Friday 17 August 2012

In my list of what really matters...

....it might surprise you to know ITSM is nowhere near the top.

I mention this because my twitter persona gets a certain amount of negative comments for not always being 100% focused on ITSM.

Let me make a small but significant point. My Twitter account is mine. It isn't a TCS persona and it isn't a "Brand Finister" one. If I wanted it to be either of those things I would create a separate #SocMed persona, and I suspect I would have twice the number of followers I currently have. Now I know there are a lot of people out there who are very carefully manipulating their on line persona.

Not me.

I'm essentially existential.

I care about the visual arts, ethical behavior, music and poetry , health care  and somewhere steaming up behind is ITSM. If I'm honest simple concepts like wanting to make a decent living are probably still ahead of ITSM in my little  list. I have a little list, and if you don't get the cultural resonance of a comment like that, well then I don't care what you think about most other things.

If I'm really, really honest even little steam trains come above ITSM in my list of what matters.

I came across one of my old finals papers the other day.



I love Question 6 "Why not be an emotivist?"

At the time I was doing the exam I didn't have the confidence to write the obvious answer

"Because it doesn't feel right to me"

Sit back, listen to Vaughan Williams' 9th symphony and tell me where does ITSM really sit in your personal list of what you care about?








Tuesday 14 August 2012

Getting up to date

Yes yes it is a long time since I last posted. For goodness sake even the Spice Girls have managed a reunion in the interim.

Trust me, if I'm not posting here either A )I'm at Le Mans or B) TCS is very very busy, and this year I didn't manage A because of B.

So where do I begin to play catch up? You know I don't think I can. I've spent the last five months criss-crossing the globe and doing some major deals that I might one day be able to tell my grandchildren about, but not you, or at least not yet.

Let me share two quotes with you, though, from clients about my team

"He has been visible, available and accountable" 

Well shouldn't that be tattooed on the butt of every service manager?  I hope it applies to all my team, so it would be invidious of me to single out Martin. But hey, what the heck, he deserves it.

And, oh let me polish my fingernails before I share this one with you, and buff up my cuticles

"We think there are only two companies in the world who can do what you do"

Dead right, there are, and one of those is lying to you.

Or in other words I've not been busy here because I've been very busy elsewhere,and I've been busy because most of my predictions about 2012 are coming true, big time. Actually, scarily true and scarily big time.

So I'll also just throw in that I have a couple of speaking engagements coming up, including another Bright Talk seminar and an itSMF Ireland event. I'm still waiting for the Pink 13 invite, hint hint.

If I had one massive plus point to make at the moment it would be how much I enjoyed the ITSM MSc. open day at Northampton University. Hopefully we will be releasing an ITSMROW podcast in the next few days, but  essentially I was gob-smacked by the quality of the dissertations I've read from the graduates.