There's a lot of text I'm going to get out of this idea. I know it well. One of the things I always see when I get started with a customer is the belief that implementing this system will solve their problems. It means they have fresh memories of the sales presentation. The promptly forget, because they don't know how to read, the embedded and implied caveats of the salesman's speech, and they specify what they want built to me. I listen and nod. As a designer and architect, I can make it happen. Here's what never gets discussed: process. So at the end of the customer's speech they finally give me the $10 question. Can we really accomplish all this? My answer is (now) "If you really want it."
Or let me put it more snarkily. I'm going to show you how to do more, with less, faster and more accurately, and you are going to tell me no, because it makes you uncomfortable.
It always comes down to that. If you want change, you have to change your process. The technology only facilitates change. It doesn't make change. You have to change.
The Guardian Activate Summit: Clay Shirky Keynote from The Guardian and The Paley Center for Media on FORA.tv
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