When people drive technology (and not the other way around)

As a technologist I've always been an advocate for technology. Technology that makes people life better, less expensive and more beautiful. Technology that breaks geographical and cultural barriers. Technology that creates jobs and creates opportunity.

Some 20 years ago, I actually chose a career in technology because I believed in the concept. And where others see technological obstacles, I tend to see opportunity.

I some fast 20 years we were all witnesses of some huge technological moves that forever impacted the world: the PC was invented, the Internet spread out, mobile devices got born etc. etc.

But, while some things that I call "technology popularization" and "democratization" happened, we keep seeing resistance to technology. We keep running into underfunded projects. And we keep running into places where technology runs people rather the other way around.

We believe people should create useful, easy to use, totally white hat, high impact, inexpensive technology. For other people. Period.

So, as people who create technology every day, we are taking this liberty to open up a dialogue with other developers, users and members of the business community.

We are raising awareness, as many times we see technology either underutilized, utilized in a wrong way or simply ignored.

It's almost like a manifesto. I would like to:

(1) Have people drive and create technology to the benefit of other people

When you create a mobile application that retrieves geo location aware data from a database, do it so you can make the user's life easier. Maybe he/she is a new in town and does not know where to pick up pizza from. Maybe he/she is looking for a doctor in his neighborhood. Maybe he/she wants to see menus and prices of all italian restaurants in a 5 miles radius.

We, the people (or the programmers), created that app to help other people. They, the people at Google, created that Map API that allows for that. They did it to help other people.

And, as long as these apps will work well and people will be able to find what they are looking for, we will all do well business wise too.

But never start with the business or with the money in mind. Have that as a reward of a very well done job. A job that helps out people.

(2) Never create technology just for the sake of technology: always address a problem

How many times have you ran into dumb, copied or redundant systems? Into crappy apps. Into things that bombard you with random ads? Or into things where you do not see any practical sense (such as a corporate CRM that requires sales agents to insert sales leads that already exist in another CRM of the same company).

How many times have you seen companies putting out products that serve no purpose or products they do not believe in. I've seen many. I've seen accountants web pages that look like a 3rd grader's work and do literally nothing. I've seen in-house databases that nobody ever used. And I've seen exotic features that people were literally afraid to touch. "NEVER push that button!" told me a sysadmin one time :)

Never create technology just for the sake of showing off technology. Create technology that serves a purpose: save people time, save people money, make their work easier.

(3) Be careful with letting previous developed technology "choose" your users or customers

"This is how we always did it." You hear this dangerous statement all the time. And in organizations of all sizes. The fact that you used to it bad, buggy and inefficient are definitely not good enough reasons to keep doing it.

Even worse is to recruit personnel or chase customers just based on a certain technology. "We are targeting Microsoft users." or "We only recruit for Windows programmers" are examples of very simplistic ways of looking at things. Nothing against Microsoft here (we totally use and build products based on their technology every day). Just an example.

So try and see the big picture. And do not be afraid to change technology if your users or customers will benefit from that change.

(4) Leverage the beauty and power of technology

Instead of starting with a generic / negative statement like "We do not need this type service.", "We do not have the approved budget to approach this." or "Our customers are not familiar with this type of technology" please take a moment to reflect on some things.

How can you leverage technology? Why investing in good well implemented, easy to use technology is never an expense and is always an investment? How can you make 1,000 times fold what you are making right now by implementing a technology?

I'll just give one example: a real estate company continues to market in their neighborhood by mailing out business cards and fliers. They spend countless hours having staff producing the written content, putting everything in envelopes, sticking stamps on and manually sending thousands of pieces of mail out. What if they had a mobile app that will actually drive potential buyers to their doors? How much more impact full and productive will that be?

(5) Remain curious and up-to-date with technology 

Technology always changes but that should not intimidate you. See, things are actually not changing that fast as they seem to be. There are somehow always the same fundamentals- try to understand those a bit and you will be able to easier see the big picture. There is always a database- somewhere. There is always a cloud- somewhere. You always have some apps- somehow. And you also have a smart phone, a desktop and maybe a laptop. The rest is just ... pushing buttons :) [of course I am simplifying things but it's something like that.]

So please, I urge you to remain curious and to keep learning and playing with new technological things. Weather it's your new iPhone and you just take pictures of your broken refrigerator parts to send them to your contractor or it's your new PC with a new awesome flat screen where you lookup things on the Maps, whether you are new on Facebook and you are trying to figure out how to post a "selfie" while staying in line for coffee or whether you want to see how you can enroll your kid in a new health insurance plan in less than 10 minutes there is always opportunity to learn and exercise technology.

Give technology a chance and technology will not let you down ...

Life with technology is absolutely beautiful Planet Earth! Let's keep it that way together.

Make it a great day!

Adrian Corbuleanu
Miami Beach, FL
http://wittywebnow.com