May 26, 2008
Future career trends from Microsoft
IT World Canada
Jason W. Eckert offers a recap of Microsoft’s recent EnergizeIT conference where the company urged more workers to join the IT industry.
“Although the IT industry in Canada has been growing at a healthy rate for many years now, Microsoft noted that there still exists a stereotype in industry that discourages people from entering IT due to the poor IT hiring situation in 2001-2002 and the notion that IT is a cost centre (uses money and will be downsized as necessary) rather than a profit centre (creates technology that drives company innovation). Microsoft also encouraged the audience to negate this stereotype where possible since IT people will be needed as the IT baby boomer population retires in the next five years.”
Site surveys: The sale, the non-sale, and the conditional sale
Network World
Channelguy looks at the changes that have occurred over time regarding the sales process for channel partners.
“Technologies like IPT and security are causing changes to the whole sales process for channel partners. In the olden days, IT products were more of a green-field situation. Yes, you had to make everything work together, but the site survey was nothing compared to what it is today. Nowadays there are so many technologies and physical situations living side-by-side that the partner has a lot more up-front work to do before choosing the best solution for the situation at-hand.”
Dear social networks: I’ll decide who my friends are
Techdirt
Mike Masnick explores the idea of friends, versus “real” friends on social networking Web sites such as Facebook.
“There’s already been a court ruling noting that being a Facebook friend is not like being a “real” friend, but the vast “cheapening” of the concept of friendship is ticking some people off. In noting how the various social networks keep encouraging you to add more friends (even if they’re not real friends), it raises questions about whether or not these social networks are hurting their own reason for being. As businesses, they have every reason to encourage you to keep adding friends. However, if you so cheapen your relationships by adding anyone and everyone as a friend, doesn’t it make the services a lot less useful for really keeping up with your friends?”
