Australia is a long way from anywhere, making it hard (historically) to lean on overseas skills to solve problems. This has breed a strong streak of pragmatism into the Australian DNA pool, leading us to find pragmatic solutions to real problems.
Robert Connolly published a brilliant white paper in February 2008 which is a great example of this in action. Showing a a strong sense of realism and common sense, Robert pulls apart the Australian film industry and, using clear and direct language, provides a set of good recommendations on how we might address the challenges the Australian film industry faces.
There’s a lot of good ideas in the paper for the IT services industry. To a certain extent we’re caught in a similar situation, caught between the low budget films of SaaS (software-as-a-service), and spiralling demands from our star talent (architects, project managers, …) who’s careers drive them toward block buster projects. The top four measures he proposes might even provide us with a template to create a new engagement model that incentivises the IT industry to deliver business outcomes, rather than IT assets:
- a first dollar share for filmmakers,
- fair returns for cast and crew,
- more realistic budget models, and
- simplified reporting obligations.
Robert’s recommendations provide us with valuable grist for the mill as we, in the IT industry, work our way through the current evolutionary phase our industry is going through, driven by the shift from large, on premises applications to a future increasingly dominated by cloud solutions. His approach to the problem is also an excellent model of how to engage with the wholesale transformation of an industry.
Posted via email from PEG