I know the BlogIdol contest is over, but just had to get this off my chest. Every time I see the adverts for the new Playbook I find myself commenting out loud to anyone who will listen. Usually it’s the dog, and she knows how I feel about this.
The problem is this… I would NEVER buy my employees a Playbook if all they did were the things you show in your commercial. I don’t buy them technology to play games (Flash or otherwise), watch movies or music videos, or surf the shopping pages on the web. If productivity is my goal, and reason to add technology to their arsenal, then you haven’t convinced me that Playbook would help.
Just saying. (and I do feel much better now).
While I'm currently the CIO for Appleby College in Oakville (the best IT job in Canada), I've had a great ride in a number of positions in various locations. I've lead a team of more than 100 staff at Sheridan supporting a constituency of 50,000 users, I've been part of the founding team building a brand new medical school in Northern Ontario based completely around distributed education, I've started 3 companies, consulted internationally, drove my gorgeous wife crazy moving around all over, raised 2-1/2 great kids (I'll round it up when the final one leaves home), and occasionally scratch the ear of our butt ugly dog. My craft is not IT, but building IT organizations that support challenging and new ways to do things. I am utterly convinced that we as IT leadership need to dramatically change how IT is delivered, before we get relegated to a costly overhead department. In the midst of all this fun, I've had the distinction of being awarded the inaugural 2010 IT Leader of the Year (SME) Award from Computerworld Canada for my work at Appleby College. I'm humbled by the honor and thankful that some of my ideas actually make sense to someone.
