The Blog Year That Was

I started my blog earlier in the year as a way to organize my articles/presentations. In my wildest dreams I could not have imagined I would end up with 37% of my visitors from around the world – at last count from 102 countries (though many had a medal tally of 1 - so probably just stumbled into my blog). Most I have never met or talked to but who I now hear from more than my friends (someone psycho-analyze that, please). Or what I wrote over the year when exported into Word is over 250 pages in length. I never thought I had the stamina to write a book! Google Print, feel free to scan and catalog every page.

So, as I look back at the blog year, several thanks are in order. To Google, MSN, Yahoo, Technorati, Six Apart  - thanks for providing the affordable platform to reach so many folks. To my favorite bloggers (many identified in this post), thanks for the inspiration. To my readers – thanks so much for the time and the feedback.

And one of you asked me – do I have a favorite post from the year? Not sure about favorite – but can I share my most enjoyable, most impactful and most read?

Most enjoyable – I love writing about applied technology innovation - CIOs who take early technologies and give them to small “tiger teams” and deliver huge payback. Like at Steelcase,  Hertz, Jetblue. Michelin can rate restaurants. I like to write about “home cooks” and their “recipes”. These folks make mockery of the question “Does IT matter?” They are the Medicis who are funding the new Renaissance.

Most impactful – to free up more innovation budgets for CIOs, I write about fat in incumbent, utility IT spend. The Giant Crunching Sound. Utility Computing – wish it was so easy. I have not received too many holiday cards from IBM, Microsoft, EDS, SAP, Oracle, Verizon, Accenture – vendors that provide most of the utility spend that eats up 60 to 80% of IT budgets for basic, keep-the-lights on, IT spend. But you should see the kudos I have from CIOs for helping them crunch this spend. And those from newer technology companies with innovations and hunger to show what they can do even with crumbs from the budget table. Lots more to do. And even new, low cost vendors need to be watched as I wrote about offshore vendors in “The Economics of "Cheap"”

I am glad I challenged Larry Ellison about software industry consolidation earlier in the year. Now as we can see SaaS, Open Source, Web 2.0 vendors and of course, Google are generating a fair amount of excitement in a so-called consolidated “software” market. 

A topic which makes many people uncomfortable – is that of global competition. My philosophy is summarized in China/India – Shouldn't we be worried? Sure I am worried. But it is also an exciting new world as I wrote in Generation G.

Beyond IT, I believe we have clogged a number of our business processes. If we are worried about global competition we should listen to the customer POV and conduct Business Process "Angioplasty" on “plaque” that comes from expensive technology, people, security and compliance.

Most read -  I wish I could tell you there was a consistent pattern around what your favorites are. Earlier in the year, it looked like my post on the research firms – Analyze This! – was going to be a runaway winner. Not exactly sure why since that is only an occasional topic for me. But over the last few months, many more posts have gained in readership. Some blog software seems to allow for a listing of most reed posts - mine does not.

Sorry, you asked a simple question – what is my favorite post and I started to write another book!

So I have a better answer – since my tracking software can cannot give me a clear answer, I would love to hear from you about YOUR favorites. (My tracking software does tell me all kinds of other useless informatuon like 28% of my readers use Firefox, the time most readers access the blog is between 1 and 2 pm eastern, and the slowest day is Saturday)

Thanks – and keep reading, commenting, arguing.

Happy holidays!