There are today more pressures than ever to conform, to avoid rocking the boat. I’m
prone to advise at least once in your lifetime take a risk for a principle you believe in even
if it brings you up against your bosses.
And he said:
It really is true that I would sometimes stand up for a principle at the risk of my
job.
But he was honest. He also said:
It is also true that when I lose my job, I get terribly nervous.
I think those are some things to think about. And I am not telling you when you go home you
should tell your boss that you really are not interested in how many steps his granddaughter
took last weekend, or how much fun your supervisor had on her vacation in Iowa City or Eindhoven
or wherever she went. Nor am I suggesting that you insist on getting your way on everything all
the time, but rather pick your battles and know what’s important. And take this time at
Balisage to think about what’s important in the technology we work on.I know some people who have a lot of very important data. What do I mean by “a
lot”? Well, when they talk about things you can count, the unit is usually millions. How
many documents? It’s in the millions. How many searches? It’s in the millions. How
many users? It’s in the millions. They have a lot of data,by
anybody’s count, they’ve got a lot of data.And what do I mean by “their data is important”? Well, not only does their
organization live off their data, if they and their data cease to exist, there are a whole lot
of other people and a whole lot of other organizations who would be seriously disaccommodated
and who would have to scramble to find some way to meet this need. So, they have a lot of data
that a lot of people think is important. And they have a fifteen-year-old — well, almost
twenty-year-old — data lifecycle architecture. Not all the pieces of it are twenty years
old, but the way they handle their content is between fifteen and twenty years old.And they have a group — I think they call it a “team,” but maybe
it’s a “task force” or a “committee”; it’s one of
these organizational things — looking into new storage options because they’re
having a hard time serving their data fast enough for their users. And they’re looking
toward getting a big, fancy, new database of the same sort that they’ve already got; only
this one will be bigger and better and faster and newer. And the brochure has the word
“XML” in it to plug into this architecture and solve all their problems. And most
of this task force thinks that’s the right answer because the thing that’s slow is
serving the documents, and if they get a bigger, better, faster database, all will be well. And
if they get the same kind of database they already have, then all of their training will still
be good, and they will still be valuable to the organization because they know how to work in this
environment, and it is the least risky thing they can do, and it will solve the problem.Fortunately, they have an irritant on their task force, and this irritant keeps saying to
them, “That’s not safe.” “What do you mean, it’s not
safe?” “We have to look at the whole lifecycle; we have to look at receipt and
validation and storage and maintenance and archiving and all the things we do with our documents
before it makes sense to just replace one component of this architecture.” And my friend
(my friend is that irritant, wouln't you know)
is hearing, “That’s really risky; that’s going to be really disruptive.
It’s going to touch everybody in the organization if we do that; we can’t do
that,” to which my friend is arguing, “If you don’t do that, the whole
thing may crash. If we don’t look at the whole system, when we remove the bottleneck, we
may create a whole bunch of new bottlenecks, and the whole thing may break, besides which this
organization does not have the stamina to sustain two major system changes in ten years. And if
we use up our once a decade major system change on a logically-minor upgrade, we then can’t fix
anything else. The least risky approach is very dangerous.” I’m not sure how this
is going to come out. I know who I’m cheering for.We at Balisage are the people who can, should, and often do speak up and say, “The
safe approach is unsafe. The emperor has no clothes.” If you’re going along to get
along, and that feels safe, be aware that that may be safe in the short run, but it may be very
unsafe in the long run.Let’s talk about Balisage for another minute. There are conferences where all of the
presentations are comfortable, safe, and non-controversial; where everybody loves everyone else;
where bluebirds flit decoratively through the hallways without soiling anybody; and where
anybody who sounds a sour note and talks about anything that doesn’t work or can’t
be done is not invited back (quietly behind the scenes so as not to upset the paying customers).
You’re not at one of those conferences.There are conferences where every talk is expected to give the audience members something
they can use next week. They want a “take-away” from every forty-five minute
presentation of something practical that is implementable immediately. You are not at one of
those conferences, either.This is a place where you should expect to have your ideas challenged and to hear about some
work that you don’t understand or that you don’t understand the logic behind or
the reasons for. Expect to hear about projects unlike yours and organizations with priorities
different from yours. Expect to hear some stuff you don’t quite understand. (I know I
will. I read all the papers; I know there’s going to be stuff here I don’t
understand. With luck, I will get some of it.) Expect that in the next year or two or three,
some of the things that you heard here will come to mind as you are thinking about a
problem or decision. It’s possible some of them will actually
be practically useful; it is more likely that they will get you thinking about things that will
help you in the future, get you out of places where you’re stuck. Expect the payback on
Balisage to be real, substantial, difficult to document, and significantly delayed.As you speak at Balisage, stick your neck out a bit. Tell us about the good stuff: what have
you done well? Tell us about the unfinished stuff: what do you want to do next? Tell us about
the things that unexpectedly don’t work. Tell us about what you want to do in the future,
about what you’re thinking.We have some first-time speakers. One of the things I really enjoyed this year when the
submissions came in is we got submissions from a whole lot of people I’d never heard of.
That’s really good! Please don't misunderstand me, I am very happy to see old friends
and familiar faces here, but I am particularly pleased to see all of these new people.
So, I say particularly to the new speakers, be warned: discussion here will be courteous
but lively. People will question your assumptions. They will question your methods. They may
agree with you for some very odd reasons. That’s the most disconcerting — when somebody
gets up to the microphone and says, “Yes, you are absolutely right because the moon is
made of old socks!” (Talk to them in the hallway afterwards.)Expect lively discussion. Be aware that, at least in my opinion, the best contributions to
Balisage will end up on our evaluation forms on both the “best of” lists and the
“worst of” lists. When you look at the evaluation form, it asks you to list the
talks you liked the best and the talks you liked the least. There are some talks that will end
up only on the “best” list, and that’s nice; somebody gave a good talk. I
like that. And there are some talks that will end up only on the “worst” list, and
well, that happens, and it’s unfortunate. I don’t which it will be, but I expect that
we’ll have at least one total dog of a talk this week. But the really good ones will end
up in both places because they will polarize people, and that’s what makes people think.
That’s what we’re here for. So, welcome to Balisage; let’s start thinking.