I thought an apache was an injun

One of my clients called me yesterday. He is trying to figure out which CMS he should buy for his revamped innovation web site and KM intranet. He rang me up having had a beauty parade of five or six vendors. He was lucky to get just that few. In the UK there are something over 300 suppliers of various hues and slendours. His IT manager however wants him to go ‘open-source’ for his solution. ‘Its free’, he said ‘Well John, that’s true’ I told him ‘But open source stuff is just like water. Its free, but then you have to pay a guy to come and plumb it in for you. And you can never find a plumber when you want one. And if the plumber goes off on holiday or gets sick what are you going to do? And when did you last see a poor plumber? and what are you going to tell your misuss when the washing machine won't wash. I'll hold your coat.

'Code is poetry', If thats the case it needs a new publicist.

Interesting point though about open source stuff. Most of us have heard at least of the likes of Linux, and MySQL.They are, I hear from reliable sources, tremendous tools but the skills and benefits they provdie tend to be hidden in the bowels of an IT or app developer, and the secret codes of acronyms on boomin' millions of web sites should you care to Google away the small hours. To the casual observer it seems to be another land with its own language. and culture. If only we, the mere mortals, who have to live with the consequences could get a handle on what they actually do that makes them so life affirming that was written in plain english, or your native tongue, rather then the arcane and mesmerisingly boring stuff they throw at us, we might make more adventurous decisions. Until then the likes of John and me, who is actually supposed to know a bit about this stuff, will talk wisfully about this mystical land of giveaways ignore it and write the PO for the,out of the box solution. Plug in our Navmans, I-pods and iphones and ihavnetgotacluehowitworks butitdoesosidontcare gizmos and sit back and relax.


On one web site I saw the slogan ‘Code is poetry’. I think it could do with a good publicist if thats the case. John and everyone who runs a business will be faced with the dilemma and confusion of object based or SQL, XML and what do I want a taxidermist for anyway? And then, just when you thought you had it under your belt the second round of the shortlisted presentations. And IT have their for pen'orth

Ask them about their approach to 'automotic link checking,' that’ll keep the salemans busy for an hour or so. It will give you time to leave the room and for your IT manager, to wallow in importance and have somebody just be nice to him for a change and not yell at him about the sales guys laptops crashing- just because their spilt their skinny latte on the keyboard. He won’t be signing the cheques anyway.

Innovation isn’t just about doing it. It’s about telling the world, in a language they can understand, what it actually does for them.