IT rock stars

In social settings I used to avoid saying, “I work in IT” because I knew it would shut down the conversation. It wasn’t that people were disinterested; it’s just that to anyone not in IT they didn’t understand what it meant or how to relate to it. How things have changed!Late in 2001 Apple launched the iPod and, for the most part, people didn’t get it. Adoption was average at best, but then it happened: the world had an ‘a-ha!’ moment, sales took off and we’ve never looked back. In my mind the iPod did what had never happened before; people stopped being afraid of technology en-masse.Today, adoption of technology is swift and widespread. Personal smart phones, Nike+, iPods, digital cameras are all commonplace and very few households don’t have a wireless network. With all this becoming part of people’s everyday lives they can better relate to IT and technology has become less abstract, but it has also created a double-edged sword.Many people working outside IT have become very technically savvy; they not only understand the technologies they’re using, but also research and hack away at them to bend it to do their bidding, often in very unexpected and clever ways. These are the real technology lovers, and to me they are gold dust.Whenever I interview someone for an IT role, I look for these people. As a rule of thumb they will be faster learners, more creative problem solvers and, most importantly, enjoy what they do. Great marks are one thing, but a real passion for what you do is critical if you’re going to be doing it every day. Organisationally these technology lovers are also a valuable resource because they bring a fresh set of eyes and often some really good thinking when scoping out a project. For any IT project to be fully adopted by users and to be successful it needs business champions. If your organisation has tech-savvy employees, involving them at every stage of the project can not only enrich the project but also increase its chance of success.On the flip side, there are the people who have a lot of technology in their lives, but only the most basic idea of how it works. This in itself is not a bad thing — after all it should just work — but when something stops working these people often find themselves in a grey area with no safety net.My IT people have seen all sorts of these grey area problems – smartphones with corrupt applications, home wireless routers that keep dropping out, 3G data cards that simply don’t attain usable speeds, you name it. In every case the person has tried going back through consumer channels with no luck as it’s “not a manufacturing fault” and is left with nowhere to go… except their IT department.To a professional IT person, these problems are fairly straight forward, however to the individual it can be incredibly frustrating. While the problem may fall outside the technical responsibility of the organisation, I strongly urge you to think about the benefit of helping your colleagues when they find themselves in this grey area. Helping resolve someone’s personal technology issue reassures them of your IT department’s ability and humanises its function. Fixing a complex technical fault in the workplace is one thing, but to come to the rescue when they need you outside work makes you a rock star!