The big difficult thing about the 2.0 things is that they’re really not fundamentally technical but sociological: about mindset rather than tools — even if the tools are the thing empowers the mindset.

But the need for change is bigger than .. in my life, at least.

I’m more and more inclined to think that The Change will come from outside rather than in. This has already been the case but I’m really not seeing that the giants will be able to have enough agility to change except for rhetorics (or patching up in panic, which we can see in some places to an extent already).

Interesting times.

That’s understandable to me as Web2.0 is as much about a mindset as it is about the tools.

Also have to examine my own expectations that IT people should be different from other people pursuing a career in an organisational hierarchy. What reasons are there for stepping out of line?

I found this very interesting as related to the IKM Emeregent programme, I have been been trying to identify audiences for the programme. I thought that our 3 key audiences were: IKM (information and knowledge management) professionals; senior managers and policyshapers; and members of the Programme itself. Then I started thinking, what about IT managers?

I have now included IT managers in the audiences but, in a realted blog post, I’m also arguing that IT managers are often the enemy of good IKM practice. Why?

Firstly, they like technology for its own sake, often the bigger the better. Secondly, and this comes from personal experience, they often torpedo smaller initiatives with more development relevance. Thirdly, they don’t often have an understanding of the realities of Southern partners and this has led to many partners being obliged to share information of the organization’s own portals with a total disregard for connectvity issues. And this list goes on.

I realise that this is a bit of an extreme view – and not all IT managers are like this – but when you think that IT budgets and KM budgets often come out of the same pot (this is something I found from case studies of a number of organizations), the arguement begins to look convincing.

Why is this relevant to your post? Well, I think it is showing the same sort of evidence. Web 2.0 may be threatening to IT managers as it is a sort of organized chaos which they can’t control. So I see it as more as a control or power issue than anything else.

If you think this is too extreme, I’d be happy to hear from you.

To complete your above mentioned list on why IT departments are so slow on picking up the web 2.0 hype: i think it is also because they are IT guys – and just think inside this IT frame of providing reliabe IT. Instead of what their technology offers to others and how all this might help to enhance internal communication.