Pink

There appears to be more vendors certifying their products against more processes on PinkVerify than the OGC scheme. Why is that? What can OGC learn from Pink about making it easier for vendors? or does it show that PinkVerify is too easy? Does it matter?

I hate technology. Really. I work with it every day, but I feel about it the same way that sanitation workers feel about their medium (or the way I HOPE they feel about it). I use technology when I have to, to do what I want to do. But I hate it. And it knows it and it hates me back. Take for example the weekend's outage on this blog.

It is not too late to sign up for Pink Elephant's 14th Annual ITSM Conference in Las Vegas next month. I'll see you there. If you come along, we'll be introducing an entirely new feature: an Exhibit Hall Optimizer. I have created the EHOBOK, the Exhibit Hall Optimizer Body Of Knowledge, as a tool for you to extract maximum value from the vendor exhibits, usually a dead zone for some of us at a conference. Check it out on the Conference blog and discover important principles such as

Over on the Pink Elephant conference blog, I talked to Pink Elephant’s AVP Product Strategy, Troy DuMoulin, who blogs regularly and – I think – with lots of insight. We don’t always agree (see my recent post) but anyone who themes his blog around the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has got to be worth reading, and the content rewards the effort.

Anyone who has read my posts on CMDB and those of Troy DuMoulin on that same topic might think we disagree and they'd be right... but only partly. There is a lot we DO agree on over CMDB. Nevertheless I look forward to some brisk debate at the Pink conference in February in Vegas.

In true camels/committees fashion, the ITIL V3 certification scheme is arcanely complex, as it twists itself into knots to please everyone. Then Pink Elephant come along and make it all seem simple.

In our mobile age it becomes very difficult for employers to build a base of expertise in the organisation. It leaks. You've no sooner paid for someone's ITIL Manager's (now Expert's) certificate and they are moving on. Pink Elephant has been talking about an interesting alternative approach: an expert team.

[Update June 2009: This article has a poignant irony to it, now that OGC have unilaterally decreed that ITIL is, after all, a standard that one can certify compliance against]