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Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »August 01, 2007 — CIO —
IT departments have had a long, sometimes deleterious and mostly fun-filled history of making up nicknames for clueless, overwhelmed and tech-challenged users of IT software and hardware.
One of my favorite derisive terms is a calling a user a luser. Good one.
Another one that Ive recently latched onto is PEBKACproblem exists between keyboard and chair. Zinger!
How about this one? UBD: user brain damage. Nice.
Or this old acronym, which has a different (if still toxic) use these days: DDT. That is, Dont do that, which is usually in response to a user who just said, When I do this....
This one was new to me: Wetware, referring to the source of some type of user-introduced error. Theres also the id10t error, and the less biting Luddite.
This antagonistic relationship between IT and users has been wonderfully parodied by Saturday Night Lives skit Nick Burns, Your Companys Computer Guy, played by Jimmy Fallon. (A couple of my favorites are on YouTube, including Nick and his dad (Billy Bob Thornton) and Nick and a smart user (Jamie Foxx).) His three catch phrases typify horrible IT and user interactions: Nick Burns shouts, Move! whenever he commandeers a confused users keyboard; Was that so hard?! is his sarcastic remark when he fixes the problem; and Oh, by the way, youre welcome! is the snarky way he exits the room after he has easily solved all of the lusers tech problems.
As someone who has committed many idiotic computer transgressions over the years, I find the simmering animosity between IT staffers and the user base fascinating and mostly funny. (The legendary story of the user trying to use his CD drive tray for a cup holder justifiably lives on.) Still, many people feel that derisive IT comments widen the divide that IT sometimes drives between itself and other non-IT staff, according to an unscientific gathering of user opinions among my colleagues and friends.
Weve tried to figure out the whys and wherefores of this dynamic on CIO.com from time to time, as in Why IT and Users Hate Each Other and Users Are Right to Hate IT, or Time to Rethink Your Relationship to End Users and Why an Autocratic Approach to User Support Will Fail.
Whatever the case, you cant deny the adversarial vibe and the occasional wit that results. So what other names have you heard IT use to identify clueless or annoying users? Lets see what you can do.