Saturday, March 22, 2014

A rose by any other name - or, is it HR or IT?

While reading the news of the day yesterday morning, I happened by this post by my trusted friend Prashanth Padmanabhan. 

The debate started well before we started speaking about "CLOUD" or SaaS, discussed many times, at meetings, global user groups and conventions, in private offices and conference halls.
Credit: http://incandescentcloud.com/cloud-credits/ - isn't it a magnificent art installation?

Indeed, should HR or IT take the lead when it come to HRIS projects? 
When the Cloud started being commercialized, the common understanding was that FINALLY the function could be solely in charge, with very limited or no input required by the IT/IS group - so there would be no need for expensive long term consultants, nor specialized IT headcount. Is that true? More specifically, can we hold it true when we are talking about critical systems as HR Core?

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Confluence 2014 in Santa Clara

On March 5th, I attended Confluence 2014  in Santa Clara. 
First thing first: I must give thanks to the organization of the event, who contacted me and was kind enough to invite me to attend. It was a day very well spent. 



The title of the event could appear pretentious anywhere else than in Silicon Valley: "The Future of Engineering: Better, Faster, Smaller". Here, it felt just right. While I feared to be blown off by topics way out of my comfort (i.e. expertise) zone, the agenda's keynotes and panels hit right home, and I learnt a lot from a roaster of exceptional speakers. 

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Have you ever regretted not doing an MBA?

HA.

Well, no, I never wanted to go for an MBA (even if occasionally I considered the idea, in particular when my alma mater EPFL started sending me the pamphlets detailing the executive MBA in Management of Technology); I remember too well the sense of relief I had upon finishing my degree, and how much more at ease I felt in the real world rather than in pure academia.

Am I ready to change my mind, just when a few recent articles evaluate the actual value of an MBA sizeable investment (examples of such articles can be found on Forbes, or on Business Insider)? No, I don't think so, but I have become more curious of the different opportunities out there.

My life still doesn't afford me the extra time to go back to school; and programs that I have evaluated tend to be exemplary for how they address other people need for development, but never seem to truly apply to me. My niche is HRIS - it branches out in many different disciplines, but I have never had the ambition to become CIO; even less now that HRIS systems (on premise, in the Cloud, for large corporations, for small 1 to 200 employees ventures, as well as everything in between) are in such a frenzy of novelty.
Credit: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/mooc-makes-oxford-online-dictionary/2006838.article

Enter here the MOOC approach (my last blog in December was about my recent discovery). Quickly, I found myself using many waking moments (I will not say all, because I have an employer and a family, each having every right to expect my full attention during large parts of my days) evaluating which courses I would prefer to pick and how many I can manage to learn well from simultaneously.