The death of the "classical geeks"

A quote from ReadWriteWeb:

Today, there still may be plenty of businesses employing ‘classic geeks’ in their I.T. Department, but that’s about to change. Don’t misunderstand – the world will always need a good engineer, but the I.T. leaders of tomorrow – the ones guiding the business in the use of their computer resources, the ones working with the CEOs to execute the vision and direction via information technology – they will no longer be what we think of as the classic ‘computer geek.’ You know the type – the stereotypical introvert, who’s more comfortable behind the glow of computer screen than interacting with the rest of the human race. The one who likes to speak in acronyms that only he or she understands. The ones who know how to do everything from a command prompt. These folks will be a dying breed…at least around the office. Instead, tomorrow’s computer ‘geek’ will be a true member of the business team as opposed to the mysterious man behind the curtain who you only notice when something goes wrong.

Instead, tomorrow’s computer “geek” will be a true member of the business team as opposed to the mysterious man behind the curtain who you only notice when something goes wrong. So what does the “new geek” need to know to run tomorrow’s I.T. Department? An entirely new skill set, as it turns out.

It then goes on to talk about the shift to “Enterprise 2.0”, “Cloud Services”, “The Mobile Workforce” and “A Self Provisioning User Base”. I’m not sure that the titles are as important as recognising the general shift away from in-house provisioned and in-house constrained services to services that are leveraged globally and have few constraints.

I speak to many I.T. people, because I’m an I.T. person and very few of them see that there is a change lurking just over the other side of that hill over there. A change that isn’t going to swoop down in a huge rampage, but is going to work under the radar and change their lives without them even knowing it. The ones who choose to go with it and to become valuable to their customers within the business will thrive, those who hide behind existing policies and standards will have their value steadily eroded until their value is difficult to see.

Change shouldn’t bring fear, we are used to it, we do it every day, we just need to recognise it and embrace it. As I.T. people we can, at least, see that the change is there. Business people, in general, have no idea about the change that is coming their way. Security organisations, as an example, will have massive changes to make, the old rules will no longer be valid. I know of organisations where there has been a huge backlash against the security organisation when they have insisted on locking down Internet provided Instant Messaging. There view was that it was an unnecessary security risk, the business’s view was that it was essential to operations, user innovation had overtaken them. It’s just one example of many of the things that are going to occur.

It’s just one small example of the mind-set change that will need to take place. Organisations that don’t change will themselves find it difficult to survive, those that go with the changes will thrive.

Today is Monday, it’s the start of a new week, perhaps now is as good a time as any to start embracing some change.