Happy holidays to all!
Today I write about a topic near and dear to my heart, as it applies both to my personal and professional lives: New technology and the price we pay to procure and implement it.
Last Sunday morning, I woke up at 4:30 AM at my house in Virginia, got dressed, filled up two heaping mugs of coffee, and set out into the frigid darkness with one intent in mind: To obtain for myself (That’s right, I don’t have kids old enough to appreciate it) a Nintendo Wii.
For the previous two weeks I had been coldly snubbed with laughter and pointing at my meager attempts to procure one by simply showing up at Best Buy at 9AM. Today would be different. First, during the week I interrogated the kids that work at the local game store to find out the where and the when of the next available shipment and was told that Target on Sunday was my best bet. Next I did a little web research to confirm that I was not being led on a wild goose chase and finally, having completed my extensive research, both on the specifics of the system and the easiest and most likely place to procure, I set out.
I was fully expecting with my insider knowledge to be the first person there, and to sit in my car working on my laptop until I saw another human being and then and only then braving the 27 degree morning (That’s Fahrenheit, not Celsius).
At 5AM at the Target in Leesburg Virginia, I was the 18th person in line…
I had a decent time in line, met a lot of fellow techies, folks in IT, and a lot of really great parents who must love their kids a ton. For the first hour however I had no idea if the store in fact had any Wii’s or if they had enough where I would get one. By 6AM my hot coffee was gone. By 6:30AM I had my answer from the store manager that they had 70 units and all I had to do was wait. By 8AM when the store opened, my feet were frozen, my lips and the rest of my face chapped, and my bladder most certainly tested to its limits, but I got my Wii, and I must say, it was worth it.
Now how does this relate to my professional life? Simple.
Bleeding edge technology, wherever it exists is cursed by two things: A lack of knowledgeable experts and resources, and a lack of reliable support due to the fact that users, more than designers, determine how an application or device will be used in production.
First of all, best of luck finding reliable resources that go past the product marketing to explain how the thing really functions from an architectural perspective. Most likely the product was developed by a small start up and then was purchased by a large company who now has plenty of sales people that can give the give the elevator pitch but not nearly enough people to deliver a highly technical overview of how the product functions. At this point also from a support perspective you also now have what weeks ago was a small company capable of supporting a state or two with a couple of critical customers now supporting a global effort without the appropriate amount of time to train technicians. Finding good information is difficult, strictly due to growing pains. The other and more directly applicable aspect is the manufacturing crunch and delay for hardware for bleeding edge tech both for units as well as replacement parts.
Second, as the product evolves through maintenance and feature packs, who knows if it will continue to focus on the aspects of the application you deemed worthy of purchase as an early adopter, or if the user community will drive development into a different direction? Also, as an early adopter, at some point, the tech will do something that neither you nor its creators expected it will do, either by filling some new tangential purpose or by totally hosing production.
No one expected someone to accidentally throw their Wii controller through their $3000 60” plasma television, but I’m sure if you are reading this blog you’ve already read that article somewhere. I think we can all agree in the world of IT it’s a small step to call this a mission critical system failure. I also have no idea where Nintendo will take the Wii, or if a year from now development will decide that they really want to focus on games for toddlers and octogenarians.
So that’s the tie in, and I apologize for taking such a long time to get there, and while it may certainly sound like I’m promoting fear of the new and saying its not worth the risk, I am happily endangering my Plasma right now and could not imagine life without the bleeding edge features that were so costly for me to research, acquire and implement. I’m also finding that my best source of support (much like bleeding edge tech) is the rest of the user community, which is always growing. :)
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