Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: change

Short sharp shocks
In Atlantic Magazine’s China’s long history of defying the doomsayers, Stephen Platt and Jeffrey Wasserstrom put the case that the Chinese Communist Party is unlikely to fall in our lifetimes.

China’s military is presently powerful enough and its diplomacy stable enough that the Communist Party faces no realistic threats from outside. Internally, its control over society is effective enough that, while unrest and discontent may be widespread, there are neither well-organized opposition parties nor rebellious armies that might seriously challenge the central government.

They are probably right, it’s difficult to see any immediate threat to the power of China’s current leaders.

Although we should keep in mind that only a few decades ago it was inconceivable that the Soviet Union would disintegrate or the Warsaw Pact dissolve.

Had someone wrote in 1986 that within five years both would happen, they would have been written off as being foolish. But that’s what happened.

In the stock market it’s said “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent” and it’s true for any pundit – you may be right that property is overvalued, the US is in decline or the Eurozone will break up, but the powers that be will may be able to kick the can down the road and sustain the unsustainable for a lot longer than any of us expect.

Steve Keen found this with the ‘walking to Kosciusko” bet where he was railroaded into giving a fixed date of when the Australian property market would fall. He, nor anyone he made the wager with, had any idea of the billions of dollars governments would throw at the market to maintain prices.

All too often people make the right calls about property markets, economies or the fall of regimes but get their timing wrong.

In his book The Sun Always Rises Ernest Hemmingway’s character Mike Campbell describes how he went bankrupt – “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

And so it is with empires, nations, ideologies and even the most powerful corporation. When the change happens it’s sudden and unexpected.

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September 1, 2012
Are IT workers the new loom weavers?
“There are IT workers who can’t put food on their table,” complained an industry representative at an outsourcing conference.

It’s true – there are hundreds of once well paid project managers, technicians and support staff staff who can’t get work in their industry as some tasks go offshore and others are supplanted by new technologies.

None of this is new, we only have to think back to the heady days of the Dot Com boom when any punk with a basic knowledge of HTML could pull down six figures a year.

Just like the loom weavers of the 17th Century who became the Luddites, the HTML coders of 1998 and the project managers of 2008 have had a short period of affluence before been overtaken by change.

It’s something that today’s hot shot coders should keep in mind, bubbles burst and technology changes.

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August 2, 2012
The Death of the IT Guy
Until recently the cottage industry of computer repairers was thriving, having been born with the massive take up of computers by homes and businesses in the 1990s.

Over the years, things got better for the local IT guy as businesses and then homes became networked. Some of the smarter technicians started selling and supporting servers and things got better.

The arrival of the Internet, the approach of Y2K bug and, in Australia, the introduction of the GST made even more business for the local computer tech and the Windows virus epidemic of the early 2000s guaranteed plenty of work for anybody who knew how to wield a screw driver and a boot disk.

As the industry matured, maintaining office servers and looking after the regular glitches in desktop computers was a steady, reliable source of income for most support companies.

Every few years businesses or homes would upgrade their computers and that would trigger a cascade of costs as data was migrated and older peripherals like printers, serial mice and ADB accessories had to be replaced.

Then all came to a stop with the arrival of cloud computing services where many of older computers could access online applications just as well as newer computers.

For IT organisations with a business plan based up customers upgrading systems every three to five years this was a disaster.

These businesses were already feeling the pinch with the late arrival and market rejection of Microsoft Vista and now their customers could sit on older XP machines and happily use the latest online applications.

Sensible IT folk have understood the change and the good support companies now have an armoury of cloud based services for their customers. These businesses know the IT hardware and support spend of most businesses is shrinking and taking the market with it.

Unfortunately there are a few holdouts trying to keep the old business model alive who have a hundred reasons why cloud services are no good for their customers.

To be far to those fixed on the old IT model, this attitude is probably even more prevalent in corporate IT departments and among CIOs with cloud services seen – probably rightly – as a threat to their power and income.

One of the biggest risks to those support folk who aren’t at least evaluating cloud services for their clients is that shrinking IT spend and eventually there won’t be much money, or customers, left for the old model.

A similar thing is happening to bookkeepers and accountants as newer businesses and those with younger owners or managers are moving to cloud based software while the older ones are wedded to their legacy systems.

The older accountants who won’t move to the newer systems are finding their businesses growth stagnant while their younger colleagues are picking up the work from new businesses.

Computer support was always a business based upon the transition to a digital workplaces, similar to the men employed to walk in front of early motor cars with red flags.

Now workplace technology has matured, there’s less work for the IT guy. Hopefully most of them will make the change and not get run over like the guys clutching red flags.

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July 14, 2012
On being a Luddite
“I’m a Luddite”, magazine editor James Tuckerman proclaimed as Master of Ceremonies for Microsoft’s Asia Pacific Bizspark Summit this week.

James was referring to an article in Australian Anthill in the 1990s where he predicted businesses would never use the Internet for research.

Being a Luddite isn’t a bad thing, James contends. In his view being skeptical about technology enables business owners to better evaluate technology as Luddites “think like a layman, don’t know the limits and think commercially”.

None of this is true though – being a skeptic is not the same as being a Luddite.

The original Luddites in the English Midlands weren’t anti-technology, they were opposed to the technology that would put them out of work.

At the beginning of the 19th Century, mill workers were a highly skilled and extremely well paid trade but the new automated loom technology meant those skills were no longer needed.

To protect their livelihoods, the loom workers started smashing the new machines and burning down factories. Eventually they were viciously suppressed by the British government with some being executed while others were transported to Australia.

What drove the Luddites was the loss of their income and who is to say we would have behaved any differently if we were faced with being unemployed and destitute in the harsh conditions of 19th Century England.

However we shouldn’t equate being skeptical about technology with being protecting one’s turf.

Today’s Luddites are those businesses who don’t want to move with the times – those who have grown fat on easy credit or lazily clipping the tickets on state sanctioned monopolies.

Some of those Luddites are going broke as consumers stop buying electrical goods or cars, while others lobby their friends in government to protect their privileged and profitable positions.

In the early 1800s the Luddites eventually lost, we can only hope that when history repeats itself two hundred years later today’s Luddites haven’t damaged the economy too much.

James Tuckerman isn’t a Luddite and that’s why he’s part of the future. I just wish he wouldn’t call himself one.

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July 13, 2012
Hubris and risk
Today is the centenary of the Titanic’s tragic sinking. In many ways, the RMS Titanic described the 20th Century conundrum; a blind faith in technology coupled with a struggle to deal with the consequences of those innovations.

It’s worthwhile reflecting on the hubris of those who believed their technology made a ship unsinkable, or those who believed their shipyards would never close and – probably most relevant today – those who believe the sun never sets on their empire.

Technology can liberate our lives which is shown by the fact the average American, European or Australian lives far longer and better than even kings did two centuries ago. But we should never assume these improvements don’t come at a real cost to ourselves, the environment or the ways of life we take for granted today.

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April 15, 2012