The Infinite and Fleeting Beauty of Technology Platforms

Guestblog by Antony Clay, Founder, CEO & Tummeler | Soulsailor Consulting Ltd

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that is certainly the case with technology platforms.

Before I continue, I would just like to take this time to make you aware that I’m writing this guest blog post in a cold, icy England and it is snowing. This is giving me a whole new perspective on our ‘green and pleasant land’ and the view from my office window may have influenced my writing and analogies a little bit…

The world has a plethora of technology platform awesomeness both sides of the corporate firewall… Not all though is to our liking, not all of it even makes sense, but it all has some value somewhere in innovating, evolving, emerging and driving forward technology platforms in our organisations. Each and every technology platform has some kind of beauty and is unique in some way, just like a snowflake, whether it is the underlying architecture, the technology platform itself, the way it is used, the way it was created, the type of business it is used within and how it is integrated with; all of these facets add a dimension of uniqueness. From each of these unique so-called technology-platform-snowflakes we can learn a great deal, but we need to make a clear and conscious effort because the beauty and value can be gone in a fleeting moment, just like a snowflake. The anti-aging cream for technology platforms is ‘continuous improvement’.

But just like these wonder-creams, applying only to the face of technology isn’t enough we need to immerse our organisation in continuous improvement. This means we need a business user and IT Department mind-set change and a different set of tools and techniques. At the Re:Think conference this year I will be leading a workshop session on: “Using collaborative play for continuous improvement of the use of technology platforms”

Together we will explore why technology platforms have such infinite, but often fleeting beauty, discuss why our goal should always be to sustain and even extend the beauty of these technological wonders and experience first-hand some technology anti-aging techniques in the form of collaborative play. From this session you will:

• Learn how to engage IT, stakeholders and business users in continuous improvement
• Have fun
• Learn new techniques for continuous improvement
• Do ‘Collaborative Play’ with an English guy.

Come and join me, come and play, let’s make technology platforms even more beautiful together!

When? 8 Maart 2013 Where? Ter Elst, Edegem (Antwerp, BE) How Much? 225€