http://www.issurvivor.com IS Survivor is run by Bob Lewis en-us Copyright 2007, IS Survivor. Persuasion is, on the whole, a more difficult task than providing information. Sure, there are exceptions. Persuading someone to carry an umbrella when the forecast says rain would usually be easier than, for example, explaining how to perform a trustworthy http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=675 More than in any presidential election in recent memory, 2008's candidates will be notable for uttering far less nonsense than the commentariat. To illustrate: The reliably pseudo-eruditic George Will said, in a recent column: "Most improvements make http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=674 I'm banishing excuse (the noun, not the verb) from my vocabulary. It serves no useful purpose. I made the decision after I realized that the only difference between an excuse and an explanation is which side of the conversation you're on: It's http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=673 My friend Willy Chaplin first became involved with the World Wide Web on the day people first started calling it the World Wide Web. I might be off by a week or three, but not much more. In any event, by 1995, four years before Chris Locke, Doc Searls http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=672 The subject is strategic change. The question, posed last week, is whether we can lichen business change to Agile software development -- whether we can devise an Agile http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=671 Low-hanging fruit live somewhere between proofs of concept and important results in the business change hierarchy. Your average proof of concept, far from proving the concept, does nothing more than prove a concept -- a more simplistic http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=670 Last week's column used MSNBC commentator Tucker Carlson's Hillariphobia to introduce the subject of persistent sexism in the workplace("Managers who have discriminating tastes," Keep http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=669 I like working with women. When I treat men as equals and respect them as professionals, it's routine and unnoticed. When I work with women and treat them the same way, a common response is relief, perhaps appreciation, and usually cooperation. This http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=668 Way back when, before the World Wide Web, the Internet was a small, close community. It was self-policing; as much as any other technique the small-town punishment of disapproving looks took care of most problems. As the Internet grew, and as more and http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=667 I should have known better. Last week I griped about Gartner failing to give credit where due, based on the simple arithmetic of an August, 2007 Gartner press release, which said, "[Research Fellow] Jackie Fenn has been authoring the hype cycle for http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=663 Okay, now I'm mad. According to Gartner, in an August 2007 press release that just caught my attention, "[Research Fellow] Jackie Fenn has been authoring the hype cycle for emerging technologies http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=662 One of the dumbest bits of political commentary in the past several years came from Jonah Goldberg. Commenting on somebody-or-other's accusation that somebody else ... somebody else Goldberg happens to like ... was a hypocrite, Goldberg said, approvingly, http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=661 Favorite themes from Keep t http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=660 The passionate middle wins. I'm not talking about the presidential race, although we should all be so fortunate. I'm talking about PC policy. The consensus of my correspondence seems to be that to lock or unlock isn't a binary choice. There are levels http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=659 It doesn't hurt so much anymore. A couple of weeks ago I was forced to acknowledge that long before the idea was mentioned here in KJR, Gartner published a prediction that increasingly, http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=658 I had a plan. Last week's column listed three factors to take into account in deciding how far you should open up or lock down desktop PCs: The company's size, how heavily it is regulated, http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=657 What is it about vitamins? When I was a kid they were chewable. Then I grew up and they were small, coated, and easily swallowed. Now they make me feel like Mr. Ed: They're the size of horse pills, and if (when) they get stuck on the way down I taste http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=656 When is a computer not a computer? Answer: When it's a portal to an entire universe, as I pointed out last week with perhaps-excessive lyricism. Lyrical or not, quite a few correspondents http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=655 In 1980, a 3278 green-screen terminal cost (as I recall) about $6,000, not including the mainframe it attached to. Along came the PC. It cost half that, and was self-sufficient. IT tried to keep them out. They put too much power in the hands of ignorant http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=654 I wrote harsh words about the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) ("The connection between leadership and process in IT," Keep the Joint Running, http://www.issurvivor.com/ArticlesDetail.asp?ID=653