Before the Thanksgiving holiday, I sat down with Ross Mclean of Methods in Excel for a fireside chat. OK….we weren't in the same room. But we talked about a variety of topics. It turned out to be an interesting conversation.
Ross has published the converasation as part of his Podcast series. The entire conversation is about 47 minutes. Here's the rough breakdown and minute count (in case you want to jump around).
minute 0 - 15 : Xcelsius vs Excel
15 – 24: The Failure of IT departments and Cloud Computing
24 – 31: Why Google and Open Office won't bring Microsoft Down.
31 – 33: The Big Grid in Excel
33 – 43: The Case for Access (and its future)
43 – 47: Office Development vs Web Development
You can find the entire conversation here.
Thanks Ross for hosting this event. I have no doubt our talk will change people's lives forever….(or at least for 5 minutes).
Hi DataPig
I liked the podcast. I found the comments on the demise of IT departments interesting. While I'm in small business these days, I have an opinion. I think that bringing computing technology solutions to business requires a firm understanding of existing business processes and systems. Quite often the work I do isn't necessarily a solution to a problem, but more an insight into a better way. That insight derives from understanding both sides of the equation – the business side (quite completely) and IT side (just enough to know what's possible). Hence my proposition is that IT dept's don't have the full understanding of the business side which is more important that the full understanding of the IT side. Another aspect is that bringing IT into the early development loop immediately requires a costed or budgeted resource allocation. If you do it yourself (on the side) its "free".
I enjoy your blog, please keep up the great work.