…Non-IT people! Breakfast reading is fun reading, and today I’m going to share what today’s morning meal had to offer literature-wise. I was just reading Scott Bradner’s recent column in Network World, and as usual, he has the right concept, but can’t seem to connect the dots to the central issue.

Before anyone thinks this is an attack on Mr. Bradner, I need to make sure I get this out of the way: I have the utmost respect for him, he’s kind of Internet royalty on the tech side of things. He is part of what keeps this all going technologically and is a pretty nice guy from what I’ve been told! If you read this, I’d love to take you for coffee sometime!

Ok, I continue now. Not once in that article does he use the words “training”, “education”, or “instruct”, or “responsibility”. No way could he possibly blame himself or people like him (myself included here!) for not using those words when speaking with hardware suppliers, telcos, or even administration - a pretty typical point of view from him.

When I’ve asked for things such as what he’s mentioning, I use verbiage that the vendor can understand. I bet he wouldn’t go to foreign countries without learning to say “thank you” or “where’s the bathroom” in the native tongue, so why not learn some of the native language of the vendors? I once asked for redundant T1 lines, using the telco’s own vernacular to describe how I wanted the lines to be routed, and to make sure they understood that my employer was willing to pay for the custom request. Sure enough, my ever-so-wise boss got to prove the value of this diligence during some street maintenance happening behind our building. One of the lines got cut, along with telephone, cable, and power, but the redundant Internet connection stayed online because it came from a different physical location in the telco’s network. Our UPS kicked in, our customers had no idea anything happened, and I got to sit around and play paddleball* for 35 minutes while waiting for the power to come back on.

The point I’m making here is that being an informed consumer is meaningless if the vendor is in the dark about how to provide the service you’re looking for. Granted, not all vendors are suited to providing these special requests for any number of reasons (some being: physical plan capability, personnel, economics, etc.) but there is always someone out there willing to do whatever you’re willing to pay them for as long as you can explain what it is… and it isn’t impossible. You’d think that the tech security officer from Harvard would be a little more in touch with issues like this. He’s obviously extremely good at what he does, has an impressive IT-beard, and is motivated to share his experiences - which are all important. Wow, I’ve got 2-out-of-3 of those things (guess which one I don’t have!) - maybe I should be half-writing articles for Network World.

You can do better, I know it. See one of your recent previous articles if you don’t believe me!

* I know, a totally stereotypical nerd thing to do