Buzz Bruggeman, of Pop-Tech and ActiveWords fame, was my host for my brief stay in Florida. Let me highly recommend that you find a way to get him to play host for you someday.

I'm pretty sure I met everyone in a 3-county region while I was there. Most of these introductions occurred in the context of food and drink. Babalou's Bodacious BBQ followed by watching Buzz hold court alfresco outside of Starbucks was the highpoint I think.

Buzz is a consumate storyteller and our conversations ranged from technology startups to casinos to wi-fi to fruit smoothies to NASA to CIA safe houses. We really need to persuade Buzz to find more time for his weblog.

Of course we spent time talking about the ActiveWords Odyssey as he likes to call it. ActiveWords has been on my machine for a while now and I continue to learn new ways to get value from it every day. The central challenge and opportunity with ActiveWords is that it makes all the software on your machine more powerful, but only if you let it. To get the full benefit you need to take the time to think about how you work. That ought to make it a natural for anyone who takes the time to think enough to blog, so go check it out.

5:19:02 PM •  • comment  

I was in the Orlando area on Friday as part of a session on "The Real-Time Enterprise" hosted by the University of Central Florida. About 90 executives in a half day program on the continuing challenges of successfully putting technology and strategy together.

I used three mini-cases to look at the issue; two drawn from my experience working with CIO Magazine on their Enterprise Value Award. The three examples were the engineering firm Black & Veatch's successful efforts to create a new partnership between engineer and computer-augmented design; PPG's successful creation of an electronic market linking insurers and independent auto-glass repair shops; and, GE Aircraft Engines use of remote sensing technology and statistical analysis to derive better utilization from their products. All were examples of organizations that have found a way to get IT and the business to work together successfully.

All were also examples of organizations that did not believe in silver bullets. Technology marketing is rife with promises of silver bullets followed by delivery of silver bullet manufacturing kits (on a good day). When you look at real successes putting technology to work for a business strategy, you invariably find years spent putting in the foundations in terms of working relationships and working systems. No one considers this out of the ordinary in any other part of the business, so why it should be a surprise in IT remains a bit of a mystery.

4:47:47 PM •  • comment