Simon is a hands-on software architect and has a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Reading. Over the past 12 years, he’s been involved in projects ranging from rich desktop clients and web applications through to highly scalable distributed systems and service-oriented architectures; predominantly within the finance industry. He's also undertaken consulting and training roles with a broader focus on people, process and technology.
Corporate spam
It's 2007 and time to wise up to the Web 2.0 world
We don't put up with it outside of work, so why should we put up with it inside of work? Spam. Not pills, porn and poker, but organisational e-mails that get sent out to the entire company on a weekly basis, e-mail alerts when somebody adds something to a discussion board and e-mails to say that services will become unavailable at the weekend. Some of this information is interesting, some isn't. More often than not, there's no way to unsubscribe from this type of communication. It can be frustrating, a waste of time and a waste of resources.
My take on this is that if you're really that interesting, *I'll* subscribe to *you*. Technologies like blogs, wikis and RSS/Atom have made this possible for a good few years now and you've only got to look at sites like Google, Technorati, del.icio.us and flickr to see how these technologies are changing the way people stay connected to the information they want to receive. With the web awash with innovative examples of Web 2.0 technologies, why haven't more people grapsed this inside the corporate firewall? There *are* other ways to distribute a message rather than e-mail. It's 2007 and time to wise up to the Web 2.0 world.
