Berkeley Bloggers Dinner #2
Thanks to Dave, Sylvia, and all the folks involved in putting this together. It was a great way to meet new people and catch up with some previous acquaintances.
I was surprised given the proximity to the Berkeley campus that we didn’t have more students. We seemed to be a little heavy on the over-30 side. I have a theory about this as it relates to blogging that I’ll discuss in another post.
The evening ended again with me, Steve Gillmor, and Robert Anderson closing the place down. They literally turned the lights out on us. Yeah, the restaurant could use a few lessons in customer service.
The night’s conversations left me with some concerns about people involved in technology. My motivation as a developer has always been the excitement of solving a problem, especially if it can make things more efficient and help people. My concern is that we often work on technology so that we can experience the latest and greatest “cool” thing. I don’t think we should ever lose sight of the people involved. We can’t just develop cool stuff and then say screw everyone who doesn’t hop on board. It’s great to think about how things will be in two-to-five years, but what are you doing to solve today’s problems? Today’s browser UI sucks for most business applications. We’ve actually lost productivity as we’ve moved from Windows to the browser. How are we working to solve these issues today — and don’t say outsourcing. Just because Nike moves a plant overseas doesn’t mean they hand people a hammer and nails to put the shoes together.
Expert Texture » Blog Archive » Getting Better: Berkeley Bloggers Dinner #2 said,
Wrote on February 10, 2006 @ 9:47 am
[...] I met Shannon Whitley again. Since meeting him several months ago, he has started blogging. He took exception to some arguments that were made last night regarding technology and change. He may have misunderstood where I was coming from — enterprises cannot throw their investments in the lake; many businesses are five+ years behind the technology curve and that is actually OK. [...]
Shannon Whitley said,
Wrote on February 10, 2006 @ 2:05 pm
I was glad to see that you found me Robert. I’m now subscribed to your blog! Although our conversation did affect my post, it wasn’t a direct result. The feeling I’ve been getting over the past couple of get-togethers is that no one cares about what’s going on in corporate America. The focus is always on start-ups and consumers. Corporations aren’t necessarily fun or cool, but they spend millions of dollars on software every year. The folks at our dinners want to wave away points that I make about corporate software usage as if businesses don’t matter. I’m just saying that businesses are the bread-and-butter of tech developers and we shouldn’t ignore them or trivialize their needs. This is not something you’ve expressed, but other people have.
http://et.cairene.net/2006/02/10/getting-better-berkeley-bloggers-dinner-2/
5702e5faa4aeee0d315936f34c2c49d5 said,
Wrote on October 17, 2006 @ 1:59 am
5702e5faa4aeee0d315936f34c2c49d5