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The "I" in IT » Opinions »

  • Clash of the Browsers

    All's fair in love and war . . . and browsers

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 17 Nov. 08 10:22

  • Paper Jammed

    I’ve decided that the long awaited nirvana of the paperless office is more distant than ever after receiving a press release touting a swag of new printers, which shows they’re alive and thriving. I have the press release on my desk so I can’t give any specific details, not because I can’t find the press release on my desk, but I can’t find my desk. It’s probably somewhere under numerous piles of paper

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 05 Sept. 08 11:38

  • On the Training Track

    I was prompted to evaluate my skills and training certifications when I saw a position description with our company that seemed eerily similar to my position on a job Web site. I'd ignored skills development over the past few years, having focused on getting my job done instead of training for possible future jobs

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 01 July 08 14:05

  • Feeding the Tall Poppy

    I feel sorry for Microsoft. I realize this is probably the first time that sentence has ever appeared in print, aside from marketing glossies that touted "far superior" competing products from companies no longer in existence. But Microsoft has had a tough time over the past few months, and they're being picked on from all quarters

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 06 May 08 16:15

  • Boom and Gloom

    I see the recent decrease in stock market prices has been immediately balanced by the increase in doomsayers. This follows the time-honoured tradition where economists and other seers say exactly the opposite of what they said last week (that is, if market moves contradict what they'd previously forecast)

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 07 March 08 15:04

  • Clouding the Future

    I was just beginning to contemplate the formulation of the thought to back up my files when my desktop suddenly died. While waiting for it to rebuild, I read an article telling me that the desktop computer was dead

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 04 Feb. 08 13:16

  • I call IT as I see IT

    When we went through a redesign of ComputerWorld Canada last year we decided to call our feature section IT Business. This was in part because a Web site I launched some years ago, ITBusiness.ca, had never had its own print component, and in part because I thought IT Business was a good way to describe what the in-depth stories we write are really about.

    Written by Shane Schick • 24 Jan. 08 09:30

  • Disoriented and Disenchanted

    I recently attended a seminar on service-oriented architecture (SOA) mainly to discover why, given it's already been around for a few years (an eternity in IT management time), people are still holding seminars on it

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 10 Dec. 07 14:24

  • Truly Madly Secondly

    I have been working on my end of year performance appraisal to hand to the boss for signoff, a practice I've developed to ensure a better rating. However, it's forced me to reflect on what I've achieved this year and why that list is so short

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 05 Nov. 07 14:04

  • Multiple Personalities

    I recently endured another team-building, personality-rating exercise that again tagged me as an Introvert, which explains why I dislike team building exercises. This feeling was not improved when I got back to my desk to trawl through another half day of e-mails that accumulated in my absence

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 02 Oct. 07 10:16

  • Lost in the Library

    I am a very organized and procedural person. The evidence is in the hundreds of procedures, processes, plans, methodologies and a smattering of paradigms I have filed away. These were painstakingly defined, developed or stolen by me whenever I had a new project, as I always found it more exciting to create new procedures than modify existing ones. It gave me a great feeling of achievement to create new processes - a feeling I rarely got from the project itself as I rarely followed these procedures

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 03 Sept. 07 12:15

  • Voicing My Difficulties

    The lure of free phone calls might be enticing, but configuring commercial VoIP systems is still a black art

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 05 July 07 10:06

  • I, CIO

    I am embracing that great tradition of those who can't do, teach by offering advice on how to be a successful manager of IT. Unlike many articles, my advice does not rely on authoritative surveys, interviews or research, as I think anecdotes and personal recollections are often undervalued as training tools

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 04 June 07 14:45

  • Buying Intelligence

    I'm convinced that this is the right time to implement a business intelligence (BI) solution. Other CIOs have ranked BI projects as the number one technology priority for 2007, so I need to get in quickly if I'm going to look proactive

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 07 May 07 14:18

  • How Green Was My Silicon Valley?

    I'm seeing an increased emphasis on environmental greening of the IT industry. It may be due to the reduced levels of green on the actual environment due to ongoing drought, or to Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore recently addressed a group of 1500 Silicon Valley business leaders, imploring them to promote green technology that causes less pollution. Companies seem to be heeding his request in one of two ways: Green by Proxy or Do as I Say

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 03 April 07 13:10

  • Trusted Source

    I don't entirely trust the Internet. I realize this is not an original sentiment, but the rapid increase in financial usage of the Internet suggests that we now trust it a lot more.

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 06 March 07 12:48

  • Travelling Man

    I've got the message loud and clear from big business and governments that we live in a global village.

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 08 Feb. 07 10:35

  • Music to My Peers

    While anti-authoritarian youth used to "rage against the machine", now they "rage using the machine", with illegally downloaded dance music

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 11 Dec. 06 12:49

  • Me and the Gang Down by the Schoolyard

    The kids are not alright

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 06 Nov. 06 12:44

  • The Scrabble for Open Source

    Why all the fuss about open source software? And what does "open" actually mean, anyway?

    Written by Bruce Kirkham • 09 Oct. 06 12:30
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