Two Worlds

Last week I attended the WW Developer Conference with two goals. 1) To learn as much as possible about the current and new features of the OS that I love and earns me a living and 2) meet them fools from Twitter. I think I succeeded at both (but it could be the booze talking, still) but that’s not what I keep coming back to.

I bounced between developers and I.T. professionals at various meetings, socials and at late night Denny’s sessions and the biggest difference between them is this; One group is devoted to giving their users the best experience in their power and the other will use their power to best limit their users’ experience.

This troubles me as I work with and in the field that tries to do the latter. Over the years I’ve tried to steer I.T. admins to become that “enabling force” (petit barf) to much debate and resistance. Few buy in and they’re happier and more importantly their users are happier for it.

For example, has your I.T. department ever surprised you with an announcement that they’re going to allow corporate and personal chat? What about your own personal picture gallery let alone a web page? Probably not and more importantly you are probably doing it on the sneak during company time. You convince yourself that you’re punk or l33t. I.T. confirms you’re shit. Nobody wins.

Anyways, you get the point, feel the pain or hear me. Last week highlighted my concerns and I’m going to spend the next few weeks getting my head around the difference but more importantly the similarities between devs and admins. My focus will be on the I.T. side because I’m more familiar with the challenges. My “research,” to use the term lightly, will be on the dev side because I know the least about it. In other words; I’m searching for Zen in I.T.

*I’ll provide a link elsewhere because this space is for dick/fart/poop jokes.