The speed of change - and of Flickr

The Computing Awards event earlier this month was very enjoyable. It's good to see the delight of those winning the awards - it clearly means a lot to them.

I did have one surprise. One of my fellow judges snapped a photo of me attempting to control a wayward snowboard - part of this year's entertainment. He kindly picked one of my better moments and sent me a copy. Next morning I received a note asking about the picture from our PR team at Henley!

Of course, all they had done was set a Google alert on Henley and the Flickr photo that Mark Kobayashi-Hillary had posted came up automatically. It shows how quickly and how widely these activities can be communicated.

I did my presentation to the Change Directors Forum on IT Enabled Business Change and we had some interesting debates. If you want to know more read the blog of Peter Thomas, one of the attendees.

One question I asked was if they believed that business change should be a profession. As many of you will be aware, the BCS has been promoting IT as a profession. My view is that it is critical to raise the capability levels in both IT and business change and that is one step towards a profession but a lot more would be needed. I have a number of people who want to participate in my research next year on raising capability.

It was disappointing how few people were aware of the IT-Enabled Business Change qualification at the Change Directors Forum and the two Government IT Academy seminars. I hope that word gets round since it is real opportunity to demonstrate a broad understanding of the whole lifecycle from alignment to benefits.