Musings, Rants, and Random Thoughts

I’ve been meaning to write about how the commoditization of so many different things that we use on a daily basis has changed our expectations of reliability.  For instance, I find myself thinking that if I get a good 4 years out of something, then that’s amazing.  Even with cars, I think of something 5 years old as aged and ready for replacement.

This is not about always wanting something new.  It’s about forgetting that sometimes we should expect things to last.  How many times do we see a car on the road that is 10 or 15 years old, still running strong and reliably?  Why should I be frustrated with my “old” car that is not yet even 5 years out of the plant?  A car is a bit extreme of an example – let’s look at the items we have around us on a daily basis.  How many people have kitchen appliances that are more than 3 years old (other than the fridge, oven, or dishwasher)?  More importantly, how long do you expect that toaster or blender to last?  How many would be okay if they broke within 5 years?

The reality is that most appliances and have become commodities.  Think of all the things you see at Target that used to be even $50 that are now $25.  How they have become almost throwaway items.  Even something like a computer monitor, which can be less than $100 if you look around, doesn’t seem like a big deal anymore (the environmental impact of perceiving monitors as throwaway is a pretty big deal, as an aside).  And if we were to start throwing all this stuff away when we’re done with them, and they end up in landfills, that’s sad and a massive environmental issue.

I have been “proud” of the fact that I try to invest in purchases whenever possible.  Yes, I can spend $15 and get a really lame coffee maker that will break down after a few years because the coil that heats the bottom plate (that burns the coffee after too long) wears down.  Or I can spend $100 and get a high quality maker with a vacuum carafe that will last me 15 years.  Same thing with my TV, which I bought 4 years ago and still feel will be just great for another 10 (until they come out with 50000p resolution, that is).  And even my home theatre processor/amplifier, which I do intend to replace, is of wonderful quality and build.  It’s just missing some functionality now that blu-ray and HDTV have different connections and sound options.

Speaking of coffee…I’m reading and hearing rave reviews about Starbucks’ new “Via” instant coffee.  Supposedly it’s different from those big cans of instant coffee because

1. it’s ground more for a french press, which is of course just soaked in hot water rather than dripped through a filter
2. it’s sold in small, single-serving packets so they are less likely to get stale

After all this time thinking about how everyday appliances have become such commodities, having lost an expectancy of reliability and sturdiness…and now even my coffee maker goes down in the battle…

One professional skill that I both value and work hard at improving is effectively communicating with others.  Effective communication skills is one of the most important attributes one must have in order to be an effective manager and leader.  And it is absolutely required should one have ambitions about moving upward through an organization, in my opinion.  Not that being a good communicator is easy, of course.

I work in a tech field, heading up a tech department, but one of my responsibilities, explicitly, is to develop a strategy about providing the tools to help my overall organization do its job more effectively while not overwhelming others with jargon, too much information, or causing general confusion.

This is not an easy task – many times the benefits of some new technology or equipment are the direct result of what that stuff does, yet what it does is complicated or perhaps out of the ordinary for many folks.  I’m not by any means saying that people aren’t able to comprehend these things, it’s just that they aren’t part of their everyday vocabulary.

Sometimes it’s conceptual, too.  For instance, I remember a conversation with my mother quite a few years ago where I talked about how we used a server to do something at work.  Now, technically, any computer running a service of any kind is a server.  So if you take the computer with which you are reading this post right now – desktop, laptop, whatever – and install the right thing on there, it could be a server.  This might be something that turns the computer into an e-mail gateway (what actually sends out e-mails, and to which your client, like Outlook or Thunderbird, connects to get mail), or perhaps something that tracks the statistics for this or that.  If it’s a service, the box is a server.

To my mother, however, a server was a big, loud, heavy duty machine with lots of blinking lights that the “IT people” kept in a secret, separate room.  Of course, there is a reason why she had that perception – services should be run on enterprise-grade hardware, the kind of stuff my mother was accustomed to seeing.  But the point is that she could not separate the two.  It was a paradigm that was already cemented in place.

Well, it’s my job to help translate that.  To find a way to explain the difference to, in this example, my mother, so that she could understand the benefit she received.

At work, that means that I tell others that we’re looking at getting a “big storage system” instead of a SAN or that we’re working on “a way for all of us to take our Word documents, share them, keep them up to date, and get them off of our personal desktops which might break down” rather than “a collaboration suite with document management tools that is network-based for greater and more effective central management.”  The latter example is far less extreme than the first, but there is still a difference.

I like to think that I do a pretty good job at this, but I have run into a couple of recent surprises.

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