A forum post on LinkedIn asked us what will IT be like in 2011? I checked the police website and found the IT Swami was last seen in Hokitika, poaching paua (abalone) for the Chinese market. After a close shave while diving under the influence he appears to have seen the light on stripping our birthright to supply Asian greed through Kiwi greed. I finally found him building a gypsy house-truck that included a local area network, UPS and satellite link. I got up early enough in the morning to catch him sober (as he wasn't awake yet) and quickly recorded his predictions while he fumbled for his cigarettes:

FWIW, here are some sample ITIL service catalogue documents. They may not be flash but they are better than what you get in the ITIL V3 Service Design book. I have used these a couple of times with success but they are not extensively road tested: they are provided on an as is basis with no warranty or support.

A reader had a quiet word with us about the relative costs of itSMF conferences, and we discovered on investigation that there is a most extraordinary diversity of cost around the world. Each itSMF chapter is constitutionally obliged to hold a chapter conference, but boy do they have a range of pricing for them. Aussies should have come to our conference in NZ- you'd have got a holiday in lovely Wellington, along with Sharon Taylor, Ivor MacFarlane, Rob Stroud, your prez, and others, and probably still had change left. And how about the Netherlands? Free to members! That's how you drive membership.

Worldwide there is an overall IT professional accreditation spreading, in the UK (CITP), Europe, the USA, Australia and other places. Not before time.
For too long IT managers have accepted poor documentation, subverted change control and general ill-discipline from IT technical staff simply because they held the sacred knowledge about the technology under their care.
The understanding is emerging that the long-term health of IT depends more on professional behaviour: good process, good data, good record-keeping… a good culture amongst the staff. There is less patience with the prima-donnas and the cowboys.

Unemployed skeptics have too much time to ponder things. As I lay sprawled on the footpath outside the labour exchange in the sun, it occured to me that although we are stuck with the word "incident" for historical reasons, there must be a better word for it.