IT from here

Having spent over 20 years in the IT industry I’ve fought more than my fair share of battles.  I’ve lost some skirmishes and won some wars.  I have the scars to prove it.

My illustrious career began as a COBOL programmer working in the mobile telecommunications sector creating customer care and billing software.  I travelled the world in the early 90s as the industry exploded and government monopolies privatised into fierce competition.

I then killed my inner mainframe dinosaur and began working with some of the earliest web based technologies integrating workflow and imaging for the biggest name banks and investment houses.  I was right on the bleeding edge of the technology and my teams failed more often than we succeeded but we set the standards (of what not to do) for the future.

The control freak in me cried over agile delivery techniques (god knows you can’t call it a methodology).  And the travel left me disoriented always carrying the wrong currency, speaking the wrong language, unfit, unhealthy, and inevitably inappropriately packed for the local weather.

So I settled down in a lovely village in the UK, found myself a husband, had 2 lovely children (not necessarily in that order) and found my career flexing to adjust to all the demands of those hefty responsibilities.

I now work in the UK energy industry. In fact I work for the UK’s largest integrated energy company.  And what an exciting wild ride this is.  Just when I thought my career had peaked, climate change steps in, the economy tanks and the roller coaster ride begins again.  Only this ride is doing 0-60 in 4 seconds and I’m in the very first car waving my arms in the air like I just don’t care.

But let’s get something straight right up front; I’m not here to blog about me.  I do that on another blog.  There you can read all about me and my amazing family and our wild adventures through life.  Here you are going to read about thoughts, observations, experiences and advice on being at the sharp end of corporate IT.

Why?  To begin with when I went looking for advice from other IT professionals in the blogosphere there wasn’t much to be found.  Secondly, I was speaking with a colleague of mine a while back who was leaving our organisation.  I showed him some initiatives I’d implemented and he was distraught.  He had needed this stuff a couple months ago and no one had shared with him what we’d done.  Perhaps we could have avoided his downfall.  Finally, despite the notion of IT professionals being thought leaders in the world of business, I find few thought leaders in our ranks.

So I’m stepping out on a limb here.  If you’ve got questions, bring them on.  Tell me what you think about what I write.  If you’ve got suggestions for topics, let me know.