Recent ITConversations

This week I listened to three excellent ITConversations . (One of the nice things about having a 30 minute walk to campus is that it gives me a chance to listen to books and interviews.)

The first was Capturing the Upside with Clayton Christensen. He talks about his Law of Conservation of Modularity, which is about integration and where value lies. His comments on the upmarket disruptions, such as the demise of DEC are fascinating. His distinction between growth markets and growth business made a lot of sense to me. (Steel mini-mills are growth businesses, wireless communication is a growth market.)

Doug Kaye's interview with Joel Spolsky was interesting, especially since I've been reading Joel on Software for a couple of years. The interview is a whirlwind, but Joel's comments about listening to customers made me think. He pointed out that often customers don't really know what they want, and that very rarely will a customer suggest a breakthrough feature. I agree with Joel. It's important to treat customers with respect and to respond to their feedback, but you have to realize that not every feature request will really make sense. Sometimes when customers have a feature request, they are trying to fix a symptom, not a problem. There's no substitute for the overriding vision of an individual or small team.

Finally, I enjoyed Robert Lefkowitz's talk, The Semasiology of Open Source . Oddly enough, I was walking to my accounting class while he was saying that the open source community needs to focus on accounting just as much as it focuses on law. His talk is extremely well developed, and he raises interesting points about what really constitutes source. I won't spoil the ending.