I just stole the title from this article over on Novell’s Cool Solutions titled, obviously, BrainShare: The Next Generation … which you should go and read.
While it speaks generally about BrainShare and Novell, the overall message is a useful one for any information technology company of department:
How do you spread the word about technology choices to the next generation of IT professionals?
That’s my quote up above, feel free to steal it. It has probably been said 1000 times in the past, so I don’t claim any real ownership of it.
However, the question still stands. Many decisions are bore out due to context that is long gone, or long perverted in our minds, and so new decisions are often made without the benefit of understanding why the old decisions were made in the first place! What a waste of time, effort, and resources!
One of my favorite things to do is to listen to the stories about why certain technology decisions were made. Who was there. What were the options. What was tried in the past. Ultimately, why the decision to go with one technology in one way over others. They all provide valuable insight into not just the technology, but into the organization as a whole. You learn about internal politics, decision-making structures outside of the organizational tree, and tons of other important cultural information.
I mean culture as in what is there, not what some people in the organization are trying to push.
For me, BrainShare 2014 is going to be another part of that. Novell has been the backbone of our IT infrastructure since 1995, and it looks like it is going to stay a major part going forward. In order to adequately serve the campus, I’ll need to also get to know Novell better and Novell, me.
Going to conferences, talking with other users, trying out the new (AND THE OLD) technology is all part of the same goal of retaining knowledge from the past while also looking to the future so that we can make better decisions with more information to provide the best services we possibly can.
So I look forward to attending BrainShare 2014 and many conferences to come in the future as I navigate providing the best systems and services I can for today and the future.