 4 to a loaned Lumia 520. I’m no stranger to Windows Phone, and I’m not really missing any apps. I do miss the tight-knit Google ecosystem, though, and that got me thinking about the implications the concept of mobile ecosystem has for the enterprise market. Read on for my thoughts on this.

Last week was marked by two interesting announcements concerning instant messaging (IM).  First, BlackBerry announced that its signature Messenger app is gaining a Channels functionality that comes across as a Facebook/Twitter mash-up, and that it’s coming to Android and iOS this summer.  Later, Google announced their revamped Hangouts strategy to unify and enrich IM across its different platforms and offerings.  In this post, I explore some of the commonalities between both strategies, as well as single out my perceptions about the main drivers behind these changes at both companies.

I’ve long held the view that concerts are for fans.  By this I mean hard-core fans.  There’s no place in a concert for people who casually consume the artist’s music.  No, you need to know all songs by heart, even with different arrangements, the idiosyncrasies of the band when touring: the symbols, the antics…  You need to be deeply invested into a band or artist in order to make it be worthwhile the minor ordeal that attending a concert usually involves.

At least that’s my opinion.  And for somewhat similar reasons, I think similarly about developer conferences: generally speaking, they’re more of a hassle than they’re worth.  Read on to find out my argument before you think I’m just older and bitter than I should.

As an IT leader, I often find myself walking a thin line: I am the company’s voice before the employees, and the employees' voice before the company.  This extends to mediating between internal parties and vendors, auditors, consultants and other external entities as well.  While not an absolute situation (and certainly not at my current workplace), it is often the case that higher leadership pushes an IT management model that is ultimately a fallacy.  Curiously enough, other parties' retort is also deeply flawed.  Both are rooted in good intentions, but tangle up in a vicious circle that does more harm than good, even though no one overtly intends it.  In a sense, a lot of IT leadership and management efforts are spent bridging these two fallacies.