Timing is the new Location

You know 40 is the new 30.  Brown is the new black (or is orange now the new brown?).   So I say that timing is the new location.  Proximity, relation, relevance these have now surpassed mere place-based traits.  Location, location, location – hardly – now the rally cry should be timing, timing, timing.  And for me the wrong time is the new wrong place.

It is fair to say that it is occasionally challenging for me to stop being a technology advocate (evangelist?) and remember that I am an objective, impartial researcher. Today however, my irritation with technology and technology implementation far out-weighed my love affair with the digital. Our division’s IT decided to migrate our exchange mailboxes to new servers (and network?) on the 4th day of the term.  Four days into the busiest week of the entire year.  The communication has been minimal and there was heaps of confusion today as people struggled to figure out how and where to find our current email (and use it!) while we are undergoing the change.

So what’s the big deal?  Anybody who has been around the technology block has been through a similar situation at least a dozen times and it usually involves data loss and 20 hour days.  But for me, it was this on top of a blown motherboard which left my laptop dead for almost 2 weeks and then 2 more days of not being able to get on the division network because “changing your motherboard has unregistered your laptop and you will need to re-register to gain network access”  – aaaaaaaah!

In the middle of this I am advocating for the use of computer-mediated social networking (i.e. Facebook or something similar) to facilitate community development for the SoB (that’s school of business) postgraduates.  Do I need to rethink this or am I over-reacting to the techno-frak-up-trifecta?  Help – time is of the essence.

I love/hate technology

I was searching for, printing and reading some more articles today when I thought “I love this – it is so amazing that I can do all of this from my office instead of trudging off to the library – I am so lucky”. Then my iPod batteries were running low and I spent the next hour trying to get my laptop’s USB ports to recognise the iPod. I thought – “I hate technology – this is all such a waste of time”. Well I spent heaps of time Googling the error and thought (you guessed it) – “I am so glad that I can search the web and find other people who have experienced the same things I have”. Because I didn’t find the solution to my problems on Dell’s website or Apple’s. I found different things to try (and the combination eventually worked) by reading blogs, discussion groups and various postings.

So I still love the fact that people are motivated and willing to publish information on the web that really helps. Love wins.