New Workforce - The Weblog of New Equities

Open source Coca Cola?

Or Pepsi, or something very much like it, used to promote the concept of open source software:

If you’ve been to a computer show in recent months you might have seen it: a shiny silver drink can with a ring-pull logo and the words “opencola” on the side. Inside is a fizzy drink that tastes very much like Coca-Cola. Or is it Pepsi?There’s something else written on the can, though, which sets the drink apart. It says “check out the source at opencola.com.” Go to that Web address and you’ll see something that’s not available on Coca-Cola’s website, or Pepsi’s — the recipe for cola. For the first time ever, you can make the real thing in your own home.

OpenCola is a brand of cola unique in that the instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License.

The company who devised this promotion has long since exited the scene, but the opencola recipe lives on... (Via Digg.)

The once and future Google

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for the year 1997. We're going to pay a visit to a young Stanford University graduate student named Sergey Brin and take a look at his pet project, a new search engine called Google.

Hat tip: Freakonomics and Pajamas Media.

Retro PC dreams

Remember Atari and Commodore? The Apple II and the original IBM PC (and its hapless successor, the PS/2)? Now, you can relive the TV commercials that sold us all on the dream of owning our own personal computer, thanks to the folks at Downloadsquad, who have meticulosly compiled them in one nostalgic post, "The history of the personal computer in TV commercials".

It's all here, including Apple's famous "1984" superbowl ad introducing the Mac, and the early IBM campaigns incongruously featuring a Chaplin lookalike. Plus, classic Microsoft ads ranging from the Rolling Stones to a bizarre performance by Microsoft's own Steve Ballmer hawking Windows 1.0. Not to be missed!

Hat tip: Pajamas Media and James Hudnall

Whither Microsoft post-Vista?

On his blog at Information Week, Alexander Wolfe muses that, with the release of Visa, Microsoft may have reached its upper limit:

In software terms, there are two interesting trends, which underscore Vista's probable place as Microsoft's high OS watermark. First, Vista has essentially -- and at long last -- brought most of the features of Apple's Mac OS X to the Wintel platform. (Widgets/Gadgets, anyone?)

Secondly, Linux has effectively disintermediated expensive software vendors like Microsoft (much like bloggers have in some sense cut the rug out from under not quite as well compensated journalists such as myself, though I'm running hard to catch up :).

For Microsoft, it seems to me that the only real question going forward is, will the company's fate mirror more closely that of DEC (Digital Equipment Corp., to readers under 40), or of IBM?

Funny, people were making the same kinds of assessments about Apple a few years ago.

UPDATE: CNET's "Vista for the Masses" is a veritable Vista-palooza for anyone interested.

Is Web 2.0 dead?

No, says Steve Rubel, the market is just thinning the herd.

They all scream for iPhone

Lots of buzz at MacWorld over Apple's new iPhone though somewhat less at CES. The general consensus is that it's pretty damn cool, even as some question whether it's ready for enterprise use.

Meanwhile, Cisco is suing Apple for copyright infringement over its use of the iPhone name.

The shape of things to come

Wired Magazine boldly gives its predictions for 2007.

The wild, wild Web

Read/WriteWeb weighs in with predictions of the important Web technologies and trends of 2007. Topics include, Microsoft vs. Google, enterprise collaboration, the proliferation of Amazon-like Web services and the rise of rich internet and mobile apps.

Great expectations

Information Week looks ahead to the 2007 IT job market.

Survey: IT pros are "job flirts"

A recent UK survey found that a large percentage of IT professionals are constantly on the lookout for the next opportunity:

The "Work in Progress: Jobseekers survey", carried out by polling firm Loudhouse Research, surveyed over 1,000 UK workers across the UK and found that nearly half (48 per cent) of workers in IT have applied for a job or registered with a recruitment agency in the past 12 months. Despite this, over two-thirds (68 per cent) reckon they will still be in the same job 12 months from now.

According to the study, IT employees are knowledgeable about what they look for in a new job and are intent on finding companies that can offer the best deal. However, money was not necessarily the main priority for job seekers.

Top factors that attract job seekers to a new company or role are interesting or challenging work (89 per cent) and friendly environment (84 per cent).

This is consistent with our own findings at New Equities, based on surveys and roundtable discussions with consultants (both those who work for us and those who don't). Getting the "best deal" is important, but the intangibles such as job satisfaction and cultural fit are also key. And - being listened to was something consultants highly valued and sought in their work environment. Not surprising, but apparently a much rarer occurrence than most of us would think.

All of this points to the looming challenges of 21st century workforce management: how to find the best talent, and how to retain that talent (and the knowledge of those workers). These are actually age-old questions, but they take on a new urgency in the IT industry, as the qualified pool of talent ages and the next generation of potential IT workers, spooked by fresh memories of the recent tech recesssion, opts for other career paths.

Company loyalty is not entirely a thing of the past, but it has to be constantly earned and the bar is set much higher than it was a decade ago. For firms that hire consultants on an ongoing basis, it means adopting a more "consultant-centric" outlook that works from a starting point of trying to understand what consultants want out of their careers and making an honest effort to deliver value in those areas.